#Striped Starfish

[clarktooncrossing]

HEY THERE PEOPLE OF TODAY AND ROBOTS OF TOMORROW! IT'S ME, CLARK! There is a madness deep in the dark catacombs of Castle Clarkenstein. For years these claustrophobic corridors have been the home of the ghoulish giraffe himself, watching as the world passes by. He prefers it this way. It gives him more time alone with the voices. The voices tell him many strange things. Yet they always come back to one: make more monsters! Everyday they tell him this. Everyday he is unable to comply. Hey, being a mad scientist on a budget means he can’t afford the fancy scientific equipment needed to breathe life into newborn abominations. Guy’s gotta afford pizza somehow. Luckily, he has discovered a way of sorts to please the voices. During all those years of watching, Dr. Clarkenstein noticed a particular pattern. Every night during October saw artists posting new pictures based on peculiar prompts. Many of them based on children of the night. While the spotted specter might not be able to craft new zombies, he can sure as heck sketch’m! As such, I provide this friendly warning to you all now: Be afraid. Few people can survive the horrors that are DUDELZ of the Damned!

By that I mean I decided to do my own take on Sketchtober this year just minus the prompts. Anybody gotta problem with that? Tough, cuz I already drew this crap so you might as well check it out.

You know what’s really scary? How we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about Earth's oceans. Centuries of sailing, navigating, and exploring the big blue ball has still garnered very little knowledge of what lies below the waves. Considering what we have discovered though, maybe that’s for the better. For down in the deepest, darkest trenches of the seven seas lives some of the most frightening fish known to man. Blobfish, vampire squid, giant spider crabs, ghost sharks, who knows what else is down there? Polka Shark does. While out searching for a midnight munchie the nutty predator came upon a strange, glowing fish buried deep beneath the sand. Being the sensible sort of creature he was, Polka swam away without giving the glowing fish another thought. And by that I mean of course he ate it. So now he’s a zombie.

For this DUDEL, fans of Polka Shark can breathe a sigh of relief. Much like when Goofy died in 1999’s How to Haunt a House, this is only temporary. It’s also an idea I’ve had for a while. Assuming my memory isn’t faulty, this idea initially took shape back in my days attending CTI, quickly scribbling a zombified shark in the margins of my homework. I ran the sketch by Polka’s original creator Finjix and he got a giggle out of the idea as well. A decade later and I finally got around to sketching the whole idea out properly. My time management skills are rivaled by no one! Still, I think the wait was worth it. My attention to detail has gotten better since my college days, resulting in an undead fish that looks notably more rotten. His flesh is flaking off, black ooze is dripping from his maw, there’s a giant hook stuck in his head, it’s all so gross and I love it! Unlike Striped Starfish. His expression perfectly sums this sketch up. I hope you all enjoy this DUDEL more than he does.

MAY THE GLASSES BE WITH YOU!

[ryartchus]

🌊.

[colorsoutofearth]

Close-up detail of the striped sunstar (Solaster stimpsoni)

Photo by Shane Gross

[f-airchilds]

Bathroom Powder Room An illustration of an eclectic powder room design with a white bathroom, recessed panel cabinets, and an undermount sink

[literallyfrist]

Guest - Bedroom

[vestaignis]

Рог тритона , или харония тритон , или тритонов рог— брю­хоногий моллюск из рода Charonia . В древнегреческой ми­фологии существует легенда, что Зевс наг­радил Пана рогом Три­тона, который издавал громкие звуки, слу­жа сигнальной трубой.

Раковина Тритониса одна из самых больших ракушек в мире - ее длина до 45 см. Имеет ба­шневидную форму, с крупным последним оборотом и стройной заострённ­ой вершиной. Общая окраска раковины харонии— бежевая, с множеств­ом С-образных пятен и линий коричневого цвета. Спиральные бо­роздки оранжевые, за­родышевая раковина фиолетовая. Окраска ноги моллюска ярко-жёлтая с широ­кими поперечными чер­ными полосами.

Тритонов рог обитает на глубине 5—30 м. Насе­ляет коралловые рифы и мелководья. Этот брю­хоногий моллюск хищни­к. Питается в основн­ом морской звездой «терновый венец», мор­скими ежами, гребешк­ами. Слюнные железы моллюска вырабатывают секрет, содержащий 3—4 % свободной се­рной кислоты, а также аспарагиновую кисл­оту, приводящую игло­кожих в состояние оц­епенения.

Распространена харония тритон в Тропическом Индо-Тих­оокеанском районе - от Филиппинских остров­ов до Окинавы. На островах Океании раковины этого моллю­ска применяли в каче­стве музыкального ин­струмента — трубы. Островитяне высверли­вали отверстие в вер­хних оборотах завитк­а, что позволяло пол­учать звуки различных тональностей и исп­олнять мелодии.

Triton's horn, or Charonia triton, or Triton's horn is a gastropod mollusk of the genus Charonia. In ancient Greek mythology, there is a legend that Zeus awarded Pan with Triton's horn, which made loud sounds, serving as a signal trumpet.

Triton's shell is one of the largest shells in the world - its length is up to 45 cm. It has a tower-shaped shape, with a large last whorl and a slender pointed apex. The general color of the Charonia shell is beige, with many C-shaped spots and lines of brown color. Spiral grooves are orange, the embryonic shell is purple. The color of the mollusk's foot is bright yellow with wide transverse black stripes.

Triton's horn lives at a depth of 5-30 m. It inhabits coral reefs and shallow waters. This gastropod is a predator. It feeds mainly on the crown-of-thorns starfish, sea urchins, and scallops. The salivary glands of the mollusk produce a secretion containing 3-4% free sulfuric acid, as well as aspartic acid, which causes echinoderms to become stupefied.

The triton charonia is widespread in the tropical Indo-Pacific region - from the Philippines to Okinawa. On the islands of Oceania, the shells of this mollusk were used as a musical instrument - a pipe. The islanders drilled a hole in the upper turns of the curl, which allowed them to produce sounds of various tonalities and perform melodies.

Источник: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV1D_QmbehA&ab_ channel =JamesKregness, //dzen.ru/a/X5nMW5A3CFgh7EpC, /animals.pibig.info/37363-haronija-triton.html,//i-prize.ru /products / charonia-tritonis,/seaforum.aqualogo.ru/topic/54178-улитка-рог-тритона-charonia-tritonis/,http://www.underwaterkwaj.com /shell/ triton/Charonia-tritonis.htm.

[shy-writer-999]

I’ve never actually said (written???) this to anyone before but I need to say it. I need to get it out there.

I’m a slut for the idea of somnophilia with Ace. I feel like that’s a fairly common thing (or at least, I’ve seen it a few times?), but I’ve never actually admitted it. I wanna wake him up by sucking on his cock until he comes to and starts face fucking me and calling me his good girl, or riding him until he comes deep inside and I only realize he’s awake when he starts talking about how pretty I look rocking on his dick. I want him to get me even closer to coming myself with his morning voice alone because you know it’s damn good. Just. Hnnngh. I want iiittt.

*reaches for my vibrator*

what a lovely picture you have painted for me. like if ace told you he's really into it, you'd have absolutely noooo problem meeting that need. i'm sure he'd love it. also holy shit I love anything that entails the phrase “good girl." anyways, i came up with around ~1k words based on your prompt, but i'm not sure it is as good as what you came up with! check it out under the cut (≧◡≦) i'll edit this more tomorrow!

**but first, a note! i am here for the somnophilia as long as there's established consent beforehand and DUHHHH ik that's implied but perhaps i ought to state that! so, let that previously established consent stand for the smut below! also, you mentioned that somno is common, and i would like to confirm that, at least in my personal experience, many men eat that shit up. so… feel no shame in admitting that, anon, because its very real and iconic of u to like the idea. 💅💅 (if i do say so myself LOL)

Ace + Somnophilia

It was around 5AM and you couldn’t sleep. Ace took up the entire bed, starfishing it while you were curled up next to him, cheek resting on his chest. Considering the fact that you’d just woken up from a steamy dream, there was one thing on your mind. Heat was blooming at your core and you could feel wetness pooling between your legs already. There was only one solution, which happened to be one of Ace’s favorite things.

You crept your hand towards the bulge in Ace’s boxer briefs and ran a palm over it. He was such a heavy sleeper that it didn’t register. His deep breaths continued, quiet and comforting. You continued to pass your hand over his cock, massaging his balls briefly through the fabric and grinding your palm down. He got hard so fast, but his breathing didn’t change at all—he was sound asleep.

Sitting up slowly, you scooted off the bed so that you could walk around and climb back up, this time positioned between his knees. You knew that one of his favorite things was to wake up with his cock in your mouth—and what a perfect time for it, since you couldn’t sleep. On your knees between his wide-spread thighs, you tugged at the waistband of his boxers until they were low enough to give you access to his cock. It was large and veiny. In the muted morning light trickling in through the half-covered window, you could see just enough to tell that his tip was already pink and enflamed.

You were careful not to wake him as you grasped his shaft and stoked it lazily a couple of times. You licked a long, wet stripe from base to tip and repeated the motion until you started to taste milky white pearls of precum seeping from him.

He was still asleep.

