#Happy to finally write it for someone

[bluerosefox]

F*ck Forgiveness. I Want Vengeance.

Hmmmm

Another DeadTired idea. And Ghost King Danny with Consort Tim.

Tim dies a bitter ended death with the Batfam (Maybe during his RR run and isn't caught by Dick when he is kicked out of WE window? Or its in the future where his relationship between the bats is bad.)

So yeah Tim dies. And wakes in the Infinite Realms and learns to unlive in that Realm and gained a wonderful afterlife.

And somehow manages to gain the attention of the Ghost King, King Phantom and somehow manages to become his Consort after some adorable ghost courting.

Despite the fact he's been dead for like a few months in his original Realms timeline, time in the Infinite Realms is more ocean like than riverish, Tim has been happily married to his husband for what feels like eons.

So Tim was not, very very not happy when his ghost is suddenly pulled away from his anniversary dinner and stuffed back into his body.

He hears yelling and fighting, wakes to see the Bats fighting League Assassins while Batman is fighting Ra's in rage.

And Tim.

He isn't happy at all.

He already figured it out, connected the dots.

Oh Ra's was going to regret bringing him back. The Bats, and he KNOWS they should had respected his last wishes to be fucking cremated, ashes scattered in space, so THIS wouldn't had happened.

Cause Tim wasn't playing around anymore.

[simkoos]

hey so i've been working on a lot of things (and also second guessing myself a lot because perfectionism) but here's some very random sneak peeks if y'all are interested!!

[nabaath-areng]

All is full of love.

[shadownox]

457 Soulmate AU, where one soulmate feels emotions and the other feels physical. Gihun feels Inho's emotions (mostly painful in later years) while Inho feels all of Gihuns physical pain (also painful in later years when he gets beat up)

During Inho's game in 2015, Gihun for a week straight, felt a wave of intense emotions ranging from fear to desperation before finally anger. Then, at the end, he feels the rippling grief so intense he blacks out. After that he doesn't feel anything anymore because Inho cut off his emotions completely becoming the Frontman and Gihun is left feeling empty for the next five years.

On the other side, Inho still feels all of Gihun's physical pain (because you cant block that out) until one day he feels a persistent and very painful slap on his left cheek that makes him realize his soulmate is most likely one of the new players.

Imagine how season one would change.

[hitlikehammers]

This Is Your Life (¿ǝɟı˥ ɹno⅄ sıɥ⊥ sI)

Steve Harrington never thought he’d end up like his parents. He never thought he’d allow his life end up like this.

…but did it really?

He wants to grab for his wallet: he knows there’s gotta be pictures there, he always knew if he did become a dad he’d be that dad and maybe he can’t fucking grasp how he’s here, how it all went wrong, but he, it’s… He can’t have gotten it this wrong; he might have fucked up the love of his life, somehow—and he knows that’s what it was, the one, came out of nowhere and made him feel more than anything he’d ever known his chest could hold: he might have failed the soft brown curls he can feel against his cheek with his eyes closed, but he’s shaky on the smell of them, the scent of this person he knows that he loved, fuck, no, he knows that he still loves—but he can believe that part. He doesn’t want to believe it, really thought this was different, feels it in his chest that this was so different, and this time was forever—but Steve’s history speaks for itself. Doesn’t matter if he doesn’t want to think it fell apart—again. But. That said: he swore he’d never be his own parents. He can’t have gone and failed this bad, with his own kids—

rating: t ♥️ tags: post S4, established relationship (?), drama, introspection, angst (?) with a happy ending (!), steve harrington and the inescapable reality of becoming your parents no matter how hard you try, (it IS inseparable, right?), creeper hitting on a sad divorcé at the bar, SINCERE APOLOGIES TO PEOPLE NAMED A NAME MALIGNED HEREIN SOLELY FOR PLOT PURPOSES

for @steddielovemonth Day Twelve—“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.”―The Sandman —

“You look like you shouldn’t be alone.”

Steve, actually, feels like he should definitely be alone. Certainly isn’t looking for company from this random, hair-slicked-back, not-even-being-subtle-about-the-sleaze stranger.

Who sees fit to put his hand on the back of the empty chair across from where Steve sits.

Alone.

“I meant,” and his voice is…soft, but like he wants something. Soft like he means to pull you in. Steve doesn’t fucking need this, not tonight. “Are you waiting for someone?”

Steve wants to laugh. Steve wants to throw his glass and watch it shatter, watch the other patrons of this fairly high-end restaurant gasp and clutch their pearls for it.

He wants to know how he ended up here. How his story unfolded to this. He knows there was a time when they were happy. When he was happy. Lots of memories of being unhappy, especially when he was a kid, but Steve knows in his bones there was happiness, there was lov—

“Hmm,” the stranger hasn’t figured out he’s unwelcome yet, apparently; Steve tries sipping his drink as a hint.

It has the opposite effect.

“Ah,” the man watches Steve’s hand, then points: “it’s been a while, but you still remember the weight, no?”

Steve makes the mistake of taking his eye off this nuisance of a human to follow the pointing: he grabbed for his drink from the left.

Yeah, he does still keep his presently-empty ring finger the slightest bit off the glass. Like a habit.

Motherfucker.

“Children?” the stranger who absolutely cannot take the goddamn hint presses on, too curious, too poised at innocence to be wholly genuine.

Steve doesn’t know what could have possibly given him away—he knows he looks run through the wringer, but kids, there wouldn’t be a tell for the kids in his wrinkled suit, his mussed-up hair from running his fingers through it, greasier than he ever allowed before, tie rumpled and half-undone, what—

His right thumb catches his eye, just out the corner: nail polish. He didn’t have the heart to take it off, and, well. There’s a little corner of Barbie pink on the inside of the tip, hanging on months later. Taunting him.

Must be pretty quality stuff.

“How old?”

And Steve’s lips part, he intends to answer actually because the drive in him to tell this asshole it’s none of his business and that he needs to fuck off was strangled in a second at the thought of the girls, his three girls, the six little nuggets he always dreamed of, plus one more besides as a bonus, a fucking gift, and maybe it’ll hurt less in the long run to say anything about them to a faceless person he’ll never see again, so he intends to answer, but…

Suddenly he can barely form a coherent thought about his kids, it all hurts too much—like the burning, the wetness caught on his lashes; like that’s flooding full-on in his own mind’s eye as much as his lungs all at once.

He wants to grab for his wallet: he knows there’s gotta be pictures there, he always knew if he did become a dad he’d be that dad and maybe he can’t fucking grasp how he’s here, how it all went wrong, but he, it’s…

He can’t have gotten it this wrong; he might have fucked up the love of his life, somehow—and he knows that’s what it was, the one, came out of nowhere and made him feel more than anything he’d ever known his chest could hold: he might have failed the soft brown curls he can feel against his cheek with his eyes closed, but he’s shaky on the smell of them, the scent of this person he knows that he loved, fuck, no, he knows that he still loves—but he can believe that part. He doesn’t want to believe it, really thought this was different, feels it in his chest that this was so different, and this time was forever—but Steve’s history speaks for itself. Doesn’t matter if he doesn’t want to think it fell apart—again. But.

That said: he swore he’d never be his own parents. He can’t have gone and failed this bad, with his own kids—

“She took them?”

Steve turns—he hadn’t been looking at the pestering asshole, had kind of forgotten he was there. Steve stares at him a little open-mouthed; blinks. The fuck is he talking about—

But it makes sense. Steve got his picket fence and his gaggle of Harringtons, maybe only got a handful of their trips across the country under their belts before it went to shit, before Steve fucked it up like it was always in his blood to do: lost his marriage. Lost his kids.

“For Henry?”

Finally, the man turns away, automatic: so that’s his name. That’s the only reason anyone looks so quick.

Steve…doesn’t know any Henry, but he bristles to hear it anyway. Like a…a back-of-the-mind instinct that it’s a bad name for bad people.

Maybe it’s just the fact that he’s obviously had too much to drink, for now fuzzy him mind is proving; for how quick his eyes are to sting in public—for how much of a mess he is.

How much of a mess it all is—

“Let me grab that, but,” and the man, this Henry, he gestures to Steve’s glass of mostly-melted-ice; “what were you drinking?”

