#Sanguine and the Wastelander

[entelodante]

Wyrms come in a lot of different flavors in Abattoir land, so we're starting with the Sweep variety! More info found BELOW!

Containing some of the largest species of Wyrms, Sweeps are distinguished by their mouth placed ventrally on the proboscis, needle-like teeth, all 8 limbs used for locomotion, and a swollen hind gut. Sweeps are typically some of the most hardy Wyrms in the wastes, able to continue to move at all temperatures. They thrive at a range of about -100 to -160 degrees Fahrenheit, but are unbothered up and to around freezing point. They ARE more vulnerable to the scalding rain more typical to the Southern areas of their range. If they get to hot they swell up and can burst, so they typically try to stay Northernly! Honestly the best weather prediction you can find nowadays is these guys stuffing themselves full of ice and snow before a storm rolls in.

But! We've got a varied bunch here so lets get into the SPECIFICS of these Annelids! I've got a small sample just to show off some of the basic types you'll encounter.

Sleek Wanderer These guys are found in the remnants of the great plains, which are now vasts expanses of snow and ice. Sleeks are primed to spend their lives enduring the biting winds of their home as they snuffle their way through the ground cover. They move especially slowly, often a single step for every sweep of their mouth! Being in such a barren home, they don't really worry about too much going on around them. Assuming you don't bother them too much you can touch them or even ride one and it wont pay you any mind. The only time they get a little aggressive is when brooding, then they may try to strike. Though it isn't anything you could not leisurely side step.

Whistle The noisiest of the bunch, these guys are known for the iconic whistling noise they make during the uh.. digestion process. They live in warmer areas and eat a lot of plant matter so they tend to have a more swollen gut. On the smaller side of things though! And a LOT quicker than other sweeps, they WILL turn and slash you if you startle them. Still not fast enough to meaningfully chase a human, but they got some reach on em! They typically run into humans a bit more as they also like to congregate around the exteriors of Abattoirs to eat the plants that grow there.

Grimacing Chatter The most BEAUTIFUL of the sweeps, these guys like to curl up their 'lips' and expose their teeth down to the roots. Their teeth are mobile as well, used to shift through the snow and dirt for food. The sound of these teeth clattering against each other is a signature of these big beasties. Probably for the best as these fellas are EXTREMELY aggressive! They are the Southern most variety of sweep, dealing with a wide range of predators by flailing their head towards any perceived threat. If you get caught in their maw they WILL start to chow down on you, never a missed meal with these guys!

Eastward A sweep that enjoys the spoils of a sanguine Atlantic! Eastwards are so named because they are usually always facing that direction, nibbling at the snow and ice to feed on any blood that blows in on the breeze. They begin their lives spawned by the blood sea and will spend the first half of their lives walking away from the ocean. The second half of their life is spent walking back towards it! Once their they are back at the shore, they are able to withstand the heat drifting up from the sea by sweating profusely. They keep most of their body on the frozen shore, reaching into the warmth with their big ass mouth. After a life of walking, they will gorge themselves on blood until they breed, after which they promptly die. Nature is beautiful even now!

Swingsnap While Wyrms have no eyes and therefore don't really have a concept of light, the fact that humans and their derived forms still mainly rely on sight has greatly influenced the Swingsnap. Their dark coloration is perfect for blending in with the eternal night of the wasteland! They possess a highly sensitive sense of smell/taste to track down the remnants of humanity. Once they come upon their quarry, they are quickly able to coil their toothy maw around them, stabbing into them with many hundreds of teeth. Their prey is 'chewed' by the constant coiling and shifting of the mouth, drunk down bit by bit. After a week or so of gnawing, they will drop the remaining pile of gristle and begin the hunt once more.

That's the gist for these fellas! Typically these are the chillest of all Wyrms, both literally and in the attitude sense! Most of the time you'll run into these guys just in the middle of nowhere. Stand still and they'll most likely just pass you by.

That being said all varieties can still bite!

[valentine-cafe]

˖⁺. ﹙ corrupt serpent god x gn reader. ﹚ .𖹭 ݁

. . . your time is running out !! 🍒 :  corrup snake god ˖ siren character﹙ verse 164 talisen. ﹚

after you betray your god in hope you can gain more power after salvaging your kingdom. He comes to slaughter the corrupted sovereignty that you have become, cw: reader death, dark topics, topics of martyr, mass slaughter, kingdom in ruin

Wastelands, empires in ruin all but scattered with crows left to croon out the last few songs that remain of a kingdom laid to rest in it's moment of lament and tyrany. All souls departed but that of the one martyr that ruled the kingdom.

It is all your fault, really. For the sake of your people. You thought you were doing the right thing.

O' glory, of what used to be when you once were a great warrior who promised freedom to the people. A pact so foolish, destined only to sour like the bitter wine you drunk from in the hour of sovereignty.

High on the power, it is easy to meddle with other divine forces that seem to hold such. Necromancy, while under the watch of your previous god. O' sanguinism, the blood you drank of your enemies in bygone days, you turned to drink of your people in exchange of what you had assumed strength.

revolting, wretched.

"Hast thou found the satisfaction, the might thou didst seek?" The god you previously worshipped so faithfully with your entire life asks.

Copper coloured light blinds you worse than the sway that resulted in the fall of your people. What you had lived for so passionately.

"Didst thou savor the shattering of oaths thou pledged unto thy kin?" Leaned over the broken wall of which you lay bent over, broken ribs and limbs seem like mercy in comparison to the feel of snapping soul threads, on cord by one. Torn by a single glare.

“My— lord,” that is all the excuse you could muster in your last breath.

The smile upon his face remains ever gleeful as the world is ridden of a soul that failed to do the good it had promised. Clearly, you were not strong enough to do such. "Might thou burn still in the realm whence souls dost not abide."

[kado-fortnite]

pinned like a bug. (Jul. 31, 2024)

RP/ask blog for Kado Thorne from Fortnite run by @corvidazed! Partially an excuse to learn Blender rendering, so expect some of those.

Heavy on headcanons, canon divergent. I'm no lore expert but I will try my best to keep things accurate where I can!

I'm an adult, so please expect heavy themes and suggestive content from time to time. Tags to blacklist this content are below, and I will never post anything explicit. Shipping is welcome, but you and your character must be 18 or older.

Anything OOC will be denoted by //text.

#fresh blood - In character asks #networking - In character reblogs #collected - Aesthetic, art, and related reblogs #pretty things - Renders and other art #entropic eclipse - Dark/heavy content #sanguine secrets - Risqué/suggestive #corvid crows - Anything OOC

Spotlight on Kado!

After narrowly escaping the events of C4S4 with his life, Kado rode out the shock waves of The Big Bang to end up on Helios prior to the events of C5S1. Content to bide his time and regroup, his presence on the island has remained subtle, save for the few remaining pieces of his collection that crash landed on the island alongside him.

He's been keeping close tabs on the island's inhabitants and their struggles, though the escape of Midas was something he failed to expect. With the island free from the iron rule of gods, Kado has taken an interest in the vacant throne and currently resides near Charon's Crossing.

While he's finally showing his face, Kado is keen to keep his vampiric identity hidden for as long as he can manage to keep such an ace up his sleeve. Ill intentions aside, he's about as friendly as a prissy appreciator of the finer things in life can be. He's easily won over through gifts of high value, eager to rebuild his once formidable collection from the ground up.

Although a vampire, his ancient existence has granted him resilience to the sun and other typical detriments. Still, he prefers to avoid the unrelenting heat of the new wasteland whenever possible.

Nobody on the island is from his normal timeline, but he's most often found interacting with @valeria-fortnite and @king-midas-fortnite.

[suremonty]

i. "the tide is turning" - roger waters // ii. "two suns in the sunset" - pink floyd // iii. "four minutes" - roger waters

( lucien laviscount, 32, cis man, he/him ) — Look who it is! If you take a look at our database, you’ll find that MONTY ROMANO  is a FACTORY WORKER that works in SECTOR 8. According to the file, they’re a mutant with the power of TIME TRAVEL + ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION. That must be why they’re DEDICATED and OBSESSIVE. If you ask me, they remind me of morse code desperately tip-tip-tapping, the sole with no eyes, the desolate confines of a busy wasteland. They are affiliated with NOBODY. 

prior warning that the grand majority of this intro has been copy + pasted with just a few tweaks fhlaks

QUICK FACTS:

full name: montgomery “monty” romano

date of birth: december 5th, 2143

zodiac big three: sagittarius sun, scorpio moon, libra rising

gender & pronouns: cis man & he/him

sexual + romantic orientation: straight gay bi queer

ethnicity: 1/2 black, 1/2 white

nationality: he was born in 'australia,' but he spent most of his life in the usa, so... probably usamerican

religion: christian (protestant, very loose in his practice), starting to lean agnostic

languages spoken: english (5), asl (5), morse code - technically an alphabet (5)

enneagram: 3w2

mbti: enfp

temperament: sanguine

alignment: chaotic good

ability: time travel + electronic communication

affiliation: n/a

task: mutation breakdown

BACKSTORY:

triggers: war, nuclear wasteland, nuclear tensions, institutionalization ( very brief mention ), VERY brief mention of suicide

Monty was born in Sol City to two loving parents. When his mother held him in her arms for the first time, she knew that she would never let anything bad happen to him.

-> And then he was yanked away, literally the second he was put in her arms, to 1930s USA.

If Monty could say nothing else about Time, he could say: 'well, at least she literally dropped me off in an orphanage' -- because she literally dropped him off in an orphanage. We're going to ignore logistics for the sake of humor (you know, being born and immediately vanishing). Just pretend that that makes sense and maybe May will edit it later to make it a little more realistic (said in a setting where polar bears and tigers talk). Anyway, also just assume it's realistic that he was very quickly taken in <3 Okay, onwards we go. The rest of this intro is largely going to be copy + pasted from Monty's first verse with just a few tweaked details!

Monty’s world was silent from the moment he entered it. He would never know it any other way. Teachers tried to force him into the mold, Deaf educators in the dime-a-dozen oralist schools teaching him English, speech, and as-good-as-it-could-be lipreading, all while restricting the usage of ASL at best, forbidding it at worst. 

And, though it made socializing with his peers, understanding his lessons, and connecting with his family much more difficult... in the end, maybe it’s for the best. There would be so many disastrous things to see and smell and feel -- adding one more sensation would tip him over the edge.

Despite his parents and hoard of siblings, his eldest brother, Jack, was the only one who put time and effort into learning ASL with Monty. For that reason, they connected well. His brother would go on to have his first and only child at eighteen, leaving Monty an uncle at only six. But it was absolutely poor timing...

Because the USA could no longer just sit on the sidelines in silent support of the Allied powers. In 1941, his eldest brother enlisted to join the army in the war effort, leaving his wife and family with the baby -- but promising he’d be back.

Monty spent much of the time his eldest brother was gone connecting with his brother’s girlfriend, Mary, who let Monty teach her ASL. So those next three years were spent with her, with baby, and keeping up with the news.

1944, Jack was sent to the frontlines in the Normandy Landings. The story went that he went out blazing, that he at least had that much to his legacy, but who could tell any of the thousands of D-Day bodies apart ?

Monty didn’t need to hear to know that silence fell over his family. He could feel it, even when they were talking at dinner. Life only returned in 1945 as a broadcast celebrating two nuclear bombings played! And Monty... he didn’t know what to feel. This meant the war was over, right? Finally, a sigh of relief! But how many innocent people had died in the fallout of it? How long would those effects last?

He did not wake up in his bedroom the next morning. He woke up when a piece of rubble blew against his forehead. And he was surrounded by complete and utter waste. It was hot -- no, it was cold. He assumed it was loud -- no, he assumed it was quiet. There were a few fires burning in the snow, and there was plenty of rubble to spare. Nothing was standing. It was completely empty, completely desolate. 

