#It's like most kiddie horror

[amplexadversary]

Right. This has been a vampire thing since *Dracula* Dracula. For some reason that's so easy to forget.

[perenlop]

watching this youtuber talk about fanmade kirby horror games and the comments are like “oh sweet summer child…. you must not know the LORE… no one tell him about void termina haha!!!” and its funny bc in the video he literally references the tragedy in triple deluxe and talks about morpho knight several times. i think he knows the lore you guys he just isnt focusing on canon content rn

[nozomijoestar]

you reblogging so much of shin megami tensei got me back on playing the game i had for a while (smt5) but i'm really curious what the one ur reblogging is about

I want to play four (the one with the samurai) if that's the one you mean but if you mean three then that's Nocturne and I'm playing it now. You play a guy who with his two friends is spared the apocalypse but are left to all fend for themselves in the world after, infested with demons because the people that ended the world wanted to bring about the process of creating a new one. Instead of dying immediately in what's effectively now a waiting room with everyone from Heaven, Hell, and myth, the player is saved because some kid (won't spoil his identity) who's part of these forces likes you and makes you swallow a parasite. You become half human half demon. Because you're now half demon you get excluded from being able to make a Reason ie. come up with an idea for a world to replace the old one, then get sponsored by a demon to fight in the struggle to make your Reason the new world. But being excluded from making your own allows you to choose what Reason you'll sponsor and champion into existence, or you can reject all of them, or you can leave the world to be solely for demons. Among other routes.

It's demonic pokemon just like other mainline SMT in a philosophical thought experiment, because the only way to gain party members is by fighting then talking to demons to collect them. I just really like the different Reason philosophies and how they interact and what happens when you reject them all; I like what the game is trying to say about what defines a human being, even if they get made demonic, really what's the difference between a human being and a demon at all and so on. It's not very character driven, characters are more a representation of the themes, commentary the game is making etc. and implications of where those intersect or what's implied but in this case I think that's fine. The music is bangin and the atmosphere is fantastic. I know it has a reputation for being hard but so far I don't care when it'll get hard for me, the combat is fun; getting absorbed in everything else is the real reward. And I love Demi-Fiend's tattoos that are more like his demonic veins. Really that was the first thing that always made me wanna play, his design.

How do you not find this cool

[mellowsadistic]

Costume Changes - Part 1

Three college girls perform a childish prank on a woman’s house on Halloween, not realising the occupant is an actual witch. The girls are helpless to resist when she instructs them to come inside, and to their horror they find themselves being permanently altered by her magic.

***

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” said Amber, glancing nervously at the front door of the house.

“Oh lighten up,” said Lucy, handing her a roll of toilet paper. “it’s just a bit of fun.”

“Yeah, don’t be such a downer,” said Candace, pausing her examination of her nails to accept a roll of toilet paper from Lucy herself. “TP’ing someone’s house is a Halloween staple.”

“But what if that woman comes out and catches us?” Amer asked anxiously, adjusting her glasses and glancing again at the front porch of the house. Fake cobwebs stretched between the wooden pillars, plastic bats hung down on strings, and numerous pumpkins were sat around on the ground, leering at them.

“We’ll be long gone before she realises what’s happened,” said Lucy, rolling her eyes impatiently. “Besides, what’s she gonna do? Chase after us? It’s her own fault for not giving us any candy. We did things properly, didn’t we? We said trick or treat, and if she won’t give us a treat, she gets a trick. That’s how it works.”

“Aren’t you three a little old for trick or treating?” Candace mocked, echoing what the woman in the witch’s outfit had told them when they’d knocked on her door. “I’d rather save these sweets for the kiddies. What a bitch!”

Lucy put her hands on her hips. She wore a devil costume with a red vinyl bodysuit, matching boots, and a horned hairband. “And now it’s time for a little Halloween justice,” she said, tossing back her sleek brown hair and smirking.

Amber fussed with the sensible cardigan and knee-length skirt of her librarian costume. “Alright,” she conceded. “I’m in.”

“Well now that Amber’s given us permission,” Candace said scornfully, “I guess we can start.” She was dressed in a flowing blue gown with a loose, revealing bodice. A very realistic crown sat in her golden hair.

“I was just saying-”

“Ugh, stop bickering!” Lucy snapped. “Let’s get on with this! When we’re done, we’ll head to the bar, okay? I could do with a drink, and warming up a little.” She shivered in the cool Autumn air. Her costume left her shoulders, arms, and most of her legs bare.

Lucy threw the first roll of toilet paper, looping it high over the squat tree in the woman’s front garden. Amber and Candace followed suit, covering the hedges and flowerbeds with toilet paper, some of which began to melt immediately on the damp leaves. They moved on to the house itself next, arming themselves from the plastic bag of toilet rolls they’d brought with them, and tossing them over the porch and up onto the tiled roof, leaving trails of increasingly soggy paper everywhere. Soon the three college students were giggling like schoolgirls. At least until the front door opened and light spilled out onto the lawn.

“Well, well, well, looks like I was wrong,” said the woman in the witch costume. “Maybe the three of you are just kiddies after all.”

“Run!” Lucy gasped. She could feel a giddy excitement bubbling up within her, and she let out a laugh. But it died in her throat almost instantly. Something was wrong. She’d tried to sprint away towards the street, but it was as if her legs were frozen in place. She couldn’t move! She looked around wildly and saw Amber and Candace in the same situation, both gawking at their feet in confusion.

“I don’t think so,” said the witch woman lightly. She let out a sweet, tinkling laugh that sent a shiver down Lucy’s spine. “My, my, look what a mess you’ve made!” Her eyes travelled over the garden, coming to rest on the place where Candace had stuffed a roll of toilet paper into a drain pipe. “What silly, messy girls you are!”

“What have you done to us?!” Lucy demanded. She tried her best to sound confident and calm, and not scared out of her wits, but her voice shook nonetheless. There was something freaky going on here. “Why can’t we move?!”

“Just a little freezing spell,” said the woman, gently. “I can’t have you running off, can I? Now let’s see, what do we have here…” She walked up to Lucy, whose heart was thumping rapidly in her chest. “A naughty little devil!” She examined the other girls. “A snobbish queen too. And a fussy librarian!” She laughed again, shaking her head. “No, no, no, I don’t think that’s right at all! Come inside, little ones. I have some costumes that will suit you much better.”

The witch woman turned around and walked back inside the house, and to her horror, Lucy found herself following after her. It was as though her body was on auto-pilot, acting totally without her permission. Amber and Candace followed too, and Lucy could see the expression of fear on Candace’s face, and the look of shock and disbelief on Amber’s.

“This isn’t possible,” Amber was whispering to herself. “This can’t be happening. She can’t be an actual witch…”

They crossed the threshold into the house, and the woman closed the door behind them. “Follow me, girls,” said happily, leading them on into the living room. Even on the inside, the house was covered in Halloween decorations, but otherwise it looked normal. Regular chairs and regular tables and regular wallpaper. No giant cauldrons or bloodstained pentagrams, no place they might be sacrificed or eaten alive. Still, just being out of control of her body was enough to frighten Lucy to her core.

“Halloween is my favourite night of the year,” said the witch, walking over to a large wooden chest that sat against the wall and kneeling down in front of it. She lifted the top, and a gold light emanated from within. Lucy, Amber, and Candace stood in a row watching her, glued to the spot. “It’s always fun seeing what people choose to dress as. I think it reflects something about our inner selves.” The girls exchanged frightened glances as the woman rooted around inside the chest. “But some people need a little help understanding who they really are.” The witch stood up and turned around, holding a bundle of clothes. “And that’s certainly true of you three.” She handed a sparkly pink mass to Candace. “That’s for you, sweetie. You’re not a queen, I’m afraid. Just an overgrown little princess.” She moved on to Amber, pushing something white and tartan into her arms. “And you might think you’re a big, smart librarian, young lady, but I know better. You might be in your twenties, but you’re not ready to be out of school just yet.” Then she reached Lucy, and she handed over something soft and silky and pure white. Lucy’s hands reached out to take it without her say-so. “A devil is completely the wrong costume for you, little one,” the witch said sweetly, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “I think you’re just an innocent little angel, aren’t you?”

Lucy looked down at the bundle she was holding. It was a wispy white dress, a pair of strap-on angel wings, and a fluffy halo attached to a hairband by a piece of wire. There was something else sitting on top, but for a moment she couldn’t comprehend what it was. Then the realisation came to her, and she felt her heart drop down into her stomach. Pull-ups. Soft and crinkly, with little flower designs for wetness indicators. A pair of Huggies pull-ups, just her size.

“For just-in-case,” said the witch, winking at her.

Lucy felt sick.

“But there’s nothing just-in-case about yours, is there, sweetie?” the witch cooed, looking over at Candace. Lucy followed the woman’s gaze and saw Candace looking stricken as she extracted something from the mass of pink frills she was holding. She unfurled it slowly and stared at it, horror-struck. “It’s only fitting for someone who clearly doesn’t know what toilet paper is for, don’t you think?” said the witch. “That will handle all your wees and poos.”

Candace blanched. She seemed unable to tear her eyes away from the enormous disposable diaper in her hands.

Lucy glanced at what Amber was holding. Resting on top of the tartan whatever-it-was was a pair of white panties with a My Little Pony design on the front. Amber was staring down at them intensely.

“Well come on, girls!” said the witch brightly, clapping her hands together twice. “Chop, chop! It’s time to change into your new outfits! Then we’ll see about some trick or treat candy!”

[artydonsgf]

Could you do something for a Lifeguard!Au?

hi!! i am SO sorry for the lack of response, i've been incredibly busy. as an apology, please enjoy a lifeguard au!

The quiet stillness of the pool was interrupted by your personal nightmare. A group of twenty or so five year olds descended on the pool, splashing and screaming as they jumped in. You sigh, dragging yourself towards the deep end. Your spot in the kiddy pool gave you a perfect view of the gorgeous blonde lifeguard. The deep end was technically closer but it also meant you couldn’t stare without feeling embarrassed. His eyes were trained on the kids, a weary look on his beautiful face. He made a signal towards another lifeguard, a dark-haired boy, clearly telling him to keep an eye on the children. The other boy was further away but it was easy to make out the annoyed look on his face. The blonde laughed, sending a wave of desire through you. His smile was gorgeous. 

“Hey!” A panicked voice shouted, the only indication of what was to come. A wet rubber ball slammed into your face. Your head went under from the force of the hit and for a moment, you wondered where the surface was. That single moment was all it took for a pair of strong arms to wrap around you and drag you upward. The sweet comfort of oxygen filled your lungs and your butt sat on the edge of the pool. A comforting hand sat on your knee. 

“Hey, look at me, are you okay? Do we need to get first aid?” To your horror, the beautiful blonde lifeguard was bobbing in front of you. His wet curls stuck to his forehead and his eyes held the same red twinge as every swimmer you’d ever met. Embarrassment clogged your throat and no words formed. The panicked look on your face reflected back on his. 

“Patrick! Get first aid here, now,” He turned and barked. The dark haired lifeguard from earlier made a signal at another boy and he switched places with him. “Hey, I’m Art, you with me?” You nod, but the action makes your head hurt. He frowns at the face you make. 

“Where does it hurt? Here?” He reaches up until his fingers lightly graze your cheek. You flinch in response, the skin still tender. He gives you a small smile. “That ball hit you pretty hard, huh?” He throws a glance at the ball bobbing a few feet away. If you didn’t know any better, you’d say it was a dirty look. The thought makes you laugh. His head snaps back toward you. 

“Something funny? Is your head hurting?” He places a hand over your forehead in concern. You flinch again and he snaps his hand away. “Right, I’m sorry, I keep forgetting.” He grins, his voice apologetic. Right then, the other lifeguard comes running with another lifeguard. 

“Art, quit flirting with the injured girl," the boy he called Patrick says, voice teasing. Art rips his eyes away from yours long enough to glare at him. His eyes narrow and that's all it takes for Patrick to shut his mouth. A girl with a first aid kit and a smile crouches next to you.

"Hi, I'm Tashi. Can you point out what hurts?" Her smile is so blindingly beautiful, you find yourself unable to speak. Her smile is replaced with a frown. She puts a hand on your jaw and angles your face up, looking right up your nose. This was the most humiliating moment of your life. A beautiful lifeguard looking up your nose while two equally gorgeous lifeguards watch.

"Is she alright?" Art asks, his hand still on your knee. Tashi doesn't respond, her eyes still trained on your face. Her cold hands contrast the warmth of your face.

"Yes, but I see blood in her nose and her face is really warm. Probably from the impact of the ball," she reports back. Patrick catches your eye and has the audacity to smirk.

"I'm sure," he licks his lips, staring at you like he's hungry. Somehow, the gaze doesn't feel predatory, it only heats you up further. The words jump back into your mouth all at once.

"I'm fine. Totally fine. I don't need all three of you here," the words sound harsh as they spill out. "Wait, that sounded wrong. I mean you're all kinda making me dizzy. You're all very attractive and I'm not really sure how to cope with that." This word vomit is somehow worse. All three of them look at you with shocked looks and pink cheeks. You sigh in defeat. "Please, please, ignore me."

"It's kinda hard to ignore that, don't you think?" Patrick's smirk is replaced with a small smile. Art nods, too shocked to speak. Tashi clears her throat, drawing your attention back on her and her brown eyes.

"Let's attribute that to your head injury. Though as a person without a head injury, I'd like to say you're also very attractive." She swipes her hand gently over your forehead, clearing a piece of hair. The boys instantly speak, yelling over each other.

"Hey, I saw her first." Art argues.

"Don't care. I saw her second." Patrick argues right back, petulant. Tashi rolls her eyes as she packs up her first aid kit.

