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razzle-zazzle · 3 months

Text

Brothers

9650 Words; Between AU, pre-canon

TW for death

AO3 ver

Gristle Junior was seven months and eleven days old on the day of his first Trollstice.

Or rather, he was seven months and eleven days old on what would have been his first Trollstice, were it not for the lack of trolls. And the day had started so well, too, anticipation electric in his veins as he bounced around his father’s room. He had been so ready to taste true happiness!

But the Trolls were gone, fleeing underground despite the best efforts of Chef’s underlings. Not a single Troll had been recovered, Gristle had been told, and from what little he had been able to see of the commotion—from the swinging shovels and pickaxes he had glimpsed in the plaza as he was being shuffled away from the action—supported that notion. Surely, if Trolls were being found, then surely there would be much less frustration.

But the day passed without a single Troll eaten. Gristle’s father, for who he had been named, had taken him aside to calmly explain that with no Trolls, Gristle would never be happy. Not ever. Nothing else could possibly work.

To a Bergen less than a year old, such words were absolute. And why should Gristle doubt his father? The King had lived for decades, an extent of time which felt like an eternity to Gristle Junior. Surely, if there was anyone who could know everything, it would be the King.

Gristle was seven months and eleven days old on the last chance he would ever have to know true happiness. The date clung to his mind, the damnation of eternal misery heavy in his chest. To a Bergen so young and inexperienced with the world, there could be nothing worse.

Chef was disgraced. Not a single Troll recovered, in all of that mess? Her exile was quick and loud—Gristle watched from the castle door with his father as Chef was bodily thrown through the gates, shouting curses he strained to hear. With a sigh, Gristle moved to turn away from the door, prepared to ready himself for bed.

“Your Majesty!” Two Bergens hailed down his father, bowing the moment the King’s eyes were on them. “We found…” The Bergen on the left had his hands cupped together oddly, perfectly concealing whatever would be inside. With a nudge from his partner, he bowed again, holding out whatever it was to the King. “We found this at the tree’s edge.”

Gristle Junior turned back towards the door, pressing against his father’s legs to peer at what was so urgent it couldn’t wait for daylight. The air was thick with anticipation as the Bergen’s fingers slowly parted, revealing what was delicately clasped in his hands.

It was a Troll.

Gristle’s eyes widened. His father inhaled sharply, peering down at the tiny shape curled in the palm.

The Troll stared up at them with wide eyes, curled in on itself and shaking. It was so small. How did creatures that small even exist?

The King hummed, leaning in further. Gristle Junior was quick to imitate, peering at the tiny Troll even more intently. This brought to light a detail that had been previously overlooked—a detail that seven month and eleven day old Gristle had no filter against pointing out.

“It’s gray.” Gristle said, peering down at the thing. Tiny, too. Could something so little really bring him happiness? “Is it sick?” He poked at the Troll, and it flinched back with a hiss, tail clutched in its paws.

“Inedible.” Gristle Senior growled out. He turned bared teeth to the pair before them. “Your effort is appreciated.” He said, “But there’s no use for a Troll that’s gone bad.” The King sighed, moving to reenter the castle. “Do as you wish with it.” He dismissed. “My son and I…”

Gristle Junior reached for the Troll. “It’s so small.” He whispered, staring down at it. Small and gray and baring blunted teeth in an approximation of a snarl… He looked up at the pair, eyes wide. “Can I have it?”

The Bergen holding the Troll hesitated, before tilting his hands towards Gristle. The Troll squeaked as Gristle scooped it up, voice tiny. Gristle squealed, clutching the Troll and running back inside, the rest of the world forgotten.

The Troll turned bewildered eyes up to Gristle. It trembled, shouting as Gristle turned a corner, but Gristle paid no heed to anything but the sheer novelty of his idea. His very own Troll! There was hardly much of a plan in the toddler’s head, but a simple idea was all Gristle really needed at his age.

Gristle bounced into his bedroom, Troll in hand. He moved to set the Troll down on the desk—

“Son!” Gristle Senior’s voice was seldom so loud—but when it was, it commanded attention from everyone in the area. And indeed, Gristle Junior turned his attention to his father, the Troll still squirming in his hand. “What are you doing?” Gristle had never heard his father at such a loss.

“Keeping it.” Gristle Junior said.

Gristle Senior walked across the room and peered down at the Troll on the desk, trapped between Gristle Junior’s hands. “A pet is a lot of responsibility, son.” He pointed out.

“You say the same about being Prince.” Gristle Junior responded.

Gristle Senior jolted slightly, taken aback. “That… is true.” He conceded. “But it’s a Troll.” He poked the Troll in question, sending it stumbling backwards onto the ground. “It will just get eaten.”

“But you said gray Trolls are inebidable!” Gristle Junior lifted the Troll—his Troll, up with cradled hands, pressing it against his chest. “That they’ve got no use, which means that eating them can’t do anything!”

“Inedible.” Gristle Senior corrected gently. He lowered down, to be closer to his son’s eye level. “Son, be realistic. The kingdom just lost all of its Trolls. Trollstice has been a tradition for more than a century. The shock of no more Trollstices will make the people desperate.”

The Troll stared up from Gristle Junior’s hands with wide eyes. Tiny claws too small to do any damage dug into Gristle Junior’s hand.

Gristle Junior huffed. “But they gotta listen to you, Daddy. You’re the King.” The people had listened when the King declared Chef exiled; Gristle had witnessed just that less than an hour ago. “If you say that my Troll is inedidible then nobody will eat it!”

The King sighed, tired and heavy. “You’ll need something to keep it in.” He advised. As his son cheered, he turned to the door, and made his way across the room. Once Gristle Senior reached the doorframe, he turned back to his son one more time.

“If I wake up tomorrow and find that thing is running around the castle, I will feed it to Barnabus.” He threatened. His face immediately lightened, and he left the room with a single, cheery, “Goodnight, son!”

Gristle Junior nodded at the closed door with the utmost seriousness. He turned back to his Troll, who he set on the desk gently. “Hear that?” He asked. “You stay in here, or else.” With that, Gristle propped his face up in his hands, leaning forwards. “My name’s Gristle. Yours?”

The Troll crossed tiny Troll arms and glared up at him. “I’m not telling.” It said, in a voice that reminded Gristle of the mice Barnabus ate.

“Then I’ll just give you one!” Gristle chirped. “How about… Trolly!”

“No.”

Gristle frowned. “You’re getting a name, no matter what.” He huffed, poking his Troll in the side. The Troll stumbled a bit, but remained standing. “You’re so grumpy.” Gristle noticed. “Just like… a Bergen…” He trailed off, something approaching realization creeping up his throat.

The Troll snarled. “Not a Bergen!” It insisted, tail smacking the desk.

Gristle stared. “You…” His eyes lit up. “You and I are gonna be best friends.” Gristle decided, poking his Troll again.

The Troll’s response was simple. Gristle yelped, yanking his hand back. The Troll fell over, rubbing at its mouth with tiny paws, and Gristle stared at the tiny teeth marks on his finger.

The Troll glared mutinously, as if daring Gristle to come within biting range again.

Gristle nodded. “Yep! Best friends!”

+=+=+=+=+

Gristle Junior was nine months and two days old when he learned the Troll’s name. He had been poring through a pet care magazine, oo-ing and ah-ing over the different kinds of pets that Bergens kept. From alligator-dogs like Barnabus to even frog-crows!

He had hit the section for small pets, though none of the kinds commonly kept by Bergens were as small as a Troll. He looked over at the custom cage his father had had commissioned for his Troll, from the pod taken from the abandoned Troll Tree to the sandy substrate in the basin. As usual, his Troll was down on the substrate, pressed into the corner while it worked its way through safflower seeds.

“Look!” Gristle held the magazine right up against the cage bars, pointing at the circled bird perch. “How does a swing sound? I bet you’d have a lot of fun with it, Trolly.” He didn’t expect a response—the Troll rarely ever spoke back, content with glaring and darting away when Gristle reached into the cage.

Which meant it surprised him all the more when the tiny creature spoke. “Branch.”

Gristle opened his mouth to continue speaking—stopped. “What?”

“Branch.” The Troll repeated. “My name is Branch.” Its eyes were locked resolutely on the sandy substrate, shoulders hunched and tail thwap-thwap-thwapping against the corner.

Gristle gasped. “Oh!” He’d never thought—he—Branch—

“That’s a weird name.” Gristle finally decided, leaning in. “Are all Trolls named like that?” He couldn’t quite read well enough to digest all the books he’d found about Trolls (or that had Trolls on the covers), so his only real source of information was what former Troll-handlers Chad and Todd (or was it Todd and Chad?) could tell him, when he saw them. Which wasn’t often.

Branch gave Gristle a deer in headlights look, a helpless sort of “how-would-I-know” conveyed through body language alone. Paws clenched and unclenched against the seed held between them.

Gristle shrugged, and went back to the magazine. “So,” He said, “You never said if you wanted a swing.”

“Don’t bother.” Branch huffed. “I won’t use it.”

+=+=+=+=+

Gristle Junior was five years old when his father led him into his study for the first time. The younger marveled at the book-filled shelves and neatly organized desk, at the candle holders set into the wall and the banners hanging down—this room was his future.

“My son,” Gristle Senior began. “What you will be starting today is a time-honored tradition of Bergen Royalty.” His voice had a practiced lilt, a deep timbre made of years of self-assurance. “For no Monarch rules Bergentown alone—it is the duty of Princes and Princesses to run the kingdom in concert with the reigning monarch.”

“Whoaaa…” Gristle Junior hopped up and down to see atop the desk. “I’m a Prince!” He realized, whirling around to face his father. “So I have to help you run!”

Gristle Senior chuffed. When he spoke, there was pride in his voice. “And that is exactly what you will start learning today.” He lifted his son with one arm, sitting down behind the desk and settling Gristle Junior in his lap. “Now,” He pushed a stack of books from the edge of the desk to the center. “Here are the best volumes to start with…”

The lesson continued on throughout the rest of the morning. After lunch with his father, Gristle Junior returned to his room with the stack of books he had been given, ready and willing to learn. He pushed open the door, and made his way over to the desk right next to his bed.

“There’s so many books I need to read!” Gristle lamented. “How am I ever going to learn it all?” He’d have to, though, to be a proper Prince of Bergentown. And he would! Bergens were tough, and royal Bergens were said to be the toughest of all! So Gristle would be the best Prince! No book could defeat someone as tough as him!

He was starting with history. But there was so much! He held out the book to Branch’s cage, showing off just how thick it was—and it was all pre-Trollstice, too!

Branch squinted at the tome, then returned to his digging. He’d been doing a lot of that lately. Which was weird, because Trolls were supposed to live in trees—every book Gristle had read on them said so. But the pod in Branch’s cage—taken directly from the Troll Tree, no less—remained just as empty as it always had. There was even dust building up along the top!

“I mean, how in the world am I ever going to remember all this?” Gristle slammed the book down on his desk, prying it open. He was glad for Branch—the Troll was a good listener, in the five year old’s eyes.

The Troll in question poked his head back up, ears twitching. “Are you going to read it, or are you just gonna complain?” He asked, before going back to the hole.

“Right.” Gristle turned his attention back to the book. Slowly, he began, sounding out the words as best he could.

“The first re-cor-did history of Bergenkind dates back to… three… fow-sand years ago.” He began. “When Fow-ler the First wrote the… the first ever Law.” He continued reading, stumbling over words while Branch continued digging. Gristle let the history wash over him, entranced in the task set before him. Hours passed, and Gristle found himself being called down to dinner before he even registered that so much time had passed.

Three days later, Gristle found himself staring at a worksheet in frustration. He was supposed to fill it out without looking at his books, and he was struggling.

“UGH!” Gristle threw his head back, clutching at his hair as he seethed. “How can I remember the name of the first Bergen to write a law but not when?!” He smacked his head against the desk, groaning in frustration. The urge to go to his shelf and pull out the relevant book itched down his spine—but he had to hold strong! A good Prince knew how to look things up, but a great Prince could recall whatever detail was needed when it was needed.

Oh, how was Gristle ever supposed to be a great Prince?

“The first recorded history of Bergenkind dates back to three thousand years ago.” Branch said, casually breaking the frustrated silence. “That’s what your book said.”

Gristle looked at Branch’s cage, where the Troll was busy jotting stuff down on a scrap of paper. Gristle then looked over to the book on his shelf. Slowly, he pushed out his chair and went over to the shelf, opening the book to the first page.

“That’s…” He turned back to Branch. “You’ve got a good memory.” He said, returning the book to the shelf.

Branch muttered something that Gristle didn’t quite catch. Gristle shrugged, and went back to his worksheet. He’d have to read aloud to Branch more often, if Branch could remember stuff so well.

With a hum, Gristle continued on with the worksheet. It probably wasn’t in the spirit of the challenge to have a friend who could remember a lot of words, but Gristle wasn’t concerned at all with that notion.

He continued to talk to Branch as he worked, something light in his chest with the knowledge that Branch really was listening.

+=+=+=+=+

Gristle Junior was six years old, and he and Branch were having a real good row. The kind of row that, had they been proper siblings, would have only been able to be settled by some proper Bergen roughhousing, with weapons and property destruction. A real riot-causing dispute.

It was hardly their first disagreement—Gristle had the faint bite scars all over his fingers to prove it. But it was certainly frustrating, born from weeks of buildup over a simple fact.

“It’s not healthy! Trolls are supposed to sing!” Gristle gestured to the book in his hand, which was way more useful than all the cookbooks he’d found. It actually went a bit into Troll health and growth, detailing all the ways and times that Trolls could become inedible. As Branch was, and had always been gray—or at least, as long as Gristle had known him—the book in question proved very useful.

“Well I don’t!” And that was the crux of the situation, the simple fact from which all of this had spawned. “And I never will!” Branch’s stand was resolute, unshakeable, even in the face of all of Gristle’s Princely Rage.

“But you have to!” Gristle insisted, gesturing again to the page he had the book opened to. “Trolls that don’t sing—this book isn’t very nice about them!” He was fumbling, he knew, but he didn’t know how else to say it. The book said that gray Trolls were to be removed from the Troll Tree and disposed of immediately. It didn’t say why, and Gristle was still a child—he didn’t question the words presented as fact. As far as he could tell, a Troll that had gone gray was just… it wasn’t right!

“You’re supposed to be happy.” Gristle pushed. “You’re supposed to sing, like a regular Troll.”

“Never gonna happen.” Branch insisted. “I’ll stay unhappy, just you watch!” He crossed his arms with a huff, tail twitching angrily.

“That’s not good!” Gristle responded. “You have to get your color back eventually!” The book said nothing about whether Trolls could regain their color after losing it. But it wasn’t right, for a creature so intertwined with music to never make a single note. And if the book said to get rid of gray Trolls…

Gristle cared about Branch, more than he could feasibly admit. The castle staff were fine, and his father was his father, but Branch—Branch was a friend. Someone Gristle could talk to who would actually listen, no matter what it was.

The book said it wasn’t healthy for a Troll to go gray. Gristle was going to be King someday, in the far distant future, and he’d be responsible for all of Bergentown. Even sooner, he would be a fully fledged Prince, responsible for helping his father with Bergentown. If Gristle couldn’t even take care of one tiny troll, then what were his chances of ever being good at what he was literally meant to do?

