#DELIRIUM +LUNACY+

[foundationsofdecay]

g-d i HAVE to finish that doc about sundowning and the concept of both the namesake phenomenon itself and fucking LUNACY and all that entails. I am so obsessed with it

[bladeofdestruction]

Tag Drop 1

Crimson Chaos (IC)

Eternal Decay (RP)

Fragmented Delirium (Asks)

Destruction (About Muse)

Distorted Lunacy (Crack RP)

Free Blade Hugs (OOC)

CAPtastrophe (Mun)

Unending Wreckage (NSFW)

Playtime (Dash Games)

Papers (Tag Index)

[writers-potion]

Hiii! I don't know if you already did it.

But I'm struggling on how to describe a character slowly losing it, slowly falling into madness, I can't find the words without them being repetitive.

Hello! Thank you for the question :) 

In order to be less repetitive, I suggest that you map out the stages of madness that your character will have. As the symptoms of madness become more apparent, your character’s experience would experience the world differently. For example:

Stage 1: Your character occasionally forgets things and sees an ant that doesn’t exist. 

Stage 2: Your character can’t remember 2-3 hours of their day, and the ant hallucination has now become a giant ant that talks. 

Stage 3: Your character loses the sense of time, and now thinks they’re living inside an anthill. 

Stage 4: Your character thinks he’s an ant himself

Like in the above example, you can vary the severity of symptoms going from “forgetful” - “blackouts” - “out of touch”. 

If you present different symptoms throughout the story, it would naturally be less repetitive than just having your character experience the same thing over and over. 

Focus on their body language

Vary the emotions your character experiences, like frustration, anger, fear, etc. The description you’d provide would be very different. 

Use analogies where adjectives won’t suffice. 

Alternative Words for “Madness”

Absurdity, craziness, delusion, foolishness, Hysteria, lunacy, Mania, mental illness

Stupidity, aberration, Delirium, derangement, fanaticism, irrationality, Neurosis, phobia, psychopathy, psychosis, unbalance

Words for Confusion

Befuddled, vague, confounded, amazed, baffled, disconcerted, shaken up, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, stupefied, muddled, mixed up, disorganized, befuddled, addled, at sea, unbalanced, unhinged, senile, indistinct, imprecise, blurred, nebulous, hazy, wooly, foggy, shadowy, dim, imperfect, sketchy, obscure, remote, puzzled, perplexed, stumped, mystified, nonplussed, at sixes and sevens, thrown off balance, discomposed, troubled, unnerved, dazed, stunned, astounded.

Words for Hallucinations

Delusion, illusion, figment of the imagination, vision apparition, mirage, chimera, fantasy, dream, daydream, delirium, phantasmagoria, trip, pink elephants, phantasm, pipe dream, conceit, castle in the air, cloud-cuckoo-land, fabrication

I hope this answers your question!

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💎If you like my blog, buy me a coffee☕ and find me on instagram! 

💎Before you ask, check out my masterpost part 1 and part 2 

💎For early access to my content,  become a Writing Wizard 

[vourfrede]

beware of the scathing swordsman!

chapter i: the rebirth. masterlist.

content warnings: graphic descriptions of physical wounds, blade going into a mara mania, jing yuan is a little harsh.

taglist (open): @lunaescient @lov3-ly

his rebirth tastes like blood.

the perennial vestige of his foregone past is the cold, whetted object tearing the flesh of his torso capaciously. his tongue savors the taste of iron lathing his mouth, voice coarse like that of a barbaric beast's.

death beckoned its arrival, juxtaposed by the rain-lipped meadows burgeoning with crimson hued flowers. he feels his previously steady heartbeat stall, coursing ichor running cold ever so slightly as the breeze havered on.

how wondrous. he thought to himself.

a withering, trenchant pother churns in his viscera, squandering the dregs of his limp physique to the pinnacle. parted tendons stretch forth and welds with one another. crimson resurfaces in his vision

—he laughs.

wickedly, sickeningly, dementedly.

the sound of it echoes, a rattling clamor that reverberates through the hollowed space within him, crawling across his ribs and hollowing out his lungs. the laughter, once weak, now sharp and jagged, shatters the air like glass. his mouth twists in agony, contorting the edges of his lips into a smile so grotesque it seems foreign to him—an alien thing, borrowed from some other, darker place.

his muscles, unnaturally taut, seem to strain against the sinews and skin, as if his very being were stretching to the brink of rupture. there is no strength left in him, only the gnawing, insatiable hunger of something far beyond the human. a sudden impulse, as instinctual as breath, drives him to grasp the ground beneath him, to sink his fingers into the dirt like a beast reclaiming its soil.

the crimson—the dark pulse of life, or death, or both—gathers in his vision, bleeding from the periphery like a spreading stain, thick and suffocating. he blinks, trying to clear his mind, but it only deepens, pools into something more grotesque and vivid.

and there it is again—his laughter. a rasping thing, born of delirium. It’s almost… familiar now, comforting in its madness.

the sound seems to ripple through his very bones, resonating deep within the marrow. it isn't a mere laugh anymore—it's a grotesque anthem, a hymn to the fracture of his very soul. his breath comes in notched gasps, each inhale pulling him deeper into this phantasmagoria, each exhale plunging him farther into the abyss.

his fingers rasps against the earth's flesh, plowing with ferocity, as if he could claw his way out of himself, out of this bane that is becoming more fervent with each passing moment. the ground beneath his fingertips feels inapt, slick with something other than dirt. it pulses with a rhythm of its own, an answering beat to the thrumming within the cavities of his heart. his mind, however, is too far gone to decipher whether it is the earth or his own body that is shaking in such violent unison.

a flicker of memory—outlying, waning—sweeps through his consciousness, like a dim light on the verge of going out. faces. voices. a life once lived, before this… this thing that he is becoming. but the memory is as fleeting as the wind, and the deeper he descend into his laughter, the more distant the wisps of his past become. his humanity skids through his fingers like smoke, ashen and dreary.

and still, his laughter continues. it echoes off the walls of his skull, becoming an outlandish language, a strange carol of torment, pulling him further into the lunacy that beckons with arms ajar. what is he now? something more, something less, something twisted beyond comprehension? does it even matter anymore?

the question lingers, but it is drowned out by his own voice—a savage, triumphant bay.

"his condition remains unstable as of now, general," an unobtrusive voice echoes within the thin ringing of his head.

gingerly opening his eyes, blade finds himself reposed on an aberrant surface. the pristine white glow of lights above gutters, blinding him in a trice before his vision gathers. his limbs feel leaden, blundering, as if he’s not quite in countenance of his own body.

the purling of glass wind chimes, the whispering of sand, the intermittent ripples and bubbling of brewing elixirs surrounds him. gradually, his mind begins to mend together the spalled dregs of his memories—a paroxysm of bestiality, chaos, and then darkness. the ache that strings along is keen and abrupt as his body protests any movement, a grim reminder of whatever ordeal he’s just survived.

unstable, the word straggles in his mind. the phrase feels too clinical, too objective to describe the jumble of his thoughts and senses. his heart pulsates, as he wrangles to piece together the state of things. his gaze carts across the room, but there’s no one to explain to him where he is, or more importantly, why he’s here.

as he tries to sit up, the acrid pain of his wounds smolders across his chest, and he quickly lies back down, gawking up at the ceiling. his mind races with questions, but the weight of his fatigue presses him down.

