#Faithless project

[artseadragon]

The fish siblings from a new worldbuilding project, Faithless! Arwen is the pink one and Ardyn is the blue one. They’re built like the tomato and cucumber from veggietales in both shape and height, I don’t make the rules (I do)

I’ll post more info about the Paths later but for now all you need to know is that Arwen follows the path of Guides and Ardyn follows the path of Guardians. Also he’s “wandered” from his path, which has pretty drastically affected him physically and made it harder for him to follow his path.

Those who follow the path of Guides are often your “battle clerics”, who can heal and also wield powerful offensive magic. Those who follow the path of Guardians have sworn to protect, and are more melee fighters. Ardyn uses a trident, personally.

The pookies are both iterations of old ocs! Only Arwen’s name has changed though.

+ an Ardyn alt with nicer clothes

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

#and when he lay dying he's full of remorse as he speaks abt her bcuz what kind of guard dog leaves his master behind to the lions

"A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he'll look you straight in the face." (Sansa II, ACoK)

sandor unwittingly stating that he is sansa's dog now. he says a hound does not lie to his masters, and yet right in the beginning of acok we see him lying to joffrey on sansa's behalf to save her from his wrath. he was the only one in the king's guard who had the guts to say "enough" when he saw sansa getting beaten by grown men in front of the whole court, like a hound that chooses to side with the prey instead of the hunter. we see him disobey orders and abandon a crucial battle because he realized he was unwilling to fight and die for his supposed masters, but then he went to sansa with the intent of taking her away with him knowing that she was the lannisters' most valuable hostage and thus having her would put a huge target on his back. the hound was ready to die for sansa, and he never lied to her (but was willing to lie for her).

[theoxenfree]

OF FLESH SIN

vampire priest x reader | 2.6k | 18+

you're the child of a monastery groundskeeper and come to find out that one of the senior clergy, father marius, was brutally maimed in his chambers overnight. you're approached by the monastery's new recruit: father shaw; who claims he had witnessed the scene of the crime and invites you to his chambers to tell the tale.

warnings; dark content bc of descriptions of gore and violence towards the end, obsessive behaviors, theological themes, probs inaccurate representation of monastery life lmao, outdated + deragatory mention of psychiatric care to fit the narrative, very brief mention of animal death, classism (mc getting shit on for being poor and coming from an "uneducated" family), kinda honestly cheesy if you think about it, roughly proofread, vampires are monsters y'all—that's the only way I write them

shouldn't have to say it, but: none of this is indicative of my personal viewpoints. it's just fiction, folks.

second prompt fulfilled for my lil' october writing project! this won the second poll! please reblog + leave feedback to be kind and help a sister out 🥹💕

Father Marius died in quite some awful way last night, as reported to you by the nuns hanging fresh washed garments on the clothesline in the waning, purpling daylight.

“A look of horror! Utter terror! So frightened that his jaw had become dislocated in forever a scream,” shivered one young nun, Lucy; recently a convert from the slums. “I, well, I didn't see it myself. Neither did the rest of us, actually. They say it was that new Father Shaw who found him at dawn.”

You had been raking gravel out of the yard, tiny stones kicked off of the path into the kempt lawn by prancing horses and wagon wheels, when Lucy and the other nun, Esme, had caught your attention with their hard, dense gossip. They regarded your approach with less caution than they would have had with their other sisters, as gossip was deemed inappropriate, a violation, a flickering serpent’s tongue carrying covert temptations leading to luscious sins and debauchery.

They saw you—poor, morose, the groundskeeper's only child and reminder of loveless trysts—and thought nothing of snaking you into their prattle. You were not the sort to divulge anyone's secrets without gain, without reward, and you knew that the nuns kept nothing to their names once they took their vows and donned their habits.

“Father Shaw,” you continued the discussion with some intrigue, mostly from the fact that he was very new, very young, and modestly handsome, “why was he awake so early? Why was he in Father Marius’ chambers? Curious to me.”

Neither of them gave much caution to your questions, shrugging as if to dismiss your ambivalence and accusatory tone. You were bold in the way that the faithless and lost always tended to be: asking senseless things, always concerned with the wrongdoings of others, always suspicious, always inquiring—forever inquiring.

“Oh, my, you're so defensive,” Esme fanned a yellow bedspread out with an oncoming breeze, catching the wind beneath the fabric so it billowed and rippled midair. “If that’s how you're going to be, then: why does your father stumble around the yard at night with a lantern, swinging around a pistol like a madman? Won't he hurt someone?”

Because he's a godless, superstitious drunk. Perhaps, even, a bit disturbed in his mind, but you couldn't bear to think that way, that he might be the type to need his head locked in a metal cage, gagged, arms bound, and padlocked in some damp, distant corner of an asylum.

“He's a good man,” you relented, taking your hands from the top of the smoothed out, worn handle of the rake and resumed your task. The gravel made an awful, grinding sound as the teeth of the rake collected pieces of stone and led it back to the rest. “He's served this monastery well. I don't mean offense about Father Shaw, I'm simply curious about what transpired is all.”