“And then what?” Branch gripped the bars of his cage, rage in every inch of his body. “You’ll eat me?”

“Of course not!” Gristle could never! Branch was… Branch was his friend! Inedible by Royal Decree! Gristle would sooner eat Barnabus!

“You’re lying!” Branch yelled back. “The moment I become edible you or some other Bergen will be serving me up on a silver platter!” His tail lashed about wildly, tears bubbling up at the corners of his eyes. “Because that’s all Trolls are to you!”

Gristle flinched back. He… he refused to admit it, but Branch had a point. Trolls were the only way that Bergens could ever be happy, and they had spent generations with a holiday dedicated to that very thing. But…

“You’re different.” Gristle insisted. Branch was his friend. “You’re not… you never sing and you’re always unhappy.” He huffed. “It’s like you’re barely a Troll at all!”

This time it was Branch’s turn to flinch, tail falling flat against the ground. “Maybe you’re right.” He said quietly, turning away from the bars.

“Branch, I—” Gristle reached out, only for his hand to fall back down when Branch glared at him.

“Fine, then.” Gristle grumbled. “We’ll just be unhappy together.” Between the two of them, Branch was the only one who had even a chance to ever be happy—Gristle would never get to eat a Troll with all of them gone, but Branch… Branch was a Troll. If anyone would ever get to be happy, it would be the creature who was quite literally made of the stuff.

“Fine!” Branch sat down hard on the substrate, arms crossed and turned away from Gristle. “Unhappy together!”

It felt like a promise, like a finality.

It felt like Gristle was failing hard at this whole “taking care of others” thing.

+=+=+=+=+

Gristle Junior was seven years old with a form in his hand. He stood before Branch’s cage, expanded over the years to include deeper substrate and a small climbing tree. The… well, it felt weird to call him a Troll, when he was nothing like Gristle’s books, but what else could he be called?

A Bergen. At least, that was what he’d be if Gristle’s idea went through.

“I’ve been learning about law.” Gristle began, with no real preamble. Branch looked up from his orange slice, ears twitching, but made no comment. “And I found out something interesting.” He took a deep breath, and glanced at the memo in his hand. “Adoption Laws, Section Two. In the case of a non-Bergen being adopted by a Bergen or other being of Bergen citizenry…” Gristle hurriedly looked at the memo again, “They are considered, in all aspects of the law, a Bergen, with all of the rights and restrictions that such a designation entails.” He let the memo flutter down to the floor and looked down at Branch, who was staring up at him with wide eyes.

Branch clenched and unclenched his paws against the half-eaten orange slice in his lap, tail flicking behind him. “...what.”

“Listen.” Gristle leaned in close, holding up the form in his other hand. “If I adopt you, then you wouldn’t be in any more danger of being eaten!”

Branch squinted. “Aren’t you a little young to be a parent?” He asked, orange slice seemingly forgotten in his lap. “And I’m older than you.” He pointed out, somewhat bitterly.

“Ew! No! Not as a son!” Gristle waved his arms wildly, then pressed the form against the bars again. “As a brother.” He clarified. “Because… you’re more of a friend than a pet,” Gristle explained, “And it’s not fair to keep treating you like one. A pet.” He carefully gaged Branch’s expressions, watching as his face flickered through a series of emotions. “All you’d need to do is sign on this line…”

“It can’t be that easy.” Branch groused, tail flicking faster. “Bergens don’t do ‘easy’.”

“Well,” Gristle rubbed at the back of his neck, “We would have to get approval from Dad for it to go through.” He rallied, clenching his free hand in a fist. “But that’s easy! I mean, he let me keep you!”

“As a pet.” Branch stressed. He set the orange slice aside, brushing off his paws as he stood. “That’s totally different.”

“And that’s why I want to do this!” Gristle unlatched the cage door, not bothering to reach in—he had long since learned that Branch hated being picked up unexpectedly. Better to let Branch come out of the cage on his own terms. “Because what kind of Prince treats his friend like a pet?”

Branch’s expression fell, his shoulders hunching. His paws clenched and unclenched in the rhythmic way they often did, his tail flicking. Carefully, slowly, Branch clambered out of the cage, climbing down the flipped out door to settle on the smooth wood of the shelf. Gristle held out his hand, palm up, and Branch hopped onto it, letting himself be lifted over to the desk.

Gristle laid out the form. He’d double-checked every word to make sure it was exactly what he needed, and all that was left was to sign it and have it approved. Gristle had already signed it, his name penned in only slightly messy ink. Penmanship win!

Branch pulled a tiny quill from his hair, hopping up to gently dab it in the inkwell on the desk. As Gristle watched, Branch kneeled down in front of his line, and carefully signed his name.

“Think that’ll be enough?” Gristle asked.

Branch hummed. “Maybe…” He tucked the quill away and went back to the inkwell, hopping up and leaning so far in that for a moment Gristle feared he’d fall in. Branch kicked the side and lifted himself back and out, clambering over to the form and slapping right next to his name with his paws.

Two inky paw prints, right next to his name. “That should do it.” Branch decided, satisfied.

Gristle nodded, offering his hand again. As Branch hopped onto his palm and clambered up Gristle’s arm to his shoulder, Gristle grabbed the form carefully, blowing a bit to make the ink dry faster.

“Let’s get this done!” Gristle declared, running off to go find his father. It wasn’t the first time Branch had left Gristle’s room, nor the first time that Branch had ridden on Gristle’s shoulder. But it was the first time since the belled harness had been made that Branch had left the room without the jingle of bells signaling his every movement. Gristle realized it was weird, actually, to feel the weight on his shoulder and not hear the sound of bells he’d come to associate with that weight. But the harness was from when Branch was still a pet in everyone’s eyes—it wouldn’t do to make Branch wear it now.

And really, Branch was like a Bergen, in a lot of ways. He never sang or danced, he was disagreeable—even the gray of his short fur was similar to the average Bergen’s dull tones. Whenever he had something to work on, be it the den he’d dug or even old worksheets Gristle tried to downsize for him, he took to working on it just like a Bergen: with a grumble and the focused spirit that allowed Bergens to create sturdy walls and buildings. And he had interesting insights, too—Bergens disliked great heights, so even the castle couldn’t get very tall, but it was Branch who gave Gristle the idea to suggest subterranean expansion when the King presented the age-old issue of expansion logistics. Which was just funny, because Trolls lived in trees—yet Branch never once touched the dusty pod hanging in his cage.

Branch settled down on Gristle Junior’s shoulder, tucked just below Gristle’s ear. Gristle found a sudden bounce in his step, a mix of anticipation and excitement in his veins. Yeah, this whole adoption thing was a great idea! Maybe even the best Gristle had ever had!

Finding the King was easy—it was just before lunch, so King Gristle Senior would be just finishing up with the final petitioners in the biweekly levee. Normally, Gristle Junior would be sitting in his own princely throne beside his father, to listen and watch and get a general idea of how a levee worked—but he had… kinda skipped it, what with how eager he was to try out the adoption idea. Not that that was a major issue—Gristle Junior wasn’t meant to fully step into his duties as Prince until he was ten.

Still…

“Ah, there you are.” King Gristle Senior groused, shifting slightly in his throne. “Care to explain why you missed today’s levee?”

Gristle Junior stopped short, nodding his head in a bow. “My apologies, Father.” He kept his tone careful, regal, like he’d been taught. “I found something that needed attending to.” He explained, head still down.

Gristle Senior snorted. “Well, out with it, then.” He waved his hand encouragingly as his son looked up. “What grand idea did you come up with this time?”

Gristle Junior’s mouth pulled back in an odd way, and he fought the strange expression off of his face. With a simple flourish, he drew out the form, holding it out towards his father. “This.”

Gristle Senior took the form, glancing it over. His expression remained neutr—his eyes widened, as the contents of the form properly registered. The King’s expression scrunched, turning thunderous, before going down to mere annoyance. He turned that annoyance upon his son, and all but sputtered out, “What in the name of Berg is the meaning of this?!”

“It’s an adoption form.” Gristle Junior explained, pressing his hands together. He felt Branch shift slightly on his shoulder, and he held out a palm. Branch took the offer, sliding down Gristle’s arm to stand upon his hand, small and gray and steady.

“I can… see that.” Gristle Senior hissed through ground teeth. “But…” His expression became just as lost as the night that Gristle Junior had first met Branch. With a deep sigh, Gristle Senior looked down at his son and the Troll.

“Letting you keep a Troll as a pet is one thing,” The King began, “But adoption? Of a Troll? Are you insane?”

Gristle Junior felt oddly gobsmacked. “It makes sense.” He tried, unable to keep childish uncertainty from his voice. “Branch is the most unTroll Troll ever, he’s just like a Bergen and I think it’d be best if he was called as such, because then nobody would even think to eat him!”

Gristle Senior sighed, heavy and tired. “That’s not a good enough reason.” He started. “Son, do you have any idea what would happen if that… thing were to become your brother?”

“It’d be a serious crime to eat him.” Gristle Junior responded easily.

Gristle Senior brought up his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, grumbling too low for Gristle Junior to make out the words. “...of all the—” With a rumbling groan, Gristle Senior regarded his son with a firm—but not wholly uncaring—expression. “You’re a Prince, my son. You can’t just go adopting every creature you see fit.”

“It’s just Branch.” Gristle Junior pushed back, “He’s already close enough to a Bergen, what’s adding the legal distinction going to do?” He shook his head. “This will all work out, Dad, I know it. I just need you to trust me.”

“Son, be realistic.” The King groused. “If that thing becomes your brother, then that makes it a Prince. There’s no way a Troll could be a Bergen Prince! Trolls are all about loud parties and sugar and silly games—they’re simply unsuited to laws and regulations and the hard work required to run a kingdom!”

Gristle Junior’s mouth opened—to say what, he wasn’t sure, but air was being forced up from his lungs and defiance was roaring in his heart, ready to burst out what would surely be a useful and clever retort—

“I can do it.”

As one, Gristle Junior and Senior turned to look at Branch. Branch took the combined attention with hunched shoulders, his tail clasped in his paws. “You want me to learn how to help run a kingdom? Fine. I’ll do it. I’ll learn.” He dropped his tail and crossed his arms, expression firm.

“I don’t want you doing anything of the sort.” Gristle Senior growled, but Gristle Junior was already rallying.

“He can! Branch is smart, Dad, he’s where I got the idea for underground expansions from! He remembers all the stuff I read, and he listens, and he’d make a good Prince!” All of his reasons were true and proven—which meant a lot, for seven year old Gristle Junior.

“Preposterous!” Gristle Senior began—

“If you think it’s so preposterous,” Branch’s voice cut through the room like alligator-dog teeth through mice. “Then why not bet on it?”

Those three words echoed in the sudden silence of the room, bouncing off the vaulted ceiling and tangling up in the eaves. If there was one thing Gristle Junior knew his father could not resist, it was a wager.

Indeed, Gristle Senior’s face had turned contemplative, his hands steepled before him. “A bet, you say?” Something like satisfaction slithered its way onto his face. “Hmm, I think I see what you mean. A trial period, of sorts, is that it? To find out if you could even come close to being a Prince?”

Branch nodded.

“Yeah!” Gristle Junior agreed. “If Branch can prove himself then you have to let the adoption go through!”

Gristle Senior snorted. “Sure, fine.” He waved his hand dismissively, before turning his attention to Branch. “But when that little creature fails to keep up the pace, I’m burning that form and you’re going to put any wild ideas of adopting Trolls out of your head for good.” He glared down at the pair, lips curled in a derisive snarl.

“You have three weeks.” Gristle Senior declared. “Better get started.”

+=+=+=+=+

Gristle Junior was seven years old when he became a brother.

The wager had been… not as hard as Gristle expected. Branch had thrown himself into the challenge with a fervor that was only seen with master artisans undergoing hefty commissions. It had taken a lot of work, in those three weeks, but at the end of it all—

The cage had to be redone, renovated into a proper bedroom. The castle staff found itself expanded by two—Bernice and Groth, who had been hired to aid in the fiddly and sometimes frustrating art of turning tiny, Troll-sized writings into something that could be read by the average Bergen. Branch needed new clothes, and a proper bed, and a shelf for all of the Troll-sized copies he’d made and was making of the various books on Law and history and regulations, and had to attend meals and levees and lessons with Gristle, and—

It was so much. Gristle had known, when he had drafted that first attempt at an adoption form in the castle library, that things would change—but he had never quite imagined the sheer scope of it all. Suddenly, his brother was accompanying him everywhere, riding on Gristle’s shoulder or flinging himself through the halls with his hair. Gristle had heard some of the staff discussing pathways for Branch, where he’d be safe from being stepped on—

There was so much.

But…

Gristle had never had a brother. He had had a friend, in Branch, but it had taken so long for them to really get there. And now, despite how it had felt like the world was ending on that fateful failed Trollstice, all those years ago—

Gristle couldn’t imagine that day going any other way. He didn’t want to imagine a world in which he never met Branch, who was surely a Bergen in Troll skin. Branch was his friend—no, his brother.

“Hey, Branch?” Gristle rolled over and looked at the shelf that Branch’s things currently resided on, at the cage hurriedly covered with a sheet in an approximation of a proper room with real privacy. Late at night, in his unlit room, it barely looked like a cage at all. “Do you ever think about the day we met?”

Branch’s voice filtered down from the shelf. “Not really.” He admitted. “Why should I?” There was something oddly bitter in his voice. “It’s the day I was left behind. Again.”

Gristle Junior wasn’t sure how to unpack that. Or if he ever should. “I won’t leave you behind.” He promised, “‘Cause brothers stick together.” It felt like such a simple truth, to the seven year old Bergen.

There was silence from the shelf. It stretched on, almost uncomfortably so, feeding into the static of the darkness filling the room.

Gristle huffed. “You really are just like a Bergen.” He commented, “Always miserable.” He chuffed, something light in his chest that he didn’t fully register. “And that’s why you know we’ll always stick together.” He said, staring up at the darkness clinging to the ceiling.

“Unhappy together, then.” There was something soft in Branch’s voice—he must have been tired after such a long day.

Gristle sighed. Unhappy together. It sounded like a promise, like a finality.

It sounded like he was finally getting the hang of this whole “taking care of people” thing.

+=+=+=+=+

Gristle Junior was ten years old when he was properly crowned Prince.

The day had been rife with tradition, from a breakfast banquet stocked with imported delicacies to the event itself out in the plaza. The old Troll Tree, withered from its abandonment, stood tall in the center of the space, dominating the whole scene no matter how Gristle Junior tried to look at it.

He fiddled with the clasp on his cape—his Princely cape, paired with his new crown to signify the change in status. The festivities weren’t exactly celebratory—the whole ceremony amounted to more of a town meeting, but with the best catering the royal kitchens could provide. Bergens of all kinds wandered about the plaza, taking advantage of the free food while Gristle Junior—Prince Gristle Junior watched on from his father’s side.

Branch—no, it was Prince Branch, now—stood to Gristle’s side, on a small platform made entirely for the occasion. His own blue cape and silver crown had to be custom-made, instead of passed down, but neither of the brothers were bothered by that fact.

“I still don’t understand how Glixry managed such tiny details.” Gristle commented, focusing in on the silver metal of Branch’s crown. “It even has tiny metal leaves!”

