#I have an idea for a very short story

[theemeraldforesthideout]

The Queen Beech ↑ Her view of the Bluebell Forest ↓

Emotional supporting (and wish making) ↑

[ineed-to-sleep]

Some sketches I did to try to get a feel for what I want my Rook to look like 🤔

[luck-of-the-drawings]

smth smth about 'the thing that the character did that you thought was rly rly funny in the moment is actually linked to a terrible trauma that lies within said character.' or wahtever.

[bookshelf-in-progress]

If I could write stories as quickly and vividly as I can envision them, I would have written at least three lovely novellas in the last week. Two of them this morning.

[tootditoot]

Their office reeked of sulfur and salt. Under the floorboards, I could hear dozens of tiny legs skittering about intermittently. Dried leaves and dead twigs were scattered under the furniture, ink stains covered the book that laid on the table, and I imagine that the scented candles that had been left burning were some futile attempt to make the room feel more pleasant.

"You must forgive me, Inspector, had I known you were coming sooner, I would've..." She looked around, her eyes landed on the dried leaves on the floor and then back to me "...prepared tea".

She led me to the center of the room as she sat at the side of her desk at the other end. Beetles and cockroaches started to pop up from under the floorboards at this point. She paid no heed to them. I could've sworn those pests were forming a perimeter around her and were ready to swarm me by the snap of a finger.

"I don't suppose you came here to ask for my expertise". A scan around the room revealed walls lined with bookshelves, filled with monographs on insects, fishes, and mythical creatures. There were even a few books with her name on, Salome Barko, listed as the author.

"For the yearly census. Have you recently travelled outside the city within the past month?"

"Oh yes, recently I had just returned from my trip in the desert city of..."

Listening to her recount her travels, I started to realize what I was surrounded by. These insects infesting the place weren’t normal.

"...then a small bite killed the camel I had in no less than a minute!"

These insects are not from here. A cockroach suddenly flew and landed on my arm, I saw its mandibles slowly widening. Instinctively, I frantically shook my arm and slapped it, knocking it to the ground. I then heard hundreds of wings furiously buzzing from under the floorboards so I ran. I tripped over a dead twig in my haste, hitting the ground with a hard thud. As I scrambled to my feet, I glanced back. She was still sitting at her desk, looking at me with a blank stare.

Only after the door slammed shut behind me was I was finally able to breathe. I paused to fill my lungs with fresh air, then pulled out a checklist from inside my coat and crossed off a name.

I will be writing my resignation letter next month...

- Personnes d'Intérêt Illustrated: The Excommunicated and the Exiled., Chapter 6: "Excerpts from the Diary of Inspector Priuli", P.38

[dekusleftsock]

Mha fandom when you say that Izuku’s biggest fic mischaracterization isn’t making him twinky:

WHEN DID BEING A TWINK BECOME A BAD THING CAN I JUST ASK THAT

Like yes, twinkifying one male character in a ship can be annoying—it can perpetuate heterosexual roles onto same sex relationships (“who’s the woman in the relationship/who wears the pants in the relationship?”), BUT LET US BE CLEAR:

TWINKS ARE A PART OF THE QUEER COMMUNITY. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH BEING A TWINK, MAKING A CHARACTER A TWINK, OR SEEING A CHARACTER AS A TWINK.

WHEN in the ever loving FUCK did that somehow translate into “the twink has to be the stereotypically aggressive one so it doesn’t abide by queer stereotypes”. HOW DID WE GET HERE.

