#THE MOTH TO THE SUN IMAGERY

[fluffyartbl0g]

IM GOING!!! TO GO CRAZY!!!! @lunaisanartist’s ZOLU ANIMATIC IS SENDING ME TO THE GRAVE!!!! PLEASE GO WATCH IT FELLOW ZOLU FANS!!!!!

[doctorsiren]

Day 6 of Sirentober / Doctober

Moth / Ghost

Available as a print on my Etsy Shop

[satanicpagan]

Offering Ideas for Deities

─── ⋆⋅⚝⋅⋆ ───

Fire Offerings:

Charcoal

black salt

herb ashes

images/symbolism of sun or hearth

spicy foods

Red poppies

Spicy/strong-smelling herbs (Cinnamon, Chili, Pepper, Cloves, Ginger, Wormwood, Asfoetida)

Rosemary

sunflowers

marigold

dragons blood

calendula

herbs that sting or irritate the skin (Stinging Nettle, Holly, Cedar, Mace)

Protective herbs/crystals

red crystals

incense

cauldron

Earth Offerings:

Any herbs

plants

flowers

rocks you find

protective crystals

obsidian

amethyst

onyx

garnet

sticks/bark/branches

bones

images/symbols of earth, Gaia, mother earth, flowers, plants

most food offerings

fruits/vegetables

bread

rice

milk/water/tea

dried herbs/flowers

Water Offerings:

moon water

rain water

clear quartz

jasmine

mugwort

lily

willow

nettle

violet

lavender

perfume

essential oils

seashells

beach sand

florida water

symbols and imagery of water, ocean, fish, rain, the birth of Venus, etc.)

blue/transparent crystals

air humidifier

Air Offerings:

smoke cleansing

sound cleansing

feathers

incense

light fabrics

white/light/transparent crystals

dandelion fluffs

essential oils

essential oil diffuser

Athame

bird bones

meditations

breath mindfulness

moths

butterflies

Most Deities have one or more elemental associations and this can help you with finding some offerings! Remember, every offering is unique to you and your energy and actions, outfits, songs, writing, and art can be offerings as well!

[pinkrosealice]

A non-exhaustive list of art, pieces of media, franchises, authors, and thinkers that I really need my fellow Cultsim/BoH/Secret Histories fans to get into and discuss with me and between themselves.

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(WARNING A LOT OF THE FOLLOWING RECOMMENDATIONS COME WITH A LIST OF CONTENT WARNINGS AND ARE SOMETIMES CONNECTED TO CONTROVERSIAL ARTISTS AND PUBLIC PERSONS. THIS LIST IS NOT A ENDORSEMENT OF ANY PROBLEMATIC IDEALS OR STATEMENTS MADE BY ANYONE MENTIONED IN THIS LIST AND IT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED THAT ANYONE WHO LOOKS INTO ANY OF THE MENTIONED WORKS OF ART DO THEIR DUE DILIGENCE AND THOROUGHLY CHECKS FOR DISTURBING / TRIGGERING CONTENT AT THEIR OWN VOLITION)

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Film Recommendations:

1. Dario Argento's Three Mothers trilogy, especially Suspiria & and especially especially the 2019 remake of Suspiria. Very Dancer DLC-coded, very Sisterhood of the Triple Knot and Thunderskin.

2. The Magic Lantern films of Kenneth Anger, who was a practicing Thelmaite* for many years. Lantern Principal is obviously what comes to mind when you hear of the name of the series and the dreams that were mystical experiences that inspired and were expressed in art, in this case films is very much akin to stuff we see in Cultist Simulator.

(* As shown in later parts of this recommendation list I argue that the games of Weather Factory become even more interesting and artistically impactful if you learn more about late 19th and 20th century occultism and movements like Theosophy and Thelma.)

3. Hereditary and Midsommar are obvious recommendations but even more so I would recommend the original 1970s The Wicker Man. Folk Horror in general is a great source of what the arts of The Bosk would look like in real life. They were definitely worshiping The Low Red Sun on Summer Isle.

4. A Dark Song, a 2016 horror film that actually revolves around the performance of a very famous and important real life occult ritual. I think a lot of the visual imagery in that film can give some inspiration for the kind of Rites our player character in Cultist Simulator is performing.

5. The Lair of The White Worm is a movie loosely based on a Bram Stoker story and is also very much a Gods of Stone overthrown by forces associated with humans raised to Divinity and the powers of the Sun and Apollonian principles type of story. Plus the whole Worm/Wyrms thing going on. I also recommend it because it's one of the more light-hearted and comedic entries on this list and I want some variation in tone. Also its psychedelic visuals compliment a lot of the surrealist elements that are tied to things like the Moth Principal.

6. Black Swan isn't explicitly supernatural but it is very Dancer Coded.

7. The Hellraiser movies, but only the first second, fourth, and the reboot. Leviathan, being associated with pain and pleasure and having the name of a mythical sea monster is probably very similar to whatever the hell The Tide was before The Red Grail vored her. The Cenobites are Long with Grail, Knock, & Forge as their Principals.

8. Pan's Labyrinth, for the Woods and the Bounds appreciators. I also think there is something to be said about the fascist subtext that underlines much of the Edge Principle, especially in The Colonel that can be explored and appreciated in this film and its reckonings with the evils of Spanish fascism.

9. To compliment the recommendation for the Magic Lantern films, also check out the short film The Wormwood Star, you can find it easily on YouTube and it's another piece of art heavily influenced by Thelma and stars Marjorie Cameron who I will talk about more later in this list.

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Game Recommendations:

1. Hollow Knight, it might as well be a story set in the era of the Carapace Cross. Sentient bugs, mighty Wyrms and dream gods with the powers of light but not necessarily moral goodness. Even the Void in Hollow Knight, and it's antagonism to The Radiance is very similar to The Nowhere and it's relationship with the established hierarchies in The Mansus.

2. The Silent Hill games, particularly the entries that revolve around The Order; like 1,3, Origins, and Homecoming. Dream worlds, Sun worship, the Dark Feminine and female psychics/mediums with deep associations with blood, birth and menstruation. Valtiel is totally a Name. Even the fog and mist of Silent Hill is giving The Bounds and it's Forge smoke meets Woods darkness type energy.

3. Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines, it's basically playing a Grail Long.

4. The tabletop games Geist: The Sin Eaters and Wraith: The Oblivion line up really well with the Ghoul / Medium DLC. *

(basically most if not all of the World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness tabletop games contain some themes, elements, or bits of World building that should appeal to anyone interested in the games created by Weather Factory)

5. The video games created by Korean studio Project Moon. Lobotomy Corporation has a lot of timers and simulation elements that have many similarities to those found in Cultist Simulator, and as the title implies Liberty of Runia takes place literally in a paranatural library just like Book of Hours even though the game play between the two is very different.

6. Fallen London and it's related media. The reasons why should go without saying. The controversies around AK aside, Echo Bazaar and Secret Histories are blood siblings and I desire more intersection and interaction between the respective fandoms.

7. The Bayonetta games have a surprising amount of real mythological and occult influence in their world building. The Solar Lumens juxtaposed with the Lunar Umbrans definitely has some resonance with Church of The Unconquered Sun and their on again, off again antagonism and allyship with The Sisterhood of The Triple Knot. The Apollonian natured House of the Sun contrasted with the Dionysian Woods & House of the Moo, and the Nowhere being connected to all three but being distinct; is not all together that different from the division of the Bayonetta universe into Inferno, Paradiso, the human world and Purgatorio between all of them.