"Ignore them. You should stay out of the pool for a bit, let the dizziness pass. Maybe you can sit by my stand?" She points at a lifeguard chair by the hot tub. You grin, the boys and their argument effectively tuned out. The rest of the day is spent with the three lifeguards switching stations every fifteen minutes in order to sit near you.

this was originally meant to be an art fic (as seen with the first part of the story LOL) but the bisexual in me had to make this messy. thank you for your request!

[ace-of-clubs-and-diamonds]

Needles and Pins

Trouble saunters up to your workplace in a gas station in the middle of Nowhere Special, Southern U.S.A. Night after night, it comes armed with a charming smile and bared teeth. And despite knowing full well it's a bad idea, you just can't keep yourself from being lured in.

Rating: Explicit, NSFW 🔞 Fandom(s): Near Dark 1987, Abigail 2024 Pairing: Severen x AFAB!Reader x Frank/Adam Barrett Word count: 9.8K Content warnings: Canon divergence, DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT, dubcon, vampires, alcohol consumption, manipulation, hypnotism, physical assault, biting, blood drinking, making out, brief gun violence, reader makes some dumb decisions because of hypnotism and/or blood loss, threesome, grinding, blood kink, cunnilingus, vaginal fingering, handjobs, implied reader death, reader is AFAB but gender neutral AO3 Link: Here

Author's Note: Ohhhh baby this idea's been blooming since I saw a gifset comparing Near Dark's Severen and Abigail's Frank. They're so alike but so different it's insane, and the idea of getting tag-teamed by them was too fucking good to pass up. Plus it's Multi-May, an event run by my lovely friend @bisexual-horror-fan, so I figured - why not? Hope y'all enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!!

It didn’t occur to you that the harbinger of your little town’s demise would be an old RV that was one pothole away from shuddering itself to pieces. You’d seen plenty of them over the years. Most folks who weren’t local were just passing through on their way elsewhere – stopping for the night to stretch their legs, to sleep, to grab gas or a drink or a pack of cigarettes, whatever. It’s just how it was living in a snoozy little town not far from a major highway. Plenty of people stopped for a while, but few ever lingered. So it was strange when they did. It made you suspicious.

But on the surface, there’d been nothing to suspect.

You’d been at the gas station counter just past midnight, scrolling through your phone, when they’d pulled up in a dirty RV that had to be decades old. A family of five. Had come from some other part of the South, judging by their accents. Three of them had come inside – an older man, a woman who seemed to be his partner despite being about twenty years younger, and a young boy you assumed was their son. The man had been the one to speak to you. He was perfectly polite, friendly, charming even. He’d introduced himself as Jesse. He and his family were roadtripping across the U.S. and had stopped to get gas, stretch their legs, and spend a couple days not cramped inside an RV.

You’d nodded politely as he’d spoken. Had rung up the gas and a couple magazines the kid had grabbed – none of the brightly colored kiddie ones. You hadn’t commented on it, kept your face as pleasantly friendly and neutral as possible. When Jesse has asked if there was a motel in this town, you’d given him directions. They’d paid in cash and left. And you hadn’t thought much of it, because it was the kind of story you’d heard about a hundred times. They’d stay for a couple days, realize there was fuckall to do here outside of sitting in a bar or sitting in a church or going to the grocery store, and they’d leave.

So what if their stares, hard and intense and glimmering with an unfathomable something, piercing like they could see through your skin to the veins and muscle and bone beneath, had lingered in your mind for the rest of your shift? So what if the kid glared at you with a simmering hostility and a calculatedness that felt distinctly wrong? So what if something in the back of your mind told you something wasn’t right about them?

You’d met plenty of folks passing by in this job. You’d met plenty of the friendly kind, and a few of the shadier kind. And you’d made a habit of listening to your gut when something felt off. Someone like you working largely alone in the dead of night couldn’t exactly take chances. So you paid attention to that prickle on the back of your neck, that curling unease in your stomach.

But the kid…. they were a family with a little boy. You’d brushed the unease off and gone back to scrolling through your phone to pass the time.

Then they’d come back around the next night, again past midnight. This time it was the kid and the two who’d stayed outside – a blond haired girl and a man wearing sunglasses, a leather jacket, and the kind of grin that set you on edge as soon as you saw it.

“Hey there.” You said the words with calm friendliness. “Can I help y’all?”

“I’m sure you can.” The man swaggered up to the counter with the confidence of someone who owned the place. You resisted the urge to cringe away.

You weren’t exactly the type to scare easy. What was wrong with you?

The girl and the kid were wandering, eyeballing shelves of candy and snacks without touching anything. They were siblings, maybe. Both blond like the woman from yesterday. Not like Sunglasses. He looked closer in age to –

Your attention snapped back to him as he stopped in front of you and propped an elbow against the counter. “What kind of ah…. fun do y’all get up to here? Got any bars, clubs…” His gaze flitted up and down your body. “….Strip clubs? Or is this more of a ‘grannies at town hall’ kinda place?”

You schooled your features back to neutrality despite the rising discomfort in your chest. “No clubs, adult or otherwise. Sorry.” You weren’t really. “There is a bar, though. It’s just down the road from the motel, actually. Surprised you didn’t see it earlier.”

“Well, yknow how it is. Kiddie-winkies keepin us busy n all that.” Sunglasses gave a vague wave toward said kids. The boy shot him a look of cold fury, while the girl seemed engrossed in reading the label on a packet of Nerds.

You gave him an obligatory nod. “Sure.”

The man studied you for a moment. After a beat of uncomfortable silence, he tipped his head and pulled off the sunglasses, then studied you again. His eyes were blue.

“Don’t suppose you’d be willing to show me round town, would ya?”

You blinked at the whiplash of this family’s oddness and Sunglasses now apparently coming onto you. Because that’s only what he could be doing. Ladies-man type. Alright. Sure. Not the first time it had happened.

“I don’t get off till seven a.m.,” you said apologetically. You’ll probably be gone by then, and I’ll be heading home to pass the fuck out, you didn’t say.

“Aw. Shame.” He tilted his head, eyed you up and down again. Like you were a strange little puzzle to figure out. Or a particularly interesting piece of meat. His smile turned cheeky and, if you were being honest, just a little bit strangely charming. “Don’t suppose I can convince you to skip the rest of your shift?”

Well. The idea was certainly tempting. “Not if I wanna pay the bills,” you answered instead.

He nodded and made a little hum. “Right. No mercy for the lil guy, huh? Well.” He straightened, flicking his sunglasses back on. The grin was sharp and feral again, and it poked at some ancient prey animal instinct far in the back of your brain. “Thanks for the directions, sugar. See ya round.”

And then they were gone.

You really hoped the kids hadn’t pocketed anything while you were distracted.

They were still in town days later, long after you’d expected them to leave. You only ever saw them at night, and even then, it was glimpses. Maybe that should’ve been strange to you, but you were something of a nocturnal creature yourself. Sleep all day, wake in the afternoon, work the night shift, come back home as the sun was rising and pass out soon after. Maybe they worked the night shift too, whatever it is they did. Though that didn’t explain the kids’ sleep schedule. It occurred to you that they should’ve been in school but hey, maybe they were homeschooled. It wasn’t your business. Maybe it should’ve set off alarm bells, but you knew better than to stick your nose where it didn’t belong.

But apparently Sunglasses had never learned that.

You’d been intending to grab some groceries and take them back home before your shift, but as soon as you stepped up the curb to head into the Harris Teeter, someone called your name and on instinct you turned around. And were met with a familiar face.

“Fancy meeting you here!” Sunglasses sidled up to you but notably didn’t make any physical contact. Points for that, you supposed.

“Well,” you said dryly, “I do live here.” You weren’t on the clock and didn’t have to have your customer service face on. You were free to say what you like, leave any time you like.

“Really? Thought you mighta been stuck haunting that place.”

“Stuck haunting a twenty-year-old gas station in this town? No fucking thanks. I’d rather drink myself to death,” you scoffed.

A delighted look sprang across Sunglasses’s face. “Sounds like a plan to me! How bout it? I’ll buy you a drink.”

Whoa whoa whoa, wait. You mentally backpeddled. “No – that’s not what – I have stuff I need to do before I clock in–” You weren’t exactly eager to get to work early, but neither were you eager to let a strange man buy you a drink.

“Aw, c’mon now.” He took off those sunglasses and met your gaze. “Just one drink. It’ll be quick.”

….He was pretty good-looking. He was the posterboy of tall dark and handsome, with the pale blue eyes, mussed black hair, and jawline. The leather and chunky rings gave a rougher edge to that prettiness. And there was something else about him – an erraticness, an unpredictableness, that was as enticing as it was unnerving. And really, how many other guys had tried to come onto you before, invasive and unappealing? How many of them had actually been truly tempting? Exactly none of them. And now that a guy like this, strange as he was, showed up and offered you a drink, were you really about to say no, even when you wanted to say yes, deep down? Were you really about to shoot down the only decent chance you’d gotten in this middle of nowhere Southern hell?

“Alright.” It just slipped out. It slipped out so easily it startled you.

Why would you say yes like that?

“Alright!” The man threw an arm around you and tugged you away from the grocery store parking lot – and towards the bar on the other side of the road. The bar you’d pointed out to him just days before.

Your head whirled. What the fuck? Why did you say yes? What had possibly compelled you to say yes to this stranger?

“I don’t. I don’t even know your name,” you stuttered.

His grin turned cheeky as he glanced down at you. “Severen. Feel free to wear it out much as you like.”

It was an astronomically bad idea to get involved with a total stranger. A total stranger whose smile gave you bad vibes. A total stranger who’d probably be leaving within a couple days. A total stranger who’d been so very eager to have your attention. There were red flags. He probably wasn’t involved in some drug or sex trafficking scheme, but you still didn’t know a damn thing about him. Severen. You wondered if that was the name he’d been given, or if it was something he’d chosen himself for the punk-cowboy thing he had going on.

And yet, despite your reservations, here you were. You weren’t usually so swayed by a pretty face, but something about those blue eyes had compelled you to say yes. And against all odds..... you were enjoying yourself.

Severen was engaging, to say the least. Intense. Energetic. Constantly in motion, even when he was sitting – moving his arms and hands animatedly as he spoke, bouncing his leg, fiddling with his sunglasses or his un-drunk glass of alcohol.

The longer you sat there and listened to him – the more you stared at him – the more you found yourself loosening your grip on caution. The more your reservations wilted away. You couldn’t even blame your drink, since there was no alcohol in it. He was just…. kind of fascinating. And energetic. He made you laugh. And despite your earlier misgivings, he was kind of sweet. He told you about his family. Apparently Jesse and Diamondback, the blond woman, had found him at a low point in his life and taken him in, provided him with food and shelter and company he hadn’t had in a long time. And they’d done the same with the two kids, Mae and Homer. They were a patched-up family who stuck together and took care of each other when no one else did. It was sweet. It brushed against something lonely and untouched in your heart. To have that kind of family, that kind of reliability…. you shoved down the pang of sheer want it stirred up.

You could not start wanting and getting attached like that. Not when they were just passing through.

Still. You couldn’t stop meeting his gaze. You quickly stopped minding how often his arm brushed against yours. And you very quickly started to idly wonder if there was room for a sixth in that beat up RV.

When your phone alarm pinged at 10:30 p.m., you didn’t want to leave the comfort of the bar and Severen’s scorching attention. You could hear the reluctance in your own voice as you said, “I should head to work.” But God, you didn’t want to. You almost hoped he’d ask you to skip out on your shift, like he had last time. You weren’t sure you’d be able to say no.

But instead he just fixed you with a smirk and said, “Prolly.” He waved you off as you reached for your wallet. “Don’t worry bout it, sugar. Drink’s on me.”

You hesitated. “Well. Thanks. This was actually really nice.” Please give me a reason to stay.

“Course.” His gaze flicked away from yours, down your figure, sizing you up again. Did he see anything different from the first time he’d done that? Did you…. feel something different from the first time?

You forced yourself to say, “See you round.”

“I sure will.”

You left the bar in a haze, as if slipping out of a dream. By the time you were clocking into your shift, reality had fully settled back in and left your body oddly heavy, limbs buzzing with the faint sensation of pins and needles. Doubt had come back in full force. About a dozen questions whirled around your mind all night. What the fuck had you been thinking? Why did you say yes to him? Why did you so desperately want to head back to the bar and find him again?

You kept a wary eye on the door for the entire night. But there wasn’t a single damn sign of life, even if you felt like something was watching you from beyond the bleached lights of the gas station. You were almost relieved as the sun peeked up from the horizon at the end of your shift. As if it would protect you.

As if it would shield you from whatever went bump in the night.

You kept running into Severen. You kept making bad decisions. He would take you to the bar or walk to work with you or come to the gas station and hang around like it wasn’t a public establishment you were supposed to be running. Every time you wanted to tell him to fuck off, every time you wanted to ask why he was still here and why he was stalking you, he’d make eye contact and the words would die on your tongue. He’d draw you in. He’d say something that made you smile or laugh or, God forbid, that made your face warm and your breath come a little too quick. Things were moving far too fast far too soon, and you knew it. Whenever he wasn’t around, you snapped back to reality and promised yourself that he wouldn’t reel you in again. You had to cut him off. Whoever he was, he was trouble. You could sense it. But then he’d pop up again and your resolve would instantly burn away – you’d forget why you wanted him to stop in the first place. He was hypnotizing.

Even now, eight days after they’d first come to town, you just couldn’t bring yourself to care that Severen was perched on the gas station counter, teasing you and making you giggle like a schoolgirl with a crush and completely distracting you from what you should be doing. Which was acting professional while there was a customer. Which you most certainly were not doing. He was making you fucking stupid, and you couldn’t care less.

The customer kept eyeballing you from out the side of his glasses. Embarrassment burned in your stomach. But you just couldn’t drag your attention away from Severen for more than a few seconds.

“Anyways, like I was sayin – Diamondback took one look at this sucker and just bout knocked his block clean off.” He whistled and you jumped when he snapped an arm out, as if punching an invisible attacker. He laughed at your reaction. “Knew from then on never to mess with that bitch.”