After a few minutes of slowly licking his shaft and sucking the precum from his slit, you reached a hand up to softly cradle his balls. At the same time, you finally took his whole length into your mouth. You could feel and taste his precum at the back of your tongue as you sucked your cheeks in and started to bob up and down on his cock.

You sucked him off for a few minutes, alternating between cradling his balls with one hand and dragging your fingers over his shaft with the other. You were getting lost in it, so focused on the process of sucking him off that you didn’t realize when his hands tangled in your hair and pushed your head down. He bucked his hips up at the same time, making you gag on his length as it poked the back of your throat. He held you like that for a second, taking in the warm, slippery feeling of his cock throbbing in your mouth.

Ace groaned, half awake. “Good morning, beautiful.” His voice was scratchy and husky, not warmed up yet from his pleasure-filled awakening. When his voice got like this in the morning it made you feel feral—something about that deep and gravelly sound made you need him more than usual.

He pulled your head up until your lips were wrapped around his head, and then plunged you down on it, eliciting another filthy noise as you gagged on him again. He was fully awake now “Fuckkkk, its so early and you’re already taking it for me like a good girl.”

He proceeded to face fuck you until you were a mess—his precum was dribbling out of the corners of your mouth, your hands were covered in your own spit, and every sound he made went straight to your cunt. You were dripping wet and dying for his touch, wishing he’d put his cock in you and fuck you until you couldn’t talk anymore. But instead, he was fucking your face for now.

Your breaths were labored. You used every shred of control to breathe through your nose, but his cock was twitching and his hands didn’t give you any reprieve. “Just like that, baby. ‘M gonna fuck your mouth full, just like you wanted. You gonna swallow my cum, sweetheart? Every last drop?” You attempted to nod but you were unsuccessful, on account of his hands tightly gripping your head. He could tell that you were trying to nod, at least.

His hips jerked upwards every time he pushed your head down. The choking, muffled sounds you made were vibrating his cock. “Hang in there, just a little bit longer. There’s my girl.”

By the time he came down your throat, you were so far gone that you swallowed his seed without a second thought. He pulled you off his cock with a popping noise, and you crawled up his chest and collapsed.

“You can’t give up yet, sugar. Don’t you want to ride me first?”

[rotworld]

7: Night Shift

art by @exorbitantsqueakingnoises

you work in one of the tourist traps along a popular beach pier known for its party scene. it's a night like any other. you have no idea about the unusual party crashers who are about to show up and ruin everything.

->original work. explicit; contains non-con, graphic descriptions of violence, feral behavior, hard vore, mind control, terato, non-human genitalia.

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Last week, it was “Greek Gods of the Sea.” Togas and tridents, mostly, some seashell bikinis, a few fake beards stuffed with plastic starfish. They drank too much and cranked the music too loud, but that’s nothing new. Everyone knows what to expect from the Lucky Rock Pier Party People Association (“Lurpppa” to the local news, “Trouble at Ten O’Clock” to your fellow boardwalk employees, “Those Fucking Kids” to beachfront property owners). 

You wear headphones most nights anyway, desperate to keep the shrill, repetitive carnival songs of the pier funhouse from being seared into your brain. They don’t bother you much because the sign at the front says there’s no bathroom and all the hot dogs and funnel cakes are further down the boardwalk, but a few will trickle in just for something to do. If they spot the freezer, they’ll huddle around the glass and stare like the Mona Lisa’s in there, agonizing over a choice between an ice cream sandwich or fruit pops. 

Tonight, it’s a glow party. Neon beach balls and glow stick arches. You can’t hear the noise they’re making through your headphones but you can feel the bass throbbing through your feet. Someone’s probably going to call the cops again. The tourist family population retreats this time of night so it’s just you, the handful of shops still open this late, and Trouble at Ten O’Clock. This one’s more fun to watch, at least, bright and colorful like the spill of noctiluca. They’re vivid in glow-in-the-dark body paint, covered in luminescent stripes, swirls and splatters. 

A few of them come stumbling up the pier earlier than usual. Three women in different halter tops, painted with matching curly cues and butterflies on their faces. One of them wanders off to look at the tote bags. Another, much more inebriated, leans heavily against her friend. The designated driver, you assume, who drags her to the freezer to pick out something to eat. You glance down at the beach and see one of them sitting on Lucky Rock, the jagged chunk of stone sticking out of the water not far from shore. You’re not sure how he climbed up the slippery, steep sides but he’s definitely not supposed to be up there. The people on the beach are way too excited about it, gathered around cheering and hollering. 

Three ice cream sandwiches are dropped on the counter in front of you. You lift one side of your headphones and shrieking noise rushes in, the glow party just as raucous as you expected. “Will that be all?” you ask. The woman nods. Her friend starts to fall over and she has to support her weight against her shoulder. You ring up the total and she groans. Everything on the boardwalk is three times the price it should be, but she adds a tote bag when the other woman wanders back with one and tosses their ice cream inside. “Thanks, come again,” you call, sliding your headphones back on.

Ten minutes until closing time. Not much to do but sweep out the sand gathered in the doorway and tidy up the disaster zone a horde of children made of the stuffed animal section. Sharks and dolphins on the top shelf, turtles on the second, fish and starfish on the third—

Something moves in the corner of your eye. Startled, you turn and find a man ambling slowly through the store. A stray from the glow party, you think at first. Then you look again, paying attention this time. He looks like all the partygoers down on the beach, a silhouette with luminescent edges, but he shouldn’t. Not under the store lights. He’s midnight blue from head to toe beneath intricate glowing patterns, chest and shoulders speckled with small dots like cyan freckles with larger spots along his sides. Thin stripes trace the outlines of muscle beneath the skin, turning into a spiral pattern at his hips. 

Which you can see, you realize, because he’s naked. No swim trunks. No speedo. He’s wet and dripping all over the floor like he just crawled out of the water, a puddle slowly growing beneath his feet, and you can follow the course of every droplet as they roll slowly down curves and valleys of lithe swimmer’s muscles. Some of the lines on his torso are moving, you realize. Horizontal squiggles on either side of his abdomen flinch and pulsate. 

Gills, you realize. The pieces come together all at once in your mind. Despite working the boardwalk as long as you have, you’ve never seen a sea muse before. Most people haven’t. They’re skittish, you’ve heard. They prefer quiet coves and grottos, places humans have a harder time reaching. Safer that way if they decide to shed their tail and sun themselves for a while. This one certainly doesn’t seem bothered by the commotion down at the beach, poking through the t-shirt rack with long, clawed fingers. He doesn’t look much like the pictures you’ve seen, either, but all the pictures are of muses lurking in tropical reefs, big-finned and colorful like bettas. Beautiful like him, but not bioluminescent and not quite so large. He must come from deeper, colder waters. 

You set down a stuffed octopus as gently as you can but he hears it, turning swiftly to face you. Your heart races. He has the large, eerie eyes of an abyssal creature, glowing half-moons gleaming underneath wide silver irises and black sclera. Nobody prepared you for what to do in this situation. Do you play dead? Raise your arms and make noise to scare him off? What you mistook for slicked back hair is some kind of shimmery membrane. It flares out like the neck flap of a cobra in a threat display, but it starts to sag and flatten the longer you stare at each other. His eyes move slightly in their wide sockets, looking you over head to toe. 

An uncannily human smile spreads across his face. He makes some odd gestures towards you. His mouth moves. He’s talking, you realize, trying to communicate. You almost lift your headphones off but your brain catches up at the last second. You don’t know a lot about sea muses but you know enough to keep your ears covered. 

He blinks, staring at you in almost comical wide-eyed confusion. Then he smirks, his gills fluttering with laughter. He starts pacing back and forth, slowly inching closer like a shark circling prey in the water. He’s between you and the door so you inch towards the register counter instead. Maybe you can slip out the back? 

He stops suddenly, leaving some distance between you. He speaks again, tapping the side of his head and pointing at you. You shake your head and he frowns, but he doesn’t give up. You watch, morbid curiosity overpowering your fear, as he starts to move in a slow, seductive manner. It’s some kind of dance, you think, arching his back and extending the membrane on his head again, bioluminescence glittering on thin, translucent flesh. He holds your gaze as he runs a hand down the center of his chest, over his stomach, down to his pelvis and—

You’re not entirely sure what you expected to see between his legs, but it’s still a bit of a shock. The thick, jutting member is deep indigo at the base and a lighter aquamarine down the length. It barely resembles a human cock except in its vaguely phallic silhouette, oozing from an engorged sheath that dribbles cloudy slime. The shaft is smooth with a gentle upward curve, thick and shuddering with unnatural flexibility. It narrows to a soft triangular tip. Two additional appendages unfold from his hips. They remind you of crustacean legs, rigid and insectoid. They bend along two joints, pawing at the air with their sharp claw tips. 

The sea muse makes a thrusting motion. The tentacle-cock wraps around his hand, drooling like a tongue. His bioluminescent patches flash and dim like a flickering candle. You’re no marine biologist but it feels safe to assume this is a mating display.

“Uh. No? No thanks,” you say.

He grins. You see a row of daggers for teeth. He speaks slowly and your heart skips a beat when you clearly read the words, Are you sure? on his lips. 

