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ohwhatagloomyshow · 3 months ago

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buzz cut season

I wrote gemma x helena hate sex and i'm insecure about it so y'all are my guinea pig audience rather than ao3.

a loose companion to alas, I cannot swim where helly pushes mark out of the emergency exit in the finale instead of running away with him. the tonal difference between the works, though, is night and day. lol.

explicit, 4,665 words.

characters: Mark Scout, Gemma Scout, Devon Scout-Hale, Ricken Hale, Harmony Cobel, Helly R.

relationships: Mark Scout/Gemma Scout, Gemma Scout/Helena Eagan, implied Mark S./Helly R., implied Mark Scout/Helena Eagan

The first thing she does exclusively for herself is buy a pair of clippers with Ricken’s credit card and give herself a buzz cut.

She doesn’t give any of them a warning, though she’s not sure why not. Maybe she’s too used to keeping secrets. Maybe she’s forgotten how to talk to people.

She does it at night, outside, even though it’s freezing. They’re heading out towards Salt’s Neck, the five of them, stopping for the night in a rundown motel off the side of the road that looks the other way when they pay in cash. It’s the world’s shittiest camping trip, four adults and a two month old baby crammed into the same space, traveling - inexplicably - with an older white woman who gives her the creeps. The motel and the gas station next door are the only things for miles on a wide, empty plain. She hopes her strands of hair can be used by birds for their nest, although they passed their last tree four hours ago, when they stopped for gas and she swiped Ricken’s wallet, slipping away as the four adults argued about the logistics of dinner. She kept the clippers in her pocket, felt them grow warm as she clutched them the entire drive.

She fucks up and doesn’t cut her hair before she attacks it with the clippers, has to sneak into the car for the emergency Swiss army knife the Scout siblings always keep in their dashboards. When it’s in her hand she thinks of herself as the store-brand version of Mulan, no reflecting pool in sight, the dull five-inch blade a kid-friendly version of slashing off a symbol of her femininity with a huge sword. Her cousin’s daughter - her niece, for all intents and purposes - had turned four the year that movie had come out, and they had made a girl’s day of seeing it together. Jenna had been obsessed with swords for months after that, she remembers. It would’ve been cool if Mark had rescued her with a sword, she thinks as she saws through a lock.

She’s sure the buzz is uneven but doesn’t give a fuck, is confident no one will look at her long enough to notice. She likes the feel of it under her palms. She’s never felt a buzz cut before. It’s bizarre how light her head feels now, how harsh the wind is on her scalp. When she returns the Swiss army knife she looks at herself in the passenger-side mirror and grins. It’s uneven as all hell - it looks terrible - she barely recognizes her own reflection and it’s the best thing she’s seen since Mark’s face, covered in blood.

Devon stirs when she re-enters their shared room but Mark still sleeps like a log, which is an incredible feat given Ricken’s chainsaw snores, although Eleanor doesn’t seem to mind them either. As much as she dislikes Cobel - distrusted her from the moment they first made eye contact - maybe she can argue for gender-segregated sleeping next time. Not that she wants to be away from Mark, really. It’s just fucking unfair that that silver-haired bitch gets her own room.

He still doesn’t stir when she wriggles her way over to him, molding her cold body around the curve of his spine. He smells different now in a way she can’t quite pinpoint. Maybe two years of smelling the same recycled air has fucked up her nose.

She thinks about Jenna, about Kiran - how angry she’d been at Kiran for giving her daughter a similar name to her own. How flustered Kiran had been by her 15-year-old jealous and furious cousin, not understanding that Gemma just wanted to be recognized as an individual, an adult. By the time Jenna had a personality, Gemma had been halfway through her bachelor’s program, finally almost-confident, thrilled to be a sort-of-aunt when her life was just getting started.

But then Kiran had moved her family to Boston for a job, and her other cousins started their families or careers and moved on to greener pastures, and her parents contemplated a move back to Lhasa to take care of her maternal grandparents. She made their choice easier by going to UW-Madison and they scolded her from halfway across the world for such a useless doctorate until she got that poverty-wages tenure-track position at Ganz and they’d flipped to bragging about her to all their neighbors.

She presses her forehead against Mark’s back, which does get a response from him - a flinch away. Because they’ve both been sleeping alone for two years, and it’s harder to readjust to sharing a bed than sleeping alone.

It’s hard to sleep. When she does, there’s flashing red lights, absolute silence, icy wind on her face. Needles and blood and broken glass and a barefoot woman shoving her husband through a doorway.

Mark is angry about her haircut but she gets a cold approving nod from Cobel, which she fucking hates. Devon is so gentle, so careful, when she goes back over her scalp with the clippers. They don’t talk, but Devon does squeeze her shoulder, every so often.

She always gets first pick of where she sits in the Scout-Hale SUV and she always sits beside Eleanor. It upsets Mark but he tries not to show it. He is always trying not to show it. Eleanor is soft and warm and sometimes she smells like heaven and sometimes she smells like shit but mostly she smells alive. Gemma can’t get enough of it.

They had fucked, desperately, in Ricken and Devon’s basement an hour after their rescue. Mark had showered and then she had showered but his neck tasted like copper when she sucked on it. He had grabbed her by her loose wet hair and she had cried out and he had bent her over the couch and it had been agony and ecstasy. He thrusted as deep as he had ever gotten, as deep as he could possibly get, and it hadn’t been enough. They both finished unsatisfied.

