corpserites

[corpserites]

"will you match my freak" no. i'm freakier than you. this is a competition and i'm winning

[corpserites]

⠀⠀⠀HE'S ABOUT TO SHUT HER DOWN AS SOON AS HE HEARS THE WORDS 'HELPING' AND 'HAND' IN A SENTENCE TOGETHER, but the change in her tone quiets his protests before they can start, believe it or not. normally he'd have gotten up and left already, so this is all very, very strange anyway. namely his willingness to entertain whatever this conversation is about to be, but jason's sort of dying to know where this is all going. he flicks a pink hunk of meat from his fingernail down to the floor and folds his arm back over his chest.

⠀⠀⠀"you're bein' real vague, julia. explain to me what you mean by a helping hand. and why you think i need one, while we're at it,"

⠀⠀⠀despite the dismissive tone, he likes the sound of not fucking with authority. most people in this city don't, so it's not a quality that particularly stands out to him, he'd give her a solid fist bump for it any other time — motivation to hurt people, though? he can work with that. he has a lot of it, himself. he's basically an expert, if you ask him, and—

⠀⠀⠀...oh, no fucking way, dude. he's realizing maybe a little too late that this is a job interview of sorts and he's the big red boss sat across from a prospective vigilante newbie. so she's insane, he decides. does she know anything about the red hood, like at all? his public image is the worst out of every vigilante in this city, and she's coming to him? he laughs, and it sounds kind of unhinged. this has to be a joke, right?

⠀⠀⠀"...are you trying to be my fucking sidekick or something?"

PERMISSION GRANTED. Julia—with some amount of grace, despite the general stickiness of everything at the diner, especially at this late-to-the-point-of-nonsensical hour—slides into the booth. She sits with her back straight, her hands folded in front of her. She looks disgustingly serious; he, of course, does not.

So it's a little humiliating, her all-business attitude, how much she cares about this when his interest is barely hanging on by a single thread. She tries not to let it get to her head, make her all twitchy and nervous. She can fucking do this. She's survived much, much worse.

"No, I know you don't do interviews, don't do press at all. Nobody's been able to pin you down—if they even got here fir—"

Disgusted by his renegade flossing, she pauses to purse her lips. Meanwhile, he goes on.

"Unfortunately," she sighs, "I don't have any leads on bar mitzvahs coming up. — but I do know somebody who'd be willing to lend a helping hand. Somebody else who doesn't fuck with authority, and who is very, very fucking motivated to hurt who they're trying to hurt."

She speaks quietly, urgently.

[corpserites]

Anton Chekhov in a diary entry written c. November 1888

[corpserites]

written dec 16 2023. ID in alt description

[corpserites]

full disclosure? completely forgot about my last starter call, so let's try again. specify muse, or at least give me two or three ideas of who you'd like to try an interaction with... going with jason by default and open to doing some plotting too, just let me know!!

[corpserites]

⠀⠀⠀SHE ISN'T SURE WHY SHE SAID ANYTHING LIKE THAT TO BEGIN WITH. she's not usually so gloomy, even as she picks at the skin of her nails and scolds herself internally for it at the same time. self-doubt, she thinks, is a good enough answer, as she leans to put more of her weight onto her left leg than her right, and some of the tension in her body eases momentarily.

⠀⠀⠀she fell, about midway through class earlier. her hip gave way as she was demonstrating a turn for a couple of her students. she's sure she scared them, that they're going to go home and tell their parents that miss siobhan hurt herself today. she's going to have bruises, and she's going to get humiliating e-mails and text messages of concern and support from parents she won't want to answer. or maybe, for better or worse, nobody will say a word.

⠀⠀she was a prima ballerina not so long ago, you know. her hips never buckled before. her body was a perfectly tuned dancing machine before. she'd worked hard to make it so. she's never felt so fragile in her life. she wants to go home.

⠀⠀⠀then, mikey's pinky finger curls around hers, dwarfs it, and she looks up from where she was intently picking at her cuticles to find his kind eyes ⠀( way up there in the rafters, almost, if she wants to be a jokester about it. what's it like to be so giant, she wonders? ) her frown doesn't dissipate completely, nor does the crease between her eyebrows — miss siobhan is so strong, the children will say to their parents, she fell so hard and she didn't even cry — and she wants nothing more than to hide, so that she can cry.

⠀⠀⠀"...yeah. we can."⠀ she doesn't sound fully convinced, not for lack of his trying, but because she's watching the life she'd already had planned for herself at five years old crumble every time her body betrays itself like it did today. a beat. ⠀"do you... can you still walk me home tonight..? if not, i can... i-i'll suck it up and take a taxi. it's okay."

