#I know there's a scary one out there

[imminent-danger-came]

MY NEWS LETTER CARDS WERE SO GOOD Y'ALL

[thelaurenshippen]

watching bridgerton and obviously there were a lot of things wrong with the way socializing has worked in the past, but honestly the idea of a "calling hour" is so appealing. office hours for friendship. you can show up unannounced at my home between 1 and 3pm. you must leave by 3pm. I may give you a pastry. lets bring that back

[gallusrostromegalus]

Might I inquire as to what, precisely, a Mustain't is? (Aside from a string of letters I hesitate to Google in that order.)

In October 2014 I went on a road-trip to the Driest Place In America.

I was having a rough year, very depressed from having dropped out of college for the third time. I decided a road trip was in order to re-set my brain and get a little distance. Being that it was October, and therefore all the campgrounds in the American Southwest were filled with people who have the good sense to camp in reasonable temperatures, I elected to take my parent's minivan so I could car-camp anywhere suitably isolated, and looked up some of the southwest's geographic extremes- the highest place I could drive to (Pikes Peak), the lowest place (Badwater Basin), and for fun, the Dryest Place in the continental US, which turned out to be the Pinacate Volcanic field just west of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It gets rain maybe twice a century and has no standing water, despite being less than 100 miles from the gulf of California.

It's a startlingly beautiful and alien place. The ground is a deep chocolate brown to black volcanic sand, and in mid October, the rabbit brush is turning bright yellow as it shifts to autumn, the organ pipe cacti are a dark green and stand, partially concealed in the brush at exactly human height. The air is alive with birds and insects and bats at night. The stargazing is like looking into the eyes of God.

You get there by driving down a little dirt road called "El Camino Del Diablo", or "The Devil's Road".

I drove out about three hours from Glendale, AZ to get there, arriving at sunset, and felt a profound sense of peace. I stargazed, listening to the bats hunt and sing, and slept peacefully for the first time in months.

I stayed out there for three days, sketching and painting the landscape, taking strolls through this almost alien landscape, and enjoying the light and sound and total absence of human intrusion besides myself.

On the fourth night, it was a new moon, and I awoke in the middle of the night. Something was amiss, and it took me a while to realize it was because I could NOT hear the bats. I was sleeping inside the van with the rear windows rolled halfway down rather than trying to set up the tent, so I when I sat up, I looked out of the van's reflective windows to discover what at first appeared to be A Horse.

It was something between pale gray and bright white in the starlight, standing maybe a dozen feet from the van, sniffing curiously. It made sense- I was in the middle of mustang country and there was quite a bit of foliage in the area for it and it did look like a truly wild horse- lumpy where the bones were jutting out, dusty about the hooves and face.

I was instantly seized by the sort of paralytic fear Sleep paralysis is made of. I couldn't move. It wasn't quite looking at me because it couldn't quite see through the windshield into the shadowy into the shadowy interior, but I had the distinct impression that if I looked away, it would know, and get me.

I already had problems with horses. My beloved Aunt Helen's Prize mare tried to kill me on two separate occasions, and the year before I had to carry my sister-in-law backwards out of a slot canyon whilst reciting the Saint Crispin's Day Speech as loudly as possible to keep a mustang from trampling us to death.

This is approximately what it should have looked like:

Instead, it was... off. like trying to draw a horse from memory.

The waist tapered in.

The legs were slightly too long or the torso slightly too short, probably both.

The ears were Triangular.

The head wasn't quite right- Too narrow and the jaw wasn't heavy enough.

The tail was too long and arced unnaturally away from the body.

The neck arched.

The nostrils were too high and close

The mouth too long.

Whatever this is, a Mustang it Ain't.

I watched it from the back seat as it sniffed around the front of the van, curious with about the side mirrors. It moved around the van, nibbling experimentally on the front door handle. It came up to the side windows, sniffing like a dog, and it's breath didn't fog up the glass.

Finally, it came up to the rear window, which was rolled halfway down to let the fall night air in. Not even half a pane of glass and two feet of air between us, and I could clearly see it's bright blue eyes.

Horses have Elongated pupils to give them a wide field of vision, and eyes that rotate sideways in their sockets so the pupil remains parallel to the ground. Rather creepy to watch, especially the ones with blue eyes.

