#and as it decays so will your relationship fester and rot as he comes to blame you for his suffering

[jaggedjot]

“But I need this one to live. As a testament to our companionship. Of its endurance.” 

Armand; centuries spent serving as the high priest of a temple to devotion itself, where the rituals and duties matter more than the subject of dedication.

Louis; an enshrined object playing as deity, pleading for his alleged follower to make a sacrifice through sparing another from death.

Daniel; a fading offering at a crumbling altar, desecrated, preserved and recreated into an eternal monument to its ruin.

[the-real-rain-world-confessions]

what if i want to see nasty iterator bullshit because they have nasty creators that would've likely let this happen so they could ascend and make them solve their stupid fucking problem that made them all miserable and fucked up to begin with when created. not even in terms of relationships or anything.

their existence is fucked up and they should be allowed to do fucked up stuff. pebbles literally nearly killed moon if it wasn't for significant giving slag keys. maybe pebbles would come to moon even including giving up his core. you can see his observers start to wander further in game after the core is taken. suns fucked up with pebbles when they did their best to help and advise. same with sliver who is dead and tried to help bring others with her to end their suffering. to them at this point with everything they knew so rotted away and pointless to keep up when a new ecosystem is taking hold in the abandoned world. they have no reason to hold ties to old relationships and bonds that won't matter in the new world that's to come.

besides, maybe being a bit fucked up with media is good for refreshing yourself on what's good and bad. perhaps even allowing you to healthily go through motions of trauma you've had that could be compared to the iterators and reaffirm you made the right choice to get help. who fucking cares as long as the media isn't condoning it and labeling it as "normal and healthy". not everyone heals by always consuming media that's aligned with their struggles and reality. sometimes they heal by ripping that bandage off and cleaning it the fuck up by looking at it to see how to clean it. (metaphorically speaking.) you let that wound fester and it becomes rot like pebbles with his attempts.

he didnt come clean with others. he should have listened. but they all still cared about him anyway and that's a love that transcends labels. its unconditional. regardless of what they did to each other. regardless of what they all suffered. they had each other. even if they could not show it in the healthiest of ways. even when so far apart. at least moon and pebbles were so close. pebbles even chose to die the most painful ways as an iterator to right his wrongs. isnt his twisted rage and care so admirable? that he tried to break the cycle for them all, fucked up, and did the most he could to fix it when it all came to do or die? he gave up everything to at least say he is sorry in the way he could. moon should have been furious and she was but she didnt lash out. she understood completely despite not knowing how to tell him. same with suns. same with significant. and i bet that goes for sliver too. they all love each other unconditionally in some manner. even if their ruined and decayed lives slowly being swallowed up for the new civilizations...

media that doesnt touch on dark or potentially taboo topics just don't hit the same. if you want to have reality really hit you in the face and realise you've made the right choices to become better than before no matter what, then dark stories will do that for you. no matter how cute. no matter how stylized. your heart and mind changes in that moment, even if by a little.

keep media literacy alive in rain world <3 (and thank you mods)

.

[boonki]

Could you please do “liberosis” for the challenge prompt? Find this one really special and cool! And thx, you’re wonderful at words

Hi my lovely anon!! 🌷😘 

liberosis - the desire to care less about things

I’ve been reading the ROTS novelization by Matthew Stover and I wanted to give writing in his style a shot, so here it is!! 

thank you so much for the ask, my dear!

_______

This is how it feels to be Obi-wan Kenobi:

You are the perfect Jedi, esteemed by a centuries old order and held to a higher standard than most, displayed on a pedestal for exemplary control, wit, and wisdom for everyone to strive towards. You are renowned for your role as Master—youngest Master—on the high council, as well as Master of The Chosen One, an unruly and impulsive force of nature that has gifted you early grey hairs. You are collected, compassionate, perceptive, and principled, and breathe the Jedi code as if you would choke in its absence.