[hanzajesthanza]

god we need to bring crackfic back. or just short and idiotic ideas that wouldn’t happen but would be funny to read

[taffywabbit]

i just woke up so i haven't actually watched the pokemon direct thingy yet, but i heard they mentioned they aren't pushing out another console release at all for 2024 and if that's true then frankly THAT news is way more hype than any actual game announcement could ever be. go girl let us wait!! this is genuinely what i've been begging for for years now

like, oh a new Legends game? that's neat i guess. oh wait it's being given literally ANY time to cook and they aren't crunching Game Freak to hell and back in order to pump out a bunch of half-baked annual releases for the first time in ages?? NOW we're fuckin talking. LOVE to see the torturous cycle broken

[kazz-brekker]

i was pondering the enormous backlash to the humanization of the orcs in rings of power from annoying people on the internet and realized that i'm pretty sure my first exposure to "maybe we shouldn't portray a whole race of beings as totally evil" in fantasy was actually the urgals in the inheritance cycle. i don't think that it was an arc christopher paolini had planned from the beginning because from what i remember the urgals are pretty much orc ripoffs in the first few books of the series since they are just evil foot soldiers for main villain, but i do remember my 9 year old self having my mind blown when some of them showed up in a later book and were like "hey we're actually sentient beings with language, a culture, and free will, and we don't appreciate being used as cannon fodder by a tyrant, want to team up to defeat him?" and that was oh, probably fifteen years ago, so it just goes to show that humanizing supposedly evil races in fantasy stories is not a new concept at all.

[tworedplants]

It's been a few months since I've drawn anything for this, and maybe I've been avoiding it a little bit. I'm just embarrassed that I don't know anything about my own au lmao (half joking)

[bitterseaproduction]

Some days you want to work hard on your little fanfic epics, spending hours detangling the lore and timeline and plans for stories crying in the night for an update, and some days you're sick off your rocker and just hacking a lung out while haze-blinking into the horizon as you halt reading someone else's fic summary mid-first sentence to hard left turn into a very blurry but detailed daydream about the dwarves thinking Bilbo died in the Battle of the Five Armies while Bilbo--unaware of a king and his company upending their own mountain in a fit of grief as he heals among the Men or Elves--ends up in an awkward Race to Mordor with a Sauron he is barely aware of alongside his own ironic Nine, made up of himself, Gandalf, Bard, Legolas, Tauriel, and a trio of dwarves (Dís, Gimli, Gimli's mom) plus an unexpected favorite cousin (Falco Chubb-Baggins) who all broke off from the first convoy of Blue Mountain immigrants to Erebor to go along and protect Bilbo.

Place bets now on how Thorin & Company hear of their burglar's survival and latest insanity (highest bids placed on the remaining Blue Mountain travelers passing along word vs a smarmy message from Thranduil), how quickly they shake off their shrouds of mourning and royal pseudo-widowhood, and where exactly on the path between Erebor and Mount Doom they manage to catch up to and dog pile an unwitting Hobbit.

[icewindandboringhorror]

finally finished all of one character's entire quests/optional dialogue/questions/etc.... 100,000 words... .... aughhh

[shady-tavern]

Deals and Revelry, Quin's Backstory

The lovely @fyrenwater requested some more pieces for Deals and Revelry and I started with Quin's backstory. Hopefully it's a fun read! With Quin there is of course a warning ahead for implied murder.

***

The temple was old and not in the broken, long abandoned kind of way, overgrown and damp and too dangerous to enter. Quin had seen plenty of old places, had walked through plenty of runes. He lived for the danger, made a living out of going where no one else wanted to thread.

The upper temple had looked like one would expect, half swallowed by the swamp, covered with plants and little pieces of walls and fallen pillars stuck out of the knee-deep water and morass. 

He had even found the remains of a statue's face, nearly whittled to be unrecognizable by time and the environment.

The place clearly had been looted to hell and back, but something had felt different. Something had compelled him to stay. So he had looked around, using every single ounce of his talent and bullheaded tenacity until he had found it three days later. A hidden entrance.

The temple that laid below the broken skeleton husk above ground was not destroyed or crumbling. It was perfectly preserved, even if water had clearly found its way in. Nothing had grown, however. There was no slick algae, no signs at all that nature and the elements had wriggled through the cracks.