“No offense taken,” came a voice from behind, startling both the twittering nuns and yourself at the same time. They saw it to be Father Shaw standing there, hands cuffed behind his back with a particularly demure disposition, hiked their skirts and whisked themselves away back inside. “Ah, am I really such a frightful figure? I couldn't really find an opening during your conversation to invite myself in. I apologize.”

You were of a similar fretful nature, quickening your clawing and the reach of the rake. “Nay, Father. I think it's simply because you're a strange man to them still. A handsome face, a warm voice, mysterious; give them time, they'll come around.”

“Have you?” Father Shaw asked, taking measured strides in a half-circle around to your front. He concentrated on where the teeth of your instrument struck next, tips temporarily wedged into the soft dirt before being ripped up with chunks of earth and gray gravel. “It wouldn't do for me if you… were still ill at ease with me as well. I consider you my one, true friend in this place.”

Your father held a certain destestation towards Father Shaw that you'd never witnessed before, saying nothing else than that something was terribly wrong with him and not to place yourself in a position to be alone with him. This you attributed to his unsoundness, but it was always the sudden flicker a sharp breath against candlelight—a jarring shift in his demeanor when he spoke about the Father, neurotic and prone to throwing things about the cottage interior, that caused you to pay some mind to what he told you.

“And, you're a great friend of mine as well,” you hoped you sounded coherent and paced your words evenly enough. “I'm sorry if you thought I was accusing you of something, sir. I really meant nothing to it.”

Father Shaw’s lips sprawled tight and pale into a fond smile, never showing his teeth, though the imprint of them seemed massive and the skin of his lips startlingly thin across them. “I know. You have nothing to fear. My feelings were not affected. If you'd like, come to my chambers later, we may pray together first, and I'll tell you everything you wish to know about what I saw to sate your curiosity.”

“That seems improper, sir.” You said.

“How so?”

“Inviting someone to your chambers at night seems an unbecoming venture for a pious man of status, such as yourself,” you continued, now standing upright beside your rake, “if any of the sisters were to witness it, worse another priest, aren't you afraid you'd be horribly chastised? Even worse, excommunicated altogether?”

Although Father Shaw’s dark eyes reflected no light, holding such demanding depth to them that it was hard to keep your bearings whenever you realized you'd been staring, his entire face was alight in amusement.

“Wherever did you learn to speak like that?” he asked candidly, still glowing despite his pallor. “Forgive me when I say, but your father is not an educated man. I mean no offense, please don't look at me in such a way. You are so well spoken, I only wish to know more about you.”

“I've lived here my entire life,” you told him. “The nuns taught me how to read.”

He looked impressed. “You can read?”

“I can!” From a near distance, you could make out your father’s haddard form, bent sideways on a walking cane and limping towards the pair of you. You looked up at the priest’s smooth face. “It'd be best for you to leave before my father can speak to you. He isn't the kindest soul after a long day.

Father Shaw didn't react with any semblance of worry, but agreed that there were other things needing to be done and began away. Just as he passed you on his way towards the monastery, he let his hand rest atop of your shoulder and leaned you towards him to whisper in your ear: “come to me tonight. I'll be waiting for you.”

There was something so luxurious and cooling about his voice; fine silks sitting in the shade during autumn gliding across your bare skin, wrapping your neck, your chest, your nether parts. His voice was a fine, chilly mist after the first rains in spring which felt refreshing and new after a glacial winter, yet still had capacity to soak you to the bone. It was a nighttime breeze caressing your cheek, sweeping through the hairs of your scalp, making your skin burst all over with bumps.

“I don't like the way he looks at you,” said your father with a mouthful of porridge you'd seasoned with herbs of the season. It was wonderfully fragrant and warm during nights that were still a bit too uncomfortable to sip anything cold. “He looks at you like you're a slab of meat! Some prize after a hunt. I don't like him, love. Not one bit. You'd do well to stay to mind yourself and do your chores and nothing else, y’hear?”

After dinner, you cleaned up, swept the floors with hard bristles, and snuffed all the lights except for the fireplace where your father sat in his old chair, fiddling with his favorite pistol.

“It's time for bed, old man.” You watched him fit a couple of small bullets into the loading chamber. They glinted against the orange flames. “Goodness. What have you gotten this time? Something new?”

“Aye!” he grinned, nearly toothless and in a sickly sort of way. “Went to market the other day while the nuns bullied you and picked out some fine bullets from the silversmith,” he cracked the two halves of the pistol shut. “Better to be prepared.”

You waited until sometime later once he was finally asleep, possibly after midnight, before leaving the humble cottage sitting on the fringes of the massive monastery yard and rushing across the grounds to get inside.

Once, they'd kept a guard dog on the property, one of those meaner breeds that were used for gambling, but the poor thing wound up shot dead in the middle of the night by a traveling friar who'd come to seek refuge at the monastery. The sisters, and yourself, were horribly distraught by the entire ordeal and all vetoed the consideration of bringing another dog here.

Since then, it was no task for you (or anyone else) to get inside the building and shuffle along the shadows through the corridors. At night, the place stirred with patient insects, feral rodents large and small in the pantry, and hungry owls tamely whining from the rafters when something startled them away from their hunt of vermin.