He didn’t know where he was or how he got there. The more he explored, a terrified young boy trying to get home, the more he wondered when he was. 

A few weeks in, unsure of how he was still alive -- but not questioning it -- he came across a tunnel that led underground. Already figuring he was going to die if he didn’t find something fast, this was the first sign he’d seen of any life since he’d woken up -- he kept going, past extra doors until he reached one that was bolted shut and looked to serve as some kind of vacuum. 

He did not know it. He could not know it. But, on the other side of that wall, a radio picked up the first broadcast it had heard in ages -- some sort of morse code. A few hours of sitting against that final door that he could not even begin to open, it opened with a gust of air. He dragged himself in. It was shut with that same gust of air.

A man peered through a slit and, after hours of trying to communicate when all Monty could see were his eyes, a sentence of 1s and 0s... he stripped himself of his clothes, scrubbed himself with the water and sponge that sat in the corner, and was swiftly let into that final room and tossed a pair of clothes that were a few sizes too big for him. But he wore them, of course.

He was given half a can of uncooked sweet beans, half a bottle of water, and half of some... futuristic chip that he was prompted to sit on his tongue. and half of his nutrient requirements were met.

The man would point viciously to the radio, tap on it... all sorts of insanity that meant nothing to Monty until he took a sheet of paper and wrote out a cipher: morse code and the related letters. He, the man, couldn’t risk losing paper to the amount of letters in a word -- a few dots and lines were a quicker solution, and, as he told Monty, he could hear him over the radio... which would be cause for concern later.

what year is it ? ive stopped counting. i thought every1 was ded. where am i ? used 2 b canada. what happened ? the east. the east ? yes. what do you mean, the east ? ur not from here. no. where? illinois. america.  u dont know? i don’t. do u know what yr it is? it was 1945, last i checked.

He and the man spent the next four months together underground, the man eventually coming up with a way to express morse code without the paper. Tap Monty on the shoulder, make him watch him tap the wall in morse code. But it was far from paradise, and, more than that? Their supplies were running out faster than expected, what with the man only having prepared supplies for himself.

He volunteered to go look for supplies aboveground, but Monty realized that he was the one who was communicating through the radio. If something happened to the man, Monty would have no way to know; if something happened to Monty, however? So he left with a walkie-talkie, an extra coat, and half a canteen of water.

It grew colder and the conditions grew worse. By the time he finally found a few non-perishables locked away in a safe, he didn’t know where he was. He couldn’t find his way back to the man. And the signal only worked one way. So he had two options of what to tell the man: he was going to stay where he was, or he was going to keep moving and hope for the best.

If he did the former, there was a good chance the man would have to leave and try to find him. If he did the latter, he was diving further into the possibility that he’d never see that shelter again... but there was also that slim possibility that he’d be saving them both if he could find him... So he sent a signal that he was lost, but he was going to keep moving and hope for the best. The walkie-talkie wave seemed to tap against his mind, to offer the only description possible:  ‘goodbye, ed.’ ‘goodbye, monty.’

He was thirteen when he hopped again, this time quick as a flash. Hopped just far back enough to watch the missiles fall from the sky, cars ‘screeching’ to a halt, mothers holding their children close, and pulled forward just in time to survive the blast. This time, a different country. This time, closer to the fallout. 

There was no one for him this time, though. He was on his own. He sent out frequencies, but saw nothing. Felt nothing. 

Certain his streak of good bad luck had finally run out, turned to simple bad luck, he was only days away from succumbing to his hunger or his dehydration or the elements or all three... but, instead of dying, he woke up in his bed. In 1949. Four years after he went missing.

His family had been certain he, too, had died. Perhaps ran away first, gotten lost, then gotten himself killed. It had been four years after they woke up and didn’t find him in his bed, after all? Was it a miracle? Yes! Did it also feel like some kind of abomination, like something ungodly? Yes!

After the initial many-a-hug, they grew... frightened!He connected to the house radio and morse code played, explaining his unbelievable absence... but no one there knew morse code?! And no one there knew ASL?! And speaking took more effort than he’d like to put in, especially after all those years completely shut up?! Where was Mary to translate for him? Where was baby?

That much, he could express. Chicago. as Ed taught him how to say in morse code: what a goddamn shithole!

But, only moments later, everyone’s attention snapped to the radio. They understood what he was trying to say. After the initial shock, they were mouthing: we can hear you. With vicious points: the radio. we hear you.

-> Keep in mind, this is before mutants were a thing.

The story he told was completely unbelievable. But so was being able to hear his speech through the radio, so... live and let live...?

They did take note of how he began to draw more into himself. He became obsessed with this nuclear apocalypse he claimed to have witnessed, he drew a strange man with dots and lines underneath and hung it up in his room. He couldn’t focus in school and his grades suffered terribly. At 17, seeing he was still as distant as ever, still writing in morse code, still drawing that man 'Ed Gorrister' and trying to tell everyone who it was and what was going to happen and no he didn’t know the year or the details or- they had him institutionalized.

Before he could undergo more than two rounds of electroshock therapy, he was an 18y/o in 1962. Just in time for the Cuban Missile Crisis. And this time? Not only had he seen the after effects of nuclear bombings, he understood the magnitude of this threat. And this time? They were not fighting to free concentration camps and prisoners of war, they were fighting just to prove who was more powerful. They were building walls and sending dogs into space because they had to prove one was better than the other... and if they had to press the button to really show who was who, then they had to press the button. 

Was this the wasteland monty had witnessed? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to find out. He could put a stop to it somehow, right? He was the only person who’d seen both, as far as he was aware...

Traveling to the 70s, the country was still together -- and tensions were still high. Without any other ideas, he began doing what only idealists would think would work: sending false reports over radios and broadcasts. But instead of bringing people together through shared fear -- and shared gratitude that they were still alive when they learned that the report had been a hoax -- he just scared them, then brought them back to their regular lives (those who didn’t kill themselves or run to their shelters, that is).

He continued moving back and forth within the timeline of the Cold War, relentlessly trying to stop the crisis... but he only had so much he could do without making it even worse. He could activate it. If he wanted to, he could activate it.

In 1991, when the announcement that the Cold War was over was made, something in his timeline glitched. He spent three days in WWII, the first two being... entirely random to him, the final one being right there in D-Day... where he got to see that Jack didn’t go out blazing. And he was pulled just in time -- but this time, to three days in the trenches of the Vietnam War, a useless side effect of the Cold War. About to be taken prisoner, he was pulled forward into the year 1999 in the middle of a countdown to a new kind of apocalypse, just to be pulled SO FUCKING FAR forward into 2173... and he finally had reprieve.

But if WWII wasn’t the cause of the nuclear apocalypse, and if the Cold War wasn’t the cause of the nuclear apocalypse, then it still had yet to come. And the doomsday clock was moving fast.

Left in actual civilization and... no immediate peril in 2173 Sol City (it took him a while to figure everything out... didn't really understand why he'd been pulled so far forward, but there had to be a reason), he spent the next two years starting to cultivate a life. Every now and again, he would glitch to a different year for a few days, but the power he had never been able to tame... seemed to be beginning to tame itself as he spent more time in a calm, but focused, state of mind.

He took on a job as a factory worker, reminded of the few times he had spent working in factories as a boy! It was easier that way, too -- if/when Time threw him around, he was expendable. He began using the walkie-talkie he’d always held onto to transmit his thoughts across the microphone. A very standard American voice.

Suffice it to say, he's still... very confused as to why he is where he is and why he is when he is when. There has to be a reason, right? He's just waiting for the other shoe to drop, especially with how the world looks now... it'll drop at any moment, right? This is totally pre-apocalyptic and not post-apocalyptic!

TIMELINE:

yeah, things will just get confusing if we use years for this.

BORN - In late 2143... but was immediately yanked to Chicago, IL, USA, 1934. Completely deaf. Adopted pretty quickly. Already had three siblings... would have even more later on.

GENERAL EARLY SCHOOL YEARS?: Was discouraged from, sometimes punished for, using ASL at school due to oral education being at its peak. He was taught English, speech, and lip-reading, but that only extends so far. His eldest brother, Jack, learned sign to communicate and connect with him. The rest of his family was a little bit busy with the amount of kids...

AGE 6: At eighteen, his brother has a child with his first wife, Mary. Monty becomes an uncle.

AGE 7: Jack goes off to fight in WWII. Mary takes up his torch when it comes to providing Monty with company. 

AGE 10: Word is sent that Jack died fighting in the frontlines in the Normandy Landings.

AGE 11-12: Atomic bombs fall on Hiroshima & Nagasaki and everyone is celebrating. This is something that Monty both does and does not understand... Wakes up in the fallout of a nuclear apocalypse. It’s not 1945 anymore, it’s not Illinois anymore. He hopelessly travels around for weeks, unsure of how he’s alive! And, right as he’s sure he’ll be succumbing to the elements, he finds the passage to an underground bunker. After a whole series of events, he manages to get inside a safe place with a man named Ed Gorrister. Ed manages to communicate to Monty that he had sent morse over the radio. And when Monty doesn’t understand, Ed creates a morse-code-to-english-alphabet cipher and begins speaking to him using that as Monty communicates over the radio. Monty learns he’s in Canada, but Ed doesn’t know what year it is anymore. The cause of the 'atomic bomb' that had hit was ‘the east.’ They eventually devise a strategy that’ll use no paper at all: Ed taps Monty on the shoulder and has him watch him tap the wall.

AGE 13: They start running out of supplies. Ed volunteers to brave the elements, but, ultimately, Monty figures that he’s the one who can communicate through technology. If Ed tried to send word to him over the radio, he wouldn’t hear it, but the same couldn’t be said when it came to Monty. Monty took a walkie-talkie with him and traveled out. When he finally came across non-perishables, he realized he was completely lost. He decided to tell Ed that he was going to keep walking and hope for the best. They exchanged goodbyes. Monty felt Ed’s morse coming through the walkie-talkie. He hops back in time, just a few years, and watches as the missiles head right towards him -- whatever new country he’s in. Disaster occurs all around him as women hug their children and cars come to a sudden halt and the timeline saves him by mere milliseconds, jumping him forward a few months. He spends the next year trapped in this side of the wasteland with no one to talk to.

AGE 14: He wakes up in his home, just barely making it out alive. But it’s 1949. after a few mistrials, he communicates with his family over the radio. And they cannot believe their eyes or ears: first of all, he’d just literally spoken through the radio? Second of all, he... had been in a nuclear apocalypse? Not just missing? Hmm...

AGES 14-17: He is constantly preoccupied with this ‘fallout.’ He’s drawn into himself. he talks about it, he draws pictures of some guy with some symbols underneath... wtf?

AGE 17: His family decides to institutionalize him.

AGE 18: After going through two rounds of electroshock therapy, he is transported to 1962, just in time for the Cuban Missile Crisis.

AGES 18-28: The timeline decides it wants him right in the middle of the Cold War. He’s certain that this is what will bring the nuclear apocalypse if he can’t stop it. He goes about it by sending false broadcasts, hoping to unite people under gratitude when they come out with their lives... or maybe fear... or maybe love... but nothing seems to work. Everything he tries tends to just make things worse. He could activate it if he wanted to.

AGE 29: He’s in 1991 and the Cold War is over. With that news, the timeline fritzed. He was in WWII for a few days. The final day, he was by his brother and saw that he did not go out blazing. Then he was in the Vietnam War for a few days. About to be taken as prisoner, the timeline yanked him to a party he was not invited to on December 31st, 1999. It was in a bunker with a group of people counting down to the end of civilization. When the clock was one second away from hitting January 1st, 2000, he was pulled forward all the way to 2173. Aside from all of the weird technology and mutations, nothing seemed to be immediately off, unlike his past three destinations...