A real horse that was curious about the interior of the van would have come up to the window more or less sideways, and looked at me with something like this:

Instead, the damn thing walked up and faced the back window head on, staring back at me with this:

I'm not sure how long we watched each other like that, eyes locked. My eyes burned. I couldn't blink. My mouth was dry. I couldn't swallow. My throat began to ache. I couldn't make a sound. My skin began to twitch, like I was severely dehydrated. I couldn't move. My lungs burned. I couldn't move. I couldn't move. I couldn't move. I couldn't move.

Something was touching the side of my hand on the seat next to me. It's my water bottle.

The realization must have broken the terrible paralysis in the lower parts of my brain first, because by the time I consciously realized I could move again, I was already flinging my water bottle out the window at it.

The top was open, and splashed out the window at the Mustain't.

I've never heard such a scream out of an animal. Something halfway between the sound of unquenchable rage vibrating in someone's chest and the way rabbits cry out to God when the dogs catch them.

It jumped back, pivoting away from the van, snarling at the water bottle. I don't think you're supposed to be able to see All of a horse's teeth at once, no matter how angry it is.

I watched it run into the night for some distance, it's pale body visible against the black sand and the dark gray shadow of the ancient volcanic cone it was headed for.

When the blood stopped pounding in my ears, I could hear the bats again.

I debated leaving right then, but I didn't want to get out of the van with that thing in the area, nor litter by leaving the water bottle out there. I also had the awful idea that if I left now, it might somehow be able to follow me home. I ended up staying up three hours to watch the sunrise, shaking and trying to figure out if I'd woken up from a vivid dream, if my meds had stopped working, or if that had really happened. I didn't dare move until I actually felt the temperature rise, before stepping out of the van to grab the bottle. I had my camera ready- I was still using a DSLR back then- to take pictures of the hoofprints, to show how close it had gotten to the van.

No hoofprints.

Beetle tracks in the soft sand around the van, and the clear foot-and-wing prints of a bird that had hopped around then taken off. But no hoofprints.

I went over the entire campsite with the tent broom, to make sure I removed every scrap of evidence I had ever been there, including my footprints, grabbed my water bottle, and drove the three hours back back to Glendale, then decided to do seven more hours of driving to Moab, Utah just to put more than 500 miles, the state line and at least nine things that could be considered "running water" between me and the Mustain't.

-

I still have that water bottle. It has a dent in the bottom from hitting something, but that could have happened at any time. Strange thing though. I can't drink that bottle dry. I'll have it on me, drink whatever I've put in there- water, juice, iced coffee- and eventually feel like I've drunk the whole think and that it's empty. But I open it up and it's still at least a quarter full. I drink that. I get thirsty. I open it up again. ...and there's always a mouthful left.

Not sure what the side effects of drinking from a bottle cursed by a Mustain't to always have some left are, but it lives in the Emergency Breakdown Kit in my car now, just in case I meet another one.

---

(I'm a disabled artist and make my living telling stories, please consider supporting me on Ko-Fi or Pre-order the Family Lore book on Patreon)

[stromblessed]

Mizu, femininity, and fallen sparrows

In my last post about Mizu and Akemi, I feel like I came across as overly critical of Mizu given that Mizu is a woman who - in her own words - has to live as a man in order to go down the path of revenge.

If she is ever discovered to be female by the wrong person, she will not only be unable to complete her quest, but there's a good chance that she'll be arrested or killed.

So it makes complete sense for Mizu to distance herself as much as possible from any behavior that she feels like would make someone question her sex.

I felt so indignant toward Mizu on my first couple watchthroughs for this moment. Why couldn't Mizu bribe the woman and her child's way into the city too? If Mizu is presenting as a man, couldn't she claim to be the woman's escort?

However, this moment makes things pretty clear. Mizu knows all too well the plight of women in her society. She knows it so well that she cannot risk ever finding herself back in their position again. She helps in what little way she can - without drawing attention to herself.

Mizu is not a hero and she is not one to make of herself a martyr - she will not set herself on fire to keep others warm. There's room to argue that Mizu shouldn't prioritize her quest over people's lives, but given the collateral damage Mizu can live with in almost every episode of season 1, Mizu is simply not operating under that kind of morality at this point. ("You don't know what I've done to reach you," Mizu tells Fowler.)