“Old Fashioned.”

Steve’s voice is metal on gravel. He licks his lips.

“I’ll bring you back another,” this Henry, he thinks he can touch Steve’s shoulder as he walks away.

Once he’s reached the bar and shoots Steve a…deeply discomforting smile as he waits on the second drink and—

Steve doesn’t remember what he had been drinking.

But he knows in his core, somehow, that it wasn’t an Old Fashioned.

“Shame they can’t just turn the music off,” Henry slides the drink Steve’s way before sliding back into the seat he was never invited to sit in in the first place; “not loud enough to really hear is it,” and where he’s started the out-of-fucking-left-field comment with more annoyance than Steve thinks it warranted, he hadn’t even noticed there was music playing until now; “but not strong enough to make an impression.”

Henry ends with more…satisfaction, and weirdly, kinda like self-satisfaction, and fuck but this guy’s weird as shit.

“Oh, unlike the drink,” Henry laughs, shifts the mood—or tries to—after a sip of whatever he’s got for himself and he laughs…too forced. Too much like a game, and unsettling for it when Steve doesn’t know the rules, let alone the playbook.

And honestly, Steve is more interested in the music, now, than his unsavory tablemate.

“You were talking about your children,” Henry leans close his arm extended like it wants to grab for Steve’s in something comforting, too presumptuous—Steve moves that closest arm to grab his glass, but not to lift it.

“I’d rather not,” he says as flippant as he can because he doesn’t want to go back to the hurting, to the lack of anything to hold to in remembering that’s still closer to the surface than the actual face of his kids, his kids—

“Don’t see them much,” Henry says, kinda…tuts, like he’s regretful on Steve’s account, and it’s less a question than an observation, but Steve’s face must do something without his permission at those words because to en Henry’s got this too-bright, too eager sympathy painted all over him before he starts damn-near cooing:

“Oh,” he says, breathy, sour at the back of Steve’s mouth somehow; “oh you poor thing, you’re not even in their lives? Barely remember them sometimes, no?” And the weird thing is…he sounds too invested, yeah, but not just like a creepy fucker looking to maybe take a sad sap to bed. It’s…

It’s different.

“Like they never existed.”

Steve doesn’t understand why of all the things this asshole says, it’s that that shakes him, that trips in his pulse in a way he can feel, and hard.

He stares, jaw clenched, at the unsampled drink still in his hand: whiskey.

Like your eyes, sweetheart, just like whiskey in the morning sun, magic and full of their own perpetual light—

“She took the house, I bet,” Henry sighs, shaking his head, while Steve shakes his own from the voice that had floated at the back of his mind through to the front, close, so close and so fucking clear; “your white picket fence. Your Winnebago.”

And he looks over Steve’s shoulder like he’s really aiming at sympathizing, but…

Something about those exact words seems too precise. Lights something up in Steve’s wobbly memories—but the light feels old. Like it’s a thing he did know, once; followed and looked to, but…changed course.

And how the fuck does this jackass know that Steve maybe wanted, ever, or thought he could have wanted but knew it was a past want, a no-longer-want—in the marrow of his bones he knows the way he’s remembers it, if he is remembering it, he knows the last time it left if lips he didn’t mean it anymore, he’d turned toward wanting something else, something somehow more—

His chest feels stretched for thinking all of it through and…something equally uncertain and shimmering, just out of reach: that part knows this.

And is very fucking suspicious of how this fucker sitting across from him knew about a fucking Winnebago he doesn’t even want anymore?

“Love,” Henry, fucking, yes, Steve is now 100% convinced that that’s a bad name, it’s a bad name that means a bad person, his brain might be fuzzy right now but he knows that part: “even if it werereal,” and he says is almost dreamily but more mocking, kinda, but he’s…he’s not sincere in it. At least not the hints at empathy.

Steve knows he’s being played, even without having the rule book. Even without knowing the game.

“It’s never quite enough, is it.”

It’s not a question. But still. Nonetheless.

Love isn’t enough?

Wrong.

That he knows deeper than any narrow. Closer to the soul of him than of the other things his brain has thought it’s known so far, he’s—

Wait.

Wait, why did Steve think that? Whose voice was that, in his head? A deep voice, smooth and sweet and beloved, Steve feels that undeniable in his chest—thinks it might have been the same voice as the one that talked about his eyes, and, he, it’s…

Is that what he lost, the ring not on his finger, the kids he’s apparently walked out on in every way that matters—if the voice is right, if love were enough then why is Steve, why is Steve here, now, and he’s—

It’s always enough..

It’s a man’s voice. Steve tried to think of any man in his life who would say such a thing in the first place—no family, and friends? He—

Maybe not enough to fix everything alone, but it’s the foundation, Stevie. If it really is love, then it’s more than enough to build anything out of, or back up from.

That’s a man’s voice. And it rolls through Steve’s veins like embers, like the light catching precious stones and sparkling prismatic.

Steve may not be able to place the where or the who just yet. But he knows that it’s there.

There was no ‘she’ to take anything from him, not anything that mattered, when it mattered.

It’s the weight of the memory between his lungs and his steady-pounding heart, gaining pace and punch with every breath—the first inklings of some knowing. It’s the face of kids he’d die for. It’s the knowledge in his bones they’re not the only people he’d die for, and that he’d feel his life more than well-served in doing it. More than.

Steve swirls his glass, watching the smoke from the bar haze through real crystal—thick where the cloud in his head is dissipating more every second. It’s a meta…metafort? It’s a thing that’s making a point about another thing. Illustrating it poetically, or whatever.

The smoke left in his head. The clearest thing shining through it is that voice. That voice telling him not just about love, but something crucial embedded inside: this man seated across from him.

That man is wrong.

“What did you say your name was?” Steve asks, because there’s power in redirecting someone’s attention. And Steve feels…electricity building in his body. Lightning in his limbs; familiar.

He’s on the brink of something, and if all of the losses this man is underscoring are the reflection of who Steve’s grown into, after all that he’d sworn not to become what he knew, what nearly ruined him growing up, fucked him up so bad it took another fucking dimension and its literal monsters to yank him back from the path to becoming like the monsters at his mother’s cocktail parties, his father’s business dinners—

If this man, sitting here, is still somehow who he’s become anyway?

If Steve feels on the brink of something, so fucking close—and maybe the thing he’s close to is total oblivion, to whole-on forgetting and decimating any chance of recovering the losses this fuckface across from him with his martini glass has lifted up to the light—if he’s this close?

Last time Steve can remember breaking through the disaster of his present self was swinging a bat, and swinging to crack fucking skulls.

He’s not sure what that means but he feels weirdly inclined to trust it. So…he figures: what’s the harm?

He’d very much like to break this sonofabitch’s skull in, so.

“Could have sworn you did,” Steve finally takes a sip of his refreshed drink—the single sip alone is sharp assault on his tongue, and he bites at his bottom as the taste shoot through the nerves in his limbs and the pathways in his ways and lights them all up at once, and he hears the music in the background make a bigger impact than the way his heartbeat starts picking up in his ears as he set the drink back down, and leans in on autopilot to meet the guys eyes and make sure the way every cell in his body’s waking up is real, is telling him the truth:

“Henry, right?”

The man barely blinks, just hides less a smirk now and more a grimace in the curve of his martini glass.

Fucking bingo.

The clouds are gone. The haze has fully lifted, or at least is on its way. Steve couldn’t have said how much his body felt like a wrong-sized suit before this very moment until this very moment, when it starts to feel like his own again, like this body and every scar it’s marked with belongs to him alone.

“I’m also in the mood for forgetting this evening,” Steve lowers his tone a bit, bats his lashes as subtly as he knows and then tips his chin down the look up through them, a move that’s never failed him once when he really tries:

“Could I persuade you to accompany me?”

Henry tries to play his wordless agreement cool, almost aloof, but now that Steve knows the truth of it all, now that his own mind is clear, it’s so obvious.

Motherfucker’s champing at the bit.

They make it just out the door into the half-packed parking lot before Steve pauses, looks up at the sky—notices the eerie starlessness, the shadowy-faltering veil over the ominous red of the clouds.

“It’s funny,” Steve tells the sky as his eye catches the impression of a bolt of lightning behind the shade; “what you said earlier.”

