#OUGHHHH NEED TO WRITE ABOUT THIS....PLEASE

[twistedlovelines]

You know those videos of white people trying ethnic food for the first time and literally burying their face in their plate?

Yeah that's how some of the twst boys act when you cook them any cultural dish for the first time, ESPECIALLY Deuce.

"Damn what else can you eat that well?"

Deuce still on a food high: " umm anything else you make?" Ace bullied him about it later on when Deuce told him (big mistake)

-🔱

YESSS LMAOOO

deuce my darling...he enjoys whatever new foods you place in front of them and is ur human garbage disposal for foods u don't like tbh. ace can make fun of him all he wants but he's just jealous he doesn't get portions of your home cooking after making a comment about how your kitchen smells weird. nước mắm (fermented fish sauce) is particularly pungent but it is a staple of viet food and if he insults it he will never taste my cooking again <333

truly deuce is the ideal bf. even if he doesn't like it or thinks the food smells unusual to him he'll try it at least once. and if he likes it? he doesn't even leave a grain of rice on the plate. not even a crumb. its an act of appreciation and its soooo endearing. just don't tell him about balut.

praising him by how well he eats...he feels so happy afterwards and he's so genuinely enthusiastic to learn more about your culture and augsihfd . . . also if u make kimchi or other labor-intensive foods he will be ur perfect helper. just tell him what to do and he can do most of the manual work of scrubbing and making sure each leaf is coated in paste. even asks to taste a bit of the paste if u offer him and gets starry eyed at how good it is.

also unfortunately. i think deuce might be weak to spice HSIDFJO. u can't feed him smthn too spicy without gradually building his spice tolerance or else he'll cry. he'll choke it down bc it tastes good and doesn't want 2 insult ur cooking. but he Will Cry .

ruggie is also someone who will be excited 2 try ur cultural foods but he will be able to handle spice and will lick the plate clean after eating <33 is also ideal bc he'll go out to the store and grab ingredients you're low on stock on <33 (however he grew up in an area where there was more ethnic diversity food-wise so he can tell u about similar dishes he's had lol)

[rationaliity]

OUGHHHH ANONNNNNNN YOU'RE SOOOOO RIGHT I LOVE YOU HERES A LITTLE BLURB FOR YA !! there's no penetration, just oral for ratio since i didn't know if you wanted gender neutral reader or not !!

you and ratio had an agreement going on. when you had the collar on, you let him make the decisions. no thinking was necessary on your part, all you had to do was listen to him when he spoke to you and do as you were told, that was it. when he put the white and blue collar with the cute little golden bell on it around your neck while you were on your knees in front of him, you could feel your head empty. no matter how stressed or tired you were, no matter how nervous or angry you felt, everything would slowly disappear, replaced by the tranquility of no longer needing to be in control of things. the tension in your body would leave, leaving just a soft, needy little puppy behind.

" good pup, " ratio hummed in approval as he watched your body visibly relax, his hand gently caressing the side of your cheek, and you found yourself with your eyes closed, nuzzling into his touch. words escaped you in this moment, after all, good puppies don't bark no matter how happy they were. he took notice of your silence and seemed pleased with it, his hand lingering for a moment longer before pulling away. " your owner has to do some work now, okay ? i trust you know where to go ? go to your spot, pup. i'll be there soon. "

ratio pointed over to his study room, and your gaze obediently followed, scampering towards the room without question. your spot was your favorite place in the entire house: your kennel set up adjacent to his work station. it was filled with pillows, blankets, and stuffies of all kinds, as well as dog toys galore that he would often pick up for you on his work trips. your favorite was this blue silicone bone that you could chew on to keep your mouth satiated, which was exactly what you were going for.

you felt like biting on something, needing something to fill your mouth, and you assumed that the bone would sate that need. it usually did, so you curled up in your cage quietly, shifting through the things in the kennel until you found the blue chew toy. while you were looking for your toy, ratio had walked inside and sat down at his desk, his back turned to you as he began writing on his latest project.

the almost rhythmic sound of his pen tapping against his paper as he wrote down his ideas soothed you a little bit as you laid on your beck, a stuffed animal in your arms and the chew toy in your mouth. you bit down on it, chewing on it until drool began to slip down from your lips down your cheek.

it was calming, yeah, but you still felt somewhat unsatisfied with it. you could feel your canines struggle to tear through the hard silicone, biting at the same area there was a slight indent to see if you really could bite through it. maybe it was the lack of stimulation, but you also knew that ratio needed to focus.. well, your rational brain knew that he needed to focus, anyhow.

puppy you ? not so much.

you poked your head out of the kennel, your bell giving you away. ratio stopped writing for a moment, but when you froze in place, he continued, not turning back to look at you. he was either deep in thought or trying to test you, you weren't sure about either one. you shuffled out of the kennel, your eyes trained on his back, as if waiting for him to swivel around and face you head on, but that never came.

finally, you were beside him at this point, your head level with his legs because of how tall his chair was built for tall people like him. you looked up at him, sitting your head on his plush thigh, but he didn't take any notice of you at first, focused on finishing this paragraph of his project at least. before you really thought about it, your tongue was darting out, and you licked his pants, the drool from earlier still on your tongue, leaving a wet stripe on his pants.

" pup- " ratio's voice held a hint of warning, but he still didn't look your way, his hand writing furiously on the paper. you could hear, though, just how he was feeling by how hard the pen was tapping against the paper, letting you know that he was getting riled up even if he didn't show it outright. you took a tentative second lip, blinking up at him innocently, as if daring him to do something about your transgressions.

you watched as he opened the drawer on this left without looking at it, his eyes still scanning his paper for any flaws or misconceptions that he may have accidentally written on the paper without realizing it, always scrutinizing his own work. his hand dug for something metal in the drawer, making your head tilt as you tried to recognize the sound. metal.. oh !

before you could have the full realization, ratio had sat the pen in his hand down, swiftly grabbing you by the collar, two of his fingers curled around the metal semi circular ring at the base of your collar, choking you slightly as he pulled you up slightly til you were right in his face. " you're aware that i need to focus, at yet, here you are, drooling on my lap like a stupid mutt. " while he was speaking, his other hand pulled out the leash, attaching it to the ring on your collar, the metal chains wrapped around his fist a few times to hold you tightly against him.

" i can find a more useful task for that tongue of yours, rather than letting you dirty my pants with your spit, " he growled, already more than just a little tired of your shit, even though he knew exactly how you could be, too. in fact, he had been rather hoping that something like this was going to happen, although he would much rather die than admit that to himself. he'd been working himself to the bone to get this project out there. if you could take a break and not use your brain, just that dumb puppy body of yours, shouldn't he be able to focus on his bodily pleasures, too ?

in other words, he needed a break just as much as you needed his cock in your mouth to satiate that tingling feeling you had inside. and he was more than happy to give it to you, quickly working to unbutton his pants, his legs spreading to give you better access to his already hard cock. he just needed to feel your lips wrap around him, and his mind, usually going faster than a bullet train, suddenly quieted.

you looked up at him through your lashes, your cheeks puffed out around his cock, your eyes watery from the sudden intrusion even though you had initiated it yourself. ratio let out a quiet groan, his head thrown back slightly as you diligently worked on his erection. this is what you needed, this is what he needed. you both needed the exact same thing.

" deeper, you can take it deeper, yeah ? " he almost sounded desperate at this point, choking out the words as if he couldn't think of anything else to say. " you can, because you're such a good pup. " ratio whispered gently, his chest rising and falling with every low grunt that he let out.

you nodded a little bit, mostly to yourself, spit running down his cock as it trickled from your lips, making his cock smoothly glide in your mouth, your mouth wrapped around him with an expertise that he'd specifically trained into you. you knew how to please him perfectly, in no small part to how natural it came to you, but equal part his.. teaching.

ratio found his other hand not holding the leash grabbing the back of your head, his fingers threading through your hair. he really wanted to force you down until your nose was touching his pubic bone, but he didn't, somehow having enough self restraint to keep himself in control for the most part. this felt so good, your lips wrapped around his throbbing, aching cock. it was everything that he had needed. you were everything that he needed.

" i'm gonna cum, pup. you want it ? " ratio asked, looking down at you as he saw something dark flicker in your eyes. you seemed to get more eager, as if excited for your little treat, pulling back from his cock most of the way until it was just the tip in his mouth and then bringing your head back down several times, keeping your head as far down as you could take it without choking. " fuck- pup- i'm- fuck- " it was a rare sight to see the doctor veritas ratio at a loss for words, but as he shot his load into your throat with a loud groan spilling from his lips, you were sure you were the only one in the cosmos that was lucky enough to hear him come so undone like this.

you swallowed it all eagerly, your hands on his thighs to steady yourself as you took your treat for being such a good pup for him. even after he came, you continued to suckle on his cock, your eyes half closed as you found yourself just peaceful. ratio, too, after the sensitivity from his orgasm subsided, looked down at his paperwork, his head clearer and able to properly focus on his work now that he had gotten some stress relief in. he let you suck on his cock quietly, cockwarming him until you were satisfied. he wasn't even sure if he'd cum again, only knowing that you were comfortable where you were at, and he wasn't going to move you.

— ♡ rationaliity 2024

[sunny-reis]

Hi, may I ask you about write Ayato x reader who like be affectionate but only with Ayato? For example they don't like be touched or when someone use pet name or nickname but they like when Ayato do this? They are like this grumpy cat which only one person are allowed to pet haha.

Good day/night

headcanons - ayato with a grumpy(?) reader

credits to @/SodaPuff3 on twitter for the ayato icon :3

sorry, i can't take your touch; it's not that i don't want you...

notes: woohoo first request !! i've never written headcanons like this so please feel free to tell me what you think :)

i now realize that this is a lot longer than it needed to be .. oh well 🤠

tags: i was DEFINITELY projecting while writing this LMAO, reader isn't implied to be fem or masc in any way ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

🫧 there are a whole bunch of reasons you might not be that welcome to physical affection or touch from others

🧋 maybe you're just not comfortable? let's assume so for now lmao

☔️ anyways !! you're going about your day in inazuma, maybe running some errands, when you realize you forgot to get rice flour 🧍

🫧 for SHAME how could you forget the flour !!