“damn it,” he mumbles to himself, swallowing back the doubt. he is not one for susceptibility, yet here it is, the stark reality of frailty. The reverb continues in the back of his mind, but he focuses on the present, the struggle for clarity amidst the fog of his thoughts.

and just then, a figure steps into his view—hushed, but with an air of ascendancy that blade instinctively identifies.

"jing yuan" he lampoons, each word spoken dripping with disdain.

there is a palpable stillness in the air, cold and inscrutable gazes burns tenfold as blade grapples on the thin sheets, the throbbing viscera amplifies.

"you're awake" jing yuan imparts, his voice a low murmur showing scant interest.

his words, however, are like the strike of a match, igniting a torrent of umbrage in blade's chest. the unrelenting darkness seemed to swallow him whole, for each puzzle pieces—the memories of betrayal, of power, of twisted purpose—begin to coalesce as his body writhes for liberty.

"you think this is your victory, don’t you?" blade’s baritone voice grows raucous, a raw rasp that barely sounds like his own. his words are entwined with rancor, but there is something else beneath the surface, within the bowels of his woes—something cavernous within that tremors with a forebode he can’t yet fully grasp.

"you're broken," he simply says, a frown chiseled in his lips. the frigidity in his tone gnaws at blade's resolve. "but that’s only a part of the process. there is still so much for you to learn."

"what do you want from me?" the words are guttural, forced from blade's throat as though they don’t belong.

jing yuan's gaze didn't waver upon blade's statement, earning a scornful glower from him. he then states in a measured, couth convenance,

"what i want, is for you to embrace what you are becoming. we can’t afford weakness in this world, yingxing. not anymore."

yingxing.

the name—yingxing—clings in the air like a facsimile, echoing through the teared cloisters of blade’s consciousness. it is a name he does not immediately discerns, yet it stirs something deep within him, a forgotten truth that corrodes at the edges of his sentience.

yingxing.

it’s his name, he realizes. it was. a name once forgotten, now resurfacing with the weight of an entire life he can no longer fully grasp. his true name, stripped away, shelved beneath the abhorrent carapace he has become. and yet, it feels alien on his lips, like a name of another—someone who, for all his fury, is slipping away with each passing moment.

jing yuan eyes on him with an vacant gaze, his eyes like two pools of endless depth, akin to an abyss veiled with golden irises. he stands there, unmoving, as if he is the very embodiment of calm and control, the furor coiling within blade trifling to him.

"embrace it, blade," jing yuan mutters with a voice like silk. "this is your rebirth."

and with a final, scourged laugh—one that is does not belong to him—blade, yingxing, feels a chilling spark of acceptance.

vourfrede © reposting, plagiarizing, and/or translating to be avoided.

[qvrcll]

ᥫ᭡ 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐃𝐎 — ( avatar ! )

ᨳ 𓂃* · synopsis ⨾ the little things you do that really rile up the na’vi men + women.

auth. notes ⨾ this took a fat minute to get out but i hope you filthy ppl enjoy :-) let me know if you would like any other characters? (except the young characters) or maybe a part two? + lmk if u enjoyed ofc!

contains ⨾ jake, neytiri, tonowari, ronal + quaritch ෆ · ₊

warning ⨾ n$fw , female bodied + na’vi reader + blood warning (quaritch)

ಇ — jake sully

he absolutely digs it when you curl your feet during sex. his raw, almost sanguinary thrusts into your glistening, turgid cunt had you mauling him from bone to back, chasmal red marks running down his back. he was watching you, as he usually does. watches the buck and ripple of your breasts, the loose, éclat slaps of his distended cock-head ringing far inside your fleshy walls — but it was in the mere slackening of your weight underneath him in which he noticed your feet raised and bent at the knee, upwards. the pads capsuled and curled when his length prest in a particularly commiserating layer of flesh, to which your feet fell victim to a couple of jitters and twitches. he thinks it’s hot how your body exerts its limits to the trammels of pleasure and tries to fill the gaps with this inborn exigency for release, for movement. definitely grows harder within the hold of your spongy walls, within the moment apprehension dawns him and imparts him with the weighty decision to plunge into your sopping cunt to draw out more of the same desperate, untamed mannerisms.

ଓ — neytiri

loves when you overstimulate her via the exalted art of pussy eating. you have her strewn in a tent, anfractuous with her limbs as she lays on her back, convulsing and rife with your tongue jerking and winching on the thick flesh of her cunt, clit taut and too close for anything short of peace: you’re already taking the imparting mound between your teeth, delicately, nipping the extension of muscle and tonguing the sensitive skin around it — it sends her hauling for the floor, thighs clenching tightly around your head in an attempt to rid the feverish pleasure thickening the blood in her. it cuts her close, curls around her flimsy walls and thins her judgement when the one, two, three jolts ring through her cunt. her eyes flutter between open and close, a point of lunacy building in her the moment her cunt spasms in your mouth — her hands are digging irregular circles in the ground and her mouth is a ways off from folding close, cunt now pulsing with juices that liquidate at the give of your lips. you invite the piquant gift, eyeing her vertiginous smile between her parted legs.

ಇ — tonowari

completely loses himself to the wind when you lick his balls. it’s filthy and deranged and pornographic when it needs to be: you’re on your knees, that are raked red and raw with the extensive course of your doings with the chief behind closed doors, but there’s little to care about. the man is above you, insufflating thickly through his lungs, giving way to the primal cacophony stringing from deep within his chest when you lick a an adherent line from the bottom of his sack to the top, tracking the sensitive skin on the crush of your rough tongue. the taste is undressed and primitive in a way, killing the usual bent of his salty cum. this is more feeling than taste — its animalistic. the friction of the drag makes him swell and heighten against himself, strained and distended cock slapping against his stomach as he throats his moans — he cracks open his eye through the delirium and loathes the feeling of carnality that swamps him when he seeks your desirous tongue running cirques beneath where he needs you most.

ଓ — ronal

there’s a few things that gratify her, that truly spur the muscles of her cheek to strain into hurt. but when you’re grasping her from behind, your plump chest prest firmly against her back, thumbing her clit viciously as you harrowingly lift her leg to cushion every inch of her strained sex, she knows there’s no going back. she had thought herself immune to this, to you, but auto-eroticism was a misdeed to her, when your fingers bent and curved furiously against her cunt, procuring some substance of her juices against your fingers to ease the weight and journey of them against it — but her nipples perk and anneal at the conception of your proximity. she can practically feel the thrum of your heart against her back, the setting of your nipples grazing against her as your arms lock around her utterly — ultimately, there’s a high to meet. as you dynamically knead the flesh of your fingers into her dripping core, arms categoric against her, she enjoys the thrill, the pulse, the faint stitch in her abdomen when flesh gives way to pleasure and she falls apart in the weight of your palm. literally.