My baby.

By hour ten of the buzz cut, she realizes he won’t be able to pull her hair like that again for a long, long time.

Mark had guided her up that concrete stairwell like he knew exactly where they were going, but she learned later it had been his first time actually using those stairs. He’d seen them a few times on his very first day, but never again after that.

She’s grateful for whatever sweaty exercises they’d had her do once a week because she feels strong running up the stairs, her breath lighter than Mark’s, heartbeat fairly steady for all the added adrenaline in her system. Mark sounds like he’s going to collapse the second they see the parking lot but he keeps going, pointing her in the direction of an SUV she’s never seen before.

But she’s seen Devon before.

The sight of her sister-in-law nearly makes her drop to her knees; it’s only Mark’s hand in hers that forces her upright. Fuck, Mark’s hand in hers. He did it. He fucking did it. He fucking killed a man for her. He’s right here, and they’re alive, and Devon’s openly weeping in the driver’s seat while a breathtaking woman with almost unnaturally smooth, straight silver hair yells at her from the passenger seat.

It takes a couple tries for her to open the backseat door and the stranger is yelling at Devon to fucking drive, Goddamn it! And Mark is shoving her inside while he climbs in behind her the moment Devon hits the gas. When the door closes behind him he’s on her again, hands locking her face in place while he smothers her in kisses. She laughs and she cries and they hold tight, so tight, to each other. Devon yells at them to put their fucking seatbelts on as she hits 70 in a 35 but they never do.

The beautiful, angry stranger is Harmony Cobel, she’s told in Devon and Ricken’s Goddamn incredible wood-and-glass home. They let Gemma hold Eleanor while Mark holds her and she hasn’t felt this much love in her heart since the last pregnancy four years ago. Mark is still coated in a stranger’s blood, but Cobel is absolutely gleeful when she explains the large dead man in the elevator was Drummond, one of Helena Eagan’s personal protectors and top Lumon goon.

“The fuck was Helena Eagan’s guy doing on the severed floor?” She’s only paying attention because she’s resting against Mark’s chest, feels the vibrations when he speaks. She’s so distracted by being out, being free, holding her actual niece. Life is a miracle.

“You don’t know, do you?” Cobel always speaks in a murmur, her words just slow and soft enough to force you to listen, focus on every letter in every word she says. When Gemma looks up, the look in Cobel’s eyes has shifted. It makes her heartbeat kick; she settles back against Mark, holds Eleanor just a little bit tighter.

“Know what?”

Cobel just looks at him, looks at the two of them. Gemma almost wants to ask if she’s ok, can they get her something to drink, before she catches on that this is an intimidation tactic. She realizes, a half-second before Cobel speaks again, that Mark isn’t taking this - whatever it is - nearly as seriously as he should be.

“Helena Eagan is Helly.”

She’s nearly thrown onto the floor from how quickly he stands up; Ricken leans over from his easy chair to steady her and his daughter. She hands Eleanor over to his anxious arms as she stands, takes a place next to Devon, who has just emerged from the kitchen.

“Are you fucking with me right now?” Mark towers over Cobel, his pointer finger in her face. She can just make out his expression from this angle, and she’s concerned to find fear in the shape of his mouth. She hasn’t seen her husband in two years but she still knows all his tells; she had to memorize them when it became apparent that avoidance was written into his DNA. There’s guilt in his eyes, too. “Because if you’re fucking with me -.”

Cobel lifts her hands in a gesture of goodwill. “If I had the security footage I would show you. And there is security footage.” A look passes between them that she doesn’t have enough context to unravel, but Mark has gone deathly pale. He looks sickly under all that dried blood.

“I’m going to take a shower.” He doesn’t look at any of them when he says it, just turns on his heel and heads for the basement. Devon grips her elbow, urging her to stay in place. She’s not even sure if she was planning on following him yet.

“Who’s Helena Eagan?” she asks Devon in a low voice but Devon just shakes her head once, sharply.

They left Kier early that next morning, loading up the Scout-Hale car with as much as it could carry. Mark and Gemma had spent the night crammed into Eleanor’s future twin bed because it was the only guest bed that had sheets. They had made love properly then, pretending they were teens in her parents’ house trying not to get caught. It had been surprisingly romantic, all things considered, healing something that had been broken inside her for so long. This time she had come hard and fast with his mouth around her, again when he entered her slowly, gently. His own orgasm had been muted, though his eyes were glazed when he looked at her, stroked the hair from her forehead.

She didn’t ask, and he didn’t offer, what his conversation with Cobel had meant.

Cobel took the lead, taking all the backroads until they were safe to take the highway. From there it had been one long, monotonous drive, the mile markers increasing so slowly she thought it might drive her insane.

When she had finally come to in that fluorescent nightmare prison, everything had hurt and she felt foggy. People in face masks and white coats told her not to worry, she had been in a car accident, and her family had been notified. She would be kept under observation for 24 hours, and then she would be able to go home. She had fallen immediately back to sleep.

The second time she woke up, she was much more lucid. The people in the face masks and white coats came back and thanked her for her participation in Lumon’s revolutionary new surgery.

