#OC: Fraught

[flame-shadow]

Fraught + Dream Latte :3

dream weaver

[cayennecrush]

i was thinkin about how some of my ocs share traits with my new faves and then i just wanted to draw them all meeting 😂 so heres Jackie and Geli if they dropped into fortnite!!

[patchworkmelody]

A peek of many little doodles I did for @flame-shadow

[herearedragons]

Drakona-Firebrand thought of the hour. I think they have a half-unspoken agreement where they don't call him "dear" or any other pet names (the last person who called him that tried to kill him) and he doesn't tell them that he loves them (the last person who told them that got murdered)

[tired-of-being-nice]

trust

hi :) skipping several prompts ahead but oh well. happy valentines i got you: two very fucked up guys who are in a.... relationship... ????

this one takes place right after the events of day 5!

cws: mostly just emotional angst and a fucked up relationship (emotional manipulation? kind of?)

"Hey," Milo says. Ray turns. They look tired—well, they always look tired, but this is different. They look...sad. "Went to check in on Coren. It's awake, I think, but it..." They swallow. "It didn't think I was real." 

"Jesus," Ray says. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine," Milo says, in the brittle, bright voice they use when they are definitely not fine. Before Ray can call them on it, they add "Could you go talk to them? I think th—"

"No," Ray says immediately, holding up her hands and backing away. Milo follows. "I mean— sorry, no. I was going to say this anyway, but this is just— way too much. I'm not doing this."

"What?" Milo says. "Ray, please. You've been so helpful, and I—"

"No," Ray cuts in again, before Milo can say anything else. (They must only be saying that because they know how weak she is to compliments. They must be.) "No, I can't be a part of this, Milo, this is...this is insane. You know this is insane, right? In addition to, like, super illegal? You can't just keep them in your freaking house."

"Maybe I can," Milo says, tilting their head up. "It's gone okay so far."

"Listen, I helped you last time because I owed you, and I helped you this time because— well, it would've been a jerk move not to, but I—" He should've left. He should've left after getting Coren back to Milo's house. Or at least, once they'd confirmed it wasn't about to die on them— well, on Milo, because Ray shouldn't be here. She definitely should've left before passing out on Milo's couch. And she absolutely had no reason whatsoever to come back with Milo after work today. She had so many opportunities to leave. Why, oh why, didn't she take any of them?

While Ray is thinking all this, Milo appears to have noticed something. "Hey," they say, leaning to one side to squint at the pot on their stove. "Are you...making soup?"

"No," Ray says, blatantly lying. She realizes belatedly that she is holding the soup spoon in her hand, and resists the urge to fling it across the room. "Okay, yes, but..."

"Oh my god," Milo says, voice wobbling. "You care."

Ray flinches at the accusation, but can't deny it.

"This is– I didn't think–" Milo moves forward. Ray feels like a deer trapped in headlights. "So you– can you stay? Please?"

"Stop asking," Ray says, and hopes that it sounds like and that's final and not or I'll say yes.

"Please," Milo says, stepping forward again. They're so close. Ray's head is spinning. "I don't trust anyone else."

"Do you mean it?" Ray says, hating how much they want the answer to be yes.

"Yes, of course," Milo says, putting a hand on Ray's arm. Ray knows they're only doing it because they know it'll make it harder for Ray to say no. It works, is the thing. Milo wouldn't do it if they didn't think it would work. Ray always admired their practicality.

She wants to pull away. She also wants to lean in. Milo is staring up at her with wide, pleading eyes, and Ray knows it's not true but he wants it to be so badly, and if they say one more thing—

"I need you," Milo says. "Please."

Fuck. Ray crumbles. He can't avoid it. Because— Milo needs him. And he needs to hear that, and Milo's ex (??) who is also the fucking boogeyman, basically, is currently upstairs dying, and Ray's down here making soup, and this is basically the worst and best possible thing that's ever happened to him.