@corpserites, siobhan said: i have a sense that real life is happening somewhere far away, happening without me, and i don't know if i will ever find out where it is or become part of it.

SOFT EXHALE THROUGH HIS NOSE. remains leaned against the wall of the dance studio, eyes flicker briefly to where the children sit on the bench - chattering and waiting for their parents. watchful eye, always. but then his attention goes back to her, as it always seems to do these days.

hand inches towards her own, entangles his pinky around shiv's. mikey wishes he could better communicate his own existence. how his own existence is moot, since he doesn't know why/how/when/who he was created for. how he's meant to get busy living, now, he thinks - but is unsure how. mikey thinks he owes her that.

but he's not good at explaining his own existence, and isn't that good at verbal expression either. but again, he tries for her - he owes it to siobhan. moreso, he wants to. and he's never allowed himself to want before. it's not why he was created, right. get busy living.

"i think your life is real. just 'cause it looks different than other people ... doesn't make it wrong, or anythin'. or any less real. but i mean, i get it, sweetheart. i dunno what my own life even feels like. or is meant to be. but at least we can figure out real life together, yeah?"

[corpserites]

THIS IS A LOVE STORY. connected multi-muses. eldritch creatures, otherworldly abnormalities, haunting their own narratives. CORPSERITES, brought to you by indie. SOLRITES, brought to you by lem.

[corpserites]

you want to deceive him, but he, like you, has eyes, and uses them.

[corpserites]

⠀⠀⠀NORMALLY HE'D COME SIT WITH HER AND HELP WITH WHATEVER MENIAL TASK SHE WAS PICKING AWAY AT, but he's so fucking livid, he can't sit still, or think straight, or find words that won't be upsetting to hear. he can't tell if he's going to be sick again or not either, pacing back and forth like a rabid dog. ten years ago he'd have gone on patrol about this and done something good with his anger, felt better once his knuckles were split and throbbing from beating on those he'd decided deserved it. but this is now, and he's just jason — a husband and a father now; an educator, too — and the only remnants of the red hood are the ones that reside in his memory.

⠀⠀⠀⠀"just look at this and you tell me how bad you think it is."⠀ he gracelessly tosses his phone towards lina, towards his ever-patient ma, open to the conversation between himself and his older sister ⠀( if you can call it that — this was all fairly one-sided, with jason sending desperate, vaguely threatening paragraphs and marianne responding with a meme that made jason so mad he threw his phone at the bedroom wall and left a sizeable dent. )⠀ he continues to pace from here to there, on a war path. fuming. he thinks if she tries to play devil's advocate at all he's going to have a conniption fit.

⠀⠀⠀is this how sharks feel? do they know if they stop moving that they'll die? maybe if this all didn't boil down to marianne hurting solveig he wouldn't be so up in arms about it. ⠀"i think i'll— i'll fuckin' hit her if i have to look at her stupid, smug-lookin' face again."⠀

⠀⠀⠀( the word he's looking for is strangle, maybe dismember, but he can't say that to her. )

@corpserites, for jason, from maelina.

"WHAT DID YOUR SISTER DO NOW?" little hum, and despite the fact that maelina is busy folding various vintage band t-shirts (and setting some aside she thinks jason would like, actually) - she promises she's paying attention to him. and, sure, she adopted both jason and marianne when the two were both well into adulthood, but mothers still mother and meddle, historically. maelina is no exception to this rule. though, her wisdom with her years (and the knowledge that marianne probably started it, and is rightfully at the scorn of jason) won't make her insist that the two make up, and won't use the whole WE'RE FAMILY excuse. she's just here to listen to her only son.

her head tilts, glancing up and over at jason, a raise of her brows. "you can tell me. i can tell it's bothering you, sweet boy. how bad is it?"

[corpserites]

jenny holzer - living (1980-1982)

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Judith in the Tent of Holofernes, by Johann Liss

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RICHARD SIKEN / WAR OF THE FOXES Change pronouns as necessary and tweak sentences as appropriate!

I am faithful to you, darling.

When you bang on the wall you have to remember you’re on both sides of it but go ahead, yell at yourself.

Some people don’t understand anything.

He’s easy to desire since there’s not much to him.

No one wants to know what’s in his head.

To make something beautiful should be enough. It isn’t. It should be.

You’d break your heart to make it bigger.

Will you defend yourself? From me, I mean.

Let’s kill something.

I prefer to blame others, it’s easier.

All these ghosts come streaming down and I wish I had something else.