Henry hums, but it’s…it’s an impatient, or maybe unsettled, at the very least annoyed sort of sound. He wants to leave. He wants to take Steve farther from a neutral setting.

Or at least: neutral by comparison.

“About the music,” Steve tosses his head back toward the bar beyond the doorway. “Too low to really set the ambiance,” Steve agrees, because he knows the why; “but there enough to be,” Steve sucks his teeth, pretends to look for the right word: “distracting.”

Distraction.

Henry stills. Steve isn’t feel patient enough to drag this out any further, really, now that his gaze is clear.

“We knew it wouldn’t work this time, the music,” Steve taunts, feeling the adrenaline suddenly rise in his veins like an untamable force; “you’re not strong enough for it to matter, can’t even lift the tool you need for half your dirty work.”

Literally. Because Steve’s still cognizant. Steve can feel the bleed of the real world—even if he’s floating he’s not down for the count yet. And by rights, he damn well should be—based on all previous encounters.

And yet here, on top of everything, all the memory and clarity rushing back in one heartbeat, one breath—the choice of the cocktail, the song in the background wasn’t a song anyone would know, it was written for Steve and it was in the voice of its composer, probably sang at his side without any instrument to smooth it out to anything less than raw and real—

The last nail in the coffin were the eyes.

“Can barely hear at all, the state you’re in,” Steve kicks at the ankles of the man unraveling before him as the parking lot around them starts to fade into dead trees and shot-red skies; “the bats could have, if they’d made it.”

And there it is, even diminished, even rotting: Vecna’s eyes were always the same; unmistakable. Dead giveaway.

Still full of the same fucking unhinged, megalomaniacal hate.

“She took everything, didn’t she?”

Because Steve knew it didn’t sound right for him, when it was thrown at him beyond all of it being twisted and wrong—that part had felt different, and now he knows why: no woman was taking his house, was dismantling the life he was building with someone his heart belonged to, full stop.

But this sorry excuse for crawling corpse had a young woman whose buzz cut was growing back to her curls again; and she sure as shit took everything, and was poised now to come back for the stragglers and make it final. Make it done.

All this pathetic scrap of not even a man, not even a monster—this pathetic scrap of nothing really was?

Was lingering in the dead space, half-a-ghost on borrowed time.

So Steve thinks, given his role in this was always to be the bait, and to keep him preoccupied until that ill-borrowed time needed returning to its rightful owner, and what was left of Vecna had run out of it entirely—Steve thinks he’s more than entitled to kick this fucker when he’s down.

He doesn’t even feel bad when he trips the bastard up again, too uneven on his disintegrating legs to even try to fight; honesty feels kinda giddy, like he wants to laugh when the fucker let’s loose a fittingly inhuman scream when Steve jumps with both feet on what’s left of his knees, one by one.

“Never tell me my kids don’t exist,” Steve growls, enraged, half-feral at what this creature tried to sell him; “do not even suggest I don’t remember my fucking kids.”

Because Steve could never. Steve would never. He had the nuggets he used to dream of. Almost missed the gift of those shitheads, for too long, in clinging to a different version of it he’d just absorbed from what he thought was the way the world worked; hadn’t yet readjusted to knowing the world worked wholly fucking differently, and the things he heart really wanted of course would shift accordingly.

Had shifted. Goddamn perfectly.

“And it’s wild,” Steve takes a second, considers the writhing vermin on what’s given way entirely from the mirage of anything else than soggy ground, littered with dead leaves, blackened bark.

“I’m really not a whisky drinker,” Steve muses, circling the pathetic heap of this self-style god: some fucking god.

“Not yet, anyway. I’ve been told it’s a drink you have to grow into,” Steve hums consideringly, even as he catches a hand try to reach, try to grab, try to bring Steve down again and sap his energy, the lifeblood in him to steal a few more minutes, a few more gasps before the end.

Steve crushes the hand that darts out from what’s left of the wrist, unforgiving under his heel.

“But you ordered me that cocktail with bourbon,” Steve says, almost blasé, as the figure on the ground writhes and howls.

“I drank a lot, after our first round with you,” he had. Figuring out you might very well be falling in love with someone when that someone’s not guaranteed to make it through the night for too many nights in a row takes a goddamn fucking toll. “Only time I’ve ever touched bourbon,” and it’d been top-shelf shit, his dad didn’t keep anything less on hand:

“Only time I ever will.”

Maybe Steve could grow into enjoying another kind of whiskey in the future but…that taste was always going to be tied to the heart-pounding nightmares, the bitter fear of unmitigated loss.

“Really throws me out of the moment here and now, though, y’know?” Steve makes a point of crushing every individual finger on the hand he’s still got under one shoe with the other. For insurance. “Takes me back somewhere else.”

When the cretin slowly quiets his yelping to heavy panting—and Steve is not above admiring to himself that he does weight crushing his windpipe next because Steve’s not a vicious person, he’s not violent like that but this animal nearly cost them everything, nearly cost him everything.

Might still, if Steve can’t get back out of this half-mindfuck, half-hellscape.

He really, really thinks about it.

“You fucker,” he desires to hiss, to lean down little and catch those wrathful eyes; “you really thought you had me, didn’t you.”

And the second hand tried to shout up to take Steve by the neck, but Steve’s faster, not least because he’s not coming apart at whatever stands in for the cells of a reconstituted corpse multiple times over. He knocks that arm away hard enough to snap something clean enough to echo, and then takes his time repeating the through crushing of wrist, finger, finger, finger, finger, thumb.

And then, because the screaming isn’t load enough for Steve’s liking just now, not for this monster, he decides to see if there’s anything in the crotch area left of this wrinkled ballsack of a man. It never really looked like it, the few times Steve had seen him in full, in better days for his…already-rotting body…thing.

But the pitch of the agony that rings out when Steve grinds his heel down in that general anatomical…area must mean there’s still something.

It’s something like the middle of that scream that Steve catches under his shoe at what’s left of the neck he wanted to crush before but now…now it’s just pressure. Painful. Inconvenience, dialed up to Eleven.

“What’s wrong, Henry?” Steve taunts, meets those eyes with what he knows, means to be a crazed fucking grin:

“Never heard of a Piggyback?”

And those hate-filled go wide, go fearful.

Fucking excellent.

“El, take him!” Steve cries out and feels a seismic wave knock him far from where he was standing, but he’s still grinning wide when he lands far in a heap, knocked hard but…this was the plan.

Everything goes dark very fast after he crumples in the ground, hears mostly yelling—rage and pain, triumph and total decimation—and it’s the last thing he does hear, might be the e last thing he hears ever, save for a desperate cry of one word before it all fucking fades:

“Steve!”

🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

…..tbc??😬🫠

SERIOUSLY: I have nothing against people named Henry! I promise! 🫠

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @ajeff855 @allmyfavoritethingsinoneblog @anthrobrat @askitwithflours @awkwardgravity1 @bookworm0690 @bumblebeecuttlefishes @captain--low @depressed-freak13 @disrespectedgoatman @dragoon-ze-great @dreamercec @dreamwatch @dreamy-jeans137 @estrellami-1 @eternal-sunflowers @friendlyneighborhoodgaycousin @goodolefashionedloverboi @grtwdsmwhr @gunsknivesandplaid @hiei-harringtonmunson @hbyrde36 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @kimsnooks @live-laugh-love-dietrich @madigoround @mensch-anthropos-human @nerdyglassescheeseychick @notaqueenakhaleesi @ollyxar @pearynice @perseus-notjackson @pretend-theres-a-name-here

divider credit here and, oddly, also me!

[sawceelcd]

id like to think that at some point in loki’s vast attempts at getting the loom to work he knew he would take a while so he just decided “fuck it” and him and mobius finally got their kiss

(please turn that into a fanfic im too lazy to write plus i suck ass at it)

[feelthesturmanddrangintheair]

On Nosferatu and Dracula, Mina & Ellen

I loved Nosferatu but I hate the online discourse about it. It’s literally making me crazy. This is a pic of all of you bitches right now:

I have a huge problem with literal readings of this movie at all. It’s obviously not the point of the damned thing. But, Ellen/Thomas shippers, I'm coming for you now.