"Okay," she whispers. "I'll stay."

taglist: @snakebites-and-ink @whumpsoda @cepheusgalaxy

[archive-z]

it’s post-yr-wip wednesday, so enjoy more scenes from my forthcoming follow-up to krapp’s last tape, this time ft. events from the viewpoint of alice molloy, 1985-1989 ✨ all yr canon-typical content warnings for disordered substance use, pregnancy trauma, AIDS crisis-related death, child endangerment, codependent relationships with multiple concerning/unethical power differentials, etc.

“What mad Nijinsky wrote

About Diaghilev

Is true of the normal heart;

For the error bred in the bone

Of each woman and each man

Craves what it cannot have,

Not universal love

But to be loved alone.”

from “September 1, 1939”, by W. H. Auden 

It’s 1986 and Alice Molloy sits on the steps of San Francisco City Hall. She has been Alice Molloy for, approximately, the past thirty minutes. She is twenty-five years old. She looks out across Van Ness Avenue, at the War Memorial Opera House. She’s never been to the opera before. She’s never been married before, either. 

She rolls the name around in her mouth: Alice Molloy, Alice Molloy, Alice Molloy. She likes it. She feels like a snake that’s shed its skin, and now relaxes on the warmth of a sunned rock. She wonders how long it will take her to forget that she had any other name before this one. 

There is another her, maybe — scared and strung out — still inside, wandering the atrium. Maybe there is another her buried in a grave in Evergreen Cemetery. 

But this Alice, the one here on these steps, in this waning late afternoon sunlight, is Alice Molloy. She is Alice Molloy, with her newborn daughter, and her new husband, and their second-floor, one bedroom apartment near Buena Vista Park.  

—

December 6, 1985. The CDC recommends delaying pregnancy until more is known about the risks of mother-to-child transmission of AIDS. As of December 1, there have been 217 reported cases of AIDS among children under age 13, and 60% of them have died by the time of publication.

In Paris, their apartment is cold and there’s black mold around the windowsill. Daniel has a persistent cough. Alice wakes up nauseous. 

Three months ago, in San Francisco, Daniel gets an advance for a novel and insists they spend it all right away. 

Though he’s covering with bravado, Alice can tell he’s nervous. He’s never had more than a couple hundred dollars to his name, and never expected to have his sobriety tested in this manner either. 

They book two transatlantic tickets to Paris and a sublet in the Latin Quarter.

Alice wants to chainsmoke at café tables on crowded streets and imagine stories about passersby while Daniel scribbles in his notebook. She wants to go dancing. She wants to see the Mona Lisa. Alice is twenty-four, Daniel is thirty-two.

(Over the past several months, Alice has planned more funerals that she cares to count. She is perpetually in the final hospital visit-cremation-memorial service cycle. As the most junior member of the organisation, her duties tend to be administrative: making payments and filing bank receipts. By cash and by cheque, payments are made to the crematorium, the ambulance, the reception hall, to the sandwich caterers, to the company that rents the folding chairs and plastic table cloths, to the leaflet printers, and the delivery trucks. At the end of it all, someone has to fold up the chairs and turn off the lights. That someone is Alice. 

There is an impersonality to the deaths, she finds. Sometimes people with bring a framed photo of “the deceased” to the memorial service — a sister, a daughter, a girlfriend, a roommate, a friend. When there’s no photo, she often pictures Raequel. Twenty-two now? Would she look older? Or younger? Paris presents itself as a respite). 

Paris’ crisp October turns to a drizzly November and finally to a frigid December. Any argument that sparks between Daniel and Alice is swiftly resolved by swallowing one’s pride and huddling together under their singular scratchy wool blanket for warmth. 

In Paris, Daniel has coughed for three months. He’s smoking his packs twice as slowly because he has to take bone-rattling, hacking coughs after every few drags. 

In Paris, Alice throws up three days in one week. 