We all move forward anyway. Ripples in all directions.

What is a ghost? Something dead that seems to be alive. Something dead that doesn’t know it’s dead.

All thoughts finish themselves eventually.

Can we love nature for what it really is: predatory?

When you have nothing to say, set something on fire.

I wanted to explain myself to myself in an understandable way.

Something’s not right about what I’m doing but I’m still doing it.

The enormity of my desire disgusts me.

Look away but I’m still there.

Want something to chase you? Run.

Take only what you need.

Never finish a war without starting another.

I’ve seen your true face: the back of your head. If you were walking away, keep walking.

The fear: that nothing survives. The greater fear: that something does.

All these things and what to do with them. We carve up the world all the time.

I like dead things. They cannot hurt me.

We like things related to our survival: soup, arrows - they expand the range of the species.

My body is a graveyard.

People like to think war means something.

Let’s admit, without apology, what we do to each other. We know who our enemies are. We know.

There are many loves but only one war.

You will need to comfort him, or we will never be finished with this.

You cannot have an opponent if you keep saying yes.

Its roots in the ground and its branches in the air, a tree is pulled in two directions.

The boy is a bird, bad bird. He falls out of trees.

You cannot get in the way of anyone’s path to God. You can, but it does no good.

Some say God is where we put our sorrow.

In the wrong light anyone can look like a darkness.

What can you know about a person?

Difficult thing, to be scrutinized so long.

Even when I look away I am still looking.

Everyone secretly wants to collaborate with the enemy, to construct a truer version of the self.

How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it’s some kind of murder?

Why build a room you can live in? Why build a shed for your fears?

There wasn’t much left but it felt like him, wild and scared.

The best part of spirituality is reverence. There are other parts. Some people like to hear the sound of their own voice.

If you don’t believe in God, then who are you talking to?

But truth doesn’t count in law, only proof.

Was I discovered or invented? Feels like I’ve always been here.

Measure yourself against the truth and not the other way around.

Perfect and completely dead.

People don’t learn anything unless they are afraid of being left behind.

Logic is boring because it works. Being unreasonable is exciting.

I am your arrival, there is no refusal, we are here, you see, together, we are already here.

This is also part of the story: how the story changes. This is something I forgot to tell you.

You might like it here. I think that you might like it here.

I tell you these things because I love you.

It’s nothing like I thought it would be and closer to what I meant.

Maybe we will wake up to the silence of shoes at the foot of the bed not going anywhere.

It reminds me of where I was going without you.

You know what it’s like to be alone: gimlets and vermicide. You know what it’s like to be alive, so forgiveness.

You asked me once, What are we made of? Well, these are the things we’re made of.

I turned my ears in all directions. I’ll live alone or in between.

Everyone needs a place. It shouldn’t be inside of someone else.

Your body told me in a dream it’s never been afraid of anything.

I live in big spaces, so I’m left alone in big spaces.

We made ourselves cold. We made ourselves snow. We smuggled ourselves into ourselves. Haunted by each other’s knowledge.

To hide somewhere is not surrender, it is trickery.

I try to guess your trajectory and end up telling my own story.

I surrender my desire to be healed.

Take it or leave it, and for the most part you take it.

Shame comes from vanity. Shame means you’re guilty, like the rest of us, but you think you’re better than we are. Maybe you are.

There is no new me, there is no old me, there’s just me, the same me, the whole time.

Don’t try to make a stronger wind, you’ll wear yourself out. Build a better sail.

You want to solve something? Get out of your own way.

What’s the difference between me and the world? Compartmentalisation.

I hope it’s love. I’m trying really hard to make it love.

I clawed my way into the light but the light is just as scary.

I’d rather quit. I’d rather be sad. It’s too much work.

I mean, maybe it’s better if my opponent wins.

What happens when I no longer want to meet you?

Nothing lasts forever: we know this.

Longing and suffering? Of course, of course. You want it to mean something.

You can disconnect it or you can try to glue it all together.

We could pull it apart, spend our whole lives pulling it apart and have no time left to do anything smart with the pieces.

The sooner you embrace it, the sooner it will leave you.

You are what you cover up.

Noise and more noise. Noise up to heaven.

One wonders why a story like this exists.

I want to give you more but not everything. You don’t need everything.

Someone has to leave first.

He was pointing at the moon but I was looking at his hand.

All this was prepared for me. All this was set in motion long ago.

I stayed as long as I could. Now look at the moon.

What does all this love amount to?