I’ve noticed people online, on tiktok, tumblr etc, shipping Ellen/Thomas the exact same way I’ve seen Mina/Jonathan since Dracula Daily. And the Mina thing already frustrated me, but the Ellen one makes me crazy.

(they’re not the same character)

But I guess I understand the instinct?

Modern vampire media is obsessed with the male vampire as the sexual/romance object. Twilight, Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Buffy. (Interview with a vampire doesn’t count (lol count) cause it’s all from Vamp perspective. Also it's profoundly gay). (However Anne Rice does get enormous kudos for basically dragging the vampire from hammer horror into boyfriend material, so it is relevant i guess?).

The modern approach is that the subtext has become text “Yes we do like dracula and we do want to fuck him thank you very much”.

It’s always been the subtext of Victorian vampire stories - which were riffing off the already dark, brooding male figures in literature before that (Rochester, Byronic heroes, also Byron) and combining them with Eastern folk tales. In the original Dracula Mina and her plucky group of fuckbois slay the vampire. He is defeated and good Christian morals are preserved.

However, Dracula is that bitch - he’s an object of fascination for everyone in the book, especially Mina. The title of the book is “Dracula” not “Jonathan Harker is a good husband actually”. 

In the late 19th century gothic literature, the vampire and the monster was The Other. They were feared but also hypnotic - a beguiling, seductive other. Some women gave in to such temptation (Lucy) and some stood stoic in the face of it (Mina). But the temptation was still there. That is why it is powerful to triumph over it.

The Text: Dracula is scary and we shall defeat him The Subtext: But also don’t you think Dracula is kinda sexy?

That is and remains the subtext in all good gothic horror novels of the 19th century: you don’t literally want to fuck death or a monster but also, maybe in your subconscious, you kinda want to fuck death. You might want to fuck the monster. Maybe you want to be bad.

So when movies began making vampire stories - Dracula, Nosferatu - this theme became stronger in the visual medium. The monster was sexual, and the tension of the film was always the push and pull of attraction and horror between it and the fair maiden.

Later in the 20th century, it became more explicit, like everything else. Sexy vampire movies and exploitation movies in the 70s give way to Francis Ford Coppola’s ridiculous, fantastic, opulent “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” in the 1990s. A film that labors with every breath to faithfully adapt the novel, then throws that labour away to turn Mina into Dracula’s reincarnated soul mate. I find this movie perplexing but fabulous. I have watched it probably 6 times in the past 3 years.

And then the 2000s teen vampire obsession. You have Buffy obviously, with her litany of vampire boyfriends (I’m a Spike fan - Angel is BORING). Hilariously for this discussion, Buffy is a slayer who dates vampires, so it’s less Mina/Dracula and more Van Helsing/Dracula. 

(huh there is a market for that)

But where Buffy took what Anne Rice did and turned it into a weekly fun drama for teens (and tweens who probably should not have been watching), Stephanie Meyer evolves the vampire again. Twilight exploded the Vampire Boyfriend into the mainstream. In the early 2010s you couldn’t escape YA vampire and monster boyfriend fiction. You even had the CW jumping on board with The Vampire Diaries ffs

So after Twilight, wanting to fuck a vampire or monster became somewhat mainstream.

In the 2020s, vampires being the main love interest has fully transcended the subtext from the original stories. The monster has become a protective puppy in our beds. Say it with me “We have defanged the vampire”. And like all big, crazy trends, eventually they run out of steam and become unfashionable. There is nothing particularly shocking left to milk from this archetype. Vampires became dull, untrendy, old news. They were supplanted by dystopias and fairy courts.

(I think ACOTAR is more honest about what readers actually want - most people aren’t monster fuckers. Most people’s interest in vampire erotica is rooted in a powerful, sexy, somewhat feminine man magicking you away from your hum-drum life. Twilight is the dishonest version of ACOTAR. ACOTAR says “Yeah we just wanna fuck Howl from Howls Moving Castle leave me alone”)

I digress.

Dracula Daily started in 2021. A simple idea: using substack, send the text of Dracula out, on the timeline that matches the epistolary novel’s dates. Tumblr being tumblr, we latch on and from 2022, the yearly run of Dracula Daily is an integral part of the tumblr experience. 

Like a book club with thousands of members, Tumblr has basically conducted a multi-year close reading and textual analysis of Dracula.

What has been most surprising is the volume of readers who have discovered the incredible character of Mina, and her sweet and strong relationship with Jonathan.

I think, in comparison to the often milquetoast relationship between these two on screen (I'll call it the cuckification of Jonathan) and the reduction often of Mina to a swooning maiden, Stoker’s original text is a revelation. 

In the book, Mina is a headstrong, intelligent and resourceful operator. Without her, the group would have failed and Dracula would have England in his thrall. The men around her respect her. She works tirelessly to save Jonathan in the first place, then England.

Jonathan and Mina make an excellent team - once reunited, her determination to extinguish the thing that killed Lucy, and his first-hand knowledge combines to help defeat him. A now oft-quoted section shows that when Mina has been bitten and is in Dracula’s thrall Jonathan writes:

“To one thing I have made up my mind: if we find out that Mina must be a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land alone. I suppose it is thus that in old times one vampire meant many; just as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for their ghastly ranks.”

Very sweet stuff. Very wife-guy. Isn’t Mina lucky?

So we now have so much fandom for Mina and Jonathan.

And it’s very sweet and interesting - it’s presented often as a radical, subversive take “I think Dracula sucks and is abusive. Mina and Jonathan belong together!”. It’s a classic “only on tumblr would this be considered a radical take”. But also “Only in the 21st century is this a radical take”.

It’s like Christine/Raoul shippers in the POTO fandom (I am one but however it’s because I truly do not think Christine is right for Erik. Read the masterwork “A Stroll on Sunday” that’s what I want for poor Erik). There’s nothing wrong with thinking the canonical breeding pair are well-suited; however the fixation on them and vilification of the interloping monster is perhaps missing the point of the entire text.

I’m so sorry Tumblr, thinking Mina should be with her Good Christian Husband Jonathan is not a life-altering take. Tumblr has subverted too close to the sun and started reinforcing Victorian values. We/Tumblr should be studied in a lab I stg. The brain gymnastics involved in this one is too insane.

And now we’re seeing this bleed into the Nosferatu discussion. I really liked and agreed with a lot of what Princess said in her video about Nosferatu & the Gothic Appetite:

But to bring this shipping focus to Nosferatu, is even more insane. Eggers' Nosferatu is far more focused on Ellen’s connection to Orlok than Dracula/Mina in the original Dracula text. I really liked what Eggers' said in this interview:

“In the novel, Stoker’s Dracula is seemingly moving to London, to England, for world domination. And, but this is all a demon-lover story. Ya know, Orlok is going to Wisborg for Ellen and no other reason. And that, that’s more interesting to me as a storyteller”

Nosferatu is different to Dracula in that it strips the vampire-hunting gang out of the text. It takes a lot of the unnecessary excess of the text and pairs it down to a fairy tale. One town, cut down the plot, remove excess characters, keep it simple. For me, I feel the result is way more focused than the original plot (and the Coppola movie).

Instead of Quincy, Seward and Arthur you just have Friederich. And Friederich is not a valiant hero like our noble trio. Instead of friendship and brother’s in arms saving the day, Friederich abandons Ellen and Thomas and succumbs to the monster. There is so much more darkness and despair in Ellen’s story because of this change. 

Those changes centralize the relationship between Ellen and Orlok in a way Dracula never did. It also does it in a less shit way then the Coppola film with its terrible reincarnation storyline.  

With Ellen and Orlok central, the Ellen/Thomas argument makes even less sense. Ellen cares about Thomas of course, she doesn’t want any harm to come to him.

But she also says to him “You could never please me as he could”. 

Thomas symbolises the status quo - a husband who leaves you to go to work, to ignore your strangeness and potentially also flatten it. Ellen says “It all ended when I first met my Thomas”. She grew up abnormal, supernatural and sexual - she alienated her father and family, and had a connection to a supernatural ancient demon during her teenage years. But the presence of Thomas removed that.