Branch reached up, touching the edges delicately. “It feels so weird.” He decided. “But… not bad.”

“Of course not! You’re a Prince now!” Gristle assured him. “Stand tall and proud, like a proper Bergen.” Gristle commanded, repeating the words he had heard so many times.

“Yeah…” Branch let his paws fall back to his sides, almost hidden under the edges of his cape—but Gristle didn’t miss the way they clenched and unclenched repeatedly.

Branch was older than Gristle, true. But the fact remained that he had started learning later, so it had been decided to crown them both when Gristle came of age, and not a moment sooner. So here they were, brothers crowned together, all of Bergentown around them.

There would be so many more responsibilities, now—Princes helped the reigning monarch run the kingdom, after all. They’d still have to learn as they went, but—

Gristle breathed in deeply. The Bergens—his people—they were all miserable. But they were hardworking and honest, and Gristle would do his best to be the Prince they deserved.

Gristle turned to look back at his brother, who was fiddling with his own cape clasp. Glixry had repurposed one of the bells from Branch’s old harness for the clasp, and even now it still faintly rung as Branch slowly paced around his little platform.

There was an odd expression on Branch’s face, satisfaction and an oddly melancholy contemplation firming his brow. Gristle huffed, snapping his little-big brother from whatever thoughts he was lost in. Gristle offered his hand, and Branch rolled his eyes before hopping onto Gristle’s palm.

As Gristle lifted his brother high above his head, something proud surged in his chest, light and electric in his veins. His face twitched in that odd way it sometimes did, but Gristle ignored the feeling in favor of looking out over his people once more.

He was going to be the best Prince Bergentown had ever seen! He and his brother both!

+=+=+=+=+

Gristle Junior was eleven years old when Branch finally pupated.

His book on Troll growth said that Trolls pupated when they were twelve or thirteen. It also went on about how Trolls were utterly inedible in this state, wrapped in their cocoons as their bodies changed and matured.

That Branch’s pupation had come late according to the books was worrying. That it had come at all was a stark reminder of the fact that, for all of his Bergen-like traits, Branch was in some small way still a Troll.

Gristle peered at the dark gray hair cocoon for the umpteenth time. None of his books said anything about whether Trolls could still hear in there, or even what really happened to them outside of “maturation”—all the book really cared to go over was how to identify a pupation cocoon, and that they couldn’t be eaten.

“Even if you can’t hear me,” Gristle began, settling back down with an interesting book he’d found—some kind of romance novel where none of the characters actually got together in the end. He’d heard the librarian going on about how it was a contemplative piece about the nature of connections, so he’d picked it up to go through. “But if you can’t then I’ll just read this book to you all over again when you’re out.”

The cocoon gave no discernible response. Gristle decided that that was fine, and began to read. He made it through a chapter and a half before being summoned for dinner with his father, and he gave the cocoon one final glance as he left the room.

“I see your… brother isn’t joining us again tonight.” Gristle Senior commented, as the first course was brought out.

“I told you, Dad, he’s pupating.” Gristle Junior huffed, licking sticky roe off of his fingers.

“Yes,” Gristle Senior nodded. “Trolls do do that, I’ve heard.” He went silent as the second course arrived, digging in with royal fervor. A few moments later, and he spoke again. “Hopefully this whole thing doesn’t set him too far back.” He commented airily, dabbing at his face with a napkin.

Gristle Junior scowled over his plate as a servant exchanged it for the bowl of soup acting as the third course. “Branch always keeps up.” He asserted. “And we won that bet fair and square, so you can’t go back on your end no matter what.” He sipped from his spoon with a pointedly royal slurp.

“And I have no intentions of backing out.” Gristle Senior slurped just a little harder. “I’m just curious.” And with that, the conversation was over.

Gristle stared down at his soup. Branch would keep up. He would. He always did.

+=+=+=+=+

Gristle was eleven years old, and he was getting concerned.

Nineteen days. The books said that Trolls only pupated for a week, tops. But it had been nineteen days since Branch had disappeared into the spun cocoon, eyes glassy and unfocused. Nineteen days of a silent cocoon.

Gristle had long since finished that first romance novel, and the book on fence safety regulations, and was almost halfway into a book on the history of anchovy farming. And the cocoon still remained!

The worry was starting to affect his Princely duties, too. Maybe it was because he was used to working alongside Branch, and the absence was getting to him, but there was no denying it: Gristle was concerned. But what if trying to crack the cocoon open early ruined everything? What if he was supposed to crack it open, and he’d missed the deadline? What if being gray really was bad, and Branch…

Gristle didn’t want to think about it. He really, really didn’t.

The sun had long gone down when Gristle finally put his books away and retired to his bed. He glanced at the cocoon one last time before extinguishing the lights, worry like a rock in his gut.

The night passed. The sun rose again, creeping into Gristle’s bedroom through the window until it smacked against his eyes. With a groan, the eleven year old sat up, shading his eyes with a hand. He glared at the offending celestial body. “Every day.” He muttered. “Every day, you do this.” He was about to continue—

“Are you yelling at the sun again? Really?”

Gristle yelped, jolting hard enough to fall off of his bed entirely. He flailed wildly, scrambling to clamber back to his feet, frenetic energy in every inch of his suddenly-impossibly-awkward limbs.

“Branch!” Gristle leaned up against the shelf, examining the shredded remains of the cocoon through the door of his brother’s room. His little-big brother stood beside it, already having pulled on some pants. “You’re okay! You were in there for really long!”

Branch shrugged, walking over to his wardrobe. “Well, I’m here, so you can quit your whining.” There was a fondness in his voice that had Gristle rolling his eyes.

“Your tail’s still gone.” Gristle noticed. A lump settled in his gut, hard and heavy. “Branch…”

Branch turned around, twisting to look and confirm Gristle’s words. “Eh.” He shrugged, and turned his attention back to his wardrobe. “‘S not like it matters.” He decided, picking out a shirt to wear under his cape. “Bergens aren’t supposed to have tails anyway.”

Gristle winced. It was true, Bergens were tailless—but if they had tails, they certainly wouldn’t—

Gristle shook his head. He didn’t want to think about that. “Sooo,” He started, as Branch was securing the belled clasp of his cape. “How do you feel?”

Branch carefully placed his crown back upon his head, then walked in a small circle. “I don’t know, stronger?” He tried, holding his paws out in front of himself and examining them. “I think my balance is better, actually.” He noted. As if to illustrate the point, he did a twirl, his cape flaring slightly with the motion. “My face feels kinda… hm.” Branch pressed at his jaw with his paws, before shrugging it off. “Whatever. Are you gonna get ready, or am I doing all your work for you today?”

“Oh!” Gristle whipped back around, running for his own wardrobe. “Right!” As he shrugged on his own cape, clicking the clasp into place, he turned back to glance at the shelf holding his brother’s room.

Gristle sighed, all of his worries abated. Why would he ever worry? His family was just fine, and would be for a long, long time.

+=+=+=+=+

Gristle Junior was thirteen years old when he finally had to admit it.

He’d always hoped he’d get his father’s height, that he’d be able to stand as tall as the average Bergen in his adult years. But it had become clear that he would always be half average height, always doomed to needing steps to get onto the taller chairs.

It wasn’t the end of the world; Bergens could come in a range of shapes and sizes. That Gristle was so short wasn’t that big of an issue.

But Berg, did it feel like it! Gristle had spent his whole life looking up to his father—metaphorically and literally! And he was probably going to be stuck looking up forever!

“What are you moping about now?” And there was Gristle’s little-big brother, padding along one of the many paths set into the castle walls. The masons and carpenters had done good work with those paths—when Branch wasn’t running along them, they looked like simple wall decoration. It was real classy.

“I’m never gonna be tall.” Gristle grumbled, allowing himself a moment to lean against the wall in despair. Then he remembered who he was talking to, and hurriedly pulled away, flailing his hands as he tried to recover. “I mean—not that being short is a bad thing—”

“Okay, I’m gonna stop you right there.” Branch groused, holding out a paw. “Because from where I’m standing, you are not short.” He leaned against the wall, crossing his arms in front of him.

“I am, though.” Gristle lamented. “Most Bergens are twice my size. I mean, just look at Dad!”

Branch rolled his eyes. “At least you’re not Troll-sized.” He hopped down from the path along the wall to land atop Gristle’s head, just next to the crown. “Gotta count your blessings there.”

“I dunno,” Gristle started, swiping at his brother as the tiny Bergen pattered about on his head and ruffled his hair, “Maybe being Troll-sized would be nice. I could ride Barnabus around the halls with you.” He didn’t fully mean it—being the size of a Troll in a castle made for Bergens constantly forced Branch to find workarounds to even the simplest of things. But if anyone could manage it, it’d be Branch.

And Gristle had to admit: the idea of being able to ride on an alligator-dog, even one as old as Barnabus, was really cool. But Gristle was too big for that, and too big for his old trikes—all while being too small in so many other ways. It was like he was caught between, stuck at a size that would annoy him forever.

Branch dodged away from Gristle’s hand easily, chuffing when Gristle accidentally sent his own crown flying down the hall. Gristle growled, running after it, shaking his head in an attempt to throw Branch off. But his brother held on easily, always infuriatingly good at roughhousing despite his size.

It just wasn’t fair.

But, as Gristle replaced his crown on his head, and as Branch slid down to settle on Gristle’s shoulder, Gristle brushed away the annoyance.

It wasn’t the end of the world. Not by a long shot.

+=+=+=+=+

Gristle Junior was fifteen years old when the unthinkable happened.

His father, King Gristle Senior, who had always been an unshakeable force, strong and proud in a kingdom full of strong and proud Bergens—

Gristle Junior couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be true. It just—it wasn’t supposed to happen like this!

But there was nothing that could be done. His father had fallen ill three months ago, and, despite every effort from every doctor in Bergentown, despite all of the King’s strength—

Gristle Junior was fifteen years old when his father passed from illness, gone overnight like a snuffed candle flame. Gristle Junior was fifteen years old when the title of King passed onto him, far too soon—he should have remained a Prince until he was a proper adult, until he was married with children who would become the Princes and Princesses that would help him run the kingdom—

Gristle Junior was fifteen years old when his world shattered for the second time. The funeral was held out in the plaza, barely a week after his father’s passing. The same plaza as Gristle’s first and final Trollstice, as his and Branch’s official crowning as Princes. It felt as though every major life-changing event in Gristle’s life happened here, the caged tree looming over it all like a shadow.

It still… it just couldn’t be possible. His father couldn’t just be… gone.

Gristle returned to the castle in a daze. Some distant part of him knew that he would have no choice but to take up his father’s crown, and soon, but—

The rest of him was sinking slowly, the grief thick in his throat and veins and head. The fog was all-consuming, pulling Gristle into depths of unhappiness he’d never thought possible.

Gristle had believed his first and last Trollstice, the day where he lost any chance to ever be happy, would be the worst day of his life. Oh, how wrong he was.

Gristle didn’t know how long he laid like that, staring up at the ceiling of his room without seeing anything at all. It was as though the world around him had well and truly shattered, and now the pieces had all fallen away out of his reach. Gristle floated on the nothing for what felt like an eternity and now time at all, the mire in his head growing thicker with every passing second.

“Hey.”

Gristle rolled over on his bed, pressing his face into the comforter to block out the rest of the world.

“Hey.”

What was the point? Gristle was never supposed to be King at fifteen. He’d probably mess it up, bungle the whole thing, and then all of Bergentown would be just as dead as his father.

“Hey!”

Gristle groaned, shoving his face into the comforter. He didn’t have the time or patience for this, his whole world was falling apart, why couldn’t he have a good cry about it in peace—

Something small landed inches away from Gristle’s head. He didn’t even need to look to know who it was—only his little-big brother could land so lightly.

“Hey, idiot.” Branch pushed at Gristle’s chin, lifting the Bergen’s head off the bed by a few inches. “Chin up.” He demanded, baring his teeth.

Gristle forced his head back down onto the comforter. “Leave me alone.” He growled.

“Mm, nope.” Branch declared, moving around to pull at Gristle’s ear. “You’ve been in here long enough,” he sniffed, “And you need a shower. C’mon.” He pulled, and Gristle had to put effort into staying in place.

“No.” Gristle grumbled. “Just let me rot.” Every inch of his body ached with the grief clinging to his bones, and the very thought of getting up and doing anything made him want to vomit. The whole world made him want to vomit.

“Can’t let you,” Branch said, his voice edging into genuine worry. “C’mon, at least eat something?” He tugged at Gristle’s ear again, darting away as Gristle irritably swiped at him.

“I said,” Gristle pushed himself up ever so slightly, just so he could look Branch in the eye, “leave me alone!”

Branch shook his head, paws clenching and unclenching. “You’ve been alone.” He said. “I can’t leave you. Brothers stick together.” There was something heavy in his words, some deeper meaning than a childhood promise.

“And how are you supposed to help?” Gristle asked, sitting up fully. “What could you possibly do to make this better?”

“Not let you smell like a rotting carcass, for one.” Branch snarked. His expression immediately softened. “You need to take better care of yourself.” He urged. “Letting yourself rot only makes it hurt worse. Please.”

“And what would you know?” Gristle accused. “You and Dad barely even liked each other!”

“You think I don’t know what grief feels like?” Branch spread his arms wide, tears beginning to bubble up in his eyes. “My Grandmother was eaten on Trollstice before you were even born! DON’T YOU DARE TELL ME I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO GRIEVE!”

Gristle flinched back. All of his vitriol drained as Branch panted. “You…” Branch never talked about that, about those four years he’d spent in the Troll Tree. Gristle’s throat tightened as a wave of emotion hit him anew, his eyes beginning to sting.

“It hurts.” He sobbed, for lack of anything better to say.

Branch’s anger melted away. “I know.” He said, sitting down. “It hurts, and you want so badly to just curl into a ball and wish the world away—”

“But you have to pick yourself back up.” Gristle finished. “Because people are counting on you.”

“Because nobody else will.” Branch added softly.

Gristle sobbed, breathy and uneven. “I miss him so much, Branch.”

Branch nodded. “I know.”

“I’m not ready to be King!” Gristle’s face was wet, now, hot and sticky with snot and tears.

Branch nodded again. “I know.”

Gristle sobbed again, his whole body shaking with the motion. He opened his mouth, but no words came.

“It’s not okay,” Branch offered into the silence, scooting forwards, “And that’s okay.”

“It hurts.” Gristle whispered.

Branch nodded. No more words came, and Gristle continued to cry. All of his misery poured out, raw and real and painful, and Branch remained right in front of him the entire time. When Gristle finally ran out of tears to cry, he flopped back down onto the bed, and two paws pressed against his cheek.

The silence stretched.

Slowly, Gristle breathed. In, and out. His chest was still strung taut and raw, his face was cold and sticky, and his throat stung from the effort of crying so much. He had never felt so low. He knew the grief was far from over.

As Gristle breathed, Branch clambered up onto his chest. He kneeled down, and held out a paw.

“Unhappy together.” Branch offered. “Shit sucks, but it sucks less when we work together.”

Gristle inhaled, his breath choppy and uneven. “Unhappy together.” He agreed, offering his finger for Branch to shake. He sobbed again, and Branch wrapped his arms around as much of Gristle’s hand as he could manage.

