#author is decaying

[cherri-ying]

Sing for me, little Nightingale (Yan! Scaramouche x Reader)

Ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56024689

Felines are deserving of their accolades. Merit embodies their nimble spines and ductile limbs; bodies like pliable sand, threading their way through knots, twists, cavities and labyrinths. The prince of the hunt flexes and swipes his talons and his victims are swift to falter, their necks wringed and their spines contorted in ways that are unnatural to their physicality.

“I’ve got you now.”

At times, though, even a cat doesn't remain undefeated.

“How stupid are you to think that a cheap disguise would work against me?” He almost sounds amused, his words an arctic hiss against your ear. Reaching up, Scaramouche claws at the thick cloak that veils your face and tears it to your shoulders. Your hair is quick to mime the departed elements, hanging in disarray across your face. A mantilla of unkempt tresses, veiling whatever thoughts sketch your visage.

The Balladeer regards the sight of your person with a sort of contemptuous delight. Forcefully knelt at his feet with your wrists bound behind you and your head drooped in defeat—or in pensiveness. It's a shame Zapolyarny is so devoid of windows. What light finds it's way into these all-too familiar stone chambers is too sparse to see what expression you're making.

“Well? Say something. Or have I rendered you incapable of speech?”

Tentatively—begrudgingly—you tip your head back, back, back until your irises lock with the hypnotic indigo tinctures belonging to the puppet who leers dauntingly above you. Locks of such a hue that only you could wear part like the red sea, revealing a thin, perhaps solemn, ambiguous smile—the last expression the harbinger could anticipate. Or desire.

“Thwarted again, hm?” You chuckle and it sounds like frost, “and I even took extensive measures to conceal my tracks. No good?”

“Failures are bound to repeat themselves.” Scaramouche doesn't nuisance himself with that syrupy facade he wears to rope his targets right between his molars. Malice is a noisome stench in the air as he adds, “This is the seventh time I’ve had to retrieve you. I'd figure you’d have learned your lesson by now, but time after time you insist on making yourself a burden to fetch.”

“There's no harm in trying, is there?” You maintain that strange curve on your plush lips. It’s difficult to tell what you're thinking, or feeling.

“‘No harm’, yet you delude yourself into believing that a time would come when you could successfully evade me. I wonder how long it’ll take until those dreams of yours crumble and die.”

“You know, there’s a word for what you are,” you state after a thoughtful pause. “I think it’s called: overbearing.”

What a strange person, with a strange smile. Normally, Scaramouche would meet such defiance by smiting his poor victim to dust within the blink of an eye. In your displays of resolve, though, the invincible harbinger finds himself crouching to your level, trailing a slender hand against your windpipe. How easily he could squeeze the life from your throat until you begs for reprieve; choke you of your indignation. Instead, he allows it to linger there without purpose, applying no pressure, grasping nothing.

“And there’s a word for what you are.” He nearly whispers. Difficult. Stubborn. Irrevocably his. “Irrational, when I only want what’s best for you. And what’s best for you, is to offer me your complete submission.”

“Even though I’d sooner offer my life than yield to you?” A new tone makes itself heard in your cadence. Such words, such simple, few words, reveal what lingers beneath your otherwise indifferent facade.

Sagacious. Provocative. Challenging.

Of course, you're testing the boundaries of Scaramouche's resolve, as he does with yours. Suddenly, the atmosphere is taut and palpable with tension for what may become of the future.

Sly, sly little songbird.

Something most unanticipated happens, and you reveal your hands, which you freed from their binds. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise Scaramouche, what with your prowess in the art of escape, but regardless your smile stretches in the presence of the astonishment that lifts his eyebrows and makes his eyes flash white, if only briefly. You take your time observing such a paltry display of rare, raw, emotion, how it shapes the contours of his features at the command of your actions. And gently, you take his hand that graces your throat and tenderly place it on your cheek.

"Ah... You've always been this way, haven't you, Kunikuzushi? Since the very day fate first connected your eyes to mine? " You slant your head into his cold hand with all the fragility of a shedding lotus petal descending into a reservoir, resting your cheek against his cold, liquid touch. Although, the action is far from affectionate. Rather, it's reminiscent of a sort of obstinacy, wearing the facade of love.