AGES 30-32: He begins building a life in Sol City. He still travels every now and again, but he hasn’t spent more than two days in a different time in years. Although he still can’t quite tame his power, it seems to be taming itself. He becomes a factory worker -- he needs an expendable position in case Time takes him away again, but he actually doesn't hate it! It's like when he was a boy! This is in the headcanons section, but it’s important to note that he also uses his walkie-talkie to talk to other people. Ever since it started translating morse into direct words, he doesn’t have to rely on sign, and what they say gets translated in his mind through the walkie-talkie. 

HEADCANONS:

He is completely deaf (his original FC was Nyle DiMarco, but... then it turned out he was a zionist :/). He is familiar with and fluent in ASL, but carries a walkie-talkie to communicate his thoughts and translate the words of others into morse code to ensure the general ability to communicate with anyone he comes across. (Yes, it would probably work with other devices. No, he is not going to give his walkie-talkie up to experiment with that.)

The walkie-talkie's VC is Norm from Phineas & Ferb alfjksad

Identified as straight until he was 15 (...i mean, the 1940s-50s + four years spent without other people, save for a few months with a guy closer to a father figure than anything else...). Identified as bi until he was 20. Identified as gay until he was 25. Identified as bi until he was 27... Has always really relied on the decade... Doesn’t fully know what to label himself as, simply uses queer.

Moving back and forth in the timestream has its pros and its cons. One pro? He can survive for weeks, even months, after traveling forward without food and water. Traveling backwards? He better get to some water damn fast.

His father had some sort of mutation related to bad luck, hence why Monty only seemed to travel to shitty historical events.

Has kept the clothes that Gorrister gave him to change into. Is not an artist, but does have a picture of a poorly-drawn ed hanging in his apartment with morse code for ‘goodbye’ beneath it.

Uses 30s-80s slang like any of it is still applicable. But with most of his childhood spent in the 30s/40s and most of his early adult years spent in the 60s-80s... Look at that tubular dish! She sure is groovy!

CONNECTION IDEAS:

mom or dad or sibling! How funny would it be... if you're holding your son... and then he just vanishes FLASJD I mean, it'd be tragic, but also! Anyway, I've actually sent this in as a WC because I think it would be so funny. Now idk how they would figure it out, what considering they would have no clue what the other looked like (Monty having been an infant when he disappeared, and Monty having no memories of his biological parents) + their surnames would be different, but... we can figure that out lFKJSD

all the regulars! i am brainstorming ideas but just general. yk. buddies, neighbors, interests, etc etc etc. i am tired <3

people whose relatives he knew! sure would've been from a while back, but the 1940s-1990s were a wild time !

[red-hemlock]

"Love Story with Zsasz" (good lort, sorry River, lmao)

Send “love story with ____” for my muse’s reaction on finding a romantic fanfiction about themselves paired with that character @sanguine-salvation

"Goodness, there's really more under this thing? Maybe I should change my name, and splurge for a brand new look." But alright, who's the next 'lucky duck' to be sacrificed upon the Altar of Ship with another piece of her sanity?

...Viktor Zsasz.

Okay-... She can kind-of see why some heart-eyed Gotham shipper might want to pair the two of them up. They both like knives, they both like knifing things, they both probably dance and finger-paint a little in the bloody-red aftermath. Tale as old as time and all of that good jazz, what more could a super-fun relationship need?

But is the fic any good? Now that's the million dollar question... Though considering Wattpad was batting 0-2 in her tag right now, River's not sure how much lower the bar can even go at this point.

"Well, here goes nothing, I suppose." She muses with a soul-steeling sigh, tentatively clicking the title.

But in the end, to her absolute shock, it was-... Quite the good read. Amazing even, considering the competition raised against it. A multi-chapter cross-over set in the world of that crazy car movie her daughter wanted to watch, Mad Max: Fury Road. It had the knives and knifing, madness and blood by the bucketful of course, as she and Zsasz wrested control of some clan called The Buzzards from their former leader.

Two Warlords, tearing across the dusty desert dunes in rusted, spike-covered Hell-cars. Raising chaos and the group up from the muck, from crusty scavengers into the greatest and most fearsome faction the Wasteland had ever seen. Sure, there might've been one too many hot n' handsy make-out sessions over corpses, that were more tooth than tongue; and the whole part of them choosing to die together, in a Bond-esque explosion-death ending was a bit ill-fitting. But at this point, River's just happy to see that neither of them were insultingly woobified; it could've been so much worse.

Witness them, indeed.

River never backed-out of a website so fast, how quick she was to pull-up her text messages.

2:30am [Tally Apple]: Hey.

2:30am [Tally Apple]: Hey you! ᕕ༼⌐■-■༽ᕗ

2:31am [Tally Apple]: Sleep is for the weak lookit this now [LINK]

2:33am [Tally Apple]: Be my hypothetical apocalypse bestie, Y/Y? I'll let you sit shotgun sometimes. ( ͡° ε ͡°)♥

[dismalia]

INKMalia 2022: Day 15 - Armadillo

“In her ongoing quest to find a worthy vessel to tame, Praetoria grapples the vicious claws of an armoured, sand-terrain Behemoth on a desolate road. 

Her weapons are futile, simply bouncing off its scales before it curls back into a ball, and clashes with her again. But she will not back down willingly, until she has a new ride or a corpse in her hands.

Unbeknown to her, this demon of the wasteland was entranced by an instinct to burrow deep into the ground, following the magnetism of the world’s haematological pull. 

The stygian sanguine streams once warded by demonic royalty, now blocked and dried out from long and callous disregard of their land.

It searches for a vein into the world’s core, and won’t be sidetracked by this Zathán punk.”

[marlutterianae]

DEMONS OF DISMALIA - Samiginus Samigila, Devil Tyrant of Conquest.

The Chimeric Conquering Tyrant of Dismalia: Samiginus Samigila.

Devil of Conquest indulging in the respite of barbarians. Inhaling the eerie phlegmatic fumes of a Mystic Demon. The harrowing hill conquered yet the craving remains. That ambition to flood the dismal wasteland with the flesh horde of thousands of Chimera riding Grotesques.

Apocalyptic Chimera of the Sanguine Sea, coagulated from primordial gore tides and embraced by the will of the abyssal depths to conquer the lands a flood of flesh. Leading a horde of Grotesques riding their kin, wielding barbaric weapons augmented by spell glands.

The Mystic Brain Pipe was pillaged from one of the many stranded arks in the shallows of the Sanguine Sea Pass, from the temple of siren seers, who after predicting his path to glorious enlargement, he ravaged their treasures. Vagrant, vile and vulgar, the tyrant rejoices.

ARTWORK BY Gaegral. https://linktr.ee/Gaegral https://twitter.com/Gagaegral https://bsky.app/profile/gaegral.bsky.social

I’ll make dinosaurs fight, on my grass green afghan. Again, for I sealed a pact, with Arch-Vile, the infernal brat.

[detective-inspector-her]

Okay I completely forgot about this and I am so sorry. Life got in the way.

If you're still interested in the book series I have that link there which is the first 9 books. There's also this which is short stories which are plot relavent and also has a timeline which very helpful.

Okay so book 4 or like, the year 2010 - 2011 in series seems more accurate.

Valkyrie is kidnapped trying to find information on where Skulduggery has gone. She's at first made to be food for a vampire, but he's on strike so he doesn't kill her. Before that she managed to escape and got into a lady's car but the lady died trying to help Valkyrie escape.

Anyways, when her captors realise she's alive, they throw this 14 year old CHILD into a gladiator ring against two vampires. She escapes but the idea that people paid to see you be torn to pieces is... something.

Uhhh, the detective who went insane in the last book after throwing a 13 year old in a cell breaks into her house and tries to murder her in her sleep. Her parents hear what happened and she claims it was a bat. It's mentioned that this is the first time she's been home in months.

Skulduggery's skull, which was the only way to get him back, was taken by the current detective to stop Valkyrie from opening the portal. She and her friends get arrested for trying to steal it and Valkyrie gets beaten up by a grown woman for being snarky during an interrogation. You don't understand, this woman makes Valkyrie beg.

Valkyrie escapes prison and opens the portal to a wasteland. A version of Earth that has been destroyed by these gods. She finds Skulduggery in literal pieces, but he's still alive. He thinks she's a hallucination and then she has to hide and listen as the Faceless Ones tear him apart again while he screams.

They're then chased by the Faceless Ones and their thousands of pets and Skulduggery only believes she's real when another friend of theirs, China Sorrows, demands he return to the right dimension. China has been shot multiple times

Skulduggery is saved. And then he goes to a new case immediately and Valkyrie comes face-to-face with the vision of her parents being murdered by a being known as Darquesse. She sees her friends die as well, but her mum and dad.

She then goes home and finds out her mum is pregnant, right after finding out everyone dies. But no, she's fine.

The Sanctuary has been torn to pieces by vampires and Guild, the guy in charge, no longer has fingers on one hand. But there are bodies everywhere.

In this book there's a group right. And their goal? Most of them want to kill Valkyrie. I think there are two that don't and that's it.

Valkyrie gets tossed into an apartment building of nearly turned vampires, and then thrown out a window by Dusk.

The one responsible person in her life and her sister figure are kidnapped after that and then she's in a high danger car chase. They go to a hotel run by one of Skulduggery's friends and are attacked by hundreds of zombies. Valkyie watches a man get pulled through a window and eaten.

She and Sanguine (who is a part of the group who want her dead) work together to kill the zombies but he's still going at her.

To list off the last few things without detail

She finds Tanith with nails hammered into her. Kenspeckle is possessed and tries to make her listen to him. She gets bitten by Dusk, the vampire Sanguine puts a razor to her neck and nearly kills her She watches Fletcher, the only other child in this series really, teleport away with a detonating bomb.

The woman from the beginning? The detective? Manipulates the duo so they're in the Sanctuary and then detonates a bomb that would have vaporised them. Valkyrie watches everyone in that building die.

A few days later, Valkyrie wakes up from a dream and the dream whispers about the first book, with the Book of Names. Her True Name, the source of her magic, is Darquesse.

[sheliesshattered]

2016 writing review (fic)

Because @thatonezombiecosplayer and @thebyrchentwigges and @lurkinghistoric and all the other cool kids are doing these...

My AO3: glasscannon

Total Number of Stories Completed: By ‘completed’ I’m counting everything I posted to AO3 in 2016, not just things tagged ‘complete’. Six new stories posted to AO3 in 2016.

Total Word Count: 46,239 (including many many words co-written with @jezunya)

Fandoms Written In: The Hobbit, Poldark, Once Upon A Time, Max Max (in order of word-count)

Looking Back, Did You Expect To Write More Fic Than You Thought You Would This Year, Less, Or About What You’d Expected? I always hope to write more than I end up writing, but 2016 was actually fairly prolific by my standards. I made less progress on the big co-writing behemoth Truth Universally Acknowledged than I’d hoped, but posted quite a few more one-shots than I had any intention of writing. I even managed to complete a couple from concept to posting in a single day, which is fairly huge for how slow of a writer I am.

What’s Your Own Favorite Story Of The Year? You would ask me to choose between my own children like this? Who does that??

Honestly I’m fairly thrilled with everything I wrote/co-wrote in 2016, but in terms of sheer re-readability, chapter 3 of TUA, Asheed, is probably my favorite. TUA is a Hobbit/Pride&Prejudice fusion set in Middle Earth with a lot of additional world building. That chapter is the P&P equivalent of the Meryton Ball where everyone meets for the first time, and covers the Hobbitish festival of Ashseed, based on real-world Beltane festivities. There were a lot of moving pieces, but I think we pulled it off, and I still get a kick out of re-reading it.