And while I still feel like Mizu has an obvious and established blind spot when it comes to Akemi because of their differences in station, such that Mizu's judgment of Akemi and actions in episode 5 are the result of prejudice rather than the result of Mizu's caution, I also want to establish that Mizu is just as caged as Akemi is, despite her technically having more freedom while living as a man.

Mizu can hide her mixed race identity some of the time, and she can hide her sex almost all of the time, but being able to operate outside of her society's strict rules for women does not mean she cannot see their plight.

It does not mean she doesn't hurt for them.

Back to Mizu and collateral damage, remember that sparrow?

While Mizu is breaking into Boss Hamata's manse, she gets startled by a bird and kills it on reflex. She then cradles it in her hands - much more tenderly than we've seen Mizu treat almost anything up to this point in the season:

She then puts it in its nest, with its unhatched eggs. Almost like she's trying to make the death look natural. Or like an accident.

You see where I'm going with this.

When Mizu kills Kinuyo, Mizu lingers in the moment, holding the body tenderly:

And btw a lot of stuff about this show hit me hard, but this remains the biggest gut punch of them all for me, Mizu holding that poor girl's body close, GOD

When Mizu arranges the "scene of the crime," Kinuyo's body is delicate, birdlike. And Mizu is so shaken afterward that she gets sloppy. She's horrified at this kill to the point that she can't bring herself to take another innocent life - the boy who rats her out.

MIZU'S ONE MOMENT OF SOFTNESS AND MERCY, COMING ON THE HEELS OF HER NEEDING TO KILL A GIRL TO SPARE HER THE WORST FATE THAT THIS RIGID SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER WOMEN, AND TO SPARE A BROTHEL FULL OF INNOCENT WOMEN WHO ARE THE CASTOFFS OF SOCIETY, NEARLY RESULTS IN ALL OF THEIR DEATHS

No wonder Mizu is as stoic and cold as she is.

And no wonder Mizu has no patience for Akemi whatsoever right before the terrible reveal and the fight breaks out:

Speaking of Akemi - guess who else is compared to a bird!

The plumage is more colorful, a bit flashier. But a bird is a bird.

And, uh

Yeah.

I like to think that Mizu killing the sparrow is not only foreshadowing for what she must do to Kinuyo, but is also a representation of the choice she makes on Akemi's behalf. She decides to cage the bird because she believes the bird is "better off." Better off caged than... dead.

But because Mizu doesn't know Akemi or her situation, she of course doesn't realize that the bird is fated to die if it is caged and sent back home.

Mizu is clearly not happy, or pleased, or satisfied by allowing Akemi to be dragged back to her father:

But softness and mercy haven't gotten Mizu anywhere good, recently.

There is so much tragedy layered into Mizu's character, and it includes the things she has to witness and the choices she makes - or believes she has to make - involving women, when she herself can skirt around a lot of what her society throws at women. Although, I do believe that it comes at the cost of a part of Mizu's soul.

After all, I'm gonna be haunted for the rest of this show by Mizu's very first prayer in episode 1:

"LET" her die. Because as Ringo points out, she doesn't "know how" to die.

Kind of like another bird in this show:

[nidbaesenpai]

Paper flowers seem beyond you now but you can always go back to the basics, paper cranes are easy enough...

[chyarui]

Commander Wolffe, no introduction needed.

I had so much fun with his tattoos, if you couldn’t tell. After Fox’s depressing ones and Cody’s cute but simple one, I needed to go all out with Wolfy boy’s tat. Honestly, this man deserves a cool tattoo after having to deal with the torture of interacting with C-3PO. I could FEEL his annoyance through the screen (that sassy fucking eyeroll I swear you could feel it though his helmet)

Cody Fox Doom

[2129888]

@pkaykim i'm so happy i got to be your secret santa this year wow... your art is like a balm on my soul but also makes me crazy every time i see it cannot stress this enough big fan. anyways until i learn how to write fanfic please take this missing moment in comic form! class 2-4 i pray for you...

@oofurixmas thank you for all your hard work organizing this event! the dedication and love of oofuri fans is always so amazing to see!!

[pr0cyon-lotor]

I need all of you to HEAR ME THE FUCK OUT

The Qing Jing trio but they're dating. Somewhat. At least BingFan are. Ning Yingying has a queerplatonic thing going on with both of them.

Like for some reason BingFan are co-head disciples and constantly trying to one up each other (in a very homoerotic way mind you). NYY feels left out so she secretly takes lessons from LQG so she could be on par with both of them.