Gristle Junior was fifteen years old when his father died. And it sucked, and hurt, and Gristle wasn’t sure he’d ever really stop grieving.

But, at the very least, he wasn’t alone. It wasn’t much, but that simple fact helped.

+=+=+=+=+

Gristle Junior was twenty years old when Chef returned.

The day started as any other, really. Wake up, get cleaned and dressed, find his brother already awake and poring over details from the latest construction updates in the new quarter. Have breakfast, Branch darting about to steal off of his plate as he stole from Branch’s, like proper brothers would do. Go through the castle halls greeting everyone, Branch walking along the various small walkways lining the walls and arching up across hallways like tiny bridges. Prepare for the biweekly levee in the throne room.

It was as the final petitioner was leaving that it happened. A Bergen that Gristle only vaguely recognized emerged from behind a potted plant, swishing her cloak ominously as she all but marched towards the throne.

And then Gristle recognized her. The chef’s hat, the lavender tint, the wicked gleam in her eyes. He glanced to the throne beside his, and anxiety germinated in his chest at the sight of Branch still as a statue, eyes wide and locked onto Chef.

“Were you behind that plant the whole time?” Gristle asked, for lack of anything else to say. He realized immediately how stupid that sounded—but Branch made no comment on it, which was so unlike him that Gristle’s uncertainty ratcheted up another notch.

Chef grinned as she reached for the zipper on her fannypack. Slowly, she opened it, and a sweet harmony emerged from within.

Gristle gasped, the rest of the world forgotten. If Branch had any reaction, Gristle didn’t notice it, too entranced with the sight before him.

For in Chef’s fannypack was a handful of Trolls, bright and colorful and singing.

This… this could change everything.

No—this would change everything. For all of Bergentown! Finally, Gristle Junior could live up to his title, could be the King that brought happiness back to his people!

If he had bothered to look back at the thrones, he would have seen Chef glaring daggers into his back.

More importantly, he would have seen the look of utter uncertainty on Branch’s face.

#dreamworks trolls #gristle junior #branch trolls #king gristle jr #zaz writes #between au #death #themes of dehumanization (depersonization?)#WHY. WHY IS THIS SO L O N G #9K WORDS?????#N I N E T H O U S A N D W O R D S ??????????#anyway. here's the between au for anyone who was wondering #i wish this was smaller and easier to digest #but i jsut. kept adding scenes #EVEN AS I REMOVED THE TAIL SCENE AND SKIMPED OVER THE ADOPTION AND DIDN'T WRITE ANY SCENES BETWEEN GRISTLE SR'S DEATH AND CHEF SHOWING UP #anyway. branch is four years older than gristle (jr) in my mind #and also trolls are like bugs to me. hence the pupation #i have fish in a birdcage playing on loop rn and i think my brain is melting #it's a good song for this au tho ngl

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ventiswampwater · 7 months

Text

subterranean

FANDOM : house of wax (2005) PAIRING : bo sinclair x afab!fem!reader RATING : explicit 🔞 WORDCOUNT : 3.9k

Reader POV. Basement fuckery. He tells you it's to keep you humble. It’s really just to keep you scared. The distinction doesn’t matter. You end up here again and again, knees biting into the concrete.

Crossposted on A03 here.

⚠️ Stockholm Syndrome. VERY dubious consent under duress. This was supposed to just be porn without plot. But then I lost my goddamn mind. Oops. Decent amount of weird prose. Depersonalization and derealization. Pet play (but make it weird and kinda metaphorical). Collaring. Forced boot riding. Vibrator and anal plug use. Bondage/gagging/edging. Bo at his absolute WORST (his natural state), being smug and mean and awful. Dirty talk dialed ALL the way up. Extremely dehumanizing and degrading language. Mind break elements. LOTS of backhanded praise. ⚠️

You always got too comfortable.

A lifetime before—when you were first here—you sat on this mattress with him, swallowing down mouthfuls of cold beef and carrots. You can remember the soup swirling in the can, murky and brown like a puddle of stagnant rainwater. He hadn't bothered to warm it up for you, but it hadn’t mattered. The food was something. Sometimes it felt like everything.

You licked the broth off the spoon as he plugged another tape into the VCR.

“One of my favorites.” He told you. Of course it was. Every movie he showed you down here was one of his favorites. Every can of soup might be the last. It was always the same things, over and over.

That’s when you started to lose track of time, you think—when you’d started to cling onto all that nothing.

Time wasn’t all that bad of a thing to lose, was it? Who needed it when his thumb was rubbing against your knee, stroking up your skin? The soup was cold, and his hand was warm. You traded one for the other and you liked it.

Funny. Thoughts like that always felt like they came with an or else tacked at the end.

A chunk of potato sat unpleasantly on your tongue—almost bitter, gravel in your mouth. Just like everything else, you swallowed it down.

He pressed play, his fingers drifting up your thigh. The TV quality was fuzzy, interrupted by the occasional flicker of static. Sometimes the films he chose would start in the middle of scenes. You’d get brief glimpses of things he’d recorded over—the triumphant blare of a talk show theme cutting off mid-note, dropping you in media res. He always assured you that you weren’t missing anything. At least that was one thing he didn’t bother lying about.

The movie wasn’t why you remembered that day, though. It was because of something he’d asked you.

“Where’d ya’ grow up?”

You hadn’t known what to say. He never asked you things like that. Your confusion only deepened when you turned towards him. There was no tension in his jaw, no furrowing of his brow. He looked, for the first time, wholly and startlingly calm.

When you failed to answer, he leaned forward and switched the TV off. He never did that either.

“Tell me ‘bout it. Whatchu do out there, anyway?”

You always regret not lying to him.

The world had shrunk down so much in the time you’d been in the town that it almost felt like you could gather it up and stuff it in your pocket.

You think about home. It looks different now.

Spidery tendrils of dust cling to the gaps between the balusters. It’s so difficult to get light in the house. No matter how many windows you open, there are always corners lost to shadow.

It’s strange how you could be up there one day, replacing the bulb under a fringed lampshade—and the next, you’d be tumbled back underground.

Just last week, you were lying on the couch in the living room.

The dog had padded into the room. She’d been gone for the better part of the day. With the doors unlocked, she went wherever she pleased. It had worried you at first, but it didn't anymore. She'd never leave town. She knew better.

At least, that’s what he’d said.

“Come here, beautiful.”

Jumping up, she curled into the space beside you. You wrapped your arm around her, wrinkling your nose. She reeked terribly of dog, stale corn chips and dirt and musk. You wondered if she might let you give her a bath now that you were in her good graces. It took a while to get there, but she came around. In a manner of speaking, the same thing had happened with you.

Pretty funny, huh?

Earlier, you'd been thinking about the puppies in the pet store window. Did she know about them? Slumbering away behind glass and dust, forever only a couple breaths old. Click. A switch was flipped, and they were as alive as they would ever be, nestled on newspaper shavings. On days like this, did she ever make her way down the hill to see them?

“Girls don’t last in this town.” You murmured, scratching behind her ear. “Just me and you, yeah?”

With a huff, she buried her head in the crook of your neck. It seemed like she was done listening to you.

That was fair, really. Half the time you weren’t even saying what you were really thinking anymore—and when you did, you weren't entirely sure that you made much sense. So much of yourself was locked up in your head and you kept forgetting where you left the keys. It all got clogged up inside your skull and oozed out of your mouth in a trail of sickly platitudes. You were just so thankful, so grateful.

“Sorry.” You whispered. You were always sorry for something, and sometimes you even meant it.

The rays of light were receding off of the arm of the couch, crawling up the wall. Your thoughts filled the living room. You could almost see them floating through the air, bouncing off each other like bubbles. Fleeting, effervescent things, popping as soon as you tried to track their paths. When you turned your head, you could smell his cologne. It was his jacket, hanging discarded over the couch cushions.

For a sudden, terrifying moment, you missed him.

That’s when you said the prayer. You didn't know where you meant for it to go. You guessed it was for whoever was around to hear it. Most days it was him and some of the time it was his mother. Both choices rang false. If God was still in this town, it was here, caught in these beams of light. Or maybe God was the dog heavy on top of you, her breath a rhythmic rumble against your throat.

Maybe you wouldn’t last long. Maybe it was all just wishful thinking.

Today, Bo fastens the collar around your neck. The leather feels heavy against your skin.

He tells you it’s to keep you humble. It’s really just to keep you scared. The distinction doesn’t matter. All the light bulbs you screw in will eventually need to be replaced. Wiping away the dust only gives way to more dust. You'll end up here again and again, knees biting into the concrete.

This almost feels more like his room than the one he sleeps in up at the house. Here, you can feel him more than anywhere else. There's more of you down here too. Real, tangible parts of yourself. Look around. There you are in the stain on the mattress, the blood crusted on the vinyl.

Welcome back, baby.

You keep your gaze on the ground, searching for something to bore your eyes into. Your eyes land on his shoes. Flecked with dirt, they bear obvious signs of wear. There’s a sizable hole in the toe of one of them. You focus in on that as he readjusts the collar, tightening the strap around your neck.

Embarrassment heats your cheeks as you hear him click the leash into place. Even without looking up at him, you can picture the expression on his face. It isn’t a good one. You still can’t decide if he looks more or less like himself when he screws his face up like that.

Tugging roughly at the leash, he forces you to look up at him. Wrists bound; your hands flex uselessly against your back.

“Please—”

Without warning, he sticks his fingers into your mouth, forcing them to the back of your throat. You choke, your hands flexing in panic behind your back. When he pulls them out, you cough, eyes watering.

“Now, normally I like hearin’ you, baby.” He says, smiling down at you. His face is a discordant thing. All American, boy next door. A slice of apple pie that someone put a cigarette out in. “But you know somethin’—”

He crouches down in front of you, still smiling. You watch him silently, shifting anxiously on your knees.

“I never did meet a dog who could talk.” Reaching over, he flicks at the metal ring on the collar. “Feels wrong.”

Dropping the leash, he gets to his feet, striding away. You crane your neck to the side as he rustles around behind you. After a moment, he lets out an affirmative grunt.

Quickly, you pivot your head back to the front. Making his way back to stand in front of you, your eyes flash to the item in his hands. Seemingly amused by your concern, he dangles it in front of you.

It’s a ball gag, shiny and black—noticeably a hair newer than the rest of the junk down here. Maybe he bought it just for you. It’d make a pretty lousy gift, but then again, he was always shit at stuff like that.

He had an incredible knack for getting you shit that you never asked for. Everything came with conditions, a laundry list of provisos and conditions that you didn't remember signing up for. Everything he gave you was actually for him.

“Open up, baby.”

Before you can think to do as he asks, his thumb forces your mouth open, pressing down on your teeth. You sputter as he forces the gag into your mouth, securing it around the back of your neck.

“That’s better, yeah?” He asks, grabbing hold of the leash again.

You stare up at him, exhaling tight bursts of air through your nose. You tilt your head a bit, working your jaw around the ball. Your teeth rest uncomfortably on the rubber.

“You been so good today, think we outta give that pussy some attention, huh?” He smirks. “Whatchu think?”

You whine, the noise coming out in an embarrassingly wet gurgle. Spit runs out of your mouth, dripping down your chin and trickling onto your neck.

“So cute.” His voice is syrupy sweet. He can play at authenticity, but never with you.

He kicks your thighs apart with his foot, nudging the tip of his boot between your legs. His eyebrows shoot up expectantly as he nods down at you.

“Go on, then.”

Disgust is an old friend. She disappears for months at a time, only to show up unexpectedly as if no time has passed. She’s back again, turning your stomach around in her hands. You tilt your hips down. Rubbing yourself against the tip of his shoe, you wonder if he’s doing this for old times' sake.

Rocking forward, you imagine a glossy magazine cover. You could see him on the cover of one. He does have the face for it, when he bothers to put it on.

Bored? 50 Ways to Keep the Spark Alive!

Your jaw is beginning to ache. Bo's hand strokes softly at the top of your head. You hate that the pressure against your clit almost feels good. Your mind unhelpfully supplies more article titles, bubbling up in your mind in obnoxiously curly lettering.

10 Mouth Exercises For The Modern Woman. Have You Tried Screaming? It’s All The Rage in This Town. Once You Start, You Won’t Want to STOP!

“That’s it.” He grins. “What a little slut.”

You look up at him pleadingly, another dribble of spit running down your chin.

“Always got told ya’ shouldn’t let dogs up on the bed.” He muses, the amusement plain in his voice. “But you been on your best behavior, huh?”

Last week, you fell asleep on the couch. You woke up somewhere else.

It was dark and you were pressed against something warm. Not the dog, not the light. Those were both gone. His jacket hanging off the side of the couch, maybe. But it was moving now, and so were you.

“Gotta getcha to bed.” He’d muttered, carrying you up the stairs.

You lay across Bo's lap, the side of your cheek against the dirty mattress. You shudder, your legs shaking.

“Pretty girl.” Reaching over, he tugs you up by the leash, forcing your head back.

Every breath you take seems to make your muscles clench around the plug in your ass. He works it in and out of you slowly and you gulp, shallow breaths whistling out of your nostrils. Every time you jolt forward you can feel him press against you, hard against your belly.

“Hey. What’s wrong, baby? That hurt?”

You nod frantically.

“Huh. Funny…'cuz I don't think it does. You wanna know how I know?” You feel him spread you open, fingers dipping into your pussy. “You’re wet for it, baby.”

He pushes the plug deeper, and your head spins at the sensation. A warbling moan pitches out of your mouth as you feel it sink fully into you. You shiver uncontrollably, whimpering around the gag. Saliva gathers on your tongue, and you feel it spill out of the side of your mouth, pooling under your cheek.

“Good.” He rumbles out, stroking his knuckles along your back. “That’s my good girl.”

You squeeze your eyes shut when you feel him nudge something between your legs. With a click, the vibrator buzzes to life. You let out a startled cry as he strokes it along your pussy.

“It’s nice, huh?” He chuckles. “Don’tchu act like I never gave you anything.”

The vibrator teases against your clit in short bursts, pressing down just long enough to leave you panting before he pulls it away. Almost enough, not quite. You arch back uselessly, chasing after that glittery warm sensation. He laughs a bit, holding the vibrator just above your clit.

You can feel the edge of pleasure, but it’s nothing more than a distant dull thrum. He keeps you hovering over it for what feels like forever, squirming over a feeling that’s hardly there. You bite down on the gag, your sob watery and muffled around the rubber.

“This body’s all mine, girl.” He murmurs, running his thumb down your spine. “I ain’t gotta make it feel good.”

With a hum, he rests the vibrator fully onto your clit. The sensation you’ve been chasing envelopes you, shimmering through your core. Nasally, high-pitched whines escape you in quick, desperate succession.

“But I do, don’t I? ‘Cuz I’m just so sweet.”

You open your eyes, staring up at him in bleary gratitude. He presses down on the plug. The discomfort has crested over and all you feel now is loose and pliant. You moan around the gag, your eyes fluttering.

“You like having somethin’ in your ass while I play with this pussy?”

And you nod, humming out your agreement.

“Mmm-hmm? Yeah?” He teases, mimicking your garbled reply. "That's good, baby. That's real good. Reckoned I’d fuck your ass today, but that pussy’s gettin’ nice and wet for me. Whatchu think? Which hole you want fucked?”