Your feet were a light sound on the masonry below, padded by thin leather soles which alerted you to your enthusiasm as the thwap thwap thwap became louder, aggressive as you closed in on a wall and turned down another hallway for a sturdy wood door at the end of it.

As your knuckles rapped, hoping the sound wouldn't disturb the animals’ nighttime caroling, a swift darkness moved across the floor from behind the door, briefly blocking out the soft light seeping out from underneath.

The next moment, you were being pulled inside and sat at a small table tucked to the side of Father Shaw’s rather generous room. It was a simple space, sparsely furnished for the barest of comforts—only for what was needed to live—but what had been made for him was of exquisite craftsmanship, some made of teakwood, which Shaw assured you was remarkably durable and highly resistant to rotting.

“It's wonderful for boats,” he said, pouring a light amber colored brew from a metal kettle he'd heated a short while ago. “It’s good for all elements, really. Exceptional longevity. I've heard it has become a popular option in the city for burying the deceased.”

“Will Father Marius be buried in a teakwood coffin, then?” you asked, sipping politely from the cup even though you had no appetite for it. You already felt ill at ease enough having disobeyed your father by sneaking into a priest's personal chambers at night. The things the sisters would say about you—

“He will be entombed underneath the monastery with the rest who have served here and passed. I believe that is all stone down there, my dear.” Father Shaw smiled tepidly, kettle aside, no tea of his own. “But, I know that your curiosity led you here to me with questions, yes? About the state I found Father Marius in, yes?”

You tried to disguise your intrigue by drinking more of the tea, of whatever it was he had given you, and listened to the sounds of your fingertips sticking to the porcelain from sweat and steam.

“If you wouldn't mind sharing…”

“I wouldn't!” he leaned on his arms on the table, closer towards you as though with a secret. “As I've said, you are truly the only soul here who I can confide in. You are not a sheep. And you do not fear sin as the rest do. So, you can ask me anything and I'll tell you everything.”

“Tell me about Father Marius, then.”

Father Shaw reached across the table for one of your hands; his far larger, fingers much longer and colder than your own and held it as he recounted the event.

“Dreadful sight, it was. It was, oh, perhaps sometime after three o'clock when I heard a massive racket. A struggle. When I knocked, all of the noise subsided at once and there was complete stillness. Silence, my dear, silence so deep, dark, and damning that I knew something awful had happened.

“I didn't knock again, I was too afraid to! But, Father Marius was getting on in age, so I couldn't just stand by, either. I kicked the door in—just once was all it took—and I rushed inside to see the room was a complete mess. A fight had clearly taken place, and the walls—oh, the walls—”

His remorse was carefully placed, stiff, and uncertain and he couldn't be seen in the vastness of his black gaze. You were moved by the vulnerability he was trying to show you, going as far to abandon your drink to place your warm hand on top of his.

“The walls, my dear, were a mess of blood. Something vicious and awful had happened in that room. But, then, I found Father Marius lying there on the ground next to a broken window. I think he'd tried to throw himself through it. His face was shredded to pieces, his eyes gouged. When I got closer, I noticed that his tongue had been severed from his head!”

You were holding Father Shaw’s hands in a bloodless grip, face ashen, teeth chattering behind your lips. “What on earth! That is not only horror, but cruelty!”

“Oh, my love, it gets worse!” Father Shaw held you mesmerized in his gaze, the conviction and anguish with which he told his story. “Closer still, Father Marius’ face was locked in one of pure terror, I've—I’ve never seen a human react in quite a way such as that before, to fear. The man unhinged his own jaw in a hideous scream, and it seemed to me he was skeletal. By that, it's like he was, well, quite dry.

“So, I crouched down so much lower and inspected him all over. Do you want to know what I found?”

“Yes.” You spoke breathlessly.

Father Shaw had moved out of his seat and was on one knee in front of you, both of his frigid hands on your face to smooth across your cheeks, pushing away pieces of hair obscuring some part of you he'd wanted to see.

“My love, I saw marks in his neck. Two, beautifully, wonderfully symmetrical marks that were far too clean to be of any animal that we know of. The bite was clean, it was patient and cunning. And the fangs that had sunk into his tender flesh had drained him of blood, of the very essence that kept his heart beating until the very last.”

“Sir—” your stomach plummeted, falling forever, when he smiled, teeth longer than any humans should be shown through to you. He wouldn't let you go when you went to move out of his hands, away from him. “Father Shaw, please—”

“I wish you could have seen it, my love. It was a breathtaking sight and I long for someone else to admire the beauty of my work alongside me.”

It was unthinkable that a vampire could walk on these holy grounds and in the bright of day, yet Father Shaw had for countless days. Evil held you sweetly by the cheek and in your hair, kissed you with a corpse’s cold lips, and laved the skin of your skin with a long, serpentine tongue.

“O’, my merciful lord…”

Father Shaw bent your head back with a fistful of hair and spoke from your throat:

“There is no God, only me. Come into the endless night with me, my love.”

[nousrose]

It is not the conscious subject but the unconscious which does the projecting. Hence one meets with projections, one does not make them. The effect of projection is to isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of a real relation to it there is now only an illusory one. Projections change the world into the replica of one's own unknown face…The more projections are thrust in between the subject and the environment, the harder it is for the ego to see through its illusions…It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world. And what is being spun is a cocoon, which in the end will completely envelop him.

