#Unbound

[cloudedmoonofficial]

Crocus - Unbound Marauder

Children: Breezeheart and Crowstalker

Crocus had always lived in the barren desert. She knew the best times to get a drink, where to find her food, how to survive. She didn’t know how to take care of kittens. She couldn’t even remember ever being a kitten. Was she ever this young and helpless? 

When she was young, she could remember the various travelers her and her mother would stumble across. Some mean and cruel, some kind, most indifferent. 

But Crocus has heard of a group of cats who take care of kittens. They live together in huge colonies and help each other survive. They won’t take in adults, not that Crocus would be comfortable giving up her life of solitude anyway, but maybe, just maybe, Crocus could offer her kittens a better chance at survival by taking them to these Colony cats. 

Crocus knew how to survive.

Art by Tennelle

[nicoooooooon]

Outtake with Chelsea Wolfe photographed by Nedda Afsari for the ‘Unbound’ EP (2024)

[nerevar-quote-and-star]

Alduin: My therapist told me to write letters to all the people I hate and then burn them. So I did that.

Alduin: But now I don't know what to do with the letters.

[killiancormac]

UNBOUND is a sci-fi / action story set in an alternate New York City, where corporations, small and massive alike, rule the nation. Much of the state outside of the city is home to abandoned warehouses, and many make their living scavenging whatever scraps they can find and selling them off to rival companies. 

Ethan Jackson, 26, a scavenger since he was a teen, is content with his life. He’s never known his parents, but is close with his surrogate father, Henry. He lives with his lifelong best friend Vaughn, and together with their mutual friend Diana, he makes ends meet by delving into the newest hastily abandoned facility in the remote edges of New York. 

When an acquaintance drags him along with them to a freshly deserted warehouse belonging to none other than Alistair Sinclair, tech mogul and scientist, Ethan learns much more about the world – and himself – than he bargained for.

fuck it do it scared etc etc. ive had this floating around in my head for eight years now NO it does not have a clear ending NO i have not written any of it down NO i do not know where it is going nor do i have a clear idea of how to get from point a to b.

this has very much been a very self indulgent little story that i made up when i was 16 that has just completely snowballed over the last few years <3 maybe one day ill do something real and true with it but before then i need to be properly medicated. love and light.

THE CHARACTERS:

ETHAN

My scrungly. slaps his bald (shaved) head

DIANA

from diana: greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen. she and ethan influence each other

VAUGHN

i do love a gay doctor it has to be said. the only reasonable character in this series

E-25

ethan's twin brother he didnt know about and also somewhat superhuman weapon of war / assassin. my other scrungly x10000000000000

SINCLAIR

[renegadesstuff]

He called him 'Jask' 🥺🤏🤍

[sweetsweetperil]

I fear you

From the inside,

An ache I cannot bear

Creeping up on the outisde

Reaching the surface,

Gasping for air,

I swallow hard, my pride

But there was none left to spare

Eating me alive

Can’t remember a time

It wasn’t there

[hyunsuksswife]

[toushindai]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Hades (Supergiant Games Video Games) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Heracles & Prometheus (Hades Video Game) Characters: Prometheus (Hades Video Game), Heracles (Hades Video Game), Aetos (Hades Video Game) Additional Tags: Written During Hades II (Supergiant Video Game) Early Access, Hades II (Supergiant Video Game) Early Access Spoilers Series: Part 4 of Matters of Time (Hades II Ficlet Collection) Summary:

The gods want Prometheus's help against the Titan of Time. Heracles has been sent to free him.

[thattransdad]

OMG I hate X media because it's all about X and X is a bad thing 😳

....have you considered that that is the point of the media?

[arcofacatboy]

Remember when, towards the beginning of Unwind, Connor sees a storked baby on someone’s doorstep?