🧋 now you have to go all the way back to the tsukomono grocery shop when you're already out of the city 😟 yikes

☔️ yeah that isn't gonna be a fun trip GOOD LUCK

🫧 anyways you're back at the grocery shop and - just your luck!! - it starts raining

🧋 why. does the universe hate you 😶

☔️ sigh. anyways

🫧 you do the mental gymnastics of realizing you have to walk back to the kamisato estate ... yeah lmao there's no way that's happening

🧋 you look back from under the little awning and see that it's now pouring cats and dogs

☔️ today's really not your lucky day huh 🫠 you're just standing there like a fool, watching it rain and holding your little bag of produce and (now wet 😟) flour

🫧 a few minutes later you see the one and only

🧋 your saving grace, the (now) light of your life, your reason to get up in the morning, the apple of your eye, your good samaritan,

☔️ your savior,

🫧 thoma !! you've never been happier to see the man

🧋 waving at him like a madman, he looks your way, eyes wide, and rushes over to you to ask you what the heck you're doing out here in the rain

☔️ you recount the whole flour situation (albeit embarrassed), and thoma, being the amazing person he is, offers to share his umbrella with you

🫧 you thank your lucky stars and gladly accept, now walking back to the kamisato estate as the rain pitter-patters over the polished paper umbrella

🧋 which is great ! you're really thankful and all that ! but there's a small, itty-bitty, minuscule, tiny problem

☔️ he's WAY too close for your liking 🧍

🫧 it's not that you're worried about good ol' thoma flirting with you or ayato being over-possessive or anything !!

🧋 you just Don't. like touching/being touched by other people (which is understandable !!)

☔️ but you don't know how to explain it to thoma without sounding like an absolute asshole (ﾟｰﾟ;

🫧 like he did offer to take you back home in the rain and he's a really good friend and all that

🧋 but every second that passes by with his arm brushing just a little too close for your liking drives you INSANE for some reason

☔️ by the time you reach chinju forest, you're overstimulated and frustrated and grumpy and slightly wet and your robes are clinging to your body and you can feel the water in your soggy socks and

🫧 OUGHHHH you feel like a steaming pile of trash ((´д｀)) at least the kamisato estate's just above the stone steps in front of you

🧋 after a few minutes of carefully climbing up them, drying off with a warm towel from furuta (the sweet old housekeeper), and a change of clothes, you plop down on your and ayato's shared bed

☔️ god the past hour's been .. something

🫧 you don't know if you're being dramatic (although you feel guilty .. so maybe not), but you still feel overstimulated after that sensory nightmare

🧋 so you curl up under the covers and try to sleep it off 💤

☔️ and you do !! you get a solid two hours of sleep (my eepy ass could never) before you're woken up by a tired ayato slipping under the blanket with you

🫧 neither of you say anything, but he understands everything by the look on your face

🧋 he knows about how sensitive you are to touch and proximity with other people, and has helped you get through many a sensory overload before

☔️ so you both just lay down in silence, lights dimmed, and you start to feel a little bit better :)

🫧 at the end of the day, you do think you need to work on setting boundaries with other people when it comes to things like physical touch

🧋 but that's all for another day !!

☔️ right now, you're focused on nothing but the shared warmth between you and ayato and the soft sound of your breathing

🫧 all is well now :)

[japanifornication]

20 fic questions

i was tagged by @mutxnts thank you ash!!

1. how many works do you have on Ao3?

21, ayyy, one less than ash!!

2. what's your total ao3 word count?

189,718. this does not surprise me.

3. what fandoms do you write for?

ace attorney and very rarely ff7 and the last of us.

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

late night (257 kudos), tasting (121 kudos), finality (114 kudos), alive (91 kudos), distance (88 kudos) all of these are ace attorney, three of them are part of a series lol.

if we want to include my art that i've posted to ao3, holding would actually be in second place, with 218 kudos.

theoretically another fic should be in the top five instead but i left it out because i just don't like it and don't plan to update it again/will prob remove it at some point (it was my first in the fandom, was trying to do a case fic before realizing i am bad at them).

5. do you respond to comments?

i try to always respond but sometimes i just don't know what to say! that being said i am always open to chatting about my fics. please. please talk to me oh my god i want to talk about ace attorney.

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

oughhhh....... i guess no one told me it would be beautiful? it's one of my shortest fics and part of just a short series of a post-apocalypse au. it's not exactly the angstiest ending, i have another series in mind for that, but the whole fic has an undertone of angst, and series will too. i just write it in spurts when i feel the need to write something that isn't one of my WIPs.

7. what’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

i think most of my fics end on a sort of higher note! my fics have strong undertones of angst but with lighter endings, but i think the winner would go to status :) because it's the happy ending to the long angsty series! and also it just makes me happy, i feel like i really stuck the landing, we get to see the boys laugh over the most absurd situation and it makes me laugh too.

8. do you get hate on fics?

i've never gotten hate on a fic but shortly after i posted fic that met this description in the tags once, someone i follow made a post making fun of the idea that edgeworth would ever be a sexy dom. listen we are all playing in our own sandboxes.

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

we all know me, come on now. i write trans phoenix getting railed in all configurations smut. every e-rated fic has at least one creampie. we know this.

10. do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

i don't, but i do have one in mind. i've been planning a severance ace attorney fic for a long time.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

no

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

no

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

kind of? tybalt wrote a fic in the universe of one of my series! which kind of counts? idk! but he didn't feel like posting it so i did lol (he's co-author on it). but i do RP a lot, just none is published yet. maybe some day.

14. what’s your all time favorite ship?

of all time??????? tifa/cloud/aerith probably

15. what’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

ohhh god maybe my vampire fic, wait for the morning. i'm trying. i'm trying for the homosexuals.

16. what are your writing strengths?

i think i'm best at writing dialogue honestly, that is what i love to write the most, especially arguments. otherwise in the Real World i am very good at writing passive-aggressive but still somehow polite and professional emails to get shit done.

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

i have a lot of problems with just repetitive vocab.

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

i have a lot of feelings on this i can't exactly elucidate well. i only speak english fluently. i have a very beginner's knowledge in french. i'm also indigenous, but i don't speak the language of my people, which despite being one of the largest indigenous speech communities in the US, still only has around 2,000 native speakers.

so... i have a lot of feelings about language that take up a lot of space in my chest. but i just am kind of stuck writing in english. if i need to write dialogue in another language, i try to source from friends who speak the language first, then elsewhere on the internet if i don't know anyone directly who speaks it (e.g. asking in a public discord or reddit or somewhere), and use online translation tools as a last resort.

19. first fandom you wrote for?

theoretically it was accidentally tomb raider when i was in 3rd grade but i didn't know that's what i was doing at the time. intentionally, the first fic i ever wrote fanfic for was ff7.

20. favorite fic you’ve written?

i really and truly cannot choose here. it's like picking your favorite child. for the writing skills alone i have to pick wait for the morning (unfinished, i'm sorry). clarity is another one i think shows off some writing skills, idk, i just like it! for the characterization, something about decadence really floats my boat. and for the one that really earns its e-rating, it's tasting (especially chapter 3), my magnum opus of smut.

i am tagging.... who am i tagging. i hate tagging ppl bc i get sooooo anxious that ppl will be annoyed but i am going to tag @sandboxer @m-aximumjoy @samioli if you want to do it, and i have forgotten everyone else's tumblr urls in this exact moment it's like the men in black just memory-wiped me

[butchcarmy]

No but like that blurb about Carmy needing to be held? To be taken care of? PLEASE. Like I keep having this recurring headcannon inspired by your Carmy and roommate reader. Like Carm comes home from work early on roommate’s day off because he’s not feeling good (could be physically or mentally, but knowing Carmy, it’s probably both). He’s just going to hole himself up in his room so he’s not a bother. Except roommate is 100% like “Carm, do you want to be on the couch or bed? OJ or Apple juice? Tylenol or Advil? Soup now, or soup later?” And basically just plans their whole day off around making sure Carmy is the MOST taken care of. And he feels so shit and wants it so bad that he just lets it happen. If we want to go extra angst, roommate suggest watching Heartstopper as a mindless comfort fluff show but then by the end of binging season two Carmy is a blubbering wreck because he’s bi and on the ace spectrum (Carmy has such demisexual vibes, convince me otherwise) and he’s never really told anyone or even fully acknowledged it and he’s been so alone and disconnected from himself and the world for so long and the floodgates just OPEN and roommate just holds him and encourages him to let it all out… his childhood, the neglect, the abuse from New York, losing Mikey…. It just all comes out and he lets himself be held through it all. They ground him and keep him from drowning in the shit he’s suppressed since forever. And there’s no going back after that. Carmy is like a fucking octopus whenever they’re around roommate after, and they both love it and that’s just how it is.

WEHHHH okay first of all i'm so happy to hear that you could b thinking of this in my roommate au!! that brings me a lot of joy :)

anyway YEAH this is a great time for me to mention that bc i'm queer as hell any character I get obsessed with is automatically queer in someway. so yeah carmy is bi as hell and he TOTALLY reads as demisexual, i love that so much!! i've never seen heartstopper but i think i should (esp since it may destroy me it seems)

OUGHHH him learning to learn on his roomie and not isolate himself!! i love it!! to shamelessly plug ch 4 of the roomie fic because... well... it may or may not be very related to what this ask is about... how did you know i was gonna write about this!!!!!

i'm a sucker for hurt characters learning how to love and trust again and learn the joy of being vulnerable around others... OUGHHHH CARMY ONCE I GET MY HANDS ON YOU

[eparch]

[fic] it can only remain poisoned

Lucilaeh knows she shouldn't be doing this, knows she's just walking back into the danger.

But the haze calls to her, so she sneaks back into the depths in the dead of night.

***

2.6k words. On AO3.

What Lies Beneath made me completely unhinged.

Notes on AO3:

I should probably have waited for chapter 17 to come before writing this but I seriously needed to get this out of my system and I SWEAR I am Very Normal about MMORPG Guild Wars 2 Expansion End of Dragons Chapter 16 What Lies Beneath Final Instance Deep Trouble oughhhh

This fic has: Gavin from the White Stag personal story NPC, OC-specific Mordremoth-related trauma, and a little bit of my headcanons on thief/specter shadow magic.