ಇ — quaritch

won’t admit it within the succession of his gruelling existence, but loves it when you bite / prick him. na’vi are gifted with a set of whetted fangs, might as well put them to use — in his terms, painted loosely with his blood; consequent to effect, it’s a normal day — you’re beneath and between him, clasping him desperately for life, for want as he drills into you like an uncharacteristic primate. he has you sore and varicosed as his length punctures your gaping hole with ease, enjoying the strain of it tractably taking him in inch by inch. it’s common ground now, the colonel taking you at any give-able trestle available… but it’s harder today. his cock is eager to make for places it habitually strains to due to your irritative walls. it’s eager to kiss the crick and ache of your gummy cunt. so, instinctively, you bite into whatever is close to you to soothe the draw, which also happens to be his collar / neck area. it’s a second of a smarting ache for him, as he hisses into the wind, but when you’re dumbly lulling back, he can’t miss the thick veneer of blood coating your fangs — his blood. he pauses, watches as you cast a confused glare and then dissolve into a heap of jammed cries as he thrashes into your clarty cunt again. come, he thinks, bite me again. i dare you.

© 2022 qvrcll ! do not repost any of my works on any platform.

[iwtvdramacd18]

First comes the delirium, but then the elation, mon cher. Every natural movement as if it's never been done before. You breathe with the lungs of many, and you will not believe how sweet the air can taste as it washes over your panting tongue..."

LUNACY-- teaser for a werewolf au

One last prompt to round off @iwtvfanevents Saint Louis of the Vieux Carré event, a different monstery take for Halloween

[gabessquishytum]

It's very weird, but lately, any person Hob has dated has been going ~ insane. Like in an asylum, tasting colors, petting invisible animals, pulling their hair out in chunks, insane.

Up until recently, Hob hadn't noticed, not really. His stranger was back, and visiting Hob more frequently and spending time with Hob. So he hasn't had much time to pay attention. 🤷🏽‍♀️ To be honest, when Dream ('eeeeeeeh, a name, Dream) came back to him, Hob pretty much dropped everything & everyone whenever he deigned to darken Hob door.

So it took a while to notice. But he was supposed to meet Rory to catch up last week and Gwen for post trip drinks a month ago, and neither showed. When Hob finally got around to asking after them, he found out they were under a doctor's care. Indefinitely. It's so bad/so many of his past lovers have seemingly wound up in an asylum, that Hob is scared for Dream! Maybe knowing Hob drives a person crazy!?!

Ah, no that would be Dream,,,,,using his dreams and nightmares to chase away any demands on Hob's time, that is not spending time with Dream(, and Dream guesses his students; Hob's teaching is fine, he loves it so ~ but that school's administration better watch out. If Hob comes home mad one more time.)

AKSJDJFNFN this is very mean of Dream tbh. But he just wants Hob all to himself! Doesn't he deserve nice things after all that time he was captured?

Delirium is very cross with her brother indeed. He's getting far too close to crossing into her realm, and she doesn't approve of his reasoning. She likes Hob Gadling as much as anyone, and driving all his friends and lovers to madness is so unkind! She tells Dream all this to his face and warns him that she's going to return those poor people to their right minds. Dream’s going to have to find another way to keep his human's attention.

Dream is very annoyed but there's nothing he can do about it. He glumly shows up for his next meeting with Hob and sulks the entire time. Hob is equally glum because he's convinced that he's driving people to lunacy. He's so worried about it, he even warns Dream about it - "if I was you, I wouldn't hang around too long. I think there's something seriously wrong with me. I mean, it can't be a coincidence! I'm definitely making people go mad. My head of department has been signed off on sick leave and I'm sure it's all my fault."

At this point Dream realises that Delirium may have been correct. Hob does look rather miserable. So: no more madness inducing dreams and nightmares. He'll have to find another way to secure Hob’s attention.

And his solution? Next meeting with Hob, Dream shows up in the sluttiest little outfit he can imagine. He’ll have to do this the good old fashioned way and make sure that Hob can’t think of ANYTHING or ANYONE except for Dream.

Delirium approves, tbh.

[bruce-wayne-simp]

Hey what's up i have brainrot so i decided to use a Valyrian dictionary to figure out what the Endless' names are in Valyrian and here you go:

For some of them i had to use synonyms/a different word tense which is why Destiny has (fate) next to his name and Despair is (sad) :(

Unfortunately there is no translation that i could see for Delirium or any synonym that made sense for her so if anyone has any suggestions for synonyms or even just a name then feel free!

EDIT: I completely forgot Delight 😭 I looked it up real quick and Kirine means 'happy' (no direct translation for Delight)

EDIT 2: The lovely @phoenixqueen07 suggested 'madness' as a synonym, so i looked it up and we have..... Hakossiarza!!

So:

Delight - Kirine (happy)

Delirium - Hakossiarza (madness, lunacy)

Fun facts:

Time and Nights names mean 'tides, ocean, time, the passage of time' and 'the night skies; space' respectively

Destiny's name means getting what you deserve, or getting your just desserts.

Death's name is pronounced 'Morgan' which i think is fitting. In a family of weird names hers is pronounced like a regular human name :) its ✨️thematic✨️

Desire's name means 'a heat that one feels' and its apparently considered derogatory but it's the only name i could get so 🤷‍♀️

And for Despair there were two that i saw that i thought could be names. Mundagon means 'to be miserable' and Qūvyr means 'sorrow or sadness'. Also Qūvyr is pronounced like 'Qar' if that makes sense??

[raytm]

hc + 🤝 but for both gep and sparkle against my scampo bc i can’t get enough of your thots

and hc + 🎡 for gep

hc + 🤝 for a headcanon about a connection with one of the receiver's mutual. hc + 🎡 for a hobby-themed headcanon.