“What?” she had asked, certain there had been a mistake - perhaps they meant a patient in the next room, she was Gemma Scout, and her husband would be on his way to bring her back home in just a minute.

The man with the bright blue eyes lowered his face mask. “No, Gemma,” he chided softly. The look in his eyes made her stomach twist. “Don’t you remember? You signed the waiver.”

“Waiver for what?” Fear hadn’t begun to set in yet, despite her discomfort with this man’s focused gaze.

“When you underwent our fertility treatments.” Fake pity in his eyes, a hungry tilt to his smile. “Didn’t you read your intake paperwork?”

When they grab ready-made sandwiches from the next gas station, Ricken is the one who makes conversation like nothing is amiss. Cobel has sped on ahead, will wait for them in the next town, so it’s just the Scout-Hales breaking bread again like it’s a normal Sunday.

She’s wearing one of Devon’s extra winter hats and Mark’s pajamas, shivering by the frozen picnic table. They’re all so tired of sitting in that fucking car that freezing their asses off is the better option.

When she first entered Ricken and Devon’s home, the hostility between her husband and their brother-in-law had been immediately apparent, but she hadn’t been able to puzzle out what had happened.

By dinner that night, she had realized: she had happened.

To be fair to Mark, Ricken is different now, and their relationship had never been terrifically deep before. But it hurts her more than she wants to admit that she was the glue holding them all together. Devon’s done an admirable job in her absence, but she’s picking up on the distance between her and Ricken, too.

She just wanted to go home. She has only ever just wanted to go home. She couldn’t have predicted an atomic bomb had exploded in her absence.

They’re all exhausted and hungry and cranky when they finally pull into the city limits of Salt’s Neck. Cobel again bosses them around, driving them to a rundown “safe house” owned by an old coworker of hers, where they can lay low for the next two days, figure out their next steps.

Gemma does not plan on staying for two days.

Devon, Ricken, and Mark all drop into sleep twenty minutes after settling in, but her legs itch, and she grabs Devon’s keys from her purse without a plan, just a feeling.

Cobel stands in the yard between the door and the car, nearly giving Gemma a heart attack. What makes the scene almost uncanny is the lit cigarette between Cobel’s fingers. For whatever reason, she never pictured her as a smoker.

Cobel offers her one when she steps closer, and she takes it, accepts Cobel’s offer to light it for her. She steps away when she exhales; she doesn’t like hovering over people and with distance she can pretend she’s a little shorter, Cobel a little taller.

“Who are you?” she finally asks, throat burning after a hard pull, after two years without a cigarette. She’s immediately lightheaded.

“I was Mark’s next door neighbor,” Cobel offers in that not-quite-marble mouth of hers.

“Don’t fucking lie to me.” There’s no heat to it, but she grips Devon’s keys just a little tighter in her pocket.

“I was also Mark’s boss.” She flicks her cigarette butt away but doesn’t move to leave.

“On the severed floor?”

A long fucking pause.

“On the severed floor.”

She wonders if she could move quickly enough to put out her cigarette in Cobel’s eye. She probably could. She considers it seriously.

“And Helena Eagan?” Another pull that’s too hard, and she coughs through the pain.

“Lumon’s future CEO.” Her silver curtain of hair barely budges in the wind, while Gemma left her borrowed hat inside and feels chilled to the bone.

“Helly?”

“Come now, Gemma. You’re smarter than that.” If she wasn’t enjoying the taste, the feel of this cigarette, now she would put it out in this bitch’s eye.

Because she is smarter than that. She just wanted to hear it, for whatever ungodly reason.

Cobel is still standing in the snow-covered yard, lit by the setting sun, when Gemma drives down the road.

The sun is just rising when she pulls into the Lumon parking lot; it’s amazing how much quicker the drive is without a baby or stopping to eat. She does wish she had grabbed for a pack of cigarettes when she’d stopped for gas, though.

Helena Eagan arrives at 6:15AM on the dot. Her driver pulls away the moment she slams the door shut.

She only has a few moments to make this work, so she sprints from the car, hoping any weight she lost from missing dinner and breakfast might make her just that much faster.

Helena hears her footsteps as she reaches the steps. Pauses, turns around.

She nearly has the dull Swiss army knife at Helena’s throat when their eyes meet. Helena takes a half step back out of surprise, and recognition.

“Gemma Scout.” Her voice is deeper than she was expecting. Refined. “I like the new hair.”

Gemma grips Helena’s pea coat at the neck, pressing the blade ever so gently against her jaw. At this, Helena does shudder out a sigh, a spark of real fear in her eyes.

“I want to talk to Helly.”

Helena laughs seemingly against her will, as the movement brings her jaw against the blade. It draws blood, which impresses Gemma. Just because a knife can be dull on hair doesn’t mean it can’t slice a bitch to shreds, she supposed.

“If you come down to the severed floor with me, you’ll just become your innie,” Helena argues, a slight shake in her voice as Gemma’s threat fully begins to sink in. It’s a delicious sound.

“You have a master key to this building, don’t you? You have to, as daddy’s little girl, right?” It’s more words than she’s strung together in a long time.

Helena’s emerald eyes harden at that; she’s hit a nerve. Something to exploit.

“Take me to the stairwell.”