Did You Take Any Writing Risks This Year? Writing and posting what amounts to, for me, flash fiction, was a really big jump. 2016 was the first time I ever woke up one day with no intention of writing, had an idea around 10am, had it mostly pieced together by 2pm, then finished and beta’d and posted by 8pm. Even just for canon-compliant one-shots, that’s quite the stretch for me, but utterly worth doing.

Do You Have Any Fanfic Or Profic Goals For The New Year? I want to add chapters to my unfinished stories, particularly TUA. I might try writing a series this year, individual parts marked complete rather than chapters, sketchier narrative arc. I’ve challenged myself to make progress on one creative project every single day of 2017, writing or otherwise.

Best Story Of The Year? I think TUA certainly got the most attention of any of my writing in 2016, but in terms of my best writing, it has to be The World Is Falling Around You. I started work on that one prior to 2016, and only managed to post the first chapter last year (second chapter is well underway, mostly just needs an ending), but the goal from the beginning was to focus mostly on the language. Whenever I feel like I can’t put words together coherently, I go back and re-read TWIFAY to remind myself that sometimes I can.

Most Popular Story Of The Year? TUA, by far. I’d forgotten what it was like to write in a large, ravenous fandom, lmao.

Story of Mine Most Under-appreciated By The Universe, IMO: The World Is Falling Around You, always. It’s utterly off-beat from the fandom currently, but I do so love it.

Most Fun Story To Write: Tie between Sanguine And The Wastelander and Wedded To His Work, for completely different reasons. The former because I used it as an exercise to develop my persona for Wasteland Weekend, and the latter because Ross Poldark’s troll-face is so very fun to write.

Story With The Single Sexiest Moment: Ha, I write nothing like sex. I wrote a snogging scene in 2011 and I still haven’t recovered. A Year In Bath at least mentions kissing, and implies slightly more.

Most Sweet Story: Chapter 4 of TUA, Peace And Quiet And Good Tilled Earth, which is all told from the point of view of Tauriel, our Jane Bennet. The chapter is a tour of Hobbiton and the surrounding area, showing the visiting dwarven dignitaries around and hitting all of Bilbo’s favorite places to eat. Tauriel is infatuated with Kili without really knowing it yet, so there’s a lot of sweet awkwardness (handflex!) and smiling and eye contact and cultural exchange. It’s not quite rot-your-teeth-out cute, but it might be as close as I get.

“Holy Crap, That’s Wrong, Even For You!” Story: I... wrote shockingly little angst in 2016? Usually that’s what that phrase is in reference to, but I managed to use my superpower of finding the bruise and pushing on it very little in my 2016 writing. Familiar And Unchanging is probably the closest, but to be honest that’s very light angst for me.

Story That Shifted My Own Perceptions Of The Characters: TUA definitely changed my perceptions of all the characters from The Hobbit. I mostly knew which dwarf was which before we started in on this, and now I can give you family histories to three generations back for all of them, lol. And now I understand what makes Lobelia Sackville-Baggins such a bitch and that’s not something I ever thought I’d say!

Most Unintentionally Telling Story: Sanguine And The Wastelander, of course. Though maybe that’s more intentionally telling than not, lol. I was working on my persona for Wasteland Weekend, for who I would be in a post-movie, post-revolution Citadel, and there was a self-insert fic week event happening, so I made some prose happen. There’s quite a lot of me in that fic, and I learned that Jack’s voice is incredibly difficult for me to write, but @jezunya​‘s is very easy. 

Hardest Story To Write: TUA, always TUA. The Hobbit has never been one of my main fandoms, Kili/Tauriel was a ship that flared and dimmed for me. This story has always been about the world-building and the co-writing project with @jezunya​. When it comes time to actually put prose to page, it often takes a monumental effort to get these characters talking to me again.

Biggest Disappointment: That we didn’t make more progress on TUA, and that I didn’t finish second chapters for TWIFAY and Sanguine And The Wastelander.

Biggest Surprise: The three stories I wrote for the Dwight/Caroline ship in Poldark. While watching Poldark s2 I got bit by the ship bug hard, but there was basically no fic for them -- literally six total, I think, on AO3, before someone organized a fic-week around the pairing. I wrote and posted all three stories, A Year In Bath, Familiar And Unchanging, and Wedded To His Work, in the course of four days in November, trying to hit as many of the daily prompts as possible. That’s not something I’ve ever done before, or even thought myself capable of doing.

(I don’t think this is a tag-another-person thing, but hey everyone jump in on this! I love seeing the answers of authors I read! :D )

[fantomcomics]

What’s Out This Week? 5/24

How are there only 2 weeks til June???

Ava’s Demon: Book One: Reborn GN -  Michelle Fus

When a young, shy girl named Ava discovers that the demon who haunts her is actually the spirit of an ancient alien queen named Wrathia, the two form a dangerous pact. But in exchange for a better life, Ava must help Wrathia seek revenge against TITAN...the most powerful being in the universe.

Black Mass Rising GN -  Theo Prasidis & Jodie Muir

One year after Vlad Dracul's death, hope is returning to the lands of Transylvania. As the shadow of 100 years of darkness begins to fade, a young peasant girl dares to dream of a better future. But when a mysterious Healer drifts into town, a new evil begins to stir among the ruins of the lord of the undead's former castle... A titanic and darkly fantastical reimagining of and sequel to Bram Stoker's sanguine classic, Dracula.

Briar TP Vol 1 -  Christopher Cantwell & German Garcia

What if Sleeping Beauty never got her happily ever after... and had to save herself instead? One-hundred years after Briar Rose first fell into her slumber, the sleeper has now become the sleepwalker, and she must face a brutal, bleak world ruled by a tyrant from her past. Burdened by prophecy and betrayal, it will take everything Briar and her band of misfits have to survive the wasteland where magic went to die. As they journey through a land of untold terrors, Briar nurtures a burning pledge of vengeance. But will it be enough to bring some semblance of a happy ending to the land... and her heart?

Constellations GN -  Kate Glasheen

A debut graphic novel about a queer teen living in the margins who is determined to find their way ahead. Are you supposed to be a boy or a girl? It's a question that follows Claire everywhere. Inescapable on the street, in school, and even at home. A black hole forever trying to pull them in. But as long as they have ride-or-die best friend Greg at their side and a drink in their hand, everything will be okay. Right? Except, Claire can never have just one drink. And when harassment at school reaches a fever pitch, Claire begins a spiral that ends in court-ordered rehab. Feeling completely lost, Claire is soon surrounded by a group of equally messed up, equally hilarious new friends and, with the help of a patient counselor, finds a space to unpack all the bad they've experienced. But as Claire's release gets closer so does the question: Can Claire stay sober and true in a world seemingly never made for them?

Elden Ring: The Road To The Erdtree GN -  FromSoftware & Nikiichi Tobita

The epic and foreboding world of the hit video game Elden Ring gets turned on its head in this absurd comedy adventure! Follow Aseo the Tarnished as he struggles his way through the Lands Between. What he lacks in strength, speed, intelligence, charisma, skill, experience, intuition, and common sense, he makes up for in...uhhh...  

Even Dogs Go To Other Worlds GN Vol 1 -  Ryuuou & Hana Ichika

Ordinary salaryman Takumi works a grueling job, but he can get through it because he has Leo, his beloved puppy-sized Maltese, waiting for him at home. One day, Takumi wakes up in a fantasy world... and right in front of him is an enormous wolf! Wait, could this gigantic creature actually be the once-little Leo?! With the help of a mysterious new magic skill, Takumi will do his best in this world to make a better (and more relaxed) life for himself and his furry best friend!

Far South: Crooks, Pimps & Gauchos #1 -  Rodolfo Santullo & Leandro Fernandez

An arid and wild land, cut off from the world. Tough and hot blooded men. Crime. Alcohol. Revenge: This is where the taciturn Montoya runs a bar. A bar where the worst scoundrels in the area come to settle their differences or talk about their setbacks. What happens in the FAR SOUTH stays in the Far South!

Girl Juice TP -  Benji Nate

Welcome to the Girl Juice House, home of only the hottest gang in town. Benji Nate's stylish and rambunctious sense of humor lovingly takes digs at the young and tragically hip-reserved and introspective Nana, comically hypersexual Bunny, fledgling U-tuber Tula, and Designated Mom™ Sadie-as they navigate life, love, and the pursuit of a good time.

Hitomi TP -  H.S. Tak & Isabella Mazzanti

In Feudal-era Japan, a drifter with no prospects begins training in secret under Yasuke, a once-famous and now-disgraced warrior, as she struggles to find her place in a society entrenched in discrimination and violence. Combining the historical sweep and elegance of Kurosawa with the visceral action of Tarantino, this saga follows the trials and tribulations of a young female warrior who travels the country-side unendingly working to gain the rank of Samurai, a title no man, monster, or myth can give to her, but one that she will have to take.

Magical Girl Incident GN Vol 1 -  Zero Akabane

As a little boy, Sakura Hiromi once dreamed he could be a hero. Now...he's simply your everyday office worker, toiling away for the sake of his company. Though he longs for his childhood dream, it seems so far out of reach-until he decides to step up and save a child one fateful day. Suddenly, fantasies become reality as Hiromi finds himself transformed into...a magical girl?!  

Manner Of Death GN Vol 1 -  Yukari Umemoto & Sammon

When the skilled coroner Dr. Bunnakit is called to examine the body of his childhood friend after her "suicide," he soon determines that she was actually murdered. That night, a mysterious stranger threatens him, telling him to rule her death a suicide-and after he confides in his prosecutor friend about this incident, his friend suddenly goes missing. But all hope is not lost, as a young lecturer named Tan offers to help him get to the bottom of all this-which would be more reassuring if Tan weren't the prime suspect... 

My Dear Agent GN Vol 1 -  Ebino Bisque

Professional bodyguard Riichi is employed to protect the son of the leader of a large conglomerate and takes his work incredibly seriously. One day, he's tasked with coaching Tachibana, a rookie new hire, who unfortunately has no money and no place to go. Opening his home to the new employee, Riichi is taken aback by Tachibana's brashness... and his endless flirting! Just who is this mysterious new coworker and what's his problem? 

Puella Magi Suzune Magica Ominbus Ed GN -  Magica Quartet (A) Gan

Suzune Amano lives an extraordinarily normal life as a middle school student by day and...magical-girl assassin by night?! When a group of four magical girls begins investigating the serial murders in their city, they soon find themselves Suzune's next targets! But what motivates Suzune to hunt both witches and magical girls alike?  

Red Tag TP -  Rafael Albuquerque, Rafael Scavone & Roger Cruz 

Lis (aka Lisa), Lu (aka Luciana) and Leco (aka Leandro)-three friends bonded by their love for Brazil's unique street art "pixo," also known as pichação or pixação, a distinctive style of tagging unique to Brazil-strive to be good in a place where corruption still thrives. After Lis witnesses injustice and abuse of power on the streets of São Paulo, she enlists her friends to take matters into their own hands. Their plan works until they realize they've become privy to sensitive information belonging to holdovers from the country's brutal dictatorial past who are plotting against the movement for reform and an upcoming election. Armed with a can of spray paint and the help of a journalist, can they escape the dangerous and life-threatening plot they've mistakenly become entangled in?

Tegan & Sara: Junior High GN - Tegan & Sara Quin & Tillie Walden

Before the indie-pop duo Tegan & Sara took the world by storm, Tegan and Sara Quin were identical twins trying to find their place in a new home and new school. From first crushes to the perils of puberty, surviving junior high is something the sisters plan to face side-by-side, just like they always have. But growing up also means growing apart, as Tegan and Sara make different friends and take separate paths to understanding their queerness. For the first time ever, they ask who one sister is without the other. Set in the present-day, this fictionalized autobiography offers a glimpse at Tegan and Sara before they became icons, exploring their shifting sisterhood, their own experiences coming out, and the first steps of their musical journey. A prequel of sorts to their New York Times-bestselling adult memoir High School, it's the story of the people they are now, and how so many of the trials they faced in their youth not only brought them to music stardom, but to a rock-solid relationship with each other.

