#but i did make this scrap edit a while ago!

[grxceful-ly]

happy last day of sabezra week!! it's been such a good one. biggest of thanks yous to the people behind @sabezraweek, you guys rock 🫶🏻

[shy-urban-hobbit]

Edwin flipped the page in yet another thick, obscure volume, the title near faded from the cover with age. Charles and Crystal had retired hours ago with the promise to pick up again in the morning; the human claiming a need for sleep (understandable, considering it was the early hours) and Charles had gone with her in the event of any more unpleasant flashbacks (a common occurrence since she'd recovered her memories), leaving Edwin to search for any possible leads alone. There had to be something relevant in this one! After the fuss he'd kicked up to the Night Nurse about acquiring these particular books for this case in the first place he absolutely could not go back to her admitting that for all of his bargaining (or 'tantrums' as she'd called it. Honestly, that woman could be so patronising at times) it had indeed been all for nothing in the end.

"Anything interesting?"

Edwin did not startle at the sound of his lovers voice behind him. He whipped his head around to see Thomas, arms behind his back and perfectly straight faced even as the shaking of his shoulders betrayed his amusement at having made the other jump.

"Thomas, when exactly did you get here?"

"Here being my room? And you got here about ten minutes ago."

Edwin blinked. No...he was at the office in London. Finally taking in his surroundings, his eyes landed on a familiar circular bed and neon sign.

Thomas moved closer, wrapping the other in a one armed hug, "If I can bring you here without you even noticing, I think that's a sign you need to take a break."

"That's not necessary. Ghosts don't feel physical exhaustion, as you well know by now."

"Who said anything about physical? You might not need to sleep, but you still need to give that big brain of yours a rest before you overlook something incredibly obvious and important."

"I can't right now. I assure you, I'm perfectly fine."

"Yeah? Ok then, tell me all the basic weaknesses of a shape shifter."

"Child's play."

Edwin was confident in his answer until he saw the fond smirk on his lover's face, "What is it?"

"The fact you're mixing up shape shifters and vampires."

"An easy mistake to make."

"Sweetie, you listed sunlight. Twice."

He had? "Hmmm....perhaps a brief respite would be beneficial at this point."

"Perhaps." Thomas laughed, "Your research will still be there in a couple of hours Bookworm, come cuddle with me for a while. I'm feeling generous so I'll even read to you."

Edwin got to his feet, opening his mouth to protest when Thomas plucked the book from his hands, "Ah, ah. Nothing work related though. That's cheating."

He gave the end of Edwin's nose a tap before, with a flick of his wrist, the thick volume was gone. In its place a first edition of The Hobbit, a scrap of paper poking out from the pages (a source of playful bickering between the two. For all that Thomas was capable of conjuring books, he could never be bothered to do the same with bookmarks, instead using whatever was to hand. Thomas argued that at least he didn't dog-ear the pages like some heathen).

Thomas reclined on the bed, giving the mattress next to him an inviting (expectant) pat. Edwin rolled his eyes before climbing on and curing into the others side, closing his eyes and drifting along with the feeling of his lovers fingers running through his hair to the sound of Bilbo Baggins engaging in a game of riddles.

[puckpocketed]

hello i was tagged by @18minutemajor for WIP Wednesday. it is not Wednesday but i am also not a cop so . here we gooo!!!!!!! tagging my esteemed colleagues (very politely and with no pressure!!!):

@neonfretra @oensible @sorrellegiance @moregraceful @stereax

@wheelsnipecelebrini

@korshrimpski (EDIT: it won’t?? let me tag you. unless these are on separate lines <3)

what's in-progress in your life <3 writing? art? recipe? skill acquisition?

if any crafty people see this - if ANYONE sees this - and would like to join in, feel free and consider yourself tagged <3 (and tag me back so i can see your stuff!!!) link to 18minutemajor's post if yall curious :3 my VERY long wip dump + ramblings under the cut!

its christmas soon and i like to paint gifts for my friends + and i'm finally revisiting my anime/lineart/inking era (here you are K!! my lineart past, present, and future!! <3) so here are some things i've been working on/coming back to/MAY NEVER FINISH: hockey related:

this is juraj slafkovsky and his dinky little middle part which he can absolutely learn to style into something a little less dinky but never does. i am so charmed by him. i imagine he just rocks it because his pretty privilege supersedes dinky middle parts . LMAO!!