Content notes: Canon-typical violence, emotional self-harm, emotional baggage, psychological horror (I..guess? I’m bad w/ genres), hallucinations

***

There's barely a moon in the blackened night sky when she finally sneaks back into the haze after a week of enduring the urge. She's been recovering, letting her brother fuss and worry about her while she figures out what to tell Logan and Rytlock and Aurene regarding this recent adventure, and Lucilaeh knows she shouldn't be doing this, knows she's just walking back into the danger. But she doesn't even know why she wants to go back in, after the terrors that had awaited their team. Would she find the demon again? Or something else? Surely there is something better calling to her, compelling her, like a Wyld Hunt's push and pull.

She's supposed to be waiting for Gorrik to get his experiment together, but things had their way of working out...right?

She doesn't believe that.

Shadow magic comes easier than ever before here, as she ventures further and further into the depths. It hasn't been this easy since Primordus and Jormag, since before it nearly consumed her from within. Lucilaeh pulls at it, lets it enshroud her and take her presence away until she finds herself just walking past everything that would normally attack her. The haze makes the air thick, almost slimy. Even through her jade bot's filter, she can taste something harsher than oil and blood. It makes her want to retch as much as it did when they first came here, but even then, it had been enthralling, both repulsive and pleasing and she knows she can't stay away.

She stops in her tracks when the scent changes and she smells the sweet, clear air of Astorea. Not the same as when she was training freshly awakened Sylvari in the weeks after the engagement party, but older, cleaner, crisp. Like the first time she consciously took a deep breath before setting off on her first Hunt. As the edges of her vision darken just so, Lucilaeh feels once more like---like a---

"Sapling."

He's standing there amidst the cliffs of jade, the same as his last day on Tyria, armored in Nightmare Court livery and wearing that smile that had fooled her heart.

"Gavin," she breathes his name, and it's so foreign on her tongue that she steps back instead.

"Is that any way to greet your oldest friend?" asks the nightmare before her, spreading his arms in welcome. "After all the trouble you went to, to come save me? And such a naughty sapling you are, to sneak out in the dead of night where the menders can't catch you!"

She shouldn't engage. She can't. She has to go back. She's waiting for Gorrik. Her brother would worry. But his words aren't even right. She was never in Astorea long as a sapling. She walked away from that life and her brother as soon as she opened her eyes and felt the weight of the Dream on her shoulders and feet.

"I didn't come here for you," she tells him. "You betrayed me."

"No?" He quirks his brow at her and chuckles. "Why would you come here if not to see old friends again? Tell me, my dear sapling, aren't you here so you can see me outside your head?"

"You're wrong." And it's getting harder to remember why he's wrong. Why did she come here, if not to see him? Wasn't he right about that? But she does know. She does know what's wrong with his words and she's not going to let it go unsaid again. "You were never just an old friend to me."

Gavin pauses as if he'd never considered such a thing, as if he's thinking over her words. Did he know that this was the extent of what she could tell him on the matter? Lucilaeh had mourned him, had cursed him. She had spent long weeks turning over what she could have done instead for him, and that had only been because he had come so early in her life, before everything and everyone else that she would be responsible for and would never have time to mourn. She had decided back then: her love and pain for him could only ever be the same thing from then on.

He breaks the long silence with a sigh, but his smile grows, stretching ear to ear in a way it never did.

"I understand," he says, and gone is the friendly air, gone is the cunning kindness that always lingered in his eyes. "I was never just merely your friend. I am your dearest regret, the first of many you couldn't save. But you don't care about that, Commander."

"No---" She can't manage more than a whisper, not when it feels as if she's got an arrow in her side again.

"You came here because you want to be hurt, Commander." Gavin steps toward her, but her feet are frozen to the ground. He doesn't look like himself anymore. She's not sure in what way. "Deep down you're eager for something to fight. All these years, you've fought for a peace you never knew---and now that you have it, you're looking for a new monster to hunt because you're nothing without one."

"No...no, I---" Her voice cracks against the still air like a thundering Brandstorm, and it's this that startles her to alertness. Gorrik had explained the effects of the haze on her feelings last time, hadn't he, and that was why she isn't supposed to be here. She breathes in deep and lets the sharp scent of the haze startle the rest of her senses in turn. Lucilaeh squares her shoulders and straightens her back and gazes into the false Gavin's dark eyes and she thinks hard about her brother's firm voice as he warned her, after she had won her duel with Gavin their entire lifetime ago, to renounce their mother so that she would never be hurt by the Hunt again. She remembers balling her fists and squaring her shoulders too, back then, and telling him, she would never let the pain stop her from pursuing her purpose.

She has bled a thousand times for Tyria. She has died for her duty. This is no different.

"No, I know nothing but the fight," Lucilaeh tells the darkness around her, "but I also have known love of all kinds from the moment I awoke. That is how I know there is peace in this world, even if I may never have it for myself. And---I also know what I already told you: I know what you're doing."

Gavin's smile twists further, warps further in a way she's not sure her mind is comprehending. Shadows bleed from him, oozing outward and joining the darkness lapping at her vision.

"But Commander, there will still always be monsters of your own making," he says, "and may you always use your bloodshed to grow your garden."

"Stop." Lucilaeh rushes him, dagger out, and to the surprise of some small part of her he does nothing, instead opening his arms to her once more. She feels it when the dagger pushes into him and his arms wrap around her back, embracing her as if mocking her for what she never could have had.

"I will be remembered..." He trails off as he slumps into her arms, but she senses no life leaving him, only that continuous flowing and swarming of shadows.

She stands tall. Still as she can. Long lost feelings wash over her in waves, and she doesn't fight them this time, letting them pass through her. She imagines herself like Aurene for a moment. The Prismatic Commander of Confusing Emotions and Sad Memories.

No, Gavin. I will never join the Nightmare Court.

That's a pity. It grieves me greatly to turn predator into prey, Valiant---

"But you forgot me."

She startles as the corpse slumped against her speaks again, but this time it isn't Gavin's voice.

It's her brother's.

Lucilaeh looks down and finds Benedicuore gazing back up at her, exactly as he looked when she hunted him down in the heart of the Maguuma, features twisted by the dragon's corruption. He sneers as she leaps back, and he rises and rises to full height over her, towering over her in his corrupted body.

"How dare you," she hisses.

"Oh sister," he says, leaning down to look her in the eyes. "I should be the one to ask you that. You left me behind with my copies. Or maybe you did kill me. Do you even know if the one waiting for you on the surface was the real me?"

"He is," she tells him, and suddenly all the bravado she had worked up dissipates. She forged forth without it anyway. "He came back to me. Ben fought off the corruption when he heard my voice---"

"No, you'll never know." He starts to move, and she forces her feet to let her turn, if only to keep her eyes on him as he starts to circle her. "You turned your brother into yet another regret when you chose to save him. In the end, you forgot the real me because it was simply more convenient to let this copy take my place."

It's only when she tries to raise her dagger once more that she realizes she let go of it at some point, her hands shaking as she tries to do---anything at all. It was true. It was true. She hadn't tried with the other copies when they attacked her. She'd killed them because it was easier. Because fighting and killing was always easier. Because despite everything she claimed, she really did know so little of anything else.

"I'm sorry." Those wretched words wrench past her lips before she can stop herself, followed closely by a sob, then another and another until she is simply weeping as she stands there amidst the shadows and the jade. "I'm sorry. I never forgot. But he was the only one who listened...what more could I have done..."

She senses, rather than sees, the darkness enveloping her. It doesn't feel anything like her own shadow magic. It grasps her, swallowing her---

"No! Sister!"

She hears the shout through the haze but does not understand what it means until light floods her vision, chasing away the shadows and when she blinks, Ben is before her, holding up a hard light dome between the two of them and the demon.

"They're over here!" he yells and Lucilaeh coughs and sits up. She gasps for air, realizing all too suddenly she's been on the ground. Ben glances at her over his shoulder. "Stay, stay with me, sister."

"Ben, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she chokes out through damned tears she can't stop. "I left you, I left you behind so many times---I---are you...are you real?"

"A-as real as I've ever been," he answers sharply. Shadows slam against his shield, pushing down toward them both. He was never much of a fighter himself. "This, erm, doesn't seem like the best time for this, but you really, you really ought to know I've never once begrudged you for choosing your duty over me---"

Words she's never dared to dream of hearing, never quite knew she wanted to hear. She clings to them as she crawls to her dagger, laying just a step away from Ben. Lucilaeh musters up her strength despite its constant fleeing from her, and digs deeper into herself as she takes back her dagger and grasps it tight with both hands. It was fool of her not to bring her scepter, so this would have to do.

"W-where are they---I can't...much longer---" Ben hisses as the darkness presses him down to his knees, the shield just barely covering them both now.

The air around them has thickened to the point she can barely breathe, but she breathes, challenging the shadows that dare bear down upon them. The dagger's hilt digs into her palm as she takes a precious moment to concentrate and listen.

The demon isn't allowed to be stealthier than her. She won't allow it. She points the dagger in the direction of the demon, draws in a breath, and starts to siphon the shadows. She hears a growl, but little other noise, just her's and Ben's ragged breathing and the hum of his forge and the dome. But she's hurting the creature, she's sure of that. The shadows envelop her again, this time mingling with her magic and it's more than she's ever tried to draw in before and there's what she guesses must be the foreign magic Gorrik had mentioned, something woven into these shadows that stings and scorches her enough to draw out a cry of pain from her.

"Stay with me...!"

She doesn't hear Ben this time. She's too busy holding onto the shadows she's gathered from the creature and fighting through the pain. She grits her teeth and grips her dagger tighter, tighter, until she feels that pain in her hand instead over the magic, and then---

"Thanks for sharing," she whispers, as she lets the shadow magic wash over her and Ben both. Swiftly, she finds strength coming back to her limbs, hears Ben's breathing even out as well. Slower, she rises to her feet, properly shrouded in darkness, careful to shield Ben without giving him any of the foreign magic.

"It's weakened!" Someone shouts from beyond, followed by a cacophony of gunfire.

All at once, the darkness recedes.