This leads to her cultivation significantly improving and she can even topple MF over in a sparing match. LBH of course tries to give a backhanded remark before promptly getting thrown to the ground by NYY too.

Eventually when the Conference arrives and NYY actually gets selected too. All three go together and when the canon event happens, MF tries to pull LBH up but falters. They both end up falling in and NYY tries to pull them both up but ends up falling in too.

SQQ is panicking because "ohhhh fuck oh fuck. Ning Yingying and Ming Fan are going to die there. Of course LBh will be fine, but those two?"

Anyway he goes back to Qing Jing and does his whole mourning thing, and then all three come out and take over the demon realm.

SQH is the first to find out and was like "What... What the fuck?! That's not supposed to happen?!"

Eventually they go to Qing Jing and give SQQ the scare of a lifetime. Soon he gets used to it because aww his little ducklings are back 🥹

Just ignore that now all three can bring fear into a demon's heart. They're just his little babies. It's so unfortunate that he missed Ning Yingying and Luo Binghe's marriage :(

Huh, why does Ming Fan have a ring too? 🤔🤨

[skunkes]

micro comic with no real point or punchline i just have conversations i wanna draw out sometimes

[allastoredeer]

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ WIP WEDNESDAY ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅

There was something…off about Lucifer.

Something that wasn’t adding up.

Alastor watched him from a distance. At first it was to get a better read of him, and how long he intended to stay, but the as the days ticked on, an unsettling feeling of wrongness grew in the pit of Alastor's stomach.

It’s the mixer that set off the first alarm.

Lucifer followed through with his promise to get Charlie a meeting with Heaven—now scheduled a few days from then—and he and Charlie were in the kitchen cooking up a celebratory meal.

Alastor hid in the shadows, watching the two bubbling personalities with growing boredom.

“Oh, wow, it’s been a while since I’ve been in here,” Lucifer said, wandering around the kitchen as Charlie pulled appliances out of cupboards and ingredients out of the pantry.

“Yeah, Vaggie and I rearranged a lot of the hotel. To make it new and refreshing, you know?”

Lucifer nodded, as if he understood exactly what she meant. “Well, you’ll have to show me where everything is, I guess,” he laughed, opening a few cupboards. “Because I have no idea where that blasted mixer is. I could’ve sworn it was in here.”

“I’ll grab it, let me just—oh, hold on,” she pulled her phone from her back pocket as it started ringing. “It’s Vaggie. She’s out running errands. Do you mind if I?” She gestured to the door.

“Oh, go right ahead. I’ll get everything ready in here.”

“Thanks, dad.”

She left and Alastor was prepared to follow her example, as there was hardly anything worth watching in the kitchen, but paused when Lucifer let out a deep, happy sigh and turned, walked to a cupboard across the room, and pulled out the mixer.

Alastor frowned.

But it could’ve just been a lucky guessed, he reasoned as Lucifer plugged the appliance into the wall, humming a jaunty circus tune to himself. But then Lucifer opened a drawer close by, grabbed a wire whisk, then hopped a few shelves over for a mixing bowl. The squirm in Alastor’s gut tightened.

For someone who hadn’t been there in centuries, he sure knew his way around.

Still, that wasn’t too strange. Lucifer was an immortal being. A few centuries was probably little more than a week for him. Who could say how his memory matched?

Except…

Didn’t Charlie say she and Vaggie rearranged everything?

His magic, Alastor decided. Divine powers of an angel, and all of that. Surely that would cover finding basic kitchenware.

But even that explanation felt a bit…off.

Something about it wasn’t right.

It was Lucifer’s confidence. The way he strode from cupboard to cupboard without a lick of hesitation or a hint of doubt. No fumbling, no second guessing, no pulling out the wrong drawer, even on accident.

Still hidden, Alastor inched closer, to get a better look.

That’s when Lucifer turned his head and looked at him.

For a split-second, when those red slitted eyes met his, Alastor thought he’d accidentally stepped out of the shadows, because all of the sudden, Lucifer's smile was gone, his humming dropped, and the cadence around him became tangibly colder. Alastor checked himself but, no, he was still hidden. Still covered in shadows in the corner of the kitchen, where the lights weren’t far enough to give away his hiding spot.