8. The Shadow Hearts series of JRPGs are a Gothic, urban fantasy, historical fantasy, lovecraftian adventures around late 19th / early 20th century Europe and Asia. It has a lot of comedic elements and its world building and cosmology are not all that similar to the ones in Weather Factory games (barring their shared history as being inspired by Lovecraft). But if you want Lovecraft in video game form without the racism associated with his writings and you found Cultsim/BoH to fill that niche, then I recommend you give these games a try as well.

9. Secret World Legends, a functionally dead MMO but still incredibly fun to play and I think one of the best examples of urban fantasy / soft Lovecraft or post lovecraftian media in existence. Absolutely fantastic & memorable fully voiced NPCs and characters, really intriguing and rich world building and takes on mythology and folklore. Also given that you play as a quasi immortal with a deep association with bees and an ancient techno-organic goddess you're basically a Long.

10. To compliment the Lobotomy Corporation recommendation and the later SCP mention I think it's only natural that I also recommend the urban fantasy games of remedy entertainment like Alan Wake 1 & 2 and Control. Artists channeling / being used by Eldritch Forces in other dimensions and government institutions related to keeping a control on the supernatural are the most obvious similarities to stuff in WF games.

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Visual Artists:

1. Francisco Goya, especially his Black Paintings, his insights into the witchcraft and folkloric traditions of the Basque region and elsewhere in the Iberian peninsula should be very appealing to fans of The Twins and The Thunderskin. Plus all of the Catholic imagery brings to mind The Mother of Ants.

2. Austin Osman Spare, Rosaleen Norton, and Marjorie Cameron. All three of these people were heavily influential occultists and illustrators/painters so their work is definitely a great representative example of the kind of occult art that you are making when you Paint in Cultsim.

3. Salvador Dali is also a relatively obvious, but I think very appropriate all the same recommendation. Surrealism is by and large the big big tonal influence on Secret Histories in my opinion. He also did a tarot deck so that brings in the Lucid Tarot connection

4.Erté, absolutely the kind of art and fashion you would find in Cultist Simulator's 1920's. Art Deco for days but also his works in particular show a more flowy and organic influence that we would more stereotypically associate with the Art Nouveau of decades prior.

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Comic Books:

1. Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing and Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man. DC's Red and Green (plus all the other elemental forces) are a deeply underappreciated and underexplored element of the setting, and I think they have a lot of similarities with the Principles we find in Secret Histories.

2. Related to the above, Alan Moore's Promethea and Grant Morrison's The Invisibles for an exploration of 20th and 21st century occultism. Despite the two authors general distaste for each other, their works are often very complimentary.

3. The Hellboy franchise doesn't have a lot of one-to-one parallels with Cultsim & Co. but they draw from the same artistic influences of gothic fiction, weird fiction, mythology and folklore and the occult. So I feel very strongly that fans of one would and should find the other to be enjoyable. Both fandoms need to be more active on this hell site and though there are a handful of quality hidden gems of fanfiction for both franchises I desperately need more people to be writing & reading fan fiction for both. Plus I do strongly believe that Mike Mignola' s art style would really excel at illustrating characters and settings from Secret Histories. His non Hellboy work is also recommended especially the works that fall under his Outervers setting, like Baltimore and Joe Golem.

4. Although I will admit that I am not up to date on it, and that there has been a considerable amount of discourse around the quality of its storytelling (especially within the past few years) I would recommend the webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court to fellow Cultsim fans. Alchemic imagery, interesting reinterpretations of folklore and a setting and tone that is quintessential British urban fantasy / science fiction, Gunnerkrigg is in my opinion a work that has a lot of appeal for fans of WF's games and stories.

5. Lackadaisy Cats is an awesome Webcomic and animated web series. 1920s/ 30s gangsters and bootleggers in the form of anthropomorphic cats! And absolutely beautiful Art Deco illustrations! What's not to love.........

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Anime & Manga:

1. Any of the anime directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura especially Serial Experiments Lain and Ghost Hound(this one is seriously underrated in my opinion.) Surrealism is the name of the game as I've said earlier.

2. Le Chevalier D'Eon, both it's manga and anime even though the two are very totally different and have divergent takes on a similar premise. Historical fiction that reinterprets 18th century historical events through an occult lens is so very very Secret Histories. Plus both works have interesting explorations of gender and the nature thereof. It helps that as far as we know the French monarchy's Secret Histories equivalent are associated with the Hours, my personal headcanon is that Louis XIV was Lantern Principal aligned, and Louie XVI had Knock as his Principal. Also the manga version of the story has a lot of its magic system based around the Tarot.

3. You can't recommend D'Eon without recommending it's biggest inspiration (apart from Rose of Versailles of course) and that would be Revolutionary Girl Utena. Edge Dyads for days with that one. Utena and Anthy are totally The Twins. And the whole show and it's movie are full of surrealist pseudo occult imagery practically to the bursting.

4. Baccano! , a light novel / anime series that's about a bunch of immortal Mobsters in the 1920s and 30s. I mean that's basically The Exile DLC right there.

5. xxxHolic and Legal Drug / Drug & Drop, by CLAMP. A shop that grants wishes and a pharmacy that handles the paranormal are both the kind of businesses that I could see existing alongside Morland's, Oriflamme's Auction House & The Ecdysis Club. Plus both manga are hella gay and I will push my Weather Factory games are inherently Queer pieces of media agenda till the day I die.

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Theater, Operas, Music and Albums:

1. Jimmy Page's unused soundtrack for Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Raising. Definition of Occult rock and role.

2. Kiki Rockwell, especially her two most recent albums Rituals on the Bank of a Familiar River, and Eldest Daughter of an Eldest Daughter.

3. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring might just be the closest we will ever get in real life to an occult ritual in the form of an entire ballet like we see in Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours. Definitely a skill that could fall under the Wisdoms of Birdsong and The Bosk.

4. On that note, Mozart's Die Zauberflöte is also full of Hermetic Elements, Lunar / Solar antagonism, mystical initiation and ritual deity impersonation. Mozart was a Freemason so the fanfic of him as a Heart Adapt practically writes itself.

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Literally Fiction:

1. The webnovels Pact and Pale by wildbow. A magic system that revolves around incredibly hierarchical relationships between humans and mystical beings, where magic fundamentally requires discarding one's humanity and transforming into some kind of mystical being yourself is very similar to the Adapt to Long pipeline we follow in Cultist Simulator.

2. The Rivers of London series is one that I'm still familiarizing myself with but it's another example of wonderful British urban fantasy (that isn't the wizard books that shall not be named) The fact that the main characters of the series are magic police officers gives it a certain Suppression Bureau appeal.

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Nonfiction- Philosophy and Occult works and Authors:

1. Georges Bataille!!!!!!!! If you only pick one thing from this list to investigate further let it be the philosophical works of this man. His theory of religion as it relates to concepts such as economy, sacrifice, and eroticism you literally completely change how you understand The Hours and The House Without Wall.

2. Aleister Crowley, and any of his students, especially Kenneth Grant. He really is the quintessential modern English occultist, whether or not AK and Lottie intended it, the DNA of his beliefs or those of his Golden Dawn contemporaries, or his students is all over Cultsim and BoH. The Red Grail is like, so blatantly Babalon it's kind of ridiculous.

3. The Book of English Magic by Phillip Carr- Gomm & Richard Heygate, is a good introductory source of information on the history of magical practice and occultism on the British isles.

4. Occult Paris by Tobias Churton is a fascinating insight into some of the mystical practices that were en vogue in Europe just a few decades prior to when Cultist Simulator takes place.

5. Atlas of Cursed Places by Oliver Le Carrer. I could totally see some of the places documented in this book as being locations you could send your Followers to in Cultsim.