A few roots dangled from the ceiling, but they were all dead, crumbling when he reached up to touch them.

The temple was old, old in a way that told Quin it had withstood the tooth of time without a single scar for centuries. Something was still alive in these halls, even as everything that touched it died.

For just a brief moment he felt like he inhaled something otherworldly, a strange kind of power permeating the air. Whatever was down here wasn't even hiding that it existed, even if its presence had barely made it above ground.

This was what he had felt, what had made him trudge through mud and water and get bitten relentlessly by mosquitos for days. 

His steps echoed as he walked, a heavy presence to the silence around him. The sort of presence that only came with something ancient that refused to disappear. That refused to die even after it had been forgotten.

Quin wasn't a fool, however. He took his time, carefully examining his surroundings, disarming traps and escaping the few he didn't notice in time by the skin of his teeth.

The first time his blood spilled he felt the entire temple around him sigh and tremble. As if a great beast had tried to move in its cage.

And this temple was a cage, he realized as he walked and considered the ancient writing on the walls, his rations dwindling by the day. But he couldn't leave, it was almost feverish how he kept looking and searching, being drawn ever deeper into the temple.

Or rather, the tomb. This was meant to be a final resting place for something too powerful and ancient to comprehend.

A part of him knew he was pulled along by whatever was entombed here, but he allowed it to happen. He wanted to know what was down here.

He found his answer in a comparatively small, circular room. Paintings glittered on the wall as through freshly finished, the paint still wet.

Plaques with text were left below the artworks, as well as big words pressed into the floor. A strange kind of metal had been used to form the letters of a civilization long gone.

The presence was strongest here and Quin set up his camp, studying the ancient texts. A warning was on one part of the wall, showing two giant beings battle it out. The next text was easier to guess, if only because of the depiction of one giant being slain and the people at its feet using its blood and bones to seal the other.

Just as his last crumb of food was devoured and his last sip of water swallowed, Quin figured out the ritual. He still didn't understand too much about what exactly was down here and what exactly had been done to it to put it there, but he knew how to at least...wriggle loose the bars of its prison a bit, so to speak.

He used his blood to write, each ancient letter precisely placed between the metal writing on the floor. The moment he finished, his blood glowed a dark and deep red and he heard a sigh in the very air itself.

The being's presence became cloying and overpowering and while he couldn't quite make out words or any kind of spoken language, he could make out intent. A pact. A promise of power and wealth and everything he could possibly ever want, so long as he carried it out into the world.

Quin didn't hesitate so much as he turned the offer over in his head. He knew the stories of deals made with devils, with sealed away entities and rumored demi-gods and of course with very human monsters. He knew they were always a bad idea.

One could not trick or out-deal creatures that lived and thrived on such things.

But this deal was the very thing he had been searching for when he had first started dungeon delving. Power. Purpose. To be more than he was now, to no longer walk with blunt teeth and hidden daggers.

He wanted to be sharp and dangerous and deadly and powerful.

So he reached out with all that he desired and the being accepted. His world turned dark and black as, in his mind, a maw massive enough to swallow the sky opened wide.

*.*.*

The thing was in his head now, kind of. Quin was not fond of this part, but he managed to figure out how to shield his thoughts as he traversed the ruin, collecting the treasure the thing was guiding him to. Wealth was a part of power after all and power was what he had wanted, first and foremost.

It was...exhilarating. He was no longer human, he knew that in the very marrow of his bones. He bled red still, he learned and his emotions and thoughts were the same as before. He hadn't lost his humanity, however much of it he had possessed in the first place.

But he was stronger, faster and sharper now. As dangerous as he had always wanted to be and he reveled in it.

His bags filled with gold and jewels he emerged from the tomb-temple and the world was just slightly sharper around him, his senses stronger. He knew he could actually track something down by scent alone if necessary and it made him grin.

He set out with a confident stride, tall and fierce in ways he hadn't been able to even emulate as a human. He was different now and as he traveled, he slowly got used to all the changes.