But Lucifer didn’t look away. He wasn’t moving. Wasn’t blinking. It didn’t even look like he was breathing.

There weren’t many things in Hell that unsettled Alastor anymore. He’d encountered demons without eyelids, ones who seemed to disappeared when they stopped moving, plenty who didn’t need to breath or eat for days on end.

Lucifer was hardly the strangest, or scariest, thing he’s seen, and yet…

He slowly cocked his head and took a step around the counter. Alastor’s heart jumped. Lucifer still hadn't broken eye contact. He walked slowly, not like he was scared or nervous, but careful and quiet, like a predator stalking through bushes. Trying not to startle its victim.

Alastor figured he may as well step out of the shadows, seeing how his presence was obviously known. Or he could simply leave. Just meld into the darkness and return to the parlor to see if anything interesting was going on at the bar.

But he couldn’t, for the life of him, move.

His body refused to. His lungs held his breath captive in his chest. His heart thumped harder with growing unease.

Deep in the recesses of his mind, a small, intrinsic voice told him to stay still. To keep eye contact. So certain that if the moved, if he took his eyes off of Lucifer for one second, he wouldn’t be fast enough to see him a second time. Before it was too late.

The closer he got, the louder that voice became, until Alastor didn’t feel like he was controlling the shadows so much as the shadows were holding him in place. He was trapped, completely and utterly, and he could. Not. Look. Away.

Lucifer was only a few feet away when the doors flung open and Charlie bounded inside, hauling a load of groceries with Vaggie close behind. His change was immediate.

The air warmed, his dark demeanor disappeared and a wide, happy smile lit up his face. He whirled around. “Char-Char, welcome back! I think I found just about everything.”

“Oh, wow, you did,” Charlie said, looking over the counter. “It wasn’t too much of a hassle, was it?”

“Ah, not at all, kiddo. I found may way around. Ready to get started?”

“Yes! Here, Vaggie got the rest of the things we needed.”

Lucifer walked to her with a pep in his step, but as he rounded the counter, he looked at Alastor again, face impassive and cold, and suddenly Alastor was being thrust away. He stumbled out of the shadows on the third floor, knocking into a hall table that nearly took him off his feet. He clutched it, barely keeping himself from hitting the floor.

He stared at the wall, stunned.

⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅

I've mentioned that I've wanted to write a dark!Lucifer fic and I got an Anon a while back asking how I would go about writing that.

Well, here's a little piece.

[premamelody]

lord, give me one more chance

[kelocitta]

Perhaps a more literal "Clerk Lover" than most abnormalities playfully given the title; Rat King shows significant variance in hostility when faced with high level employees vs. low rank ones. Teams otherwise completely decimated by its rampages may find themselves with stragglers who were merely forced out of the way in favor of more enticing prey, at least in the moment.

Naturally, Managers should take care to discourage any dangerous ideas about 'mercy' 'favoritism' or "kindness" lest they find abnormality containment units suddenly prone to failure.

[fatedroses]

Some body type references and notes I wanted to make, especially before I redraw some of my old pieces (plus, a bit of him as an adventurer having a crisis of a realization), and also just personally how I HC the change between stormblood to now based on some in game refs I've been looking at.

[boxheadpaint]

I just need to know is that Cackletta paired with Peach? If so, fascinating, I wish to know more - if not, I entirely understand the coincidence of two people standing next to each other in a dynamic does not equate to them being A Pairing

yeas

Reasoning: funny

[looney-mooney-studio]

The secret that nobody knows about the Pheonix Flynn AU is that it’s actually meant to be canon compliant with Act Your Age. The AU isn’t an alternative way for Phineas to grow up, but a way for the character to (hopefully) continue growing afterwards (and a way to explore how these feelings might have been building up over time.)

The shell of her egg was made of solid steel, and she kept welding the cracks shut. She broke free from it one day, but it still took a long time for her to feel comfortable enough to start chipping away at it instead of trying to keep it sealed.

[sluckythewizard]

PART OF A BIGGER DOODLE PAGE. WHEN ITS DONE ILL TUCK THE LINK INTO THIS LITTLE X RIGHT HERE ----> [X] I REALLY REALLY LOVE THE TOM N JERRY DYNAMIC W EMIZEL N VEX. IMAGINE BEING SO SO HAUNTED BY A LITTLE GUY THATS JUST SSSSOO FUCKING ANNOYING.