She keeps the knife at Helena’s back on the walk down to the complex’s far left side. The only sound is Helena’s block heels on concrete.

Daddy’s little girl does, in fact, have the master key. Gemma lets her take one brief, steadying breath before she presses the knife against her back, encouragement to get it the fuck together.

It all happens very fast: Gemma nearly lets the door slam shut when Helena steps inside. She shoves the knife closed against her thigh and keeps it hidden in her palm while she watches Helena’s entire posture change, weight shifting forward, shoulders gently slouching. When she turns around there’s actually emotion in her expression: surprise, nervousness, some resentment, but most of all curiosity.

“Gemma Scout?” Helly asks.

The barefoot woman from her dreams.

She chokes on unexpected tears as she nods. “Why did you push Mark out?”

From the widening of Helly’s eyes and the shifting of her posture, it’s clear that this is the last thing she expected to hear.

“Because you love him,” is all Helly can think to offer.

“You love him, too.” The blood drains from Helly’s face, so she continues. “He loves you.”

Tenderness floats across her face for just a moment before confusion settles in between her brows. “Mark Scout? I’ve never met -“ she catches herself then.

“Helly hasn’t,” Gemma admits, “but Helena has.” It’s a shot in the dark but that look on Mark’s face in Devon’s living room won’t leave her head.

Helly has the decency to look embarrassed, ashamed. “I’m sorry, Gemma,” and her voice is soft, sincere. “He didn’t know - we didn’t know -“

Gemma silences her with a gesture. “I know, Helly. I didn’t want to come here to, I don’t know, torture you.” She hiccups through a laugh. Why the fuck did she come here? “I guess I just wanted to tell you thanks. Truly. Thank you. For giving me my husband back.”

Helly’s eyes begin to shimmer with unshed tears. “Is he happy? Out there?”

Gemma gives a sincere laugh this time. “Sweetheart, I don’t think anyone is happy out here.”

Helly doesn’t know how to respond to that. Gemma gestures for her to step back through the door. “He’s with family. He’s being taken care of. I promise you.” There’s still hesitation written on Helly’s body. She closes her eyes and sighs. “I know what falling in love with Mark is like. I know what being loved by Mark is like. It’s the easiest and the hardest thing in the world.”

Her eyes are still closed when Helena steps back through the doorway, and they only open as she gropes for Helena’s wrist, grabs it blindly, and pulls her away from the door, pushing her into the wall. They’re not so different in height, enough so that when Gemma brings her forearm against Helena’s neck, she chokes.

Their noses are inches apart. Helena’s gasps are the best fucking sound in the world.

“You fucked my husband, daddy’s girl,” she says, voice as low as it will go. “You killed me and then you fucked him, right? Or did he fuck you?”

Helena blinks as her face reddens.

“Would you fuck me like he fucked you, princess? Seems only fair. Fucking us both over and then fucking us.” She lets up on Helena’s neck and her gasp is desperate. “You ruined our lives,” she says, vision blurry, before finally, finally letting Helena Eagan go.

She coughs as she leans against the wall, catching her breath. Gemma just watches her, waits.

“We knew there were cracks,” Helena says finally, voice hoarse. Her hand rubs her throat as she speaks. “We were watching. Fertility treatment is always hard -“

“Don’t you DARE fucking talk to me about that FUCKING treatment!” She screams - screams, holding her head, knees buckling.

Helena waits for her to finish. And it takes a while to shove every single molecule of oxygen out of her body, through her throat.

By the time she’s done tears have leaked from her eyes and the fresh, cold air she sucks in is a balm to her throat. When Helena asks, “Do you still want me to fuck you like he fucked me?” she replies, “Yes,” and Helena unlocks the emergency exit again.

She tells Helly that she and Helena plan to talk in her office. She hates walking back through the severance barrier.

They’re in an elevator now, going up. This is what Mark did, every day, for two years, she realizes when Helena leads her through an empty locker room. She wonders which one he used. Because he couldn’t let me go. But if Mark had been able to let her go, she’d still be in that basement. The love she feels for him in this moment hurts.

She shouldn’t be surprised by the size of Lumon - she stared at the building all morning, waiting for Helena - but being inside it is a different monster. Helena leads her without issue up two flights of stairs, down a winding hallway, up another elevator.

One wall of her office is a window and it gives Gemma a feeling of vertigo to be so high up. This could be anyone’s office - there’s nothing personal here, just a huge L-shaped desk, three wide monitors, a few papers spread about. It’s a little dire, if this is where Helena spends most of her time when she isn’t Helly. There isn’t even a couch, although there’s plenty of room for one.

She turns to find Helena sitting primly on the floor, a little awkward in the restraint of her pencil skirt. She gestures for her to sit.

Of course they fucked on the floor, she thinks, but sits cross-legged in front of Helena anyway.

Helena makes the first move, because of course Mark had made the first move. She had made the first move once, eight years ago -

Helena’s lipstick is smooth on her mouth, and her tongue is warm. When Helena lifts her sweater over her head she feels hard acrylic nails against her back. She thinks about Mark’s blunt hands, always careful about the size of his nails.

Her bra is unlatched before she thinks to do the same to Helena - does she want to see Helena, or just be fucked?

When she’s lowered onto her back, she tries to stop thinking.