You mumble incoherently through the gag.

“All of ‘em?” He exclaims, the grin evident in his voice. “Well, ain’t that real sweet. Good answer, baby.”

He keeps talking, but it’s getting harder to focus on what he’s saying.

“Next crew that comes through here—maybe I’ll tell ‘em I got a slut who needs breakin’ in. You spread those legs so nice, sure you’d fuckin’ love it.”

The image flashes through your mind. Hands everywhere, laughter and heat and friction from a kaleidoscope of people destined for death. You’re in the middle of all of those faceless people—a tribute to be used up, one last meal for a parade of living corpses.

You’re all destined for the same end, but theirs is closer than they know. Yours is prolonged, tied around touches and salt.

Bo would be in the corner, lighting another cigarette—watching, because he’s always watching. Mouth twitching into a smile because he’s right again. You’re exactly what he thinks you are. You’ll keep your eyes on him because you can’t look at anyone else. After all, if it isn’t his hands, could you even feel it? Would it even count?

The panic is sudden and hot, twisting inside your chest. A desperate little whine builds at the back of your throat.

If I’m everybody else's, I can’t be yours.

“I’d have a hard time sharin’, though.”

Relief. The vibrator pulses against your clit and your eyes go unfocused.

“’S funny. Gotchu down here—and nobody knows.”

Between your legs, your pussy feels pathetically wet, sloppily sliding along the vibrator. You almost wish he’d keep you like this forever, jolts of pleasure lapping hungrily between your legs.

“If there’s even anybody out there lookin’ for ya’…” He muses. “Wish they could see ya’ now, huh? Don’t think they’d feel bad for you, baby.”

Pleasure rolls dizzily through you, electric licks of sensation as he rubs the vibrator against your clit. The rubber in your mouth is an anchor, it feels good on your teeth.

“Betchu thought you were really somethin’ out there.” He chuckles. “How’s it feel to find out you ain’t? Feels good, don’t it?”

You open your eyes and nod up at him, panting out your agreement. Through the haze, you see him smirk. It’s a cruel, cold thing. You’re all full and useless, but he doesn’t need you to say it, because he knows. Thoughtlessly, you shift in his lap, trying desperately to spread your legs wider for him.

“Nothin’ but a little fucktoy.” He coos. “That’s all you are, baby. Want you to remember that.”

He doesn’t need to worry. You remember everything, except what counts.

“Good girls cum, baby. They can’t help it.”

You’re hurtling higher and higher, the pleasure battering against your brain. That’s where the memories are, where the time used to be. It feels better to fill it with this. But then again, you’ve known that from the start.

“Go on, baby. Cum all pretty for me, yeah?”

And you do, a million times over.

He keeps the vibrator pressed firmly against your clit as you tense up, your hands clenching into tight fists behind your back. Your orgasm is a bone-deep shiver, wracking your legs with uncontrollable chills. The pleasure throttles through the last of your coherency, prizing a desperate noise from your throat. Maybe it’s a word. It might be his name. It might just be the time. Maybe this is how you find it again.

The buzz of the vibrator goes dim and far away as he holds it against you. You’re twitching somewhere above it. Each involuntary movement you make brings with it a new hiccup of sensation. Around you, the room seems to spin—whirling into a terrific blur of green and yellow.

It can be beautiful down here, if you squint.

When he lifts the vibrator off your clit, you pitch forward, warbling out a dizzy laugh behind the gag. You wait for the sound of the wand powering off. It doesn't come. Behind you, the buzzing is a low, incessant drone. You’ve barely managed to ground yourself when you hear it kick up a notch.

Click.

The sheets smell like all the thousand versions of you, each one answering questions she shouldn’t. Four walls surround you and they feel like they’re collapsing down on all sides. They could be made of plaster or stone, but they might just be something else. Your limbs, your heart, your mind, him. Separate appendages, but all linked. All part of the same crumbling structure.

A scream builds at the back of your throat as you feel him set it back on your clit.

“We ain’t done, baby.”

Your sleep is deep. Quiet. Only one dream.

Bo’s sitting on the edge of the bed, an inky blot in the gray morning light. He makes a move to stand up and you grab onto his arm.

“Go back to bed, angel.” He murmurs.

It almost sounds real enough.

When you wake up, you're alone. You try the door and find it unlocked.

Figures.

Upstairs, the shop is empty. There’s a can of unopened Coke on the counter. You crack it open and take a sip. Lukewarm bubbles of carbonation fizz over your tongue. God, he really was shit with gifts.

Walking up the hill, you catch your reflection in the window of a sedan. You look haggard, your hair a raggedy clump around your shoulders. You try the handle and it cracks open easily. Crawling into the dirty belly of the car, you wince as you lower yourself down into the seat. You sit with one leg dangling out, absentmindedly studying the dusty speedometer.

There are cars in other towns, parked on different streets. There are places without dust. There are always other futures. Sometimes you turn down the wrong road, and sometimes you die. Sometimes you don’t.

That’s just the way these things go.

You imagine the town collapsing in on itself like a pop-up book. There’s Bo, frowning down at it. He seemed like he’d been the type of kid that wasn’t allowed to check those kinds of things out from the library. He’d bring them back with pages ripped out, scrawled with pen marks. Pilled white card stock where faces used to be.

God, you’re miserably sore. It’s impossible to narrow down the ache to a certain part of you.

Lifting your leg into the car, you pull the door shut. The dust inside tickles your nose. Unthinkingly, you reach up, your fingers brushing against the metal buckle of the seatbelt. The sting is sharp and immediate. You pull your hand away with a hiss, your hand smarting. When you reach for the seatbelt again, you’re careful to avoid the clip.

You buckle yourself in. Click. Alive again, now more than ever. Wrapping your hands around the steering wheel, you close your eyes. The leather is hot against your palms, and it hurts a bit. Just a little. That’s just the pain again, but you don’t really mind. It’s something you can keep. It’s all yours.

Nothin’ you can’t handle, girl.

That’s what he said last night. Afterwards.

You were laying with your head in his lap, the itchy crust of dried spit against your cheek. It was then that you decided that you were so ugly that you had to be beautiful. You had to be worth looking at. You’d rolled over on your back, looking up at him through swollen eyes. That’s when he said it, so low and quiet that you almost didn’t register it. There’d been a an edge of pride to his voice.

Nothin’ at all.

A lick of pleasure thrums between your legs and your eyes flash open. You unbuckle the seatbelt and scramble out of the car, ignoring the pain that sings through your limbs.

Things like that? They always came with an or else tacked at the end. You remember that, don’t you? You couldn’t have forgotten.

Looming above you, the house is a dark blot of ink against the blue sky.

There were no collars for dogs in this town—they didn’t need them. They’d always find their way back home, pawing at the door for some scraps. The only leash is the one that exists in your mind. You can almost see it, trailing off your neck and up the hill, looped messily around the front doorknob.

You were going to die here with all that wetness between your legs, begging him to take out more of you with his teeth.

It's like he said.

You don’t need to tie up a dog if it loves you.

#I FINALLY finished this shit. it's horrific. tysm for coming there are drinks n snacks @ the door #we're goin back 2 ambrose I'm sorry 2 say #and our first stop? oh. just down these stairs #house of wax #bo sinclair #bo sinclair x reader #slashers x reader #slasher community #x reader #my fics #in his basement like damn bitch u live like this #shit is dis cos tang #r/malelivingspace for fuckin real #I've stared @ these bingo bongo ass words for far too long. so I'm sure there's errors. but I will fix them when BRAINCELL lmao

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5eraphim · 7 months

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i've been binging ur entire masterlist for the past week ur writing is so good.. is there anything else you've wrote that might not be on there? sorry i'm so obsessed i love these sweaty middle aged lunatics sm

im working on the new master list post right now- i try to get it up every 3 months, but i gave myself one extra month to work bc there are a couple fics i wanna finish nd add to the master list.

(i know it would technically be easier to just edit one list, but i like to make new ones to measure progress, idk why im weird nd i find it satisfying)

but here are the links to all the stories not on the current masterlist

Poacher's Pride (Werewolf Sniper)

Content Warnings: Dub-con, exophilia, mild terato, Dark!Sniper, werewolf, breeding kink, angst-y ending, stalking, yandere, possessive behavior, mates, size difference, forced cuddling/intimacy

Heaven Waits (Emesis Blue Medic)

Content Warnings: Slight spoilers for Emesis Blue, Sad Medic, asphyxiation, sexual massage/hand bathing, gender neutral reader, yandere, oral (male receiving), angst/bad ending, religious themes, death

Hunting Party (Soldier and Demo)

Content Warnings: Noncon, death threats, stalking, blades, guns/getting shot, Dark! Characterization, outdoor sex, double penetration, rough, AFAB reader/female terms used, fearplay, primal play, blood, depersonalization, boot licking, bukkake, threeway

The Chateau (Vampire Engineer and Spy)

Content Warnings: dubcon, Dark! characterization, corruption kink, sexual venom, three-way, hostage situation, coercion, blood drinking, degradation, implied bad ending, AFAB reader/female pronouns and terms used, reader is a masochist, Spy is a massive jerk and bullies Engie and reader

Birthday Cake (Engineer)

Content Warnings: MAJOR daddy kink, dub-con, spanking, aphrodisiacs, yandere, toxic relationship, forced intimacy, fingering, possessiveness

Night Light (Medic)

Content Warnings: yandere, possessive behavior, mind break, hurt/comfort, toxic relationship, implied NSFW, kidnapping, touch starved reader, cuddles, reader is gender neutral, implied dehumanization/slight infantilization

#sorry i havent posted a real fic in so long im not satisfied with a thing i write recently :/#but there are a handful i NEED to get done before the end of the month #well see how it goes #anonymous #tf2 x reader #mini master list #yandere #yandere tf2 #x reader

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catgirl-catboy · 3 days

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Weird opinion but, I’m a big Hifumi fan and I feel like he’s extremely underrated compared to Tsumugi, a more conventionally attractive weeb.

oh, he is 100% underrated, expecially considering the fandom made Gonta into basically Hifumi 2.0.

I was talking to my friend Crow about this the other day, and I genuinely think Hifumi should not have been a trial 3 character, and that he makes a better victim for Sayaka than Leon.

Two young kids are very lonely. One's family is never mentioned until Ultra Despair Girls, one has an absentee father.

They both find something that changes the course of their lives, and gives existence meaning.

An idealized image of a girl.

They both devote their entire selves into chasing that image, and have no relationships outside of that.

One is glorified for her devotion, the other is demonized for his "obsessiveness", despite this being the school for obsessive types.

Both are dehumanized.

It'd be the perfect commentary on how Hope's Peak as a whole fails every student that attends it, and it wouldn't be at the expense of Leon's character either!

He fits with the themes of chapter 3 beautifully, and honestly I'd buy him making the mistakes with Robo Justice before I'd buy Hifumi making them. Leon is about coolness over practicality, and nobody gets good at art without having at least a passing interest in anatomy.

Also also also, if you take Hifumi's character with any degree of seriousness, which I do because I am way too serious about everything Danganronpa- he meets all the criteria for a depersonalization/derealization disorder. Celeste WANTS to belive she's living her dream. Hifumi is actually living his dream.

There's a potential for a really interesting arc there, where Celeste descends further into self-delusion while Hifumi pulls himself out of it and begins to see his classmates as people and not characters.

Sorry this got long I love to ramble about DR and will do so at the slightest provocation.

#fandom post #danganronpa #hifumi yamada #hifumi and sayaka #celeste and hifumi

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tianzhan · 8 months

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#𝑻𝑰𝑨𝑵𝒁𝑯𝑨𝑵 : jingliu of hoyoverse's honkai star rail , established august 27th , 2023. as immortalized by 𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒔. southeast asian , they / them pronouns. please be 21+ to interact with me !! minors and personal blogs will be blocked. mutuals exclusive , canon , oc , and duplicate friendly! this blog will contain graphic content of violence , identity , abandonment , motifs of and ideations of death , and will reference chinese folklore and culture. i am unaffiliated with hsr and any of hoyoverse's games. you can also find me on: @zixunsilu !

𝐚𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 @boxue , @qiinglong.

𝐀𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐓𝐇𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐒𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐒 ; temper my soul into a blade that will never dull , destruction as salvation , i am the sword / i am the wound , love as the balm and the blade , the bona - fide sinner. i am nobody; i , the cataclysm.

rules below. / i dont want to make a carrd anymore / promo.

i. im going to keep this brief , so. first and foremost , i intend to keep this space as a place where i can chill and have fun. my workload occupies half of my time , so i'm going to be scarce , so this blog will be a PERMANENTLY low activity space tyty. i will be active with communicating , mainly discord. if i follow you , that means i would love to interact with your muses! i just ask that you be patient with me, since i am scarce as is. i don't really care too much about duplicates and i would love to interact with other blade writers , so long as there is respect to each of our portrayals of blade , but i would love to share around ideas too !!

ii. it goes without saying that i'm unaffiliated with the game, so everything of that material is not mine , the lore for ren will mostly be mixed canon, and expanded upon on from leaks, chinese mythos, culture, and item stories. that being said , ren only offers courtesy to people he holds neutral to better regard to , so he will be rude if need be , and awful where the situation begs for it. but most of the time he's quiet. haha lmao... please keep this in mind when interacting with him! therefore , steal from me and ur ass is grass !! psds , writing, etc are mine unless stated otherwise.

iii. this blog will contain references to and explorations of blade's character within the story and elaboration on chinese culture and mythology, my chinese reading level is literally abysmal (cries) so please bare with me! this blog will also contain triggering themes such as, but not limited to: violence , gore , dehumanization , depersonalization , memory loss , sexual themes , and more to be added. triggering material and general content warnings will be tagged as '___ tw' or '___cw'.

iv. do not involve me in any shape or form in your drama. i don't care , don't involve me. i firmly believe that some things can be solved through talking it out in private therefore, i reserve the rights to block as i please. that being said , i will reblog callouts if it does involve someone who brings genuine harm to the community.

v. i don't really care too much about length or formatting. i personally use small font text with minimal editing , as well as icons, but i do occasionally go iconless bc im lazy lmao... just please don't give me something that i'm gonna have to zoom in 500x to read , and just not one sentence LMAO !! basic roleplay etiquette goes, don't godmod my character etc. i generally do not make starter calls since i am terrible at managing them or answering them but i do. sometimes :clown:. but , the best way to start off threads with me is through ask memes! i loove when ask memes are turned into threads, and i do encourage plotting!! my d*sco handle is available if we're mutuals :)

vi. shipping is not a priority but i'm always up for it. it's not on the forefront of my mind , and i'm sure it isn't for you. what happens , happens. that being said , i reserve the right to drop a ship if certain dynamics don't interest me, or make me uncomfortable. but again , i am pretty flexible , i don't mind exploring darker dynamics between our characters. mains are open, and i consider us mains only if we have talked about it! i do not practice character exclusivity unless requested of me, but i do practice ship exclusivity. this means i will not write romantic ships with different writers of the same character if i already have a writing partner designated to that ship.

vii. if you are a multi , please specify a muse if you send in an ask or like starter calls. if you require anything from me in regards to interpretation or clarification , please by all means drop by my IMs and ask me! all in all , have fun and i look forward to writing with you!