Of course, every pact came with its downsides. People who had spoken freely with him before or had been willing to share information or even secrets over a couple of drinks shied away from him now.

Quin found that no one dared to meet his gaze and he checked his small pocket mirror multiple times, but his eyes were still the same. Dark and soulful, as his mother had once said. Gods rest her soul, she had always encouraged him to do what he wanted. To take what he wanted.

Quin traveled on swiftly, outstaying his welcome at every new place within mere moments. The thing in his head wanted something, but communication was still iffy and frustrated the both of them.

Then Quin stumbled across a whip-thin young woman, left bleeding at the side of the road. She was dying, that was easy to see, but her eyes told a different story. She did not shy from him the way everyone else did, a defiance to her as though she believed him to be the reaper and she was going to cling to this life with all she had.

Quin wasn't her end. If anything, he was her knew beginning, as he produced a contract for her through his...what was the thing, a patron? It was no benign entity, that was for damn sure. It roiled with malice and bloodlust whenever he focused on it.

The woman took the contract and found herself healed and changed, much like Quin had. They traveled onward together and Quin realized that people avoided her as much as they avoided him.

"What are we?" the woman asked as they camped outside a village that had refused to house them.

Quin shrugged. "Better," was all he said with a smile he knew was too sharp, dangerous in a way human smiles weren't. "Eat up, we're having a long road ahead tomorrow."

Treasure weighed heavy and it soon brought the unsavory attention of bandits and robbers. Quin had never shied from bloodshed, from protecting what was his and this was no different.

The fight was almost too easy with all that he was capable of now. He and the woman stood over the dead once it was done and dealt with. He inhaled the smell of blood, sweet and coppery, iron and salt and smiled to himself.

"You are right," the woman said quietly as she helped him loot the bodies. "We are better now."

They continued on together, picking up a couple more people along the way. A man tossed out on his ear by his family for loving another man, twins who were rumored to be born with black magic, a couple that had fled from their wrathful noble families. A betrayed merchant left in rags.

They all accepted the contract Quin offered them and soon he called them his hunters. They were vicious when necessary, absolutely deadly and no longer quite human. They weren't as strong as he, the contract he could offer a diluted version of the pact he carried in his soul and mind.

They approached a city a couple of weeks later and the thing in the back of his head stirred, hungry and greedy, feeling all those souls within calling out. It pressed images into his mind, of deals and contracts, of all the ways he could feed it. Make it stronger. Help it break its cage in given time.

Quin did not like that he didn't have much of a choice in this matter. The thing would take back the pact if he didn't listen and that would kill him and his hunters. And curse him, but he had grown fond of this lot of lost souls that followed him like he was their shepherd. 

Maybe he was, in a way.

His treasure got him what his charm no longer could: people willing to listen. He found an empty, unexpectedly large tavern and settled in. It was nice to have a home, he had to admit, after traveling for so long.

He soon had to concede the business side to employees who had no deals with him. For if he or his hunters were behind the bar or walking around with serving trays, the few that had shown up left swiftly.

It took time and effort to build a bit of a reputation, but slowly he carved out a place for himself in this large city. Mostly he was known for his deals and his tavern for offering nice ale and food to acceptable prices.

As he sat in his usual booth, waiting for people to approach him for a piece of his patron's powers, he realized that this wasn't quite the life he had wanted for himself.

Sure, he had gotten quite a lot out of the pact, but mostly he had wanted to be free. To do whatever he wanted. To have all the different versions of power to be untouchable and uncontrollable. To be really, truly free.

He watched a man gather the courage to approach him, his arms gripping a clearly sick babe. He'd get the mildest contract Quin could create.

Quin would help the guy for free if his patron allowed such things, which it of course didn't. For all of Quin's occasional depravity and ease at murdering, he did not like to take advantage of the truly helpless.

Of the people his parents had once been.