Some may see that as a saving grace - symbolising Thomas’ love as healing and protecting Ellen from the forces of darkness. That is a fairly simple, Christian reading - the healing love of matrimony and gender norms. However, you can also see this as a squashing of her powers and uniqueness. As Von Franz says:

“In heathen times you might have been a Great Priestess of Isis. Yet, in this strange and modern world your purpose is of greater worth.”

He does not view Ellen’s powers as an affliction but as matter-of-fact and part of who she is. He reframes those powers as something different - not a curse or possession. He compares her to the respected priestesses of an old world. 

Ellen chafes against the role of the good, noble wife. She does not want to be an angel in the house, and she does not want to be left at home while Thomas works. She clearly enjoys the honeymoon part of the marriage. The first scene we have between them Thomas gets ready to leave for work, leaving Ellen in bed crying: “The honeymoon was yet too short!”

It’s a Romeo and Juliet style scene - Thomas trying to leave the bedchamber as he must, and Ellen trying to convince him to stay and enjoy their married life. Thomas, like Romeo, does not realise the horrors that await him.

When he returns and tells her he must go away on a business trip, her reaction is less romantic and more frantic: she throws down the lilacs he bought her and eventually shrieks “Can’t you see that it doesn’t matter? If you leave nothing will matter!”

Throughout the movie Ellen fights Thomas leaving with everything she has. She has premonitions, she knows nothing good will come of his trip. She does not want to be a little wife and does not want to be left behind in domesticity. 

(this is in contrast to Anna and Friederich, who are blissfully happy in a traditional marriage. He talks of his sexual appetite, she produces babies for him. He runs a shipping business, she stays at home with their children. He is brash, masculine and doesn’t listen. She is sweetness and light, hosts their guests and never causes trouble. And they both die. Their goodness, their adherence to Christian values does not save them)

Ellen however plays the part of the hysterical woman. She does not remain quiet, she does not remain sweetness and light. She has fits, she is hypersexual, she speaks her mind and speaks about death.

If you watch Nosferatu and think Ellen would be happy as Thomas’ little wife at any point, I think you have missed the point. Thomas’ personality or qualities are besides the point - he is part of patriarchy, part of status-quo living, part of her subjugation and squashing her into a role she could never fit into. She says as much when he returns and they have their infamous fight by the fire:

“Well, where is it? Your money? Your promotion? Your house? Where is that which is so precious to you? Have you paid back kind Harding your debt? Have you repaid him with this plague that infects his wife?”

She is furious that she warned him not to leave her, that he did and the bad thing happened. That he seemingly sacrificed their love for a sack of gold. Women, in parts of culture and history, blocked from seeking work and income of their own, were therefore subjected to their spouses ambition and therefore neglect. If she was happy with having less materially, and more in her marriage, that was not a decision for her to make. Her husband made it, and the consequence was being left to her loneliness with an increasing brood of children to take care of.

Ellen does not want this. She spends the entire movie telling Thomas this. And at no point does he get it.

I think this is why it's so important that Orlok says:

“It is not me. It is your own nature… Love is inferior to you. I told you, you are not of Human kind… I am an appetite, nothing more”

Orlok is a symbol of all of Ellen that is not able to be seen, heard or appreciated in her world. She has an appetite of her own, love is inferior to power and control. In her marriage, unlike Anna’s, she is the one with the sexual appetite. She wants, she asks and calls. 

There is no future of Ellen and Thomas happily together. There is only death - either the way that played out in the film, or Orlok killing Thomas. But if Ellen and Thomas somehow defeated Orlok with both surviving, like Mina and Jonathan, I doubt they’d happily go on to have a child and name him Friederich. Ellen would leave, one way or another.

Ellen is a woman trapped in a society that does not want her, or at least wants to cut her down, contort her to the right size and shape. Reduce her expression, shut her up and leave her at home while the real men do the real work, including hunting vampires.

And this is why I find Stoker’s ending to Dracula so fucking frustrating. Mina is kept outside of the plans (for good reason - she has a channel to Dracula’s thoughts and worries he can see what she sees, but this is created by the author and so I get to critique it) and bears witness to the destruction of Dracula. While I don’t need a girlboss in every story, Mina is somewhat side-lined in this process and I don’t love it. She follows this by becoming the normal and good house wife to Jonathan and producing some progeny to name after their slain heroes.

(sidebar I think it would be more meaningful if Mina had a daughter and named her Lucy, the name of her dearest friend who was horrifically killed but don’t mind me)

Ellen is very different from Mina here. Her connection to Orlok is not the reason to keep her distance - it’s the reason she must get closer than anyone else. She takes control, speaking to Von Franz and getting what information she must to help her plan Orlok’s destruction.

Like many people, I see the final scene as both a sacred bond (a matrimony) and a heroic sacrifice. It can be both. Ellen can both know what she needs to do to save her love and the innocents around her (kill Orlok), she also knows she is the reason for their suffering (girl clean up your mess!) and knows that luckily, this is also what her dark heart has longed for.

It’s not often the thing you must do is also the thing you desperately, secretly want.

Ellen knows there’s no life after this. There’s no world where she becomes the happy mother and wife Mina Harker. There is only darkness and despair.

Eggers Nosferatu is a fairy tale that warns about the prospect for unusual, modern, sexual women. I read the ending of Dracula, of Jonathan saying “My wife is so happy now” and I think of Betty Draper shooting pigeons in the backyard. You’re telling me that educated, brilliant Mina Harker is happy being relegated to the home? There will always be something that rubs me the wrong way about Mina’s ending in Dracula, and the way the fandom has decided to blindly celebrate it. Ellen is an amazing antidote to that feeling.

Nosferatu is brilliant because it is honest about women and their status in this world. It allows room for Ellen and her own foibles. And it allows the darkness and the monstrous to coexist with the feminine. The ending is not a girlboss ending, it does not leave me feeling warm and fuzzy. It makes me uncomfortable - it is a gothic horror. The status quo is not maintained at the end of the movie - Orlok has disrupted their world, and it cannot be undone.

Ellen and Thomas are not a love story, and to pretend they are is to take the piss out of the entire thing.

[bluerosefox]

Her Astrophel and Sterling

hmmm

Hmmmmmmmm

You know what.

You know those AU's where the Batfam finds or learns about either hidden or thought to be dead Al Ghul Danny! with a deaged/daughter Dani (Ellie) (I should know, I created a few of those storylines) but what if, now hear me out, what if instead of them finding Danny first its Talia.

Do I want Talia discovering her thought to be dead son to be alive? Yes. Do I want her to find him while investigating Amity Park when the League gets reports of 'Lazarus creatures/water'? Yes.

DO I WANT HER TO KNOCK ON THE FENTON'S DOOR, fully ready to pretend/honey talk her way into the house to uncover what the Fenton's know, ONLY TO MEET A LITTLE ELLIE?!

YES.

Ellie whose eyes and hair look like a copy of her Beloved but she can see bits and pieces of herself as well. Talia knows the child in front of her was not fully her's though but everything makes sense when she hears a voice, a voice she hasn't heard in ages but as a mother just knows, speak out.

"Ellie! I thought I said do not answer the door my Sterling."

"But Daddy, yous was busy fighting the hotdoggys!"

Talia's eyes widen when she finally catches sight of familiar black hair and blue eyes.

and she could only lightly whisper a old nickname she hasn't dared uttered in ages, a name she secretly gave her son due to his love of the stars "Astrophel..."

[maruyaaya]

HELLOOOO EVERYBODY!!!

chapter one of my neomachus fic, someday i know you’ll come to your senses, is finally up!! you can check it out HERE!!

[xxplastic-cubexx]

i was a bit anxious to reach out but i wanted to share a little headcannon i have for charles' powers^^

i feel that depending on the intensity of what hes doing at a certain point his powers turn into waves (though not necessarily visible) the person affected can feel it as a pulsating sensation and it can make their head throb

that and my other idea that his powers tend to affect gravity, but not making things float more like the exact opposite bc yknow how if u feel some intense emotion you want to just curl up on the floor sometimes? that but everyone has to now be it in a certain radius away from charles

and also ty for ur gorgeous cherik art ❤️❤️❤️ keeping the community alive

hello !!!!! thank you so much for sharin your thoughts, i LOVE the idea of charles' telepathy having physical effects on people (from the effect of his powers/his presence in their mind) it's sooo important to me .....