gepard finds sampo an ambiguous presence in his life, simultaneously stirring and insufferable, he thinks himself unsuspectable to his ridiculing but he’s not. the things sampo says to him stay with him, rending him apart from the certitude he has had in his own life, it’s strange, cathartic, to be forced to challenge his own concepts and ideologies. he’s lived a linear life guided by stringent regulations, felt himself satisfied with the way his life would play it because it is a grand, respectable thing to be what was intended of him, sampo makes him question that aspect of his life, it’s good, because it forces him to think further outside of himself than he would otherwise allow, it’s bad because it’s addicting and it makes him realise he isn’t as immutable as he would like to be convinced he is. it’s hilarious to me because as bad as sampo is for him and how scarce the prospect of them ever being end game is, the things sampo represents in his life are inherently good for him. besides the criminality, that’s not great. sparkle and sampo were once fellow revelers, violence follows their silent footfalls through life and calamity bites at their heels, it was a recital teeming with delirium and zeal equally. she misses him, it’s an obscure concept to her because sparkle’s conscious is not inherently accommodating to concepts otherwise ingrained in other people, she doesn’t view others as something to be treated morally, she views them as game pieces, or inanimate objects that she can manipulate to her whims. he holds a different position in her eyes, which is an abnormality in what makes sparkle up and this, plagues her in his absence. she wants to see him suffer, to tow him through the more depraved lunacy possible because she believes, perhaps wholeheartedly, that he is deserving of it, that it will bestow him the liberty to exist as they once had, because who can be sated truly with the crumbs he has left for himself now ? she knows him to be a liar, she’s a liar herself, but how much of his life and the contentment he plays at are deceitful. she wants to find out for herself, she wants to take it away from him. It’s a twisted rendition of fondness she holds him in and it’s only making her sicker. gepard has a good many hobbies, none he’s particularly talented in. it’s been a practice in his life for a while, serval mentioned in passing once that he was too dedicated to his work, that there should be room for enjoyment in his life as well as duty. so he takes time out of his day to trial them, as if he’s seeking one that will really stick, but he has yet to find it. he had plants, he surmised he would be good with them because of his diligence to structure in his life, however, different plants require different amounts of care and he accidentally drowned some whilst starving others of nutrition. baking, he tried baking, it wasn’t that he was inherently awful at it, it was more so that he somehow made things taste deplorably plain while also follow a recipe to exact measurements, also serval gently teased him because his decorative skills were rather lacking. currently, he takes time to visit serval shops and aid her in her work, it’s a hobby, he thinks, he’s good with his hands, can wrap his mind around the concept of constructing things and improving them, so he’s not bad at that. he also spends time scrapbooking the photos that lynx sends to him, usually through serval, and sends them back to her, he’s uncertain how she receives them, if she thinks they’re pleasant or garish ? but he does so because he’s seeking to establish more of a bond with his younger sister. their whole family dynamic is off kilter because of how much of his life work takes up. he also goes out of an evening and feeds the local strays, the cats tend to like him and they follow him around sometimes, he’s given them all nicknames but they’re rather awful as his sister has informed him - he does not have a talent for giving names. 

[foundationsofdecay]

ok so this is a bit far-fetched when you look at it at first glance but i want to make a post talking about sleep token and the actual sundowning phenomenon as well as (ideally) delirium the idea of lunacy in the most literal sense of the term, in my head it does get a touch personal at times but i'm having some trouble getting my thoughts together on it, i know i'm posting this when a lot of my st mutuals are asleep but if anyone was interested in discussing it i'd love to collectively even just talk about it/bounce ideas or make a collaborative post

[tpquill]

I’m not politically motivated when it comes to life (I came from Northern Ireland…enough said!) but when it comes to a man, who has been a corrupt property developer, corrupt tax fraud cheat, corrupt casino owner, corrupt hotel owner, corrupt golf course developer, paid hush money payments to make his “corruption disappear” and a corrupt politician (if you even want to call him that?) he deserves the book of law thrown at his very large egotistical, orange tanned and bad weaved head. I have no time whatsoever for this carnival barking clown, he reaps what he sows. He has always, throughout his failed businesses and play boy thuggish image been “protected” by mob styled lawyers (all good friends of his late father) to hush away - catch and kill bad information regarding his gaudy, glaringly obtuse lifestyle and multitude of affairs and cover ups. This man was solely responsible for hard shouldering leaders of countries, quid pro quo other authoritarian dictators to scratch his back for favours. Bully and threaten those who did not kneel to his grasp of delirium when it came to running a country (practically into the ground) he plays the victim card like a sullen, spoilt child throwing a temper tantrum when he can’t get his own way or if you disagree with his delusional rhetoric. Supported and goaded an insurrection on the Capitol a government building that was always seen as a place of importance - sending a mob of thugs to destroy and discredit and demean the very rule of law. Oh and he ignored a dangerous deadly virus that gripped the entire world by suggesting it was fake, let’s not forget how many died because of his ignorance in science and fact.

The delusional ringmaster will play this out, grifting as he always has, pleading to the meek minded out there who believe in his lies and conspiracies (he hasn’t charged his racist or fear driven point of view that he’s made of Teflon - nothing sticks) since he was in his early 30’s - he’s the victim, he’s good and the deep state government is bad. There’s just one thing, to those willing to die on the proverbial cross for him…prove the mountainous amount of evidence wrong. Prove the audio and video evidence wrong. Prove the receipts and records of bank transfers signed by his very hand (handwriting experts conform) wrong. Prove the telephone calls demanding that the election counts be changed - wrong. Prove the amount of court documents filed for him by not exactly whiter than snow lawyers to try and delay and dismiss and reject all that has been uncovered about his “criminal” behaviour wrong. This corrupt man has had 5 decades of getting away with things because he paid enough money (that would feed the not so wealthy in the US a hundred times over) to keep their mouths shut. He hired lawyers to do his dirty work while his brand was a shinning example of a shit, no matter how many times you try to polish it - is still a shit.

The fear on his face was real, it doesn’t matter the countless press conferences he holds, that droning whiny voice complaining because he has been caught, but he didn’t do it, and if he did so what? Will be played over and over on any media site that believes, the sun shines out of his depend covered pasty ass. A jury will decide hopefully without outside interference from the lunacy that is his family of equally corrupt children and the anger of little people claiming he is the next messiah - Waco anyone? Cult behaviour is a break down of mental and social health. The people who believe him or worse believe he is some kind of second coming are mentally and cognitively not well. He strokes their hate, their racism, their misogyny, their darkness and he revels in it because they keep the attention on him and his sociopathic behaviour loves it.

Can I also add, I have never seen a more delinquent, socially deprived, mentally unstable person who refuses point blank to accept anything they have done as wrong in my entire life. Regardless of how people view this man today - his nepotism, his continuous corrupt way he has always oversaw businesses conducted, not to mention his lack of any morals regarding the line of women he slept with while married then paid them off to keep quiet - all part of his playboy charm, he destroyed a lot of lives to keep his Trump brand where it is. He lies as easily as he breathes because he has always believed he was untouchable. He will put lives in danger to keep his bloated ego out of prison and that includes throwing members of his own family under the bus. His sociopathic, narcissistic behaviour willingly displays this - he thinks himself a modern day Al Capone except this time Trump will be determined not to get caught because he needs another 4 years to finish what he started Make America Mine Again.

[fluidstatick]

There have been many philosophical, theological and medical discussions as to the causes, symptoms, and semantics of madness. At its core, madness‡ is a concept defined by sociological and

[ 437 ]

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‡ insanity, dementia, lunacy, mental infirmity, •••---••• mental illness, delirium, hysterics, schizophrenia, schizotypy, paranoia, delusion, psychosis, irrationality, derangement, psychopathy,

our house... in the middle of our leaves¹

¹This is a humourous riff on the lyrics to the song "Our House" by the English ska-pop band, Madness. "Our House" is considered a working class anthem, which contrasts the bourgeoisie lifestyle of the Navidson family.²

²Alright, while the music stuff is factually correct it's still a huge stretch to connect the song and the family this way. Sometimes a corny joke is just a corny joke.

[madhousedarry]

The Omen: Legacy of Lunacy | Chapter 16

At this time, Nar-Tai and his friend Ando were walking arm in arm through the night Pet-el-burge. Not long before, they had decided it would be best to leave the hospitable pine forest so that the two big shots could pluck each other's needles in private.