Tsugumi Project GN -  ippatu

In the western Pacific Ocean floats an island archipelago, cut off from the world and full of mysteries: scientific secrets that some believe are best forgotten, decaying monuments to an era of human decadence two centuries gone, and strange, radioactive monsters that tear apart any human beings foolish enough to set foot there. Its name, spoken only in whispers: Japan. It's illegal to go near this dangerous place-but, after being torn from his family and convicted on a false charge, that's exactly where Leon has been sent. An experienced soldier of fortune, Leon is tasked with retrieving a powerful weapon called Tsugumi. Can they stay alive long enough to find this Tsugumi? Just what the hell is it, anyway, if that's even the right question? And does it have anything to do with the quiet, brutal girl with taloned feet who swoops in to save Leon's life?

Yokohama Station Fable GN Vol 1 -  Yuba Isukari & Tatsuyuki Tanaka

All Hiroto has ever known is a life on a tiny coastal speck of Japan. Much of the country has been swallowed by Yokohama Station, a mysterious, ever-growing series of buildings that's been around for as long as anyone can remember. The few who live outside its many entrances have never seen Inside and know only rumors and legends of the station's interior. That all changes when Hiroto is given an 18 Ticket, a mysterious item that lets him enter the massive complex for five days. The young man has always sought a purpose, but the one he finds may not be the sort he'd hoped for...  

[sentfromwolves]

HIS BODY A BROKEN LAW. WIP INTRO & DIRECTORY

There’s a clock tattooed on Nemesis’s wrist, and when it reaches midnight on his 21st birthday, it will kill him.

It doesn’t help that his mother was the one who cursed him, and that the demon possessing his car ate her down to the bones before Nemesis could get her to break it. But Nemesis is nothing if not versatile, not when he’s only got a few months left until the big bad end. If a deal with the devil under the hood of his vintage car is what it takes to survive, Nemesis doesn’t mind selling what’s left of his soul.

But Judge doesn’t just want Nemesis’s soul. The demon has bigger, meaner plans than that, and he needs Nemesis’s help to see them through. After all, stealing the heart of a living city isn’t a one-man job, and for all Nemesis is cursed, he’s still the first True Witch in a generation. And with a centuries old turf war raging through the streets of the Veldt, Judge and Nemesis are going to need each other’s power if they hope to make it past every last exorcist, demon, and vengeful witch in their way―regardless of whether they can stand each other or not.

💢 GENRE ―

adult dark urban fantasy 

💥 THEMES ―

survival at any cost, morality versus the corrupt systems that raised you, the ugly path away from abuse

⭐ STATUS ―

working on first draft, target goal: 90k

📛 POVS ―

third person limited past tense.

🌃 SETTING ―

A century ago, a city came to life and began crawling across the wastelands of the west coast. No one knows how it came to be, or who built it, only that now, the Midnight City is a fabled urban legend, and a hunting ground for all creatures that called the hidden world of the occult their home. 

Guarded from the rest of the world by the warped labyrinth of the Zero—a hostile ley line now curled like a serpent around the city within—the Midnight City brims and bristled with danger on all sides. A turf war a century in the making has turned its streets crimson with blood between the witches of the Foxtail Coven and the exorcists of Rapture, and the stalemate has left both sides desperate and hungry for a way to finally slaughter their enemy and claim the Midnight City for their own.

But there are darker things asleep beneath the concrete and cracked asphalt of the living city, where its heartbeat thunders out through the twisted rib cage of floating highways and migrating cathedrals, and its dreams shift the landscape with every nightmare, every breath. As the first True Witch in a century and the demon inhabiting his car race ever closer to the city limits, one thing becomes certain above all else: whatever has been slumbering all this time is at long last beginning to wake.

🚬 CHARACTERS ―

❌ NEMESIS. trans he/him  ― scorpio  ― a true witch, the first in a century

The first True Witch in a century, Nemesis was born to Agatha Bluesummers, the Sanguine Witch. Greedy for a taste of eternity, Nemesis’s mother stole his immortality from him in the cradle and cursed him to die on his 21st birthday. Now, Nemesis seeks a way to lift his curse before it kills him, making a deal with the devil in a last ditch effort not to bite the dust.

🖤 JUDGE. ?? he/they/yikes that’s a demon ― ??  ― eternal, immortal, undefined by time.

A mysterious demon from the Restlessness, Judge ate Nemesis’s mother after she summoned him for her own greedy use and found herself unable to control his appetite. Now set on bigger things to consume, Judge seeks out her son, Nemesis, for a taste of his blood and to use him as bait in luring out the monstrous things asleep beneath the skin of the Midnight City. But the truth is that he bears a curse just as fatal as Nemesis’s own.

🧨 HALLIDAY. cis he/him  ― leo/virgo cusp ― exorcist; heir of the book of genesis

A formidable exorcist, Halliday has worked hard and long to prove his own merit beyond the imposing weight of his family name. The Heir of the Book of Genesis, one of the most powerful grimoires in existence, Halliday intends to live up to the expectations set upon him by his community and his family. Unfortunately, fate has other plans the moment a True Witch walks right out of a fairytale and into his life―by running him over with his possessed car. 

🧥 DESMOND. cis he/him ― ??  ― exorcist; the Tower of Rapture

The leader of the Exorcists inhabiting the Midnight City, Desmond is a ruthless, charismatic ruler that many follow without question, even into hell. Bored of the stagnation of the turf war against the Foxtail Coven and desirous for a taste of something new, Desmond sees Nemesis not as the omen most exorcists beneath him do but as a key to unlocking his deepest desires. The only problem now is dealing with the demon with his name tattooed to Nemesis’s soul.

⏳ TARGET DATE: THIRD DRAFT; September 30 2024 goal date for line edits ⏳

👋PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU’D LIKE TO BE ADDED TO A TAGLIST! I’ll probably update this post with more characters and information as I work more on the project.👋

[kayleezra]

MASTERLIST

❗️JOIN TAGLIST❗️

(You can find me on AO3 here)

*** = SMUT

💔 = Angst

(Otherwise it's probably fluff)

Javier Peña x Reader (Narcos)

It's You

Anyone, Anyplace or Anything (1%💔)

Could Be Worse

Din Djarin x Reader (The Mandalorian)

New Beginnings 💔// Part 2 // Part 3

Something New

Through Thick and Thin

Unknown

I Promise

Unseen Love

Frankie Morales x Reader (Triple Frontier)

How Did You Get Here

You’re My Comfort

I’m Half The Person You Need Me To Be 💔 // Part 2 // Part 3

Astonished

Marcus Pike x Reader (The Mentalist)

Easy Love

Unaccustomed

Secret Santa

A Giver

Shower Notes

Nighttide Waltz

Someone Else 💔// Someone New 💔 // Some Strangers 💔-ish

Ezra x Reader (Prospect)

A Petal In Pain

Daily Dosage

Cover Up

Loud Silence // (with @writer-darling)

Capitalist Holiday

A Sunflower and Their Encyclopedia

Nobody

Tangerine

Max Phillips x Reader (Bloodsucking Bastards)

Low Iron

Miracles

Maxwell Lord x Reader (WW84)

Joint Accounts***

Pizza Party

Never Letting You Go

Agent Whiskey x Reader (Kingsman)

Physical Pain is Easy

Joel Miller x Reader (The Last of Us)

Sanguine // Part 2 Gut Feeling

Thoroughfare

Last Woman on Earth

Rafael Barba x Reader (Law and Order SVU)

Peace and Warmth

Caught by Carisi

I Can't Let Go 💔

Forever and a Day

Surprise

Tragic Wishes 💔

Helmut Zemo x Reader (The Falcon and The Winter Solider)

Wasteland, Baby!

More Than Your Actions

Your Excellency

Laszlo Kreizler x Reader (The Alienist)

Together

Excuses 💔

Party Favour

Sewn Heart

MORE

Aaron 'Hotch' Hotchner x Reader (Criminal Minds)

Unforeseen

Bucky Barnes x Reader (MCU)

Who Cares (40s AU, Male!Reader)

Matt Murdock x Reader (Daredevil)

See You Later 💔

Frank Castle x Reader (The Punisher)

Stubborn(fem!reader)

[rebellicnrising]

jessica parker kennedy . cis female . she/her ➶ DID YOU SEE THEM ?! they’re finally back as a MENTOR , and you know they’re one of my favourites ! it’s JUNIPER TORRANCE , the THIRTY-EIGHT year old WINNER of the SEVENTY-SECOND hunger games! i’m just so excited to see them returning to the capitol all the way from DISTRICT EIGHT! they won their games using DAGGERS/ALLIANCES so their tributes will no doubt be desperate for their wisdom. the capitol just loved them for being so NURTURING , even if they have been known to be SHARP at times. they DO  have a relative in this years games ( daughter ) and they DID volunteer to go into the arena with them . ( character ISN’T part of the uprising ) 

BASIC INFORMATION

full name: juniper torrance nicknames: june, junebug age: thirty-eight birthday: september 22nd zodiac: virgo district: eight gender: cis female pronouns: she / her orientation: bisexual profession: weaver, tribute, mentor, mother

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

face claim: jessica parker kennedy hair color: dark brown eye color: hazel height: 5'3" scars: scars across the tops of her hands and fingers, a jagged scar that runs from the top of her right hip to mid thigh

RELATIONSHIPS

father: jasper reems mother: annette reems ( deceased ) siblings: holly reems ( younger sister ) children: chantilly “tilly” torrance ( 13 year old daughter, reaped for the 94th games ), bobbin torrance ( 5 year old son ) significant other: tba torrance ( potential wanted connection )

TRIBUTE DETAILS

reaped/volunteered: reaped reaped age: 16 victor of the: 72nd hunger games weapon of choice: daggers arena: winter wasteland and a hot desert  kill count: 1 token: a woven bracelet made by her sister

EXTRA

mbti: infj-t ( the advocate ) temperament: sanguine moral alignment: lawful good primary vice: pride primary virtue: charity element: water

BACKSTORY **TRIGGER WARNING: TYPICAL HUNGER GAMES VIOLENCE/DEATH, SUICIDE, FORCED SEX WORK**

ɪ ᴀᴍ ᴍʏ ᴍᴏᴛʜᴇʀ'ꜱ ꜱᴀᴠᴀɢᴇ ᴅᴀᴜɢʜᴛᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴏɴᴇ ᴡʜᴏ ʀᴜɴꜱ ʙᴀʀᴇꜰᴏᴏᴛ ᴄᴜʀꜱɪɴɢ ꜱʜᴀʀᴘ ꜱᴛᴏɴᴇꜱ

it’s a golden first memory: the light of the sun filtering through a dingy window, casting rays of sunlight that reflect the dust in the air in small sparkling flickers and the rhythmic sound of your mother’s loom as she wove fine dyed silk threads together. your mother’s voice had been warm in your ear as she paused to pick you up from the floor into her lap, letting your small fingers run across the delicate pattern she was weaving together. you can’t remember what she told you but you remember the warmth of her voice and the love in her kiss when she pulled you into a hug and pressed her lips into your hair, the swell of her stomach with your baby sister pressing into your side. it’s the last time she holds both of you because bringing that baby sister of yours is what takes her from this world. 

your father is heartbroken but he throws himself into being the best he can for you and your baby sister. it’s your mother’s mother who watches the two of you when he leaves when the sun is barely beginning to color the sky until the stars start to dot the sky and he comes walking back up the road. she teaches you to weave with your fingers and thread and how to stretch a meal meant for two into enough for four. she starts teaching you tatting when your hands are still small and unsure with hers covering and guiding them until your muscles learns the patterns. when you and your sister get older, you sit beside her on the hard wooden bench with your hands grasping freshly woven tweed that you thump and knead with the women of your district, their voices raised in song to help keep the rhythm; you remember the peacekeepers that loitered and watched, wondering what they were so curious about. nan tells you later that it wasn’t the work they were interested in but the songs you sang-- that songs have power for normal folk like you and that peacekeepers and the capitol wanted nothing more than to keep that power from you. 

your father gently hushes her. he’s a quiet man, your dad-- a good man. a man who goes to his job working as a tailor in a factory that produces those bright white uniforms for the peacekeepers, keeps his head down, and loves his family-- slow to anger, first to offer help. he never wanted any trouble. but nan is a storyteller, a songteller and she tells you that the women of this family have never been quiet. she teaches you the history she tells you the capitol doesn’t want you to know, teaches you songs she tells you have been outlawed. because of the power-- power she gives you. and when your name is called at the reaping and you’re allowed one last brief goodbye, she squeezes you tightly and tells you to remember the songs. remember that power. 