“She sounds pretty badass,” you admitted. You wondered what she’d think of you. After the initial meeting with Jesse, you’d spotted her wandering around the town at night, sometimes laughing and with her arm around a young blushing guy who’d moved to town a couple years ago. You wondered about that. Didn’t ask.

“Yeah, she ain’t half bad. Ole snake’s got one helluva bite, that’s for damn sure.” Severen paused, as if considering, then leaned over with a mischievous look. His lips brushed the shell of your ear. “I been told I got a good bite too.”

Oh you could not be thinking about that at the cash register. You ducked your head and furiously looked for something to do with your hands. Severen’s self-satisfied laugh – it was more of a giggle, really – just made your face warm more.

A magazine smacked down against the counter. You snapped your head up. The customer was staring at you with an unamused expression. The slicked-back hair and chain necklace and obvious impatience all just screamed douchebag, as if the words from his mouth didn’t say it loud enough. “If you lovebirds are done – can I check out?” Oh, and a Yank to boot. New York or New Jersey, if the accent was anything to go by.

“Sure thing,” you said with forced niceness.

“These too.” He tossed down a packet of spearmint gum and a bottle of iron pills. You nodded and rung them up.

You didn’t have to look at Severen to know he was sizing the customer up; the dirty look the customer was giving him in return was indication enough. You grit your teeth. Please don’t say anything. Please don’t start a fight. Please don’t –

“Got a problem?” Severen asked. The cheerfulness in his voice felt like the warning rattle of a snake. You sucked a breath in from between your teeth.

“Yeah, actually. Think you can fuckin move?”

For a second, you were certain Severen was going to just tackle him and start a fight then and there. But instead he hopped down from the counter and clapped a hand onto the man’s shoulder. That grin was still fixed on his face, but it was thin and sharp like a razor. “First come first served, Yankee.”

Something like disdain or anger flickered across the customer’s face, but you jumped in before he could say anything. “That’ll be twenty-four dollars and seventy-eight cents.”

The customer’s gaze bounced between you two, something unreadable in his shockingly blue eyes. He gave an annoyed huff, shoved Severen’s hand off, and rifled around his jacket pocket for a wallet. He tossed a twenty and a five down. “Keep the change.”

“Alright. Would you like a receipt?”

“No.”

You shoved the items in a shitty plastic bag and thrust it over the counter to him, accompanying the motion with a blithe smile. “Here you go. Have a nice night.”

“Uh-huh.” He paused before heading out, giving you a weird raised-eyebrow look. “Don’t let the fuckin bed bugs bite.” He said it obnoxiously, knowingly, like it should mean something. Your face heated as you recalled what Severen had whispered in your ear. Fucking asshole.

You waited till he was out of sight to turn your disapproving frown to Severen. The urge to melt and let it go was near overwhelming, but you shoved it aside. “What the fuck was that about?”

“Yankees ain’t got manners, that’s what.” Severen said it dismissively, tossing his head like a dog shaking off flies. Then he sprung over the counter and landed with a jostle of leather and buckles and spurs, and he popped up to full height with an expression that promised nothing good. The same expression he’d been wearing when he first set foot here. You startled back. He followed you.

“Since when do you care about that sort of thing?” Something rung in warning at the back of your mind, even as that fuzzy contentedness that came whenever you looked at Severen tried to smother it. Something was off.

“Aw, don’t be like that. Lookit me.”

Rough fingers curled around your jaw and tilted your head up. As soon as you made eye contact, the warning in your head went silent. The tension in your jaw and your brow and your body unspooled. You went limp, letting Severen herd you against the back wall and cage you in with his arms and his body. His head blocked the sterile glow of the neon lights, casting you in shadow. His breath settled against your lips.

“Now, aren’t you a pretty lil thing?” he murmured, all soft honeyed tones and Southern charm. You would’ve liked to have thought you were immune to that sort of thing, being in this business and all, but your heart hammered so loud in your ears and your throat that you couldn’t think straight. “Thought that since I first saw you. Thought to myself, ‘oh, well I could just eat this lil sweetheart up.’ Wouldn’t I be a lucky man?”

He laid a hand on your chest, just below your throat, fingers curling against your pulse as his thumb caressed your skin. The edge of his mouth twitched up in a smirk. “You scared? Excited?”

Your tongue felt heavy. Everything did, heavy and weightless at the same time. “Yeah,” was all you could get out.

“You weak in the knees for me? Lil heart aflutterin?” The hand at your neck had climbed to join the one at your jaw. He cradled you like something delicate. “You sweet on me?”

You managed a weak laugh. “Y-yeah.” That was one way of putting it. One way to describe whatever the fuck was going on with your body.

He smiled. Brushed his nose against yours. “Good. That’s good.”

“Severen.... please.....” You weren’t quite sure what you were pleading for. What, exactly, you wanted him to do. “Please.”

“Don’t you worry sugar. Imma make you feel real good.”

Lips pressed to yours. Slightly chapped and cool, but firm and relentless, a sweet moving pressure that had your head spinning even more than it already was. His body pinned you to the wall and his fingers tilted your head to the side, moving you how he pleased. He pressed his tongue into your mouth sooner than you would’ve expected. A helpless noise came from your throat. Heat shuddered down your spine. He kissed you deeply, languorously, as if he had an eternity to explore you.

A thought bubbled up from the back of your mind – what if a customer walked in on you? But then Severen was slotting a thigh between your legs and biting at your lower lip and you stopped thinking much at all. Your hands slid under his jacket, racking up his shirt and dipping along the curve of his spine as you explored smooth, cool skin. Or maybe you were just burning so hot that he felt cold in comparison.

You whined when he pulled away, only to sigh in relief when his mouth latched onto your neck. Wet, open-mouthed kisses and scraping teeth and one hand cradling your cheek as you tilted your head away and gave him better access. Fucking Christ he needed to stop being a tease. You squirmed and dragged his hips closer, sliding yourself on his thigh and biting back a sound of pleasure at the friction. One of his hands dropped down to brace your hip. He huffed a laugh against your skin.

“God, please Severen,” you breathed.

He hummed and pressed a kiss to your pulse. His fingers dug into your skin.

And then he bit you.

Not a playful nip. Not a hickey. A full-power clamp of jaws like a dog or an alligator biting down on its prey. Teeth tore through your skin, punctured clean through like you were butter left out in the sun. It knocked the breath right out of you. Pain exploded through your veins. Your body thrashed of its own accord. Your mind screamed awake.

A gunshot rang out. Severen yanked away from you, teeth ripping back out your neck. A cry of pain unlodged from your throat and you stumbled away, sliding down against the wall. Severen swung around and snapped bloody teeth at something beyond your line of sight. “What the FUCK–” Another gunshot. Severen yowled and his body jerked and buckled. He collapsed to the floor. You scrambled away from his body as his words ricocheted in your own mind. What the FUCK....?? Your breath sawed in and out from your chest far too quickly. Your head buzzed.

What the fuck had just happened?

There was the crunching of broken glass – when had one of the window panes been broken? – and a head peeked over the counter. Slicked back hair and glasses and ice blue eyes.

The customer from earlier.

You stared at him with what was probably a panicked, bug-eyed look. He stared back at you. Then his gaze drifted slightly to your left and his eyes darkened. “You’re uh. You’re bleeding.”

“Yeah.” Your voice came out raw. “He bit me.”

“Must’ve been one hell of a bite.”

“Yeah.” Was this really the time or place for this conversation?

You weren’t sure if you’d said that last part out loud, because the man grimaced and leaned over the counter, offering you a hand. You took it and tried not to think about the fact that yours was shaking. He yanked you up with ease then helped you clamber over the counter. There was a pistol in his other hand.

Your head swam.

“We should, uh, get you out of here.” The man shoved the gun into his waistband and glanced around. A hand snaked around your upper arm. Normally you would’ve pulled away, but you weren’t exactly confident in your ability to stay upright. Not when you were shaking and fucking bleeding from your neck as if you’d been bitten by a vam–

“Holy shit.”

The man gave you a look that was halfway between annoyed and alarmed. “What?”

“Did I just get bitten by a vampire?” you blurted. He grimaced again. You realized how that sounded. “No, I’m not – shut the fuck up, don’t look at me like that–”

“Oh come on–” For a guy who’d gone out of his way to save you and shoot the maybe-vampire-maybe-crazy-guy who’d fucking bitten you, he seemed pretty fucking fed up. “Here.” He grabbed a bottle of orange juice from one of the drink shelves and shoved it into your hands. “Drink the fuck up. We’re leaving.”

“We can’t leave the scene of a crime. There’s a fucking dead guy!”

“Yeah, unless he’s a fucking vampire, in which case I don’t think a bullet’s gonna do much to stop him.” He practically dragged you out of the gas station with him. You couldn’t exactly argue with his logic, even if the world was tilting around you and you were lightheaded and your thoughts wouldn’t stop sloshing around like soup inside your skull.

God, how the fuck was this even happening?

“Got somewhere we can hole up?” the man asked.

You almost blurted, Who’s we? Trusting a stranger was what had gotten you into this mess. Then again, he’d gone out of his way to save you. And even if a bullet didn’t do much to stop a vampire, you had to admit you felt marginally safer with a human shield. As awful as that thought was.

“Um.” You tried to collect your scattered brain. Took a gulp of orange juice and cringed at the bitter taste. “There’s a church that isn’t too far from here.”

“That’s not–” The man cut himself off.

You glared at him. “What?”

He gave you another annoyed look. You again debated yanking your arm away from him and walking yourself. Instead you took another sip of orange juice. You probably weren’t putting enough pressure on your neck.

“That shit probably doesn’t work. Hallowed ground and crosses and all that religious BS.”

“What? Why?” You frowned. “Don’t tell me your name is Van Helsing.”

He scoffed. “It’s Frank. And your little vampire buddy didn’t need to be welcomed into that shithole to get to you, so that’s probably a myth. And who the hell knows what else is a myth too, right? We could be wasting our fuckin time in a church.”

You strained to remember whether or not there had been a welcome sign on the door of the gas station. Working there for so long had made you blind to the details of the place. You tried twisting around to catch a glance of the gas station receding behind you, but Frank was pulling you along too quickly and had you in an iron grip. Shit, maybe he was right.

Another thought hit you. “Oh fuck,” you said aloud.

“What now–?”

“Will you shut the fuck up?” you snapped. “Severen, the fucking vampire, came here with four other people he calls family. I only ever see them around at night. They’re probably fucking vampires too.” A whole pack of vampires. Right under your goddamn nose. Then again, how were you supposed to expect something that wasn’t even supposed to exist?

“Oh, well that’s just peachy.”

You were walking down a cluster of buildings now, passing by the grocery store and the bar. Warm hazy lights cast an orange glow on everything and reflected off Frank’s glasses, obscuring your view of his eyes. His mouth was set in a flat, grim line. You couldn’t get a goddamn read on him, or why he was here, or why he was helping you. You didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but after Severen, your guard was firmly up.

But….

You sighed. “We can hide at my place. I never took Severen there.” Of course, there was always the possibility that he’d followed you at some point. But then why wouldn’t he have attacked you there rather than in public? You twisted around, trying to get a look behind you again. You didn’t see any angry leather-clad blood-stained guys tailing you. You didn’t see any bats. Did vampires even turn into bats? Fuck, who knew? At least at your place, you’d have kitchen knives. And garlic, if that worked. Did you have anything that could be used as stakes? Did that even work? You’d heard decapitation was a sure way to kill anything, but you doubted you had the physical strength or mental fortitude to cut through someone’s spine, even if the bastard had tried to kill you.

Ultimately, you did end up going to your place. Your hands were shaking hard enough that you had trouble getting your keys into the door, and Frank glancing out into the open empty night didn’t do anything to ease your nerves. Especially not when his hand was resting on the grip of his pistol. It just made you want to start scanning the tiny neighborhood too. But once the door was unlocked, Frank ushered you in, slipping in right behind you before you slammed the door shut and locked it again. And hooked up the extra chain lock too. Not that it would protect you from vampire super strength. You assumed that one was real.

You flicked on the lights, but Frank immediately shut them back off. Only half a protest escaped your lips before he interrupted. “Nope. As far as anybody else is concerned, no one’s home.”

“Fine. Just give me a second.” You flicked the lights back on long enough to check the analogue clock hanging in the living room. “It’s just past three-thirty. We still have a few hours before sunrise. We can stay here until it’s light out, assuming that one’s real.” You hadn’t seen Severen or any of his pack out in the daylight. You were pretty sure that one was real, but now Frank had you second-guessing every bit of vampire fiction you’d ever seen.

But Frank just said, “Yeah. I’d say that’s a pretty safe bet.”

“Yeah. Okay.” You nodded dumbly. Stared at the faint outline of his face in the darkness. Christ on a stick. You were stuck with this guy until then. Another stranger. A stranger with a gun, no less.

Fuck.

“Alright. You close the blinds. I’ll do something about this.” You gestured to your neck. It had stopped bleeding, but you were damp and sticky with your own blood. “We can, I dunno, rub garlic around the door and windows afterwards?”

“You really think garlic’s gonna work?” Frank said doubtfully.

“I don’t fucking know!! You figure something out, Mister fucking Van Helsing! I’m gonna go deal with the fucking bite on my fucking neck.” You beelined for your bedroom and left him to his own devices. Hopefully he’d trip over something in the living room, the fucking douchebag.

You grabbed a change of clothes then stepped into the bathroom. There were no windows in the closet-sized space, so you closed the door, locked it, and flicked the light on. Through your squinting at the sudden brightness, you caught a glimpse of your reflection.

Jesus Christ, you looked like a walking corpse.

Okay. That was fine. That was expected. Whatever.