Helena’s hand at her crotch is hesitant, awkward, trying her best to circle her clit the same way Mark does, but it’s instantly clear she’s never touched a woman before, has to find her way around a stranger’s anatomy like a groping teenager. But the pressure she applies is good, and Gemma isn’t ashamed to moan into her mouth.

Helena is so slow and tender that it hurts. Her lips are gentle against her neck, only the barest suggestion of teeth. When she pulls Gemma’s pants down, she uses her whole hand to help get her off. This is lovemaking at its purest form and it makes her so angry when Helena finally enters her.

“Tell me what he did,” she asks in a voice that isn’t quite her own. Helena meets her eyes, deadly serious, as she speaks.

“He did this, Gemma. This is what he did.”

“He didn’t eat you out?” Her breath hitches when Helena’s tempo increases.

“Do you want me to eat you out?” She’s still serious but there’s sadness in her eyes, and Gemma thinks, one thing I still have with Mark.

“Did you suck him off?”

Helena’s eyes narrow, and she thinks, Two things I still have with Mark.

“Did he pull your -“ but she can’t finish the sentence because Helena is pressing her thumb into her clit.

“If he did, there’s not much left for me to pull.” There’s a bite of humor in her tone that makes Gemma moan again, tighten around Helena’s fingers.

“I think you should eat me out, princess.” The flush on Helena’s face is delicious - she hates this. She’s probably wet herself. Gemma wants to find out but not now. Now can only be about her, and getting Helena off would not be about her.

“He didn’t talk dirty to me, either,” Helena says and she adjusts herself between Gemma’s legs.

“Did you want him to?”

The aggression with which Helena puts her mouth on her cunt is answer enough; she groans at it, tightens her thighs around Helena’s face. She can’t help herself then, reaching down to tangle her fingers in that beautiful red hair. No wonder Mark has always liked her long hair. There’s power in it, she realizes as she scratches Helena’s scalp. You can make anyone do anything with a fistful of their hair.

“Baby,” she whispers as Helena devours her. “Baby, my baby.” Goosebumps break out across her back and she shivers. Helena is nothing like Mark, is everything like Mark.

She comes fast and hard on Helena’s mouth, a whine clawing its way out of her throat. Helena’s face is slick when she sits up and Gemma has half a thought to lick herself off of her cheeks and chin, but Helena says, “Are we done here?” and the thought vanishes.

Helena wipes her mouth with the back of her wrist and leaves Gemma in her office to dress herself alone.

#severance #gemmahelena #gemma x helena #helena x gemma #gemma scout #helena eagan #this is so WILDLY different from what i usually write #but i think writing hate sex healed something within me #i think also the first lesbian sex scene i've written??? ever???? which is bonkers to consider #is it obvious i have recently picked smoking back up or have rapidly developed an interest in sexy hair pulling. sorry.

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colinwilson11 · 10 months ago

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#Global TIL Therapy #Melanoma Trials #Developing Rapidly #Expanding Global Access

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serpentface · 1 year ago

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Do psychotropic drugs and/or ritual play a role in any of the blightseed cultures? A pretty broad question, lol

Yeah that’s a very broad question, the answer is about as much as it tends to play roles in real history. Alcohol is pretty ubiquitous (outside of cultures that abstain from intoxicants) and used for a variety of purposes, opioids are commonly used in some parts for pain relief or recreational purposes, stimulants (usually in mild, natural forms) are used to provide extra energy, and hallucinogens are most commonly used as part of a larger religious framework (rather than for recreational purposes). Any more elaborate answer kinda has to be case by case in a certain culture or part of the setting.

I'll just take this as an opportunity to talk about the one established sect that pretty much REVOLVES around psychoactive use. This is the Scholarly Order of the Root, which is a sort of mystery religion + elite community of scholars who currently occupy the Ur-Tree and its forest in the far southern Lowlands (southeast of Imperial Wardin, on the same land mass).

The Ur-Tree is the obligatory Huge Fucking Fantasy Tree (and its surrounding forest). It’s a mass of vegetation about a mile tall and almost as old as Plant Life Itself, its upper branches are primeval plants, which become more modern the nearer they get to the ground (and each 'level' holds tiny ecosystems, some containing descendants of LONG-extinct arthropods/other small animals). Its lowest branches and the surrounding forest are contemporary plant life, and all is connected and protected by an incomparably MASSIVE fungal mycelium network (which is itself a living god).

A lot of the Scholars' more secretive practices revolve around experimentation with substance use with the goal of expanding the Mind and transcending the body to fully connect to the Dreamlands, and they have a supply chain of traders and mercenaries called Rootrunners who traffic substances into the Lowlands. Most of their psychoactive use is in a very intentional capacity and not just like, for fun, but a LOT of them are just straight up addicted to cocaine (in the form of alchemically refined bruljenum, which is used for practical purposes of its stimulant effect during long hours of work).

All known psychoactives are desirable for experimentation (particularly hallucinogens), with each having properties that either allow expansion of the Mind, transcendence of the body, or outright divine communion. Their effects are logged in great detail and interpreted to form the basis of the Scholars' understanding of the natural world and reality itself.