#do not interact w this post i will scream and cry

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clippedwingsmuses · 3 days

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‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎" 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐈 𝐬𝐚𝐲? "‎‎

canon divergent multifandom multimuse - private - indie - penned by crowmun please see my rp tracker before asking about replies that i owe

muses - oc muses - rules - about mun - verses - credits - promo tags memes - headcanons - drabbles - permanent starter calls

this blog is 18+, and may feature depictions / mentions of the following topics: psychological torture, mental & emotional abuse, abandonment issues, depersonalization / dehumanization / derealization, murder, violence, hypnosis, toxic/unhealthy relationships, suicidal thoughts, cult ideologies, religious trauma, mind controlling, nsfw innuendos / jokes, experimentation please be mindful when threading / viewing, as many of these topics are relevant to the backstories / worldviews of my muses and will be reflected in their thoughts. all topics will be tagged with '[topic] tw' if / when they appear.

rules under the cut for mobile users

Typical roleplay etiquette applies here. No godmodding, no meta-rps, no powerplaying or controlling my muse, and don't be a dick.

This blog is PRIVATE, meaning that I only roleplay with mutuals. -- As this is a sideblog, I follow from my main; TRACKDNTRAILD.

Personals will be soft-blocked unless they have a RP sideblog.

I will not roleplay with minors because of my blog's themes.

Proper grammar and punctuation are a must when threading with me. -- Capitalization is generally excused due to my writing style, which features mainly lowercase writing (except for emphasis).

I exclusively do LITERATE roleplays, typically multi-para in length.

You don't have to match the length of my replies, nor the speed at which I reply! However, I expect more than a sentence or two reply.

If I have not responded to our thread for TWO WEEKS+, tell me! -- Similarly, if you have not responded to our thread for more than THREE MONTHS without notice, I will consider it dropped.

This blog will deal with mature themes, but I will not write NSFW. -- Content leaning to NSFW will fade to black, no exceptions. -- I will not engage in mature themes with minor/aged up muses.

If you write content intended for pr*shippers, or you are one, leave.

I will not roleplay fight sequences unless they are heavily plotted. -- If our RP is edging towards a fight, please talk with me first so we can discuss where it goes. I will do the same to you.

I am MULTISHIP, so I will ship my muses with multiple characters. -- Every character that I RP with will be set in their own verse. -- Please ask before including other people/muses in our verses.

I am more than willing to write pre-established relationships! -- I will not write pre-established romantic or familial relationships, unless I know you personally.

Don't reblog memes/threads/musings/aesthetics directly from me.

Specify verses when sending starters/asks! See my verses HERE. -- The main muses of my blog are KIERAN, KOKICHI, and KITSUNAMI. I will respond as them by default depending on their activity.

I will only ship characters in the same age group, including aged up muses. (Ex.: No Scoots x Mane 6, even in the post-finale verse)

If you read these rules, please send an ask with 'I will heal you'. -- If I reply to the ask IC, you don't have to make it a thread. -- I'll also accept you liking my pinned as sending the password.

my blacklist: images of bugs / blood/gore / body horror / spiders, unsanitary jokes

#:/: ooc #:/: pinned post #mun msg: NEW PINNED LETS GOOOOOOO

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ow-anteater · 2 years

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Not to focus overly on a very minor and accidental details in OW, but I think the use of names - especially around Gabriel - is really interesting and could be used as a part of a really interesting theme of depersonalization if the writing team was a tad more competent

The narration in his short story almost excusively refers to him as ‘Reyes’ suggesting that’s the name he in that moment feels the strongest connection to. It’s a way of referring to him that - at least to me - has overtly militaristic connotations, it’s what he would have been called as a soldier. In a situation of extreme stress; his body being torn apart, his mental state breaking, he falls back on being exactly one thing: A soldier

It’s yet another thing him and Jack share and that could probably be traced directly to their abuse and dehumanization at the hands of SEP and the american military at large. They have little grasp on who they are outside of their functionality and their place in a hierachy - both seem extremely aware and at some level shameful about breaking from it

They also share the trait, that Ana refuses to follow along on characterizing them like this. She almost exclusively calls them by first name (even a nickname in Gabriel’s case) when they’re in private. It’s such a subtle thing and I’m pretty sure it’s not something they thought about writing it, but it speaks to how their connection and friendship stretches far past the borders of duty. The same is true for Jack and Gabriel’s connection to one another. After all, when Sombra tries to aggrevate him it’s not with ‘commander Morrison’ or ‘Morrison’ (which would have made a lot of sense if the true point of irritation she was trying to hint at was how Jack was chocen to lead), it is ‘Jack’

#overwatch #Reaper #gabriel reyes #jack morrison #soldier 76 #ana amari #love them so much #yes this is what im choosing to focus on about the lore drop leave me alone dhassci<i<d

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dumb-american · 4 years

Text

The Forever War: Thoughts on The Last of Us Part II

“There were people – a minority of them – that were just stuck on how violent it is and how dark and quite cynical it is about mankind.” --Neil Druckmann, director The Last of Us Part II

“Yeah, once we’re done with this whole thing, I’m gonna teach you how to play guitar.” --Joel, The Last of Us

*This is the spoiler warning for both The Last of Us and Part II*

The Last of Us Part II had lofty ambitions. Meant to invoke The Godfather Part II in theme, epic scope, and even naming convention, the game knows what it has to live up to. I’ve heard many people say The Last of Us is either their favorite game or a contender for the game they’ve ever played. How do you follow up something like that?

The world of TLOU is unforgiving and, I’d argue, misunderstood. Some critics have drawn attention to the TLOU’s relentlessly pessimistic tone and whether or not it’s appropriate. Maddy Myers, writing for Polygon, says that The Last of Us Part II is “...needlessly bleak, at a time when a nihilistic worldview has perhaps never been less attractive”. An entirely fair criticism and worth interrogating, but I think that line of inquiry misses the crisis at the center of TLOU that Part II brilliantly brings into focus.

Like the first game, The Last of Us Part II is a post-9/11 fever dream. No one can ever be trusted, no good deed goes unpunished, and at some point even your friends may have to kill you. The first game gave us brutal depictions of terrorist attacks and authoritarian government crackdowns as a routine part of life in a quarantine zone with dwindling resources. Society was rapidly breaking down, a deep anxiety, rooted in racism and xenophobia, that has preoccupied the minds of Americans and Europeans since 9/11. These depictions of terrorism were not the bulk of the game, but always came at narrative inflection points. The first being the impetus for Joel and Ellie’s trip across America and the last as the game’s oft-maligned conclusion at the Firefly hospital. The infected serves its role as the depersonalized invading hordes; the incomprehensible being from another world, baying at the gates of civilization, ready to bring the whole thing down.

The sequel, wise to not simply retread old ground, instead depicts another aspect of post 9/11 life: a clash of civilizations. The Washington Liberation Front, or Wolves, is a paramilitary organization that were once “freedom fighters,” but now gleefully condone torture and, by the game’s end, attempt to perform a genocide. The Seraphites, by contrast, are a primitivist religious order that eschews the modern, sin filled world and practices self-mutilation and ritual sacrifice. The WLF refer to them as the dehumanizing epithet “scars”. You don’t have to squint very hard to recognize unflattering portrayals of The United States, Great Britain, France, and other so-called Western nations on one side and Iraq, Palestine, Syria, and other “Muslim” countries on the other. Throughout the game the player collects training manuals that accentuate this ideology. Survivalist and prepping manuals. Guerilla warfare tactics. Counterintelligence guidebooks. All totems of the Forever War anxiety that we’ve been marinating in since 2001.

There is no better world to imagine, just a vanishing small series of less bad options. No ideology has any meaning or pulls people towards any greater purpose. Near the end of Part II’s grueling 25 hour playthrough time, Ellie writes in her journal “Scars. Wolves. Fireflies. Fuck all these groups”. And why wouldn’t she believe that? Who hasn’t tried to kill her? Exploring the world, you come across notes and documents that speak of a truce between the two groups that was soon broken. The player never can discern who broke the truce since both sides claim the other was at fault.

Another Forever War is at the heart of Part II’s plot. Ellie and Abby, two young women from vastly different backgrounds, locked into an endless cycle of vengeance and misery that continually escalates, threatening to destroy both of them. Abby is the daughter of the surgeon murdered by Joel at the end of The Last of Us and comes to Ellie’s home in Jackson to violently and sadistically seek revenge. Roughly half the game is spent playing as Ellie and the other half as Abby, we see each of these women survive, love, and lose people close to them. Ellie comes to Seattle with her girlfriend Dina to re-escalate the Forever War. Abby spares Ellie twice, and each time Ellie comes back to kill her. Both women cannot find peace. Abby has reoccurring nightmares where she steps into the room where her father was murdered, discovering his body or someone else she loves. Ellie has PTSD from being forced to witness Joel’s gruesome death; she can’t stop seeing Joel’s broken face on the floor.

Their stories converge a final time. Ellie can’t let it go, she abandons Dina and the life they dreamed of together at the farmhouse for one more shot at Abby. In the interim, Abby and her companion Lev are captured by the Rattlers, a deranged group of slavers. Ellie discovers them on the beach, strung up on wooden posts, left for dead. She cuts them down and provokes Abby into a fight to the death. Despite eventually getting the upper hand and moments away from drowning Abby, Ellie can’t kill her. She lets them escape.

Ellie returns to the farm. It’s abandoned. She picks up Joel’s guitar and attempts to play it. In the fight with Abby, she lost two of her fingers. She can’t play the song Joel taught her, she’ll never play the guitar again. Dina is gone. All of this has been pointless.

It’s the sort of pointlessness that defines the age of the Forever Wars and post 9/11 world. Concepts such as heroism, valor, and justice are dead and replaced with necessary evils, the best of bad options, and endless suspicion. There is no winning, only temporary alliances and truces that will never hold. As always with post 9/11 media, torture is a practical tool to achieve goals, and not a war crime.

As I watched the credits roll on this 25 symphony of misery, I reflected on the final moments of the game and what they say. Had Ellie simply stayed with Dina and not took off in pursuit of Abby one final time, Abby would have died on the beach where Ellie found her. Ellie would have no way of knowing this, but all she had to do was just let it go.

#The Last of Us Part II #gaming #review

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carolynmarykleefeld · 4 years

Photo

The Alchemy Oracle is a divination tool based upon my book The Alchemy of Possibility, an experiential guide for creative inspiration and personal growth. Each chapter includes my artwork—an archetypal painting or drawing—paired with my prose and poetry, and with an I Ching hexagram or tarot card which also resonates with the theme of the chapter.

Today we consult The Alchemy Oracle with the question, “What is the spiritual message for the collective this week?” Here is the answer: 

Defining Self: Being Independent of Others’ Opinions

Painting: “Independent Wolf Spirit Stands Resolute”

It is dehumanizing to accept the role of either a worshipper or an icon. In both cases, we give away our independence.

Labels, stereotypes and categories divide us from ourselves and others. I am disinterested in being an adjective, defined by someone else’s point of view. As we are more than descriptions, even “compliments” can be depersonalizing and constricting. To be a noun, however, is to be the subject of our own sentence, liberated from the judgments of others. No longer will I let another person define me. Read more.

Ask your own question to The Alchemy Oracle here.

More about The Alchemy Oracle

When ‘The Alchemy of Possibility’ was first published, I gave numerous readings around the country. At the end of each, I invited people to take the book in their hands, allow a question to arise, and then open the book at random. Remarkably, each time this happened, the participants were amazed at the resonance, relevance, and illumination they found. With the technology now available, this oracle opportunity is re-created here online. Read more.

www.carolynmarykleefeld.com

#divination #i-ching #tarot reading #tarot #Mindfulness #artist #big sur #abstract art #metaphysical #innocence #wu wang #modern art #44b #The Alchemy Oracle #The Alchemy of Possibility #the rise of the phoenix

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deadskepticfiles · 5 years

Text

THE DREAMING PROPHET, EPISODE 7: CHOIR CLASS

[PODOMATIC LINK]

Keep quiet - they have ears everywhere, and eyes, too. We know them, but at the same time we don't know them at all. Who are they? They're Many, and yet, One. Talking points: Speak-as-One, SAO & Humanity, The Shape, SAO's relationships with other gods.

Spoiler + Content warning begins at 1:14. Content warnings: General horror, cults, religious symbology, dehumanization, brainwashing, brief mention of suicide.

Cass Marshall's article on Polygon

God Encounter Transcript Master

The Blackout Club Steam store page

The Blackout Club Lexicon, for player/game lingo & terminology

After you review/if you've already reviewed, use #TheDreamingProphet and #TheBlackoutClub to share your favorite TBC memories on Twitter, and read some from other players. We'd like to read some of them in our next show.

Credits:

- lavanya: host, transcript, video editor, asset artist, speak-as-one's #1 fan

- astriferal: host, audio editor, puncher of things

- be11amy: advertising

- xaviul: guest, moral support

- spoderman: publicity, hype squad

- intro & outro music, "ringing bells": a weirdly handsome individual

- transition audio clips, music, voice lines: the blackout club/question games

- weird ambiance: Magmi Soundtracks on freesound (https://freesound.org/people/Magmi.Soundtracks/sounds/475737/)

- the blackout club: question games (https://www.blackoutclubgame.com/)

LAVANYA

[00:00:20] Good evening, and welcome to our favorite listeners.

LAVANYA [00:00:22] Tonight we have a very special topic, but first we're going to take a moment to consider our mother-father; our mama-papa; our darling grandma and grandpa. When they say that blood is thicker than water, what they mean is that there's music in your soul, and whether you're speaking with your hands, your tongue, or your pen, everyone is ultimately led by the same song.

LAVANYA [00:00:43] You can ignore it if you want, but it's in your steps. It's in your breaths. It's in the beat of that mistake we call a heart in our chest. You can ignore it but you can't deny what you are and what you are is one of many.

LAVANYA [00:00:57] Welcome to our Speak-as-One discussion. My name is Lavanya -.

ASTRO [00:01:01] And I'm Astro.

LAVANYA [00:01:02] - and we'll be your hosts for tonight.

ASTRO [00:01:04] This is a Blackout Club show for Blackout Club players with minimal speculation, all lore and focus on the known facts. Our topic of the day is SAO, a.k.a. Speak-as-One.

LAVANYA [00:01:14] So in terms of spoilers, just like with the Thee-I-Dare episode, this episode is going to be so fucking chock full of spoilers that if you were allergic. you'd instantly enter anaphylactic shock upon reading this transcript.

LAVANYA [00:01:26] *Instantly,* dear listeners.

LAVANYA [00:01:29] But thankfully, you probably are not allergic! And if you are, we are *not* legally liable for that~!

LAVANYA [00:01:35] So let's keep trucking on.

LAVANYA [00:01:37] So our content warnings are basically - we're discussing a massive fucking cult. So if cults bother you, discussion of religious symbology, all of that that - that's your warning for this episode. As always, there is a general horror themes warning in the discussion of death, and injury to children.

LAVANYA [00:01:55] But we are dipping into SAO, the best God, tonight, which means we're also dealing with dehumanization and brainwashing. Those are kind of their thing.