"You pine for my heart like you're starved for my flesh.” You take his hand and pass it through your cloak, poising it on your chest, right above your pumping heart.

"But... Perhaps I have no heart to offer you. What then? What will you do when you realize, there is no flesh to pick from my bones? No heart beneath my ribs?"

Scaramouche trudges through your words, running them across his mind. No plausible answer makes itself seen. He relinquishes his hand from your chest.

A cat may not have wings, but it is unrelenting.

“If you have no heart…” He murmurs, before smiling a bitter smile, “Then I’ll make you learn how to love.” how to love him. “I’ll create a heart in the shape of my love, and then I’ll take it. By force if I must.”

"You're willing to create something, just to seize and destroy it..." His words taste like blood upon your tongue. Strange. Carrying pleasantry and uncanniness in a sordid congruence. your lips falter from their smile.

"What a rotten soul you have... When will you realize that your avarice will be your demise?"

A wry, perhaps relenting chuckle emerges from your throat. Then you sigh.

"Perhaps we were made for each other." “

Then why do you run from me? Why do you fight, when you’re meant to be mine?” He asks, vehement, pertinacious.

"But that is where you're mistaken, Scaramouche. You see—” You direct your pointer finger to his chest, resting it in the junction between his collarbones.

“—You're tenacious in pursuing me. But I'm," You points at herself, "Tenacious in avoiding you. We are made for each other like the same ends of two magnets. The same, yet destined to be apart."

There it is, another one of your challenging remarks. The chirping nightingale wriggles free and unfurls it's wings, just as the cat thinks the bird is trapped beneath its paws. And oh, how infuriating, how exhilarating you are. Hatred is a simmering tempest that ignites the harbinger's temper. He despises how affixed he is to you, to the thought of trapping you beneath his claws, only for you to fly free and rejoice your liberation in song. It's petty. It's pathetic. It's irresistible. The Balladeer scoffs.

“Is this all just a game of push and pull to you? Just how long are you willing to avoid me?”

 “How long are you willing to pursue me?”

“Until you submit to me.”

“Then, until you set me free.”

Scaramouche can only watch as you put on your hideous, inhuman, anomalistic smile. Fine, then. If nothing else, he’ll build you a gilded cage to lure you into a golden prison disguised as a paradise. He’ll rip your wings from your body, flesh and bone marrow hanging in loose tendrils, so to erase all notions of flying free from your unreadable mind that he tends to make his possession, until you’re bleeding so sweetly beneath his claws. His beautiful songbird, who sings in the shape of his love.

Because you were made for him. He, the heartless one, who wishes for a heart. For your heart, which you are't willing to offer. Which you wish you never had.

You’re the only one who believes he still has a soul; that he ever had one, rotten as it may be.

Scaramouche cannot let that go. Regardless of how many times you flee from his talons, he will find you and chase you to the very ends of this earth.

Fly away, little singing nightingale.

[jeeaark]

I was always befuddled how such a mindflayer can be so hard to trust while ultimately having simultaneous goals as the team. Then I finally saw their stats in the other timeline.

It all makes sense now.

I am forever bemused by this this lower-than-the-average-squid-charisma disaster of a mindflayer.

I can only surmise that when the Emperor said Stelmane was the face of their business-partnership, it was not only meant literally but charismatically as well. Squid buddy's got the brains, none of the suave. If Emps tried rebuilding the Knights of the Shield without another business buddy, it might've been a tad difficult if morals were concerned huah.

[theverumproject]

CW: Mentions of possible decay

Today, when I went outside to write, I was immediately hit with some gross smell. Since my mom says that cats like to piss on our walls, I thought that it might be that, because I don't know how it smells.

Later, my mom came outside to give me tea and I mentioned the smell. She noticed it too and said that it might be something dead.