And yet you are flawed, in a deep and unforgivable manner: you care. The Jedi, of course, are allowed to care, to be humane and benevolent, to have a heart. But they are not allowed to use their heart as a vessel, because possession is a trembling path to a ravenous night, and love, in its jealous and wanting form, is the greatest breed of possession possible.

So are their hearts empty, then? Not quite so. Their hearts belong only to the Force, and it is the Force that fills them up with its gentle suggestions and omnipresent murmurings. It is not an emptiness, or absence of love, but rather, that there is no room for anything but the Force. This allows them to surrender to its will and wishes with perfect complacency, as a good Jedi does.

And so this is your secret: your heart is your own, and it is full of molten love that will burn you alive. From the moment you met Anakin, crouched down besides Qui-gon to shake his too-small hand inside the ship on Tatooine, to severing off his Padawan braid with misty eyes and relinquishing your bond to the will of the council, you loved. You cared. You worried.

Even now, years later, you love. You care. You worry.

And so you construct an impenetrable cage around your heart, where nothing can neither leave nor enter, forsaking your love to fester and grow like a disease. You watch him grow into a man, lead an army, and ignore your trembling hands when reports of the 501st double back to you. Please let him live, you think, please let him come back to me. Even if he is not yours to have.

You are the perfect Jedi, except for the nights when you toss and turn on a rigid bed, gruesome nightmares of his potential death haunting the space behind your eyelids. You desire to crack open the cage and push this ugly yearning into the Force, because the thing no one told you about caring so much is that it hurts. It hurts to ache for Anakin’s presence so greatly that it feels like a cancer rotting in your chest, and sometimes you have to place your hands over your heart and pretend they are his, just to satisfying the craving. It hurts to stand next to him and restrain your proclivity to touch, to hold, to press soothing kisses over mangled, healing wounds. It hurts to watch him run off eagerly towards the Senate apartments, towards a relationship you are not privy to, nor discuss with him. You lie to yourself: if it makes him happy, then I am happy. If it makes him happy, then I am happy. I don’t make him happy, but I am happy for him.

You are the perfect Jedi, except for when the plan goes south on a mission, and you are faced with either saving him, or serving your purpose. You save him, every time. Even if that means letting an entire planet crumble into dust, an entire population decay into particles of sand, failing the mission and returning shame faced to the council, you will not let him die. He belongs inside your heart, and as long as that is true, you will not let him die.

You are the perfect Jedi, except when are you not.

And the Force has always been a vindictive lover; it takes everything from you in its jealousy and rage until you return to it. Your heart has been your own for far too long, and like a rubber band stretched taunt, you will either snap back into place, or tear apart completely. You wish you could love less, could surrender the space to the cool touch of the Force, but you know with each thread that rips that you are well on your way to fraying in half. You wish that you hadn’t handed your heart so willingly to someone who doesn’t even know they carry it with them.

You are the perfect Jedi, and yet this is your secret: you wish you didn’t have a heart at all.

This is not how it is supposed to feel, to be a Jedi, but this is how it feels to be Obi-wan Kenobi, forever.

[ramckinnley]

The streetlights were dim tonight, nothing new. The cities power grid had been awful for years now and the church was in an older part of town.

Father John Martin made the trek back to his Parish from the shelter he had been volunteering tonight. The stench of stale bread and body odor soaked into his vestments like blood into an old carpet. Walking up the steps leading to his rectory he noticed the lights had been shut off. He didn't remember switching them off and the power seemed to be on, albeit faint.

He tugged on the door open; it creaked and moaned open revealing a dark void. No color, no objectivity. Father Martin navigated the room through familiar instinct. Enroute to his sleeping chambers he passed his office, a quaint little place to catch up on paperwork and plan that weeks sermon. He has walked past it a million times before, lumbering the same tired shuffle...the enthusiasm lost years ago. Yet tonight the air seemed heavier, almost as if he was moving through a dense fog.

Straight to bed...none of the normal, habitual hygienic pleasantries tonight. No, this was a man far too exhausted to worry about such menial tasks. For tonight at least.