It's not much brighter, with the natural tenebrosity of the cave, but finally her vision clears completely. Somehow, she's managed to wander all the way down to the shore of a jade pool. How had she not noticed the sickly green glow earlier?

Movement catches her eye. The creature is fleeing from them through the cavern ahead, back down to the leyline once more. Ben tugs on her arm.

"We should go," he says.

She nods, holstering her dagger and reaching for his hand. Lucilaeh's entire body aches, but the scar in her side protests the loudest with every movement as they start the trek back up.

"How did you find me?"

"I heard you leaving," answers Ben quietly. "I-I woke up Gorrik, then followed you. It seemed as if you couldn't hear me at all, then you just...disappeared."

"Ah."

They might have talked about something else, perhaps about the words of doubt she had expressed to him, if they did not quickly run into Gorrik with Rama and Yao and Finn in tow: their saviors from above, at the moment she weakened the creature.

Lucilaeh says little as they make the rest of the way up, only half listening to their concerns, both the ones stated out loud and the ones cloaked in ridicule and sarcasm. She knows it should be shame on her sleeve, for sneaking away like this, for endangering them all again, but now that they're leaving the depths once more, she feels only an icy detachment settling over her.

She ignores the whisper as she steps out onto the warming soil of the surface, where pale morning light reaches down past the outpost and the cave entrance toward her, caressing her. She ignores the whisper as she fends off the others' fussing and the commotion across the camp over her and makes a beeline for her tent. She ignores the whisper as she takes off her mask and drops into her bedroll, but she hears it once more just as she plunges into a welcoming blackness: the twisted voice of her brother, as inviting as it's repulsive, as kind as it's cruel, as warped by Mordremoth's touch as it's that of the liberated one carefully laying down next to her, and it's calling to her from somewhere deep within the haze, somewhere she hasn't gone, somewhere she wants to go, and it whispers like a long lost part of herself: I'll be here where you left me when you need to poison yourself once more.

[shinakazami1]

I’m so, so sorry for dipping for months it’s been quite busy and procrastination got the hang of me,,, But since I’m finally free now, time to actually transcribe the raw reaction I wrote two months ago from paper to Microsoft word and edit it! I just need to summarise it and I'm done! *look at word document: page 2 of 2,640 words* yeah maybe a small segments should do

(this one is for Destiny Surely Likes to Play Tricks, thing absolutely slayed me my goodness I'm blushing screaming kicking my legs I'm just so happy for these men and their journey to happiness)

“While I do know your name…beautiful” ,,,Ok that might be something left behind in the editing process (or maybe it’s intentional I have no idea) but the text ending with no dots really enhanced that need of his since Nar is a very careful person who would reread every sentence before pressing send (like you’ve written some sentences below). And here, without the dot, it felt like he typed that sentence and pressed send at rocket speeds. No thoughts in that moment, those fingers driven by pure instincts and feelings alone,,,

“Us. It felt strange to refer to himself…anymore.” “us!” like, both of them! Not just “you” and “I”, those two words grouped, combined together to become one “us”! They belong to each other, from two people to one couple! Them!! ajsdhdhfdk I'm so normal about them

Thank you writers for writing the most tooth-rotting fluff ever and I apologise again for taking too long ;-;; I should really work on this whole thing... Also happy followers count!

307 anon,,, I was just thinking about you in the past few days cus I am now writing another story (,,,hope you will like it,,) and wondered just how are you,,,,,, (rest under the text cus this is long foiahafs)

Please don't be sorry at all - there are so many things in your life going on that I will never have a chance of knowing about but you spending the time to write these just means so much to me. And seeing you come back just means so much ough

And also OUGH DUDE YOU HAVING THE WHOLE DOCUMENT I would be so up to just reading it whole too, you not only spending time to read but also write down comments to send me, who are you why are you so kind, I hope life treats you well, I hope you are doing okay, I wish you the best and I hope my response will bring at least a tiny bit of the joy your asks bring me, thank you for spending time on this all (pwease reveal yourself one day,, / nf)

To the responses I go:

,,, I think it's just me not writing dots tbh IOHFSAHIOSFAHIO but to think someone thought of it in such lovely way because that's so right - Narrator would check, Narrator would normally reread again and again but he didn't, he just found his soulmate, he is in the moment, living it all oughhhh 307 anon you are a genius

US US US they just are TOGETHER NOW there are separate entities but they are together just ough yes you GET IT I'M SO GLAD YOU GET IT

Please take your time, take it easy and I hope you will have a lovely day anon

A little snippet from the TSP angst story I'm writing that someone took screenshots of hoiashfiao

:3c cus every angst deserves sum silly moment

[chromes-corner]

Hello there! I am a human who is in desperate need of an angst regarding Lilac Cookie and is hoping you could perhaps provide me with one since I absolutely adore your writings. Would that be okay?

I do not have any scenario in mind as my mind had been on a constant "No head, thoughts empty" mood for the past few days. But I was hoping you could do something with reader dying and lots of remorse and guilt for Lilac afterwards (Please, this is my fav stuff lol)

Thank you and bye :D

(Also this is my first request on Tumblr so sorry if anything I said is weird and/or out of place lol)

i have been thinking about this prompt nonstop for days. like I've been fucking CURSED by it. You gave me BRAIN WORMS DUDE. oughhhh i love writing angst so much AND WITH LILAC HELLOOOOO OPPORTUNITY. HELL YEAH BABEYYYY

5k (!!!!) words of brainrot enjoy :))))

---

Drown

Lilac/Reader

Notes: angst

Content Warnings: gratuitous blood, violence, injury, death, brief gore (an appendage gets chopped off ok)

A/N: this might not be as polished as it could be but god i was getting really sick of rereading it and tweaking it in teeny tiny bits. i just had to get it out lmao

A/N cont.: also I experimented a bit with story structure in this one so I hope it’s not too hard to follow?? Idk <3

Emotions are weakness.

That’s the first thing you learn on the job. Anger burns like an inferno and turns into blind rage, which will kill you in the end. Sadness boils in the pit of your stomach and turns into desperation, which will kill you in the end. Happiness dulls your edge and will be used against you, which might as well kill you in the end. Nobody teaches you how to suppress emotions. Nobody shows you how to pull a thick mask over your face until you’re indecipherable from the marble statues in the royal courtyard. It’s learned from experience; from trial and error (and pure luck if you don’t end up dead) that forces you to numb yourself from feeling anything at all. Then, and only then, are you safe from the world and all the terrors it has to throw at you.

Lilac knows this rule all too well. He’s honed himself to a deadly blade on the whetstone of this rule. He’s dedicated his life to it, and it, in return, has become his livelihood, providing him with more coins than he knows what to do with. As long as people roam the markets, there will be quarries to eliminate and bounties to collect. As long as Lilac continues to reinforce his walls, to block out anything and everything, he will survive.

He’s so well versed in the golden rule, in fact, that he doesn’t so much as flinch when the sharp edge of the metal tub slices open the pad of his finger. It’s more of a minor annoyance than a painful affliction – nothing more than a dull scrape against a brick wall. Lilac kneels in the sand over the metal tub, watching a single dark drop lazily dribble down his finger and palm and drip into the clear water, fresh from the well. The blood blossoms out in a wispy cloud, the single drop of pollutant rendering the entire basin spoiled. It only takes a tiny bit of one solution to corrupt another.

The single drop is not the end of it. Lilac submerges both his hands in the tainted waters. He splays his fingers wide, feeling the cool of the liquid seep into every crevice on his stained hands. The long-dried crimson that cakes his palms and crusts his fingernails starts to disperse, pluming out like the flames of a torch, dyeing the water in the wild hue of the desert sunset.

—

It’s like the sky was on fire.

Lilac crept over the lip of a massive dune, kicking up puffs of sand as he walked with light footsteps. He had shed his cowl after he left the marketplace, wrapping it – and the item it held – beneath his arm as the sun had disappeared behind the pale crests in the distance. When he stood on the very top of the massive bank, the wildfire glow revealed itself to him.

The sun hung low in the sky, like a blazing amber pupil trained on the world below. Bronzed clouds stayed still as a held breath against the smoldering backdrop of the evening sky, their edges lit up by the piercing sun like liquid gold. The sea of sand beyond was shrouded in its smoldering haze, dunes like embers and desert birds springing from their hiding spots like stray sparks.

Below the forge of the setting sun was a single, untouched coal, a cool relief within the scald. The tent was pitched beside an outcrop of sandy boulders, protecting it from the midday sun that choked the desert with a grip of scathing steel. It was a white canvas sheet stretched over the sand, held upright by a pole in the center. The color deflected the worst of the heat, and the canvas provided a shady pool to hide under when the scorch of the sands was too much to bear.

As Lilac began to slide down the dune, a head peeked out from under the tarp. Attached to that head was a pair of arms, clutching a tiny dagger to the owner’s chest. He adjusted the bundle of his cowl under his arm as he approached. The wielder of the dagger relaxed their grip on the weapon when they saw the shock of his hair and the weightlessness of his step. There was only ever one person who carried himself like that in the endless ocean of sand.

You greeted Lilac in silence, wordlessly taking his face in your hands and pressing your forehead to his. Lilac was equally as mute, closing his eyes and allowing himself to breathe and let go of the stiffness of his shoulders. Your hands were gentle on his face, bringing him closer, past the limit of proximity that he had originally allowed himself. He ghosted his free hand over your cheek, the tips of his fingers just barely grazing against the softness that he felt he shouldn’t be allowed to behold, much less caress. The unspoken sentiment went both ways: I’m glad you’re okay.

Lilac only opened his eyes when he felt a tug at the bundle under his arm. He forgot it was even there while he was drowning under the soft exhales you had left fanning over his face while you cradled him. He unwrapped his cowl and presented you with the item that was hiding within.

A conch shell.

You stared at the gift with wide eyes, like it would vanish if you looked away. Its smooth, polished surface was cool on your palms, but you almost dropped it as though it had scorched you upon contact. It was pearly white like sands from where it came – wholly different from the pale gold of the desert. You ran your fingers over the various bumps and ridges, memorizing every inch of the pristine shell. Lilac couldn’t look away from its surface reflected in your glassy eyes.

Carefully, slowly, you held the shell up to the side of your head. The hollowed side had fit snugly on your ear. You closed your eyes and held your breath.