The Collected Works

Carl Jung

[myfavouritelunatic]

To Bind You to Power

Surprise! It's a prequel to my Dark Priest!Sauron fic, The Faithless and the Powerful!

Courtesy of the wonderful @theriverwild and her amazing inspirational abilities! You've done it again!

Here lies a glimpse into Sauron's mind, as he manipulates both Galadriel and Pharazôn into his designs, leading up to the beginning of the main fic.

Now part of my series, A Shadow Over the Star...

She placed the pouch back in his hand, a physical expression of a last chance. What that heraldry must represent for her, and what it might yet represent for him. Peace… he had been seeking it. It was all he had wanted, all he had wished to find when he set out across the sundering seas with that doomed ship. Any chance to find peace, he would take. Whether it meant spilling perilous whisperings into the ear of Lord Pharazôn, or achieving peace, together, with this elf that was the closest he had come to an equal in so very long. Or might there be something in the way her fingers lingered upon his hand in that moment just passed? A silent communication of more than her just begging for allyship. She sensed the darkness in him too, he could see it in her eyes. Halbrand knew already, it would make for a powerful bond between them. And he could fill her with such power that she would smile, succumbed and enraptured. A being fit to be queen at his side. Though if she cared for him deeper than she claimed, than she realised… it would make her even more easy to exploit.

Word Count: 7.6k

Warnings: None really, this is surprisingly tame compared to the original fic, but it still definitely contains the same darkness. And a little Saurondriel action. Because of course.

Enjoy! 😈🖤

[d1s1ntegrated]

basilica

tomura shigaraki

cw: religious trauma, religious motifs/themes/imagery, catholicism, defiling of the church, angst, hurt, slightly ooc

a/n: just a short angry religious trauma post drabble bc i'm feeling a type of way rn and it kinda sucks lol. sorry for projecting this onto u tomura i love u

try reading with the song! it adds a layer to the writing i feel honestly is kind of important

Tomura wanted to cry. Wanted to scream in anguish, beg and plead for a miracle or a sign from a God, any God. But the pews of the rotted church served little to sanctify him as he crumbled each one with an angry fist. Shaking fingertips dug into the deep grooves in the mahogany and crumbled them into forgotten prayers. Scattered pages of proverbs and psalms littered the marbled tiles, and the sun rays twinkled in through the ornate stained glass, reminding him just how small he was against the hands of God. There was no God here- only Him, and He alone could stand the tides of change with a battering ram for a heartbeat. It hurt, it hurt so badly, to be forgotten and known all at the same time. Who was he? Tenko Shimura, the sweetened cherub boy, with scraped kneecaps and bruised elbows? No, never. It was a dream, a softened hymn that only time knew the words to. Now he stood, an adult in the eyes of society- though his body never felt quite big enough to be- Tomura Shigaraki. A man, a disciple of the Feared One, a machine created to destroy. And destroy he would. Starting here.

He didn't believe in God. He didn't follow the practice of any one religion, especially not the Catholic Church. Hell, the fact that there was even a church to find out here was a one in a million shot- they weren't exactly few and far between in the cities, but the Catholic population in Japan was a small decimal compared to Shintoism or Secularism. But for this moment, he felt it was best to be in here. A lot of western media he had consumed over the years painted church and Christianity as some all-consuming Light, like this is where miracle happened. Well, the only miracle here was that Tomura even set foot inside.

Every step pressed another layer of dust into the deep red runner up to the sanctuary. The altar remained pristine as he caught his breath, his throat tight and dry. The sound of his thumping heart swelled in his ears and head, the pressure reminiscent to being underwater. Looking up, the height of the cathedral shrank him down to atoms. It felt like a mockery. Like even God was reminding him he was small.

Small. Tiny. Pitiful.

Each word of arrogance against him made his blood turn darker, thinner, rushing through his veins as he grasped at the elegant pillars, dragging himself to the ground with a gasping cry, so that he fell to his knees at the altar rails, his tired bloody eyes locking with the adorned chancel, and the poignant, giant statue of the Son, hung plainly in front as if to scream "I'm here, too".

He felt more alone at this revelation, that human faithlessness was so overlooked because of sin, that people like him weren't meant to be here not because of their trouble finding faith, but for their lack of it. That he too would be damned because he chose not to find light in God, and instead found his own way of safety through destruction and chaos and everything Sensei had taught him. His own scripture, signed in viscera, torn at the edges. It wasn't his fault no one taught him to believe, but it was damn sure his fault he didn't seek it for himself- and he felt it, now, as Mother Mary's half-lidded gaze held above his wakened frame as if he were a pestilence on this world that God created.

Was he in the wrong for keeping his head low? Should he hang it high, be grateful for the hands that supposedly formed him and molded him? This, Tomura knew, was the entire reason behind his aversion to faith. Because he needed someone to listen, and not a single ear fell for him. Not even Sensei cared enough to listen to his alleged son, his pride and joy as some called it. He felt neither prideful or joyous when face to face with him, instead it was a sinking, sorrowful feeling, that could best be described as grief. Grief for his old life, or for the new one he failed to perfect for himself, his Sensei, his friends- try as he might, he was just so small here, and could do only so much.