6. Please read everything you can that is academically critical about Greek magical Papyri. There are tons of resources for reading translations and analysis of these documents that are some of the most foundational examples of what real historical magical belief and practice actually looked like.

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Web Original Content, Podcasts, YouTube Channels and Tiktok Recommendations:

1. Greedy Peasant over on Instagram and tik tok does fascinating content related to Catholicism, medieval history and art, and other related topics. If you like all of the interesting reinterpretations of Christian religious iconography into sun worship that happens in Book of Hours I highly recommend his content.

2. The last few years have really seen an incredible ecosystem of academic scholarship on religion, mythology, occultism and esoteric philosophy develop on YouTube. Channels like Esoterica, Angela's Symposium, Let's Talk Religion, Religion for Breakfast, Jackson Crawford, The Modern Hermeticist, The Archaeology of Ancient Magic, and others are just overflowing gold mines of accessible and easily digestible but still academically critical and pseudoscience and conspiracy theory free information about mysticism historical occultism and esoteric religion and mythology.

3. There are also a number of great YouTube channels that aren't academically critical but are run by actual practicing witches and occultists and they offer fascinating and interesting insights into these same topics but from a lived more personal perspective which is just as important I think to learn about as the academically critical sources. Great channels include Benbell Wen, Maevius Lynn, Marco Visconti, & Nordic Animism.

4. In terms of fictional internet media, SCP is so broad that there's a lot of stuff that is completely different in appeal from what is enjoyable about Secret Histories, but there's also so much overlap. I need crossover fanfics and fan art more than air!!!!!

5. Lastly this is a fiction podcast so it's a little incongruous with the other nearby recommendations but, I cannot stress enough......... The Mangus Archives and Magnus Protocol!!!!!!!!!!!!! There are a lot of key differences between those two podcasts and Weather Factory games, but there are so many similarities that I have to write an entire three other posts about how similar the settings are and how I want to write a crossover/ fusion fic. I've seen like, one or two pieces of fan art and fanfiction that was related to both series but in my humble opinion it's not nearly enough. I really really really really really need Cultsim fans to talk more about Magnus and I need Magnus listeners to play these games soooooooo badly!!!!!!!!!!

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Well that mostly concludes this piece of propaganda for the time being, will probably make another post with further additions in the not so distant future. Feel free to reblog this with any other pieces of media that you think would also be appealing to fans of Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours.

[agentartemus]

I’m so intrigued as to what Avani would look like as a Phantasian 👀 (elven species are literally so cool)

Brief description: Avani is compassionate, fiercely loyal, and driven by a deep sense of justice. She is a natural leader balancing wisdom with warmth, making her both a mentor and protector to those around her. She is introspective and deeply connected to her past, reflecting on her past experiences to guide her decisions. Avani cares so deeply for others sometimes conflicts with her own needs, as she often puts her personal struggles aside for the greater good.

Aesthetic: Golden, sun imagery, old relics and artifacts, power and grace

DONE HOLY COW

This one sure took a WHILE (worth it tho). Anyway, Avani would be a royal Lepie guard in training! Her markings would be warrior paint. Her wings are based off of a Hickory Tussock moth. Otherwise, had a blast drawing her. Also did an extra headshot of Lepie Avani and Cathar Avani since you barely got any entries for your DTIYS (criminal). Remember if you decide to draw Lepie Avani, @ me and put the tag "Agent's Phantasia" <33

Hope you like her :]]]

NOTICE: DO NOT REPOST/TRACE/CLAIM/USE MY ART COMMERCIALLY!! PHANTASIA IS ALSO A CLOSED WORLD, SO I DO NOT ALLOW ANYONE TO MAKE THEIR OWN OC WITHOUT TALKING WITH ME!!

Extra tags:

@bladesjulia29 @starsidexiv @kdo16 @zealfruity @powdered-kneecaps @vix8n @lin-lll @furious-blueberry0 @mandalorian-general @vintagevibessketch @brainrotparsecsaway @todays-fixation-is-bigbywolf @king-chaos-world

[youremyheaven]

butterfly motif 🦋& vedic astrology

ive wanted to exclusively dedicate a post towards the use of the butterfly motif in pop culture, so here it is!! i think butterflies have had a re-emergence in fashion in the last few years and im here for it!!

🦋 as i've mentioned in many other posts, the nakshatras closely tied to using this motif repeatedly are the pisces rashi nakshatras of ubp and revati along with punarvasu nakshatra.

Revati moon, Rihanna wearing butterfly eye lashes.

Venus exalts in Pisces and ive noticed that these natives are often drawn to Venusian aesthetics and imagery.

Rihanna at a Savage x Fenty show. You cannot tell me this isn't reminiscent of the Birth of Venus and the colour scheme is super Venus coded as well.

UBP sun Lady Gaga wearing butterfly face paint. she has often gravitated towards this motif over the years.

here she is in a blue butterfly dress

idk about you but when i see wings, i think butterfly 🦋. hence why this look is here 🤭😌

yet another lady gaga butterfly lewk

2. bella hadid for Swarovski. bella has ketu in ubp and girlie is obsessed with butterflies 😍

3. kendall jenner, ubp moon wearing a butterfly print dress

4. emrata, also ubp moon wearing a butterfly print dress

5. urfi javed, an indian entertainer who has ubp ketu wearing an outfit with a butterfly motif

6. dua lipa, punarvasu moon and known for her butterfly obsession wearing a blumarine butterfly head to toe lewk

7.brie larson ubp asc wearing a winged dress

8. sarah jessica parker is ubp sun & venus with revati mercury atmakaraka and this is a vvv iconic look from sex and the city

9.bella hadid had an nft thingie and the teaser(?) for it depicted her as a cyborg in a pool of water with butterflies. couldn't get more pisces coded than that tbh

10. queen latifah, ubp sun with those butterfly tats. ive noticed a lot of pisces girlies specifically choosing blue butterflies over any other type👀

11. halsey, punarvasu moon and has a butterfly tattoo!!

12. mariah carey, i mean we all know the OG iconic butterfly top moment but here's an underrated lewk from this punarvasu queen who also has an album titled Butterfly

she also has a perfume line called Lollipop Bling that's packaged like this:

13. Kendrick Lamar's to pimp a butterfly

he has mercury and mars in punarvasu. jup in revati atmakaraka and ubp rahu. lamar has implied that the title alludes to the nature of celebrity and how something free spirited and beautiful can be so violently controlled. again, VERY pisces coded.

14. brand new eyes by paramore

hayley williams, who is the lead singer has revati mars amatyakaraka.

15. dolly parton has a very very famous song called love is like a butterfly, she has punarvasu mars conjunct saturn. look at the lyrics of the song, only a cancer girlie would go so soft like this 🥺

Love is like a butterfly

As soft and gentle as a sigh

The multicolored moods of love are like its satin wings

Love makes your heart feel strange inside

It flutters like soft wings in flight

Love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle thing

Dolly also has a perfume called "Tennessee Sunset" and its packaged like this:

16. alexander mcqueen, the fashion designer had ubp sun and used lots of winged imagery in his work

17. vincent van gogh, revati sun ubp venus and mars and punarvasu rising has a series of paintings called butterflies. i personally associate whimsical art with both pisces rashi and punarvasu. ill make another post some day but the impressionist movement and even the surrealist movement were vvv influenced by these two placements.