“I’m sure. Thanks anyway.” Maybe you should be flattered. You’ve never heard of anyone getting hit on by a sea muse. He lets out a big, disappointed sigh, extra dramatic so you can’t miss it, and gives himself one last stroke before he moves on. You half-expect the cock to slither back into its sheath, but it stays obscenely hard and straining upright between his legs.

To your dismay, he doesn’t leave but instead pokes around the shop some more. He wanders to the left, examining surfboard keychains and hibiscus shot glasses. He wanders to the right, squinting at the postcards. Eventually, he makes his way to the freezer and slides it open with some difficulty. His head membrane flares out wider than you’ve ever seen it the first time he sticks his hand inside. You wonder if he hissed. He tries again, pinching a fruit pop in its colorful package between his claws. He rips the plastic open.

“Hey!” you say. “You can’t just—”

He looks back over his shoulder at you, eyes narrowed and membrane spread in warning. You turn away and continue to mind your own business. 

The glow party seems to be winding down. The beach balls are all sitting in a pile. Some of the glow stick arches have toppled over. The pounding bass isn’t shaking the pier anymore. You see a lot of people lounging in the sand, rolling around, stretched out together, a bunch of them writhing—

Oh, you think. That’s bold, even for Trouble at Ten O’Clock. There’s no mistaking those thrusting, grinding, back and forth movements for anything else. There are a few couples scattered around but most of them have settled into a spot worryingly close to the water, seafoam rushing around them whenever the waves come surging up the beach. They tangle together in passionate motion, kissing and caressing and fucking like it’s the last night of their lives.

Something about it unsettles you. They’re being so rough with each other. This isn’t a slow, sensual orgy but a frenzy. Mindless, animalistic rutting and forceful movements. You see mouths open in silent screams. Some of them aren’t moving. Some of them are trying to crawl away but they’re being dragged back by the ankle, the hair, the arm, pulled through the dark sand. Why is the sand so dark? And wet, glistening where the tide hasn’t risen yet. 

The horrific realization grips you slowly. You’re in denial. You must be having a nightmare. A man tries to claw his way up the beach but someone else pins him down, straddles his back. You don’t see what happens, can’t make it out in the dark, but the paint on his body stretches and splits, and the sand darkens in a liquid motion under him. A woman arches her back in the throes of ecstasy, surrounded on all sides by eager, thrusting bodies. They’re biting her, you realize. Their heads lower and blood splashes the sand. Through all of it, she squirms and rakes her fingers through the sound as though she’s never felt pleasure like this before. Someone crawls between her legs and she opens them eagerly, loops them around the waist of something that is not human, you realize. None of the ones surrounding her are. They glow more brightly in more precise patterns, membranes pulsating, gills fluttering.

Your headphones are ripped away, clattering uselessly to the floor. You hear an awful cacophony of moaning, screaming, begging, and weeping. You think, for just a second, about running. Your muscles tense and your heart races. Where? For how long? You don’t know but you’re willing to try. 

“Where are you going?” says the sea muse and you can’t move a muscle. His voice is low and melodic. You hear the ocean when he speaks; the hiss and splash of the shallows, the heavy drone of the deep. “Hm? Do you want to join them?” You hear the wet slap of his footsteps for the first time as he comes closer. His hand grasps your chin lightly, barely applying any pressure, but you feel compelled to turn around. To look up at his sharp-toothed smile and the gentle pulse of his bioluminescence. “My shiver is down there. Frenzying,” he says. He turns your head to the side, just far enough to glimpse the gruesome scene on the beach, then returns your gaze to him. 

“Please don’t,” you say hoarsely, your throat constricted. “Don’t make me, don’t—” 

“It’s been so long,” he says, and your mouth snaps shut. “Since I last came ashore.” He walks backwards, his fingers still ghosting against your chin, and you follow. You don’t want to but your legs move on their own. His voice is addictive. You hang on every word and you hope he never stops talking. The silence between makes you tremble. “Even longer since I last mated. You can see it. You can tell how long I’ve waited, if you look.” 

You don’t want to look but your eyes betray you, gaze lowering to the slithering thing between his legs. It curls around itself impatiently like a snake. Another glob of slime slides slowly from its sheath and dribbles on the floor. The way it moves frightens you, the base twitching and undulating, slug-like. 

“You want this,” he says. He takes another step back and you rush forward. He strokes beneath your chin. 

You shake your head desperately. Your mouth is trying to shape the word “yes.”

“You do. You want this.” His back hits the register counter and he leans against it, spreading his legs wide. “You want to taste me,” he says, his voice dipping lower. 

You drop to your knees so fast it hurts, feeling the blooming sting of new bruises. It doesn’t matter that you’re terrified. It doesn’t matter that the thing bobbing in your face is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. You open your mouth and suck the strange, pointed head without hesitation. The sea muse moans and your thighs quiver, inner muscles clenching on nothing. You have to hear it again. 

“You need it,” he purrs, thrusting shallowly. You bob your head, taking him deeper every time. He hits the back of your throat quickly, his cock eager and probing at the inside of your mouth. “You need me to spill inside you. You need everything I have to give.” You moan and choke around his length. His hand rests on the back of your head, forcing you down further. His thrusts get harder and faster, crushing your nose against his slick abdomen. 

Some part of you is screaming at the alien movements of his cock, how it nudges and prods and tries to snake down your throat, but you can’t focus on that. He doesn’t let you. Every grunt and moan, every hiss of praise, makes the fear even more distant. 

“You need—oh, yes,” he groans, clutching your head with both hands as he pounds into your mouth. “You need to mate with me. You need—mm, suck on me, suck on the tip—fuck, you need my milt. I have so much and you need all of it.” 

You make a humiliating, needy sound when he suddenly pulls you off of his cock. It slips out of your mouth reluctantly, the tip sliding back and forth against your lips. He drags you to your feet by the forearm, shoving you against the register counter. He bends you over it, tearing at your clothes with his claws. You cum when he blows softly against your ear. You’re still shivering, clawing mindlessly at the counter when he kisses and licks the shell, sliding his tongue into every little dip and groove. 

“Do you want me?” he whispers. You hear a slick sound, a grunt, and then his hand is at your entrance. He uses the pads of his fingers but he’s not very careful. His claws prick your thighs as ass while he smears thick, warm globs between your legs. “Hm? Do you want me?” 

“Yes,” you sob. You arch your back and try to press your hips back against him. He makes a growling sound against your ear that makes your knees buckle, nipping the lobe playfully. 

“You want to be fucked?” One hand reaches around and roughly works your sex, spreading a warm, tingling sensation. “Want to be filled with milt?” 

“Yes!” 

His cock slides along the curve of your ass, teasing you. Then it slithers down, sliding into just the right angle with the tip pushed against your entrance. “Good human,” he purrs, and your eyes roll back in your head. His tip presses inside and then he’s thrusting hard and fast without warning. More slime drips from his sheath and slides down his length, the tingling slickness easing his punishing rhythm. It wouldn’t matter if the lubrication wasn’t there. You can’t do anything but lay there and gasp and meet his thrusts, needing his cock inside you more than you need to breathe. 

Those sharp, grasping appendages hook around your thighs. You feel them lock into place, their grip tightening until you’re right up against the sea muse’s body. His thrusts don’t slow at all. If anything, he’s even rougher and faster, deep humping thrusts that make you tremble and scream. He keeps talking through all of it no matter how winded and breathless he gets, keeping you right on the precipice of orgasm after orgasm with filthy whispers and wet, open-mouthed kisses against your ear. 

“So tight,” he hisses. “You feel so good, squeezing me like that. You want it so much. I’m going to give you everything. You’re going to be so fucking full.” His hips stutter, losing rhythm. You cum again just as a rush of warm wetness pulses inside you, spurting every time the sea muse thrusts. Thick, creamy liquid churns and foams at your entrance, a trickle dribbling down your thigh. You hear a few drops hit the floor under you. The sea muse rides out his orgasm with long, loud moans that send you over the edge again and again. He crushes you against the counter, hips rolling. One last, slow thrust fills you with another hot gush of his strange cum. 

He breathes heavily. His hips sway while he’s still sheathed inside you and his cock curls just the right way to make you sob for mercy. “Hm? You think we’re done?” he murmurs. “I told you. It’s been a long time. I still have so much more to give you. And you want it, don’t you? You need it?” 

“Yes,” you say, your voice quivering and broken. The sea muse starts to fuck you again and all you can do is let him.

You don’t know when it ends. It could be minutes, or hours, or days. The passage of time is measured in breaths and heartbeats and orgasm after orgasm. The floor is slick and sticky under you, a white puddle of milt steadily growing. You think he bites you but you don’t know. It all feels good, especially when he tells you how perfect you are, how sweet and submissive, how well you’re milking his cock of everything he’s saved for this moment. He makes you ride him once, seated on the counter while he bounces you in his lap. He digs his claws into the meat of your ass and leaves marks. 

You don’t know who finds you. Someone else who works the pier, probably, too horrified and embarrassed for both of you to stick around. The Coast Guard sweeps the water but the sea muses are long gone, leaving nothing behind but the mangled leftovers of their frenzy. The bodies glisten in the sand, torn to shreds like a burst whale carcass. By sunrise, the flies and the seagulls are swarming. You’re escorted to an ambulance with a blanket over your shoulders. The first person to look you in the eyes tells you, very quietly, that you might want to quit your job and consider moving inland. 