here is Sasuke from my Naruto Hockey AU. I am a little stuck on jersey mockups lol. here he is. our haunted little 1OA who is absolutely normal and regular about his captain (LOUD incorrect buzzer):

personal oc art

wanna know some puckpocketed deep lore? i've never been one to make OCs. i was just not a very creative kid tbh. spent all my time drawing sailor moon instead. i still go back to her sometimes because she is one of my favourite shapes in the WORLD!!

in my 20s i took up playing d&d because of the. uh. plague. <3 and got pretty close to having OCs!! those count right? anyway. here is my tavern-wench-turned-wizard!!! i think i painted this 2 years ago? <- put dates on your works guys it saves lives. her name is Mel (short for Melins (pronounced like melons. on account of her knockers. can you tell i never grew out of my 12 yr old booby/cock joke era?) i revisited Mel recently and have started painting her in earnest again!! :3

I briefly dated someone who was very into streetwear and fashion, and I fell down a techwear/gorpcore/cyberpunk rabbit hole for a couple days out of curiosity. i remember literally zero salient info on any of it except the broad strokes of silhouetting and Vibes. what i emerged with, however, was a ?? sorta OC?? im not sure what to call them. they dont rly have a name or gender. I did this little sheet ages ago + the aborted attempt at a portrait later:

Here are my most recent explorations (i have been doing SOOOO much art. <3) which include:

unfinished character sheet + chibi art. I played with their jacket (much more structured/square/tailored thing) and added a lotta random buckles and belts. i took textiles class years ago and have a little experience in garment construction. and i know for a fact this thing does not make any sense. it hurts me to look at a little bit LMAO so i've paused it while i go draft patterns (badly. i was never good at drafting. i think i may have to break out my scrap fabric stash and hand sew a real life mock-up. HELP!)

here is me having fun with them and imagining them as some kind of cyber-fisherman. the best part of every game is the fishing mini-game to me. i love fishing mini-games so much. I made their hair really big because i wanted them to have big unwieldy hair and the vibes told me i should add more movement to the piece aside from the fishing line. I messed with their jacket AGAIN because i can't stop thinking about what kinda jacket they'd wear. gorp-core ? idk. it sure is something!

gifts for my friends :3

back in my weeb era for real YAYYYY!!! up til now i'd been making hockey art using a zero pressure sensitivity pen brush because i simply did NOT want to deal with that. it is and has always been a barrier to me making art that uses line art. <3 easing my way back into it though!

I used to paint gifts for my friends and then get them printed into lil posters and mount them on nice backing :3 i am now ready and back to painting.

Here is my girlbestie's OC. just a rough pose sketch. i think im pretty unsatisfied with the gesture of the head/hand. i wanted to include her gun in some way. i fear i may have to rework the pose entirely <3

For the genshin girlies.. here are some of my friends fave characters.

Yelan - this one i started many holidays ago and put on the backburner because the colouring was wigging me out. you can see where i started rendering stuff + got sidetracked and started on something else (the crystal choker IM LAUGHING @ past me...)

Ayaka - I reaaally like what i did here with the perspective + foreshortening. I don't know if the pose or expression is in-character or not, but i had fun :3 got stunlocked looking at references of genshin weapons so this is where i left off:

if you made it all the way down here hi... <3 ice hockey really cracked the ketchup bottle open for me when it comes to making art again. i love the communities i've found, and i'm inspired by every artist on here every day. thanks for being so cool + have a great day :)

[rosemist50]

Okay look, I know I usually put the old version of the design first, so it's like reading it from then to now, but that means when I get a notification on the post, the old art is what shows up in the thumbnail, and it kinda throws me off, sooo I'm changing it. New art first.