You stripped and dumped your bloodied clothes onto the floor. Jumping in the shower probably wasn’t the best move when you had a possible vampire thirsting after you and a stranger with a gun in your house, so you went with a dampened towel instead. When you’d cleaned up most of the blood, you dropped the towel onto the pile of your soiled clothes. You tried not to wince at the idea of throwing them away. The shirt and towel probably weren’t salvageable.

Not that that mattered right now. You were busy examining the bite mark on your neck. Miraculously, it had stopped bleeding on its own, though blood welled if you poked it too roughly. It had hurt at first. Now it was just weirdly, worryingly numb. The teeth marks were deep and torn, hadn’t pierced through cleanly and had probably been jostled as you’d struggled against Severen. But it was definitely a bite mark. And it definitely wasn’t a normal human one. The thought made you a little woozy, to be honest. You crouched down, and the rush of blood being forced back up made your head spin.

This couldn’t be real. This could not be real, and it could not be happening to you right now specifically. This was fucking insane.

You reached for the small medical kit under the sink. How the fuck any of this worked, you couldn’t be sure, but cleaning the bite mark and slapping a plaster on it couldn’t make things any worse.

Vampires bit humans to turn them into vampires. But they usually had to feed the human their own vampire blood to actually turn them. That’s how it went in Interview with a Vampire and Dracula, right? And that hadn’t happened to you. So you were good. Right? Probably? The feeding blood thing was something vampire fiction generally agreed upon. That was probably real.

But wait, Dracula was actually able to go into the sun in the original book. It only weakened him. Shit, what if the bursting into flames in daylight thing was made up? Your heart dropped at the thought. Although, no, you hadn’t seen Severen or the rest of his pack during daylight hours. And an RV could be a pretty good place for vampires to hide if they blocked out all the windows. Okay then, that one seemed like a safe bet. You weren’t so sure about garlic. That one sounded pretty silly. And as much as you hated to admit it, Frank was probably right about vampires not needing to be invited in. So you couldn’t count on that to protect you. And what about religious iconography? You weren’t sure you had anything in your house for that anyway. Fucking hell. You’d been thrust into a world you didn’t understand and didn’t know the rules to. And you had to keep yourself alive because of it. Well, yourself and Frank.

Even if the garlic seemed silly, it couldn’t hurt either. And surely you had something around the house that could be used as a stake. Unless it had to be wood.... did it have to be a particular kind of wood....?

“Fuck,” you muttered to your reflection. Maybe Frank would have some ideas.

You finished cleaning up and getting dressed, and then you headed back out. “You see anything weird?” you asked as you opened the bedroom door. And stopped. Squinted in the darkness.

The living room was empty.

“....Frank?” Your heartbeat thumped in your ears as you peered into the kitchen. He wasn’t there. “Frank? Are you–”

Something grabbed you from behind. A hand muffled your shriek before it could leave your throat. You thrashed and kicked and bucked like an animal as you were dragged. Your elbow jammed against something solid. A grunt of pain hit your ear.

Then you were tossed onto the bed. The mattress softened the harshness of the fall, and you jerked upright immediately. You scrabbled for a weapon as a figure filled your doorway. Tall wiry gleaming glasses outline of a jacket –

“Sev–”

He pounced onto you and you shrieked again. Clawed and writhed and–

It wasn’t Severen. It was Frank. With a mouthful of sharp teeth baring down at you. Oh fuck.

“Now what are the chances of that, huh?” he sneered. “Getting attacked by two different vampires in one day? Talk about bad luck.”

“GET OFF!” You renewed your struggles, but that brief moment of shock had given Frank all the time he’d needed. He had you caged against the bed, grabbing your arms and pinning you down with his bodyweight. “No!!”

“Fraid this just isn’t your day.” He said it so cruelly, so carelessly, like you were little more than a beetle under his shoe. Tears pricked your eyes. God, you were so fucking stupid, you’d fallen for the same fucking shit again.... “Tears? Really? Now? We’re just getting to the good part.”

“Fuck you,” you gritted out.

He laughed softly. You jerked under him again, but he remained immovable. “Maybe in another life. Now. Hold still.”

He leaned in, teeth bared and breath puffing against the other side of your neck. “NO!” you screamed. You threw every ounce of energy in your body into heaving against him. One of your knees hit his gut. The air rushed out of him and he doubled over. You yanked a hand out of his grip and blindly grabbed something from the bedside table and smashed it against his head. He toppled to the side. You shoved him off and bolted.

You didn’t even make it to the bedroom door. A hand was on your arm and you were spinning and then you were on the mattress again, this time with Frank shoved up behind you and pinning you to the bed, your back to his front and your face pressed against the sheets. You hollered, half-muffled. He wrestled with your flailing arms.

“Not so fucking fast, bitch,” he spat in your ear. “I haven’t eaten in weeks. I’ve been buying my time on fucking gas station iron pills, but now that I’ve got live, squirming prey? You’re not getting away from me that easy.”

You snarled some combination of words at him. You weren’t even sure what. But you writhed and jerked and flailed and didn’t let up for one second, even as he pressed against you and swore at you.

“Yknow,” a familiar voice drawled, “it’d be easier if you hypnotized em. Right?”

You both froze. You turned your face to stare at the bedroom entrance.

Alive and well, leaning against the doorjamb with one leg crossed in front of the other, mouth and shirt smeared with blood that looked black in the darkness – Severen. Sunglasses and all. Very much not looking like a man who’d been recently shot.

Your heart plummeted. Despair like nothing you’d ever experienced washed through your body, cold and stinging like alcohol.

“The fuck you mean ‘hypnotized’?” Frank said. He didn’t sound smug anymore. Just pissed.

A disbelieving laugh burst out from Severen. “You don’t know about that? Ohhh I get it now!! Well I’ll be damned!!” He took a step forward, practically sauntered. “You’re a newbie, aren’t ya? You ain’t figured out all the perks yet! Yknow what else you ain’t figured out yet, newbie?” Another step forward. A sliver of light from the bathroom – you’d forgotten to turn the light off you’d just closed the door you’d been in such a rush – hit his sunglasses and illuminated the edge of a smile and blood-splattered skin. His voice turned sharp and low like you hadn’t heard before. “You don’t steal another vamp’s prey.”

Frank flinched behind you. You saw Severen move, but it took another second to figure out what else you were seeing. A pistol, gleaming and old-fashioned, aimed at Frank. It might’ve brought you relief in any other circumstance, but here, now, aimed at a vampire....?

“This might not kill you, but I can assure you, it hurts like a bitch.” Severen flashed his teeth at the both of you. “So how bout this, son? I’ll be the bigger man and let you go, and you fuck off into the night and never cross my way again. But first, and here’s the fun part – we share this lovely lil sweetheart here between the two of us. And if you say no, well,” he laughed cheerfully, “I’ll shoot ya and drink up by myself, and then I’ll make you regret stumblin into an elder.”

You couldn’t breathe. Two options. Neither of which ended with you still having a pulse.

“So!” Severen wiggled his free hand through the air. “What’ll it be?”

The following pause was heavy and lasted far too long. Please say no. Please refuse him. Please fight him or try to disarm him or fuck up and give me a chance to escape, please, God, please....

Frank sighed through his nose. “You know what? Fine. Fine! Whatever. As long as I get something out of this clusterfuck.”

The words triggered something in your brain, that primal drive to survive. You yelled and thrashed, hoping to catch him off guard and fling him off. He just hissed and squeezed your arms till your bones felt like they were about to snap. You cried out in pain. Tears blurred your vision.

“You wanna help me out here or what?” Frank asked Severen.

“Sure thing, partner!” The words dripped with saccharine venom. He neared the bed and reached up to his sunglasses. Hypnotism. Cold fear doused you.

“NnnNOOdon’tyoufuckindare!” You squeezed your eyes shut and turned your head away. Severen’s laugh twisted your insides unpleasantly.

“Aw now don’t be like that!” You heard shifting fabric, the creak of leather and jingle of a dozen pins and badges. Fingers forced their way under your chin and tugged at you, trying to coax you towards him as rings dug into your cheek. You struggled to resist. Clamped your jaws together and strained your neck muscles so hard it felt like something was about to pop. “I said, don’t be like that.” Nails dug into the skin at the back of your neck, piercing and hurting and lancing pain through your nerves. It shocked you into relenting, and Severen twisted your head towards him with a noise of approval. You screwed your eyes shut tighter. He tsked at you. “C’mon now, open up for Sev.”

“Here, let me,” Frank said from behind you. He yanked you away from the bed and clasped your upper arms in a near bone-breaking grip. You had no time to recover before he bit you and agony ripped through your neck and shoulder. On instinct your body arced, strained, tried to pull away from the pain as your eyes snapped open of their own accord. And then there were fingers around your chin, roughly yanking you down, forcing you to meet eyes the color of the afternoon sky –

“Relax, sweetheart. The three of us’re gonna have some real fun tonight.”

The effect was instantaneous. Something fuzzy and hazy wrapped around your thoughts. Even as you struggled, your body loosened, and your thrashing weakened to a soft writhe. You bit down on your own tongue till blood filled your mouth. Focused on the pain, the hurt, the agony radiating from your tongue and your jaw and your neck and your arms, and refused to let yourself get swept up in the stupor. You were not doing this, you were not letting this happen, you were not going down without a fight. If they wanted you, they’d have to fight tooth and fucking nail, you swore it to any God that was fucking watching.

“Jesse likes to go on about how this sorta thing is really more the power of suggestion than actual hypnotism. Accordin to him, hypnotism ain’t even real.” Severen said it casually, as if commenting on the color of the walls or the softness of the pillows, even as the dog-like tilt of his head revealed the predator in human skin. “Which is real funny comin from the walkin talkin livin dead. But point is, lil sweetheart’s still gonna be struggling if you don’t do it right. Get off newbie.”

Frank unlatched from your neck. You whimpered in pain, tried to pull away, but your body responded only weakly.

“What?” He sounded almost as bleary as you felt.

Severen cackled. “Don’t know how to make it feel good yet either, huh? Whoever vamp daddy is did a piss poor job at teachin you the ropes. Scoot over. Let a professional handle it.” He cupped your neck and ripped off the plaster you’d placed over his bitemark.

A bitemark on each side, you thought through the fuzz. Now you were all evened out.

Teeth pierced through your flesh for a third time that night. It hurt. It hurt. You tried to put up a struggle despite the weight of your limbs and the lightness of your head. Pleading words and cries fell from your mouth. They went unheeded. Severen sucked at your skin and lapped up your blood – yes, this was really happening, this was what they were going to do to you – and your head swam. Your shoved at him weakly, but you might as well have been shoving at a brick wall.

This was it. End of the line. A lamb to the slaughter. Bottom of the food chain.

Your thoughts and emotions tangled together, fueled by the rush of pain and adrenaline and blood loss. Something crept through your veins. A chill spreading outwards under your skin. Death. This is what it felt like to die, you were sure of it, and all you could do was wait for it to overtake you.

.....Except.

It wasn’t. It didn’t. It was something else. Something started to replace the pain and the despair, something that was warm and liquid and buzzing. It filled your senses and glowed in your chest and trickled further down, dangerously down.

It felt.... good.

Awareness flooded your senses, hyperawareness of every little detail and sensation. The light spilling from the bathroom, casting the scene in lurid suggestive shadows and slivers of amber. Severen’s teeth buried in your neck, his lips closed around your skin as if working a permanent hickey into your throat. How he cradled your head so sweetly and dragged a hand down your side. Frank’s breath on your ear and your cheek and your neck, the proximity of his lips. Both of them solid and pressed against the length of your body, immovable and caging you in and supporting your body weight as your legs buckled beneath you.

How could you have been afraid? How could you have run and cried and screamed when it felt like this? You shifted against them, searched desperately and half-mindedly for some sort of movement. You might have whimpered. Or moaned. You weren’t entirely sure.

Severen unlatched from your neck but didn’t go far. You could feel him smiling against you. “Didn’t I tell you it’d feel good? All that struggling for nothin.” You mm-hmmed as enthusiastically as you could, despite the intoxicating headiness unfolding in your body and making you dizzy.

Frank’s exhale brushed against your ear. You shuddered. “How the hell did you do that?” he murmured. Some distant part of you wondered the same.

“Ain’t rocket science.” Severen licked at the gouges of your bitemarks. Sparks of pleasure flew under your skin.

At some point you’d started squirming. You wanted that feeling, that friction from when Severen had pushed his thigh between your legs at the gas station and you’d ground against him. That felt like a lifetime ago. Like a dream. You wanted it back. You wriggled your hips and got a response from the both of them. Frank made a low choked noise in the back of his throat and one of his hands flew to your side, nails digging through the fabric of your shirt. Severen sucked in a breath and tipped his head back. His throat worked enticingly as he ground back against you. Oh fuck that felt good. You gasped and grabbed Severen’s shoulders to steady yourself. And tried desperately not to sound like a dog in heat as you writhed against them.

You were too warm, burning up. Aching and struggling to breathe. Hands slid along what parts of your body they could reach, mouths and tongues and teeth pressed against your neck.

The thought of being consumed no longer seemed so terrifying. The mental image of them tearing into you, bloodying and messing themselves with you, teeth gnashing and throats working and tongues exploring your veins and arteries and snapping them like rubber bands was so visceral, it made you clench around nothing.

Eat me alive eat me alive please God devour me.

Between one moment and the next, you’d been dragged to the bed. Frank was behind you still, holding your back to his chest. He grabbed your waist and pulled you flush against him, and when you rocked against the hardness pressed to your ass, you were rewarded with a stuttered groan. You couldn’t even remember why you’d been annoyed at him. He was making such delicious little noises because of you, was grinding against you with the desperation of a man who hadn’t been touched by anyone else in years. How long would it take him to cum in his jeans just from this?