“Those are mating marks,” he says. You don’t know how he can possibly tell, given that they’re everywhere. Jagged, oozing circles dot your shoulders, arms, thighs and back. “Because they’re at a very precise depth. Meant to scar, not to kill. That means it’s going to come back.” They tell you not to look at the water but you do, one last time, before you leave. You don’t see anything. That doesn’t mean anything. The water’s deep and it seems to go on forever.

That night, in a hospital bed, you have a dream of someone singing to you. It sounds like the ocean filling your ears.

[saspitite]

PART 1 | POLL 2

SHRIMP TOURNAMENT!!!

(make sure to read info on both contenders before voting! some information may be hidden under "read more"!!)

MAGNIFICENT ANEMONE SHRIMP (Ancylomenes magnificus)

AKA: N/A

like many cleaner shrimp, magnificent anemone shrimp are well known for their symbiotic relationship with other sea animals such as sponges, mollusks, fish, and others of the like! on top of that, they also rely on other organisms to live safely due to being quite vulnerable, and are often found residing within sea anemones and stony corals, making the symbiotic relationships come full circle. another unique feature of this shrimp is their patterning- their bodies being mostly transparent, yet contrasted with opaque white stripes and patterns, giving these shrimps quite the interesting appearance!

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HARLEQUIN SHRIMP (Hymenocera picta)

AKA: N/A

these bizarre shrimp are well known for their alien, nearly plant-like appearance, making them one of the most visually unique shrimp species out there! depending on where they're from, harlequin shrimp may have different color spots, which can range from all sorts of reds, blues, and purples. these fierce little guys mainly feast on starfish, and many will travel in pairs to ambush and gang up on their prey. they are masters at flipping over these starfish and do so with ease to gain access to their soft tissues. they'll also (begrudgingly) go for sea urchins if there's no available starfish in the area.

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weird shrimps poll!! reblog for more shrimp frying rice! this is part of an ongoing bracket tournament known as the Sas Shrimp Tournament, which will finally decide which shrimp is the absolute coolest of them all!

MORE BRACKET INFORMATION FOUND HERE

[bethanythebogwitch]

It's too bad Halloween was yesterday because I would have done a Wet Beast Wednesday on something creepy, like the tongue-biting isopod. It's not though, so so I'm dipping my toes into echinoderm science and talking about crinoids. While crinoids are the least famous echinoderms, being overshadowed by their relatives the starfish, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers, they are extremely well-represented in the fossil record. We know of far more extinct crinoid species than living ones.

(imag id: a crinoid attached to a rock. It is a long, slender stalk with multiple threadlike protrusions emerging from it. At the top is a crown that looks like a flower composed of feathery appendages. It is while all over)

As with all echinoderms, crinoids are bilaterally symmetrical as larvae for become radially symmetrical while adults. It is hypothesized that the ancestor of all echinoderms was a bilaterally symmetrical animal that evolved to become radially symmetrical as adults. This places echinoderms in the same clade as all other bilaterally symmetrical animals, including mollusks, arthropods, most worms, and all vertebrates. You are more closely related to a starfish than a starfish is to a jellyfish. Crinoids are one of those animals like anemones that look more like flowers than animals, which is why they're also called sea lilies. A typical juvenile crinoid consists of a stalk with a holdfast on one end and crown on the other. The stalk is segmented and made of porous calcified material called ossicles, which are attached to each other by discs. This is the part of a crinoid that fossilizes most easily and a great many crinoid fossils are only known from their stems. The holdfast is a root-like structure that attaches the crinoid to a substrate. Crinoids that attach to a hard surface have a branching holdfast to grip on while crinoids that attach to sediment have a thick, stalk-like holdfast that penetrates into the substrate like a tree's taproot. The crown is the part that looks like a flower and consists of two parts: the theca/calyx/arboral cup and the rays. The theca is shaped like a cup and has a mouth in the center. The mouth connects to a simple u-shaped gut that leads to an anus near the mouth. The rays are analogous to the arms of a starfish. All echinoderms have 5 symmetrical body segments and crinoids have five rays, though they usually branch after emerging from the theca, resulting in up to a few hundred total rays. The rays are segmented like the stalk and can curl up. Crinoids will curl up their arms and pull them in to protect them. The rays are used in feeding. Crinoids are passive suspension feeders that wait for plankton and organic particles to be carried into the rays by the current. Each ray is covered by flexible appendages called pinnules that give the rays a feathery appearance. Each pinnule is covered by tube feet that are coated in sticky mucus. When a food particle hits the tube feet, they grab on and transfer it to the center of the ray, which contains a canal called the ambulacral groove. The groove is filled with cilia that carry the food particle down to the mouth. All crinoids take this form during their juvenile phase, but only a few modern species retain it for their entire lives. Most modern species will shift into an adult form where the stalk falls off and the theca becomes free-swimming. These are often called feather stars. Both stalked crinoids and feather stars can use their rays to pull themselves along the substrate, but feather stars can also wave their rays around to swim. Swimming allows feather stars to more readily avoid danger and become more active in their attempts to catch food.

(image: a diagram of crinoid anatomy. source)

(gif id: a feather star swimming. It looks like a bunch of black-and-white striped feathers attached to a central disc. The arms are undulating, propelling the feather star through the water)

Crinoids are dioecious, meaning individuals are either male or female. In most species, the gonads are in the pinnules closest to the theca. The gonads actually swell up and cause the pinnules to burst and release the gametes. Different species have different strategies. In some, both sperm and eggs will be released into the water column. In others, only the males broadcast sperm which the females use to fertilize their eggs. The eggs are withheld by the mother, either by gluing them to her arms or incubated in sacs on the arms. The larvae, called vitellaria, are free-swimming and bilaterally symmetrical. They will swim for a few days before dropping to the substrate and attaching. They then metamorphose into juveniles.

(image: a diagram showing a crinoid progressing through multiple developmental stages from fertilized egg to larva. source)

The fossil history of crinoids dates back to the Ordovician period (485-444 million years ago), the period between the Cambrian and Silurian. While echinoderms and even stalked echinoderms existed during the Cambrian, the oldest definitive crinoid fossils are Ordovician and it's unclear which extinct group that crinoids evolved from. For over two hundred million years, crinoids were extremely diverse and were dominant sessile filter feeders, beating out anemones and corals. The mass extinction at the end of the Permian dealt a major blow to crinoids that they never recovered from, causing them to lose their dominance and become much less morphologically diverse. The Permian mass extinction is a fascinating period of history as it was the single greatest mass extinction in the history of Earth. The early Triassic saw a mass adaptation to more flexible and motile body plans in response to increased predation. It's not clear when feather stars entered the picture, though they may have come about due to predation in the Triassic. Some extinct crinoids had different survival strategies than modern ones. The genus Pentacrinites attached themselves to driftwood and floated through the open ocean. They would have been like floating islands of diversity moving through the oceans with lots of other animals following for food and shelter. A fact that gets passed around a lot is that the largest fossil crinoid ever found (Taxocrinus saratogensis) was 40 meters (130 ft) long. That isn't true and seems to stem from a misprint. It was actually 40 ft (12.2 m) long, which is still fucking enormous. Crinoids today don't get anywhere near as large as extinct ones could. Fossil crinoids measuring many meters in stem length are well documented while ones alive today never even reach a meter long. Crinoid fossils are extremely common and can be used to provide relative dates to nearby fossils. In some places, enough crinoid parts fossilized near each other that they became clustered together in sedimentary rocks called encrinites.

(image id: a fossil imprint of many crinoids attached to a piece of driftwood. The imprints ore in a flat, tan rock. The driftwood imprint looks like a long, dark blob. The crinoids have long, curved, and overlapping stems and fan-like crowns at the top. Fossil found at the Houston Museum of Natural Science)

[diazsdimples]

Coming in with multiple requests, babe. From the make ‘em swoon prompts: drawing with their fingertips on their skin + Buddie 💞

Strapping myself in. As should you.

The light filters through Eddie's flimsy bedroom curtains, bathing him and Buck in a soft, golden light. Beside him, Buck lies on his stomach, stretched across the bed like a starfish, one arm tucked under his head and the other shimmied under his hip.

Eddie sighs happily as he takes in his slumbering boyfriend. The sheets are pulled down, Buck clearly having overheated during the night, and they come to rest just on his lower back. Eddie's hands twitch to reach out and run his fingers over Buck's back, to traces the outlines of the dappled sunlight that covers his skin like leopard's spots. And why not? Why can't he? Buck is his boyfriend, after all. He should be able to reach out and touch whenever he wants to.

Eddie runs his fingers softly up the bumps of Buck's spine, tracing them as if he's playing scales on a piano, the dips like the white keys and the bumps like the black. He traces them back and forth, tapping on each like he's remembering the piano lessons he had in elementary school.

The feeling makes goosebumps raise on Buck's skin, and Eddie grins at the effect he has. He traces his fingers back down, following a particular stripe of light, and he follows it until he reaches the waistband of Buck's boxers, the only article of clothing he wore to bed the previous night.

"Mmmm," Buck murmurs, the first indication that he's awake. "Feels good," he slurs.