LAVANYA [00:02:05] There will also be a brief mention of suicide!

ASTRO [00:02:17] And we have a guest tonight. Welcome back, Xaviul!

ASTRO [00:02:20] Wait, Xaviul, what are you doing here? And where's Lavanya?

XAVIUL [00:02:26] Lavanya went on a...

XAVIUL [00:02:27] Trip.

XAVIUL [00:02:27] But it's fine, cause I'm here, SAO's number one fan. I'm all about that.. uh.

XAVIUL [00:02:36] Bong!

LAVANYA [00:02:36] You motherfucker, we didn't give a content warning for drugs on this show. This is a family friendly show! You can't just tranq somebody, and shove them in a closet, and try to take over their spot in an episode. That's *wrong.*

LAVANYA [00:02:48] That's not *friendship!*

XAVIUL [00:02:51] Is it possible to build up immunity to large animal tranquilizers..? I was pretty sure you're going to be out for at least a few hours.

XAVIUL [00:02:58] You know what they say about *ass-umptions*, Xaviul.

XAVIUL [00:03:01] Anyways, I guess it's going to be a threesome from now on.

ASTRO [00:03:07] Let's start with the basics. What is Speak-as-One?

XAVIUL [00:03:12] I think you mean, we are Speak-as-One? Just can't, like, depersonalize them like that.

LAVANYA [00:03:18] [vehement] They're not a person, they're all and -

XAVIUL [00:03:21] They are many people! Wow! Good thing I'm here to set the facts straight.

LAVANYA [00:03:27] Okay.

LAVANYA [00:03:30] Okay, now that we're going to have now that we're going to have the children sit down and take their seats... Speak-as-One is known as frequently in the community as SAO, or by the developer team, as S-A-1.

LAVANYA [00:03:42] Speak-as-One is the name as the Daimon that occupies a majority of the hosts in Red Acre. It is a reference to the hivemind collective in general, where every participant is basically Speak-as-One, because they are One-of-Many. The way that I like to think of it is fingers dipped into a glass may appear to be individual entities to fish in the water, but anyone above the surface knows that they're all connected to the same hand.

LAVANYA [00:04:08] Every host is Speak-as-One and Speak-as-One is every host.

LAVANYA [00:04:14] Even if it doesn't look like it.

LAVANYA [00:04:16] So let's get into all the parts that make up the collective. The first of this is the Voice.

LAVANYA [00:04:25] So, from what we know, this is always a man and a woman who speak as one. This also possibly could be an enby and a woman, or an enby and a man, or whatever other variation you can think of - but Speak-as-One hasn't gotten back to me on the many phone calls about that yet? So we're not entirely sure.

LAVANYA [00:04:45] These two individuals are not mentally linked in the traditional hive mind. They are two separate entities who simply choose to work as one, much as the entire CHORUS community. Sleepers lines even note that they argue with each other, which they view as alarming and upsetting: as they say dissonance corrupts the Song.

XAVIUL [00:05:05] Disharmony in my cult? It's more likely than you think.

LAVANYA [00:05:09] A possible point of interest is, despite the fact that the voice does consist of two individuals, they are referred to exclusively as they, as if they were one entity. When Speak-as-One was discussing was having what my pronouns may be, they said - do they use they, like the Voice?

LAVANYA [00:05:29] So that's a little fascinating, when Speak-as-One as the collective uses all pronouns.

ASTRO [00:05:34] They are obsessed with truth and preservation. What the voice speaks is supposed to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, according to the Song.

XAVIUL [00:05:45] So help us gods.

ASTRO [00:05:47] There is no God in Red Acre.

LAVANYA [00:05:48] There is only one, it's *fine*.

ASTRO [00:05:51] The Cryptogram Library is an extensive archive of the old tongue. You can see this in the massive walls of the projector slides, which also appear in the projector mission.

ASTRO [00:06:01] Each of those wooden cards contains information on a move in the old tongue, and the walls are literally covered with them feeling the floor. We'll talk more about the old tongue in our next few episodes.

ASTRO [00:06:12] The Voice does not lie but they do hide things from the masses.

THE VOICE [QUOTE] [00:06:17] Already has distanced himself from the hated terms - I, you, my - words spat across time by the Adversary. This one rejects them. Most attentive. We approve.

LAVANYA [00:06:46] Speak-as-One has different rules for how you should talk depending on which facet of them that you're speaking to.

LAVANYA [00:06:51] With the Watchers, they're more lenient. Overall you should always try to avoid I as the forbidden word, but as the Watchers informed me, they don't really care if you slip up. The watchers are your dead relatives, your dead neighbors, dead randos off the street. Maybe they're dead homeless people that they stuffed into the barracks to die! [laughter] They are apparently not personally invested enough not to forgive you for the sin of using a first person pronoun.

LAVANYA [00:07:15] With that said, that's a grace that's only given to the player characters. Lucids and sleepers treat I as the forbidden word. It increases dissonance in the Song where everything is weak, and sleepers show that they have a slight amount of discomfort or possibly even pain when they're encountering the word I.

LAVANYA [00:07:33] However, the voice is hard line. As the watchers warned me, the Voice does not accept first person pronouns. The voice wants you to go full fucking khajit here.

XAVIUL [00:07:43] I don't get your dated references.

LAVANYA [00:07:45] Technically Skyrim came out last year, and the year before that.

LAVANYA [00:07:50] And the year before that.

LAVANYA [00:07:54] So remember kids, when it comes to in-game visits, you're speaking to a Watcher: you can use as many first person pronouns as you want, but when you're doing rituals, you should go ahead and remember you're talking to the Voice. And whereas the Watchers forgive, the Voice does not.

LAVANYA [00:08:09] Use third person. Go full Khajiti. Do whatever it takes to avoid that watchful eye.

LAVANYA [00:08:14] Immortality is one of the most important things to Speak-as-One. When I say immortality, I don't just mean of the body: I mean of information, of memories. Watchers are what we considered dead; however, Watchers still stay a part of the Song. We don't know exactly how this compares to Thee-I-Dare's fragment, which SAO has recently claimed, are kind of knockoffs, but we know that there are some differences.

LAVANYA [00:08:41] Thee-I-Dare's fragments are fragments of his personality ensconed in the memories of his host. His host do not survive the fragmentation processm only his memories and his impressions of them do.

LAVANYA [00:08:54] If it helps, it's easy to think of it as fragments are when you sit down and you armchair, get a drink, and crack open Thee-I-Dare's live journal to read all of his deepest, darkest secrets. Watchers, this on the other hand?

LAVANYA [00:09:07] That's just dead people. Just dead people, as far as the eye can see, and they are implied to be individuals with their own consciousness that is retained in the Song, with their own memories.

LAVANYA [00:09:19] This is most evident in the sleepers line where the Sleepers speaks of the father, whose child was possessed with the fear of the night and eventually died, becoming a Watcher. When she died, she assured him that all was well - showing that she still had a bond with her father, even after death, and showing that she remembered her past experiences of being afraid and she was now assuring him that that was over.

XAVIUL [00:09:42] Bit fucked up if you ask me, but -

LAVANYA [00:09:44] But Speak-as-One loves family. Familial love and forgiveness is kind of their whole thing.

XAVIUL [00:09:51] But you wouldn't know about that, would you? Since Laugh-Last kind of went out for milk, and took, what, nine months to come back?

XAVIUL [00:10:02] [laughter] Wow. Well, really going for the fucking abandoned father jokes today. All right.

XAVIUL [00:10:07] Becoming a watcher is frequently the fate of the dead SAOites. But we don't know if it's the fate of all SAOites. I mean, who would want Lavanya in the Song?

LAVANYA [00:10:19] Wow! I have perfect pitch. I mean, I don't know what pitch is, but I'm pretty sure mine is perfect.

XAVIUL [00:10:28] Moving on --.

XAVIUL [00:10:28] SAO wants all of humanity in the Song. It views it as a tragedy when they will not join. The same applies to Daimons - but not all Daimons, hashtag not all Daimons.

XAVIUL [00:10:41] Hashtag: TID's, do not interact.

LAVANYA [00:10:45] [laughter] Oh fuck.

SLEEPER [QUOTE] [00:10:47] Such new things she will learn..

ASTRO [00:10:51] Underneath everything they do, SAO has an inherent curiosity.

ASTRO [00:10:55] They want to learn and share the information they learn with the Song. They chronicle their own history and the history of other Daimons, and other humans for eternity, sharing it within their hive mind, and they want to know more about where they came from.

LAVANYA [00:11:11] So you might be asking yourself right now what is the Song? The answer to that question is who the fuck knows?

THE VOICE [QUOTE] [00:11:18] The Song is salvation. War, famine, strife.. all will end. All will Speak as One.

LAVANYA [00:11:37] Personally, I've heard a lot of conspiracy theories about what the Song as Astro can attest during my late night ramblings - and by late night, I mean 9 p.m. - [laughter]

LAVANYA [00:11:52] Luckily, we have kind developers who are willing to clarify things and get us away from our corkboard full of strings. Null said in a quote from the discord that:.

[00:12:04] "Speak-as-One uses the Song to describe his own traditional connected host pattern of behavior, keeping the host unconscious as much as possible, because of the toxin of self-interest. But it doesn't own the old tongue itself. It can't really, because it emerged from that when identity was not yet a thing."

ASTRO [00:12:25] So, to summarize: the Song is comprised of hosts, past and present, who communicate with each other via ritualized music sound and dance. To be part of the Song, you have to be asleep. This is how the Song remains pure while asleep. You can't be tempted by other Daimons.

ASTRO [00:12:41] This is why when you're shaped, the Shape is returning you to the Song. Watchers like to complain frequently about the inaccuracy and inadequacy of the Word. They can't express themselves like they do in the Song, which is frustrating, but they also need to speak to us in a way that we understand.

LAVANYA [00:12:57] Unfortunately, the Song is difficult for humans to hear now. They rely on the Instrument to amplify it, and the Voice to interpret it for those that can't fully understand. Speak-as-One mentions in a God talk that there is a level of natural aptitude that they seek out in children. This could be linked in with how they train sleepers - hosts conditioning is made to sort out which sleepers can do what, and which are suitable to use as workers jobs.

LAVANYA [00:13:19] It's up for grabs if no sleepers left behind is a theme for us, but we've got to get batteries somewhere, right? Some sleepers get trained, some get picked up and gently dipped down into the gas tubes of Somniliquoy in order to listen for the unseen, sleeping God.

XAVIUL [00:13:38] The Song is truth, but not the full truth. In Madi-Shaw Log 1 in the journals, there is a quote: "we advise ending this recording, dismissing the Chordist performing. The Song is truth. But one must give a thought to - to harmony?".

XAVIUL [00:13:55] In a conversation, the Watchers note that the Voice will not allow information to be encoded, which scares them.

LAVANYA [00:14:02] The history of SAO is pretty fucking fascinating, because we have a Voice right now and per the lucid lines, we've had a voice back in the 90s. But we don't actually know a lot about the history of CHORUS, or the precursor organizations of it, but instead we know a little bit about SAO.

LAVANYA [00:14:20] SAO is one of the earliest voices that we know exist, if not the earliest. The first voice is the progenitor of SAO that they're searching for, as TMC mentioned in a dream and has been mentioned in God talks. We know nothing about them unfortunately, but neither does SAO.

LAVANYA [00:14:40] What we do know is that they are located beneath slow wave sleep, and the experiments that SAO performs in the Somniliquoys with the sleepers, which sometimes involve full submersion into the freaky ass gas, are all aimed towards finding this first Voice.

ASTRO [QUOTING] [00:14:56] SAO has said your kind were primates, yes? Apes, barely upright nomadic. Some came upon this valley. Even animals may dream. Here, their dreams intensify.

LAVANYA [00:15:08] SAO refers to humanity semi-frequently as upright apes. You've probably heard this in the sleepers lines in one particular God talk. They state that they discovered humanity back when they were still apes, barely upright and still nomadic. SAO guided these early primates in a symbiotic relationship. They state that they were not fully sentient at that point in time.

ASTRO [QUOTING] [00:15:31] "This valley was fertile. When the adversary ruined you, some of our kind entered the caves, drew pictures of what we were."

LAVANYA [00:15:41] SAO has detailed some of their own history in the past in various God talks. What we've learned is that SAO does not know precisely their own origin. They refer to themselves, early on in their past, as being "a pattern, repeating, improving". SAO, as the first voice, we know separated from the old tongue, which is the pattern mentioned, due to the growth of flocking and eusocial behavior in pre conscious humans.

LAVANYA [00:16:05] So basically, humanity, which at that point would probably there have been Homo habilis or one of the other early precursors of near humans, as they developed social behaviors and began cooperating with one another in forming early tribes - *that* is what eventually evolved into creating SAO. SAO is literally the Daimon of community.

LAVANYA [00:16:27] Even if sometimes it's a little bit of a xenophobic community.

XAVIUL [00:16:29] You're either with them or you're against them.

LAVANYA [00:16:33] While a lot of the Daimons have a bad tendency of lying or distorting stories in order to make themselves sound better, SAO's origin story has actually been further confirmed by TMC, who stated in a private dream that "we were one voice, one species, live host - highly intelligent, but not awake, clustering in caves. A kind of neural dance passed over the area of bodies in great waves, a rapture of connectivity, even death, the tribe's memories would persist.".

LAVANYA [00:17:05] So, in the beginning, that was SAO, long before anyone had actual words to describe what they were. This rapture of connectivity, as TMC describes it - this happened in numerous places across the world as humanity gained consciousness and self-confidence, naturally, as a species. When the Word was introduced by Thee-I-Dare, humanity split and SAO states some of them fled into caves to leave monuments behind of the Old Tongue. SAO calls this a sacred place. It's from this place that they get their symbol, which is two stones, side by side. We do not know exactly where this place was. They insinuated that it might be Red Acre, but they also insinuated that it could be anywhere.

ASTRO [00:17:47] More on this after a word from our sponsors.

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Even better, we trace back the calls to find out and block the perpetrators! Those pesky hackers won't know what hit them. Install CHORUS firewall today.

LAVANYA [00:18:27] So, after that lovely commercial break, we're back to the most important thing of the day: SAO! So buckle in your seats, kids, we're back to the cult.

ASTRO [00:18:38] How do we change the channel again..?

LAVANYA [00:18:41] You don't. You don't! I put on the child locks, so sit down and eat your pudding.

XAVIUL [00:18:46] Can I unplug the TV..?

LAVANYA [00:18:49] No!

LAVANYA [00:18:49] Modern humanity and SAO is kind of what's going on in the game right now. Red Acre is a perfect example of it. Red Acre is SAO, just like CHORUS is SAO. All of the are involved with CHORUS, and with the cult, whether o not they know it. As Sleepers, as Lucids, as unwilling battery farms - because that's what the In-Her-Teeth claims.

IN-HER-TEETH [QUOTING] [00:19:11] "I requested to be able to how I will die." So, what I forsee right now, is that you won't even be allowed to die.

LAVANYA [00:19:51] In-Her-Teeth states that Speak-as-One uses human bodies as a battery farm for the memories of the rest of the collective. The exact meaning of this is of little unclear - biologically, emotionally, spiritually, she doesn't get in detail.

XAVIUL [00:20:11] What do you mean? I love being backup storage.