ɪ ᴀᴍ ᴍʏ ᴍᴏᴛʜᴇʀ'ꜱ ꜱᴀᴠᴀɢᴇ ᴅᴀᴜɢʜᴛᴇʀ ɪ ᴡɪʟʟ ɴᴏᴛ ᴄᴜᴛ ᴍʏ ʜᴀɪʀ, ɪ ᴡɪʟʟ ɴᴏᴛ ʟᴏᴡᴇʀ ᴍʏ ᴠᴏɪᴄᴇ

the capitol is a new world that seems so at odds with the life you have left in district 8 and you realize quickly that sixteen years of watching the games hasn’t prepared you to be apart of it. your district partner is a boy you know from school- caspian polk- and at first, he won’t acknowledge you. silence the entire train ride to the capitol and when your foot slips on the dress they’ve put you in for the parade, his arm reaches to steady you but still-- not a word. you go through your training, your hands trying the weight and balance of all sorts of weapons- not handled with even an ounce of expertise- but you realize that outside of the career districts, most everyone else seems as lost as you are. you might be going into an arena in a matter of days where you will either have to kill or be killed by the faces around you but for now, you’re all the same: a bunch of kids who have no idea what the fuck you’re doing. you don’t make friends but you become friendly with those faces and your mentor reminds you of the reality and you remind them of yours: you’re all the same, you’re all lost and you’re all fucking scared. why not show kindness in the moments leading up to the inevitable? 

the gamemakers give you a four for the less than impressive display you give as you try your hand at the weapons that don’t feel right in your hands and even that you feel is being generous. you don’t expect to like caesar but he puts you at ease almost immediately and you tell him about your dad, your sister, your nan and about waulking the tweed and tatting the lace and button swaps with friends at school-- things that all seem so important to you but you know bore your audience. that night before bed, your district partner slips a small silver button in your palm. you try to hide it- not wanting to give up the bracelet on your wrist, woven with love by your sister- tucking it inside of your cheek when they inject the tracker in your arm but just before you go to the platform, a gloved finger shoves its way into your mouth and fishes it out. the last thing your mentor tells you before the platform takes you is that there is no kindness inside the arena. the inevitable was here. 

icy wind hits your face and steals your breath and when you open your eyes all you see is white-- blinding snow as far as the eye could see, a frozen tundra. the horn sounds and chaos ensues as all of you run for the cornucopia and the sparse packs, the plethora of weapons. you grab a pack and run blindly into the snow as fast as your legs can carry you, trying like hell to disappear. six die at the cornucopia and you think about venturing back to find some shelter in this frozen wasteland but you know how this goes: the careers have taken the cornucopia, there was no shelter there. hours later, you find your district partner, gripping a spear in his hand and the first words he says to you are you’re alive. 

the two of you stick together- strength in numbers, after all. another cannon goes off in the wee hours of the morning and neither of you realize just how long and slowly those cannons will go off. two more die in the first week. no cannons go off the second week. at the beginning of the third, two more go off in quick succession and then the rest of the week is quiet. and it goes on like that-- a quiet week, a cannon or two the following, then nothing. the days are long and the nights are bitter cold and you know that caspian’s warmth at your back keeps both of you from ending up another canon fire; your rations last for four weeks- nan’s lessons in stretching coming in handy- but soon your stomachs rumble. you’ve seen animals here and there- nothing that looks natural, nothing you’re all that eager to eat but caspian tells you that you can just close your eyes while you eat- and that’s where he gets the bright idea to hunt. 

you hear his screams echoing on the frigid wind ( is it still frigid? have you grown numb to it? is it warmer? ) and when you find him, the female tribute from four has buried the dagger in his throat, cutting off those screams. you don’t remember what happened next ( though now you’ve watched it dozens of times ); you don’t remember tackling her from behind, a scream of rage ripping your throat, how your fingers had twisted in blond hair and how you had slammed her face into that hardpacked snow, how you had held her down into it while she thrashed and how your hand had grappled for that dagger, ripping it from her when your knee jabbed into her kidney and how you buried it in her side ( over and over ), staining the snow red. two cannons sound and you weep. 

there’s only nine of you left when the wolves come, massive mutts that look like the monsters from some long forgotten fairytale. you’re running from them when you meet up with two others- two girls from ten and eleven- and they let you hide with them as the mutts continue to roam and another cannon sounds. there’s only eight of you left and the three of you agree to work together to at least take care of the career pack. the snow has started to melt and where you expect to be hidden green, there’s nothing but hardpacked dirt peeking through patches of muddy white. the three of you try for the cornucopia when the gamemakers announce the jugs of fresh water and food, only two of you come out with no food or water. you wake up a few days later to the sound of a cannon only to realize that your last companion has taken your dagger and let her blood soak into the dirt. days pass and more cannons sound off at irregular intervals: one, two, three, four, five. you’ve lost track of how long it’s been. 

the snow disappears and instead of the frigid air that steals your breath, it’s an intense dry heat that dries your mouth and eyes. snow blistered skin cracks open and bleeds at the dryness and surely to god it’ll be over soon. the wolves return and you run towards the cornucopia but one of those paws catches your thigh, ripping through your pants and tearing through skin and muscle. you manage to higher ground, dragging yourself up and just out of reach with weak and trembling arms; you watch as the mutts tear the boy from four apart. 

you won the hunger games. 

ᴡᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ᴀʟʟ ʙʀᴏᴜɢʜᴛ ꜰᴏʀᴛʜ ᴏᴜᴛ ᴏꜰ ᴅᴀʀᴋɴᴇꜱꜱ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ, ᴛʜʀᴏᴜɢʜ ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜʀᴏᴜɢʜ ᴘᴀɪɴ

nine weeks. you were in the arena for nine weeks and all anyone can talk about was how boring the games were this year. caesar grins that too wide grin and asks if you wished the games had been more exciting and you can’t say anything. you go back to district eight alive but with less fanfare than previous winners-- you were a boring victor, only one kill to your name. but you go home against all odds and that’s a brief comfort before you’re brought back as a mentor. you feel woefully unprepared to be in that position and you can see the looks those tributes give you, familiar faces that cloud with doubt as you stumble through those first games, trying to coach them through trainings, the interviews, those moments before the platforms raise. another mentor tells you that the first year is the hardest-- growing pains, you’ll figure it out-- as both of your tributes are killed in the bloodbath. 

you try your damnedest to try and return to a normal life- all you want is to return back to your life at your mother’s loom, with your nan’s tatting spools-- but the reach of the capitol is long and those claws dig into you time and time again, dragging you back with no warning or cornering you while your mind is supposed to be focusing on those terrified faces you hope will replace you. you don’t belong to yourself anymore; you are another trophy to be passed around, awarded to those who have pleased the president-- and you’re not the only one. it’s the most fucked up club to be apart of and your voice raises in dissent- not for yourself, your voice quiets for yourself- but for the other faces whose eyes echo that same silent shame and fear. when you return home to eight after letting your voice raise, your father is healing after being punished by peacekeepers-- those peacekeepers he had spent your entire life avoiding, his head down and his mouth silent-- and no one can give you a reason for why. it’s the first moment you realize that those you love would suffer under president snow’s long reach to cause you pain. to keep you in line. 

your nan tells you the women in your family have never been quiet but your voice is stolen out of fear for those you love most. you go when called and return quiet; you take the sons and daughters of your district and play mother preparing your children for battle, soothing the anger that burns in their chest and comforting the fear and grief that spills over onto your shoulders. you work each year to try and create alliances between your district and others- we can keep them alive longer if they work together, we can keep them safe longer if they stand together- and some years the offer is accepted and others ( most ) it’s left on the table. while your focus has always been on your tributes- your district’s children, your children- there’s never animosity towards any of the others that come off those trains and enter the tribute center; your arms have always been open to those too, shoulders strong enough to bear the tears and fears-- your heart has always been open, ready to spill out a mother’s love to cover them before sending them off to war. 

your focus had been on your tributes, your family, your life-- falling in love had never been a part of the equation. you run from it for years, keeping those would-be suitors at arms length, not willing to give another avenue for president snow’s twisted form of control to constrict around your throat. and it’s so frustrating when he comes into your life, undeterred from the way you hold him at arm’s length, how you run from him. you slip and fall into love and it’s the most terrifying thing you’ve ever experienced- yes, including the games- and you do everything you can to keep him hidden from those prying eyes, that long reach. because when he looks at you, he doesn’t see the brokenness you see reflecting back at you from the mirror, he only sees strength; he doesn’t see the shame you feel painted across your body from hands that have left their stains on your soul, he only sees the love you carry for those dearest to you. he asks you to marry him; you tell him no. he keeps asking and you continue to refuse him. it’s nan who you confide that secret fear- that you would only put him in danger, that your love would bring him pain-- and she reminds you that you belong to yourself; the capitol might have it’s claws in you but that you have the power to take back yourself, a little at a time. you have given so much, are you not due some happiness? 

you marry him in a quiet ceremony, your clasped hands tied together with thick cords, braided in intricate fashion. and you’re happy for the first time in so long, covered and protected in the love of your husband. when your daughter begins to grow under your heart, it’s impossible not to think about the games and you wonder if you haven’t made the most terrible mistake a woman in the districts can make and provided another tribute to be reaped for their games. when she’s born, the games are fast approaching and you are firm in your decision and when those tributes and you board the train for the capitol, she is wrapped against your chest, your thundering heart soothing her to sleep. it’s more than refusal to leave her, it’s more than the fact that you are nursing her-- and when you arrive in the capitol, a new mother with her baby, you don’t hide her from the cameras. you show her off, smiling to the camera as they zoom in on her sleeping face, telling caesar about this new journey you’re embarking on. you bring her back the next year and the next, allowing those cameras to capture those precious moments and broadcast them across the capitol- across panem. you want everyone to see her face and hear her bell-like voice; you want them to love her the same way that you do. if nothing else, you can try and offer her the protection of being known and beloved. 