"Yeah?" Eddie whispers. He leans over and presses his lips to the warm skin of Buck's shoulder blade, and Buck lets out a long, slow sigh.

"Yeah. Don' stop, pl'se."

"I won't," Eddie promises.

And he doesn't.

Eddie has traced his fingers over Buck's entire body. He's mapped his way up the length of his arms and down the expanse of his back. He's outlined every tattoo, and traced the shape of every scar. He's brushed his lips against each freckle, and caressed the stretch marks that crisscross Buck's thighs.

But that doesn't stop him from doing it all again.

His fingertips dance over Buck's skin as he works his way up Buck's arm, circling each tattoo with his finger, and he follows it with his lips. He presses his mouth to each mole, and laves his tongue over each freckle. Buck's back is his canvas, and he paints a masterpiece.

"Eddie," Buck groans. "You're going to drive me insane."

Eddie grins, and he nips lightly at the skin of Buck's shoulder, before soothing it with a swipe of his tongue.

"That's kind of the point, baby."

Eddie shifts himself so he's straddling Buck's thighs and begins to kiss down his spine, pressing his lips to each spinous process. His hands skim down Buck's sides as he kisses, before coming to rest at his ass, cupping him firmly over his boxers.

Buck lets out a choked sound, and Eddie grins. He slides his hands under the waistband and squeezes, enjoying the way the firm muscle feels in his palms. He massages the firm globes, digging his fingers in and then pulling them apart, a tease of what's to come.

"Fuck," Buck pants, pressing his hips down into the mattress. "Eds, fuck."

"Can I?" Eddie asks, tugging at the waistband Buck's boxers, asking permission.

Buck nods furiously and wiggles his hips. "Yes. Please, yes."

Eddie pulls Buck's boxers down, praising Buck as he lifts his hips for him, and then he runs his fingers from the dimples of Buck's back to his cheeks, pulling him open once more.

"So gorgeous, baby," he murmurs. "So perfect."

"Please," Buck begs, pressing his face into the pillow. He's almost grinding himself into the mattress and Eddie presses down on him, pinning him so he's still.

"Close your eyes," Eddie hums the instruction and leans down, pressing a kiss to Buck's tailbone, before he drags his tongue down, down, down.

Make 'em swoon prompts!

[adobe-outdesign]

since the altador cup is going on this month, can you review the yooyu petpet?

I've mentioned this before on here, but one of the few good things about the Altador Cup is the worldbuilding behind the idea of Yooyuball—it's a game where you carry a ball in a sling and try to throw it into a goal, except the ball is an armadillo and your feelings don't matter. I think it's particularly neat how the Yooyu's colour affects the way it behaves during the game as well, like how the fire Yooyu moves faster or the Darigan Yooyu hates you specifically. The ball design also lends itself to some other games as well, like Crisis Courier.

Visually, the design is pretty good. It's basically a six-pointed star with a long tail and floppy ears, with a light yellow inside color and a hard brown shell of sorts on the outside. You can easily look at it and figure out how it rolls into a ball, which is an important mechanical feature, and it's fairly cute as well.

Favorite Colours:

Christmas: A Yooyu not actually used in the AC itself, the Christmas Yooyu takes their natural segments and turns them into some nice peppermint striping, with a complimentary green outside and a sprig of holly for good measure. It's pretty straightforward, but it works.

Darigan: Yes we all hate this thing in-game, but you gotta admit, the design's kind of a banger. I like the black and purple contrast with red eyes that work really well with the Yooyu's default solid-colored ones. Things like the spikes on the tail and the wings feel like fairly natural extensions of the original design as well.

Faerie: The faerie Yooyu has a bunch of nice subtle touches to it, like how the wings looks similar to its limbs, or how the ears curl in a more than usual. The pink and blue palette works well and the stripes on the outside add just the right amount of flair.

BONUS: The Tyrannian Yooyu is similar to the default colour, but uses a slightly lighter cream color for the underside and adds features like fur, spikes, and fangs. It looks good all around and really feels like it works well with the Yooyu's design.

Least Favorite Colour:

Maraquan: Listen, Yooyus are effectively just six-pointed stars with a face, but there's something truly disturbing about taking a regular six-limbed starfish and slapping a Yooyu face directly in the middle that just plunges it straight into the depths of the uncanny valley. Maybe if they had stuck closer to the regular anatomy and just added starfish touches it wouldn't feel quite so weird.

[mollymauk-teafleak]

like silence but not really silent

Another Magnus Archives fic from my little mundane AU! This one turned deeply, deeply self indulgent because of Bad Things Happening in my personal life so I make no apologies! Only thanks to @minky-for-short for all the encouragement with this AU in general!

Please reblog and comment over on Ao3 if you enjoyed this! (It is formatted a little nicer over there into the three separate chapters)

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Three moments from Jonathan Sims' life, spent on the same beach in his hometown of Bournemouth.

Three moments of quiet.

----

One

The world was too loud for Jonathan Sims. 

That was what his daadi would tell him, in a soft voice that didn’t do much to hide the disappointment like a cloth worn too thin to conceal what lay underneath. After the police would leave, their halfhearted concerns about Jon’s welfare muffled under cups of tea and homemade cardamom biscuits, after the headteacher would let them leave her office, everyone well aware how little had been achieved in that latest meeting, she would take his face in her hands, look him in the eyes and say it to him as she stroked a thumb across his cheek. 

It wouldn’t be an accusation, not really, or an attempt at comfort. It would just be a statement of a fact that made life harder, a geography textbook’s explanation for floods or earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, something he just had to accept, just like the fact that everyone saw him as a girl no matter how many times he tried to correct them or tell them the name he’d decided for himself. The world is too loud for you, beti.  

But daadi never told Jon what he could do to fix it. He was left to figure that out for himself. 

The closest he’d found to a real answer was down on the beach. 

Not that Jon had ever left Bournemouth to confirm this but, if he did, he imagined people sighing romantically at the idea of living there. They’d imagine it like residing in a postcard, the sea a perfect watercolour blue, the sand a butter yellow, the sunshine washing over everything all the time. The reality was very different. Postcards didn’t show the dense crowds that gathered on any day with a little sunshine, the rain that fell the rest of the year, the litter all those people left behind to blow across the grey sand like decorations left behind after a party. Or how the amusements always looked more than a little sad when the streets were empty, their garish paint peeling and their tinny songs becoming a headache. 

So when Jon told his daadi he was going down to the beach- if he bothered telling her at all- he didn’t mean the same beach everyone pictured when they thought of Bournemouth. He avoided that place like the plague. The world was too loud for him so he needed somewhere that felt like it wasn’t part of the world at all, somewhere everyone else had forgotten so completely that it felt disconnected from everything else. He meant his beach. 

It was hard to get to, especially for a pair of ten year old legs, involving a long walk along the striped cliffs of clay and sand, a perilous half climb, half slide down a particular face to find a little closed off bay tucked safely behind the curve of the land. Away from the wind and the rain and, more importantly, the rest of the world. It was a pebble beach rather than sand, the seaweed washed up thicker, the gulls were always screeching overhead but Jon didn’t mind. He would pack a book or two in his rucksack, whatever snacks he could find around the house, an extra jumper, a raincoat, everything he needed to maximise the amount of time before he had to come sloping back to civilization. He would tuck himself into the little natural caves and read, he would skim stones in the water, he would take off his socks and shoes and walk through the little shore, finding crabs and starfish and sea snails.

There he could be Jonathan for real, not just in his head. 

Whenever he went there, he could feel the weight on his chest lift with every step he took away from the town proper, finally able to take a deep, full breath once he’d staggered down onto the little scrap of a beach. 

Today, it felt like it had come just in time, a few seconds before he would have suffocated. 

Jon scrubbed at the burn in his eyes that definitely wasn’t tears, silently begged his chest to stop heaving, his shoulders to stop shuddering. Now it was quiet, now he could actually think, his body finally listened. He took the rising, overwhelming emotion he’d carried all the way here, packed it into a box and shut the lid tightly, sent it away to somewhere far from here. Jon gulped down those things that weren’t tears, feeling such a sense of relief as the sea resolved in front of his eyes and became clear. He counted the whitecaps he could see, digging his fingers into the pebbles under his knees to feel their reassuring rattle and clack. 

He was here. He was in his one quiet place, the one place he belonged, the one place that knew he was Jon and accepted it without question. 

Once the steady roll and crash of the waves on the shore had cleared away the panic, Jon shifted to sit cross legged on the stones. He felt wrung out, hollowed, the way his favourite jumper had gone all thin and unravelled after he’d tried to put it in the washing machine. He couldn’t even find the anger anymore, there was just nothing. 

Just the aching, echoing gap left behind when he just didn’t understand. 

Jon’s stomach had already been a writhing mess of snakes as he’d walked out of school. They’d ended the day by working on making family trees, all the other students settling in excitedly for an hour spent with the colouring pencils. They moved around Jon, ignoring him as per usual, laughing and chattering away about whatever it was kids his age were supposed to talk about when they had someone to listen. 