You listened for a long time.

—

Lilac blinks, and the image is gone.

He swishes his hands around in the tub and begins to scrub. The dried blood comes off in flakes, and the clarity of the water is entirely lost beneath the pink tint. He scrubs everywhere. Between his fingers. Over his knuckles. Under his fingernails. He passes the stiff bristles of the brush over his hands dozens of times, revisiting the same areas over and over again until the skin is raw and tingling. Still, he does not show express a fraction of discomfort at the feeling.

Finally, he stops his scrubbing. The stains on his hands have been washed away. The skin underneath shows through. Despite this, he still feels unclean.

No matter. Lilac moves on to the next item that needs cleaning. A small, soiled pouch jingles as he picks it up. He dumps its contents into the tub, and he watches the shiny gold coins sink to the bottom.

—

The man behind the desk peered into the bloody sack Lilac provided and grimaced. “Sheesh, I take it he didn’t wanna come willingly?” He pushed the sack away with a pencil until it was at arm’s length. “It doesn’t matter, I guess. You got the job done, and that’s all I asked of you.”

The man haphazardly threw a pouch onto the table in front of him. It landed next to the bloody sack with a full, hearty clink. Lilac took the pouch and dumped it on the table. Dozens of coins fell to the surface with a hefty clatter.

“You think I shorted you?” the man asked with a snort, tapping on the red wooden desk before him as Lilac began to drop them back in the pouch. “They’re all there, friend, trust me. Come on, now, you're gonna stain the imported wood.”

Lilac did not hear him. He could not hear anything. The only thing in his ears was the thrum of blood throbbing through his head. Like the crackle of static. Like the ocean’s tide.

He counted the pieces individually, turning them over in his hand, then letting them fall into the sack. The red that coated his hands dirtied the luster and left the coins wet and slick. Lilac didn’t worry about staining his payment. The money was already dirty, even before he arrived.

The man at the desk watched, gritting his teeth each time Lilac picked up a coin. “I’ve got a few more jobs for you when you’re done with that.”

Lilac did not acknowledge him. The clinking of coins was his only answer, sharp and rhythmic.

The man pushed forward a few sheets of aged parchment from his side of the desk. One depicted a woman in a bandana, her toothy grin nearly as sharp as her daggers. Another was simply a dark, blurry silhouette in the vague shape of a person. The only tip to their identity was the glint of the diamond on their cane and the white bulb of light reflected in their monocle. On the last poster was a hulking beast of a man, his sun-kissed skin wrinkled with sea salt and his yellowed teeth crooked into a sneer. One eye glared into the sunlight, while the other was covered by a black patch.

Lilac’s gaze hovered over the last poster. The man’s heavy, squared frame took up most of the image, but behind him was a glimpse of vast, never-ending water beneath a clear horizon. Blue meeting blue.

Lilac’s employer leaned over the desk. “Ah, looking for a tropical vacation, huh? Ol’ ‘broadside’ here was last spotted in the Tropical Soda Islands, plundering my merchant ships with his ragtag scurvy crew. Good choice, though. I hear the Isles are beautiful this time of year.”

Lilac took the poster and the coin satchel and left without another word.

—

Lilac scoops the coins out of the water and tilts his hand until the light hits them just right. They shine like the day they were minted. They are heavy in his palm, heavy enough to make his arm teeter like it rests on the fulcrum of a scale. Even a single coin in the center of his upturned hand leaves him trembling. They’ve never been so weighty before. They’ve never been so worthless. He lays them on a square of burlap, so they can dry beneath the sun.

The next item to be washed is the lump of stiff, black fabric that was once the thick veil attached to his belt. He pushes it under the water and it loosens, then he goes to work on it with the brush. The material is dark, and it flows beneath the water in slow-motion, as though being pushed by a soft nighttime wind.

—

The rising full moon encircles your head like a halo as you remain still beneath the cover of the black desert sky. Your hair, dark and shapeless against the stark white backdrop, rustles in the breeze.

You listened into the shell until your lungs screamed for air. The first breath you let slip from your lungs came out as a stutter. The first breath you let into your chest was drawn in as a sob. A tear rolled out from beneath your still-closed eye. It trailed slowly over your cheekbone, flushed red, but was wiped away by a gentle thumb.

Your eyes flew open and you pushed the shell into Lilac’s hands. He let you guide it up to his ear, and he closed his eyes as its cool surface rested against the side of his head. He stilled his breath and waited, just as you had.

The static that filled his ear swayed into focus like the tide. The gentle swish rang out throughout the shell and filled his head. It was a sound he had only ever heard stories of. Water lapping against the shore, like the pulsing of a heartbeat. Like the rhythm of a song on the wind. Like the sound of your voice breaking through his trance.

—

The dark stain does not come out. It’s lightened significantly, but as Lilac fans it out to dry, there’s an ugly cloud of brown spanning nearly the entire surface. He traces his fingers around the edges of the stain. It’d be easier to throw the whole thing out and get a new one.

He grabs his twin Chakrams from his side and inspects them. They, too, are stained, their razor edges more red than their normal steely silver. They’re cool to the touch, despite the heat.

—

The marketplace buzzed with life, filled with the calls of criers advertising their wares and the chatter among locals and tourists as they clinked about the shop stands. It was a constant, steady noise; not a whisper and not an uproar. It was static, like a rusty cooling unit sputtering to life in the sweltering afternoon. Like the calm but colossal weight of water creeping up a beach as the tide swelled in.

Lilac stumbled into the narrow street from an even narrower alleyway. He knocked his shoulder against the cool sandstone wall as he pushed himself upright. A damp sack dangled from his hip, still dripping blood into the dusty cobblestone beneath his feet. When Lilac pushed himself from the wall and started forward with all the grace of a newborn doe, his hand left a dark, smeared handprint.

His ears rang and the world tilted beneath his feet, while his legs went into autopilot and carried him toward his destination. The cacophony of the marketplace never ceased, even as eyes, so many of them, followed him down his path. Tourists shied away from the streets. Locals looked away as he came, then at him as he went. Shopkeepers leaned out from the red canopies of their stalls. Some glanced his way and turned back to their business, while others, wide and frightened, bore into the back of his head.

The buzzing of conversation beside him became hushed. Lilac was underwater, the rumble of alarmed voices all around him pulled him deeper and deeper below the surface until the edge of his vision turned black as night. His bleary mind fell down into the depths. The only sound in his head was that of the blood pulsing through his ears, drowning him beneath the torrent.

—

The Chakrams cleaned easily, even in the soiled water. They are quickly returned to deadly perfection. Lilac studies the blades, looking for any spots that he missed. A dirty weapon is poor showmanship. When he finds one, a small blot of dirt crusting the steel, he flicks a fingernail over it. It rings out with a soft metallic peal. White noise in the back of his head.

—

“Do you hear it?” you asked, cradling the back of his hand in yours.

Lilac nodded to the beat of the current that washed over the invisible shore.

“So much water, as far as the eye can see.” You threaded your fingers through his free hand. “They say you can’t see any land on the other side. It’s just water. Blue water meeting a blue horizon.”

You closed your eyes and saw yourself standing on a beach. The sand there was wet, not dry like the desert. The tide massaged your ankles as it washed over the ground beneath your feet. The air was cold and fresh in your lungs, and your nose was flooded with the bite of salt on the breeze that melded around your body like the lightest of fabrics.

Lilac pictured a beach, too. All he could see was you running down the beach, kicking up a spray of salty water in the red sunset with each joyful footstep.

“I will take you there.” Lilac clung to the image of your joy, your laughter fully drowning out the white noise. “We’ll see the ocean together.”

—

Plink.

A droplet of water splashes against the blade of his Chakram. Lilac turns the weapon over in his hand. The reflection of the sun flashes brilliantly against the shining steel. He instinctively squeezes his eyes shut as the brightness momentarily blinds him.

Plink.

Another drip, despite the clarity of the day. The liquid slides down the blade and drops unceremoniously into the tub. 

—

Plink.

You looked so small in the dark, narrow space, with your shoulders shrunk inward and your arms squeezed tightly against your chest. Your hands were clenched over the steel below your chin, and the metal just barely kissed your throat. Your fingers were so stiff, so tense that the entire length of your arms, all the way to your neck and shoulders, trembled. Lines of red drew themselves down the blade as you tightened your grip on the steel and tried to pull it away from your throat with all the strength you could muster.

Your eyes were trained on him, wild and frenzied, pupils constricted as your teeth chattered.

Plink.

The tear that rolled down your face dripped onto the scimitar skimming your jaw.

Lilac tightened his grip on his Chakrams, the sharp edges trained at the person before him. It was just a young man, barely out of his teens, who had a hand tangled firmly in your hair. He, too, had a wild look in his eyes. The hold he had on his sword’s hilt left his knuckles nearly as pale as his face, and there was no doubt his palms were as slick as his forehead. The man lurched back into the shadows, cornered and so very afraid as he tilted his blade back to meet your throat.

“You don’t want to do this.” Lilac was the first to speak, his tone measured and calm as he matched the man’s step back with a calculated step forward. “I can take you in breathing, or I can drag you in stiff.”

“Don’t come any closer!” the young man exclaimed. His voice shook and cracked.

Lilac stilled himself, even as his heart crashed against his chest and boomed in his ears like a seaside thunderstorm. The man was holding you to his chest like you were a shield, and cowering like a trapped animal.

All Lilac needed was a window for him to fling one of his weapons. The man would make a mistake sooner or later. He was so very young, face still plump from childhood, as scared and as pale as you were. He wasn’t a murderer, only a petty thief who stole from the wrong person. A moment of hesitation — or flat-out surrender — was inevitable. Lilac kept his eyes trained on the man, waiting for that perfect moment.

“Lilac,” you whimpered beneath tears. “Lilac, help me…”

“Shut up!” The man jerked your head back and curled his fingers deeper into your hair.

The angle at which he pulled you was perfect. With the man’s attention drawn away and the side of his neck exposed, Lilac flicked a Chakram forward, faster than lightning. The man didn’t even know what hit him as his hands jerked to the side to clutch his neck. His sword clattered against the wall where he threw it in his panic, and both it and the man fell to the ground.