The fathers rest was short lived as the smell of smoke filled his nose like waves crashing in the ocean. He jumped out of bed, running desperately to escape the sweltering inferno. With each step he took, he could feel the air being drained from his lungs. Falling to the floor he peered a blurry gaze around him...no fire, no ash...not even a bit of smoke. Father Martin stood up, visibly baffled by the events that had just transpired.

Room to room he searched, checked, ventured. looking aimlessly, hopelessly for a shred of logic or reason. Perhaps he was merely having a dream that bled into his waking mind and confused him...yes, yes that must be it. Simply a dream.

Walking back toward his chambers, the priest glanced over into his office again. To his shock and fright, a small shadowed figure of a child sat on his desk, tapping her heels against the aged walnut. She appeared to be no older than 8 or 9 years old and her features became more noticeable as he entered the room. Her long blonde hair was pulled tightly into a braid, porcelain skin was tainted by the spatter of freckles across her nose and cheeks...her eyes were a color he had never seen before. Something beyond...

"...Jessica..." He chocked out in disbelief.

"Tunc suus 'experrectus es." She stated gently. "Ego erat exspectans."

"Waiting for what." the good father asked the rigid child.

"You." She perked up in distorted English. "I've been waiting for you."

A shiver ran up the priests spine as he heard the child's words. What was this child, surely she wasn't of this Earth.

"Foul demon, give me your name." A mighty bellow from the shaken priest.

"O quaeso, est ut vos have optimus. Infirmi agresti nationis Dei." The girl chuckled back.

"Your Latin is weak demon." Father Martin announced. "I command you back to hell!"

"Not my first language Padre." The girl laughed. "And Hell is no place for me...Hell is a vacation compared to me."

The priest staggered backward, a sharp pain ran up and down his legs. The smell of smoke returned and the sensation of heat scorched his body. fear enveloped Father Martin and he fell onto the floor. Looking up to the child, the universe seemed to shift...distort.

Father Martin's office became a swirling maw of chaos and despair. He couldn't see but a foot in front of his face or hear his own thoughts over the cacophony of discordant echos, screaming in all directions.

Suddenly a voice...not the voice of the child. not the voice before. It was something different...

John began to pray.

"N'ektar ver romshuma Martin. Your time is upon you." A deep growl gurgles deep within John's mind. "Here Priest...here in the Other, your worthless God is one of my many slaves. Damned to die, rot and be reborn until the sands run still. Praying to him now only increases his pain."

A wind howled through the maddening, impossible vortex. John was thrown back, his body hurled at speeds that seemed to defy physics. Disoriented, he lay crumpled over a large rock on a suspended platform in the middle of the inescapable blackness. A stiff wind cut through the priest like a spray from the ocean; constant, unrelenting.

"For everything you tried to be, for every lie you passed as real, for everytime they had to suffer through you." A moan came from the darkness.

John stood up, fists clenched screaming into the hallow void of indescribable eternity.

"I FEAR NO EVIL, YOU SHALL NOT CONQUER ME." His voice echoed into the timeless malevolent filth.

"Evil...maybe not." The sinister voice called from John's left. "You know evil well priest, but what of innocence, what of purity."

John swallowed hard, a quiver came over him as the acrid taste of decay filled his mouth. Looking down he saw his flesh boil and bubble and peel. A spume of puss and blood seethe from his newly opened wounds. Falling to his knees, John erupted with a howl of pain so ear shattering, the hollows couldn't contain out.

"It seems I have your attention." The voice called. "I was wondering when we could get down to business."

Whipping and lashing, a festering, slime covered tentacle shot around John's body from the depths. Tiny lancers pierce into his exposed flesh an hold him firmly in place while the ground beneath him dissolves.

The rope like appendage retracts into the time space vacuum at speeds fast enough to agonizingly liquefy John's bones. What felt like a torturous eternity was condensed into a mere second as the Father was transported into a small room. a room he had seen before.