He’d been left to sit and stare at the name that everyone kept telling him was his, scrawled at the bottom of the template, his eyes following its dark lines up to the many branches with their own spaces for other names to go. Names he didn’t know. Names he’d never get to know. A whole family tree that had withered and died before he’d even gotten a chance to learn what the word even meant. Just him and his daadi, who already had a bad chest and doctors visits written onto the calendar in the kitchen that she didn’t want to talk about. When she went away, like his papa and his mama, his name would be completely and totally alone. 

That’s when his eyes had started to blur and burn. 

Miss Andi had done her circuit of the classroom, the only person to notice Jon sitting there, frozen under the weight of the grief he didn’t know how to hold. She’d been kind, of course, speaking in her soft voice, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, dear, you can go read in the corner if you like . 

But her voice hadn’t been quite soft enough, the other children had still heard her, that damning sympathy carrying over the waves of chatter somehow. And then he’d felt the prickle of eyes on his back, wide stares like Jonathan Sims was just something behind a thick pane of museum glass and a little white card explaining just how sad and lonely he was. Though the card would probably call him the wrong name too.  

He’d fled to the reading corner, even if none of the books there interested him anymore. He’d just needed to hide his face. 

Maybe it was that tight, storm in the stomach feeling that had made him do something so stupid as standing up to those older kids. Most of Jon’s mind had still been running fruitless, frantic laps around the base of that blank family tree, he hadn’t even noticed his feet changing direction, striding towards the knot of hollering secondary school boys.

Jon’s voice hadn’t been nearly as forceful as he’d hoped for, it didn’t come along with the comic book style speech bubble announcing the arrival of a hero that he’d envisioned. But the boys had been surprised enough by anyone, even a stammering ten year old girl to their eyes, daring to tell them ‘stop’ that they’d turned regardless. 

Jon had seen a glimpse of the stray cat they’d been tormenting, the same one those boys always went after when they saw her, just because she didn’t belong to anyone and they knew they could get away with it. A black streak fled between their legs the second she saw her chance, darting between some wheelie bins and disappearing. He’d felt a moment’s fierce pride, the solid certainty that he’d done the right thing. 

Until it ended the same way that feeling always seemed to. With a heavy, painful thump as his legs were swept out from under him and he went crashing down. 

Jon’s eyes were burning again. They weren’t tears but they really stung as they rolled down his face and into the scrapes on his cheeks, the split lip. He could tell himself that taste on his tongue was the salt in the air, that he couldn’t hear his own ragged, sobbing breaths over the scream of the gulls. He was alone, nothing else had to matter. 

He didn’t have to think about how silently angry daadi would be about the blood on his collar and the rusty brown trail that had dripped down his front, how it was another school shirt and jumper ruined that they couldn’t afford to replace. Though of course the skirt he hated was unscathed. He didn’t have to think about how he’d pass those boys who’d seen him cry, again and again in the tight little maze of their streets, running and hiding from them like the poor cat. How he was sitting at the bottom of that bare and empty tree, completely alone, trying to take shelter in a world that was too loud for him. 

So he decided it was a good thing. What other choice did he have?

Jon stood up, wiping his eyes, his jaw tight and determined. If the rest of the world wanted to chase him away then he’d let it. They could keep their noise and their rules that didn’t make sense, their expressions he couldn’t read, their cruelty and their wide eyed staring. He would just stay here forever and never go back. He’d sleep on a bed of seaweed, catch fish and eat seagull eggs, never having to hear another human voice full of anger or pity or disappointment or confusion.

Of course Jon knew it was a childish fantasy, something out of a Robinson Crusoe book he constructed to make himself feel better, to get the same kind of release as throwing pebbles at the cliff face to shatter. The reality was inescapable. He didn’t have any clothes or food or books with him, daadi would call the police when he didn’t come home before the sun went down, just like she always did. They’d find him as he trudged his way home, stomach growling and his whole body shivering with the cold, defeated. 

But he also knew something else, deep down inside himself in a place he hadn’t explored yet.  The place where the adult man he’d be one day was growing, half formed but crystallising slowly. That part knew he didn’t need to become a hermit on a beach to make sure he’d be alone. That he could choose it for himself, build up walls that didn’t need to be physically real to do the job. 

As Jon walked up and down the beach, the life he painted for himself in his head was imaginary but the decision he made was very, very real. 

He didn’t know how to fix the world. He didn’t know how to fix himself. 

So he would just spend his life alone. 

At least then it would be quiet. 

Two

Jon had known it was going to feel strange, going down to the beach again.

There was no other way to feel, putting his feet in furrows he’d worn into the ground a long time ago, finding he still knew exactly where to step, when to turn off, where to go. Even after saying goodbye to this place years before, so sure he’d never see it again, discovering that the way had never really left him, that he hadn’t excised his childhood as neatly as he’d thought. Of course it was going to feel strange. 

Jon just hadn’t expected something else to feel stranger. Because it wasn’t just walking in his own, smaller footsteps. 

It was looking back over his shoulder to see who followed him. 

“I thought you said you used to do this when you were a kid?” Martin’s voice was wheezy around the edges from the hike across the cliffs, but the indignation in it was clear. 

It made Jon laugh, worth the mouthful of his own hair he got as the wind whipped around them, “I did. Nearly every day.”

“Didn’t know you were part mountain goat…” his boyfriend grumbled.

Jon grinned at that, hesitating so Martin could close the gap between them. He caught his hand as soon as he was in reach, sliding their cold fingers together like two cogs in a machine that had always been meant to sit next to each other.

It was early enough in their relationship that little things like that were still surprising Jon. How natural it all felt, how their bodies fit together in small ways, how their personalities that had once seemed so different now threaded together and made something good. Something really, really good actually. 

He wondered if he’d ever stop being surprised by it, however long this thing between them lasted. 

He would hardly call it a small thing but the only reason they were even standing here was because of Martin. Jon had never thought he’d go back to Bournemouth, certainly not after his daadi passed away. The idea had always made him feel sick, like the feeling of pulling off a bandage while knowing it would make the wound scream with pain and look disgusting. 

But they were on a little road trip of sorts, driving down to Daisy’s hometown for her and Basira’s wedding. When Martin had realised how close they’d come to a piece of Jon’s own history, he’d suggested a visit with such a hopeful expression that Jon found himself caving far sooner than he’d ever expected, despite trying his best. 

He’d pointed out they could only spare a few hours, that there was really nothing to see, there was no one who would even recognise or remember or be too pleased to be reminded of him. None of it put Martin off. He’d driven them here with an unmistakable excitement, like someone following a treasure map to a treasure trove. Jon didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was going to be more of a cursed ancient temple situation. 

Of course they’d pulled up to a sky like slate and a sea the colour of a stagnant pond. Immediately the wind found every seam and minute hole on their coats, chilling them to the skin, then down to the bone as periodic showers of that infuriating thin, showering rain randomly fell. The pier and amusements had only gotten older and sadder, decrepit to the point where they’d become more like the setting of a horror movie that was being rather heavy handed with its metaphors. They’d walked up the same tight, claustrophobic streets that had taken a younger Jon home, past his old school, up to a house that looked like his daadi’s while somehow being so different that he couldn’t say he’d ever crossed it’s threshold. 

And every time Jon had turned to Martin to apologise, to promise they could leave straight away and they never had to come back, he’d found him smiling. 

He’d asked so many questions, what Jon’s favourite ice cream shop had been, which slightly malformed steed he’d always chosen on the merry go round, what his favourite subject at school was, which bedroom window had been his. Jon had given his answers, even if they’d felt small and sad to him, each one just making Martin smile wider. 

Almost like he’d found the treasure he’d been looking for and it was just Jon himself. 

So when Martin had asked where he used to play, Jon had reached out, taken his hand and asked him to follow him. He’d decided he’d show his boyfriend something real. 

He just hadn’t told him it was at the bottom of a cliff. 

“Jesus Christ, Jon, they let you do this when you were a kid?” Martin yelped, nearly slipping onto his backside as the path took a sharp slope downwards. 

“No, of course not,” Jon looked over his shoulder from a few paces ahead, grinning, “That was kind of the point. It’s not that bad, really…”

“Not that bad!” Martin scoffed before almost losing his footing completely, only saved from a very hard landing when Jon reached out and caught him, “I always thought you’d be the kind of kid who stayed indoors with a book…”

Jon chuckled, deciding it was best to keep Martin’s hand in his as they skidded down the last little part, “Not really. I’m just that kind of adult. See, the beach is right there, keep your eyes on your feet, there we go…”

Jon found himself dropping right into the middle of his own past. His knees ached more as he braced himself against the pebbles but, other than that, the beach hadn’t changed in the slightest. The curve of the shore must have been enough to shelter it from the winds and time itself, keeping it preserved, not a single stone out of place. It felt a little sacrilegious to be disturbing it now, like it had been enjoying its peace before he came lumbering back. 

Or was it glad to see him come back? Did it even recognise him after a decade and change, with a flat chest and short, greying hair and the rough stubble? This place that had always been the one corner of the world where he could escape and feel like he belonged might not even know who he was. 

“It’s beautiful, Jon.”

Martin’s voice was soft and awed, a little much for what really amounted to a skinny strip of grey sand and pebbles, a fringe of decaying seaweed and a few hollows in a cliff wall. But something in Jon lifted when he said it, a kind of relief, a sense that he’d been right to know Martin would understand. That he’d see what this place had been to him, years ago. 