18. Papillon 1973

its based on the true story of henri charriere, who is played by steve mcqueen in the movie. not only is the movie called papillon (french for butterfly) the character also has a butterfly chest tattoo and steve mqueen has ubp sun, revati venus atmakaraka and punarvasu rising

19. silence of the lambs<3

one of the most iconic movie posters of all time features a moth. this moth also plays a key role in the movie and is a major motif.

the book on which the movie was based was written by thomas harris, who has a revati stellium (sun, jupiter & ketu)

20. SPOILER ALERT!!

in the movie corpse bride, the titular character dissolves into a bunch of butterflies at the end of the movie

corpse bride is played by helena bonham carter who has ubp saturn and ketu in revati

21. Kali Uchis, punarvasu sun often uses butterfly imagery

This photoshoot was conceptualised and shot by the South Korean photographer Choi Gi Seok who has purvabhadrapada moon (0 degrees pisces)

His work heavily features butterfly imagery ;

XxxxxxX

my own take is that, since pisces is the final rashi and the point of "absolution" it represents the end of chrysalis, when all elements have come together to create transformation; in pisces there is nothing left to do, but seek liberation from these cycles (its purpose is moksha,after all) and dissolve entirely into the cosmic ocean.

a butterfly is a beautiful symbol, representing not only the death of the creature that inhabited the cocoon but also reminding us that that death is necessary because only then can something as beautiful as a butterfly emerge from within that womb. the womb is the source of creation but you're not meant to stay there forever, that's not just stagnancy, that's death. birth is a painful process because you're leaving behind the only place you've ever known but you have no other option so you must be brave enough to face it.

this brings us to the connection of punarvasu nakshatra to butterflies. punarvasu's deity is goddess Aditi who is creation itself; she is the cosmic mother, she created this universe. in pisces, you seek liberation from the cycles of life but in punarvasu, life, the universe, creation itself takes place. thus it represents the butterfly emerging from the cocoon to claim its identity as a butterfly because the life it led before that was a non-life, it wasn't yet a butterfly, it was a non-being. goddess Aditi embodies infinite space and primordial vastness. what better way to represent the cosmic abundance than with a symbol like a butterfly? 🦋you cannot ask who created you because you are your own creation

“Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”- Zhuangzi

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that's it for now but i'll keep updating as i find more examples💛i hope this was interesting<3

[druidposting]

I think so much about Third Person's specific decision to use a moth as the imagery for Phineas' metamorphosis.

Like, usually in media you'll see butterflies used as the chosen imagery for metaphors on metamorphosis, so its very interesting to me that a moth specifically was chosen, especially since moths are broadly seen as "less savory" when compared to butterflies.

If i had to guess the actual reason why 3rd Person chose a moth over butterfly, its probably because moths are known more as nocturnal and butterflies as daiurnal, so it feels more natural to have moths depicted in the Fold, a place of permanant night.

But my personal belief is that the moth is representative of Phineas beyond just evoking imagery of his metamorphosis.

As i said, moths are much less loved in the public eye than butterflies - they're seen more as a secondary thing to butterflies than anything. Who else do we know thats repeatedly shown to us as secondary? Who, in their very character introduction, was shown to us as an add-on to the shining, resplendant first-in-command?

Also, for me anyway, moths evoke a more subdued and quiet vibe than their butterfly counterparts, who tend to be seen as more flashy and vibrant, which is very on-brand for Phineas. This also makes me picture Jonas as a butterfly in this metaphor specifically in Phineas' perception of him - resplendant, loud, flashy, adored by all the public. When a butterfly's around, dazzling about in the sun, who really cares about the moth with tattered wings and dull scales?

But its an unfair comparison, because moths only truly shine at night, when its quiet, and its dark, and the moonlight can touch their scales in a way that makes them shimmer.

[scarletpath]

The new Evil Ending for Ascended Astarion really is making me think of the imagery of it. Of course before I even continue, I do know the parallels of him with 'The Sun King' Louis XIV.

I just want to explore what could be another layer.

And of course, this has spoilers. So I'll just add the read more to be safe.

I find it rather odd that A-Astarion actually blocks out the Sun. Yes, I know that he mentions he would do it eventually. But he also talks about wanting to walk in the Sun and making sure that (If he turns you into a Spawn) you could walk in it too.

When he is a Spawn, he loves the Sun. How it feels and all the colours that it brings. He talks about how he could always walk in the Sun if he Ascends too. And when he doesn't go through with the ascension ritual, it's obvious that he would deeply miss the Sun.

So again, I bring it up. It's odd that A-Astarion blocks out the Sun. But in return makes himself look like a golden, shining ethereal being. And not your typical 'Spooky, hiding in the shadows' Vampire.

He does this because he wants to be the 'Sun'. To be the center of Universe. For mortals to seek him out like 'Moths to the flame'. That despite how ruthless and dangerous he is, people can't help but to be drawn to him. With the whole world in darkness, it's only obvious that people will seek out the light. And that would be Astarion.

We always associate Light= Good, Life, Safe etc.

But he takes it and flips it. And people still can't help themselves. He doesn't even have to use any powers to manipulate them.

And A-Astarion delights in that.

[dannybobany]

Marzenie time guysss

Here’s the Basil design!

Other versions plus a little elaboration on the design:

Cloakless + wing design versions

So for the sake of specificity I’ve been calling him “Marze” whenever I refer to the in-dream version of Basil, Same naming convention as (Hikik)Omori, but don’t be mistaken, Marze is not an individual like Omori is, Marze is a costume- just the suit that Basil wears while venturing the horrors of his mind, Marze is merely how Basil conforms himself to the world of Marzenie, none of the characters there are really human so it’d be out of place if Basil himself was (this can be viewed as a form of self-dehumanizing on Basil’s part but it’s mostly for the artists sake- the meta explanation is just as important as the in-world one)

Now for the design itself:

maybe the symbolism here is really obvious but I wanna explain it anyway, the Deer parts (antlers and legs) are representative of Basil’s general personality as a whole- he’s skittish and vulnerable yes but when forced deer do fight back, an idea that’s very important to Marzenie given it displays Basil LITERALLY fighting to survive against his inner struggles, that and the creator (me) really likes deer … so there’s that

Otherwise, the wings are Moths wings, which seems like it’s a really simple connection to Sunny and the idea that Moths are drawn to light but it’s a little more literal in Marzenie because it’s not just that Sunny is Basils sun in a metaphorical way it’s that in Marzenie he actually IS, in the world of Marzenie there is a Sun-God character that is very obviously just Sunny, which is both about bit about Basil’s view of Sunny as someone without flaw but also about just how much Basil relies on him… or rather the IDEA of him

Sun-God-Sunny is a very important presence in Marzenie because it’s his very absence that’s made Marzenie what it is, returning to that Map art I made for a moment here

Within Marzenie it’s not just that Sunny is a god but that he’s a dead/‘sleeping’ god, and in his absence the world has become cold and dark (which necessitates that lantern in the desgin above)

Yes Basil had issues before the incident but having friends and having SUNNY made that bearable and something he could have gradually put behind him, being abandoned so suddenly in such a traumatic way has thrown Basil’s mind into a state of eternal darkness, the world of Marzenie is cold and dark and dangerous, and all of this is the most literal possible representation of the damage Sunny’s absence has inflicted on Basil’s mental state

Sunny’s character in Marzenie being the Sun god is also why the center of it and the beginning of the journey is a church, the only hope Basil has anymore is that Sunny will return and they can be friends again, so he’s build an alter in his mind dedicated to this hope, this prayer

Also religious imagery is fun <3, also it’s a parallel to the church of something and how Basil’s house is at the center of Vast forest (and thus the center of Sunny’s mind, they center their places of safety around each other, even if for Basil that place is a tiny candlelit alter in the center of a dark woodland while for Sunny that Place of safety is EVERYTHING in his mind, so vastly different and yet sort of the same <- does any of this make sense? Probably not, who cares, it’s my AU and I WILL ramble as much as I like ok)

[brayneworms]

fearful, wonderful.

featuring. scaramouche.

tags. kabukimono!scaramouche, trans!scaramouche, yokai!reader, gender-neutral reader, slowburn, general allusions to war and death, yokai lore/imagery.

word count. 4.09k

notes. MINORS DNI

synopsis. the both of you are missing pieces. you will never be human. you will be more human than anything that came before you.

masterlist. prev. next. ao3.