LAVANYA [00:20:15] The Matrix taught me that it is very cool, Xaviul.

LAVANYA [00:20:18] But we do get a hint of a potential meaning in the Leviathan text, and in the kids text upon entering the maze. And in the Lucid lines.

[00:20:25] Memories merge, are lost and are gained while in the Song, and going through the red doors. For instance, the player characters have seen the maze before, but not in their memories. "I've seen this before in dreams, but not mine" is a line that your child may say, while descending into the maze.

IN-HER-TEETH [QUOTING] [00:20:46] The breeders who run this town aren't interested in life as you define it. Or even the death with dignity. You want your body functioning as storage space for their own bodies. Which is to say --

LAVANYA [00:21:06] An interesting thing to note here is that a point has been made that the adults of Red Acre are in the town willingly. Either they agree with the morals of the town, in the overall sense of community, the exclusion of outsiders, all of that - that underpins course as an organization, or else they're in at full salee because they just fucking *love* cults.

LAVANYA [00:21:27] But, either way,there is a certain amount of informed consent on the part of the adult. They may not necessarily know that every night, they're being body jacked to go to hard physical labor, or to hunt in the maze before they go to their office job, but they are choosing to be in the town and to participate in the community.

LAVANYA [00:21:47] It's partial consent, even if it's not full consent, which makes it a little bit interesting in that SAO states in their various God talks that consent is a lie and choice is a deception slash poison.

LAVANYA [00:22:00] This makes sense in terms of the children of the town being forced into their parents choices into joining the cult - or being used by the cult in terms of the body jacking - but it doesn't make too much sense when SAO exists in Red Acre and does not try to extend past it.

LAVANYA [00:22:17] Yet, at least.

LAVANYA [00:22:21] What's fascinating about Speak-as-One history is that it is a perfect example in some ways of the difficulty of collating the Blackout Club lore, especially when it relates to the Daimons.

LAVANYA [00:22:30] Because the problem, of course, is that all of our references, all of our sources, do not come from, say, journals in game that we can rely on to have some form of authority behind them, but instead, we're getting it directly from the horse's mouth constantly. And sometimes, like all disgusting ungulates, the horse lies.

ASTRO [00:22:52] This becomes more interesting when you consider the other adults that go missing in Red Acre. When a player questioned Thee-I-Dare about a fragment in the barracks, Thee-I-Dare told us a story about Yutiz, a homeless man who lived there under the care of Speak-as-One.

ASTRO [00:23:08] Thee-I-Dare told us that homeless people live in the barracks and we aren't sure if this is the whole population of the barracks, or just a part of it. But we do know that taking in homeless people is a pattern for SAO. The barracks have also been described as a place where the sleepers who never leave the maze stay when their bodies need to rest.

ASTRO [00:23:27] This brings us to the final arm of SAO's reach, which is the Shape. before we begin I want to emphasize the Shape is scary because it's unknown.

ASTRO [00:23:38] As a result, the information we have is pretty scarce. But this is intentional. Even the Daimons don't know totally what it is, but if we knew what it was and if we knew what to call it, it wouldn't be scary anymore - and we need to remember this is a horror game.

ASTRO [00:23:52] With that said, here's what we do know. The first is that Speak-as-One created the Shape.

THE-MEASURE-CUTS [QUOTING]: “Who is really the shadow, or the angel?” A creation of my progenitors that your kind mistook for a winged being. The truth, as ever, is much worse.

LAVANYA [00:24:19] SAO describes the Shape as merciful and calls it the angel.

THE VOICE [QUOTE] [00:24:23] We wish to save you from this lonely waking nightmare you call life without the Song. The Angel is our hand, and it will end a life only when mercy has been proven fruitless.

LAVANYA [00:24:40] Presumably, this is because of its physical characteristics, but we're not exactly sure.

XAVIUL [00:24:45] It has a physical form, and it can be foamed, and it must open doors to pass through them.

ASTRO [00:24:53] The Shape can be changed by changes to the Song. If the Song reports more sin in one playerm other than the one that the Shape is targeting, he will switch targets. Additionally, upon completion of the instrument damper mission, he can lose his target completely. He will still wander the maze, but he won't know who to target.

LAVANYA [00:25:12] While he has a physical form, he is also linked explicitly to sound - not just in the Song, but overall. Beckoning causes a cacophony of human whispers, which increase constantly as you are shaped.

LAVANYA [00:25:25] The words almost make sense, the closer you are to joining the Song, but they'll never fully make sense, and the sound is a little similar to what you can hear in Nerve Center if you stand on top of the resonator.

LAVANYA [00:25:46] When you are shaped, it produces a loud siren as the noise that slowly gains in volume as you are put to sleep. While the Shape is on you, period, other sound around you is slowed and distorted. This is most evident in the sin wires, and it's not clear if this affects all sounds, like the ambience. But it does affect some of them.

ASTRO [00:26:12] If he wanted to put us to sleep you should look into those sleep aid C.D.S, like wave sounds, come on.

LAVANYA [00:26:17] it's like it doesn't even know its job! It could do sleep soundwaves, it could do the brown note, there's a lot of things that he could do instead of screaming at us.

XAVIUL [00:26:26] Sleep AMSR!

LAVANYA [00:26:28] Shape sleep ASMR! When can we buy it?

ASTRO [00:26:31] Being near the Shape produces visible noise similar to TV static.

XAVIUL [00:26:37] If he can't find his target, he'll grow wings and change, which increases his physical abilities.

ASTRO [00:26:43] He gets the jumps.

XAVIUL [00:26:45] Doesn't he also see in the dark?

LAVANYA [00:26:46] Yes, he does.

XAVIUL [00:26:47] Slaps on those fucking night vision goggles. Watch out!

LAVANYA [00:26:50] And to backtrack, despite having a physical form, despite somehow being linked into the Song, despite the fact he's an eldritch abomination and part of the game right now is focused heavily on exactly how you kill those off, we have it firmly established you cannot kill the Shape.

LAVANYA [00:27:10] The Shape is here to stay, baby.

THE-MEASURE-CUTS [QUOTING] [00:27:13] “I want to kill the Shape.” I have been working on the same thing. I do not believe it can be killed in the way that you mean. It has always been here. If its body dies, then somehow it persists, whether it has multiple hosts as we did or… or something that defies the law of reason. I sincerely hope it is not the latter.

XAVIUL [00:27:44] And of course we can't go without talking about SAO and their relationships with the other voices. So we'll start off with the former BFF for life.

LAVANYA [00:27:57] TMC and SAO used to be tight as fuck, probably to the extent of exchanging friendship bracelets, if SAO was capable of revealing any of the other Daimons as individual entities that deserved friendship.

LAVANYA [00:28:11] In the past, The-Measure-Cuts and SAO worked together actively, back when TMC was being viewed by society as a forge goddess. We don't know the exact context behind that, but we do know that basically TMC was in with the management at that point. But he isn't right now!

LAVANYA [00:28:27] We know that SAO is, per the other Daimons, the creator of Red Acre - or at least perceived as such. However, The-Measure-Cuts feels a certain amount of ownership over the town for whatever reason. He states that "I am running a controlled experiment and you are the subject" to one of the player characters.

ASTRO [00:28:46] The-Measure-Cuts said he tried to remain neutral when Thee-I-Dare was shattered. He's directed players to help Thee-I-Dare before, But he did let TID's get murdered.

THE-MEASURE-CUTS [QUOTING]: I have a sibling. Some once called him, THEE-I-DARE. You could be of concrete and immediate use to him, if you value truth more than life or time.

ASTRO [00:29:15] The-Measure-Cuts seems ambivalent on actually working against Thee-I-Dare, though he doesn't seem to want to help out SAO's plan either.

THE-MEASURE-CUTS [QUOTING] [00:29:22] "Our progenitor is an entity who's name I will not speak."

ASTRO [00:29:22] Names gives power. The-Measure-Cuts is choosing not to give SAO more power.

LAVANYA [00:29:34] Because he's *disloyal.(

LAVANYA [00:29:36] The thing about it is does SAO acknowledge that TMC is a completely different person and not just a naugty little body part that got cut off? No.

LAVANYA [00:29:45] But SAO still wants him to come back. SAO wants to reclaim TMC, referring to him as the Scholar. So while TMC is being a little bit of a dick, refusing to giv SAO power by saying their name, refusing to help them actually finally drop the hammer on Thee-I-Dare, refusing to let Red Acre exist without trying to poke the children with syringes -.

LAVANYA [00:30:11] Ultimately SAO does forgive!

XAVIUL [00:30:15] It's kinda like when you bite your tongue on accident. You don't get angry at your teeth for it.

XAVIUL [00:30:20] Exactly. Exactly! Spit out the blood and move on.

XAVIUL [00:30:24] Speaking of teeth.

ASTRO [00:30:28] [laughter] So what about In-Her-Teeth?

XAVIUL [00:30:30] Well, she likes to call SAO brother, while other voices have their own kind of flavors of words to describe them, like The-Measure-Cuts calls them progenitor, Dance-for-Us calls them parent - In-Her-Teeth is more of a familial sense and In-Her-Teeth is also in the past referred to SAO as those that bore me.

XAVIUL [00:30:55] Family trees. Are they real? More at eight.

ASTRO [00:30:56] In-her-Teeth has also referred to SAO as the "Breeders."

LAVANYA [00:31:02] It's a nasty term, but that we found out in a private dream from In-Her-Teeth recently, that she actually runs r/childfree.

LAVANYA [00:31:12] After all, what is banning, but the little death?

LAVANYA [00:31:15] Lavanya, we promise not to lie on this show.

XAVIUL [00:31:18] We did?

LAVANYA [00:31:21] Boo!

XAVIUL [00:31:22] In-Her-Teeth thinks all the Daimons have lived too long and wants to find a way for them to die, but specifically targets SAO.

IN-HER-TEETH [QUOTING] [00:31:34] I do need hosts to retake Redacre and annihilate the so-called “sleeping god”…

LAVANYA [00:31:37] This is an interesting contrast to the fact SAO's entire thing is conditional immortality, which probably plays into the fact SAO calls her death fetishist.

LAVANYA [00:31:46] Familial love, y'all~

ASTRO [00:31:49] So what about Laugh-Last?

LAVANYA [00:31:51] Laugh-Last calls essay management.

XAVIUL [00:31:54] I mean it's what they are.

LAVANYA [00:31:57] If SAO is management, does that mean that Laugh-Last is the unpaid intern, that they keep taking his card, but he keeps following other people into the building anyway?

XAVIUL [00:32:05] I'm too young to understand this reference.

LAVANYA [00:32:07] [laughter]

XAVIUL [00:32:07] Laugh-Last believes that if SAO has their way, Red Acre will be ~*THE WORST*~. So we have to do everything we can to fight the power! Laugh-Last claims that being serious is death. SAO doesn't want any fun, any laughs, so you can see why there might be friction there.

LAVANYA [00:32:26] SAO doesn't actually want anything to do with Laugh-Last.

LAVANYA [00:32:29] At this point in time, they call him The Fool and they say that it's in his nature to stand apart, and to look for humor at the group's expense. Which is pretty much opposite of anything that SAO wants to deal with, wants to see, or wants to have anywhere near their delicate, delicate meat husks.

LAVANYA [00:32:46] No anvils, no pianos.

XAVIUL [00:32:47] No taste -.

LAVANYA [00:32:47] None of that. So Dance-for-Us. She's an interesting case in that I assumed, personally speaking, that SAO would just fucking *love* her. However, it turns out in a rare instance - once in a lifetime experience - I was wrong.

XAVIUL [00:33:04] [laughter]

ASTRO [00:33:06] She doesn't like SAO, and the feeling is mutual. SAO has said about her: she corrupts physical meaning, and said the Dancer is consumed by vice.

ASTRO [00:33:15] They say that she is irredeemable: unlike the Scholar, she can't be brought back to the Song. Her followers are encouraged to sing and dance for fun, the way they want to. This is very different from the tradition SAO preserves, which is one of joint dance, done in sync.

LAVANYA [00:33:30] It's kind of like when somebody burst into your beautiful studio performance of the Black Swan, and starts drop-pop-n-locking and right in the center of the stage.

XAVIUL [00:33:38] I'd watch it.

LAVANYA [00:33:40] [vehement] You unplug the TV!

ASTRO [00:33:43] And last, but not least, Thee-I-Dare. Naturally, he's not a fan of SAO.

ASTRO [00:33:48] He opposed Speak-as-One in early human history: the creation of the word, causing the creation of identity and the creation of individualism.

XAVIUL [00:33:56] Now thinks that all Daimons must die, apparently?

LAVANYA [00:33:59] He's still trying to oppose SAO, even though we know where that got him before. And you know SAO still wants to wipe him off the face of the earth.

XAVIUL [00:34:09] Nothing personal, though~.

LAVANYA [00:34:10] It's just cleaning~.

XAVIUL [00:34:11] Gotta get rid of the trash!

ASTRO [00:34:13] One final note. One of the newest gods, Seed-the-Grudge has a very specific and very deliberate relationship with SAO.

LAVANYA [00:34:22] She states that if you want to contact her, you have to send a prayer off to Speak-as-One, and say her name at the beginning of it.

ASTRO [00:34:29] Where the other gods feared to speak their name, Seed-the-Grudge shows no such fear. She wants SAO to know that she's here..

ASTRO [00:34:37] And she's using us to do it.

ASTRO [00:34:43] We'd like to think Cass Marshall from Polygon. She writes about game communities and her articles are always a treat to read. She's written a couple articles about the Sea of Thieves community, and her shenanigans in it all are a wonderful read.

ASTRO [00:34:56] In our description, we're putting a link to a recent article she made, entitled "A HORROR GAME: Where the Devs Spook You Out in Real Time". This is an article that she made in conjunction with Xaviul.

XAVIUL [00:35:07] Yes! It was so much fun, it was kind of nerve racking, but I had a great time creeping around Red Acre with her.

ASTRO [00:35:16] She stealthed this article passed us and released it while I was editing Episode 6, so we didn't get to thank her then, but we're thanking her this time. So thank you, Cass Marshall.

ASTRO [00:35:24] Spoderman, who has been a previous guest on this show, has made a transcript master doc. If you have transcripts or video links, please send them to him. We're trying to compile as much information as we can to help everyone in the club. More information on that is on the doc, which you can find at http://tinyurl.com/tbctranscripts.

ASTRO [00:35:44] That's all lowercase TBC transcripts. We'll be leaving another link to that in our episode description as well.

ASTRO [00:35:50] And finally, if you enjoy the Blackout Club, please leave a review of the game, especially on Steam.

ASTRO [00:35:56] If you already have, that's wonderful. If you haven't, take an opportunity to go do that! We'll be linking the store page in the descriptionn, just make it a little easier for you.

ASTRO [00:36:05] After you've left the review, use #thedreamingprophet and #theblackoutclub on Twitter to share your favorite Blackout Club memories. We'll read some of them out on the closer of our next show.

ASTRO [00:36:15] The Blackout Club is made by Question Games. Our advertising director is Bellamy. Our transcript and video is by Lavanya. Audio editing is by me, Astro. Our hype squad is Spider-Man. Xaviul cooks three minute eggs for two minutes.

#the blackout club #podcasts #survival horror #the dreaming prophet

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