Of course, this wasn't meant to be taken literally. Obviously, this wasn't about actual pine trees, pine cones, and pine forests, but about Jorge Osorio, Deadend Graver, and the Pet-el-burge headquarters of the VRLJ corporation, which, in case you've forgotten all about the adventures of Asia Scallop and "Damien The Thorn", was involved in the creation of biological weapons, namely clone soldiers.

But at that moment Nar-Tai and his Joponese friend were too busy with their own thoughts to pay attention to such trifles as etiquette or propriety - so their gait was a little strange: both of our old acquaintances moved their legs with the speed of the turtle Tortilla from the cartoon "Buratino", walking to his secluded place in the depths of the swamp…

But no! That would have been too much, even with all the desire to offend the feelings of the honorable gentlemen. They simply looked bad, which was not at all surprising after half an hour of non-stop gossip in the company of Jorge Osorio and Colonel Deadend Graver.

Now the fact that these two looked rather ridiculous next to each other was quite understandable due to the fact that if one of them was a superhero with steel skin and platinum bones, the other was a very ordinary mortal, who, in addition to everything else, wore a geeky-looking white coat over a strict suit, while his muscular friend was dressed in a discreet, but rather flashy (don't try to understand this) combination of a red short-sleeved shirt and stereotypical The Omen Ican jeans.

Generally speaking, our two acrobat brothers were so different from each other that it was unlikely that anyone could say for sure what their true relationship was; most likely, it remained a mystery to all who had the good fortune to see these two together.

Except maybe Colonel Deadend Graver and one other person in the universe, namely myself, because I am firmly confident in my relative opinion of Nar-Tai and Ando Minamoto.

I refer to my own person, Darry Madhouse, only because it seems appropriate to me to quote here the late Professor Trottelreiner concerning my own inner world.

Although no, my little green friend, this is clearly not what you expect from me, so I'll better save this quote for a more appropriate occasion, for example, to show it off in the comments under my work, but for now let's pretend that I didn't break any fourth wall and didn't try to address you directly, okay, my little green friend?

So, Nar-Tai and Ando were walking slowly up the street, admiring the views of the night Pet-el-burge, when suddenly their attention was drawn to a certain man who was lying by the wall not far from the entrance to a certain restaurant with a very unusual name "Born Speleologist", and the pose of his body indicated very serious alcohol intoxication, the so-called "delirium tremens" - although he himself would have claimed the opposite, if he had been able to string together at least two words now, but since he was sitting motionless, leaning his back against the wall and spreading his arms and legs to the sides, Nar-Tai and Ando decided that he was either dead drunk or dead dead, forgive the tautology.

They came closer and saw that there was a distinct black spot on the asphalt under the subject's feet.

Coming even closer - so close that they smelled a rather nasty smell - the friends finally realized that it was a puddle of liquid, and not blood, as it seemed from afar, but…

"Urine," Nar-Tai said quietly.

"Yes, it's me," came the reply.

Both of our friends stepped back, looking at each other with a mixture of horror and surprise - like, who said that? And then they both burst out laughing: after all, it was the voice of that same drunkard who was now lying in front of them!

They looked at him more closely and noticed something strange about his appearance. He was wearing some strange pants made of rough fabric of an indefinite color, which was very, very close to the color of shit in a village toilet.

The upper part of the stranger's body was hidden under a black cloak like those that maniacs love to show off on movie screens, only in this case, underneath it was not the brutal vest of the same color that Nar-Tai and Ando expected, but simply some kind of crumpled and sweat-soaked white office shirt with unbuttoned buttons.

They could not see the stranger's eyes, because his face was hidden in the shadow of a black hat with huge brims, but judging by the fact that the overall impression he created was generally quite positive, he was a middle-aged man, certainly no older than thirty.

While our friends were looking at him, he suddenly raised his head and looked at them. And then Ando recoiled from him in horror - the thing is, he saw that the stranger had red eyes that glowed in the darkness!

"Vampire!" the Joponese man screamed, and his hand automatically reached for his left trouser pocket.

However, a merry laugh that suddenly came from under the hat made him stop. The stranger, still laughing, found the strength to raise his right hand from the ground and with its help pull the hat off his head.

Now it was Nar-Tai's turn to be surprised, because he immediately realized that the drunkard who had pissed himself in a half-reclining position was none other than…

"Dmitry! Dmitry Kurnosov!" Nar-Tai exclaimed joyfully and, not paying attention to the puddle of urine in which the alakash was sitting, rushed towards him to embrace him.

"Why, that's Tairymbayev!" Dmitry Kurnosov didn't remain in debt, "And I thought that I suddenly saw on the streets my dear Pet-el-burge friend from my distant childhood, spent by me in sunny Alma-Thou?! And who is this pussy-eyed one with whom you approached me?"

The last words concerned Ando Minamoto, who, having heard a far from flattering definition from the lips of a person who was a complete stranger to him, was ready to lose his temper and count all the ribs of the person who insulted him, but the steel hand of Nar-Tai immediately stopped these reckless actions, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and shaking him a couple of times, like a kitten that had pissed in his slippers.

And only then did the little Joponese boy realize the futility of his behavior and wilted. Nar-Tai, ignoring him, continued to attack his former classmate with questions.

"Why are your eyes so red? Did you install Linux on your computer?" Nar-Tai asked him, looking into his red and glowing eyes.

Dmitry Kurnosov, without answering the question, suddenly opened his eyes wide for no apparent reason. Nar-Tai turned around reflexively, thinking that he had seen something out of the ordinary, but seeing nothing worthy of attention behind him - not counting, of course, the barracks gates - he immediately turned back.

He saw how Dmitry Kurnosov, who was still sitting in a puddle of his own urine, pulled down the lower eyelid of his right eye with the middle finger of his left hand, then put the nail of his right index finger on the lower edge of his eye and moved it down.

And before the stunned eyes of Nar-Tai and Ando something opened up that they had never expected to see. Dmitry Kurnosov's right eye instantly acquired a healthy look and winked playfully at both of them.

Nar-Tai, still not understanding what had happened, looked down and saw that in the palm of his former classmate was a small red translucent object, fourteen millimeters in diameter. It was…

"A lens. Nothing personal, just a contact lens!" Dmitry Kurnosov said cheerfully, "I made it myself. What did you think? I don't just live in this city. I have training here, The Blood Polygon, all that stuff, you know? And you say Linux… I would never install it on my computer, even under threat of death! LINUX IS FOR LAMERS! Any computer geek will tell you that! ALL THE SENSE GUYS USE WINDOWS! Oh well, we'll talk about it later, some other time…

Nar-Tai, without saying a word, watched as Dmitry Kurnosov, stopping his monologue, again opened his eyes wide and, carefully pressing his upper eyelashes with the index finger of his left hand, pulled down his lower eyelid with the middle finger of his right hand and, lifting his head up, brought the index finger of the same hand to his eye and carefully placed a small object on the white part of his eye, after which he immediately looked down at his feet and, not paying attention to the fact that there was a puddle of urine right under his nose, finally took his hands away from his eye and began blinking uncontrollably, closing and massaging his eyelid.

And when he finally tore his gaze away from the puddle between his feet, Nar-Tai and Ando saw that his left eye was once again glowing in the darkness, like the eye of a vampire or a ghoul. And this eye wasn't just red - it seemed to glow from within, as if a small flame were burning within it.