I. EVEN THE IRON STILL FEARS THE ROT.

There are spirits that live in your eyes. 

They live, they dance, they die, all in the confines of your sclera. Sometimes when you blink, you see them imprinted even in your mind. Some of them are your friends, some your enemies. It doesn’t matter at the end of the day. They live and they dance and they die all the same. You watch decades go by in a blink. You watch a flower sprout and bloom and die before you can even think to pluck it. Beauty is something that escapes you, the longer the years go on. The stars blur together in silver streaks across the sky, unending glistening tubers counting the years of your misery.

You find something like solace in Tatarasuna. Your village nests itself at the bedrock of a cluster of mountains that jut up against the Inazuman horizon. You’ve lived through the war, now you reach peace. Peace is a house with a red door and a lavender-melon tree outside. Peace is a community of humans who are all kinder and more well-meaning people than you. Peace is the children that play in the flowery meadows, the elderly women who hang their wet linens on the wires outside their homes, the men who chop wood and manhandle iron. 

Peace is laying down to sleep on your futon every night with the knowledge of all your days spent, and all the ones yet to come. Peace is dreaming of friends long dead and mistaking for a moment that they will be there to greet you when you wake, only to open your eyes to an empty room, a cold hearth. You keep your teacups out of the cupboard, hanging from little wire hooks protruding from the sugi wood. They’re seto, hardly finely crafted, but you think built with heart. That is something humans are good at. Building with heart. They stir love into their creations.

You have never known yōkai to do the same. 

You make tea in the evening. The sun crests over the purple sky, dips behind the mountains, shading your village in fiery light. You look out of the window of your kitchen; the glass has become cloudy over time, built up with moss and condensation piling between the panes, but you can see out, far out, across the lavender field. Two children play there, throwing a ball made of cloth back and forward. As your water starts to boil over the fire, their mother wanders out, takes them both by the wrist and hauls them back inside whilst they cry and whine. 

There is something so human in that, you think. They know the meadow will be here tomorrow, that the moths will not consume their cloth ball in the night. And yet they cry. It is so human to want everything to linger in the here and now. 

They have no sense of future or past. They seek beauty in its extremity, hunt for it under every corner, drink it like lifeblood. 

You’re beginning to see the appeal, the longer you stay. 

Your tea is earthy. It’s made from dendrobium. 

You drink it outside in the dying light, and it looks like blood, and it feels like home on your lips. 

You find Katsuragi one evening on Nazuchi beach. You know that he sometimes takes off his shoes and walks along the foamy shore, looking for crabs or turtles that have wandered into water too shallow and tossing them back to the tide. 

Katsuragi is a softhearted man. He slants his hand against the sun to see you properly as you approach. Your footsteps sink deeply into the purplish sand—further than they should, for someone of your size. It is one of the many things about you that you’ve learned unnerve the humans. 

You slide your geta off your feet as you approach the shoreline, hold them by the woollen band between two fingers. Katsuragi bends down and observes a jellyfish trapped in a rock pool. 

“Don’t touch that,” you tell him as he reaches. “They sting.”

“Do they?” He looks surprised. “I’ve never been stung.”

You shrug. “Maybe they sense your kind intentions.”

“Ah, well, I’m absolutely brimming with those.” Katsuragi grins, then leans down again. You tap his wrists sharply. 

“Let me,” you mutter. “I don’t feel it.”

“Of course. I forget.” 

You don’t know if that’s the truth. Most of Taratsuna knows that you’re a yōkai, even if only because you’ve lived in the same place for around a hundred years and not aged a day. They have no clue how long you’ve lived before that, though. And they never will.

You cup the water beneath the jellyfish with two hands. It squirms in your grip as you lift it into the air; its feelers wrap over your arm like pale ribbons; its body is soft and rubbery and achingly vulnerable in your hands. You wonder if it knows that its attempts to sting you are in vain. You wonder if all things hurt the people trying to help them, only because they don’t know aid from sabotage. 

It slips from your hands back into the water and disappears beneath the surface. 

“Thank you,” Katsuragi says earnestly. “You’re a good soul, Y/n.”

You don’t tell Katsuragi that there is a large part of you that doesn’t come alive unless you are hurting or being hurt.  

“I’m not,” you say instead. “I’m tsukumogami. I have no soul.”

“Jellyfish have no brains,” Katsuragi shrugs. “But we care for them all the same, don’t we?”

One night—the night that everything changes—sleep escapes you. 

Every time you close your eyes you see war. You are seto-taishō, and so it is all that you know. Rain pours down from the black sky in sheets, collects in the mossy gutters and pools on rooftops. The lavender meadow by your house will flood at this rate. You think of all those flowers coming loose from the topsoil like a hundred thousand frail purple corpses, awash downstream. 

You keep a collection of scrolls tucked away inside a dresser drawer; they tell stories of your life, your past, your friends. All of it long gone and dead, yet their pictures remain. You unroll them tonight, loosening the velvet ribbons that catch them fast, lay out the worn parchment over your dining table. You run your fingers over the cracked and faded paint. What will you have left of them when even these scrolls return to dust? Your own memories? What a sick joke.

Their screams echo in your ears; you feel your skin press tight over your bones, like your heart is too big for your body, and you press your knuckles to your mouth to stifle a scream. Tatarasuna is good. The people here are good. You are not, and it is why you will never belong. 

It is why you will never integrate yourself with them, because they are only humans, and their lives pass you by in a blink. You have loved and hated an uncountable number of humans, and they live and die just the same, and it hurts so badly that it’s all you can do to shut it all out. You’ve learned that it’s easy to become entranced with humanity, and their kindness, and their hope and resilience—but it is just as easy to become revolted with it. With their fleeting lives and their selfishness and their hypocrisy. 

At first you think you hallucinate the knock at your door. It’s pitch black outside and howling a gale; lightning forks down from the sky habitually, blazing the landscape violet for a split second before it dissipates back into darkness. But then it comes again—more frantic, more urgent, and you set your scrolls to the side with a mounting feeling of suspicion. 

You think about hunting for your weapons. It seems you truly cannot escape your nature, or you would have burned the things years ago. As it is, they lay stashed and growing dust under your wardrobe. In lieu of arming yourself to the teeth, you slip a delicate half-dagger into your sock as you approach to the door. You press your ear to the wood, hearing nothing for a moment but the dull roar of the storm outside. 

And then another knock. 

You crack the door open. A curtain of cold wind whips inside, making your lit hearth sputter and protest and choke out a plume of black smoke. 

And Katsuragi says, “Hear me out.”

Your brow furrows. A crack of violet lightning splits the sky, and you see them. A figure so much smaller than Katsuragi that they were almost swallowed entirely. Head bent against the lashing rain, small and slender against Katsuragi’s thick corded-muscle arms. You blink, looking from the nameless figure back to Katsuragi. He lifts his eyebrows, beseeching. 

Slowly, you open the door. Katsuragi sags with relief and steps over the threshold, and it's only as the both of them pass over it that you notice they’re holding hands. The sight of it looks bizarre. The figure behind him moves with both easy grace and childish uncertainty. Their lithe, pale fingers curl around Katsuragi’s fist.

“Thank you,” Katsuragi pants, swiping his dripping wet hair from his forehead. You close the door silently behind him, culling the howling gale. “You don’t know what this means. I barely do.”