Your attention was abruptly, fully drawn away when Severen dropped to his knees in front of you. Enough light bled out from the bathroom to let you see the fresh blood smeared across his face, overlapping the dried splatter from before. His eyes glinted in the dimness. He looked like a predator. He was a predator. But you couldn’t find it in yourself to be afraid, not when he was pushing your thighs apart and running his fingers up to the hem of your jeans. He thumbed the button. At this angle, the way he looked up at you through dark eyelashes was absolutely obscene.

“How bout this? He drinks you, and I eat you. Sound fair?”

Lust hit you like a physical force.

Frank dropped his head down to your shoulder and licked at the bloody bite mark he’d made. “Yeah, alright. Sounds fair.”

You had enough time to catch a flash of teeth from Severen before he was undoing your jeans and dragging them off you and taking your underwear with them. It took a tangle of limbs and wandering hands to maneuver your body, but then you were bare and exposed and you suddenly realized how wet you were. How wet you’d been the entire time they’d been manhandling you. Heat flared in your cheeks and deeper in your guts.

“Well, lookit this,” Severen purred. “All this for lil ole me?”

“You?” Frank muttered against your skin.

“Was my idea.” And then his mouth was on your exposed cunt and Frank was sinking his teeth into you and it was so much, it was too much, it was near overwhelming. Pleasure shot through you so intense it made your body jolt from the force of it. Your heart pounded in your throat where Frank’s mouth met your skin. He kept grinding against your ass as he drank. He pushed your shirt up and explored the expanse of your body, every dip and fold, teasing and testing every inch of sensitive flesh. All while Severen’s tongue lavished your clit, warm and wet and fucking relentless. He drank up your arousal like that alone would sustain him. His tongue swept tight little circles over your clit and then dipped down between your folds, back up to your clit, and he did it again and again until your thighs were shaking and you were twisting your fingers into his hair. The hot pressure of his tongue and his fingers digging into your thighs and Frank clutching you and sucking on your neck was all too intense. You shuddered and jerked and panted from the pleasure. You were burning, coiling tight, about to shake apart from it all. You had no idea what you were or weren’t saying.

Fuckfuckfuck, it needed to stop but you didn’t want it to, please don’t stop fuck oh God please –

Frank pulled his teeth from your neck to press sloppy open-mouthed kisses to your skin, smearing the blood already drenching you. His lips were slick, the prick of teeth a promise. “Fuck, you taste good,” he slurred, words barely more than a growl. He rolled one of your nipples between his fingers. It was all you could do not to cry out.

And then you did cry out as Severen’s teeth pierced your inner thigh. Fresh blood joined the slick mess between your legs. You rolled your hips forward against the fingers Severen had shoved into your cunt and the thumb he’d pressed firmly to your clit, and then you continued the motion backwards to grind against Frank’s still-clothed bulge. It hit you so perfectly you wanted to cry, and maybe you did. It was impossible to tell with the onslaught of sensation. Half-blind, you grabbed Frank by the hair and yanked him up. His protest was cut off when you slammed your lips against his and swallowed the noise. He opened to you with a broken moan. You ran your tongue along his teeth. The coppery tang of blood made your insides curl with disgust just as much as it had you riding Severen’s fingers. You pricked yourself on Frank’s teeth. Sharp pain, the taste of blood, and then he was grabbing the back of your neck and devouring you, teeth and tongue and frenzied need, kissing you like it was his salvation and your demise. It probably was. And God, you wanted nothing more.

A new hand at your neck urged you away from Frank. You turned your head. Severen was leaning up, eyes-half lidded. “Oh, you sure fuckin do. Blood and pussy taste like heaven.” He pulled you in and you kissed him too, tasted your blood and arousal and you moaned into him. Frank nipped at your neck, dragged his hips against yours. Severen’s fingers were still curled inside you.

You were going to explode. You were going to die. You were going to irreversibly shatter apart and it was going to be messy and it was going to feel so fucking good that you wouldn’t even mind.

The sound of a belt and a zipper shot through you like lightning. You were pulled up onto your knees and they both came up with you, Severen in front and Frank behind, pressed against your bloody and sweaty and spit-soaked body. Frank shifted behind you and his tip pressed against your aching cunt. Between Severen fingering you open and the fluids coating your thighs, he was able to slide in with ease. You choked on the feeling, the relief from the emptiness and the fullness of him inside you. An experimental thrust had you doubling over against Severen, which just made his thumb rub harder against your clit. The next thrust hit you even deeper.

You felt sick. Sick with desire, in pain from arousal.

You only belatedly realized you’d reached for Severen’s belt, shaking hands pawing at the clunky metal buckle. He laughed at you but helped anyway. When you curled your blood-slickened fingers around him, his eyes practically rolled into the back of his head and his jaw went slack. He thrust into your hand with barely-restrained desperation. The dual motions were uneven, jolting and frenzied, but then you slid into a rhythm and the three of you writhed in tune. Moans and huffs, cries of pleasure from you and a tear-dampened face. You jerked Severen off as he punished your clit, as Frank fucked into you, as you lost what was left of your mind. You kissed them and they switched between kissing and biting and sucking and licking you. There was so much blood. All of it yours. You couldn’t care.

You seized in pleasure when they bit you at once, teeth buried in either side of your neck, four hands playing you like a finely tuned instrument. Sobs wracked your throat from how good it was. They used your body like a doll, kept moving until their own release was spilling into your hand and filling you up. Kept moving after that, chasing every wretched bit of pleasure in your bodies until the pain had returned and you could no longer tell it apart from the pleasure.

When they finally blessed you with mercy and released you, your body fell limply to the bed. Your limbs were dead, useless, body entirely wrung out. Your head swam and muffled ringing filled your ears. Colored dots danced along the ceiling, nearly obscuring the two bloodied faces peering down at you.

“Thanks for the fun times, sugar.” The words were muffled, as if coming from underwater. You couldn’t bring yourself to respond. Couldn’t make yourself get up, move, do anything. Why was that bad....? You were so tired. Too hot and too cold and impossibly tired. The bed was heaven underneath you.

The faces were saying something, but you couldn’t hear them.  Didn’t want to.

You let your eyelids slide shut.

The darkness was a blessing.

[sunjaesol]

soljae | one shot, parents, established relationship | prompt: kin

⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪

"No."

"Sol, please."

"No," Sol repeated, stern, arms crossed as though squaring up against her husband. "I don't care what your dad did, but we are not throwing Hye-young in the water and see if she can 'naturally' swim. She's not a goose."

"Goose!" Hye-young mimicked happily, followed by quaking sounds. The couple looked down at their daughter seated on the iron bench.

The public pool was expectedly busy on a Saturday afternoon. Elderly swimming laps in the Olympic bath, children chasing each other in the shallow end, tired parents relaxing their muscles in the hot tub.

It was the first time Sol and Sunjae brought their four-year-old to the pool. Last night, Sunjae adamantly stated he wanted her to swim before all the other kids in her class. Sol believed it had more to do with his pride as an ex-pro swimmer, but whatever.

Hye-young wore a bright red bathing suit and thick plastic floaties strapped around thin arms. Sunjae got more looks for using all his oxygen to blow them up than for the fact that he was a fairly popular drama actor at a public pool.

"We're not throwing her in," Sol said again. Her tone left no room for arguing—a skill she learned from her own mother.

Sunjae sighed. "Fine. You win, Sol-ah. I'll go in the pool with her."

Sol's frown dissipated in a snap for a brilliant grin. "Good. I'll take pictures!"

"Goose, goose! I'm a goose!" Hye-young squeaked. "I'm a goose, mom!"

"I can tell," Sol replied, earnest. "Do you want to go in the pool with father goose?"

Hye-young's face froze in horror at Sol's words, as though she hadn't realised they were at the pool to swim. Maybe she hadn't. But now her lower lip jutted out and her eyes widened in fear. Her hands dropped to the edge of the bench, chubby fingers clamping onto the metal.

The girl shook her head. "I don't want to."

Sunjae squatted before the toddler, squeezing her leg. "It's going to be just like the mermaids in that film you like. Or like... uh... Moana! The Moana movie!"

Hye-young eyed her father suspiciously. Somehow, despite her age, she could detect when someone was full of shit. Sol wondered who she inherited that trait from.

"It'll be fine, Hye-young-ie," he soothed. "I'll hold your hand and won't let go."

"Promise?" she pressed.

"Promise."

And that was that. Hye-young latched onto Sunjae and together they walked to the shallow end of the pool. Sol watched from the bench, armed with her phone, and prayed to whatever God was up there that Sunjae wasn't going to do something stupid.

Slowly, the two descended into the pool. So far, Hye-young probably felt like it would be like the kiddie pool from her friend's birthday party.

"Alright, Hye-young," Sunjae began. He was crouching, but most of his body was still dry. "I'll hold your hands, you start kicking your feet. Yeah? You'll start floating."

His daughter blinked at him as though he spoke a different language. He paused. Maybe throwing her in was the move. Nature over nurture and all that. But Sol was watching him like a hawk and he promised Hye-young to stick to her.

Maybe next time.

They went through a couple of easy drills—making frog-like moves with her legs, opening and closing her arms at the same time, keeping her chin above the surface—and within twenty minutes she was clumsily performing a breaststroke.

Sol was hooting and hollering from the sideline, filming every moment.

"I'm doing it, I'm doing it!" Hye-young screeched. Her voice echoed off the walls, but neither parent cared that they were drawing attention. Their toddler was freaking swimming. What a feat!

Sunjae smiled from ear to ear. "You're a natural!"

After a couple of meters, Hye-young got tired and Sunjae scooped her into his arms. Her cheeks were red from exertion, but she was beaming with pride. Sunjae didn't have the heart to tell her that in a couple weeks they'd ditch the floaties.

And that he would launch her into the pool.

[spiderprincess-suffet]

HORROR/CREEPYPASTA OCS NEEDED

pretty please 🥲

I doubt anyone will read this nor participate cuz of how unknown my little au is butttt i figured I’d give it a shot anyways.

Basically I have a Creepypasta au called ✨The Mansion Kids✨ it mainly focuses on the kiddie pastas of the Creepypasta fandom and their lives stuff like how being a creepypasta and how they ended up here affecting them as they navigate how to grow up in such odd circumstances.

Well I’d like to add more characters for world building purposes as while yes the mansion is the main place they all hang out (its like a big ol meeting spot for creepypastas) not all of them actually most of them don’t live there instead being spread out all over different countries towns cities and even relms as some choose to live in Midrelm (a realm where Ghosts demons and any other unnatural folk can roam around freely) aka where the mansion itself is even if they aren’t living in the mansion specifically.

And why I’m asking for general Horror ocs Mainly

Welllll all the main Creepypastas in this au are referred to as Proxy’s and are considered separate from regular ghosts killers ect by the mandatory operator symbol they all share. I already have enough characters to focus on within the proxy’s characters like Jeff Nina clockwork Sally ect ect there are already a LOT of proxy’s and I don’t really wanna add anymore to the list.

So instead any characters added won’t be proxy’s aka they just won’t work directly for slender and have the operator symbol BUT they can still be creepypasta ocs as this is still a creepypasta au so basically any character used is like automatically TECHNICALLY KINDA a Creepypasta.

Anyways I just wanna snatch some characters to interact with and live in the same world as the main Proxy kids that way they aren’t just exclusively interacting with eachother like I said they all actually live pretty far apart and I want to have interactions with characters that aren’t other proxy’s in this world, and while yes I could make characters myself (and actually already have made some-) it’s boring and I don’t want a majority of this au to be of my own characters I want it to put a focus on other peoples characters too!

So I shall ask one more time

If anyone would allow me to use an oc of their choosing in this little au of mine that would be great QuQ obviously any characters I use will have proper credits given and any changes I make to them for the story will be made clear and the ideas all run past their creator as to make sure they’re okay with it.

[donutz]

KickinChicken x reader fluff alphabet[5/8]

—☆You are a smiling critter in this, if u want to know which one(but don't know what animal or insect to pick) you could start out as a sheep!

Affection(How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

— He's pretty affectionate, physically

— It's not like he craves it but he just does it naturally

— Like hugs, picking you up, taps on your shoulder, he shakes you randomly sometimes

— Especially when he wants your attention but you're not listening

— “Sleepy?”

— “...”

— “Sleepy!”

— “...”

— “SLEEPY SHEEP THE THIRD.” He says while shaking you

— “... Huh?”

Best friend(How would they be as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

— He'd be very outgoing and try to interact with you a lot

— Especially with sports

— I feel like he loves soccer

— Though he'd try to have you play almost every sport with him

— Like I said, he's a pretty interactive guy, best friends or not

— It would start with him trying to include you with sports activities, or just plain sports

— Like when he just wants to play them out of nowhere

Cuddles(Do they cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

— Yes, he cuddles, only when you two are alone

— Maybe if you're both watching something scary, yea sure you can cuddle up to him!

— But he ends up the one cuddling up to you

— He can NOT handle horror movies, but are very judgemental about them

— He will literally go on a rant about how bad a horror movie can be

— He doesn't really cuddle when sleeping, but he doesn't mind holding hands!

— But when you and him are sitting next to each other, he leans on you and holds your hand IF there's something covering it

— Unless y'all are alone then he doesn't care ╮( ˘_˘ )╭

Domestic(Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

— No, no settling down

— At ALL.

— He must be moving a leg or an arm, or his flap(?) I'm not sure if he even has fingers…

— HATES cooking

— Especially when he has to see the kids eat chicken.