The most important substance is Ur-Root, which is root matter from subterranean levels of the Ur-Tree that have both their own intrinsic psychoactive substances and a very, very high concentration of living god mycelium. The tree root contains DMT and the mycelium has its own wholly unique effects (being an actual living god). They alchemically refine it into a purer, more potent form, and use it to expand beyond the body and directly commune with the Giants, a group of entities they have identified as the only true gods.

An Ur-Root trip starts off with minor visual distortion, which turns into shifting fractals that slowly obscure the vision. Eventually the senses are entirely taken over by a 'tunnel' of rapidly shifting fractals and geometries. In a complete trip, the experiencer gets a sense that they have been pushed through a membrane and entered another realm, finding themselves in a distinct experiential Space.

At this point they may encounter entities which communicate to them in a language impossible to describe but wholly understood. These beings are understood to be the Giants, or at least aspects of the Giants that mortals are capable of comprehending (they often take familiar tutelary forms of the Mantis or the Snake, or appear resembling the same type of sophont that the experiencer is, all composed of ever-shifting geometries). The experiencer often feels a sense of unconditional and endless love from these beings, though the Giants may be more hostile and may appear in the form of the Trickster (usually a cultural figure regarded as malicious, be it an animal or otherwise) in a bad trip.

(^Up until this point, this has mostly just been a DMT 'breakthrough' experience ft. 'machine elves' and the like).

They are then removed from this space and returned to something that feels like the real world, but is nearly unrecognizable. They have a sense of rapidly moving through time, and will usually see 'the spires' towards the beginning, which just so happen to look like this:

(source + some context via Implication- the spires are exactly what this art is depicting)

The experiencer continues to move across an unfathomable amount of time, occasionally 'seeing' other such flashes of unfamiliar landscapes and creatures, and yet also being devoid of all their senses, the 'seeing' is pure, unfiltered experience. There is a sense of interconnectedness with all life, and that one has become the forest (or even Life) itself. The sense of time is wildly distorted, the trip lasts only about 5 minutes but feels like an eternity and is understood as literal hundreds of millions of years.

The experiencer has usually lost any remaining sense of Self and individual consciousness during this phase (in which case this time distortion is usually a neutral or even peaceful experience), but some retain a fraction of their identity, and find themselves trapped and conscious while experiencing what feels like eternity (which can be LIFE-CHANGINGLY distressing, even after the fact).

(^This latter part of the trip is the effects of the Ur-Tree fungus).

The trip ends with a sense of rushing through the ground and back up into one's body, at which point they will abruptly return to their senses and consciousness. The details are then immediately retrieved via interview and recorded in immense detail. The whole experience is understood as having been full comprehension of the Dreamlands, communion with the Giants, and then a tour through the act of creation.

This is done as part of the initiatory practice into the inner mystery-religion of the scholars, and as needed for study by high scholar-priests. It is not taken lightly, both as it is absolute communion with the gods and reality, and in that it can be a very, very difficult experience. People who have gone through this often walk away with a permanently shifted perspective, often in a positive and/or comforting way- a sense of interconnectedness with all life, a peace with the concept of death, seeing less of a point in individual ego and the concept of Self, and comfort in the sense of divine love they (may have) experienced. This heavily influences the philosophy of the Scholars and has had effects by proxy in the religious worldviews of the region.

Details of this experience are closely guarded, and initiates are given absolutely no prior knowledge and expectations for their trip. This is seen as a necessity- their naivety will allow for a true, unfiltered experience, and can be used to gauge whether they should or should not be accepted. Those that have a distinctly bad trip upon initiation may be assumed to have been 'rejected' by the giants and thus denied full priesthood, though this largely depends on How they interpret their distressing trip- those who identify this as a test and harsh lesson in a journey to enlightenment may be accepted (as this is how fully initiated scholar-priests interpret and handle their bad trips).

This inner priesthood is only a small fraction of the Scholarly Order, and its greater function is as a hub of education and repository of knowledge, and Scholar-trained doctors can provide some of the best medical care available in the setting ('best medical care in this setting' only means so much but it's pretty solid, relatively speaking). Only a chosen few Scholars ever get to commune with the Ur-Root, and most of the divine secrets revealed in the process are kept hidden (though they indirectly influence the politics and worldview of the entire order).