Imagine me just sitting there for a few hours, casually writing a romantic scene between two gay aliens, while something is rotting away a few meters from me, lmao. There's death in almost every part of my story, why couldn't it rot away in a moment like that? It would have set the atmosphere.

I'm gonna check out what it is tomorrow.

[sableeira]

everyone has those authors that you would be so unhinged about if they were introduced in bsd right?

mine are: emily dickinson (it might be too late for her but I’m in denial), franz kafka, and any german author but especially goethe (c’mon asagiri give us the rest of the transcendents) and schiller. I’m not able to describe how unhinged I would be if any of them get introduced

[divinities-hymns]

Instead of a new chapter, I decided to re-write an old fic this week :3 “Sickness Be Upon Ye”

"Their hesitant to label what followed as a symptom, as that would be calling their condition a sickness of sorts, but a simple sickness is far to tame to describe what their going through. But whatever symptom, or curse perhaps, had followed days later, started off rather simple."

»--•--«

Four bishops, four curses placed upon the lamb that slowly drives them to insanity

»--•--«

Or, I came up with an idea of the four bishops cursing the Lamb and decided to role with it

Writing this was super fun, I tried to give the Lamb more emotions then in the original version, so I really hope you all enjoyed

[lvminisciel]

dance macabre

let us have this dance of macabre!

strums of lullaby accompany our steps

spectators of all kinds eagerly waiting in silence 

people of all race, of all ages

humans and fae alike, mingling into one

isn't this what you always long for, my dearest?

rub away your tears, if you would

look above, my dear!

look how the ceilings crumbled, 

forging a path upon the starry skies

under the sea of stars shall we waltz with grace

one step forward, two steps back

a tango everyone desires

now then, don your brightest smiles!

as we are the prima donna of this palace 

knightly boots replacing glass slippers

briars and thorns, prettier than roses

mere infatuations and lust desist,

only loyalty alone shall exist

hush now, dear

do not loathe me amidst parada

cease your sadness at once

bury your soul deep within one’s eyes

never let those speckles of aurora

be tarnished by the mere sight of carcass 

for I have bestowed you the honor

of taking my hand for this dance

moving in front ochos,

I whisper to you eternal happiness

a promise that’ll never go unkept

holier than the eternal slumber

oh, if only the crowd would cheer!

rather than rotting beneath our feet 

but fret not, my dear 

as we have a long night ahead of us!

[vermilionsun]

In the BSD fandom, there is ongoing debate about the significance of Sigma's name. In this analysis, inspired by @sigma.analysis's work, I want to share my perspective on the different forms of Sigma's name and why they are important.

To begin with, sigma takes three forms: “Σ”, "σ", and “ς”.

“Σ”: It’s the capital form of the letter, used at the beginning of the sentence or in names.

Example: "Στάση" = Stop

“σ”: It’s the lowercase form of the letter, used in the middle of words,

Example: "Πιστεύω" = I believe

or in the beginning of a word located mid-sentence.

Example: "σωτηρία" = salvation

“ς”: It’s the second lowercase form of the letter, used explicitly at the end of words.

Example: "Κωδικός" = Code

A word that has all the forms of the letter: "Στάσιμος" = Stationary

In mathematics, sigma is often used to represent summation or addition. In science, sigma is often used to denote the standard deviation, which measures the variability or dispersion of data points.*

It’s important to note the fact that sigma is the only letter in the Greek alphabet that has three variations; no other letter has a second lowercase form.

That, in my opinion, is why he was given his name. His name is significant because of the three forms of the letter.

After some thought, I came to three possible conclusions about the meaning:

1) It symbolizes the three dimensions of time: past, present, and future. Time-related abilities aren't anything new in the BSD storyline; Oda, André, Wells, and the World's Best Thief possessed future-seeing or time-altering abilities. So, it's not illogical to think that Sigma's name might have to do something with the timing of his appearance in the story through the Book. That is not to say that he possesses a time-related ability, but rather that his name serves as a subtle nod to the overarching theme of time in the BSD storyline, or that his name is a foreshadowing of events related to time in the future.