—

Plink.

Lilac inhales sharply and holds his head as it throbs, squeezing his eyes tight with a pained grimace. Blood thunders through his ears like drums, beating his temples over and over until he doubles over and clutches the edge of the tub. He reaches for the next item to clean, clenching his teeth and struggling to breathe.

There is nothing left.

With his equipment washed, the water has run red. Lilac cannot see the bottom of the tub. The reflection of the sun is muted, drowning beneath the clouded liquid. The pale yellow of the sun and the deep gold of the sand pale before the stark red that stains the opaque water. Red like the desert sky. Red like imported wood. Red like the flush of your cheeks. Red like a shopkeep’s canopy. Red like an ocean sunset. Red like blood dripping down a blade. Red like death.

Lilac, clinging to the edge of the metal tub, watching his reflection like it’s a stranger staring back at him, drowns in the red.

—

It was a shame someone so young had to meet their end in such a bloody way.

Lilac leaned over the body and positioned his blade over the man’s hand. He balanced the sole of his foot on the flat edge inside the Chakram’s loop and pushed down. In one swift movement, he separated the dead man’s forefinger from his body with a soft crack. The finger was still warm when he plucked it from the ground, and Lilac was prompt to drop it into a sack at his hip. With the proof of his completed job secured, he was ready to collect his payment for the quarry and get you as far away from there as he could.

When he turned around, Lilac expected to see you leaning against the wall, scared and shaking and ready to take his hand. Ready for him to make everything alright like he promised he always would. What he saw instead was so much worse than he could ever imagine.

You were on your back, mouth agape as your body seized. Lilac's blades clattered to the ground as he dropped to your side. Beneath his legs, the growing puddle gushed out and pooled around his knees.

The open wound on your neck was a long, perfectly straight line, a clean slice made in a split second when the man threw his sword to the side to grasp at his own wound. You weakly palmed at the cut, gasping in ragged, shallow breaths as your hands slipped right off the crimson that spilled out like water from a spigot.

He tried to stop it with his hands, first. The blood pulsed out from beneath his palms despite the pressure he put on it. It slicked his hands and leaked through the gaps between his fingers, coating him in its scorching reach. The bite of metal overpowered his personal fragrance, burning his nostrils and clogging his throat as he pressed his palms against your skin.

It kept coming, even as he clasped his hands tight, so tight, over your neck. Lilac ripped the soft lavender veil from his belt and wadded it up, frantically pushing it against your throat. The fabric plugged the wound for a few moments before it, too, became sopping wet.

You looked at Lilac with eyes nearly popping out of your head. Sweat covered your face in a film, shining on your skin as it paled under the blood loss. Your inhales became thick, and your exhales came out in gurgles.

“L… Li…” It takes all your strength to flex your tongue to the roof of your mouth.

Lilac shushes you. “Don’t speak. Just breathe.”

You attempted to nod, but all you could manage was a tremble. You clenched your mouth shut and gritted your teeth so hard they felt like they could crack. Breathing through your nose, you stared up at the sky and clenched your hands into weak fists.

Stop, stop, it has to stop, Lilac silently begged, willing the cascade of red to cease from prayer alone. He’d seen blood like this, caused by his hand, but it’s never sickened him to this level. It’d never made his heart feel like it was going to jump right out of his body. Bile rose in the back of his throat, and he held his breath so the scent and the wetness and the fact that there was so much being spilled from something so small so quickly didn’t cause his stomach to vacate itself.

The veil was so heavy under his hands, so full that it no longer absorbed any more blood. Excess dripped down from the dark edges and tassels as it overflowed, leaving the crimson that was still flowing freely from your throat to find another place to pool. 

He focused all his attention on stopping the bleeding that he hardly noticed when your shakes started to die down. The rapid rise and fall of your chest became stunted, and each exhale left a few beats of stillness in your chest before lurching back up with another gasp. Your palms were face-down on the dirty stone ground, fingers arched, no longer curled into the butt of your hands.

Lilac nudged your cheek. “Stay awake.”

You took a few rapid breaths and whimpered in confirmation of his words.

The flow was finally coming to a halt beneath the veil — as if that was any consolation. The pool beneath your neck seeped into the cracks of the cobblestone ground, painting the smooth rocks a shade darker than their typical gray. Lilac’s hands had become sticky as the wetness baked and dried under the blazing desert heat. If he could get you to a point where you could securely cover the wound while he got help, you would have a chance. He just needs—

“A little longer,” he says, watching your chest stutter in acknowledgment.

Lilac copied your breathing, counting the seconds between each breath.

One, two… one, two…

“Do you remember what I told you?”

One… one, two… one, two…

“I’ll take you to see the ocean.”

One, two…

“We’ll sail out to a distant island.”

One, two…

“We can watch the blue in every direction, as far as the eye can see.”

One, two, three… one, two…

“Just keep thinking of the ocean.”

One, two, three…

“Think of the ocean.”

Four, five, six…

“Can you hear it?”

Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve…

Lilac stopped counting. He stilled, hands still pressed to your throat, watching the sweat on your face dry and the color bleed from your face. He listened for the sound of your breathing. For a whimper. For any indication of consciousness.

He listened for a long time.

—

Drip.

The tub trembles under his grip. The soiled water sloshes around as Lilac shakes, every muscle stretched taut and lit on fire. His fingers clamp down over the sharp edge. The metal breaks his skin. He does not feel it.

Drip. Drip.

His heart pounds in his throat as he closes his eyes. The scene from the alleyway plays itself out, again and again, seared into the back of his eyelids. With every blink, all he can see is you, staring into the sky, collapsed and lying still on the dirty ground. Your eyes, so wide and scared and pleading for help, his help, losing their light and becoming blank as your entire body seized and you choked and gurgled on hot, slick red. 

Emotions are weakness.

Drip drip drip.

Lilac is a machine. He obeys his orders and executes his programs. He was an autonomous being that did as it was told without a single thought or opinion about the whole ordeal. Kill. Get paid. Kill. Get paid. A looping function that never returned zero, that never reached the termination protocol. Kill. Get paid. Kill. Get paid. Numb to the world and to the victims of his hands. A simple cycle that he went and ruined, all because he caved into the weakness of emotion. Because he let himself grow weak and left his walls to weather against the soft rain that held him in its sweet embrace. Anger will kill you in the end.

Drip drip drip.

He grew weak. He was weak. He should’ve known you would follow him, always concerned for his safety, always refusing to believe that he could handle himself. He should’ve known you’d be found. You did not grow up on the golden rule. You were never taught to stalk the streets, always checking behind your back and honing your senses to detect even the slightest disturbance. He should’ve known his happiness would be used against him. It was only a matter of time before his weak spot was discovered. If he wasn’t weak, so damn weak, you wouldn’t be rotting in some dank alleyway, or buried out in the sands, or whatever his employer did to your body when he sent his men to clean up the scene. You could’ve been happy and safe and none the wiser to the crushing numbness of his heart, had he not let himself indulge in the first shred of happiness he’d felt in years. Sadness will kill you in the end.

Drip. Drip drip drip drip.

The tears flow freely now, the taste of salt mixing with the smell of metal. The barriers he worked so hard to build eroded away in your touch. The numbness, once replaced by a warm morning’s bliss, evolves into a dark ache that eats him from the inside out. Like a storm raging off the coast, like the wind beating on a sail, the emotion breaks through the fortifications. The stronghold of his honed mind collapses. Lilac cries and gasps and shakes for the first time since he was a child.

He was weak.

He was happy.

Nearly all his life, he’d been underwater, pulled along by the current, granted just enough light to see where he was headed. Nothing else mattered except moving forward. Then, he was pulled out of the water without warning, thrust into the world that was just beyond the surface. A part of him that he had locked in a box and buried in the desert was unearthed. It was chaotic. It was terrifying. It was beautiful. 

It was you.

It came like a shock of lightning. Like a tidal wave crashing against the shore. When he was with you, the air was that much sweeter. The earth was that much softer. His heart was that much lighter.

Happiness was beautiful and so much bigger than he could ever imagine. It was a blooming in his chest, like the petals of a flower opening up to the sunshine. It was the cool moon shedding its light over the ceaseless plains of sand. It was the ocean meeting the sky, blue meeting blue, everywhere you looked, stretching infinitely beyond the horizon and winding around your heart until it was part of that infinity, all-encompassing, all-embracing.

Lilac never believed he could feel love. He thought it had died — that he had killed it, over and over again — just like his targets. He thought that everything he worked toward was meant to kill it and ensure that it stayed dead. It was still there, however; a seed burrowed inside a heart trained to be still. It waited for you to come and nurture it, to let it grow and spread until he was love, open and ceaseless and infinite.

And then he really did kill it. It really did die, choking on its own blood as it pleaded for his help, begging for him to save its life.

That blood is on his hands. He will carry the feeling of sickly wetness on his skin, in his heart, for the rest of his life. Every time he feels even an iota of happiness, he will be reminded that his love is dead, buried in a shallow, unmarked grave, and it’s his fault. The numbness buzzes in his ears. Like crackling static. Like the ocean’s tide. Like your laughter, sweet on the wind and full of joy. Like your breathing, shallow and ragged, and the moment it stops endlessly replaying in his head.

Happiness might as well kill you in the end.

[sand-worms]

Em 🥺🥺🥺 Trish and Giorno please

Oughhhh….

Honestly I try to avoid fanon for Bruno’s group at all costs but I feel like Trish is either fully ignored or put into some sort of gay best friend situation with Giorno. I don’t know if people just don’t know what to do with her or what but I see her left out of things so often or just vaguely mentioned. Or they treat her like some sort of idk preppy best friend to Giorno which… I would like them to be friends because I think they have similarities that would allow them to be (and I think Giorno could’ve been a VERY GOOD bridge between Trish and the rest of bucciarati’s team and helped her to open up to them more.) but I feel like most of her fandom characterization is based off of how she is when she’s first introduced and ignores what (admittedly limited!) character growth she gets. Like idk I think she’s a very quiet and reserved girl who kind of gets snappy and bossy out of fear/as a defense mechanism and she comes to be very confident in herself as the story progresses but she still ultimately has that more reserved nature to her.