Lilac walls with daisies painted in the corners, a dense berber rug and the scent of camomile and cane sugar enthralled the priest's senses. his body now intact, pain free and vibrant.

"...Jessica?" A woman's voice called from beyond the room. "Father Martin is here to see you."

The clatter of footsteps thundered into the room and ended in a deafening silence. the door slowly opened and John's mouth went slack as he watched himself enter the room. The scene grew cold and John felt a shiver run down his spine.

"Waaaaaaaatch." That brooding voice from the beyond cried inside John's mind.

The man, dressed in priests clothes who was in everyway Father John Martin walked over to a young girl of no more than eight or nine, crying at the foot of her bed. John remembered this moment...suddenly he understood why he was here.

"STOP, OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP!" John pleaded with this second version of himself, in vain.

"We cannot alter the past priest. We must atone for the transgressions we commit." The young girl spoke in a guttural tone. "Even a man of God isn't absolved from his unconscionable actions."

He watched in horror as he relived a dark moment in his past.

John shuddered as he watched himself run his hand up young Jessica's skirt, exposing himself to her and ultimately taking her innocence. A single tear left John's eye.

"I've changed..." He begged. "I'm not that man anymore."

"CHANGED?!" The dark voice became enraged. "YOU'VE CHANGED?"

In that instant John was taken to another scene. Another young vulnerable girl taken advantage of, desecrated, raped. Scene after scene, girl after girl. The flashes continued into the futures of these girls, these young women. A mural of drug abuse, abusive relationships, destroyed self worth and suicide became an all encompassing ocean of despair, depression and death.

"Change can only come through sacrifice, hardship and pain." The echo rang. "Your existence has proven only that you used any and all of the pithy authority you could command to further your sick desires and destroy the innocence around you."

John fell to his knees. The weight of a life erroneously lived, the lives tormented, the blood on his hands finally took its break.

"I'm...I'm sorry." He wept.

"You will be." It grunted

With that Father Martin fell through the room floor, cascading through a near infinite vortex for what felt like razor wire, acid and flame. As his skin was flayed, piece by piece, the filthy priest was forced to eat the rotting chunks. Maggot ridden muscle was exposed from underneath as he was torn apart slowly, agonizingly by a force unseen.

An intense pressure compacted his head from within. Unable to withstand the punishment, his eyes burst. Foaming vitreous gel saturated his face. the contents of his stomach erupted out from within him. Flesh and bone, bile and blood covered what remained of his body and ate away the remaining rotting husk as he was hurled into oblivion.

Suddenly John awoke, sitting straight up in bed. a cold sweat beading down his face, ready to vomit he ran to the washroom. Clutching the bowl, retching over and over.

"What...was...that...dream?! He pondered aloud as the vomiting slowed.

He stood up and left the bathroom, headed back to bed. Except this time as he passed by the office he closed the door. A simple enough action, but one that made him feel a thousand fold better.

Walking into his room he stopped dead staring breathless, lifeless, horrified at young Jessica staring back tapping her feet against the end of his bed. Eager to start her dream...her eternal revenge all over again.

© 2020 R.A. McKinnley

[proditorious]

//

   × WHAT DOES YOUR MUSE SMELL LIKE?

in his demon form, Valefor smells like: petrichor, thurible smoke, ancient parchment and old stone castles with a bitter note of iron, metallic on the tongue like blood, and of course, rot. Curling sickly in the afternotes. All things ancient and once loved, abandoned battlefields left to fester.

in his humanoid one, he smells like: belladonna, amber, oak moss, orris, opium, cypress, and narcissus. Blended together to create a dream-like, opium scent made to haunt the senses than straight up death and decay.  Further enhancing the deceptive nature of his human form.                  

  × HOW OFTEN DOES YOUR MUSE BATHE/SHOWER? ANY HABITS?