“Explain,” you say quietly, eyes flickering from the man you recognise to the figure you do not. They stand quite still in the middle of your living room, dripping water onto the tatami flooring. 

“Yes,” Katsuragi says, then promptly gets distracted. “Hey there, don’t stand so close to the fire,” he chides, seizing the figure by their wrist and pulling. “You’ll get burnt. Or your robes will set alight.”

They go without question, stumbling where Katsuragi’s gentle pull guides them. The longer you look at this figure in your living room, the more your hair is standing on end. “Katsuragi?”

“Yes. Sorry.” He hesitates, then jerks his head. You follow him into the hallway and he slides the door shut behind you; the figure in your living room watches, unblinking, until the very moment the door touches the frame. Wide blue eyes, like ice shimmering on a winter lake. “I found him at Shakkei Pavilion. Just wandering around. He had this on him.”

Katsuragi hands you something. Your eyes widen as your eyes come to focus on it—an elegant golden feather, unmistakable. 

“Hung around his neck,” Katsuragi says lowly. “It’s a mark of the archons.”

“The Shogun?” you mutter, turning your head back to the closed door in disbelief. 

“I see the resemblance alright,” Katsuragi says. “It’s strange. I don’t think he’s quite… human.”

Your spine stiffens. “What do you mean? He’s… yōkai?”

“No, not quite,” Katsuragi winces, looking awkward. “But… we walked in that rain for nearly an hour. I’m about to catch my death from the cold, and he was just… standing there like he didn’t even feel it. I don’t even think he was breathing.”

“I’ve never heard of anything quite like that,” you admit. “But… why bring him to me?”

Katsuragi bites his lip. “I can’t… in good conscience cast him aside,” he says quietly. “By the looks of things, he’s been abandoned once already. The—the look in his eyes, when he realised I was trying to take him with me… almost like he’d never even conceived of it before. But I also—I don’t have the time to look over him all day, not with my job. And yet… he hungers for it, I can tell. To be a part of something.”

“Is that so?” you say archly. “And how can you tell?”

Katsuragi’s eyes soften. “I see it on your own face often enough.”

Your jaw clenches. “Losing your sight in your old age, I see,” you spit. “Or maybe you’ve taken one too many hits to the head.”

A breathless chuckle. “But, see… I think him finding a place in this village will be good for him. I’ll pay a visit to my friend Niwa in the morning—he taught my niece to read and write, you know? He could learn to be a real person.”

You almost ask, why do you care so much? And then you remember that this is Katsuragi. Katsuragi who wanders the shores in his spare hours, finding sea animals who had wandered too close to land. All Katsuragi did was look out for lost souls. He collects them—things without brains. Things without souls. You cast a glance at the shut door again, picturing the figure behind it.

Things without hearts.

“So you want me to… what?” You look at Katsuragi in disbelief. “I’m not the one to raise him, Katsuragi.”

He shrugs. “He’s not a child. He is ignorant of the world, sure, but he seems to have lived much of it already. You wouldn’t be a parent. You’d be a friend.”

“A friend?” you repeat with derision. “I’m hardly fit to be anyone’s friend.”

“Well, I’m hurt.” Katsuragi grins. “All this time, I thought we were buds.”

“You’re hilarious,” you say acidly. “Be serious. Let Niwa house him. Do it yourself, if you care so much.”

“I can’t,” he begs. “Nobody else can. Don’t you see?”

And suddenly you do. You are the only one suited to look over him, because of one very specific thing you both have in common. You are not human. And neither is he. 

“You don’t want him to be alone,” you say quietly. Katsuragi looks at you helplessly. “I think you’re making a mistake, entrusting him to me.”

Katsuragi gives you a crooked smile. “Who says I’m not entrusting you to him?”

The thing—boy?—has moved a little from where you both left him when you shut the door. His back was to you, and he was stooped slightly over your dresser, examining the small collections of kitchenware you had stored carelessly upon there. 

“What are you doing?” you snap, striding over. The puppet doesn’t flinch, exactly, but his body sort of locks up in surprise, and he turns those wide indigo eyes over to you with the sort of innocence you’d once thought only small children or animals possessed. The seto cup in his hand trembles. 

“I was… just looking,” he says tremulously.

“You’re touching,” you grit out. “Touching isn’t looking.”

The puppet looks down at the cup in his hands, and then he slowly sets it down on the dresser. His features—somehow soft and pointed at the same time—are taut with faint confusion. “Is it valuable?”

“To me, yes.” You snatch the cup up and hang it back on its hook. The puppet’s eyes follow you, hopelessly confused. You sort of feel like you’re pointing a crossbow at a deer that’s never been hunted before. 

“Easy, now,” Katsuragi intervenes—he raises his hands as though about to place them placatingly on your shoulders, but the venomous look you shoot him cowes him. He rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck, instead. “He didn’t know, okay?”

You bite your lip, staying schtum. The puppet looks from you to Katsuragi uncertainly. The silence swells. 

Finally, Katsuragi stoops down to talk to the puppet. “So… you’re going to be staying here for a while, okay? At least until we figure out what more we can do.”

The puppet’s lashes flicker in surprise. “Will I see you again?”

“Of course,” Katsuragi says warmly. “I’ll stop by all the time. I just don’t have the time to house you with me at the moment, okay?”

“I’m not going back to the Pavilion?” the puppet asks quietly. “I… get to stay?”

Katsuragi raises his eyes and looks at you beseechingly. 

This is a terrible idea. 

You’re going to ruin this poor puppet’s life. 

You throw up your hands in exasperation and nod. 

As Katsuragi says his goodbyes, you go to the closet and pull out a spare futon and some blankets. There’s a spare room, but it’s about the size of a large cupboard and currently is used to store your old armour and weapons. The puppet will have to share your room. You unroll the futon in the furthest corner from your own bed, right under the window. Muted strips of moonlight fall over the sheets, stifled by the rainfall. 

When you wander back into the living room, Katsuragi is preparing to leave. You hesitate.

“Don’t want to dry off before you go?” 

He shakes his head with a demure smile. “Not much point. I’ll get soaked either way.” He walks over to you with his dark eyes soft and open. “Thank you for this. I’m grateful.” His voice drops. “So is he.”

You don’t voice any of the things that rise to your lips instinctively. This is a mistake. I’ll mess this up. I’ll mess him up. 

I can’t teach life. All I know is death. 

Instead, you shrug. “Whatever.”

With another pat on the puppet’s head, Katsuragi departs. The puppet’s eyes follow him warily before turning to you. The expression on his face is expectant, like he’s waiting for you to tell him what to do.

You cast an awkward look around. “Are you… cold?”

The puppet blinks. “I don’t think so.” He looks down at his soaked clothes as though they don’t even belong to him. “That’s rain outside, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

The puppet looks thoughtful. “I heard it often, in the Pavillion. I always wondered what it looked like. What it felt like. But I couldn’t feel much of it.”

“Right.” You shift awkwardly. “Well… you should change into some dry clothes, at least.”

The puppet blinks. Tilts his head curiously. “Why?”

“Just… you know.” Your tongue feels too big and awkward for your mouth, and you have to bite back an irritated huff. “It’ll feel better.”

The puppet still looks confused, but he only bites his lip this time instead of answering. The skin there, caught between his teeth, is smooth and unmarred. The clothing in question is, indeed, so wet that it’s sticking to him. The plain, unembellished karaginu is practically translucent against his fair skin, his dark katsugi veil clinging to his long, dark hair. And what hair—it cascades like a dark waterfall down to his waist, stringy with rainwater, framing a thin, pale face. 