Also I see a lot of people have her join in with the squad being like “Bruno is mom” (which I dislike to begin with) and I personally just don’t think it’s something she would do? Like I feel like given the opportunity she MIGHT latch on to an older man as a surrogate father figure (Bruno and Abbacchio do NOT COUNT!!), given the fact that her father has always been absent in her life and then did very much express interest in meeting her just to try and kill her so she might want some sort of positive male influence in her life. But she very much had a mother in her life and her losing her mother is still VERY fresh (just 2 months before the start of vento aureo I believe?) so I think she would be very very reluctant to adopt some sort of new mother figure in her life. I think she wouldn’t want to like. Replace her mother’s memory so to speak. Also final thought I’ve seen some of the grossest ships ever involving Trish and I think the fandom needs to have Trish taken away from them.

Giorno is???? God Giorno is literally always just reduced to like a cardboard cutout with no personality. He’s not lacking in personality he’s just a very subtle, subdued character compared to the other jojo’s and no one knows how to deal with that I guess. He’s a quiet, observant kid and I think especially early in vento aureo he’s got a little bit of a need to sort of control how others see him. I feel like it’s a little bit more noticeable in the manga but he’s also just like. A weird teenager. He’s 15 and he’s weird. And he’s allowed to be. Also I feel like fandom either makes him very like cheery and happy or they focus very heavily on his childhood trauma and neither of those feel very accurate to his character to me. Similarly to Trish he’s a pretty reserved kid and he’s not like? Hung up on his trauma but he’s also not very outwardly expressive. I almost feel like he doesn’t know how to be expressive sometimes like I get the impression he wouldn’t know how to react “suitably excited” for something because he’s just not very expressive.

And I won’t write a novel about it because my brain is tired but I hate giomis. Giomis shippers DNI. Not only is their age difference gross there’s just like. Not that much foundation for it outside of what people pull from the white album fight. Idk. Giomis shippers really uwuify him too I feel like.

[keezree]

AHHHH ok ahhhh @wanderbard​ / @spectraltwig​ wrote me a littol story about kiwi and me and it was the sweetest thing and i really wanted to draw it so here it is oughhhh i’m posting their story as well ahhhh please give it a read because it’s slightly different that the comic and their writing is so good and deserves to be read ahhh thank you so much again for the story OUGHHH IM LOVE YOU OUGHHHH WHAT A TALENTED BEAN IM LOV U STORY! OUGGHH

AND GO READ THEIR OTHER STUFF TOO AHHHHH  Okey here the story!

The sun was shining. The sky is blue with only a few clouds. A wind gracefully blowing through, carrying their singing voices with it.

The shade of the tree they sat under offering a cool refuge.  Kiwi was here with Mel. It was a perfect day.  The song ended and Kiwi smiled at the other. Just seeing Mel's face made it feel like their heart was singing. A warm feeling that spread all over, filling them so completely with.... Kiwi couldn't find a word for it. They leaned their head back against the tree trunk and stared at the sky peeking through the leaves. Mel was a good friend. A best friend even, but the feeling they stirred in the bard was something more. Much much more. Mel was the lyrics to Kiwi's melody. Both okay by themselves, but once together they created something beautiful. They were complete with one another. A symphony of.... Of... Once again Kiwi was at a loss of words. It was there on the tip of their tongue. A song that needed to be sung. They looked over at Mel again, and Mel looked back. There it was. The words they lost were found in Mel's gaze. Kiwi liked them. Liked them a lot. Could Kiwi even venture to say... Loved? They had said the word before to others. To close friends. To family members. The word felt so different now. Like the word could shatter their whole world if Mel didn't feel the same kind of love. Kiwi had gone uncharacteristically quiet. Their eyes never leaving Mel’s. "What are you doing? Daydreaming?" Mel asked, looking away and blushing a little. Kiwi caught themselves and averted their gaze as well, a slight blush also on their face. "Yeah! Daydreaming!" Kiwi smiled wide and hoped it was convincing, but still avoided eye contact. Their mind screaming to change the subject. "Let's sing another song!"  As Kiwi started to sing they couldn't stop themselves from thinking. Kiwi never thought themselves capable of feeling this way for another. Their mind raced almost as fast as their heart was pounding. Were they nervous? They were never nervous around Mel before, but now…. Kiwi hit the wrong note in the song. Their thoughts far from singing. Embarrassed, they cleared their throat, but didn't start singing again. "Mel." Kiwi said instead. Opened their mouth to speak again. Closed it. Open again. Closed it. They looked like a fish out of water. No, no this wouldn't do. They had to be honest! "Mel!" Kiwi called again, louder and with more vigor! "I… I…"Kiwi did the one thing they knew best. They started to sing. "I think you're wonderful~ You're so amazing~ a melody so colorful~ you make my heart sing~ once this song is over~  I want to ask you one thing~!" The short song trailed off. Kiwi looked very flustered. Face red and their smile replaced with a nervous line. They had pulled the hat off their head and were now fidgeting with it. "Will you be my…. My romantic bard-ner?" The words were out in the open, and Kiwi wondered if they could reel them back in. Maybe they had gone too far? They didn't even take Mel's feelings into consideration. It wasn't like that bard to be selfish, maybe they could play the pun off as a joke if- All worries were silenced as Mel enveloped Kiwi in a hug. Warmth spread through Kiwi’s chest as they squeezed back. Maybe a bit harder than intended considering how happy they were. Kiwi didn’t want this moment to end! They wanted to stay here forever hugging Mel! Kiwi finally broke from the hug. Cupping Mel's cheek, Kiwi gently  guided their face to look at them. Slowly, a bit unsure of what to do, they leaned in and kissed the other. Soft and innocent. “I’m so happy, Mel!” Kiwi exclaimed suddenly, and pulled them in for another hug. “I’ve felt happiness before, but nothing like this! I want to sing with you  forever!” Kiwi gripped Mel’s hand. Squeezed it, and leaned in once more to kiss Mel’s cheek. Everything was right in the world. It was a perfect day.

[gerrydelano]

[SOUND OF A PARTY HORN BEING BLOWN LOUDLY] hell yeah new chapter!! big congrats on getting it out! absolutely excellent as always, your prose is beautiful and i adore how real the characters feel! like you’re so skilled at making them into people, if that makes sense. i love how warm your writing is, like that kind of warmth you only get with real care and effort and like. conscious intention? like it feels like on purpose you write with love. i hope that’s not too weird to say! anyway the first bit of the chapter killed me in the best way,, they’re already a FAMILY oughhhh i am IN my feelings about the archive crew ESPECIALLY gerry he’s so fucking good... i love the transgenderisms in this chapter so much i’m so happy for him!! gerry deserves to feel good in his body and reclaim some autonomy over himself! it was very healing reading that whole scene :] for real though, the way you write transness and disability and trauma and recovery do mean a lot to me, genuinely. on another note, i’m gonna kick elias’ ass into next tuesday meet me in the fucking pit, leitner can come too i have no moral qualms about beating up these particular shitty old men!! aaaanyway, please take all the time you need to write and take care of yourself! i’m super psyched for what you plan to write next! <3

FINALLY I CAN ANSWER THIS aaaah! thank you so much! it does make sense, that’s one of my top priorities in writing so any time someone tells me it’s working i am Immensely Relieved. and calling it warm... sobs? none of this is weird to say, the sentence “it feels like on purpose you write with love.” just kicked my chair out from under me and put a soft beanbag chair in its place at the last minute, where i am now blissfully lounging.

they speedran lore AND friendship! it’s been nearly six months down there,  they had time to skip a lot of the awkward stages due to meeting each other Supernatural Trauma-First and eventually it’s just like. okay, fuck it. wanna order hormones off the internet. LIKE JFDKHJ. gerry so needed that, and i really wanted to emphasize as many unlikely friendships as i can in this story. and transitioning is a huge part of gerry’s healing process! even if things go tits up later, at least he’ll also have tits when it does. gotta have somethin’!

it genuinely means a lot to hear that, though, i’m so glad :’-) and YEAH! everybody hop in we’re going to hunt some old men for sport. adelard is spared and in fact drives the car. more dunking on old people coming VERY soon! thank you again<3

[glacierbash]

ok, now i gotta ask you about some characters. how about leliana and/or junia?

Aha... Nuns /j But starting with Lelianaaaaa

(under a read more because it got LONG specifically my points on Junia because holy fuck she makes me go feral I could talk about her for AGES oh my god)

How I feel about this character: Oh she's definitely one of, if not my favorite character. Though I played inquisition first and didn't have as much of a chance to get invested in her with my first playthrough (though I abandonded it because I messed up lots of stuff-) after I played again, she became one of my favorites in Inquisition. I adored the way she was open about supporting the mages, and after playing through origins, it really solidified my feelings about her. I played through Origins romancing her (because i am a stupid lesbian) and honestly, the way you were able to educate her about elven issues (i forget if it was dalish or not, and I haven't done a Surana playthrough yet) and the fact that she was receptive was mwah. Plus, her voice is amazing and I could fall asleep to it :') I Care Her

All the people I ship romantically with this character: Any ocs really! Surprisingly, I don't put too much thought into ships with DA, but really I like most!

My non-romantic OTP for this character: of course josephine and Leliana, I adore how they get along and just. Good Friends. I also have a new Tabris in mind who would probably romance Zevran, and while I don't have *much* in the way of ideas, I think they'd get along dfjdffd

My unpopular opinion about this character: Oh, I don't know what opinions about Leliana *are* unpopular. I try to stay away from the DA fandom, save for little bits here and there. I don't think I particularly *have* any? I mean, I do go for hardening in origins, softening in inquisition, but that's just me.

One thing I wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon: Yeah, being able to marry the warden (if possible) and telling Cullen off. There are just... *so* many situations where I wish she would, but specifically about mage issues.