Church was a last-ditch effort to feel something. Anything. His time was low, and the unfortunate arms of fate were every turning and chiming, reminding him that his goal was only so far. It was seconds away, he felt as he could reach out and grasp it- but he was too well trained, he knew better than to reach out to the things he really wanted, in fear he would destroy it all in the blink of an eye. Not even Gods hands could hold him now, though, as he pretended to pray for one last chance.

His hands pressed into the cold tile and he felt the ground beneath him rumble, his body quaking and splintering in wretchedness, the power lifting him entirely. The pure white turned a murky grey as they shattered and cracked under him, the giant spires atop the roof even quivered at the desolation. And as he screamed, as his throat burned in anger, poor Mother Mary fell to the ground from her pedestal, an ironic display. The caricature of fallen angel, in the house of God, airing his grievances to no one but marble and blood wine, he stood. Destroying it all.

Not in the name of God, but the name of Tomura Shigaraki. Because there was no God that could ever come close to being this angry.

[daemon-in-my-head]

We all know that Gortash would've had a fun time if he had been dragged to a Bhaalist ritual or service, Just the local tyrant surrounded by murder hobo gremlins while also staring in awe at the beautiful Bhaalspawn covered in blood, head to toe. Truly the most twisted of experiences.

But what would've happened if he had dragged the Bhaalspawn to a banite service? Dress them up and sneak them into a hidden dark corner, making Bhaals favourite little princess a banite for just a day?

I wrote about it. It's explicit and horny and bloody and as sacrilegious as it gets. And kinda subby Gortash because apparently this whole bit started way before I realised it.

[justforbooks]

Nicholas Shakespeare’s elegant biography of the James Bond author Ian Fleming takes its subtitle from a journalist’s observation, quoted halfway through, that its subject was “for a moment of time, a complete man” while working for British naval intelligence in the second world war. Yet you can’t help read it as a promise to give the reader what was left out of previous biographies such as John Pearson’s crisp, more portable authorised life from 1966. And is there a claim, too, for the alpha male credentials of the man called “Flemingway” by his friend Noël Coward? Journalist, stockbroker, thriller writer and – like his famous creation – a playboy and 70-a-day smoker, who died of a heart attack in 1964 at the age of 56 after a plagiarism row over the origins of Thunderball, the ninth Bond novel.

After a dutiful account of how Fleming’s Scottish financier grandfather became a millionaire – later cutting Fleming and his brothers out of his will – Shakespeare gets going with his subject’s troubled boyhood in the shadow of his father’s death in the first world war. Family friends in Switzerland take his education in hand after hasty exits from Eton (hanky-panky with a woman) and Sandhurst (gonorrhoea). His exams aren’t good enough for the Foreign Office; an engagement to a Swiss lover ends amid maternal threats to cut off his allowance. He falls on his feet at Reuters – it was that kind of life – further honing his knack for a scoop at the Sunday Times, a handy source of contacts for his war work.

Testimony woven from diaries, papers and interviews gives the book a flavour of oral history. Shakespeare goes to great lengths – not least tracking down a 94-year-old veteran, the last surviving member of a covert commando unit that Fleming organised – to dispel the idea that Fleming’s service, occluded by state-sanctioned secrecy, was just “in-trays, out-trays and ashtrays”. The book’s first half puts the future author at the heart of military and journalistic history – a search for German weapons of mass destruction; the race to get an inside scoop on the Cambridge spies – as well as the bedroom shenanigans of the English well-to-do. (Shakespeare, who encourages us at one point to smile at the mention of a “germanely” named Nazi admiral, Assmann, shows his assumptions of his audience when he writes confidently of “that small, turn-of-the-century intellectual clique, the Souls”.)

Fleming may be “the man behind James Bond”, in the subtitle of Andrew Lycett’s 1995 biography, but Shakespeare’s project, you sense, is partly to say there’s more to him. Eager to prove Fleming’s interest beyond the reasons that will draw most of his readers to the book, he is almost comically insistent on the degree to which his subject was ahead of the curve. Not only might he have sparked the idea of creating the CIA – in a memo written when the US-UK special relationship was being forged – but he also came up with the idea of putting a Christmas tree from Oslo in Trafalgar Square.

As for the dozen Bond novels that poured out of Fleming after 1953’s Casino Royale – written in a month in his winter bolthole in Jamaica a year earlier – they were, in Shakespeare’s telling, essentially the literary expression of a midlife crisis accelerated by the encroachments of fatherhood and a faithless union as the third husband of Ann Charteris. They had got together with an affair that caused a high-society scandal during her previous marriage to the Daily Mail heir Esmond Harmsworth; she later cheated on Fleming with the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, who told him that the “sex, violence, alcohol” formula of the Bond novels was “to one who leads such a circumscribed life as I do, irresistible”.