— He cries every time and gets comforted by Hoppy

— Only likes cleaning when it comes to sports, unless it's a lot to clean then nevermind, but HATESSS having to mop and wipe down things

— Whenever someone tells him to he groans, but ends up doing it anyways

Ending(If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

— We’re not gonna talk about this one ^_^

Fiance(How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)

— For the rest of the Smiling Critters, this section won’t ever be like an adult marriage, it will always be in the kiddy way

— Including this one

— He would be in a suit, while trying to seem confident but he’s actually really nervous

— “Wouldn’t mind at any time!” He says

Gentle(How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

— When it comes to hugs, he can be… A little rough

— He can pat you on the back pretty hard when he’s not thinking right

— He doesn’t mean it, he swears :(

— He just gets too excited, and when he expresses it physically… You might have to go through a stinging or bruising pain

— Emotionally, I mean he’ll listen, but don’t expect him to be good with words

— If you need a hug, that’s fine! But if you need comforting words, just realize that there will be some stutters between his words

— He’s not good at verbally comforting

Hugs(Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

— He likes hugs, but it depends on the person

— You and Hoppy? Yea! Anybody else he’s not too sure, it depends on his relationship with that person (or toy)

— He can hug you out of nowhere, then continue with his day

— He’ll hug you, then pick you up and spin you around, then walk away

— Does it often, because of that

— His hugs feel as if he just puts happiness into them

— Like not even just love

I love you(How fast do they say the L-word?)

— If he had to say it publicly, just give him like 5-10 minutes

— He’d try to hold it as long as he can, until the people(most likely toys) go away, then he’ll say it

— If you get a little sad and ask him if he loves you he’ll say—

— “What? Of course I love you!”

Jealousy(How jealous do they get? What do they do when they're jealous?)

— Doesn’t really get jealous, unless someone is purposefully taking your attention away from him

— He doesn’t get really jealous at the moment, but he’ll steal away from that person(less likely, toy)

Kisses(What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

—Hmm…

— Idk…

— He doesn’t really kiss

— His kisses are like… His beak.

— Because his beak is in the way

— Wouldn’t mind if you gave him a little smooch on the cheek

Little ones(How are they around children?)

— No. Having. Kids.

— But he really brings out the extrovertedness in them

— Some kids like him, some kids don't, it's based on their personality though

— Sometimes you can hear the older kids talk bad about how annoying he can be

— So you told Dogday and then he had to go over a lesson/activity  about respect plus kindness

Morning(How are mornings spent with them?)

— Morning person.

— If you're a person who wakes up late, then prepare for him to try dragging you out your bed

— Sometimes he wakes up too early

— He'll try to wake you up, just to ask you if you could cuddle so he can go back to sleep

— He struggles with going back to sleep if he wakes up really early

Night(How are nights spent with them?)

—  For most of the nights, he's too energetic to sleep immediately

— There will be times where he can sleep after 5 minutes

— It's very rare for him to sleep right away

— But when he's feeling energetic a few cuddles can calm him down, and then he'll sleep

Open(When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

— He can spill things out all at once, if he's not paying attention to what he's saying

— But he tries to avoid topics like that, at least negative ones

— I'm not sure what would be negative though💀

Patience(How easily angered are they?)

— Probably could get angry just from sports

— Never has gotten mad at you

Quizzes(How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

— Remembers everything, mainly because he's a chicken

— I feel that if he was any other animal then his memory would be bad

— Sometimes he impresses you by it

— “You remembered that?”

— “Yeah? My memory isn't THAT bad. Plus I'm a chicken!”

— “Chickens have good memories?”

— “... Yea.”

Remember(What is their favorite moment in the relationship?)

— When he wanted to go out first, you immediately pulled him back because Catnap nearly caught him

Security(How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

— He thinks he's the big man

— He's mainly being protective when it comes to arguments or physical thing(like fights)

— He always wants to go first in scary situations, just so you can be okay.

— Secretly wouldn't mind being protected, but tries to deny your help because he's worried about you

— It's his (small)ego talking, but he really is worried about you

Try(How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

— He thinks a lot about them, sometimes stressing when it isn't perfect

— When the ‘dates’ doesn't go how he wants them to you can visibly see him stress

— On the day is was both of your anniversaries, once he woke up he said

— “... It's our anniversary..!” While whispering at night

— “Kickin… It's 2 am. That's what the clock says anyways.”

— “I know but—!”

— You pulled him into a hug and laid him down, cuddling with him

— “We'll talk about this when we're supposed to wake up, okay?”

— “... Okay.”

— If everyday tasks are doing physical activities then he's down for it

— Cleaning, dealing with kids crying, yea not at all, least favorite thing

Ugly(What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

— It's your thought, but when he always wants to go first just in case

— Probably when he wakes up really early, then he can't go back to sleep unless he's cuddling with you

Vanity(How concerned are they with their looks?)

— Isn't

— He thinks he looks pretty rad

— He's right

Whole(Would they feel incomplete without you?)

— Yea :(

— Especially when doing activities, he'll remember you every time

Xtra(A random headcanon for them.)

— He and Hoppy has ADHD(even if this is about Kickin)

Yuck(What are some things they wouldn't like, either in general or in a partner?)

— He wouldn’t mind if you didn’t like sports, but could you at least play one time with him?

— That’s all

Zzz(What is a sleep habit of theirs?)

— He tosses and turns

— Probably drools too

[draconic-distress]

Ok apple pen jumpscare aside, I have a LOT of thoughts on the ghost craft/holy horror mansion trailer, so I may as well make a kinda deep dive post like I did with the Legends ZA announcement

this is gonna be long as fuck so be warned, we're diving deep

Ok so first of all… I think we all knew that it was gonna be yokai watch’s spiritual successor, but I don’t think leading with that is a great call, because people will expect more of the same, and I don’t think that’s entirely fair to this new game they’re making.

That being said, let’s get into the actual game itself, because holy shit this is a lot to take in at once and we still know like nothing.

So the first thing we get introduced to right off the bat is our protagonist, Ten Lordland, which is kind of a stupid name so I’m hoping that the localization gives him a better one

^ this is the bitch. He kinda reminds me of Hailey-Anne with how uppity and all over the place he is; we don’t have much substance on him as a character but he seems like a good kid

One thing we do know about him though is that he’s Loaded, and that his grandma is the landlord of the titular holy horror mansion, which is apparently also a gate to the underworld (giving Mt. Wildwood, but this is where the comparisons end)

We also have a better look at smaller areas of the apartment complex, or at least one small room where he whole thing starts. The camera in the third pic shows up a couple times, so I think it’ll be important in some way, especially considering this is where our ‘ghosts’ comes from:

So there’s three types, and honestly this is where the game shines the most in my opinion and really separates itself from yokai watch conceptually. they play into the concept of ‘ghost crafting’ really well:

First off is the green ghost, whose power we saw at the end of the last level 5 vision. Basically this ghost combines with objects and brings them to life, and that’s where the main critter collecting aspect comes in. I really like how they're handling this, it's a really fun idea

This is also where we get our new mascot aka pillow jibanyan:

She’s cute, her design feels very lively but not messy or too much. I hope we get to see more of her personality in game, I like her :)

Anyways back to the ghosts, now we have the blue one, whose thing is making chimera ghosts out of random objects. This is in fact where that fuckass apple pen reference happens

I like this mechanic, it’ll be fun just making fuck all from whatever’s in your inventory. Still, we’ll come back to the pen pineapple apple pen thing and its implications (because yes I’m not done with this)

And lastly is the pink ghost, whose power is… making dungeons?? I guess??

It’s cool and I like the idea of themed dungeons from everyday objects and the cool gameplay that will come of it, and I adore the cake themed dungeon, but it sticks out like a sore thumb, mostly because it’s the least purposeful of the three.

The green and blue ones have mechanics that make sense within the gameplay of being a critter collector, but the pink one’s uniqueness in its mechanics makes it feel weird.

I’m guessing that we’ll get more of an explanation of what it’s being used for in the actual game, so I’m looking forward to that. And also finding out whether the ‘something important’ Ten mentions is story related or if it’s just the thing at the end of each dungeon.

And then we hit the story aspects… ooh boy I know Yokai Watch and creature collectors in general aren’t really popular for their story, but this one just feels strange to me.

First off, our villain is the “De Ville Corp” and the "Dakarymen", and I mean I’m glad they’re not being subtle with it, we all knew what happened with YKW3, though its a bit on the nose; it makes some sense this game is clearly more family friendly/“kiddie.” But I think weirdly what irks me the most is…

why is this rich kid beefing with other rich kids? Like dude you’re fucking loaded your grandma literally owns the only known(?) gate to the underworld and makes bank off of other people living in this apartment complex that you live off of, what do you mean the villain is capitalism in a game where the protagonist is Rich.

Ok that one’s more nitpicky but still an odd decision imo. Anyways into the villain’s tactics, the main thing they do is they sell 'ghost items' which do... something. i dunno they're evil and hurt people ig maybe it'll get expanded on more later

there's also other wild ghosts that you have to find with your yokai wat-- i mean this shitty camera guy whose design is good on paper but bland in execution, and you fight those guys. i'm gonna say it now as much as i don't want to, i don't think this game is gonna beat the pokemon clone allegations in the west

i don't doubt that the battle system will be unique but at first glance i just have a feeling that people are gonna compare it to pokemon the same way they did with yokai watch, and it's a shame.

now that we've gone over the whole trailer, let's get into my three biggest concerns for this game because yes i sure do have opinions about it

first thing i wanna talk about that they said up-front is the fact that this is gonna become a HUGE multimedia series. ok. kind of horrifying if we're getting that immediately. i don't think it's such a good idea to have a brand new ip that's not even ready yet be put up to the expectation of this behemoth of a new series. that sets the bar pretty high, and there's a lot of worry of this getting too much and crashing from the pressure before its time like what happened to yokai watch

the second thing i've got which i think is a bit nitpicky but i want to mention anyways: "the theme of this title is 'family'," which means it will be "an experience for the whole family to enjoy together." this worries me a little because it gives the implication this is gonna be a more 'kiddie' game in a way. like the trailer was exciting and fun, but i could barely keep up with how fast and in your face it was even with how simple and straight forward is. (someone described it as like a tik tok brainrot vid and i think that does make sense). I hope that making it more appealing to all ages doesn't sacrifice Holy Horror Mansion's heart (we'll get to that) and willingness to go to darker places.

last thing, which i didn't know when i started writing this post, is the use of AI in like 90% of the trailer. because holy shit there's a lot.

look at that. gross. i knew something felt weird about Ten but I couldn't put my finger on it until i found out about the AI thing. this damn kid is the most damning evidence, at least for me since it's the easiest to see on him. and that's not even close to everything that could be AI, that's just the fucking protagonist!

I think deep down we all saw this coming considering Hino's previous statements on AI and the fact that he used a bunch of shitty ai yokai watch mockups as an example. Obviously if this game does use AI for all this stuff we're not gonna fucking support it, but this is still a very very VERY early proof of concept, and anything could happen between now and the game actually making any progress; until we see more I'm gonna be cautiously optimistic about the direction this game goes. Either Hino gets his shit together or we're not playing Holy Horror House because what the fuck.

to be honest, I think it's ok that yokai watch as a major franchise is ending. it kinda sucks since we've been waiting like five years since y school, but i do think it's over and that this is gonna be a fun new ip that can stand on its own from yokai watch. for a series whose first game's resolution was to live and let go of something you love, I think we should take a page from yokai watch 1's book more often. i'm excited to see where Holy Horror Mansion goes from here on out! also we still have puni puni and Jaen is there so I'm satisfied enough I guess.

anyways tl;dr, Holy Horror House looks fun and has a lot of potential as a brand new ip, i'm afraid for its future as a multimedia giant and/or an ai shitshow, and Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is my most anticipated game of 2025

[polkadottedpie]

Ouma Kokichi as a Vent Regressor

CW: canon typical horror (character death, the killing game, gore, etc.), vent regression/regression from trauma, repression, anxiety, trust issues

Wrote this because I've never seen Kokichi agere content in the actual context of the killing game, which is fair, but it was a concept I actually wanted to think about just for myself. Mentions of Amami Rantaro as a big brother-esque caregiver before his death.

Ouma Kokichi has never been one to allow himself to be vulnerable in front of just anybody, and that goes doubly for his regression. He doesn’t understand exactly what it is, so he doesn't have an exact age range, but he knows he’s not at 100% when it happens and that’s cause for concern. It’s hard to play the part of the Ultimate Supreme Leader of Evil when your head is foggy and you feel so small and your lies get worse and controlling your emotions gets harder.

In a place as dark and scary as the killing game, though, there’s nothing Kokichi can do to prevent the headspace from bubbling up along with all the despair and anguish he’s forced to experience as things continue to escalate. So, if he can’t hide this vulnerability away, the only solution he has is to bury it with more and more lies to obscure it from everyone in plain sight.

Thankfully, it’s easy to hide even the worst lie when you’re already known to be a liar. Kokichi swings hard in the direction of acting like a child, even when he’s not regressed, so everyone just sees him as childish in general. He pokes fun at others, plays practical jokes, breaks out the waterworks at every opportunity, he doesn’t take the game seriously at all, all to both cope with the situation and blur the line between his big self and his regressed self so none will be the wiser.

This becomes a bit of a double-edged sword, as throwing himself into the spoiled brat schtick only makes it easier for the haze of regression to roll in, especially when Monokuma first establishes the First Blood motive and time limit and things start to get serious. He does his best to scrounge up what clues about the killing game he can, but any time he’s forced to interact with one of his classmates and he has to turn up the kiddie act, the danger of potentially triggering himself looms in the back of his mind.

It’s dear Amami-kun, sharp as a tack and ever vigilant around his peers, who picks up on Kokichi’s behavior first.

Out of all of his classmates, Amami-kun was most partial to Kokichi for how his lies always twist the group towards the greater good at his own expense. He’s seen how serious Kokichi can be when he called Akamatsu-chan out at the Death Road of Despair when no one else would. It puzzles and intrigues him as to why he’d insist on acting so childish the rest of the time.

Amami-kun begins to notice how Kokichi’s behavior fluctuates, the thematic differences from his obnoxious kiddie act overshadowing the more genuine flashes of a frightened child looking for comfort and distraction. He may not remember much about himself, but he does still remember his sisters, how the younger ones acted when afraid or stressed out. It doesn’t take him long to put the pieces together.