[avirael]

Contemplation

With a mixture of amazement and disbelief A’viloh followed the ceremony that welcomed Ishgard into the alliance of the Eorzean City States. He could not quite believe this was truly happening. If only Haurchefant could see this.

In a way it still felt like yesterday when they had arrived at Camp Dragonhead. Back then it had taken Haurchefant weeks, even months, to convince the right people and make the preparations for them to be allowed into the highly secluded city Ishgard had still been back then.

Since then so many things had happened in a comparably short time. A’viloh barely had processed all of it yet even after his short “time-out”. Immediately he had jumped right back into this crazy journey in an attempt to live up to the example set by the people who had secured his survival and payed the price for it. Haurchefant above all else but so many more by now.

Before his return, A’viloh had admitted to himself that his good resolution to become a better person had mostly ended up just being that. Resolution, good intentions, barely acted on. And good intentions were not enough. They had paved a path for him as well as so many people dear to him that he still highly regretted.

But Haurchefant‘s death or maybe rather Rael’s blunt words about it had made a difference. He had realised how sad Haurchefant would have been, they all would have been, to see him use the chance he had been given for nothing but lament. The thought that all this pain and death would be in vain finally made him want to take back control over his own life again and do something to pay all the kindness and sacrifice back instead of just passively waiting out what would happen next and then cry about how cruel fate treated him. It would not be easy probably but he counted on Rael to have his back and keep his heart from giving up on himself again.

He was not sure how successful he had been with this attempt to let actions follow words so far though. The most recent events alone had almost been too much to comprehend. Every time he thought back to this day at Azyl Lla and how the events had unfolded there he felt like all of it had happened to a different person altogether. In the end the battle had been won of course but everything that had occurred until then gave him food for thoughts.

First of all, Haurchefant had not remained the last victim in this battle.

Ysayle.

A’viloh could still not believe she was truly dead.

As fast as she had appeared, as soon she had already been lost to them. Not without saving their lifes first, of course. Another person he promised not to let down.

She had been a difficult person but A’viloh had liked her. In a way he found her similar to Rael. She had a harshness about herself and also a strong determination but behind all that she had been surprisingly kind and caring. A’viloh especially remembered the time they had spent at Moghome. Ysaile had seemed like an entirely different person there. Carefree and excited in an almost childlike manner. Suddenly he had realised that she could not be much older than him and yet she had always acted so much more mature and brave.

It was impossible to believe that she was truly gone.

As he felt the sadness creep up on him again he closed his eyes for second. He focused on his breathing and averted his gaze from the ceremony. He had long stopped paying attention to the speeches the state leaders were giving. To his left stood Rael and Y’shtola, to his right Alphinaud and Tataru. They all looked focused on what was happening in front of the crowd.

So A’viloh let his eyes wander further over the rows of people when he noticed something at the side of the crowd. On the head of an old stone statue perched something A’viloh had at first glance taken for a bird. But as the creature turned it’s head and looked right at him, A’viloh realised it was Midgardsormr in his small fledgeling appearance.

A’viloh doubted anyone else could see him but his presence here showed that he was keeping an eye on the mortals and their willingness to uphold their promises of a peaceful future for dragons and men together. It may have worked before but in the end it had always failed, and always by the fault of men. And yet they dared to try again. A’viloh involuntarily had to think back to their conversation with Tiamat.

He had not expected to find one of the great dragons at Azys Lla, yet alone one like Tiamat. Her tale had shaken A’viloh, he had always seen Bahamut as this monstrosity that had tried to end them all. It had never occurred to him how the dragon had ended up like this, a shadow of his true self entrapped in his moon-shaped prison for thousands of years, fueled by all the despair and rage of his former kin.

Before all of that he had just been a normal dragon peacefully living together with mankind. With his own dreams probably and his own family. Until all of that had been taken away and only Tiamat remained, alone in her despair.

She could have turned her wrath towards humankind but instead she mostly blamed herself for what had happened. Especially how she had summoned Bahamut back to life but only as a cruel shadow of what he once had been. And while A’viloh could understand both the blame and the regret, he found that the fault lay with the Ascians. Tiamat was not to blame for this catastrophe. She could not have known. A’viloh would have done the same in her stead without hesitation.

Her ongoing suffering greatly moved him. He had wished for nothing more than to free her, help her in some way but she refused. For a second he had wanted to argue but then he had remembered about how dragons perception of time. What were a few thousand years to one of them? A pain like this, it would still feel like yesterday to them and A’viloh would not be surprised if it would never fade to memory at all.

He did not dare to compare himself with Tiamat’s fate. It had been almost three years now and sometimes he still found himself overwhelmed by the memories. But Tiamat? For her these memories always remained as if they were the present, reliving the pain over and over again. It was a wonder that not all the dragons had gone insane yet, consumed by pain and rage, like their brother Nidhogg had been.

Given so many horrible deeds, an amount A’viloh couldn’t even start to imagine, maybe rage would be the only adequate reaction. And yet rage was not in his nature. When he thought about these horrible events that befell dragonkind all he felt was sadness and regret about the fact that everything good in this world, every hard earned bit of peace and harmony, had been so recklessly destroyed over and over again by a few horrible men.

By Thordan and his predecessors, by the Allagan Empire, and by the Ascians. It eluded him what drove men like them to such horrible actions…

Especially the Ascian were still a mystery to him.

Wherever they appeared chaos was destined to follow and so far their dark motives refused to make sense to him. Whatever it was, they needed to be stopped from hurting more people.

Maybe in that sense it was good that there were two less of them now. Even A’viloh, otherwise entirely unable to wish bad on anyone, could not help but think so.

One of them had been Lahabrea after all. Killed by Thordan, as they already had used up their auracite for the other one. At least in this regard the Archbishop had stayed true to his word.

A’viloh wished Thancred would have been there to see it. He hoped that this knowledge might give him some peace. A’viloh did not assume that Thancred himself still remembered it but A’viloh had not forgotten the conversation that night after Moenbryda’s death, when he had drunkenly admitted that he was still afraid of the Ascian. A’viloh wished he would be able to tell him right now, to let him know that he was free of this shadow and that he would not need to be scared about the Ascian’s return ever again.

As if it would be that easy…

A’viloh sighed.

Of course that caught Rael’s attention, he should have expected that. Quizzically the viera glimpsed at him as if they wanted to ask “Is this ceremony not important enough for your taste?”. A’viloh had no idea what had just been said on stage and if his reaction had in some way looked strange. To cover that he smiled friendly and inconspicuously pointed towards the spot where Midgardsormr sat.

For a second there was surprise in Rael’s eyes. Then the dragon voice echoed in their minds.

“Forgive me, I did not mean to disturb thee. I wanted to see for myself how the children of Thordan are doing.”

The small dragon stretched himself and took flight. With a few swift flaps of his winds he flew over to them. “But while I am already here it is only appropriate that I warn thee. Nidhogg is stirring and his wrath reaches out to his brood. I cannot say when he will strike but be warned that he is planning something.”

It was not really a surprise. And yet this reminder made A’viloh’s heart heavy, because it made him remember what had happened to Estinien. Right before their eyes in what should have been their moment of victory the Azure Dragoon had been overwhelmed by the power of the Nidhogg’s eyes and turned into the great dragon himself.

What a horrible fate. Especially with the knowledge that it had been Nidhogg who had killed Estonians family. And now he had become the dragon himself. It was so cruel.

A’viloh had come to think of Estinien as a friend. Of course he was not the nicest person one could imagine but they often had trained together during their journey and to A’viloh’s surprise his skills had actually improved. Estinien had believed in him and that was something his old teachers had never done.

To helplessly watch as Nidhogg took him over had been horrible. More horrible had it been to tell the news to the other’s. Especially Alphinaud had looked so distraught. He too had gotten close to Estinien during their journey. The young Elezen had looked up to Estinien and Estinien in return had begun to thread him more friendly which by his standards seemed special.

“There has to be something we can do…”, A’viloh had muttered as he watched Alphinaud’s pained face back in Ishgard when they told the news of Estinien’s fate to Aymeric and Lucia. And since then Rael had been going through whatever books and reports they could get their hands on, anything that would help them better understand the power of the eyes and Nidhogg himself.