'Well,' he thought to himself as he smiled as mildly as he could when the father walked towards him at last. 'If this is my lot in life, I better make it a damn fucking good one.'

So he remodeled the tavern, hired performers and grabbed his carefully hoarded treasure. He spent and invested the gold, bartered and made deals that had nothing to do with the coiling darkness connected to his mind and soul.

He set himself free in almost all aspects. The pact had given him many things while shackling him down and even if the shackle was something he had to live with until his dying day, there were still other chains to break.

Chains made by society and stupid rules even he had stuck in his head despite his best efforts.

So Quin set himself free as much as he could and built his reputation anew. He built the Revelry and it grew beyond the bounds of his tavern with every year, gold flowing back to him first in a small trickle and then in a big river and he took it and invested it into his business, his street. His life.

Within a couple of years he was as powerful and untouchable as he had always dreamed of being. He had the sort of reputation that made people avoid his gaze for more reasons than one. 

Some days he could delude himself into thinking that it was his bloody and dangerous reputation alone that made folks inch away from him, rather than what his patron had turned him into.

Sometimes it was a lonely life, sure, but he had a...yes, a family now. His hunters meant the world to him and he cared for his employees, making sure they had everything they needed to be happy.

In return, they were fiercely loyal, bringing him rumors and secrets and warning him of backhanded deals and impending betrayals by business partners. He grew untouchable in more ways than one thanks to them.

He kept his patron fed and content, made sure it had everything it could possibly want. He was careful, however, never quite feeding it as much as it really wanted.

He didn't want it to get out of its tomb and while he knew some day it would happen, he'd drag it out as long as he possibly could.

Quin made the Revelry and dedicated himself to it, gave it his heart and blood and most of the time it was enough. Most of the time he felt like his life was nearly perfect.

As long as his patron was quiet, he pretended as though every part of him, his everything, could be dedicated to what he had built. That all his choices were his own and could not be controlled by another.

This was a good life, he reminded himself, trying to ignore the greed for more within him. The greed to reach that extra little inch to true freedom, the shackle on his foot keeping him firmly grounded.

He had a rich, free, powerful life. The sort of life written about in stories and that he had dreamed about as a boy while helping his mother scrub pots and pans and his father with mending clothes. 

He almost wished they were still alive to see him now. Sometimes he poured a drink in their honor and hoped they were watching from whatever afterlife they were in now.

He hoped they were proud, that he had taken all their lessons and challenged the world. That he had come out the other side as the person he wanted to be.

He hunted and made pacts, terrified foolish nobles and bartered for information to get the city guard fully under his thumb. He already had a number of people on his payroll, but he really wanted to get his claws into the captain. Then the city really would be his at long last.

He had no idea how soon his wish would be fulfilled.

It was a night like many others, filled with joy and laughter, wild partying and people cutting loose in a way that fed his very soul and spirit. Quin was in a very good mood as he made a contract with a burly man who could scarcely stand to even glance in his direction.

"My right hand will take care of things," he said, gesturing lazily and his first hunter melted out of the shadows.

His oldest friend, sometimes pain in his ass and a stalwart, loyal companion. Quin knew, deep down, that he would have withered away emotionally without his hunters at his side.

The deal made and on its way to being fulfilled, he got up just as someone tripped, stumbling towards him. He caught that person just in time, casting a brief glare at the drunk woman that had decided shoving his guests was a good idea.

The woman hurriedly looked away and Quin plastered on his best smile, straightening up the one in his arms. "Now there, usually I have to put in some work to make people swoon like this."

And the first thing he noticed was that the stranger met his eyes, unafraid and unflinching, before listing a bit to the side. Ah, a drunkard.

Or not, he realized when, for the first time, someone refused to be parted from him. Cold fingers clung to his silk doublet and the feeling that something was wrong tingled in the back of his mind.

So he reached out, hooking his finger under an equally cold chin, not yet knowing that he was looking at the one who would change his life forever in all the best ways.