ᴀɴᴅ ᴅᴇᴇᴘ ɪɴ ᴏᴜʀ ʙᴏɴᴇꜱ, ᴛʜᴇ ᴏʟᴅ ꜱᴏɴɢꜱ ᴀʀᴇ ᴡᴀᴋɪɴɢ ꜱᴏ ꜱɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴇᴍ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴠᴏɪᴄᴇꜱ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴜɴᴅᴇʀ ᴀɴᴅ ʀᴀɪɴ

you’re approached by those that call themselves rebels and the voices of women throughout your bloodline want to join them in that silent fight against the capitol but the capitol’s reach is still long and you can almost feel it hovering over you-  your father and sister, your nan, your husband and your beloved daughter- and you silence those voices. you wish you could help, you wish you could agree but there are those to think of, those that you are charged with protecting. it’s something your husband and you argue about ( he has never gotten used to that hovering hand, wants to throw it off like a heavy yolk that keeps the two of you tied to the same wagon ) but in the end, you have the final say. you will not put your daughter in danger. and when your son makes his grand entrance into the world ( that first breath taken in the medical center of the tribute training center, your voice wailing with him, lamenting the fact that you did not want him born here-- you will share your children with the capitol but they belong to you, to district eight ) it only cements that fact further. 

when your daughter’s name is called for the reaping the world drops out from under you and you feel as if you’re falling-- it wasn’t supposed to be like this, she was supposed to be safe- and those voices in your bloodline cannot be quieted anymore. you burn with generational feminine rage as you step forward, volunteering to step back into the arena for the first time in over two decades. the friendships you have fostered with these people over the years- your fellow mentors- are threads you wrap tightly around your fist; their eyes also burn with that generational rage, their own focus on their loved ones and you hope that it’s not a fire that will burn up those threads. you’ll need the in the days that are coming; you’re getting your daughter safely out of the arena, come hell or high water.

TFLDR + EXTRAS

june is from district 8 and won the 72nd hunger games at 16. 

her games lasted for 9 weeks and the arena was a frozen tundra that slowly melted and turned into a blistering desert for the finale. she only had one kill and survived by making alliances and waiting it out. 

got the Finnick Treatment until she had her first child

married her husband in a very quiet handfasting ceremony in eight and has worked very hard over the course of their marriage to keep him out of the spotlight. there’s very little known about her husband outside of vague things she lets slip to the cameras, just enough to begin to satisfy that curiosity but nothing concrete enough to incriminate him. 

has a 13 year old daughter tilly ( short for chantilly-- u know like the lace ) and a five year old son bobbin. for the first four years of each of their lives, she has brought them to the capitol with her in efforts to have their faces Known by the capitol/districts in an attempt to protect them-- thinking that the capitol would be less inclined to use them as a tool to manipulate or punish her if they were known

actually had her son in the capitol during the 89th games. she jokingly says he’s her ‘disobedient’ child bc he wouldn’t wait until they at least got back onto the train before making his grand entrance into the world. 

is not part of the rebellion bc she was focused on keeping her family safe but NOW THAT’S OUT THE WINDOW she can easily be swayed if im being fr

is incredibly friendly and absolutely leans into the Mom Victor gimmick- katniss and peeta are the star-crossed lovers, finnick is the capitol’s darling, she’s everyone’s Little Mother. will mother you, your tributes, your escorts and your stylists. she’ll mom you so hard. 

is a Soft character but just like an egg, if you put her in hot water she can grow hard. can tell you to fuck off in the most polite way. 

CONNECTIONS

mentor pals!! literally nothing gets me harder than a good found family bonded through shared trauma. would love 2 have it someday.

past tribute alliances!! have our tributes allied together in the past? let’s plot it out!! 

current tribute alliances!! bitch she is gonna try and get everyone in on her own alliance bc she wants her daughter to be COVERED. 

rebellion recruiters!! june had been approached by the rebellion before - eight has been historically more rebellious than other districts- but she didn’t join bc of her family. now, she’s definitely more inclined to listen 

ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING DAWG FR LET’S GO IT ONLY TOOK ME THREE DAYS TO WRITE THIS SHIT 

[suremonty-arc]

i. “the tide is turning” - roger waters // ii. “two suns in the sunset” - pink floyd // iii. “four minutes” - roger waters

( nyle dimarco, cis man, he/him ) — Look who it is! If you take a look at our database, you’ll find that MONTGOMERY “MONTY” ROMANO is a THIRTY-TW0 year old RADIO DISC JOCKEY that’s been in Chicago for TWO YEARS, OFF AND ON. According to the file, they’re a mutant on LEVEL ONE with the power of ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION + TIME TRAVEL. That must be why they’re DEDICATED and OBSESSIVE. If you ask me, they remind me of morse code desperately tip-tip-tapping, the sole with no eyes, the desolate confines of a busy wasteland. They are affiliated with NOBODY.

QUICK FACTS:

full name: montgomery “monty” romano

date of birth: december 5th, 1934

zodiac big three: sagittarius sun, scorpio moon, libra rising

gender & pronouns: cis man & he/him

sexual orientation: straight gay bi queer

ethnicity: white ( may loves italians :\ )

nationality: american

religion: christian (protestant, very loose in his practice), starting to lean agnostic

languages spoken: english (5), asl (5), morse code - technically an alphabet (5)

enneagram: 3w2

mbti: enfp

temperament: sanguine

alignment: neutral good

ability: time travel + electronic communication

affiliation: n/a

alias: sonny/sunny

BACKSTORY:

triggers: war, nuclear wasteland, nuclear tensions, institutionalization ( very brief mention ), VERY brief mention of suicide

monty’s world was silent from the moment he entered it. he would never know it any other way. teachers tried to force him into the mold, deaf educators in the dime-a-dozen oralist schools teaching him English, speech, and as-good-as-it-could-be lipreading, all while restricting the usage of ASL at best, forbidding it at worst. 

and, though it made socializing with his peers, understanding his lessons, and connecting with his family much more difficult... in the end, maybe it’s for the best. there would be so many disastrous things to see and smell and feel -- adding one more sensation would tip him over the edge.

despite his parents and hoard of siblings, his eldest brother, jack, was the only one who put time and effort into learning ASL with monty. for that reason, they connected well. his brother would go on to have his first and only child at eighteen, leaving monty an uncle at only six. but it was absolutely poor timing...

because the usa could no longer just sit on the sidelines in silent support of the allied powers. in 1941, his eldest brother enlisted to join the army in the war effort, leaving his wife and family with the baby -- but promising he’d be back.

monty spent much of the time his eldest brother was gone connecting with his brother’s girlfriend, mary, who let monty teach her ASL. so those next three years were spent with her, with baby, and keeping up with the news.

1944, jack was sent to the frontlines in the normandy landings. the story went that he went out blazing, that he at least had that much to his legacy, but who could tell any of the thousands of d-day bodies apart ?

monty didn’t need to hear to know that silence fell over his family. he could feel it, even when they were talking at dinner. life only returned in 1945 as a broadcast celebrating two nuclear bombings played ! and monty... he didn’t know what to feel. this meant the war was over, right ? finally, a sigh of relief ! but how many innocent people had died in the fallout of it ? how long would those effects last ?

he did not wake up in his bedroom the next morning. he woke up when a piece of rubble blew against his forehead. and he was surrounded by complete and utter waste. it was hot -- no, it was cold. he assumed it was loud -- no, he assumed it was quiet. there were a few fires burning in the snow, and there was plenty of rubble to spare. nothing was standing. it was completely empty, completely desolate. 

he didn’t know where he was or how he got there. the more he explored, a terrified young boy trying to get home, the more he wondered when he was. 

a few weeks in, unsure of how he was still alive -- but not questioning it -- he came across a tunnel that led underground. already figuring he was going to die if he didn’t find something fast, this was the first sign he’d seen of any life since he’d woken up -- he kept going, past extra doors until he reached one that was bolted shut and looked to serve as some kind of vacuum. 

he did not know it. he could not know it. but, on the other side of that wall, a radio picked up the first broadcast it had heard in ages -- some sort of morse code. a few hours of sitting against that final door that he could not even begin to open, it opened with a gust of air. he dragged himself in. it was shut with that same gust of air.

a man peered through a slit and, after hours of trying to communicate when all monty could see were his eyes, a sentence of 1s and 0s... he stripped himself of his clothes, scrubbed himself with the water and sponge that sat in the corner, and was swiftly let into that final room and tossed a pair of clothes that were a few sizes too big for him. but he wore them, of course.

he was given half a can of uncooked sweet beans, half a bottle of water, and half of some... futuristic chip that he was prompted to sit on his tongue. and half of his nutrient requirements were met.

the man would point viciously to the radio, tap on it... all sorts of insanity that meant nothing to monty until he took a sheet of paper and wrote out a cipher: morse code and the related letters. he, the man, couldn’t risk losing paper to the amount of letters in a word -- a few dots and lines were a quicker solution, and, as he told monty, he could hear him over the radio... which would be cause for concern later.

what year is it ? ive stopped counting. i thought every1 was ded. where am i ? used 2 b canada. what happened ? the east. the east ? yes. what do you mean, the east ? ur not from here. no. where? illinois. america.  u dont know? i don’t. do u know what yr it is? it was 1945, last i checked.

he and the man spent the next four months together underground, the man eventually coming up with a way to express morse code without the paper. tap monty on the shoulder, make him watch him tap the wall in morse code. but it was far from paradise, and, more than that ? their supplies were running out faster than expected, what with the man only having prepared supplies for himself.

he volunteered to go look for supplies aboveground, but monty realized that he was the one who was communicating through the radio. if something happened to the man, monty would have no way to know ; if something happened to monty, however ? so he left with a walkie-talkie, an extra coat, and half a canteen of water.

it grew colder and the conditions grew worse. by the time he finally found a few non-perishables locked away in a safe, he didn’t know where he was. he couldn’t find his way back to the man. and the signal only worked one way. so he had two options of what to tell the man: he was going to stay where he was, or he was going to keep moving and hope for the best.

if he did the former, there was a good chance the man would have to leave and try to find him. if he did the latter, he was diving further into the possibility that he’d never see that shelter again... but there was also that slim possibility that he’d be saving them both if he could find him... so he sent a signal that he was lost, but he was going to keep moving and hope for the best. the walkie-talkie wave seemed to tap against his mind, to offer the only description possible: ‘goodbye, ed.’ ‘goodbye, monty.’

he was thirteen when he hopped again, this time quick as a flash. hopped just far back enough to watch the missiles fall from the sky, cars ‘screeching’ to a halt, mothers holding their children close, and pulled forward just in time to survive the blast. this time, a different country. this time, closer to the fallout. 

there was no one for him this time, though. he was on his own. he sent out frequencies, but saw nothing. felt nothing. 

certain his streak of good bad luck had finally run out, turned to simple bad luck, he was only days away from succumbing to his hunger or his dehydration or the elements or all three... but, instead of dying, he woke up in his bed. in 1949. four years after he went missing.

his family had been certain he, too, had died. perhaps ran away first, gotten lost, then gotten himself killed. it had been four years after they woke up and didn’t find him in his bed, after all ! was it a miracle ? yes ! did it also feel like some kind of abomination, like something ungodly ? yes ! 

after the initial many-a-hug, they grew... frightened ! he connected to the house radio and morse code played, explaining his unbelievable absence... but no one there knew morse code ?! and no one there knew asl ?! and speaking took more effort than he’d like to put in, especially after all those years completely shut up ?! where was mary to translate for him ? where was baby ?

that much, he could express. chicago. as ed taught him how to say in morse code: what a goddamn shithole !

but, only moments later, everyone’s attention snapped to the radio. they understood what he was trying to say. after the initial shock, they were mouthing: we can hear you. with vicious points: the radio. we hear you.

the story he told was completely unbelievable. but so was being able to hear his speech through the radio, so... live and let live...

they did take note of how he began to draw more into himself. he became obsessed with this nuclear apocalypse he claimed to have witnessed, he drew a strange man with dots and lines underneath and hung it up in his room. he couldn’t focus in school and his grades suffered terribly. at 17, seeing he was still as distant as ever, still writing in morse code, still drawing that man and trying to tell everyone who it was and what was going to happen and no he didn’t know the year or the details or- they had him institutionalized.

before he could undergo more than two rounds of electroshock therapy, he was an 18y/o in 1962. just in time for the cuban missile crisis. and this time ? not only had he seen the after effects of nuclear bombings, he understood the magnitude of this threat. and this time ? they were not fighting to free concentration camps and prisoners of war, they were fighting just to prove who was more powerful. they were building walls and sending dogs into space because they had to prove one was better than the other... and if they had to press the button to really show who was who, then they had to press the button. 