(They have both danced around this. It is the heavy, silent thing they neglect to mention. Daniel is sick. Alice is sick. With what — who knows? Fading track marks testify to their rich, independent histories of indiscriminately sharing needles and swapping bodily fluids with, at best estimate, one quarter of the Bay Area’s creatures of the night). 

In Paris, over dinner, Alice tells Daniel she’s pregnant. 

She tells him she’s pregnant and he says yeah. 

He’s staring at the cigarette in his hand, poised over the ashtray and Alice can see the gears turning inside his head. France permits elective abortion up to ten weeks, she can see him thinking. She can tell he’s doing the math in his head. 

She tells him she’s pregnant, and he says yeah. 

They finish their meal in silence, but Alice is too nauseous to keep anything down so throws up again in the brasserie’s toilette. After she’s finished, she presses her head against the cool metal of the cubicle door and then kicks it violently several times. 

When she re-emerges, Daniel has already settled the cheque. He’s got  another cigarette in his mouth, this one unlit, and he’s chewing on the filter, eyes still staring into middle distance, gears still turning. Alice has stuffed her jacket pocket with extra towelettes in case she needs to throw-up in a public garbage can on their walk back to their apartment. 

—

“We both could have it —“ Alice’s train of thought twists and weaves, running the alternatives and counter-alternatives too fast to keep track of until its a circular, tangled mess. “It would be born sick,” she says. 

“We don’t know if we—“  

“But we could. What if it’s born sick? If it’s— if it’s not able to grow?”

“Failure to thrive,” Daniel supplies. 

“I know whatAnd, in a heartbeat of indignation, Daniel ask, “What? What do you want? Do you expect a child to consent to being born?”

“Maybe the hospital finds out! Maybe it’s — taken away from us. Because it’s our fault. How could we live with ourselves?”

“We make a choice. We live with it.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Look.” Daniel presses his hand to her cheek, and his eyes fixed on Alice’s. “If it’s wrong — does it matter?” His thumb traces her cheekbone, over the scar on her eyebrow, where it turns from dark to blonde. “All human decisions are made like this.” He kisses her eyebrow. He sounds surer and steadier than Alice has ever heard him before. “No parent knows what will happen to their kid. What does it matter if it’s wrong? There is no wrong. Just you and me. Me and you. And I want to be with you. Forever.”

Later, Daniel proposes and she says no. Things are falling apart. She doesn’t trust that the centre will hold.

On their last day in Paris, they go to the Louvre. Alice wants to see the Mona Lisa. 

—

San Francisco, 1989. Alice Molloy is twenty-nine. 

A week after the World Series Earthquake, Daniel’s mother calls him from Modesto to deliver the belated news of his father’s passing, the post-script to his unattended funeral. Daniel interrupts the daily pre-school drop off routine in order to purchase a self-obliterating quantity of heroin. 

It’s thirteen hours before Alice finds him. When she finally does, he crawls to her on his hands and knees. He clutches her legs, sobbing, shaking, and high. She says nothing to him, and her cool and implacable assessment of the situation is this: I take care of you, I’ve always taken care of you. I love you, I’ve always loved you. You and me, me and you. Daniel would not die here. Their dance would not end like this.

Her fingers grasp his matted curls, and she gently forces his head back to meet her gaze. With a thumb, she carefully wipes his grimy, tear-stained cheeks. She whispers to him: I forgive you. Of course I forgive you. How could you doubt such a thing? I have forgiven you of everything before now. I would forgive you every time, even this. 

And Alice knew this: Daniel was hers. And he would never runaway from her again. 

Outside, Lena is asleep in the backseat of the car. She is three years old. 