None of Kokichi’s other classmates would play along with his antics quite like Amami-kun did. Akamatsu-chan and that sheepish detective that follows her around found him annoying at best and outright malicious at worst, and since she’d become the de-facto driving force of the group, most everyone was quick to follow suit.

Amami-kun, however, rolled with Kokichi’s energy pretty well. When Kokichi had the mental fortitude to be serious, Amami-kun was clever enough to brainstorm with, even if he kept a lot of his insight a little on the vague side. When he couldn’t be bothered and broke out the childish antics, he smoothly played along with his games like a cool older brother, and for once it made the fuzzy fog that would roll into Kokichi’s head feel safe and warm. It was the most comfort he’d felt since they’d all arrived at the Academy.

It’s a shame it couldn’t last.

Kokichi’s head was already spinning from the time limit video blaring in his room when the body discovery announcement suddenly played, directing everyone to the library. It was too much, too fast, and the whiplash from one anxiety to another had already put him in a daze when he rushed out of his room.

He had never plummeted so hard and so fast as the moment he saw Amami-kun’s body on the floor of the library, blood spattered across the bookcase and pooling across the carpet from the gaping wound in his head. He couldn’t stop staring, couldn’t hear anything anyone else was saying. He could feel the tears already coming, but the oppressive presence of everyone else in the room choked him up in spiraling thoughts of not safe, not safe, not safe.

Amami-kun was dead.

Everyone who remained hated him.

There was no one left to trust.

Immediately, Kokichi threw himself into theatrics to hide himself in another lie.

If people like it, I might consider continuing this journey through the other parts of the game with agere tones. Let me know if you'd be interested!

[linklethehistorian]

So…as a new FNAF player — and by that I mean, a person who has loved this series for four years and counting, but only just got started with actually being able to firsthand play the games — having binged nearly the entire series by now (with just 5-7AM of Security Breach and Help Wanted 2 remaining…until Into the Pit comes out, at least), y’all were actually not cooking with all of the Security Breach hate.

Like seriously, y’all were not cooking.

“Oh, they kiddie-fied it, they took out all of the horror”

…Have you actually fucking played this game? Have you felt the atmosphere? Have you stood in the basement of the Pizzaplex and stared into the old, largely abandoned, rubble and possessed staff bot and trash-ridden, somehow supernaturally still vaguely smoldering tunnels deep underground after taking apart Chica, and for even a single moment in time, looked around and felt the weight of the emotion and the turmoil and the suffering and death that has canonically occurred over the past half a century or more and just…ruminated in it awhile?

Have you felt the experience of weaving between staff bots and murderous animatronics and hiding for dear life while watching the cameras for an opening to escape?

Have you been chased in the claustrophobic vents by something you can hear right behind you, knowing that if you slow down too long or if your sprint meter runs out, it will get you?

No, the horror elements in terms of dialogue aren’t quite as overt as the past titles. No, until you take them apart, most of the animatronics aren’t visually as overtly uncanny in design. But do they need to be for it to be terrifying? Isn’t there more to horror than being overt? Isn’t there something just as unsettling about the subtlety of sugar-coated implications, the liminality of wandering a massive closed mall after dark knowing that you are not meant to be there and no one from the outside world is coming to save you, or would even notice you’re gone?

Hasn’t a lot of that always been a major part of the charm of the FNAF series? Wasn’t the liminality and the suspense of knowing something is coming to get you at any moment — really even more than the actual moment of your death — one of the greatest things the series had to offer in terms of horror?

Is Security Breach as a game — all bugs aside, most of which I should add have been largely fixed by now anyway — really all that bad and “not in the spirit of FNAF”, or are you just judging it based solely upon its color palettes and character design, and putting on your nostalgia-tinted glasses instead of actually looking at things objectively?

Because I think it’s the latter.

Is Security Breach a perfect game? No, far from it — it has flaws and imperfections and yes, glitches, and there are some aspects that I think could have been done better, or that suffered due to wanting to not let the rating go above T. But it is a good FNAF game; I’d even go so far as to say it’s a great FNAF game. It’s probably even somewhere near the very top of the list for me in my binging of the series so far.

Don’t judge a book by its cover — or by the opinions of people who are still stuck back in the earlier days of the fandom and refuse to accept that anything happened after 2017.

There is no “old fandom vs. new fandom”. FNAF is not any less FNAF than it was during the Pizzeria Simulator era. There is no divide except for the one born from a change in the attitudes of a certain portion of older fans, who have developed a sense of entitlement to look down on newer fans/fans who are into the newer games as being “fake” fans or a “different audience”, because they refuse to accept that a “true” older fan could like anything that came out after a certain year.

Your beloved series is still alive and well.

And Security Breach deserves a whole lot more love than it gets.

[pickalilywrites]

Eren, Armin, Jean, Connie, Marco, Reiner, Bertholdt, Porco and Marcel all go into a haunted house. First one who leaves the place screaming has to ride the most embarrassing kiddie ride in public

thanks, this was fun :)

never too old

104th trainee squad boys. modern au. 2789 words.

The group of friends stand in front of the haunted house, although some of them look more skeptical about entering than the others. Eren and Connie look especially excited, but Armin’s lips have been pursed nervously ever since they’ve entered the amusement park and Bertholdt has been growing an unsettling shade of green as they’ve neared the haunted house.  

“We’ve agreed, right? First one out of the haunted house screaming has to ride a kiddie ride?” Eren asks with the biggest grin on his face. Like Connie, he lives for horror and thrill rides and the thought of going through the haunted house excites him to no end. 

“We're going into a haunted house in the middle of the summer. Is it really going to be that scary?” Jean asks doubtfully. He looks up at the haunted house with a frown. It looks out of place in the middle of the amusement park, especially since it’s such a bright and sunny day. He glances over at Eren. “Is it even worth it at this point?” 

“Y-yeah,” Bertholdt stammers as he tries to put on his bravest face even as his knees shake horribly. “M-maybe we should t-turn back now. We c-can go on a different ride.”  

Eren shoves Bertholdt aside so he can get in Jean’s face, one side of his mouth upturned in a smirk. “What’s wrong, Kirstein? Are you scared you’re going to run out screaming?” 

There had been a time when Jean would have ignored any of Eren’s jibs, but Eren’s provoked him for far too long for him to hold back anymore. With a growl, he grabs Eren by the collar and pulls him forward. “Don’t talk as if you’re not going to be the one pissing his pants five minutes in,” Jean snarls before dragging Eren with him to the haunted house entrance.  

The doors are a muted purple, the paint peeling although that might be by design. The floorboards of the porch creak as the group of friends cross the boundary of the amusement park and this haunted mansion. Once they step inside, the light in the entrance hall flickers on and the lamps that line the corridor turn on one by one. The lights are dim, illuminating enough to give the visitors a glimpse of the ornate rug that runs from the entrance all the way down the seemingly endless hall and the detailed paintings that hang from the wall and seem to be staring at them intently as they hesitantly step forward. Once they make it past the front lobby, a figure steps forward from the shadows, making a few of them jump. 

“Holy shit!” Bertholdt yelps, stumbling backwards and nearly knocking over a vase sitting on an end table. He immediately turns his eyes downward to avoid any eye contact with the haunted house’s host whose skin has been painted blue to give them a ghostly appearance. He finds a way to stumble back and cling onto Reiner’s sleeve, groaning, “Oh my god, why’d they have to pop out like that?”  

“It’s just part of the gig, Bertl. Don’t be so jumpy. You know this is all fake anyway,” laughs Reiner, pulling Bertholdt from out behind him and giving the trembling giant a pat on the back. 

“Thank you kindly for visiting us today. Please be assured that we will take care of you as best as we can,” the host says, his voice more of a ghastly groan than a normal speaking voice. It only serves to make Bertholdt even more anxious about everything they’re about to encounter. The ghostly butler in front of them is welcoming them into the haunted house and giving them instructions, but only Armin, Marcel, and Marco seem to be paying any attention. If the butler minds, he doesn’t show it and continues to drone on and on about the horrors they might encounter and how they should continue to trudge forward even if they find their knees becoming weak. 

“Haunted house! Haunted house! Haunted house!” Connie and Eren chant in unison as the butler is finishing up his spiel.  

“Did you guys even listen to anything he said?” Jean asks with a roll of his eyes.  

“Doesn’t matter what he said. We’re going through this without batting an eyelash,” Eren says. His arm is linked with Connie’s and the two idiots stand with their chests puffed out proudly even as Jean shakes his head.  

“The deal is just that we had to get through the haunted house, right? Can we just go through the whole thing with our eyes closed?” Armin mumbles. He fiddles with his hair, twirling a lock between his fingers as he stares at his feet.  

“Wouldn’t that make it scarier? You don’t even know what’s jumping out and screaming at you or waving a chainsaw in your face,” Marcel points out, but he yelps when Porco elbows him.  

“This whole attraction is, what, twenty or thirty minutes? It’ll be fine,” Porco says. He takes a more empathetic approach to calming down the nervous people in their party, although it’s unclear if it’s more helpful than Marcel’s more rational approach. Porco rubs at the back of his neck when he sees that Armin and Bertholdt are still shaking. He wonders if he shouldn’t have said anything at all. “Anyway, it’s fine if you guys get scared. It’s just a stupid bet. You’re supposed to get scared in a haunted house.” 

As they walk down the corridor, they see that the hallway has become covered in cobwebs. There are only a few at first, but soon the entire hallway is covered and only the floors are free of spider silk. Even though Connie and Eren laugh and point at the various cocoons trapped in the spiderwebs, Armin and Bertholdt cringe especially when they see the cocoons wriggle as if the victims are alive and struggling to get free. There’s a particularly large cocoon in the corner, one that’s about Reiner’s size, where muffled screams can barely be heard.  

“It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real,” Armin whispers to himself in a mantra. Even though he had resolved himself to staring at the floor, he can’t tear his eyes away from the large cocoon the corner. He’s attached himself to Eren’s side, but even Eren’s hysterical laughter can’t ease his anxieties.  

“It’s probably just a clever machine,” Marco says reassuringly to Armin. “Most of the things in this haunted mansion are.” 

“Y-yeah,” Armin stammers.  

There’s a sharp screech and a shadow drops from the ceiling in the center of the hall. Armin and Bertholdt exclaim in alarm and even Porco and Reiner curse as a giant spider joins them. The spider is twice as big as Bertholdt and pitch black with glowing red eyes. It twirls around menacingly on its silk thread, its pincers opening and closing as it lets out another high-pitched screech before it slowly retreats into the ceiling. 

“I hate this place,” Bertholdt groans. He clings to Reiner’s back like a koala and Reiner laughs.  

“It’s fine if you want to keep going like this, but just don’t pass out on me. I don’t want to have to carry you the rest of the way. You’re pretty heavy,” Reiner jokes, but even his light-hearted words aren’t enough to make Bertholdt feel better. 

The corridor twists and turns as they continue to walk down the path. There are many different paths, but only one is open to the guests. The other paths are closed off with velvet ropes and signs that say, “Warning! Do not enter.”  

As they escape the cobwebbed corridor, the hallway soon evolves into a jungle of fake flora and fauna. Even though it was bright outside, the foliage blocks any sunlight that might be streaming through the musty windows of the greenhouse. Only the dim garden lamps give them any light and it makes it difficult to navigate, so the group sticks close together with the exception of Eren and Connie who keep darting towards every moving bush or running towards every sound of jostling leaves.  

“Do you really have to do that? It’s scary enough without you guys actively seeking the thing that’s supposed to scare us,” Bertholdt whimpers. He’s lagging behind, clinging to the hem of Reiner’s shirt. Despite his long and lanky legs, he’s only able to move an inch at a time.  

“It’s more fun this way,” Connie laughs. He gives an excited shout when they hear a low growl of a wolf, and he and Eren run forward to find out where it came from.  

“Our definitions of ‘fun’ are way too different,” Armin mutters. He’s grown increasingly pale the deeper they’ve gone into the haunted house. Like Bertholdt, he’s stumbling forward inch by inch, but unlike Bertholdt he has the ability to use his much larger friends as a shield from whatever horrors they might face. 

“If you think about it, you guys are really getting a better deal out of this,” Marcel says. After failing the first time to console his friends, it seems he’s trying his hand once more. “Isn’t the point of going into a haunted house to get scared? If you don’t, it’s not a very good haunted house.” 

A rapid flutter of wings and cicada screeches fill the air, causing Bertholdt and Armin to yelp. Any comforting words Marcel had offered have gone unheard. The wings flutter once more and the cicadas shriek, but this time they’re joined with the sounds of hissing and the rattle of a snake. A low growling can be heard in the distance. The growling grows louder and louder. Even as the group of friends inch closer, Bertholdt and Armin struggle to take steps forward and have to be dragged forward by everyone else. Without warning, the growl erupts into a piercing howl that makes Armin yelp, but Eren and Connie simply cackle and let out mocking howls of their own before bursting into giggles.  

“I hope you two are having fun,” Jean says dryly. He and Marco are holding up Armin whose knees have grown so weak that he can hardly stand upright. “Your friends are going to faint soon.” 

“Are you two able to keep going in this state?” Porco asks with a doubtful frown.  

“The faster we walk, the fast we can get this haunted house over with,” Bertholdt says. Though he does his best to sound confident, his words come out shakily and his gaze is terrified at what might lie ahead. 

They trudge on ahead, Bertholdt and Armin much more grudgingly than the others. Even though Connie and Eren forge ahead making jokes and mocking everything they encounter, it’s still not enough to ease Bertholdt and Armin’s worries. They’ve managed to make it past the strange greenhouse portion of the haunted mansion and have returned to a hallway that looks similar to the hallway entrance from before. The ornate carpet is the same, but this time the hallway is lit by wax candles that flicker as they walk by.  

“How much more of this do you think we have?” Marco murmurs. 

“Hopefully not much more,” Armin groans weakly. 