A’viloh tried to help where he could. Sometimes Rael invited him to help going through some notes, though he was not much help with that, as Rael probably quickly learned. In the end they often just ended up talking about all kinds of things on their minds instead of actually making progress.

Since their return they had developed a bit of a habit to sit together and contemplate what had happened or to figure out their next steps together.

Sometimes they spent the evening in a corner at the Forgotten Knight speaking in hushed voices or with books and tea in the Fortemps library. Often though they just spent some time in either of their rooms, that were more like small apartments to be honest and a much more private setting to talk. A’viloh was grateful for the company even if occasionally he still struggled to voice what was on his mind.

But at least that seemed to be mutual. Rael was not a person to speak freely about their feelings and A’viloh’s resolution to be of use in figuring out how to help Rael with that prophecy proved difficult too. But whenever he began to doubt his usefulness again he just reminded himself of his resolution. He would try to do something good with his life, even if right now it was just supporting Rael as best as he could. He hoped spending time together would be a good start and this thought alone felt calming to him.

At some point the conversation had circled back to the happenings at Azys Lla. He still was not sure how he had mustered up the bravery to face Thordan and his knights, especially after Rael’s vision. Somehow he just had known that there was no other way, that he could not run away from this and let Rael fight alone. Their harshest battles so far they had only won together after all. He just had hoped that Rael’s vision was not going to come true, as naive as that may have been, and somehow it had not.

Or had it? What had happened after all was not too unsimiliar from what Rael had seen. Just that it had not cost him his life. But maybe that had only been Rael interpretation in the first place?

The only thing he had known with a certainty was that Rael had been in danger and that he needed to do something. He remembered the barrier and how it cracked much to his panic. He remembered the burst and how he was thrown backwards by it. Then a sharp pain as he was slammed into the floor. After that only darkness.

When he awoke again, everything had been dizzy and silent apart from Rael’s voice. At least Rael was okay, he had thought as he tried to move and registered a flash of pain. The viera’s healing magic only had made it worse for a second but so far their skills never had disappointed with the results. No matter what cuts and bruises he had endured so far during their journey Rael had always healed them within moments and without a trace.

With the magic doing its job, his wounds quickly healed and the fog in his mind cleared, he had sat up. Only to find that the fight had already been won and Thordan lay dead a few yalms away. It had equally confused and shocked him. How was this possible? Rael claimed they had finished the fight alone and killed them all. A’viloh had known that there likely would be no redemption for them but still he did not understand how Rael had been able to win this fight. One second they had been hopelessly outnumbered and the next Rael had defeated them all on their own?

They said they were not sure themself how it had happened. But the expression on their face as they had said that made A’viloh feel even more uneasy. His mind kept jumping back to Rael’s vision before the fight. That skill alone, to glimpse the future, was strange enough, although maybe not too different from his echo visions. But how Rael had looked when that vision had overcome them. Their warm amber eyes changed to a glowing milky white. Somewhat similar to Y’shtola’s eyes but still more unsettling. More cold and lifeless, almost frightening.

“That vision back at Azys Lla… It looked painful… and also a bit scary I admit. Is it always like that?”, he asked carefully one evening.

Rael slightly shook their head. “No, it could be anything.”, they said. “Sometimes it’s dreams, sometimes just apparitions, sometimes it’s more like the way you described your echo visions. As uncomfortable as it was then, it is only rarely like that. And what I saw then did not help make it any better…”

“And that prophecy you mentioned…”, he hesitated and waited for Rael to react. When they just curiously looked up from their book he dared to continue. “What had that been like?”

Rael closed their book and thought for a moment. “That’s difficult to explain.”, they started but tried anyway. “At first I though my head was going to burst, it hurt so badly that I think I blacked out for a bit. Or maybe that was just part of the vision. I remember hearing myself scream but not quite like you usually hear your own voice, more like you would hear someone else’s voice. And I also heard the voices around me. Alarmed caws of a raven and my mother crying for the oracle to help me. I remembered the oracle warning me beforehand that if I was not truly the right person the procedure would kill me and when everything went dark and silent for a moment I suddenly was terrified that I may have made a mistake after all. But then the vision hit me. With so much force… I don’t think there is a way to describe it in a way you would understand. So many different noises, so many pictures that I could barely make out anything of it at all. All that lingered in the end like etched into my mind was Golmore on fire, fire raining down onto the treetops of my home and tearing gaping holes into the green…”

Rael paused and looked at A’viloh who stared at them transfixed, waiting for Rael to continue. “That’s really all I could make out at first… it was the oracle that helped me make sense of some of the rest. They saw the vision too and explained to me that the world was going to end and that I had to stop it…”

“Quite a task for just one person…”, A’viloh sighed. When Rael had told him their story for the first time it all had been too much to grasp. Then at some point the meaning of Rael’s words had become clear to him. The end of the world. He tried not to think to much about it, although or maybe especially because of how scary that thought was. And Rael had carried that knowledge on their own for so long. “Terrifying I imagine…”

Rael nodded. “Can you believe that when Dalamud fell I at first though this was it? That I failed already?”

Surprised A’viloh ears went up. He tried to remember the map which Rael had shown to him a few days ago to explain around where their homeland was located. “You saw Dalamud fall from as far away as Dalmasca?”

“No.”, Rael corrected. “At that time I already was traveling to Eorzea, because I had thought maybe I could help stop the Garleans plan somehow. I was too late of course…”

Rael decided to omit the exact circumstances of from where they watched the Calamity, assuming that the story about a ship almost being hit by meteor fragments and barely making it to Gyr Abania without sinking in the storms that followed was not a story that would help A’viloh sleep peacefully.

Instead remembering this day brought another detail back to their mind. “Wait!”, they exclaimed and grabbed a loose piece of parchement from their grimoire as well as a coal-pen. With quick strokes they began to sketch and continued speaking while doing so. “I had another vision then. First a voice, now I think that might have been Hydaelyn, and I saw some places hit by the Calamity.”

“Oh, I heard a voice too!”, A’viloh exclaimed and suddenly it seemed to make sense to him. “Back then I thought it might be Azeyma but now that you mention it… it was really distorted but it kind of sounded similar to Hydaelyn… I had no vision then though…”

“Look!” Rael said urgently and handed him the parchment. “That’s what I saw more or less. Back then it did not mean anything to me but looking back at it now… Don’t you think these places look familiar?”

It was a hasty sketch, not especially clean but there were details in it that were hard not to recognise.

“That’s Ul’dah!”, he said pointing at the sketch in the middle.

“And this was a city with bridges and white rocks overflood by water. The drawing is bad but -“

“Could be Limsa!”, A’viloh gasped.

“Exactly!” Rael said. “And this especially tall tree here. I thought it was Golmore but it could have been the Guardian Tree! Where we rescued Y’shtola!”

A’viloh nodded. “But you had never seen these places before then?”

“No…”, Rael agreed. “And until now I entirely had forgotten about it…”

“What else?”, the Miqo’te asked urgently, as if he felt like there had to be more.

“Nothing else.”, Rael admitted. “That’s all I saw then…”

Nonetheless A’viloh seemed excited. “But before that vision!”, he insisted, “…or after that? Maybe if we write down everything you remember we can make sense of things that you did not know how to interpret before!”

Rael had to admit that it was not a bad idea. A journal about every vision they had seen. To A’viloh it sounded sort of exciting, like a riddle they needed to solve. He did not think he was particularly good at riddles but still. Even if he only could help a tiny bit it would be enough.

***

After the ceremony to celebrate the Eorzean Alliance was done, Y’shtola had excused herself to return to her research. Something strange had appeared in the Dravanian Hinterlands and now Y’shtola and Cid were trying to find out what was going on.

After another short conversation Alphinaud and Tataru decided to go back to their work too, when to Rael’s surprise it had been A’viloh who had suggested they’d go visit Haurchefant’s grave together.

As far as Rael knew the Miqo’te had not been there before. He had been in no state to do so after Haurchefant’s death. And in the meantime the opportunity just had not been there. Still Rael was surprised he suggested this. But if he wanted to there was no reason not to let him.

As they made their way up the hill not even a bell later, the snow crunched beneath their feet. It had snowed again and again the last few days but now the shy was clear and blue and the perfect blanket of white sparkled in the sun.