Nar-Tai and Ando simultaneously looked at each other with horror: they realized that this was not just a lens, but a lens that was an integral part of Dmitry Kurnosov's current appearance!!! It was simply terrible.

But what was even more terrible was that they couldn't understand how he had come to such a life, and if it had turned out that the reason for the drunk's madness was a magical compact disc made by the video game master Monolith Productions several decades ago… Oh, sorry, I couldn't resist referring to "Holeraiser", heh-heh!

Be that as it may, it was too much. Nar-Tai and Ando, without any further discussion, were about to leave this place, but Dmitry Kurnosov's cry, heard from behind them, made them both turn around.

"Guys! Why are you leaving your friend on the street when he's drunk, pissed himself, and in general not in the condition for everything to be "sweetest"?" Dmitry Kurnosov said with some strange intonation. "And I, in fact, got into trouble, ran away from the barracks without jerking off or resting!"

Ando, who was still upset with the guy for calling him "pussy-eyed", frowned and, trying to stay as far away as possible from the drunk who continued to sit in a puddle of his own urine, said to him:

"Listen carefully… If we don't find you here sober in five minutes, you can consider your life over forever!"

"You, pussy-eyed, want miracles from me," Dmitry Kurnosov responded peacefully to this evil remark. "Where have you ever seen a person sober up in five minutes? Have you ever had a drink in your life? There is no such person among living people! Got it?"

"I drank, I drank, I'm a complete alcoholic," Ando hissed through his teeth. "Just not beer, but port."

"You're going to drink my piss now if you don't take back what you said five minutes ago!" Dmitry Kurnosov suddenly yelled."

Nar-Tai, realizing that a squabble on the topic of alcoholic drinks would not lead to anything good, repeated the same "pissing kitten" operation with Ando in order to bring the Joponese man to his senses in this way.

And when he put Ando on his feet, he was no longer burning with desire to punch Dmitry Kurnosov in the face. He only said:

"Okay, okay, I agree," and without waiting for a response from Nar-Tai or Dmitry Kurnosov to his words, he turned his back to both of them and walked away.

Nar-Tai waved his hand at his Joponese friend and turned to Dmitry Kurnosov, who at that time was trying to get up from the asphalt, but his ass kept sliding in a puddle of urine and so he was floundering on the ground like a complete fool.

Nar-Tai had to hold his nose with his left hand, grab his former classmate by the collar of his black cloak with his right hand and lift him off the ground. When he did this, Dmitry Kurnosov finally looked like a man, not a drunkard.

"Thank you, bro," he thanked Nar-Tai, trying to shake the drops of urine off his brown pants, but it was pointless because he had pissed all over them.

Nar-Tai, who continued to hold his nose with his left hand, did not even think of saying anything to him in response to his gratitude, but simply turned his back to him and rushed to catch up with Ando, who had almost disappeared around the corner.

Dmitry Kurnosov, not paying attention to the fact that his pants were wet with urine, quickly followed him, not understanding where his feet were taking him. He walked along the street, not seeing anything around him and thinking only about not losing sight of Nar-Tai and Ando.

The latter had already caught up with each other by this time and were silently heading forward, and, hilariously, they didn't know where to go either! Words couldn't describe what was going on in their heads - their complete ignorance of what the hell they needed to do brought the situation to the point of absurdity.

And only when Dmitry Kurnosov finally caught up with them near some house built in the Art Nouveau style, Nar-Tai and Ando, smelling the aromas of his piss-stained trousers, abruptly stopped in their tracks and turned to him, and while Nar-Tai's face expressed concern, the Joponese man showed with his whole appearance that he was disgusted when a drunkard in piss-stained trousers and with red glowing eyes was chasing him.

"Dmitry, you're an idiot!" the Joponese man was the first to speak up. "Are you fucking nuts, running after us in your piss-stained pants?"

"Are you fucking nuts too?" Dmitry Kurnosov answered good-naturedly. "I'm just going home to change!"

"Home, you say?" Ando looked at him suspiciously. "Then why did you follow us, my dear?"

"Because you, blockheads, are going in the same direction as me!" Dmitry Kurnosov blurted out proudly.

Nar-Tai, who had been playing the role of a silent witness during this constructive exchange, suddenly realized that this was the moment of truth.

He turned to the Joponese man and asked him:

"What do you think, should we go and visit him? Let's combine business with pleasure!" and, without waiting for the Joponese man's answer, he turned to his former classmate. "Don't be angry, Dmitry, but Ando and I can't leave you alone like this," and, to back up his words with evidence, he pointed to his piss-stained trousers.

Dmitry Kurnosov measured him with a glance, and a spark of understanding flashed in his eyes. He nodded his head:

"Okay, guys, follow me," and he went forward.

Nar-Tai and the Joponese followed him along the sidewalk towards his house. Dmitry Kurnosov walked ahead of them at a distance of ten meters, and Nar-Tai noticed that he was trying to stay in the shade of the trees, and on top of that, his gait had become too smooth for a drunk as hell man of about thirty.

He walked as if he hadn't been lying in a puddle of his own urine a few minutes ago, which Nar-Tai found very, VERY suspicious.

He even thought that hypnosis was probably involved. And when they finally approached his former classmate's house and he began to open the door with his key, Nar-Tai no longer had any doubts that Dmitry Kurnosov was clearly in some kind of trance.

And if he had had some doubts about this before, now they disappeared completely, because he saw how his former classmate, without taking off his shoes, walked straight down the corridor to his room and disappeared behind the door.

A minute later he came out of there already in new pants, which no longer stank of urine, but in all other respects they were identical to the previous ones. Nar-Tai and Ando were already glad that at least they would not have to hold their noses while communicating with the owner of the apartment.

But when they entered the dining room and sat down at the table, Nar-Tai realized that whatever had happened to Dmitry Kurnosov in his room in such a short time as one minute, and no matter how he behaved, he was actually under hypnosis!

He was in a trance, and it was evident in his eyes, in which even behind the red contact lenses it was noticeable that the spark of mischief that was so characteristic of Dmitry Kurnosov in his normal state no longer burned.

Nar-Tai didn't know for sure whether the hypnosis had also affected him, or whether it only seemed that way to him, but he could say one thing for sure: in the room behind the locked doors, Dmitry Kurnosov did anything but put on new pants.

It was much more likely that he had simply traveled back in time to a time when he was not yet in piss-stained pants, and when Dmitry Kurnosov came out into the corridor to him and Ando, it was not the Dmitry Kurnosov they had met then at the Born Speleologist restaurant sitting in a puddle of his own urine, but the Dmitry Kurnosov who, in general, had not yet managed to step into a puddle of his own urine at the "Born Speleologist" restaurant, and had taken place if not a day ago, then certainly in the morning.

This was supported by the fact that if that Dmitry Kurnosov, who ran after them in piss-stained trousers and then walked them to his apartment, was dead drunk and not a fool to chat, then that Dmitry Kurnosov, who came out of his room to them in un-piss-stained trousers and was now sitting with them at the same table, was on the contrary as sober as a microscope slide and behaved somehow dryly and during the entire meal did not utter a word, not even such inevitable interjections during dinner as "Awesome gravy", "Give me salt, moron!" and "Fuck, it's hot!"