And now for Junia,,, How I feel about this character: DFHSDFJGMGAOUGH.... GOD I love her with all my heart there are not enough words for me to describe how much i love this stupid little battle nun oh my god, her barks make me sob, her design is Cool, and god even just in game there have been so many times where she's saved my ass MWAH i love her. Her backstory just makes me cry, and everytime i'm like "i'm feeling too good i need to be knocked down a notch" i go read her barks and sob UGH. God I love her so much I almost always have her on a party like. If not for her healing it's because seeing her makes me go :]]]

All the people I ship romantically with this character: PARA... PLAGUE DOCTOR... THEY CAN HOLD HANDS. AS A TREAT. PERHAPS EVEN.. KISS.. I don't even know why I ended up loving this one so much i was just like. doing the first dungeon with the usual suspects and I just went "wow :)" and started thinking about them and BOOM they're in love now sorry <3 besides that, I also enjoy her with Boudica, Damian, THOUGH I do like Audrey/Para/Junia. They all have two hands. It works out. A circle, you see.

My non romantic OTP for this character: Oughhhh this is a weird one, but her and Audrey. At least with the way I like to write the characters, Audrey being able to help Junia just loosen up and realize "hey we're all gonna fucking die here at least have a bit of fun you Idiot" and Junia helping Audrey uhh ya know not be such an ass. My other weird little thing is Baldwin and Junia, as I just. I really don't have a reason why, other than I feel they might get along and Junia would probably enjoy being friends with somebody she can. I dunno. Rely on. I could go more into that but ijust like them getting along

My unpopular opinion about this character: hngngng I might have several? 1: I don't. really enjoy her with Reynauld, but *honestly* that's because I don't like Reynauld too much as a character? He's interesting, don't get me wrong, but I'm not super invested in him and I really just kinda... pass him by. And of course that's weird bc I'm fine with her and Damian, but I just feel that relationship would have a bit more. I really don't know. Substance? It's just not my cup of tea. And also I don't LOOOVE the "oh haha horny nun" jokes, like. Of course they're fine to make! And of course, being the game it is, characters will most likely be reduced down to a character trait or two, but it's just. Tired? Worn out? There's more to her than the fact that just that. But also, I make those jokes too! Just feel like that shouldn't be her entire personality. Make the jokes you wanna make and maybe i'm just too sensitive, idk! there's just a bit more to her than Horny:tm:

One thing I wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon: * shakes tin can * lore? Spare lore please? I don't want to have to comb her barks for just a smidge of understanding I want to KNOW what happened to her please just spare the loreee,, and also I WISH we could've had specific in character conversationsss like. I wanna hear her and paracelsus interact! God, I wanna see her and /Audrey/ interact, please redhook come on im begging you i just want them to talk even if they don't get along it won't do anything enemies to friends (to lovers) come here i'll s rank their relationshiips i'll d

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 13

humansona time, hell yes

OH MAN I forgot about the stuff w/swerve and blurr oof

that panel of perceptor just saying random equations always kills me vhsdjhfkbjhksdfnka

also I love so much that they call perceptor ‘percy’ that's so cute

I love the implications here that people just Grab minibots and carry them around like luggage bc they are Tiny lmao

ohhhh my god I fuckgin love ‘I'm just wondering if there's time to expand my aura and cleanse the area of aggression’ ‘I...don't think so, drift’ hgbadjfjbaskdfs drift’s hippy nonsense delivered completely seriously pairs hilariously with his whole ‘violent guy with a bunch of swords’ thing lmao

also, IM NEVER OVER CYCLONUS SINGING TO TAILGATE, and also the security team mistaking it for cyclonus murdering tg hbhkjadfbjkhsdf cyclonus u icon

and tg looking at cyclonus all heart-eyes, omg 

drift showing rodimus how to swordfight...fellas.....

rodimus, being entirely ignorant to the irony in calling cyclonus and tailgate’s relationship strange when he and drift are Right There, being weird gay frat bros

did yall know, I love magnus so much. law dad

magnus saying ‘that's not even a word. id have heard of it’ about the word ‘relax’ is so funny god 

rodimus bribing swerve with a bar license to get magnus turnt is hbvhjakdbfhskf

never over rodimus portioning out drifts blood money to the crew for shore leave hubhjsdkhfdbjksd god 

despite tg lying about a good amount of his past, I feel like he rlly DOES see cyclonus as a link to a more familiar time, and that's a large reason why he’s so forgiving toward cyc

mannnn the stuff w/blurr and swerve is so depressing in retrospect. swerve is like, such a depressing character the more you think abt him vbhskjdhfbsk jesus

magnus trying to get in on the convo when swerve starts talking statistics oh magnus

idk what ‘the lube pits’ are but I Really do not want to know

‘the temple of the raging prism’ sounds fuckin bangin tho

I love seeing everyones humansona!! this art style is pretty simple, but I think it looks cute

rungs ‘human name’ being ‘mary sue’ lmaoooooo jro w/the self callout

also skids’ name being blank is a nice touch

still not over tg being a baby....poor guy

whirls humansona is so fuckgin good, also swerve looks like a hobbit

magnus basing his avatar on verity is so sweet ;_; I really should read all the wreckers stuff after I finish this reread

THE ABSOLUTE COMEDY OF MAGNUS JUST FUCKGIN PASSING OUT THE INSTANT THE ALOCHOL HITS...ICONIC

WHY would magnus accept a drink from whirl anyways lmao

tailgate is so cute

they rlly just left magnus facedown on the table and kept drinking huh. the irresponsibility....we love it

ARE YOU SURE THAT KILLMASTER IS DEAD, WHIRL? ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?

rung don't lie, froid is your nemesis

WHY do we never get to hear more about skids’ apparent beef with misfire

rewind calling the swerve/misfire This early, wow

literally Everyone abandoning swerve to deal with magnus hgbvhfjdskdfbhs I fucking love this issue man

GOD I LOVE MAGNUS SO MUCH!!!!!!!! he’s such an interesting and unique character and hhhh I love him and his development

like, he was probably the biggest surprise out of everyone who agreed to go on the quest - ostensibly it was to keep order on the lost light, but it would make sense that magnus would get tired of being the Only one who cares about that sorta stuff on board 

drunk magnus is such a delight oh my god

magnus rlly just wants everyone to be safe :( my daddddd

magnus: I love all my children equally...swerve, rodimus, [looks at smudged writing on hand] dirt

swerve: see, magnus, that’s where you’re wrong - I ALSO have crippling depression!

cant believe they bought rodimus a hat vhbhksdfhahsjkdf

HHHHH GOD I FORGOT ABT THATTTT when cyclonus goes bonkers in order to stop rewind from playing the ark 1 footage and inadvertently outing tailgate as a liar....AUGHHHHH THE FUCKING...THE FUCKING ROMANCE OF IT ALL

POOR MAGNUS LMAOOOO

oh rewind :( you should really wonder a little harder where chromedome is right now...oof

everyone jumping on magnus while he’s passed tf out is SO fucking funny 

RUNG, PLEASE, WE REALLY DONT NEED TO THINK ABOUT WHATS AROUND THE CORNER. REALLY DONT

hhhhhhhhhhh I love how cyclonus sat tailgate down and confronted him about lying, but did it privately and not in front of everyone - and he even saved tg from being exposed as a liar, too. AUGH 

I feel like cyclonus is kinda impressed at how effortlessly tg has managed to lie this whole time, and tbh it IS impressive, especially considering tailgate was basically teleported 6 million years into the future and has no idea how the world works anymore, but was still able to lie convincingly. even cyclonus only realized bc of his own past, and not until now

tailgate ;_; ;_; ;_; 

cyclonus: oh no...im soft

tailgate and cyclonus singing ye olde cybertronian tunes together...OUGHHHH my fucking heart bro mY FUCKING HEART.

on that note: the song ‘to noise making (sing)’ by hozier is literally about cygate. thank u for coming to my ted talk

UGH GOD SWERVE STOP MAKING ME SO SAD, ITS NOT EVEN THE SWEARTH ARC YET

magnus had to like, get the robot equivalent of a stomach pumping after that hvbskdjfbhskdf jesus they really did almost kill him huh

I consider this issue forshadowing bc it makes 100% sense that minimus would be a Mega Lightweight considering he’s like 3 feet tall

the real quest that swerve is participating in is ‘the quest to get friends’ and so far its going pretty badly. poor dude 

godddd the thing that says ‘next: Overlord!’ with a fucking exclamation point I DONT APPRECIATE THAT. 

OHO i forgot abt the canon fanfic at the end of this issue

rung kicking things off with some good ole bodily workings-based dread 

ok but being so awed by the construction of your species’ anatomy that you wanna fall on the floor in amazement? that's a whole ass mood and I do frequently stare at walls for long periods of time, thinking about the marvel that is the human body. so rung is valid 

FROID NAME DROP LMAO. also yet again, are you SURE he’s dead?? are you????

the name ‘froid’ cracked me up almost as much as ‘rigor morphis’ did when I first read this...robot-based science puns! woohoo!

rung rlly b out here thinking abt overlords lips.....

‘forced browsing is not the autobot way’ lmao skids

also fr tailgate defs thinks that whirls actually name is nutjob

the entire segment of cyclonus browsing and everyone watching him and commenting is just. golden

oh no. don't make me think of rewind and his tiny memory sticks that he carries around. I'm NOT READY

magnus’ brutal read on rodimus and the fact that he’s more suited, personality-wise, to wartime than peacetime? oof. love it

I ALSO love that a big part of this issue was magnus admitting, in less direct terms, that HE isn't made for the post-war life either - his strict adherence to the rules and constant vigilance isn't exactly the best mindset for peacetime, for him or the people under his command

magnus’s hatred of metaphors and similes and the like....hvbsdjkfbasjhdf I love him

MAGNUS ILY...he’s trying SO HARD cut him some slack. i think his jokes are. yeah!

oh goody this text used "rodimus’s" so I guess that's canonically correct and I haven't been using grammar incorrectly as I had feared 

rodimus sitting ON his desk and doodling on it...adhd icon

rodimus calling rung a psychotherapist, which was rung’s grounds for a nemesis hvbhjabfdskfnkks

rung: as I'm sure you know I take patient confidentiality VERY seriously

narrator: That Was A Lie 

AUGH this hurts...rung trying to get justice for red alert but rodimus is in on the overlord stuff :( ouch

so issue 13! I fucking love this issue. just some good ole funney space hijinks, with some nice relationship development for tg and cyc - plus a revelation about tailgate - and some characterization for swerve and magnus. plus we get to see humansonas, which is always fun. augh I love this comic, and I am SO not ready for the next few issues, good lord