#I'm kind of fascinated by the quasi-religious beliefs that have developed around recreational hallucinogen use (ESPECIALLY DMT)#In contrast to like. Uses of DMT-containing substances like ayahuasca for long-established religious purposes #So this concept is basically 'what if a religion was FORMED from pretty much the ground up out of DMT usage'#Like the common 'entities' people encounter in recreational use being identified as the Real Gods and producing a religious worldview #that is mostly rooted in this experience (while still influenced by other cultural factors)#Also the like. Meta going on here is that the fungus is a 'living god' and the oldest one on the planet #It is a VERY rare type of living god that is 'created' by non-sophont (non-sentient even) beings and exists as a mycelial network #that perfectly supports and protects an entire forest. Basically a god for plants. It is so deeply interconnected with its forest that the #usual power sophont belief would have over it has basically zero influence. This is absolutely the closest thing to A God in canon.#(While still not being a Creator/sapient/or even supernatural within the framework of this reality. Just VERY unique.)#The Ur-Tree has always been above water and grows very very slowly over the course of millenia by kind of 'pulling up' plant life from #the ground (so you see ancient long extinct plants in its higher branches and contemporary plants close to/on the ground)#The mycelium helps shield and feed extinct plant life that could not otherwise survive in the contemporary environment #And the forest is big enough to produce its own weather (it is a rainforest and has been ever since the capacity for rainforests Existed)#It's not really a tree at all in any normal sense but an amalgam of thousands of types of plants-#Some growing on top of others and some interwoven beyond any distinction. It does form a superficially treelike structure #(mostly in order to physically support its own mass) with a very wide 'trunk' and massive 'roots' (which end in actual roots).#It feeds on its own perpetually shedding and decaying 'body' and any animal life that dies in the forest is VERY rapidly #decayed and absorbed by the mycelial network (to the point that many large scavengers cannot survive in this forest)#(If you kill a cow and leave it on the ground for just 1/2 hour you'll see little strands of mycelium already growing up around it)#The fungus fruits and spores on a very infrequent basis (scale of ten-thousands of years) which causes the forest to very slowly spread #Fortunately this isn't really an existential threat because the spread is VERY slow (even on a geological scale) and the fungus #itself is rather mundane in nature and cannot usually compete against established fungal networks in other places.#Though there are little Ur-Tree mycelium groves and woodlands in other parts of the world that may (over untold millennia)#generate their own Ur-Trees (there's already a few but they are all MUCH smaller and not readily recognized as the same thing)#WRT THE TRIP:#Most of what I'm describing is a DMT trip but consumption of high doses of Ur-Tree mycelium has both mundane psychoactive effects #and IS kind of the person experiencing the fungus' entire lifetime and seeing flashes of the world's actual evolutionary history.#The amount of material knowledge that can be accurately gleaned from this this is VERY limited though.

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beneathsilverstars · 10 months ago

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one of my irl besties i follow on twitter and i do NOT get her posting style. irl our senses of humor play so well together that we have been complimented by strangers at the store on how funny our idle conversations are, but i look at her posts and feel nothing but confusion. i can't figure out what it means OR what's funny about it. i don't know if i'm misreading the tone, or if her online circles just have a totally different posting style than mine, or what, but her posts are incomprehensible to me!

anyway i think this is what following loop on socmed would be like.

#loop is already sarcastic and dramatic #they would do numbers #and start finding weird subcultures #and rapidly develop a distinctive posting style as they settle into an obscure niche #and mirabelle checks back two weeks later like hey did you end up making a tumblr? i have a post to show you #'oh yes i already follow you! i'm [username]! 😊'#'oh i missed you! ok i'll go follow back and send you the post!'#mirabelle that evening scrolling through loop's tumblr: h. how did you post this much in two weeks. how did you FIND these kinds of posts #did i get the url right. yeah this is def the url loop said and they do follow me so.#how is this LOOP #i don't understand what they're sayinggg- oh! this art is cute! [rb] OK OTHER THSN THAT I DONT GET ANY OF THIIISS #café chick #<- my default for modern au thoughts #s.mira.loop #s.isat #s.loop

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geostatonary · 8 months ago

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In other news I've digitized the little pink book, aka Nobilis 1e, because I could

#for the record it IS an lgbtq thing #nobilis #little pink book #soup of the day #also rapidly developed opinions on book scanner software automatically cropping scans

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sysig · 5 months ago

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Is this small and pixely enough that it’s not a spoiler

#Asking for a friend who is me #WIP #Just Desserts #Lol #Still no TV Guide this week - last month's Monthly Goal crashed and burned so hard that it's put this month on the backfoot lol #Last month's goal was to catch up on editing #Guess what I did Literally Nothing of #Month of Ghost development? No prob. Month of YT editing? Of course. Month of Thing That I Already Fucking Do Anyway? Absolutely not #So things are on hold until I figure out how to bribe my brain to do a thing that is In The Way of posting stuff #Would love to hear any tips and tricks to unblock Task as well - have tried timers and food and play and Just Start and nope #I wouldn't expect things this week but also don't be surprised if there's something or other? I have been doing non-editing work #Brain would literally rather be doing just about anything other than editing #So anything other than that it is! New month new goal! Which makes it Just Desserts time babeyyyyy >:3c #Push comes to shove I will just post the unedited doodles and my brain can suck on the disappointment of them not being Perfect #S'how the early JD doodles looked! And those are fine! Because they're old and we're better than that says brain yes thank you #But also other things :3c Like digital doodles of the lads #Have At Least one project in mind that would be best served by everyone's cute faces being manipulable on a canvas #And also maybe memes and stuff who knows ♪ Assets like these are fun!#Do love how quickly I've tossed the worry of it being a spoiler lol #But can you identify who's there is the real question #Nooot telling ♫ Until they're done - all of them! All the every! But for Day 1 Batch 1 I'm pleased with how it's coming together :)#Anyhow - Offline Day approaches rapidly and I'm going to enjoy it to the best of my ability

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blackjackkent · 1 month ago

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All right, we've kicked off Bellara's romance (ADORABLE) so it's back to the neverending string of other companion quests; I think for now we're just going to go down the list, which means Davrin is next up, with "Cries from the Past"!

It's a "Conversation" quest, so hopefully that means we're just gonna chill out and have some bonding ti--

Oh dear.