Fleming, injecting the American dirt of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels into the English thriller, launched 007 on what Shakespeare calls the “spam-munching gloom of Attlee’s Britain”, writing (Fleming told his publisher) in order to make “as much money... as possible” and to have “as much fun as I personally can”. Respectable sales rocketed when JFK took a shine to From Russia, with Love – and the movies were yet to come. While Fleming was self-deprecating – telling Raymond Chandler the Bond novels were “straight pillow fantasies of the bang-bang, kiss-kiss variety” – he was proud enough to greet the director of the first Bond movie, Dr No, by telling him: “So they’ve decided on you to fuck up my work.”

“Luck had to be accepted with a shrug or taken advantage of up to the hilt,” Bond thinks in Casino Royale; he sees luck “as a woman, to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged, never pandered to or pursued”. Squint enough and Fleming took some care to cast his main character in ironic light. Early in that novel, the reader gets a fly-on-the-wall thrill of watching fieldwork in action, with the scene of theatrical care Bond takes to ensure his hotel room isn’t being searched; but soon enough his French sidekick turns up to let Bond know his upstairs neighbours have been listening in to his every move.

In Shakespeare’s biography, the novels are mostly a source of supporting quotation – he doesn’t get bogged down in questions of what it means to read Bond now, confining himself to a remark on how his “cavalier treatment of women... carried the sexual climate of the Blitz into the austerity of the cold war, and was less modern perhaps than it was later cracked up to be”. And perhaps there’s no need for his defenders to overstate the case for Fleming’s novelistic subtlety. Bond has always been shaped by a collective amnesia that allows us to make him what we wish him to be at any given moment; when he parachuted into the Olympic opening ceremony with the queen, it was as the best of British, not as a connoisseur of (Fleming’s words) “the sweet tang of rape”.

The novels, in a way, are irrelevant to 007, but the course of history would surely have run otherwise had Fleming not had the foresight to change his protagonist’s name from the original “James Secretan” – Fleming’s typescript revision perhaps his most significant literary act.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[dylawa]

Gale Dekarios imagines this might be what death feels like. He imagines this must be what death feels like, before your soul re-awakens moments or days later and makes its journey to its destined ever after. Or, perhaps, for those who are godless like him, this is how that journey ends, too. A stroll to the Fugue Plane to await redirection to one’s promised afterlife, only to be met with nothing, and to eventually fade like low, flickering candlelight, or be thrust into the Wall of Faithless. The thought is chilling. Were he a less practical man, perhaps this would have been the moment where he would have broken down hyperventilating and crying, contemplating what fate may await his soul at the end of his life. No, it wasn’t death itself that frightened him, he told himself. It was what awaited him after. Fortunately, he already had that little episode of panic a few months ago. There was no need to go through it again.

A BRAND NEW Baldur's Gate III fanfiction series is now LIVE on AO3 with its first chapter! This work will follow the events of Baldur's Gate III from Gale's perspective, as he and his companions follow the leadership of an astral elf named Syolkiir. However, the two will butt heads as wizard and sorcerer, human and elf, and greatness and greatness. How will their relationship develop? What do their adventures in the Sword Coast have in store for them? Will they find a common ground, or doom each other? Make sure to follow me here on Tumblr or on AO3 to stay tuned to find out!

[catgrassplantdad]

fic writer interview

i was tagged by the luminous @energievie & @suzy-queued to fill this bad boy out! i remember doing this last year too, how fun! 🩷

1. How many works do you have on AO3?  I've got 20 on there now!

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 143,320

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? kinda raw, float, cinematic, and i'm your warm receiver, watching. the four after kinda raw are all pretty close together in terms of kudos, but kinda raw has a lot more kudos than the one after it and i don't understand why. i have written better fics lmfao! y'all are just nasty. and honestly i appreciate that.

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? i try to always respond, but sometimes it gets away from me! i just really appreciate people taking the time to leave a comment, and i want to show that appreciation.

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? i don't think any of mine have been angsty!

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending? they're all happy, but it might be you outshined the best there was just because of the nature of the story. soft dads, seen from mickey's perspective as he grows into fatherhood over the course of a year, but also so, so plotless. soft!

7. Do you write crossovers? no and i doubt i ever will. one of my very favorite conversations though is when my husband and i insert characters from other media we like into star trek tng or ds9. it's so dumb and so funny. lmao what if i wrote it

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic? yeah! once, on one of my favorite fics, ligature. they told me i should sterilize myself because i'm glorifying abuse by writing bdsm, it's a good read

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? i almost exclusively write smut! nasty and loving. i don't know how to describe it but whenever i think i've written something disgusting i inevitably get comments about how sweet it is. which, yeah, it's not like they're mutually exclusive ways to fuck. so yeah, sweet and dirty husbands

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen? i don't think so! i mean i hope not

11. Have you ever had a fic translated? nope!

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before? i haven't, but i've collaborated on a couple of projects with my dear friend @heymrspatel! i wrote and she made art for cinematic and honeycomb. cinematic was more julissa making art for parts i'd already written, but honeycomb especially was a collaborative process with the way that a bunch of what i wrote was based on things that julissa was visualizing for her art, so parts of it did feel like co-writing. it was the most fun i've had working on anything!