In general, Nar-Tai already understood that a completely different Dmitry Kurnosov was sitting in front of him - namely, the Dmitry Kurnosov from last morning, and not from this present evening.

And it was both scary and strange. Or rather strange - after all, what's scary about a sober, albeit silent, man of about thirty? Not some Alien!

But, on the other hand, what could be stranger than a person who, having managed to go into his room for one single minute, immediately wash, dry and put on his pants and still manage to sober up?

And if that's true, then what the hell happened to Dmitry Kurnosov in his room? And what was this strange hypnosis that he had transferred with him from the past to the present? Nar-Tai didn't know.

And he thought that he would never know, because as soon as he thought about it - and even before it came into his head! - Dmitry Kurnosov suddenly jumped up from his chair and rushed to the door leading to the balcony.

Having reached it, he opened it, went out onto the balcony and began to look down. Nar-Tai and Ando exchanged glances - they understood each other without words: Dmitry Kurnosov was in a trance so deep or even simply unconscious that he could not see anything around him. But he did not seem to notice this. He stood on the balcony and looked down - into the darkness outside the window.

Nar-Tai even thought that he had seen some irresistibly beautiful chick down below - well, at least Asia Vieira, with whom his friend Ando Minamoto was in love - but he didn't have time to finish his thought, because Dmitry Kurnosov suddenly turned to them and, giving each of them a strange look full of sadness and regret, immediately turned his back on them and completely unexpectedly jumped down.

Nar-Tai jumped up before the Joponese man, who opened his mouth in horror, and immediately rushed to the balcony, but it was too late - Dmitry Kurnosov was already lying on the asphalt, and his brains, which looked like a huge walnut, fell out of his skull, which had burst like a chicken egg.

In words, this combination of food products sounds quite appetizing, but in reality - not at all! Especially if you know that these words were used as synonyms, because it is obvious that a human skull is not a chicken egg, and that brains are not nuts!

Although, the author of these lines had the pleasure of communicating with individuals who, upon closer acquaintance with them, it turned out that if there was not shit in their craniums, then certainly a couple of tiny walnuts!

And she, that is, I, am even sure that she, that is, my, has a sister by gender (that's how she put it!), whom you, my little green friend, had the pleasure of seeing in The Fourth Omen, and, who knows, even jerked off to on the sly, or rather not to her herself, but to the faggot who played her, well, you know who I mean.

In short, this cunt has a rotten, shriveled, and completely inedible tiny walnut rolling back and forth in its head, surrounded by long black hair, instead of a brain!

Why is this so - the author, that is, me, will not explain, because you yourself, my little green friend, must figure out with your sperm-filled brain why things are exactly this way and not any other way! Okay, that's not the point.

[razorsadness]

…According to postwar analysts such as David Riesman and C. Wright Mills, the outcome was rather different. America’s mid-century masses were no longer huddled—unless around their TVs or in their Chevrolets—yet this gain was offset by the fact that they were apparently no longer yearning to breathe free, either. Whole new industries had sprung up based around the emergent conformist masses, finding productive and efficient ways to move them around in mass transit, to entertain and inform them through mass media, to supply them with needs and desires through mass marketing, and to fulfill those needs and desires through mass production.

With the calling into question of that way of life, with the rising concern that its bounty could be reduced to bland mass consumerism and its freedom reduced to mass conformism, Beat discourse contemplated a reversed trajectory of liberation leading from (relative) riches back to lumpen rags. The experience of life might be fuller and the desire to breathe free might be better explored, it seemed to some disenchanted Americans, through a downward mobility, and this led back to a curiosity about the inassimilable lumpen state of homeless refuse. "We wandered around," Kerouac writes, "carrying our bundles of rags in the narrow romantic streets" (170). The rags proclaimed (even etymologically) a lumpen identity; the wandering established a sense of freedom from the ordered efficiency demanded by modernity; and the narrow streets remained available to those romantics willing to abandon the standardized freeways and suburban subdivisions of the postwar world. Modernity seemed not only to homogenize the social diversity of individuals, it seemed to reduce the range of experience available to those individuals. The heterogeneity of the lumpen-bohemians, whether the vagabond vision attributed to Mississippi Gene or the bohemian delirium of Sal himself, famished and "frozen with ecstasy" on the streets of San Francisco (172), appeared to counteract this tendency.

The exploration of the spaces of skid row, of addiction and perversion, criminality, lunacy and vagrancy, became sources of a desperate sense of possibility in a white middle-class modernity that had begun to seem synonymous with dead-end mass culture, a space of potential individuality and freedom in the land of what C. Wright Mills called the "cheerful robots" (233). If, as many social critics charged, the cheerful robots of postwar America functioned as efficient cogs in the wheels of modern production, the antithesis would lie in a calculated inefficiency. The original French bohemians arose in the context of a postrevolutionary disillusionment with political solutions; their postwar American counterparts, in the wake of two world wars and a global economic depression,  in the grip of the cold war's threat of nuclear holocaust, developed a similar estrangement. In the absence of any sense that progressive social change is an option, then, uselessness itself can become a kind of virtue, and dysfunctionality a badge of countercultural courage. Nonproductivity is a hallmark of the lumpens and bohemians, whose activities may include poetry, petty crime, or wandering ragged through narrow romantic streets, but whose proclivities do not extend to productive labor in the industrial or bureaucratic model. As Jameson puts it, "To be unique or grotesque, a cartoon figure, an obsessive, is also ...not to be usable in efficient or instrumental ways" (101). The adoption of strategies of un-usability potentially opens the door to a freer space, to "a Utopia of misfits and oddballs, in which the constraints for uniformization and conformity have been removed, and human beings grow wild like plants in a state of nature" (99). Coincidentally, Sal comments at one point that Dean's "madness…had bloomed into a weird flower" (112).

Social scum and refuse appeared to threaten the coherence of both Marxist and capitalist taxonomic order, both of which depend on the efficient control of productive labor. The nonproductive nature of the lumpen-bohemians is one of their defining traits, and Georges Bataille associates this directly with unassimilable heterogeneity:

the heterogeneous world includes everything resulting from unproductive expenditure (sacred things themselves form part of this whole). This consists of everything rejected by homogeneous society as waste.... the waste products of the human body and certain analogous matter... the numerous elements or social forms that homogeneous society is powerless to assimilate... those who refuse the rule. (142)

—Robert Holton, from “The Tenement Castle: Kerouac’s Lumpen-Bohemia” (What’s Your Road, Man?: Critical Essays on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Southern Illinois University Press, 2009)

[jenngerbread13]

#VillainValentine Day 2 - Dance with Darkness

EmetWoL - T

Picking at the non-existent filth out from under their nails, Kerina walked past the Manager of the Pendants and up to the Wandering Stairs. The chronometer in their room had read three past midnight when they finally decided they needed something much stronger than willpower to help them finally sleep. Weary eyes never leaving the floor until their feet stood in front of the counter, searching for help to make sense of their inflicted madness and growing delirium.