He looks like a woman, in this light. Pretty enough to be one, you suppose. The feminine clothing and hair weren’t helping. 

You rummage in your cupboards for a spare jinbei, hands curling over soft eggshell cotton. When you press them into his arms, he looks hopelessly confused, and you heave a sigh. 

“Undress yourself, and put these on,” you tell him. “Your bed is in that room, under the window.”

You turn your back, wandering into the kitchen to make tea. You take a cup—not your seto ones, they never get used for something as prosaic as teamaking—and spoon dried curdled leaves into it, light a fire under a pot of water. It bubbles happily away as the flame catches and sputters in earnest. 

You look over your shoulder, intending to ask the puppet if he would like something to drink also (do puppets need to drink? Do they need to eat?) but your voice dies in your throat. His veil lies in a wet pile of diaphanous lilac silk at his feet. He has struggled halfway out of his karaginu, the top half pooling limply at his waist as he works at his belt. 

“W-what are you doing?!”

The puppet’s head snaps up at your near-shout, eyes wide. His fingers fumble at his waist, and the sharp jut of his shoulder blades and spine contort as he whirls around to stare at you. 

“Don’t change here,” you tell him incredulously. “Go into the bathroom or the bedroom.”

The puppet looks utterly bewildered and a little hurt. “What? W-why?”

“For privacy.” You take a deep breath through your teeth. He lived alone in a domain for Archons-know how long. Of course he would be unaccustomed to the concept of shame. Maybe it’s not right for you to introduce him to it—but you can’t pretend the sight of his bare torso doesn’t rattle you in all the wrong ways. Strange markings carve into his skin at the elbows and shoulders. They look like weird shadows, but you don’t keep your eyes on them long enough to gauge their meaning. All you see is an expanse of smooth, unmarred skin. 

“I don’t understand,” the puppet says quietly. “Is my body offensive?”

“It’s not that,” you get out through gritted teeth, eyes glued to the wall. “It’s just… decent. Please go and change somewhere else.”

There’s a pause—and then you hear a quiet rustle of shifting clothing. Silently, the puppet picks up his sleepwear and treads down the hallway to the bathroom. The door slides shut with a sound like a sigh behind him. 

You turn back to your tea, trying not to feel guilty. The water in the pot froths and spits now, starting to bubble over the cast-iron rim. You wonder if you hurt the puppet’s feelings. You wonder if he has any feelings to hurt. 

Things without souls. Things without hearts. 

What a pair we make. 

Katsuragi’s trust in you feels like a sick joke. 

You pour the tea, and whilst it cools, walk over to where the puppet was changing. He left his veil in a sodden pile on the floor, so you pick it up and hang it on one of the coat hanger hooks. It drips sullenly and relentlessly, a steady dull tapping against the tatami flooring. You cast a glance at the closed door, the one the puppet undresses behind. 

Aid and sabotage. 

Maybe it’s you who doesn’t know the difference. 

After another ten minutes, the door slides open in a soft rush. The puppet pokes his head around the frame. “Am I wearing it right?”

The shirt is backwards, and when you tell him so a frustrated furrow carves itself between his brows. He wriggles his arms back out of the holes and twists the fabric around his torso—and then he looks up at you, and you think that if he had the capacity to breathe his breath would be bated. He looks as though his every happiness clings to you telling him he’s finally done something right. His eyes are impossibly big, like night-blooming lilies, begging for your blessing. 

He doesn’t yet know that you are unfit to give it. 

You nod tersely, drain the last of your tea. “Give me your wet clothes,” you tell him. “I’ll hang them up to dry.”

He scrambles to obey, shoving the damp pile of fabric at you with haste. He watches you hang them up like it’s the most captivating thing in the world, rosebud lips parted in awe. 

When you show him his futon, his eyes gleam. He sets his body down gingerly, spreads his palm over the sheets. Feeling the fabric to an almost obsessive degree, clenching his fists so the white cotton bleeds between his fingers, rubbing his cheek against the pillow like a cat. As you settle into your own bed, staring emptily up at the ceiling, you hear him shift, a rustle as he sits up.

“Why didn’t Katsuragi want me?” he asks.

“He didn’t have time for you,” you answer. “He works a lot.”

There is a short pause as the puppet processes this. “Why did you want me?”

“I didn’t,” you grit out. “But I have you now.”

There is quiet, broken only by the endless rush of rain outside. Then the puppet sighs, long and deep and mournful. 

“I might have known.” His words seep into the darkness, a million miles from the neutral, curious tone you’ve heard so far. His voice sounds hoarse and much older, suddenly, weighed down with a hundred years of pain. “Nobody ever really wants me.”

With that, he turns on his side, pulling the blankets up over his head. 

You don’t know if he sleeps. You certainly don’t.

When you close your eyes after a few hours, you see spirits. They dance and they live and they die. The smell of blood wakes you up. As usual, when you bolt upright, gasping for breath, they are not there. 

Someone is, though. For the first time in you don’t even know how long, someone is. 

The knowledge of that soothes you back to sleep.

[honourablejester]

While on the subject, my favourite subclasses (so far) for each D&D 5e class:

Artificer: Gonna be honest, I don’t do much with artificers, but just going on vibes, while I understand it’s not the most mechanically brilliant of the options, I still just love Alchemist. I just like me some bubbling beakers, you know?

Barbarian: Ancestral Guardian. I love Zealot, I love Wild Magic, I could be persuaded towards Beast, particularly for small characters (scuttly little beast barbarian gnome, I like the vibes), but it’s still Ancestral Guardian. I want to be a barbarian with a pack of ghosts following them around!

Bard: For the longest time, it was Lore, for similar reasons that Knowledge clerics are my joint first favourite clerics. It feels like the old Irish bards, the oral knowledge and magic, and I had a ghoulish little half-elven lore bard named Feyla Thenn who was a lot of fun. But recently … I really like Creation? It definitely does have that spellsinger vibe, singing things into being, and honestly the ability to just sing myself up 50ft of rope, or a grappling hook, or a ladder, or a key, is just … endlessly useful and fun.

Cleric: If I have to pick one, singular, then Twilight. But it is two, because every time I make a cleric, Twilight and Knowledge have a fist fight in my head, and the only reason Twilight wins is because it’s prettier. I like twinkling sparkly bits. But Knowledge is forever there, loyal and true, waiting for me to return to it. (Tempest is the runner up, because I like big booms and I cannot lie. Also ocean).

Druid: Stars. No competition. If I make a druid, they’re gonna be a Stars druid, unless there’s a compelling setting reason for them to be anything else. I like land druids, I’ll flirt with spores, but as a stars druid I get to turn into a mobile starfield and smite people, and there’s just no beating that.

Fighter: Like the artificer, I don’t do much with fighter, but both Rune Knights and Eldritch Knights have a bit of a draw to them. Particularly Rune Knights. I like the hulking, placid, but smarter and more dangerous than you think sort of vibes they have.

Monk: Again, not my class, but I do enjoy a Mercy Monk. I also weirdly have a fondness for the Sun Soul? I like shiny things and radiant damage, but also the Sun Soul gives me kind of anime vibes? Channeling your ki into a radiant aura. IDK, I’m just weirdly fond of the Sun Soul as a concept.

Paladin: As we’ve discussed, a threeway fight between Redemption, Watchers and Devotion, but my love of John Donne and the imagery of weary gothic knights in a world of darkness forever pulls me towards Devotion first. Though, you know. Cosmic horror definitely gives Watchers some points, and I like the mercy first ethos of Redemption.