2) It represents the different forms of existence or states of being: stationary, transitioning, and evolving. These different forms of existence or states of being can be seen throughout the BSD storyline, with characters like Dazai representing the stationary state as he remains consistent in his motives and actions. Characters like Atsushi and Akutagawa represent the transitioning state as they navigate their way through their powers and personal growth. Finally, characters like Fyodor and Mori represent the evolving state, constantly adapting and changing their strategies. Sigma's name could symbolize these different forms of existence and how they intertwine within the story.

3) It's possible that Sigma's name also suggests the idea of combining or merging different states of existence. For example, it could signify the Holy Trinity; biblically, God has three faces (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) but only one ousia. Sigma has one name, a variable that takes three forms. In this way, the use of Sigma's name in BSD could be seen as a reflection of the complex and multifaceted nature of existence: it is not limited to a single state or form but rather encompasses a multitude of possibilities and dimensions (*cough* Beast *cough*).

It could symbolize the interconnectedness of these different states of being, as the Greek letter sigma is often used to represent summation, or the combining of multiple elements.*

[urlocalcarpet]

This is my silly mtl oc his name is Lamps Knueven

Lamps is the music producer for the band Rate Of Decay which is from a completely different universe but whatever

Lamps is mixed (Black and White) he doesn’t care what pronouns you use for her but he’s trans masc

Lamps has a bit of a loud mouth and loves gossip. He was originally supposed to be a fashion designer but became a music producer instead, which is how she met Michael Nielsen (the manager of Rate of Decay) along with ROD’s other helpers Nathan Laird and Helen Remedy, and it's safe to say he’s besties will all of them. 

Lamps has been arrested for many reasons mainly because he sells and does drugs very special ones known as Whale Blues, Catnip, and Abstract Madness

He used to be friends with Dick Knubbler way back then, and they would smoke weed and do drugs together, and Knubbler was actually the one that convinced Lamps into being a music producer, which got him to where she is now working with Rate of Decay, yet the problem is that one day he accidentally connected his mind to the universe while doing a drug he made himself that he called “Whale Blues.” which fucked him up to a whole new level, and due to his mind being connected to the universe, he looked into the future and saw the metalocalypse, and he saw Knubbler die, so he warned Knubbler, but he called Lamps crazy and stopped hanging around him, which made Lamps have a bit of a downfall in his mental health, leading him to the bar, where he eventually met Magnus Hammersmith. 

[vitusvital]

i wrote another book

hey y'all. long time no talk! i've been huddled in my little cave,

working on my latest book. Heirs of Destruction is a high fantasy novel set to come out on June 25th, 2024. it's dark, it's queer, it's got a hint of spice.

i'm very proud of this book. its 133k words of indulgent fantastical chaos. if you are a fan of GAME OF THRONES, DUNE, or the CASTLEVANIA tv show, you will probably enjoy this book.

if you like the tropes and synopsis pictured, you can add it to goodreads now. and, if you follow the link in my linktree, you can apply for an early review copy. i'd be happy to have you.

[mysteroads]

SORRY HORIKOSHI, BUT... NO 😞

My Hero Academia... I love you, I love your characters, I love your worldbuilding, I love your morals--- but I officially call the trope: DEATH OF THE AUTHOR.

I reject your reality and substitute my own, Mr. Horikoshi, because I absolutely LOATHE the idea of AFO having given Tomura his Decay quirk. It just seems... cheap. 😑 I would've been okay if he had taken Tenko's quirk, messed with it, then given it back, but... it's so annoying.

Also, bet you anything that Tenko's original quirk was some version of Float, like Nana's.

Yes, I'm sure Tenko's going to come back at the last minute and just utterly destroy that body snatching, eyeless mo-fo and it will be very heartwarming/heart wrenching. Yes, this makes AFO literally worse than the Devil (because the Devil can only tempt, he can't actually screw around with people without permission). Yes, trauma and drama and all that... 🙄

But it just sucks.

And I could go on and on about why it sucks, but I won't, because I'm pretending it didn't happen. Thank heaven for Fanfiction.