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship? don't make me choose between the angel who fell in love with a faithless man, and the closeted thug who fell in love with the kid who had it bad for him and ultimately had the most satisfying ending. destiel and gallavich are both such incredibly compelling ships!! aahhh!!

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? if there's something i'm not going to finish, it's generally because it became something i didn't want to work on anymore.

15. What are your writing strengths? describing physical sensation and emotional impact, dialogue

16. What are your writing weaknesses? exposition

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? i like evie's idea of just indicating that they've switched to another language without actually writing the language out

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for? gallavich

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to? i really want to write destiel smut. i think the nonhuman element could be fun to play with. i've read a lot of grace sex and that shit is soooooo. hot. i want to try my hand at it.

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written? this changes so often! one i come back to a lot is chapter two of 2022's kinktober collection, the prompts were wax & "yeah, that's it baby, just like that" and i wrote some wax play and i suppose cockwarming although it's not tagged as such. i also really fucking love lush, it's inspired by one of julissa's pieces and it's drunk lovemaking and breathplay. i also need to shout out a newer one, beauty in simplicity from this year's kinktober collection. mickey getting his ass eaten on the kitchen table. there's three fics! i don't care!

tagging @howlinchickhowl @whatwouldmickeydo @whatthebodygraspsnot @gallawitchxx @ohkate @sam-loves-seb @sisitrip @crossmydna @thisdivorce @mmmichyyy @arrowflier if you guys feel like playing 🖤

[leaawrites]

Two Graves, One Filled

By L.J. Bierende

When my affection fades

My sophrosyne will return

And the habromania turns into shame

Treating back into the safe yearn

Cause no name fits your lips better than mine

Not when you’ve already called it a hundred times;

But familiarity breeds contempt

And so my words start erasing themselves

In order to be only found in your grave

Cause I know you will take them with you there;

If only you could see me now

Leaving my body to rot in this faithless land

Following the path that leads me to the one who knows

How to fish my heart out of the corpse by hand.

If you follow the trail I leave

My blood soaked hands will bring you down

Staining the white fabric until I can’t breath

Cause even in between the hits you’ve blown

I never wanted to make you know me more

Than what I knew you could love me for;

I have prayed for years to fall into the fire without burning

Hoping for a cure against the heat of passion

Saving myself from the heart-formed mourning

And these people’s severe obsession

With hiding behind the trees in my garden

Just to find a hint of something forbidden

And tell it their friend in pleasure of saying

That they were right when I will finally be starving.

When there is nothing left to feed my soul

And still the hunger of lust in this gauche isolation

I put myself withing when winning the goal

Of convincing the jury that there was a sound within the auscultation

One that proved we had two hearts beating together

“But where is it now?” They ask while we quiver;

No melody could project the one we used to carry around

Two hearts intertwined like red strings in a story

Fooling the others won’t help us out

We have to break the silence before it breaks free;

I visit the graveyard where the two headstone stand

One damaged by natures flow and cruel intention

I lay myself inside the one that’s still waiting to be sentenced dead

Hoping that I can finally let you go from my prehension.

[jewishrizahawkeye]

hello! welcome back to my FMA Characters as Taylor Swift albums!!! previous albums are here:

debut, fearless (taylor’s version), speak now (taylor’s version), RED (taylor’s version), 1989 (taylor’s version), 𝔯𝔢𝔭𝔲𝔱𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫, 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓇

now, let’s all escape into the woods where we live in a cabin and write with a quill pen and wander the moors:

𝒇𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒍𝒐𝒓𝒆

Riza Hawkeye

- folklore is taylor's first forey into not writing completely autobiographically. she is still writing about herself though but projecting that onto fictional characters she's creating (mecore affffffffff).

- the loose story of the album is, you guessed it, folklore or tall tales. stories that are timeless and are passed down from generation to generation, across cultures and worlds to one another for everyone to relate to or learn from. the album discusses a lot of different topics that everyone can relate to or feel connected to in some way as they're not unique feelings and are universal. she does this in a truly achingly beautiful way and is beautiful.

- if you haven't listened to the LPSS version, do it. SO FUCKING GOOD AND MY TEARS RICOCHET HURTS SO MUCH

- BUT the album fits a lot of riza's character and story as almost all of it can be linked to her past or life at most points either in the story or in stuff implied prior to the start of the story

- seven being about her as a child and that innocence that she yearns for again

- if you're a royai shipper (great taste) august and illicit affairs can be read in the context of her and roy having a secret relationship together and the feelings tied into that.

- august being how she can't have more with roy because of their individual goals but still being hopelessly in love

- illicit affairs being about the feelings that comes over time with having a secret relationship and the pain and anger you feel but can't stop (and that's the thing about illicit affairs and clandestine meetings and longing stares they're stolen from one single glance but THEY DIE AHD THEY DIE AND THEY DIE a million little times...)