There’s a door where light is illuminating so much brighter than the dim candlelight. They are drawn to it like moths to a flame. Only their footsteps can be heard as they approach the room and as they cross the threshold, they see a warm fire burning in the fireplace. The room they’ve entered is decorated ornately like the rest of the house: various paraphernalia adorning the shelves and tabletops, books with titles written in strange scripts across the spine, torn curtains fluttering as wind streams in from the open window. A closer inspection shows even more oddities: blood staining the carpet and walls, scratches across the hardwood floor and stone walls, and a strange satanic pentagon carved on the exposed in the center of the room. Bertholdt realizes too late that he’s standing directly in the middle of the pentagon. 

“A sacrifice? The Master will be quite pleased,” a disembodied voice booms. It echoes across the room, seemingly coming from every direction.  

As the party looks around in alarm, a figure begins to form in the fireplace and a silhouette of ash and fire rises from the embers. Just before its final form can take place, the fire goes out completely and the room rumbles with the sound of laughter. Suddenly, a cloud of smoke appears from the ceiling, illuminated by flashes of lightning from the window, and a face appears in the clouds. Its expression is twisted in an evil grin, but everything about it — the eyes too far apart, the mouth too wide, the cheekbones too pointed — is too warped to be human.  

“Tonight, I shall feast!” the voice cackles and Armin faints in Jean and Marco’s arms. Bertholdt’s reaction is much more severe. 

The gentle giant, finally scared out of his wits, jumps up a foot in the air screaming before running out of the room in the direction they came from. His friends, baffled, stare after him. 

“Should we ... should we go after him?” Porco asks. 

“I don’t think we’re supposed to go backwards,” Marco says worriedly. 

“Is he going to be alright? He’s going to see everything that scared him again,” Marcel points out.  

“We should probably go after him,” Jean sighs. 

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆ 

It turns out that running out of the haunted house in the wrong direction is highly discouraged, which is something the party would have realized if they had paid attention during the host’s speech at the entrance of the haunted house. There are many alternative routes that are typically closed off to guests and only available to amusement park workers, but guests are known to wander off either in panic or out of pure curiosity and then get lost. In his fright, Bertholdt had scurried down one of these forbidden paths and had gotten lost. In the end, the haunted house had to usher its guests out and enlist the help of additional park workers to find Bertholdt in the haunted house in an operation that took nearly an hour. 

“I feel kind of bad. Maybe I should have offered that park worker more than fifty dollars to not ban us for life,” Eren says even though most of that money was Jean’s. “He was pretty young. He doesn’t understand the value of money yet. You know how kids are.”  

“We shouldn’t have gone into that haunted house in the first place,” Marcel sighs.  

“At least Bertholdt looks like he’s having a better time,” Reiner remarks. 

The friends look over at Bertholdt riding in a small dragon roller coaster. His smile has returned to his face. He’s in the very front seat despite being the largest person on the ride. Behind him are Gabi and Falco who look like they’re having a much less fun time than Bertholdt despite being the appropriate age for the ride. The friend watch as Bertholdt loops around the tiny rollercoaster, a smile on his face as the wind whips through his hair.  

“... does that look kind of fun?” Connie asks and Eren nods beside him. 

“He looks like a giant on that ride,” Eren says almost enviously.  

“We can’t ride on that thing. We’re not kids, and we don’t have kids,” Porco points out. 

Eren grins wickedly at him. “Don’t we?” 

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆ 

The tired, underpaid park employee looks tiredly at the group of friends and the two children that the friends are claiming to be the guardians of. The young teenager asks once more skeptically, “So all of you are fathers of these two children?” 

“Yup!” Eren says with his chest puffed out confidently. He gives the employee a charming smile, but she couldn’t care less whether or not he was telling the truth. “All of us are their legal guardians. Should we have brought the legal documents? Who brings that sort of thing around with them?” 

The girl remains unconvinced, but she sighs and opens the gate for them to enter the ride. She doesn’t get paid nearly enough for this. “Enjoy the ride.”  

The friends all shuffle into the carts in the front, leaving Gabi and Falco to take the cart in the back. Even though Falco seems disappointed about having to ride the same kiddie ride again, Gabi looks excited. 

“I can’t believe we’re doing this. Aren’t they too old for this?” Falco mumbles under his breath. 

“Aw, lighten up, Falco. It’s only just this once. And they said they’d take us to two PG-13 movies next weekend,” Gabi says with a grin as she straps her seatbelt around her stomach. “Besides, nobody’s ever too old to have fun!” 

[tsbs-ship-hate-confessions]

Honest to God there is nothing more hypocritical of a bunch of whiny proshippers complaining about hate

yet preach free speech as long as they get to jerk off to kids getting fucked by their parents.

The hypocrisy is appalling.

'oh oh proshipping doesn't mean that stuff anymore, we're Clearly anti censorship oh oh the horrors of being called a creep for making celestialcest smut and giggling about siblings diddling each other. but we totally don't glorify dark topics why would you say such a thing'

like pick a fucking struggle. deal with the consequences of your actions. None of this is okay.

And mind you, this is coming from someone who is a major proponent of dark fiction. people should get to write whatever fucked up shit they want to. coping, venting, idc the reason

but you cannot honest to God be stupid enough to assume you're not a walking red flag. No one owes you trust that you're 'doing it for the right reasons' or 'don't support the morally stripped content' just like how you don't have to owe anyone an explanation. That street goes both ways

It's even stupider, when these fucks are all like 'u should clearly know I don't condone this'. I'm sorry, are we all a hivemind now? Are we above communication? It literally cost nothing to add a note of 'hey btw I think this shit isn't okay in case you can't read the room'. if ppl decide to assume bad faith after that then that's on them. but being a fucking mule about it? really? thought we were supposed to be adults here

speaking of which

"Children shouldn't be reading this anyway, My audience is smarter than that" ok thanks for infatizing and being ablest. nothing says fun like attempting to grow and try new things regardless of learning disabilities. or do you think we all roll over and die before highschool?

Also are we gonna brush past the part where the sun and moon show is literally made with kids in mind? Why again are we so desperate for smut over a show literally built around found family? 'everyone here is so immature' yeah bud, it takes one to know one. we were all kids. all of us were the newbies of the internet at one point. I ain't saying ya gotta hold anyone's hand or babysit but is throwing a hissy fit over finding spiders in a jar labeled spider the hill you really wanna die on? if you don't like it, leave

you literally preach that same shit yet seldomly follow your own advice.

Actually, let's go a step further: you're not welcomed here anymore than the gore anons are

P.S.

The reason why murder and gore is more acceptable than pedophilia smut is because one of these attracts actual predators. Porn is still porn at the end of the day, whether it's video or a picture, or words. and if it's on a screen it will fuck your head up the same way you can't have just one cigaret. it's always 'one more can't hurt' until it's an addiction you cannot escape from. And once someone is in that cycle, it gets worse. because soon the same thing that got rocks off doesn't work anymore. so then you find something stronger to get that high. then you have to find another stronger way to get that same effect

And that is exactly how convicted pedophiles go from using fictional kiddy porn to actual csem. There is actual fucking evidence for this shit with neurobiology and psychology to back it up

TL;DR violent video games don't create serial killers because people can only have a dopamine addiction. video game addiction is like sugar addiction Porn however can most definitely create pedophiles and rapist because of the involvement of dopamine, oxytocin, norepinephrine, vasopressin. porn addiction is like meth or heroin

These 2 are Not remotely comparable to the other 2

ALL, actions have consequences. It does not matter if you are a celebrity, or a fic author with 3 views. You are not an exception, and you feed the machine that gets kids groomed, trafficked, and even killed when you choose to sexualize and normalize pedophilia and incest.

So if you're getting shamed for getting giddy over shipping shit like Killcode and Bloodmoon or Sun and Dazzle. maybe you should think long and hard about why that is.

This is so much bigger than fighting over 'making dolls kiss'.

Get the fuck out of a fandom filled with kids before you get someone hurt

-

[venuscheered]

derry summer faire — 

the annual summer faire has finally hit the streets of derry maine , the lights of the carnival making even a washed up town like derry , shine like booming city .

like any faire , there are many attractions for all ages !

ferris wheel — 

the ferris wheel is a popular attraction , especially at night with young couples . the line is always long , there's no real way around it unfortunately - unless you're someone who pushes their way in . not many will stop you .

house of horrors — 

asides from the bone chilling attraction inside the house of horrors , consisting of many jump scares ; many delinquents tend to hang around the area out back . a popular place for them to sneak alcohol and smoke . carnies aren't paid enough to care , nor do they want to get involved

carousel , swings , and other rides — 

the carousel is usually deemed too kiddy and uncool for most to ride , although it's a staple and it's delicate design is popular among girls .

the swing set is another popular attraction , the ride soars at a decent height , the best music is always played here .

food concessions — 

food stands are always busy , you can buy just about anything when it comes to junk food . you can deep fry about anything as well .

cotton candy , popcorn , candy apples ... you name it you've got it ! all over priced , of course .

carnival games — 

a popular attraction , play games and win prizes . although most if not all games are incredibly rigged ... those with a strong arm can absolutely claim a prize of their own ( or perhaps for someone special ! )

what can we do ? —

glad you asked ! on top of creating mood boards or art pieces based on your characters experience , this is also a roleplay event ! you can write about your character's time at the faire - what is their favourite ride ? what do they do ? even if i haven't specifically mentioned a ride , you are absolutely welcome to include it ! roller coasters , thrill rides , anything .

how to participate —

any and all mood boards and art can be tagged with #derrysummerfaire , and any roleplay starters can be tagged with #derrysummerfairestarter if you're looking to interact with other people .

[fullofgutsndopamine]

bruised knuckles brought me here

or, three truths and a lie: hasan is drunk and an idiot and she promised herself she’d stop adopting strays at frat parties. one of these is a lie.

tw: drinking (to excess),hockey!hasan (mentioned), hasan is a drunk idiot,cursing, mention of puking, not finished another one of the: 'fics i'll never finish'

the funny thing is, she wouldn't even know about his existence if it weren't for the chanting coming from his corner.

look, she made a promise to herself to stop fucking rescuing strays and yes that especially includes frat brothers, for the love of god.

her new resolution was to mind her business, drink her lemonade in the corner of the party, wait until an acceptable amount of time has passed and then leave.

it's the cheering.

it's always the god damn cheering.

her head perks up, thinking maybe it's someone from class she knows, a friendly face to make this party tolerable-

instead it's the one constant in her life she can't get rid of.

hasan is drunk.

this is obvious, even from as far away as she is. drinks always get passed to him the second he walks through the door, claps on the back, greetings.

hasan is fucking everyone's best friend, a party is political campaign and he's not leaving until he finds out how your mother is doing (after you mentioned her once, sobbing and drunk) or how the other frat brother is holding up in his math class.

she imagines it's exhausting for him, but she refuse to let herself linger on it to long or to feel any kind of guilt towards him-

and she had disappeared the second she saw him staggering around, one of those blue plastic baby pools in front of him.

"fucking idiots I swear-" she mumbles, shift her weight from one foot to the other, debating on interrupting him.

she don't know hasan. that's obvious. she knows of him but who doesn't, really.

everyone's friend, star right winger for the colleges hockey team (with a team like hers, at a college like this, it isn't hard to be the star, but she’s seen how hard he works, so she can't really deny it) and seeing him, clearly drunk out of his mind, is hard to watch.

deciding she can't be an accomplice to whatever bullshit is about to happen, she angles her body away-

it's the way the entire crowd all flinches, "Oohs" being yelled out, that finally makes her turn around.

hasan lays on his back in the empty kiddie pool.

For a second, she thinks he's dead, that she’s an accomplice to murder-

until he groans, a loud "Fuuuck" is yelled out as he holds his shoulder and rolls back and forth.

"Idiot-"

"Yo!" One of his friends fell out, "Can we get some fuckin' help?"

no more adopting strays- you tell yourself gently-especially not frat brothers-

"no but like," he's hiccuping, crying fat tears, "I think i hurt my shoulder."

"Fucking idiot." she chugs what's left in the cup, throws it onto a table, and beelines for the corner.

"what did you idiots get into this time?" she groans as she kneel down, offering her hand to hasan.

"Our guardian angel!" one of them yells out, clearly drunk, "Yeah-I remember you! You got Sam when he ran through that fence!"

she remembers this guy; Clay, she think it is, he's nice enough for the most part, sometimes walks with her to class and has these elaborate stories that make her laugh, a good enough lab partner-

"Guys."

hasan groans from the inside of the pool, rolling around, holding his shoulder, and she resists the urge to roll her eyes as she and Clay lift him up slowly, ignoring his whimpering.

he looks at her, glassy eyed, sniffles, rubbing at his eyes, "C-Can you grab my other arm?" he hiccups, "I think i fucked this arm up."

understatement of the year but she rolls her eyes as she obeys, switching over to the other side,

"You got him?" Clay says gently, seems sober

"We'll be okay. Gonna get the idiot some water." she groans-and he gasps from your side-

"Idiot?" mock horror, “how dare you-“ he stops.

"hasan." she says, watching him carefully.

"Think i'm gonna be sick." he whimpers.

"Oh, my god." she groans, picking up speed. she only made it to the kitchen, have him kneel on the cold floor, his head buried in the trash as he pukes.

she rubs his back, hating that this is becoming a normal Saturday her you now-

he pulls his head out and she offers him water, which he takes, sitting with his back against the wall.

he looks bad, is all pale, "My Ma use to make me soup when i'm sick," he whimpers, "Will you make me some soup?"

she bites her tongue from saying that he's sick because of his own stupidity, looks so pathetic suddenly-

and that's how she finds herself standing on her tip toes, digging through cabinets in this frat house, looking for any discarded metal cans of soup, standing at the stove as you stir carefully, hasan’s voice is low, as he tells elaborate stories he made up, but she’s giggling, and he takes that as a win.