was this the wasteland monty had witnessed ? he didn’t know. he didn’t want to find out. he could put a stop to it somehow, right ? he was the only person who’d seen both, as far as he was aware...

traveling to the 70s, the country was still together -- and tensions were still high. without any other ideas, he began doing what only idealists would think would work: sending false reports over radios and broadcasts. but instead of bringing people together through shared fear -- and shared gratitude that they were still alive when they learned that the report had been a hoax -- he just scared them, then brought them back to their regular lives (those who didn’t kill themselves or run to their shelters, that is).

he continued moving back and forth within the timeline of the cold war, relentlessly trying to stop the crisis... but he only had so much he could do without making it even worse. he could activate it. if he wanted to, he could activate it.

in 1991, when the announcement that the cold war was over was made, something in his timeline glitched. he spent three days in wwii, the first two being... entirely random to him, the final one being right there in d-day... where he got to see that jack didn’t go out blazing. and he was pulled just in time -- but this time, to three days in the trenches of the vietnam war, a useless side effect of the cold war. about to be taken prisoner, he was pulled forward into the year 1999 in the middle of a countdown to a new kind of apocalypse, just to be pulled even further forward into 2020... and he finally had reprieve.

but if wwii wasn’t the cause of the nuclear apocalypse, and if the cold war wasn’t the cause of the nuclear apocalypse, then it still had yet to come. and the doomsday clock was moving fast.

left in actual civilization and... no immediate peril in 2020 chicago, he spent the next two years starting to cultivate a life. every now and again, he would glitch to a different year for a few days, but the power he had never been able to tame... seemed to be beginning to tame itself as he spent more time in a calm, but focused, state of mind.

he took on a job as a disc jockey, using the walkie-talkie he’d always held onto to transmit his thoughts across the microphone. a very standard american voice. and, so long as he had the walke-talkie with him, one that he could transmit from anywhere in the city. as long as he intercepted at the necessary times, it didn’t matter if he was in the station or not... which has been very helpful for his digging.

the end ?

TIMELINE:

BORN - in late 1934, completely deaf. already had three siblings... would have even more later on.

GENERAL EARLY SCHOOL YEARS?: was discouraged from, sometimes punished for, using ASL at school due to oral education being at its peak. he was taught english, speech, and lip-reading, but that only extends so far. his eldest brother, jack, learned sign to communicate and connect with him. the rest of his family was a little bit busy with the amount of kids...

AGE 6: at eighteen, his brother has a child with his first wife, mary. monty becomes an uncle.

AGE 7: jack goes off to fight in wwii. mary takes up his torch when it comes to providing monty with company. 

AGE 10: word is sent that jack died fighting in the frontlines in the normandy landings.

AGE 11-12: atomic bombs fall on hiroshima & nagasaki and everyone is celebrating. this is something that monty both does and does not understand... wakes up in the fallout of a nuclear apocalypse. it’s not 1945 anymore, it’s not illinois anymore.  he hopelessly travels around for weeks, unsure of how he’s alive! and, right as he’s sure he’ll be succumbing to the elements, he finds the passage to an underground bunker. after a whole series of events, he manages to get inside a safe place with a man named ed. ed manages to communicate to monty that he had sent morse over the radio. and when monty doesn’t understand, ed creates a morse-code-to-english-alphabet cipher and begins speaking to him using that as monty communicates over the radio. monty learns he’s in canada, but ed doesn’t know what year it is anymore. the cause of the atomic bomb that had hit was ‘the east.’ they eventually devise a strategy that’ll use no paper at all. ed taps monty on the shoulder and has him watch him tap the wall.

AGE 13: they start running out of supplies. ed volunteers to brave the elements, but, ultimately, monty figures that he’s the one who can communicate through technology. if ed tried to send word to him over the radio, he wouldn’t hear it, but the same wouldn’t be said when it came to monty. monty took a walkie-talkie with him and traveled out. when he finally came across non-perishables, he realized he was completely lost. he decided to tell ed that he was going to keep walking and hope for the best. they exchanged goodbyes. monty felt ed’s morse coming through the walkie-talkie. he hops back in time, just a few years, and watches as the missiles head right towards him -- whatever new country he’s in. disaster occurs all around him as women hug their children and cars come to a sudden halt and the timeline saves him by mere milliseconds, jumping him forward a few months. he spends the next year trapped in this side of the wasteland with no one to talk to.

AGE 14: he wakes up in his home, just barely making it out alive. but it’s 1949. after a few mistrials, he communicates with his family over the radio. and they cannot believe their eyes or ears: first of all, he’d just literally spoken through the radio? second of all, he... had been in a nuclear apocalypse? not just missing? hmm...

AGES 14-17: he is constantly preoccupied with this ‘fallout.’ he’s drawn into himself. he talks about it, he draws pictures of some guy with some symbols underneath... wtf?

AGE 17: his family decides to institutionalize him.

AGE 18: after going through two rounds of electroshock therapy, he is transported to 1962, just in time for the cuban missile crisis.

AGES 18-28: the timeline decides it wants him right in the middle of the cold war. he’s certain that this is what will bring the nuclear apocalypse if he can’t stop it. he goes about it by sending false broadcasts, hoping to unite people under gratitude when they come out with their lives... or maybe fear... or maybe love... but nothing seems to work. everything he tries tends to just make things worse. he could activate it if he wanted to.

AGE 28: he’s in 1991 and the cold war is over. with that news, the timeline fritzed.  he was in wwii for a few days. the final day, he was by his brother and saw that he did not go out blazing. then he was in the vietnam war for a few days. about to be taken as prisoner, the timeline yanked him to a party he was not invited to on december 31st, 1999. it was in a bunker with a group of people counting down to the end of civilization. when the clock was one second away from hitting january 1st, 2000, he was pulled forward to 2020. nothing seemed to be immediately off, unlike his past three destinations...

AGE 29: he decides it would be best to stop relying on homeless shelters -- the timeline has not interfered in a while, so he pools together some money and eventually gets a shoddy apartment in chicago.

AGES 30-32: he builds a life in chicago. he still travels every now and again, but he hasn’t spent more than two days in a different time in years. although he still can’t quite tame his power, it seems to be taming itself. he becomes a disc jockey. due to the main requirement being, you know, working through radio waves, so long as he has his walkie-talkie to communicate over, he can run the job from anywhere in the city. this is in the headcanons section, but it’s important to note that he also uses his walkie-talkie to talk to other people. ever since it started translating morse into direct words, he doesn’t have to rely on sign, and what they say gets translated in his mind through the walkie-talkie. 

HEADCANONS:

I’M GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE AN OFFICIAL REQUEST THAT, IF YOU KNOW SIGN LANGUAGE, IGNORE WHAT HE’S SAYING IN ALL OF THE GIFS.

much like his fc, he is completely deaf. he is familiar with and fluent in ASL, but carries a walkie-talkie to communicate his thoughts and translate the words of others into morse code to ensure the general ability to communicate with anyone he comes across. (yes, it would probably work with other devices. no, he is not going to give his walkie-talkie up to experiment with that.)

identified as straight until he was 15 (...i mean, the 1940s-50s + four years spent without other people, save for a few months with a guy closer to a father figure than anything else...). identified as bi until he was 20. identified as gay until he was 25. identified as bi until he was 27... has always really relied on the decade... doesn’t fully know what to label himself as, simply uses queer.

moving back and forth in the timestream has its pros and its cons. one pro ? he can survive for weeks, even months, after traveling forward without food and water. traveling backwards ? he better get to some water damn fast.

his father had some sort of dormant mutation related to bad luck, hence why monty only seemed to travel to shitty historical events. a secret his eldest brother kept was that he had telepathy... and used that to understand what monty was saying, not ASL. 

his on-air persona is ‘sonny/sunny,’ inspired by the ‘sunshine units’ & project sunshine ; the station is radio KONT - aka, radio contingency (with a ‘k’ because all american radio stations have to either start with a ‘k’ or a ‘w’ and actually chicago is based in the ‘w’ region, but... i came up with that name before i knew that so... pretend with me!)

has also kept the clothes that ed gave him to change into. is not an artist, but does have a picture of a poorly-drawn ed hanging in his apartment with morse code for ‘goodbye’ beneath it.

uses 40s-80s slang like any of it is still applicable. but with most of his childhood spent in the 30s/40s and most of his early adult years spent in the 60s-80s... look at that tubular dish! she sure is groovy!

CONNECTION IDEAS:

relatives ! as i said, he had a hoard of siblings and should, technically, be 88. plenty of time there ! could even have a child ! who’s older than him...

exes/flings/ons/etc ! you have to be careful when you have an untamable power that’ll put you in peril one second and drag you out the next. although he loves the company of others, he’s never gotten very close to anyone due to this... but...

regular listeners/callers ! eye think that could be fun.

people whose relatives he knew ! the 1940s-1990s were a wild time !

plenty of other things ! my mind is just getting fried from my cormac mccarthy novel :\ 

[lafeae]

Prized/prize fighter Au (am I predictable as hell? yes I am)

So this is actually a part of Anthropolgie Sanguine, all of it coming from the original prompt of "Its just a bit of blood. I'm fine."

Basically, the plot of it is a post-apocalyptic setting where these tight-knit cities that are little kingdoms of warlords who, basically, use bloodsport to keep people in line. Usually by taking wastelanders/wanderers with no place to call home and making them like gladiators.

Specifically there's a bit of rivalry between Seto and Gozaburo, and Seto finds/claims Joey from the wastes.

The scene in mind tho, is like a cage match where Joey narrowly wins and then dialogue with "Coach" Seto, sort of a bubble of a larger thing.

I'm wondering if I'll ever get into it. So much world-building 🙃

[m42-fr]

You know, this new Plague background (which I love, by the way) is giving me a lot of thoughts on the absolute shock a native Plague dragon must have upon seeing the outside world for the first time.

Like, imagine you’re some Plague dragon. You were hatched and raised deep in the heart of the territory, where the earth is reddened flesh and the forests are of bone. The hazy orange sun, green-smog sky, and bubbling rivers of bile are your home, your idea of normal. This is the only world you’ve ever known.

You’ve heard stories of the other territories, of course. Travelers and traders tell you how the outside world is dominated by cold, alien blue: the sky, they say, is blue, and so are the seas, and everything in-between is a deeper, colder green than the lukewarm bile-pits of the Wasteland. To you, for whom the color of life is the red that runs in your veins and beneath your talons, you cannot imagine what it is like to live in a universe devoid of such sanguine hues. Every part of the Plaguebringer’s domain is alive with hot blood and pulsing flesh, and a land without their colors feels cold, cloying, and dead. They tell you that the outside world is not dead - conversely, it is somehow more alive than your realm - and that the bloodless, dark greens of the plant-forests are seen as reassuring and normal. You do not understand why so many outsiders seem perturbed by the sound of the land’s heartbeat when the night grows dark and quiet. 

Perhaps you will adjust to the outside world, in time. But when your travels take you to the edges of your territory, and you see glimpses of those bizarre lands, you cannot shake the pervasive sense of wrongness that clings to those images. They look dead, devoid of the color of life; yet, they are overwhelmingly noisy from all of the life that lives within, as opposed to the quiet serenity of the sparse Wasteland. The contradiction alone is jarring enough, and everything else about how these outsiders live - the materials they use in their construction, their ignorance of the bounty of resources around them, their opposition to basic survival techniques that even a hatchling knows - is equally foreign.

You don’t think you’ll ever be able to understand the strangeness of the outside world, not truly. But even if you don’t like it, even if you don’t understand it, adaptability is the utmost skill of all of the Plaguebringer’s offspring, and you will change yourself to overcome any challenges the outside can throw at you. At the end of the day, though, nothing will be more welcoming and nostalgic than the sanguine veins and hazy sunsets of your home.