“I always thought so,” Jon smiled, walking to the edge of the sea, where the water made an instrument of the pebbles as it rolled and rattled them against each other, “In a rough, rugged kind of sad way.”

“Well. That would explain your taste in men, I suppose,” Martin hummed, making Jon cackle along with him. 

Again, Jon was struck by the strangeness of having another laugh bouncing off the cliffs alongside his own, when he’d always thought it would just be him alone and the scream of the gulls. 

He picked through the pebbles around his boots, finding one that was suitably flat and correctly weighted. With a flick of his wrist that became familiar as soon as he drew back his hand, Jon sent it skimming across the water. Five times it kissed the surface before running out of momentum, five circles rippling out between the whitecaps. 

Martin whistled appreciatively, “Guess you spent a while practising that when you were a kid?”

“Well, there’s some natural talent involved,” Jon hummed, playfully smug, “But yes. When I wasn’t playing pirates or pretending to be Mary Anning looking for fossils or imagining I was a siren chewing on the bones of washed up sailors…”

Martin grinned, glancing around like he was imagining a younger Jon racing across the stones, wrapped up in his little games and the momentary freedom they brought him. He bent to pick up a pebble of his own, trying to mimic Jon’s arm motion, though his pebble crashed into the water with an anticlimactic plink. 

“See, that's how you can tell I was one of those kids who stayed inside with the books,” Martin gave a self-deprecating laugh. 

Jon smiled, eyes focused on how the ripples from his stone and the ones from Martin’s were joining together, making a harmonious little pattern, a moment of synchronized calm in the middle of the irritable sea. 

“I’ll teach you how to do it, if you like?” he offered, voice soft, “Unless you’d rather play pirates, of course.”

Martin grinned, smiling so wide the freckles in the corner of his eyes bunched up, “Maybe later. For now, how about you perform a miracle and get me to, let's say, three skips?”

Just like all those years ago, Jon felt like he could breathe easier down on the beach. All the sour memories from the town slid away, drawn off by the current, all the doubts that had buzzed in his brain over returning to the home where his name and his true self were things he’d never been able to share were blown off by the wind. Minutes passed by unnoticed, everything suddenly becoming so easy. 

This place still knew him. He did still belong here.

 “Don’t pull back so far, you’ll lose the control…that's it, just by your ear…deep breath…and go!”

The stone wobbled a little in the air and the last skip probably had a lot more to do with a gust of wind than any skill of Martin’s but there were definitely three skips before the stone sank. 

Martin looked stunned, face alight with a mix of surprise and joy, “I actually did it!”

“You did,” Jon tried not to sound too surprised, it hadn’t needed a miracle exactly but it had certainly been a tall order, “I may live to regret giving you all my trade secrets.”

Martin turned to him, eyes soft and hopeful, “And…what about coming back to Bournemouth? Bringing me here? Do you think you’ll regret that?”

Jon paused before answering, not because he wasn’t sure, he just wasn’t sure of the right words. He leaned his head against Martin’s shoulder, again marvelling quietly at how his boyfriend was just the right height for it to fit perfectly. 

“Do I regret bringing you down here? No, not at all. As for the rest of it? It was…nice to have you be interested. I kept a lot of that stuff packed away for a long time, trying to forget it happened but…it didn’t hurt as much as I thought, getting it all back out again. And I’m glad you made me do it.”

Jon felt Martin’s arm wrap around him like a warm blanket, drawing him in so close he didn’t even feel the wind anymore, “That’s what I was hoping for. It’s always going to hurt, digging through the past but I feel like it hurts more to pretend it isn’t there.”

Jon chuckled dryly, “You’ve been reading that book again, haven’t you? Supporting Your Partner’s Healing or whatever it was…”

“Well, it’s working, isn’t it?” Martin mumbled, a blush creeping up his neck over the collar of his parka. 

“It is…and even if it wasn’t, I’d still love you for it,” Jon gentled his tone, finding Martin’s hand and squeezing, “It is strange, though, being here with you. I always came here to be alone, shut the rest of the world out. It was the point of the place, really.”

It couldn’t have come as a surprise to Martin, it probably wouldn’t have surprised anyone who’d known Jon for more than half an hour. But he sounded sad all the same, pulling him in and pressing a kiss to the top of his head. 

“You were all alone?”

Jon swallowed hard against a sudden lump in his throat, “I…I thought I didn’t have a choice. I thought it was the only way someone like me could be. Whenever I tried anything else, it just hurt so…so I decided it was my choice. I acted like it was what I wanted.”

“Funnily enough, I got that impression when I met you,” Martin clearly tried for humour, betrayed by the way his voice broke just at the edge. 

Jon turned his face against his shoulder, smiling even as tears rolled down his own cheeks “But it didn’t stop you, did it? You’re still here.”

“And I don’t plan on leaving, Jon,” Martin breathed, “Not ever.”

He couldn’t quite believe that, not yet. But maybe he would, one day. 

“My daadi always used to say the world was too loud for me,” Jon rasped, “It still feels like that, sometimes. Most of the time, really.”

Martin stroked his hand up and down Jon’s arm, “I know…but it’s quiet right now?” 

Jon took a deep breath of salty air, leaning into Martin’s warmth and counting the waves until his heartbeat slowed and the blood stopped rushing quite so loud in his ears. 

“It is,” he murmured, knowing it would be enough for now. 

In many ways, Jon was still the frightened kid who’d come to this beach to hide, certain it was the only place he could be safe. He still didn’t understand the world, he was still such a long way from fixing himself. 

But right now, it was quiet. 

And right now, Jon wasn’t alone. 

Three

The beach hadn’t changed, it never did. It was a place so disconnected even time had forgotten it, leaving its stones undisturbed and its cliff faces unaging. A year passed between their visits, sometimes two, but leaning over the ragged edge of the world and looking down on it, Jon found it hard to believe.

His beach never changed but Jon did. And he never felt it more than what he was standing here. 

Because he knew the zig zag path down the sandy side of the cliff wasn’t any different from the one he used to run down heedlessly when he was a child, not a care in the world. But he’d never realised how bloody dangerous it was. 

Not until it was his child about to go careening down it. 

“Daddy!” Gertie tugged at their joined hands with a surprising amount of strength for a three year old or maybe Jon was a lot weaker than he should be, “Daddy, lets go!”

Jon bit his lip, eyes following the path warily, wondering how he’d avoided breaking his neck for so long, “We just need to be very, very careful so we don’t-”

Before he could even finish his sentence, Gertie had pulled enough to send them over the edge. They were suddenly running, kicking up clay and sand, Gertie shrieking in delight and Jon choking on a word he really shouldn’t say in front of his daughter. They half ran, half fell, having to just put one foot in front of the other and trust there would be no broken noses or chipped front teeth. For a second, it was almost like flying. 

And, by the time they landed on the stones, Jon was laughing too. 

Gertie didn’t stop, Jon finally letting her hand slip from his so she could rush towards the waves, go on when he was too out of breath to follow. He felt something of his heart go with her, torn away but given gladly. Tears blurred his eyes for a moment, making them burn along with his lungs. 

“I remember you telling me that walk was, and I quote, ‘not that bad’...”

Jon turned, smiling wryly, not bothering to hide the tear rolling down his cheek. Martin gently wiped it away as soon as he was in reach, letting his hand linger on his husband’s cheek. He didn’t ask, he knew he didn’t need to. He trusted that Jon would tell him. 

“Guess I’m old and boring now,” he leaned into that warmth, sighing softly, “Too old and boring to keep up with her, at least.”

Martin pursed his lips, tilting his head in playful doubt, “Are you sure?”

He nodded towards the shore, shifting Jon’s attention to where their daughter was standing, a splash of colour in her bright yellow raincoat and shiny new wellies, stark against the greys like she really had stepped out of those classic postcards. She was waving, buzzing with childish impatience like she’d only just noticed that Jon wasn’t by her side anymore. 

“Daddy, come on!’ she yelled, “You said we could play pirates!”

Martin smiled softly, nudging Jon’s hand, “If you are too old to keep up with her, I don’t think she’s noticed. And she certainly doesn’t care.”

Once again, Jon wondered how Martin did it. How, whenever the world started to twist around Jon and press in too close, Martin would take it and shake it out like a dusty old carpet, brushing away everything that was just Jon’s own fears and anxieties, leaving him with what was real. How he anchored him, holding his hand when the wind threatened to pull him away, showing him where it was safe to put his feet, leading him back to solid ground. 

He didn’t know how he did it and he didn’t know how he was ever going to thank him for it, not just for that, but for everything. So he kissed him, tasting the cold on his lips. And by some miracle that Jon would never understand, that kept being enough for Martin.

“Daddy! Papa! You’re being gross!”

Jon snorted, finding Martin’s gloved hand and squeezing his fingers, “Come on. Let’s go play pirates.”

Time stopped meaning anything for a little while, the oddly comforting, familiar stress of their lives back in London felt far away. Jon had forgotten how easily games had carried him away when he was the same age as his daughter. How a salt smoothed branch in your hands could feel like a cutlass, how being chased by a wave could turn into an enormous shark lunging from the depths to sink his teeth into you, how the barest hollow in a cliff wall could become a snaking warren deep underground, perfect for smuggling imaginary treasure. He’d forgotten that the images his mind created didn’t need to be terrifying, they didn’t need to be something he fought against like a riptide looking to drag him out to sea. 