- mirrorball ties into riza not really knowing herself or what to do. more of a popular fan interpretation though there is evidence of this based on the brief scenes we get of younger her and joining the army because she believes in roy's idyllic ideas of the military. riza herself doesn't fully know herself and mirrorball perfectly encapsulates that

- in addition to that, this is me trying is, in my opinion, the sister song to mirrorball. the song is about how you're kind of at this low and awful point but you're TRYING to be better. to keep fighting and moving on despite everything that makes you want to just stop it all. this connects to riza with similar things that i said in mirrorball. she doesn't fully see or know herself outside of roy. she doesn't believe she deserves to live and only finds meaning and value through roy himself and his future goals. she has stated twice that if he wasn't alive she wouldn't want to be alive. everyday she is actively trying to keep going and fight, even during the promised day she remarks that she needs to keep going when she was just bleeding out 30 minutes ago because she sees roy is still willing to fight despite losing his eyesight not even fifteen minutes ago.

- epiphany is also riza coded but i don't feel comfortable analyzing it and discussing it based on what the songs about. so if you want to know what i mean listen to the song and you'll understand what i mean.

- mad woman is the battle with lust *tips cowboy hat*

- i could very much go on and on and on and i will! hoax with the fucking quotes like

• "don't want no other shade of blue but you" and "your faithless loves the only hoax believe in" and "i am ash from your fire" ARE YOU KIDDING MEEEEEEEEEEE

- okay okay you probably get the picture by this point. in conclusion folklore is heavily riza coded and is another piece of evidence in my "taylor swift kins riza hawkeye" crack theory. also riza needs therapy

- like riza SPECIFICALLY just fixed herself after each traumatic event with super glue and duck tape and is only holding on at this rate through sheer force and her superior officer/boyfriends dumbass ways

[consultingwives]

A work for the @ineffableidiotsbigbang!

Essentially a 10k word excuse to put these two in some very picturesque landscapes and have them marvel at nature and the beauty of the world :> also some jokes about Australia, cameos from my hometown, and more Icelandic fjords than one might consider strictly practical.

[ticcitavvi]

I beg you to go read this fic if you are a fan of Gimli x Legolas, or even if you view them as purely platonic. It’s genuinely one of the best, most poetic, heartfelt stories I’ve read in a long time.

There’s one more chapter yet to be posted from the looks of it, and I can’t wait to read more

description:

Long has the Sea Longing tormented Legolas. Now all his mortal friends save Gimli are dead and gone on to their mortal fates, and there is little left to hold him to the shores of Middle-earth—but there is enough, for Legolas vowed long ago that while Gimli lived, he would not leave him.

But Legolas no longer knows who Gimli is.

The weight of the Sea Longing has pressed too long upon his mind, and his memories have eroded beneath it. He no longer knows why the Sea calls him, nor where it is that his soul so yearns to go. He is trapped between an oath he no longer remembers and an urge to depart that he forever forgets, lost like driftwood in the circling currents of his own mind.

If he is to ever find his way across the Sundering Sea to the white shores that await him, someone else will have to steer him to the Straight Road. Someone who will guide his faltering feet to the harbors of the Undying Lands, where living mortals may not go, even should such a journey mean the end of their own mortal life.

Who else, but Gimli Lockbearer?

[myfavouritelunatic]

The Faithless and The Powerful

This fic was a most welcome surprise! Birthed from one off hand comment in an epic chat with some wonderful friends (eyeing you with great affection @thrillofhope @scriberated and @theriverwild 😘 dedicated to you three with my sincerest thanks ❤️)

May I present my Dark Priest!Sauron fic...

Summary: Galadriel has been summoned back to Númenor in the island's most dire hour. A mysterious figure has enthralled the newly instated king and his many misguided followers.

The she-elf knows Sauron must be behind it, and soon will discover just how much.

But what else might she discover... and unleash... about herself?

Word Count: *coughs* 19.5k - my longest oneshot EVER. WTF.

Warnings: Angst, unresolved tension that definitely gets resolved, cult like behaviour, manipulation, LOTS OF SMUT, public execution and patricide to boot. Oh and just the downfall of Numenor. No biggie. Brace yourselves lol.

Enjoy! 🖤

[metamatar]

I don't know the word vomit I did in your inbox earlier is savarna guilt. Holy shit that would be pathetic, wouldn't it? Fuck.

hey anon, i feel like you wouldn't want me to publish your previous ask. sorry i took a while to get to this! what i'd say about your sense of what replaces what religion did for you viz community is this –

not all ritual has to be rooted in caste and a commitment to destroying hinduism is not one to never celebrate a fall harvest festival, which most of the religious holidays this month are. many of these festivals are synthesizing and appropriating preexisting community traditions and the hindutva project is trying to standardise them into an upper caste form – local dalit communities will have different and meaningful practices and traditions. i recommend studying nastika, shaivite, bhakti, buddhist, sikh and all sorts of anti caste traditions from the subcontinent – resisting caste is hundreds of years old and you will find something worthwhile and joyful. you will find rituals to revive and reinvent and remix. this does not have to be a lonely path! guilt does not seem productive, your emotions do not your contribution to a movement make. read and watch movies w your friends and join up with your local amdekarites!

all that said. maybe im the wrong person to answer these questions. im godless and faithless. the clean honesty of it appeals to me. many many people lose their faith across the world, everyday. they thrive. when the old world dies and the new one is born, there is always hurt and longing and pain. it is a worthwhile struggle and you will wonder after how you lived any other way tbh.