Ranger: Fey Wanderer. I like skills and languages! For themes and imagery, though, Swarmkeeper. I want a warforged ‘scarecrow’ ranger with a flock of crows. I want a dhampir or changeling swarmkeeper with a swarm of moths. I like swarms. Swarms are good. I love the imagery.

Rogue: Phantom. Again, fairly big gap between this and the closest runner up. I really like ghosts? Like with the Ancestral Barbarian, I just really like ghosts, and the story potential of a character that is perpetually followed by them. Aided by them. I will also give some points to Swashbuckler, though, because I enjoy a good old fashioned daring scoundrel, and I really like swashbuckler movies.

Sorcerer: Aberrant Mind. Again, I enjoy the horror-themed subclasses? Though having played a Clockwork Soul, I also like their whole ‘return to centre’ sort of feel. And, you know. I enjoy a tempest cleric, so Storm sorcerers also get a look in. And Draconic, because ‘my grandma is a green dragon’ is always fun. I think sorcerer is the main class where I kind of like everybody and will give them all a whirl.

Warlock: Fathomless or GOOlock. Neck and neck. I do enjoy a Genielock, there’s fun to be had with Bottled Respite, and I have a fair few ideas for Celestial too, because I like the idea of being hired, on a mercenary basis, to aid the forces of good. I love the idea of some pragmatic deva somewhere just hiring, no convictions necessary, I will simply pay you in magic to fix this evil for me. It’s a great vibe. But Fathomless and GOOlock fill my cosmic horror love so well. I think the edge might go to Fathomless. Because tentacle. And also ocean. Heh.

Wizard: Illusion. Scribes and Abjuration hold joint second place, I love them both dearly. Bookish wizards and tanky wizards are excellent. But I love the diggy, trickster, seeker nature of illusionists. I love the playing with reality, the use of illusion to hide or reveal truth, the philosophical underpinning of a character that chooses, fully consciously, to pursue this school of magic. Also Phantasmal Force is an evil, evil spell, and I love it. Pick up the Metamagic Adept feat and get subtle spell, have a tonne of fun.

There are probably not surprising for most people, but I hadn’t gone through it by class before. So. Here we are?

[rotomartsblog]

I like associating different ‘night and day’ imagery with Nerris and Harrison. Moths and Butterflies, Moon and Sun, Nocturnal and Diurnal, stuff like that

[dreadfutures]

Some details of Alethea Trevelyan, a commission I did for @demarogue

(full here)

Our idea was to make Thea a goddess of transformation. I thought about sunsets, sunrises, and lunar cycles -- ideas of renewal and rejuvenation. With the inclusion of sun imagery, I was able to bring in some Chantry symbols for her magical wrist guards. Originally, her whole torso and arms were supposed to be covered in this shimmering magic, but I just really loved the birdtit armor, the statuesque quality of her skin, and the highlight I could do on her ribs (poor stressed Inquisitor, yknow). The magic in her staff is a Luna moth her hair is a flame, and her cloak is meant to evoke an aurora.

[sunny6677]

Part 2 of the Godzilla AU: Robert/'Robra'.

@catsockpuppet

TWS FOR ANGST AND SLIGHTLY DISTURBING IMAGERY BELOW, BUGS, ETC.

————

Robert, on the other hand, is fused with a literal moth while being experimented on—and the source of his power is solar stuff. He's able to make his gigantic ass wings glow and can produce a poisonous powder when he flaps them, but his body itself is very fragile along with his wings, so he gets hurt very easily. He also has a bit of a life cycle.

SO BASICALLY ROBERTS LIFE CYCLE IS THAT BEFORE HE DIES—an egg usually spawns. And when he dies, his spirit transfers to what was in the egg, and he wakes as a sort of humanoid larvae. Then later on, he cocoons, and becomes a moth-humanoid like he normally is. Repeat.

His story in this is that when he escapes, he flies over the entire ocean as far as he can just to not be found—but he finds an island of people being terrorized by seemingly one of the angered victims of the experiment, and still having his sense of morality, he protects them and fights off the victim even though he doesn't want to. Killing them in the process. The people of the island are so grateful for this that they literally start worshipping him as a God, so now Robert is protecting this entire population of people. He also has his own little magical enchanted twin spirits who can speak to him and pass on his messages and such.

Robert can't talk like a human in this au and can only chirp. And he also still remembers his loved ones, but he has recognition issues and therefore can't tell who they actually are anymore.

Robert is overall very gentle, protective, quiet, and the nicest among most of the entities. His powers are literally being able to make his wings glow so bright he looks like the sun at times and can actually blind people, having a poisonous stinger that paralyzes whoever it stings, being able to give off poisonous powder and lightning from his wings at times, telekinesis, he can produce silk and bind people with it, etc.

And him and Ross's relationship is a bit.. complicated here. They both have a bit of an agreement to protect people here after a while despite Ross's grudge for humanity (since Robert talked him into it), and their partnership is kinda needed in order for that to work. However, they have fought numerous times in the past when Ross was going too far (because he literally tried to break an egg that had spawned for Robert), or when Robert was trying to intervene in something Ross did.

[catbycoded]

two headed boy(toby talking about beau: torn between worlds, one foot in the basin and one foot in maycheste), all floating in glass(reference to glass chalet and trying not to think about it. their home in astradell is often regarded to as a glass house, very public with little to no privacy, something almost like an enclosure or a museum of the “perfect life”) the sun it has passed, now it’s blacker than black(reference to the sun/moon motif between beau and simon) i can hear as you tap on your jar(regarding their home as a glass enclosure once more, like a moth trapped inside a glass jar)(or like a body preserved in a jar for inspection, as interesting specimens tend to be) i am listening to hear where you are(toby desperately looking for beau during his time as a missing persons)(could also be interpreted as toby after beau’s passing: desperately searching for any sign that her soul is still around. he has a tendency to do so) i am listening to hear where you are(the repitition pushing toby’s dedication to her, only when it’s too late; he’s listening to hear where she is, always.)

two headed boy(another repeated line: he is still torn up by the fact that beau was double sided) put on sunday shoes(sunday or church shoes are often the best ones they own; toby is recalling a time they were both well-dressed during a maycheste festival. it is also a reference to religion, which is a prominent theme of the festival, and a theme of simon’s as well, who is introduced during this verse) and dance around the room to accordion keys, with a needle that sings in your heart(here beau is dancing to the music simon is playing at the festival, and singing along as well to create a two-sided harmony between sibeau)(furthermore, the song later leads into a song titled “the fool”, which is led by an accordion and could be the song beau is dancing to. the title could be a reference to his feelings of foolishness about toby and simon’s relationship) catching signals that sound in the dark(furthering beau’s perspective of toby and simon: beau is picking up on signals toby’s unknowingly giving off, with toby suddenly pulling back on their sexual life once simon is reintroduced) catching signals that sound in the dark(repeated, toby is guilty and hung up about beau’s feelings in relation to his unloyalty. this line also leads into the next verse, which pushes the theme of beauby’s sexual life)

we will take off our clothes(toby looking back at the times their sexual relations were healthy and alive) and they’ll be placing fingers through the notches in your spine(now recalling the basin’s control of beau, painting imagery of the basin placing fingers through the most sensitive part of the body and controlling her actions) and when all is breaking everything that you could keep inside(now leading into the breaking of their relationship after the reveal of beau’s relation with the basin, it feels like the whole world is breaking apart inside of not only toby but in beau as well) now your eyes aren’t moving now, they just lay there in their climb(the final act of their story is beau’s death. this also alludes to the reading of a book, when the eyes stay still and the head moves down the page to read, which is a state toby will always remember beau in.)

[dykesbat]

SUN AND MOON IMAGERY IS OUT!!! BUTTERFLY AND MOTH IMAGERY IS IN!!!!