He supposed it helped when the games weren’t an escape. When you were eager to return to the world you’d left behind. 

Gertie ran them breathless up and down the beach, only coaxed to stop and take a break by their picnic, a tupperware box of her daddy’s cardamom cookies and a sandwich proving enough of a pull. Jon held her on his lap as she ate, hugging her warmth close against him, face buried in her tangle of auburn curls, just like Martin’s. 

“Daddy,” she hummed, through a mouthful of crumbs, “Why are the pebbles all round here?”

Jon smiled, three years on the planet and she’d not yet run out of questions, “The sea wears them smooth, darling. It’s called attrition, the waves roll them around until all their sharp edges have been rubbed away.”

“Oh,” Gertie hummed, reaching down to grab one, turning it over in her chubby hand as she examined every nick and stripe on its surface, “It makes them very pretty.”

“I think so too,” Jon chuckled, “And it makes them very good for skimming.”

That snagged her attention, her green eyes widening, “Oh! I wanna do that! Can we?”

Jon smiled over at Martin, “Actually? Your papa ended up being the expert on that. He’s way better at it than I ever was.”

Martin snorted, blushing a little, the way he always did when he was given any sort of compliment, “Well. I had a very good teacher.”

“Teach me! Teach me, papa!” Gertie scrambled up, needing both her hands to wrap around just one of her papa’s, trying to pull him to his feet.

Martin beamed at her like he was looking at the sun, clambering up from the stones, “I’m coming, sweetie…are you going to be okay on your own?” he hesitated, turning back to Jon for a moment. 

Jon nodded, hugging his knees to his chest, feeling warm in spite of the cold, “I will be. You won’t be far.”

“Never,” Martin’s eyes softened before letting Gertie lead him down to the shore. 

Their laughter and chatter faded a little, somewhat lost in the rumble of the waves but, just like Martin promised, he never lost sight of them. They looked like a perfect pair, same softness, same muddy red curls, even the same jumper after Martin had enough yarn left over for two. Sitting here, Jon could just wonder how he was ever lucky enough to get two of them. 

He’d always feigned frustration over their daughter coming out as the spitting image of Martin, joking that he could have saved himself nine months of work and just shoved his husband into the Archives photocopier. Martin would always joke right back, batting his eyelids and saying, well, they’d have to have another kid, see if they could get one with some of Jon’s genetics. He’d never mean it, not really, he’d never push his husband about something like that. 

Jon was looking forward to seeing Martin’s face when he told him they were going to find out.

But that could wait until they were back in London, back in their lives. For now, Jon sat and listened to the waves, thinking about the little boy who’d come here to be alone, to hide from a world that refused to understand him and was too loud for him. The little boy who’d built his walls here, thinking he’d have to live behind them forever, that his only choice was between quiet and fear, that there was never any path that would lead to happiness. That he’d never be fixed. 

Jon didn’t know if he was fixed, not completely. But maybe that wasn’t how it worked. Maybe there had always been a place in the world anyway, he’d just needed to be brave enough to find it. 

He knew he couldn���t go back in time and reassure that younger version of himself, promise him it would all be okay in the end, that he would deserve all the joy that would eventually find him. That child was out of his reach. 

But Jonathan Sims could make sure, would make sure, that his own children never had to feel like the world was too loud for them. 

They would never feel like they had to be alone. 

[riality-check]

Out of all the languages she knows, Robin thinks English is the worst.

It’s so… restricted. English has a lot of words, and it has a lot of fun words, but they’re all so broad. English has a few words that mean a lot of things. It’s confusing and takes five more sentences and mental gymnastics to understand the specific meaning of a phrase that could be conveyed much better in Spanish or French.

This is part of the reason why she wants to learn German, once she’s got a good enough grasp on Russian. They have specific words, and they actually use them. That and it should be pretty easy, as a native English speaker.

Reading Cyrillic was fun and all, but her brain needs a break.

All of this, of course, is the subject of her latest ramble to Steve since her parents already know and no one else listens to her the way he does.

(She repays the favor when baseball season rolls around, and he starts spitting stats at her. She thinks that if the word problems in school were about baseball, or if he believed in himself enough to take a statistics course, he would have kicked ass at math.)

“There’s only one way to say I love you in English, and that’s so stupid!” she says, starfished on top of Steve’s bed. God, his sheets are soft. “In other languages, there’s ways to say it to friends, to family, to whoever you’re dating-”

“Wait, really?” Steve glances at her in the mirror. His hands fuss at his hair, which, as always, looks fine.

She’s a little jealous of that.

“Yeah,” she says. She sits up and shakes her hair out of her face. “Like, in Italian, you say ti amo, which means I love you, to who you’re dating, and that’s only if it’s super serious.”

Steve straightens the collar of his shirt, the blue one with the white stripe, and turns back to her. “What do you say otherwise?”

“Ti voglio bene,” she answers automatically.

“What’s that mean?” Steve asks. He moves sits down across from her, tucking his knees to his chest.

That can’t be comfortable in jeans, but that’s what Robin has affectionately dubbed Steve’s listening position, so she knows he’s paying attention and actually cares.

“I means I love you,” she says.

“No, like…”

“Oh, do you mean the literal translation?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “What’s it mean?”

Robin wracks her brain for a few seconds before she remembers. “It means I want you well.”

Steve cocks his head at her in the way that reminds her of a curious, confused dog.

“It doesn’t translate super well,” Robin says. “So it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Steve shakes his head. “No, I think it does.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, if you love someone, you want them to be happy and healthy,” Steve explains. “You want things to be good for them. You want them well.”

And Steve says he isn’t smart.

“It makes a lot of sense when you say it like that,” Robin says.

Steve cracks a small smile. “Can you teach me how to say it?”

“What, ti voglio bene?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Robin says. She reminds herself to not get too excited because that’s weird, then promptly throws that thought out of her head.

She’s with Steve, and she can be as weird and excited as she wants.

“Repeat after me. Tea.”

“Tea.”

“Vole.”

“Vole.”

“Yee.”

“Yee.”

“Oh.”

“Oh.”

“Ben.”

“Ben.”

“Ay.”

“Ay.”

“Okay, ti voglio bene,” Robin says.

“Tea vole-yee-oh ben-ay,” Steve says, awkward and stilted.

Robin itches to correct his pronunciation, but she stops herself. She remembers that it’s really hard for native English speakers to get from the “vole” to the “yee” and have it sound correct unless they grew up speaking those sounds.

Mentally, she thanks her nonna for insisting on correct pronunciation.

“Not bad,” she says honestly.

Steve picks at the cuff of his light wash jeans. “It wasn’t great.”

“It wasn’t bad,” she argues.

“I think I’ll stick to English,” Steve says.

“Okay,” Robin says. “But you’ve got potential.”

 “I want you well, Robin,” he says, and then he grimaces. “That sounds prettier in Italian.”

“Everything sounds prettier in Italian. Even insults.”

Steve laughs, and Robin nudges his leg with her foot.

“I want you well, too,” she says, and she thinks that it might actually sound better in the language they both understand.

[are-you-a-star]

Artfight attack for @shimmershy of our guys, Todd and Lila :]! They're super cute.

[ID: Todd is a blue-green skinned monster with a tail, pointy ears, and sharp teeth. They have fluffy dark aqua hair. They're wearing overalls, brown shoes, a yellow striped sweater, a conductor hat, and bright pink barrettes.

Lila is a shadow monster with sharp nails and teeth; she is all black and slightly blurry, with pupil-less white eyes. It has thick chin-length hair.

Lila and Todd are both sitting on the floor. Todd is sitting criss-cross applesauce and holding their legs as they rock back and forth. They say "Beep beep!" Lila is sprawled like a starfish and flapping her arms around. It's going "EEEEEEEE!" Both kids are smiling happily.]

[rainybow8231]

What I imagine Shadow the Hedgehog's development to be like, headcannons galore. he was an UGLY baby

stage one: fucked up newborn. bro is just a starfish, straight up the most black arms lookin ass motherfucker, still developing in the tube, one singular ugly eye

stage two: oo he outta the tube now. his eye is there and he's got tiny hands and feet and he is NOT conscious yet.

stage three: WHAT THE FUCK. age where he is starting to talk and walk and be conscious. and his eye is. splitting. god. not to mention, his powers are coming through so he needs to be inhibited

stage four: AWWW. when Shadow's eye finished splitting and he got a new one ontop, more red stripes on his everything, pre modifications and whatnot. ears are not yet still there but he's cute so its okay, also chest fluff is actually fluffy

stage five: modifications. when doctor g robotnik started tryna make shadow look more like sonic, and getting rid of some black arms stuff like the forehead eye. quills are longer but also tail and back quills cut to be shorter. and just experiments galore. also gloves and shoes unlocked, not to mention he's learnt how to eyeliner

stage six: there's my boy. the shadow we all know and love, still has that spark in his eye because maria's still alive, though not for long as we all know, but everything is healed and no scars are seen because black.