Connor has just escaped the juvies less than 48 hours beforehand. Right now, his main focus is not getting caught by juvies and being unwound as a result. He has Risa and Lev to look out for - not that he knows either of them very well at this point - but his main goal, at this point, is saving his own skin (literally). Connor didn’t object when his classmate, and fellow unwind, Andy Jameson, sacrificed himself for him. It was implied in a Facebook post (all the way back in 2011!) that Connor and Andy were friends - and Andy was ultimately unwound because he saved Connor’s life. Andy is never mentioned again. Connor feels no guilt over Andy entering a divided state for him.

And yet, when Connor sees that baby on the doorstep, he panics.

It’s not like the general public in the Unwind Universe care about storks that much. Starkey was tormented by his status as a stork - everyone else thought he was a joke because of it, and he hated himself for that. Bam feels similarly, and is no stranger to becoming aggressive with those who try to belittle her because she was abandoned as a baby. No adults seemed to want to help them in this regard - they sent Bam and Starkey off to be unwound in the end, because their status as storks and the lack of affection from everyone in their lives came to be too much, and their anger was no longer contained and internalized. Bam lived - but Starkey ultimately died because he, more than anything, wanted to be something other than a stork to be unwound, who wouldn’t amount to anything.

But that’s not the point here, really. Connor doesn’t know Bam or Starkey, let alone that Starkey will die at his only remaining hand. He’s not panicking because someone he knows is a stork, and is suffering because of it. Someone he knew was a stork, and died because not a single person in his neighborhood cared about keeping him alive.

A baby was put on the doorstep of Connor’s parents. They knew why he was there - they had been storked, and they were now legally, and morally, obligated to take in the baby as their own.

But they already had a seven year old and a four year old! Two boys, no less! They had no need for a third son. Surely no one had seen them be storked by whatever irresponsible girl had gotten herself pregnant and given her baby up to good, hardworking people, who shouldn’t have had to bear the burden of her bad decisions.

Surely no one would notice if they just moved the baby to the doorstep of the neighbors. Surely they wouldn’t mind raising a son.

But no one said a damn thing.

Two weeks later, the baby boy showed up on the Lassiter’s doorstep - again.

He was visibly sick, so close to death that only then, out of pity for the infant, did the Lassiter parents take him in. He died in the hospital - most likely alone, having never known a world in which he was wanted. He never knew a world in which he wasn’t passed from porch to porch, doorstep to doorstep, suffering, alone and sick, because of the silence and apathy of everyone around him.

Everyone in the neighborhood came to the baby’s funeral, a funeral that was only held because it would have looked terrible for the Lassiter parents to not hold a funeral for the baby that died on their watch, and was technically their son. And they all cried. They knew they were all responsible for that baby boy dying, so they cried and cried, never admitting guilt, never admitting that one of them could have saved the baby’s life - and they chose not to.

Connor was only seven when the baby died. And yet, at sixteen, the death of the baby still haunts him. And here he is, face to face with the same situation. There is a baby on a doorstep - and the recipient of this precious gift is complaining about having to care for another unwanted child.

He remembers the death of the baby who could have been his neighbor, or his baby brother, if anyone around him had showed an ounce of compassion. A horrible thought strikes him.

This baby could suffer the same fate.

Connor is already so close to death himself. He could be caught by juvies at any moment. If he gets caught, Risa and Lev could die, too.

But, if he doesn’t act now, so could the baby.

So he goes to save her. He confronts the recipient of the storked child with no real plan. He just wants to save the baby. He can’t let another baby die because of human selfishness and apathy.

Risa steps in, making up a lie that she and Connor are the baby’s parents, and tells the recipient that she’ll take her baby back. Risa is furious with Connor, and chews him out. What could make him do a stupid thing like that? The three of them could be caught at any moment, and a screaming, crying baby isn’t going to make escaping persecution any easier.

But Connor couldn’t let Didi die.

Unwind came out in 2007 - it celebrated its seventeenth birthday last November. Unwind is now so old that, if it was a teenager, it couldn’t be unwound itself! So why bring up a well-known scene from the very start of the book.

Like the book itself, it comes back to Neal Shusterman.