Whenever he likes. The Eurynomus Fortress has large bathing pools beneath it’s hold, carved so that they could bathe and lounge at their leisure { and their more aquatic members could have some measure of comfort in the mountains }. He doesn’t really have to bathe as a giant demonic entity, whose covered head to toe in scales, but whenever he’s masquerading as something human passing, he takes pride in being pristine. He bathes every other day, and he’ll insist on using the most expensive shampoos, conditioners and body wash you own  — and insist they’re all made from organic ingredients in the process. If you fob him off with cheap synthetic shit he’ll riot.

  × DOES YOUR MUSE HAVE ANY TATTOOS OR PIERCINGS?

He has his ears pierced, four in each ear which are often decorated with simple gold rings. Tattoos are a bust, he’s a draconic demon, and even in his human form, his flesh is still partially scaled and tougher than human skin. No one would go near him with a tattoo gun, either, and he’s not particularly keen on allowing it as well.

   × ANY BODY MOVEMENT QUIRKS? ( E.G. KNEE SHAKES? )

Has a habit of tilting his head to the left whenever he’s particularly interested in something, whether it’s a topic of conversation, or an object that’s captured his attention. This goes for both his real form and his humanoid one.

In his human form, if something is bothering him, he’ll absently rub the scars on his hand with his thumb. Usually in melancholy moments. His tail will also curl around his right ankle loosely.

When he smiles, his left canine will always press into his lower lip.

He also has a habit of tapping his talons against the floor in a rhythmic beat if he’s idling for too long.  

   × WHAT DO THEY SLEEP IN? UNDERWEAR OR PJS?

Nothing, usually. His scaley hide pretty much conceals everything that needs to be covered and he’s not inclined to wear sleepwear off his own back. If he’s sharing a bed, he’ll usually pilfer an oversized shirt from someone to wear, and some pj pants depending on who it is and the relationship they have.

  × WHAT’S THEIR FAVOURITE PIECE OF CLOTHING?

His jewelry { since Val doesn’t typically wear clothing }. The gold Valefor wears has been refashioned from the amulets of his family. Rather than let them rot in the family crypts with the bones of his kin, he reforged them into bracelets, rings, earrings, pendants and anklets. Usually, he only wears the earrings, foot rings and rings. However if he’s feeling indulgent, he’ll wear them all.

   × HOW DO THEY SLEEP? POSITION?

As a standard, Valefor doesn’t really sleep. He’s prone to napping in short bursts if he must, usually at the tail end of a particularly nasty fight that requires him to exert more energy into repairing himself than usual. He’ll curl in on himself so the majority of his frills and sharp plated scales are positioned outward as a line of defense. In the Underworld, sleep invites a World of complications to your door and while Valefor’s lair is high in the mountains, he’s not inclined to give an inch to any wayward demon that may or may not have bypassed the defenses.

Otherwise, he enters trance like medatative states for extended periods of time where he recuperates the majority of his energy. Like this, he can continue to be acutely aware of what’s going on around him without putting himself in a compromised state.

Though when he does actually sleep? And this is only in his human form, in the presence of those he trusts completely. He sleeps like the dead, buried beneath a mountain of quilts and blankets. If he’s in bed with someone else, he’ll most likely end up laid over them like a glaze during the night or otherwise coerce them into being a big spoon. Valefor enjoys contact, after spending eons absent of it, and filled with a deep sense of distrust to just about anyone who comes close, he’ll also leech heat off of just about anyone. Still the slightest change in the mood of the room, he’ll bolt awake. 

   × WHAT DO THEIR HANDS FEEL LIKE?

Leather soft and snake-like, where scales meet skin. The backs of them are rough, from the smattering of fading plate scales. His fingertips and palms have the texture of cat toe-beans. The scars on his left hand make the surrounding area unpleasant to touch, deep grooves that feel like jagged shrapnel if touched at the edges. It’s unpleasantly sensitive, and Valefor will actively avoid having someone touch them if they can.

   × IF YOU KISSED THEM, WHAT WOULD THEY USUALLY TASTE LIKE?

Sweet  –  hazy, sort of like opium and something else. Unless he’s eaten something, in which case there’s probably a faint trace of that in there.

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