[vaguely-concerned]

obsessed with what we're meant to read out of rook's expression when taash starts to walk away in this scene. it feels like such an emotionally dense response from them, especially since they've only known taash or anyone else involved in these scenes for all of five minutes

sorry about the abysmal gif quality one day I'll learn how to make gifs properly yet that day is not today. but hello. rook. rook hello. what is this about. what's up with that. what are you thinking about. (also taash seeing that reaction and turning around to clarify that it IS what they wanted before they leave because they're upset, not unkind. aww.)

also flashback to this set of expressions rook makes later on, after the fangscorcher fight, if rook tells taash they're actually a lot like them beneath it all. taash apparently just consistently brings out some very tender rueful rook faces I guess haha

[frenchy-and-the-sea]

📻 for Esme!!! I want to know more about her :>

AHH thank you! I miss her so much, I will happily talk about my most useless of lesbians!!

So maybe heaven is a ghetto with no bad blocks Shangri-La dealers at the bus stops, and Maybe God is just a Cop that we can fast talk So if you're guilty and you know it, put your hands up 'Cause karma's just a different word for bad luck, and What if death is just another pair of handcuffs Well then we'd better run Then we'd better run

This is literally the second song on Esme's playlist, and it's the one that set the stage for her particular sound for me. Esme is my dreamy, chillwave astal soul monk, so a lot of the songs on her playlist have a sort of midsummer fever-heat haze to them, and this was the first song that I discovered that REALLY nailed the brief for her. Because for someone who spends so, SO much of her time trying to yeet her soul into the astral sea (because the idea of spending time in the plane that dreams and LITERAL GODS play in was always much better than real life) I needed her sound to be a little off-kilter. She's gotta sound a little like she wants to be high 24/7, cause! she kinda does!

But EQUALLY important to me, especially in relation to this particular song, is the fact that Esme also spent a really long time as a young initiate to a massive criminal enterprise! Her entire young adulthood was spent in the company of people that taught her how to scrap and how to steal and how to generally be in danger most of her life. See, she spent every day from 13 to 25 working off a debt to the criminal families of Shadycreek Run (she was a PC in a Wildemount game) and while it was not her choice or her fault, it was the hand that she got dealt, and she learned very quickly how to fall in line with it. Fast Talk works as an Esme song because it weaves together her hazy, dreamy ambitions of getting the fuck out of there with the fact that like. she's seen some shit. She has DONE some shit. And even her very best case scenarios are colored by her experiences as, essentially, a professional delinquent.

But that doesn't mean she's not about to make a damn good time of it!

[flame-shadow]

Patreon Requests - October 2023

Jump in before the end of the month to get a request for November!

[veilkeeper]

macerian soulmate au thoughts go brr. tarquin and neve both obviously know who ashur actually is and it's driving me insane. which of them realizes first? tarquin, macen's friend and also uh... friend. or detective gallus, on the case. and more importantly, when they do get to that "ohhh fuck i'm pretty sure macen and ashur are soulmates" what do you even do with that information. what's the etiquette.

[gravedigg]

obedient mutt

[crownconstellation]

I see you putting some ocs through some things

LOL yeah <3 <3 <3 i put my ocs through so many things. i love mess

currently my favourite OC Situation is that (guy who loves timeloops voice) i have reworked one of my main oc settings into a time loop and made the main protagonist 1. loop aware and 2. the final boss in the hypothetical game scenario for this setting because she doesn't want the loop to end bc she's gotten so used to it. one of many things that is fun to me

[gothyanki]

Dream Visitor: Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s not your fault the world is wicked. You did the right thing.

Vin'ath’s guardian - who only has their best interests at heart! - comforting them in a way that is definitely 100% sincere and not at all calculated to appeal to their paladin nature. Really.

[blackfem]

Plagued by the feeling that I'll never make meaningful connections with the people in my life despite being helped & supported every step of the way!!!

[impossible-rat-babies]

I do wish SB did some things better, but truly it’s the playground of eyrie lore I love messing around in the most

[vaguely-concerned]

when I'm done with this playthrough I'm making a compilation of '*tender yet gently exasperated/concerned and helpless rye voice* taash...' b/c it's something that is actually so personal. to me. he just says their name in such a Way that he doesn't with anyone else