[nightlyteaandpaper]

One thing I find funny about the narration of Avatar 2 is the idea that everyone just assumes that Quaritch cares about Spider. Yes, we, the audience, know he does, but everyone else in the story does not--even Quaritch didn't know he cared about Spider until the boat scene.

When Neytiri snatched Spider and held that knife to his throat, she was gambling, she won the gamble, but she was gambling that Spider meant ANYTHING to Quaritch. His being alive and well while in his clutches is insufficient evidence to support her thought process. What made Mrs. Sully think that Spider served any point to Quartich at all? What made Mrs. Sully believe that even if she turned that kid into sashimi right in front of Quartich, he would let her daughter go?

She gambled hard and won.

Anyway, go support my fanfiction:

The Battle Within Chapter 1: Miles, an avatar fanfic | FanFiction

[mariocki]

Fat Man on a Beach (HTV, 1974)

"I'm going to read some more poems now. Erm. It may be that if you want to go and have a cup of tea, this would be a good time. I know that's what you masses are like. The mention of poetry and off you go."

[winding-maze]

Last year I got to illustrate the cover for The Beautiful Decay, the second book in the Tombtown series by Veo Corva - and look what finally arrived! Veo was very kind and sent me a copy of the first book, too, illustrated by Anna Pazyniuk.

Both books look gorgeous and they are so smooth and soft to the touch - I've never had books with such nice paper before.

If you'd like to learn more about the books (and read the free stories and chapters!) please visit Veo Corva's website. My spooky month reads are set!

[growling]

Bsd ocs are hard man. You know how in bsd literally (almost) everyone is just named after and based off of famous (and dead) authors and if they have abilities then they also must reference them/their works like 99% of the time. Originally I wanted to ditch that rule because it's just a huge bitch to follow especially with most of the polish authors that I know of because of, Reasons, iykyk. But then autism won cause, ofc noooooo bbbut the rule :(((( it's gonna be wroooonggg the rule man i love the rulessss cannot disobey the ruleeee or it will taint my honor my family will exile me to germany i will never be able to look myself i the mirror againnn the ruleeeeee. But anyway I got it now so fak you. I don't even care anymore. I'm fucking yassifying Stefan Żeromski now and won't stop until the process is complete. This is how much I don't care anymore

[miaqc1]

Wither and Decay (295 words) by MiaQc Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Dead Plate (RachelDrawsThis Video Game), Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Rody Lamoree/Marianne "Manon" Vacher, Vincent "Vince" Charbonneau/Rody Lamoree Characters: Rody Lamoree, Vincent "Vince" Charbonneau, Marianne "Manon" Vacher (Mentioned) Additional Tags: Past Character Death, Minor Character(s), Canonical Character Death, Wings, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Song: Decay Incantation | Hurt Incantation (Disney), Alternate Universe - Magic, Rody has fairy wings, POV First Person, Kissing, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, In a way, Wordcount: 100-500, Short, Angst and Tragedy, Sad, Sad Ending, Restaurants, Dead Plate Need More Crossovers, Alternate Universe - Wings, POV Rody Lamoree, France (Country), 1960s, Not Beta Read, author is autistic Summary: An AU where Rody has honey-colored fairy wings and magic in him. The story is from his point of view. When he discovers that Vincent killed Manon, his psyche shatters. There's only one thing left for him to do.

[miirshroom]

I feel like I should make a schedule or something for clearing out my Elden Ring drafts. As an overview of the essays I have in progress:

Key References to Tolkein's Legendarium

Astrological Zodiac and calibration of the FromSoft meta-narrative

The influence of Kuon (2004) on Miquella's storyline

Radagon Anagrams and Word String Theory

Atomic Shells and the discovery of Helium

Literary Parallels to a certain other story that is constructed around Alchemy and Witchcraft

Atomic Decay of Nihonium: a comparison of the spontaneous fission of Dubnium to the 7-step decay chain ending in Californium

Visual references to the Vatican, Rome, and Pompeii

Australia

I also have a tangential analysis of the thematic subtext in .Hack//Sign that's sitting at near complete, but I need to acquire screencaps.