As the gravestone came into view Rael saw A’viloh hesitate. This must be difficult for him, they thought, and carefully reached out to take his hand.

Surprised he looked up to find Rael looking back at him. They put on a reassuring smile and lightly squeezed his hand. The tears in the corners of his eyes were hard to miss as he returned a small smile and nodded. Slowly they stepped closer to the grave and for a while neither of them made a sound as they watched Alphinaud brush the snow off of the stone and Tataru lay down a bouquet of flowers.

Finally A’viloh raised his gaze from the letters engraved on the stone to the scenery ahead. The foggy depth of the Holy Sea below in the distance clear against the bright blue sky stood Ishgard. The sun felt warm against his skin and even warmer was Rael’s hand still holding his.

“What a wonderful spot.”, he whispered. “He would have liked it, I think.”

Tataru nodded in agreement.

“From here, Lord Haurchefant can watch over all of Ishgard…”

“He will need this…”, A’viloh said and knelt down, placing Haurchefant’s shield next to the gravestone. “…and our help too.”

[wuntrum]

i dont want to feel this way forever.......

[nohoney]

no bc i’m actually obsessed with your Hunger Games AU with Keigo and Katsuki. would you be willing to expand on it??

oooh yes, i’m very willing (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

hawks / bakugou

“I think I’ll die.”

Bakugou listens quietly from behind the door of his room, opened just a small crack as he strains his ears to listen to you speak. He’s supposed to be resting since it’s less than 48 hours for the games to begin. All that stupid parading, those annoying interviews, the scoring of all the tributes skills, all of it has lead up to games.

“Don’t say that, you’re smarter than you look. Let them underestimate you, survive out there for yourself and slip under the radar.” Hawks is trying to comfort you, standing out in the hallway where all the bedrooms are located in the lavish apartment. “You remember everything I taught you?”

He assumes that you nodded your head, he can see it in his head along with the meek little hum you gave. You’re going to live, Bakugou is going to make sure of it. You’re going to make it home and pick those flowers from the bushes you love so much, drizzle honey into your tea after trading a month’s worth of rations for just a little bit of decadence, and you’ll outlive him.

You sob a little and Hawks is shushing you. “It’s okay, cry it out now.”

“And Bakugou? What about him?” you ask quietly, “He’s my friend…”

Sadness rises in his chest and he clenches his fist. It’s swallowed down but Bakugou can’t help his heart twisting at the thought of you being sad over him. He’s always been there for you, letting you piggyback off him when you were too tired to walk through the forest, punching your bullies when they made you cry, and he always walked beside you every year when you walked towards the reaping.

“… do you know why he volunteered? He won’t tell me.”

If Hawks says anything, Bakugou is going to murder him.

“It’s best that you get rest tonight,” Hawks chooses to go around the question, “did you need something to help you sleep? I know how restless you’ve been since you’ve come here.”

There’s a little hum from you again, this one being disagreeing. “Do you remember when we used to go to the lake and play in the water with the other kids? And then we’d all nap together under the trees? You used to pet my head until I fell asleep. You remember right?” You ask quietly.

“I do.”

Bakugou does too, making a small spark of jealousy rise up in his chest. It was all innocent back then, just young kids playing and tiring themselves out. But he was always jealous too, seething silently when you paid attention to someone else but secretly happy when you stuck to his side.

“Can you do that for me please? I just… I’m sorry. That was dumb.” You try to backpedal but Hawks assured you that he’s okay with it, the softness of his voice such a dead giveaway for the obvious feelings he has for you.

It makes Bakugou want to bash his head against the wall, thinking of you and Hawks together. You’re supposed to be with him. He was supposed to have given you your favorite flowers and asked your parents for their permission to go steady at this point.

“Let’s go on the couch, I’ll grab the blanket from your room.”

Good. If Hawks had suggested your room or his own, Bakugou would have blown a fuse.

When Bakugou comes out his room in the morning, you’re sleeping alone on the couch with the blanket tucked comfortably around you. You look peaceful and he stands to admire you for a bit. His eyes look around first, glancing to be sure that Hawks isn’t around. Then he reaches down to pet the top of your head, feeling how soft your hair is from the luxurious shower products that he hopes you will get to bathe in again when this is all over.

“Mmf… Bakugou?” You mutter, your voice still heavy with sleep as you start to rouse. “Good morning.”

“Hey.” he simply greets, “You want some tea?”

You nod your head as you slowly sit up from your spot. You stretch your limbs and yawn. Although you managed to sleep, he sees that you are not rested. “I’m scared.” You quietly admit, “I’m really scared.”

He knows.

“I’m scared that-“ you start to speak but then Hawks emerges from the hallway. You keep your head down and shrink into yourself, unable to look at Hawks or Bakugou.

━━━━✧

Hawks watches with bated breath, everyone quiet as they watch the scene unfold in front of them. You fell sick, running with a high fever and delirious, barely able to stay conscious. Bakugou tucked you away in a cave to keep you safe, trying to keep you fed and alive. Everyone could see that he was upset to see you so unwell and unable to fend for yourself.

The two of you fell asleep together just a few hours ago with Bakugou’s arms wrapped protectively around you despite you complaining that it was too hot. You needed to break the fever and he was making sure of that even when you cried over how uncomfortable you felt. But the cameras were on you, recording everything when you slipped out of Bakugou’s hold and slowly peeled off the layers of clothes from your body.

If only Hawks could tell the cameras to turn away, to pan to the other tributes but he knows they won’t.

This is good television for them after all.

“Bakugou… Bakugou… it’s hot.” You slightly rock him back and forth, sweat sticking to your forehead and looking so sad. “Wake up… wake up!”

He startled awake, his eyes immediately of course drawn to your nudity and he hisses for you to put your clothes back on. You weakly fight him, shaking your head and whining in a way that reminds Hawks of when you used to throw a tantrum when you were a child. He used to pick you up and hold you until you calmed down. Now he watches how Bakugou is struggling to keep his composure around you in this vulnerable state.

“(Name)! (Name)! Stop, put your damn clothes on!” Bakugou is trying to push the thermals over your head and dress you while also trying to keep his head turned away. The stupid hosts comment how chivalrous Bakugou is, admiring with a cooing ‘awww’ that makes Hawks sick to his stomach.

This isn’t meant to be cute; you’re indecent and sick and it’s all being recorded.

“I can’t do it…” you murmur, “Can’t…”

“Yea, you can.” Bakugou sighs in frustration, “just put your head through-“

“I can’t go home without you.” You admit to him, still pushing off the clothing he’s trying to put you in.

Everyone watching the scene holds their breath.

Bakugou freezes, his face looked pained but unsure what he should say to you.

“Please, we have to go home together.” You plead quietly with tears beginning to prick the corners of your eyes, “We need to go home.”

Bakugou remains silent before putting his hand over your forehead. “Your fever is getting worse, you need to lay down and rest more.”

Hawks breaks out of his trance and looks around. He needs to do his part as your mentor, try to get you some aid from his end in any way he can. So even though he’s sick to his stomach that your nudity was televised and such an intimate moment between you and Bakugou was captured, he sets it aside to schmooze up the elites. He tells them precious little stories of you and Bakugou as children, now using the intimate confession to spin a story of sweet childhood friends with secret harboring feelings for one another.

The very thing that Bakugou never wanted in the first place.

The elites eat it up and a little parachute of medicine sails slowly in the air towards Bakugou. He snatches it and practically rips the shell open, his body deflating in relief when he finds medicine inside.

Hawks just knows that if he were to tell Bakugou how he was able to get that medicine for you, he’d be dead.

[aq2003]

romeo of romeo and juliet fame is hardly my all timer shakespeare blorbo but i feel like in all the productions i've watched/listened to no one has really . Gotten his Vibes. except of course for dt's romeo essay which understands romeo so perfectly it's scary

[carlottastudios]

I'm actually nearly done my Kaeya Lore Thoughts word doc! I only have 2 sections to go, and I know at least one of them should go by fairly quickly!

The only possible hiccup is that this doc is almost 40 pages long. So if anyone wants to read this unhinged thing, they gotta get through 40 pages of my ramblings ^^; I apologize in advance