-----

It seems that Evka has turned up some useful intel on the Gloom Howler, in the form of a nervous-looking elven woman.

"What's your name?" Davrin asks her, and she stammers uncertainly.

"I..."

"It's all right," Helena says, coming to one of her occasional decisions that this isn't the right time for a joke. The girl is trembling a little, nervously; the wrong word and she might bolt entirely. "We're here to help."

"Nothing to be afraid of," Davrin agrees softly.

The young woman swallows, looking between the two of them, then nods. "My name's Valya," she says - and her voice, though nervous, is steady. "When I heard about Weisshaupt... what happened..." She closes her eyes for a moment, as if steeling herself against a flash of bad memory. "I used to be a Grey Warden, but I left before the Joining."

"It's not for everyone," Davrin says noncomittally.

Perhaps she hears judgment in the words, because she flinches back a step. "It wasn't that," she says firmly. "It's... I'm the one who found the griffon eggs. Before they hatched."

At once Davrin goes utterly still, as if he's been slapped. His eyebrows shoot to his hairline with a rapid flurry of emotions across his face - wonder, skepticism, mistrust. "I've got about a million questions," he says slowly. "But why come to us now?"

"I knew some of the Wardens who were caring for the griffons," Valya says. "Remi and Lancit. I think I know what killed them."

"The Gloom Howler," Helena confirms, managing to sound only a touch impatient. "It's a Grey Warden, isn't it? An elf?"

"But that's all we know," Davrin puts in, shooting Helena a look.

"Yes," Valya says earnestly. "Her name is-- was-- Isseya. I found her diary. She was a mage. She blighted all the griffons during the Fourth Blight."

Davrin's head snaps around so quickly that Helena's surprised it doesn't twist off his neck. "What?!"

"Upon direct orders from the First Warden at the time," Valya pushes on doggedly. "She had no choice. This was centuries ago."

Well, thinks Helena, that's a new wrinkle. "Why would they do that?" she asks, bewildered.

Valya shrugs helplessly. "In her diary, Isseya said the Blight was going badly," she explains. "The Wardens couldn't win. They turned to blood magic. The griffons fought harder. Longer."

Helena winces. She may not know much about griffons, but she's seen plenty of blood magic rituals gone wrong in her time. "I see where this is going," she says grimly.

"Isseya didn't want to do it," says Valya. She looks nervously at Davrin, whose expression has gone stony. "But orders were orders. It won the war."

Helena sighs. "But then..." she prompts.

"The griffons became rabid," says Valya. "They turned against the Wardens..."

"So then the First Warden turned against them," Davrin growls.

"He ordered them all destroyed," says Vanya softly.

"That's why they're extinct." Davrin is perhaps angrier than Helena has ever seen him. His fists are clenched at his sides, a muscle pulsing rhythmically in his jaw.

Truth told, Helena isn't much happier about this. Wardens or no Wardens, they're just talking about another set of mages willing to do blood magic with unknown side effects to achieve their own ends. And unfortunately she has all too much experience with that.

For that matter, lately she really has more experience with Wardens than she'd like too, Davrin excepted.

"Has every First Warden been an asshole?" she asks dryly.

Valya blinks, and for a moment Helena can see her struggling not to snort. But she manages to regain her composure and answers soberly, "Isseya said she resisted at first, but orders were orders. As penance, she hid the remaining eggs with a protective spell. I followed the clues and found them."

Helena frowns, rubbing her jaw thoughtfully. "That was four hundred years ago. She shouldn't even be alive..."

"Her last entry said she left for her Calling," Valya says quietly.

This doesn't really mean anything to Helena, but she can see the glances that pass between Valya and Davrin and Evka, an understanding, a grim commiseration, that is somewhat lost on her.

"Then she's probably in the Deep Roads," Davrin says gravely. "Blighted. Twisted."

He looks as if he's about to say more, but he's interrupted by a sudden excited squawk at his elbow.

Valya blinks, and then grins widely. "Assan?" she asks, and her grin widens even further as the griffon gives a squawk of agreement. "I was there the day you hatched!" she says brightly, reaching out to ruffle his feathers. "You've grown."

The atmosphere of the conversation seems to ease a little. Helena laughs - with relief as much as anything else. "Right along with his stomach," she answers conversationally.

Valya snickers. "Right out of the nest, he ate everything in sight," she says. "I remember feeding him gingerwort truffles as a baby."

"Ahh..." Helena says, as Davrin rolls his eyes. "So you're the reason Davrin's been hunting mushrooms instead of monsters."

"Anything for the prince," Valya says lightly, giving Assan another quick pat.

The griffon preens with one long-clawed foot, and Davrin snorts. "I don't see a crown on your head yet, boy," he says lightly, and Assan's tail thumps loudly against the stone floor.

"There should be," Valya says earnestly. "Griffons give the Wardens hope, something to rally around after Weisshaupt." She reaches out abruptly across the space separating them.

"Please," she says in a lower voice, both humor and nerves now gone from her tone. "Find his brothers and sisters, whatever it takes. We owe them so much."

Davrin looks back at her for a moment in silence, and then nods. "Count on it," he says.

#bjk plays datv #helena mercar #yooooo okay interesting development :O #helena's opinions of First Wardens are rapidly declining XD

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