Glynard knocking on the counter underneath Kerina’s hanging head woke them from their stupor as they jerked their head up to look at him. “What’ll it be? You’re looking rough tonight.”

Letting out a half-hearted chuckle of exasperation, they shook their head and held up one finger “Just one old-fashioned, please.”

Nodding, Glynard set about mixing the drink and handed it to Kerina when he was done. “I’ll be watching you. You know my policies,” he said with a knowing smile.

Kerina gave a small but appreciative smile back. They’d learned of all the small ways friends tell each other they care. It was not always an overt ‘I love you’ but sometimes a more subtle ‘take care’ or ‘I’m watching you’ and it gave them a bit of small comfort that they had found friends here in the Crystarium.

Turning around they headed towards their normal table back near the celebration table and a frown instantly formed. He sat there, in their seat, watching the crowd swirling a glass of red wine absently in one hand, the other supporting his chin. They quickly tried to avoid his notice, darting their gaze to tables far away, nearer to the markets and railings.

“You’re up rather early, or awake rather late, Hero.” Kerina heard him call out to them and they pretended to not hear him.

Fuck. He was the last person they wanted to see let alone talk to. They pretended not to notice him or hear him and walked towards a table away from that mess. He did not need to know or get close enough to have any inkling of what made them now feel their face burn hot with shame. There was no way he could no. No way he should know. Did he know? Fuck. They had to find out, otherwise it would consume their every last waking thought until they knew for certain. 

Stopping in their tracks, they heard his voice again “I know you heard me. You of all people should know that cooperation is a two-way street and if you’re wanting me to be civil, then that would mean you are as well.”

Fine. I’ll play your game. For the first time in a while, a smirk crossed their lips, before quickly disappearing behind a mask of indifference. It’d been a long while since the ability matched the skill to be on their level. It wasn’t the one-mindedness of his violently inclined great-grandson nor was it the sheer lunacy of Lahabrea. No, this was different, subtle. Intriguing. “Forgive me for being tired, I didn’t want to burden you with company that might be less than amicable to anyone.”

“Burdens growing too rough for you, Hero? After all it seems that upon the morrow which lay only a few hours from now you and your merry band will set out into Rak’tika to search for an audience with Master Matoya. One wonders how that will go now that you are on the First.” Swirling the glass around in his gloved hand with effortless ease, his eyes never once left them.

“Same as it always goes. Some new land, some new mystery, same old bullshit and keeping me in the dark. They think I don’t know until now something is up. That they’re planning and not telling me about it until they can find a way to fix it and pretend nothing was wrong at all ever.” Kerina sighed and sipped their drink not bothering to look at him, staring out into the Crystarium instead “I hate they think I’m stupid.”

“So you don’t trust your companions? The ever present Scions of whom you’ve helped through so many occasions? Why stay if such is the case, after all it sounds like it would be almost madness to do so.” The infliction in his voice, the swirling of the glass to distract, it was a game. Not of strength but of words. Of wit. Of intellect. To draw them out of their shell so he could find their weaknesses.

“What other options did I have besides inaction? What other options do I have now unless I ever want to go home? I simply cannot sit idly by and watch others flail about in search of answers. I need to help, in whatever ways I can, even if I am being selfish in reasoning.” Placing the glass down on the table, they folded their hands in their lap, staring down at them.

“Surely the Hero of the Source is not the only one being selfish for wanting to go back. Certainly your other companions pulled here against their will would love to go back too.” A small smile tugged at the edge of his lips. Doubt. It would serve him well here along with its bedfellows, mistrust and conflict. After all, that would leave them with no one to turn to for honest answers besides him and he prided himself on his honesty, no matter how brutal it may be.

Looking over at him after rolling their eyes, he couldn’t help but maintain the slight smile after their blatant display of sarcasm on their face and a long drawn out ‘no’ before they sipped their drink. Raising an eyebrow he urged them to continue as they shook their head and stared at him out of the side of their eyes “Well, you can quite clearly travel back and forth between shards with no issue. I can’t exactly do that. Not yet anyhow. I hadn't known I needed to figure that out until a few weeks ago. I at least got to the point of being able to poof to known locations on Eorzea without needing a cost of tickets or gil.”

The swirling stopped. His eyes for a fraction of a second grew wider before a laugh erupted from him and he slammed his glass down on the table, spilling a bit of wine over the side “You’re telling me, Hero, that you can teleport without a cost for compensation? And there’s no ill side effects?”

“Listen, I can’t do it as well as any of you can, okay. But at least I’m trying. I’m teaching myself. I’m learning far beyond what anyone wanted to teach me, or let me learn. I’m figuring it out on my own because I know it scares people. Seven hells half the things I can do that I can’t explain scare me. But I forge ahead anyway to learn. To grow.” Exasperated, Kerina shoved their seat back and moved to leave but his hand shot out and grabbed their arm, strong and insistent.

“Then what do you say from learning from someone who does know? Who could teach you more than any of the books in this tower could offer. You certainly don’t shy away from danger in other situations.” Scooting closer to them, he gently let go of their arm and placed his hand over theirs. “Think on it, Hero. After all, you do seem to delight in dancing on the edge between light and darkness.” 

Drawing their hand out from underneath his, they only offered a single, confirming nod before downing the rest of their drink. They hated his habit of being comfortable enough to touch them. It really didn’t lend credence to his fear of them being a slayer of his brethren but somehow, for once, someone being this close was comforting. Granted, Kerina knew they were the cause of his misery but at least they had someone to be miserable on this gods’ forsaken shard together with.

[opalescentegg]

bat and tongue of dog for the Halloween asks please! :3c

Thank you for the ask!

Bat: What animal would be your familiar?

A cat! Pretty basic, but I was half-raised by a pair of them, so that's what I feel most at home with. Tongue of Dog: Open the nearest book to you onto a random page and write what you read. Oh, boy, it's Moby-Dick: "...was moreover intensified by his delirium, that his mates were forced to lace him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock. In a straight-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings of the gales. And, when running into more sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun'sails spread, floated across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances, the old man's delirium seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn swells, and he came forth from his dark den into the blessed light and air; even then, when he bore that firm, collected front, however pale, and issued his calm orders once again; even then, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form. Ahab's full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly contracted; like the unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomably through the Highland gorge. But, as in his narrow-flowing monomania, not one jot of Ahab's broad madness had been left behind; so in that broad madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That before living agent, now became the living instrument. If such a furious trope may stand, his special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and carried it, and turned all its concentrated cannon upon its own mad mark; so that far from having lost his strength, Ahad, to that one end, did now possess a thousand fold fore potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable object. "This is much; yet Ahab's larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted. But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound. Winding far down from within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where we here stand--however grand and wonderful, now quit it;--and take your way, ye nobler, sadder souls, to those vast Roman halls of Thermes; where far beneath the fantastic towers of man's upper earth, his root of grandeur, his whole awful essence sits in bearded state; and antique buried beneath antiquities, and throned on torsoes! So with a broken throne, the gread gods mock that captive king; so like a Caryatid, he patient sits, upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablatures of ages. Wind ye down there, ye prouder, sadder souls! question that..."