The one to set him free, truly free, at long last.

*.*.*

Tag List:

@those-damn-snippets @the-cash-cache @queenofbooknerds @14-lizards-in-a-trenchcoat @fern-writes-whump @bexterbaileyw @setsailforthestars @piperjistic @addrai @catloverlawyer @permanentlydepressedpigeon @tama-on-vetta @marateleam @transparentdiplomatlandgoth @cheesecakev2 @myst3rious-figur3 @warriorofbooks @aprilraine

[ninawolv3rina]

Me: Ok robot story is done let’s get back to long form content—

My brain this morning, entirely unprompted: Gay/trans werewolf fur trappers.

Me: … what?

Brain: You fucking heard me the first time.

[voluptuarian]

o endless wips and figments: graphics for plot ideas that may never see the light of day

Thomas the Rhymer -- Caught up in the deadly net of suspicion surrounding Anne Boleyn, Thomas Wyatt, literary giant of the Tudor court, remains trapped in the Tower anticipating his doom-- until a mysterious visitor appears with an unexpected offer of salvation. Long enamored with his work, the court of Faery loathes the potential loss of one of England's few great poets. To save himself and the other unfortunates imprisoned alongside him, Wyatt enters into an unholy bargain with Faery; spared on Earth, the seven prisoners are bound to serve in the fey court, a place as savage and unpredictable as Henry's own. Just as before, Wyatt must survive the intrigues and pitfalls of court and the whims of a mercurial monarch, armed only with his wits and his poetry-- and just maybe, find a way to escape Faery and take up his own life again.

(credits)

https://sunkissedfawn.tumblr.com/ kedb1.tumblr.com / oonachaplinsource.tumblr.com / filmgifs.tumblr.com / amatesura.tumblr.com / thetudorsgifs.tumblr.com

[lord-squiggletits]

A tangent from the tags of my previous Pharma post (and I just thought about this so bear w/ me if it's hastily reasoned) is that the Autobots being generally sanctimonious is actually sort of a reason why I find a lot of IDW Optimus interpretations to miss the mark, specifically the accusations of calling him stuff like self-righteous, caring more about principles than people, etc. And I know that sounds really ironic, but out of every Autobot (and almost every character period), Optimus is one of the few people who has a very forgiving/humanistic perspective on life or at least has a political approach of "if we don't stop fucking fighting we're going to be at war forever and eventually just kill ourselves."

He very explicitly wanted a diplomatic end to the war and not a military victory/conquest. He extended multiple offers to Megatron personally to work together and end the war (Autocracy trilogy, which was pre/early war, and Chaos Theory, which was late/end war, so from this we can assume Optimus' stance was consistent the whole time). When ppl hated him so bad they rioted he removed himself from the planet rather than argue or fight to justify why his actions were the best he could do. Sandstorm starts murdering Decepticons and Optimus solves the murders and then throws Sandstorm in prison bc sparing one of his Autobots the consequences of his actions is less important to Optimus than keeping the peace and making sure anyone who threatens to ignite wartime hostilities is punished for it. There are multiple characters throughout the series that other people give up on as too far gone or too cowardly/evil/damaged to be worth helping where Optimus alone is the person who says "I think they can get better/they did bad things but they're still people" such as the Dynobots, Blurr, Prowl (despite how OP's patience with him hung by a thread by the end of it), Shockwave, and, yknow, fucking Megatron of all people.

And on top of that Optimus' internal thoughts most of the time revolve around feelings of guilt, responsibility, anger, hopelessness/barely hanging on to his ideals, and so on. Bro regularly has thoughts about how the entire Autobot-Decepticon war was his fault and is depressed to the point the thought of dying/martyring himself makes him feel relieved. So like. Idk guys I don't think those are the personality traits/actions of a self-righteous person who thinks he's correct about everything and everyone who opposes him or fails his moral standards is just evil or whatever.