[corpserites]

died and came back wrong and no one could tell the difference

[corpserites]

a lover’s discourse, roland barthes

[corpserites]

Havana Rose Liu in Somewhere (feat. Gus Dapperton) - Surf Mesa

[corpserites]

⠀⠀⠀NOT HERE ON REPORTER BUSINESS, HUH? jason stares a moment longer, lips pressed into a thin line as he passes his tongue over his teeth. interest may or may not be piqued. he picks up a napkin to wipe his mouth and his fingers, drawls a " julia, " in a thick new jersey accent. no last name, he notes. the detective in him screams to pry and fish for that bit of information at least, but he can just as easily get oracle to look into it later if it ends up being something that matters. despite his slight offense at her sauce flinging comment ⠀( something about not being a pig comes to mind but he doesn't voice it — let her think what she wants )⠀ the red hood scowls, and gestures to the seat across from him. ⠀" fine, "⠀ he says, only mildly irked. ⠀" sit. "

⠀⠀⠀he tosses the used napkin onto his mostly empty plate, crosses his arms over the red bat on his chest and leans back into the worn cushion of his seat. somewhere below the table he's tapping his foot. impatient. ⠀" if not an interview, then what? "⠀ he's going over the possibilities in his head already and making his own assumptions, but again, people are surprising. he picks meat from a recently devoured burger out from between his teeth with the nail of his pinky finger. boyishly unprofessional.

⠀⠀⠀" i charge big money for merc shit. and i don't do parties, either, for the record. ever. "⠀ a pause, and then, pointing at her for emphasis, ⠀" maybe — may-be — a bar mitzvah. it'd have to be a phenomenal fucking bar mitzvah, though. "

THE KETCHUP AND RANCH CONGEAL INTO A PINKISH MIXTURE THAT STAINS JASON'S FINGERS, THE CORNERS OF HIS MASK. Julia tries not to be too disgusted. She's sure she could be found in similar enough situations—when she was four or five.

All that means is that he's sloppier than she expected—to the extent that his perceptiveness comes as a surprise. Julia isn't exactly wearing a PRESS badge at any given moment. Maybe there's something about her whole approach that just screams gutsy intrepid reporter. She'll have to work on that, if she ever wants to get anything done in this city.

"I didn't say my name was Jessica. I did say it was Julia, though." She'll refrain from advertising her surname just yet. Paired together, her first and last names sometimes ring bells for certain true crime junkies, especially those invested in local lore. "I'm a reporter, yeah, like I said, but I'm not here on reporter business. Can I sit down, or will you fling sauce at me?"

[corpserites]

INTIMIDATION AND VIOLENT RP PROMPTS. ( A collection of action based roleplay prompts. Feel free to add information if you wish. )

Send a symbol for the action and/or send a # for reverse

🤲🏻 or ‘firm’ // sender grabs receivers chin firmly

🔪 🔙 or 'knife behind’ // sender presses a knife on receivers’ throat from behind

🔪 🔜 or 'knife front’ // sender presses a knife on receivers’ throat from front

🧱 or 'wall’ // sender backs receiver up against a wall

🔗 or 'kidnap’ // sender kidnaps receiver ( feel free to specify details )

👐 or 'choking’ // sender wraps their hands around receivers’ throat

💥or 'smack’ // sender smacks receiver in the face

🩸or 'bleed’ // sender makes receiver bleed ( feel free to specify where )

🤕 or 'knockout’ // sender knocks receiver’s head against the wall

🦴or 'bone’ // sender breaks one of receiver’s bone ( feel free to specify which bone )

🚬 or 'burn’ // sender burns receiver ( feel free to specify details )

🔫 or 'gun’ // sender points a gun at receiver’s head

⛓ or 'handcuffs’ // sender handcuffs receiver ( feel free to specify details )

🪓 or 'weapon’ // sender corners receiver with a weapon

🔧or 'gunpoint’ // sender holds receiver at gunpoint

🗑 or 'murder’ // sender attempts to murder receiver

✂️ or 'cut’ // sender cuts receiver ( feel free to specify details )

🧤 or 'yank’ // sender grabs receivers hair and yanks them over the floor

💊 or 'drug’ // sender sedates receiver ( feel free to specify ex. for a kidnapping, torture, etc. )

➰ or 'restraint’ // sender restrains receiver with ropes

💧or 'water’ // sender waterboards receiver

💪or 'arm’ // sender forces receiver’s arm behind their back

🔥or 'fire’ // sender puts cigarette out on receiver’s body

🪖 or 'tackle’ // sender tackles receiver on the ground

🚅 or 'shoot’ // sender non-fatally shoots receiver