@nealshustermanreal - remember what you wrote. While The Schwa Was Here might have been your first critically acclaimed book, Unwind is why you’re here today - why you are anything to anyone. And while all your books (that I’ve read) have complex themes of morality, like the anecdote I just mentioned above, remember that Unwind is what most people who know you, know you from. They know about Baby Lassiter, and they know about baby Didi. They know that silence, apathy, and complacency does more harm than good - they know that because of you.

And yet, here you are. People are dying in droves, and the people that aren’t dying are being injured, having their homes destroyed, being forced to watch their loved ones die, or otherwise being terrorized. Palestinians are dying. And yet, you wait over two months to say anything about it. You wait until your book tour, promoting a graphic novel you wrote about another genocide, is over. You send out an email quietly, an email that only those who are subscribed to your newsletter will see. And your statement seems to be an afterthought, squeezed between a paragraph on how you approach presenting your books on tour, and links to where you can buy a signed copy of your new, shiny graphic novel about genocide. And this is what you say.

Most of your fans, at least on this platform, know of this email. We’ve all seen it. But I want to focus on that last part.

“I’ve taken a stand - by refusing to feed that mentality. The situation is tragic for everyone. We need empathy everywhere.”

You are being selfish. You wish to try to see why both Israel is justified in their slaughtering of Palestinians, and why Palestinians don’t deserve to be slaughtered. This is not a topic in which you can have your cake and eat it, too. Either you support the country who has proven that they will continue to murder Palestinians, destroy every aspect of their culture, and bomb every place that Palestinians cherished and loved, or you denounce that. Your refusal to acknowledge that the citizens of Palestine are the current targets in a genocide, to acknowledge that Israel will call anything or anyone they don’t like “Hamas” to slaughter them without criticism, and to acknowledge that all of this was the result of Israel wanting to destroy Palestine does not paint you as someone who is refusing to feed a black-and-white mentality. It paints you as someone who, because they aren’t being directly affected by this genocide, doesn’t think it’s their problem. That, by definition, is apathy.

This isn’t a perfect comparison by any means, but.

You are leaving Didi to die.

[cloudedmoonofficial]

-Art by Tennelle

[nerevar-quote-and-star]

In English, we say, "Reality."

In TES, we say, "Legends don't burn down villages."

[killiancormac]

desire, fear & ghost for diana 🤍

desire: What's one thing your OC wants more than anything in the world? Are they open with that desire? Why or why not? What would they do to fulfill it?

this is something she struggles with, and has for years. she doesn't know what she wants. she knows what's been fed to her; a good, real job (not scavenging for parts), and a big, happy family. But does she actually WANT those things? she's not so sure. she has a great relationship with her mother, so I think she's scared of disappointing her, and not doing what she wants her to do. But I think, at her core, the thing she wants the most in life to just do what makes her happy, even if other people don't like it.

fear: What is your OC's greatest fear? What do they do when confronted with it? Are they open with their fear, or do they hide it away?

losing her mother. her father died when she was young. she never knew him. she's been kind of protective of her mother ever since. given just how unsafe NYC can be at the time of unbound's story, she worries for her. she's definitely a bit of a mommys girl and she wont deny it FGFDGH her mother knows she worries about her, but she has a tendency to brush D's concerns off. in her words, shes here for a good time, not a long one.

ghost: Who or what haunts your OC? What happened? How do they live with their ghosts?

hm.. I dont think she's necessarily haunted by anything.. she wonders about a lot of things, what her dad was like, what her life would be like if she wasnt from NYC, that kind of stuff. but I don't think a lot of stuff weighs on her mind until unbound's sequel (which will have an outline written one day eventually at some point), where she kills someone for the first time up close. that stays with her for a while.

[phijodo]

Something I did for Mermay!

Trying to focus on emitting vibes and emotions through my pieces has been so challenging and gratifying.

Thanks everyone for sticking around in this art journey of mine ♥️

[renegadesstuff]

The way he looks at him 🥹

[mangouuuuu]

Janus