Anyways first up is Tawnypelt!! She is one of the most redesigned cats, I have such a hard time getting a design I like for her. Sorta same story as in the previous post; I like her old design, but not enough for her as a protagonist, if that makes any sense? If she stayed as a side character then I think I'd be fine with the old design the way it was, but now that's she's a protagonist I wanted to change it. Then is the one and only Moonpaw!! :3 Her body design has stayed pretty much the same throughout design testing. Next is fixing up the new kits to follow the Super Edition's allegiances preview thing. I put Leafkit on the new one even though her design didn't change so that I wouldn't need to pull up two separate images in any drawings. Branchkit and her are now twinsies! And Grasskit is described as auburn?? Gave that a shot, most of her body design is taken from Branchkit's old one, I thought it was a better blend of their parents than Grasskit's old one. Then is Rapidkit, Floatkit, and Troutkit. Rapidkit and Floatkit pretty much swapped most of their design elements, and Troutkit got some spots and color changes. And thennn Russetfur!!! Wow! I did NOT like her old design, so here's a much better one.

Tawnypelt design extras under the cut

Y'all,, okay, so Tawnypelt's design gave me so much trouble omg.... You can see I started tweaking it in May, three months ago. All of these were Tawnypelt design concepts that I didn't like for one reason or another. I knew I wanted some yellow in there for her mother but that was kinda it. I know split face is popular with her, but with Moonpaw being split faced already I didn't want to make Tawnypelt also one. Too much white in the face was the problem with the first two, then not enough, then I took a break and came back at it with a full page of just throwing stuff at the wall (and a scrapped Branchkit idea hehe). I sorta wanted her to also have some brown, but I couldn't get it to look right so I scrapped it, then I tried a sort of lykoi style, which I thought looked cool but ultimately decided against, then got to the last two where I was trying alternating black and brown, and I liked how the first one on the end looked on paper, but when I put it in digitally there wasn't enough black so I ended up going for all black instead. And here we are now 😁 I very much hope that I like this design enough to keep it around for a while.

[impossiblepackage]

What's one of your fav things that has happened to you in dwarf fortress?

One of my first games I played when I was actually getting a handle on things, years ago before the steam edition, I had a fort that was going pretty good. Right away I had started to build a big grand entry hall with a spiraling ramp entrance, not bothering with stairs, and was just going to dig out the main hall and a few rooms before looking into making some arms and armor so I could get some dwarves training. I didn't have many dwarves, but I had settled near a necromancer tower (which are much more common if you let the world gen run for 250 years, which used to be the default instead of the current 100 years) so i wanted to get prepared early. I had the starting seven when the necromancer came knocking. I managed to get almost every locked aware inside in time, and spent a couple months waiting for them to leave. I was able to dig out that main hall and a few rooms and get a random dwarf to start practicing making copper gear. When they finally did and I opened the gates again, I barely had time to chop a bit of wood and for a migrant wave to take me somewhere around 12 dorfs before the undead came back. This was a much smaller group of 6 or so experiments with decent gear. I kept the dwarves locked up, started looking for flux and iron to equip them properly. After a while I realized just how much I was depending on forage for food and booze, which was beginning to become a problem since most of a year passed without the experiments leaving.

At the time, I still didn't have much of an understanding of how flux worked or where to find it, so I had maybe a few scraps of steel and a load of iron when our food reserves started getting really low. I never considered looking for the caverns because that was still a no-go zone in my mind. So, I hammered out what steel i had into a few weapons and used iron for the rest, plus what iron armor I could slap together. Shortly before we ran completely out of food and booze, I said fuck it, had the civilian dwarves hide away in what was going to temporarily be a hospital, and stationed the military dwarves at the gate. The necromancer experiments had spread out in the tunnel a little bit, so I thought maybe I could just let one or two in at a time, but they were quicker than expected and my dwarves a bit too overzealous. Pro tip: when you want to fight, station the dwarves further back than you actually want them to fight, because they WILL just charge ahead.

An all out brawl broke out which was taking AGES for some reason. The fight spread out all over the hall, and one of the experiments showed up a bit late and peeled off to slaughter most of the civilian dwarves. Several of my military dwarves had died, but a couple of them had too. Eventually, I had nothing left but one military dwarf and two civilians behind a locked door in the hospital. That soldier was wounded but still up and about. The remaining experiments had started spreading throughout the rest of the fort and the mines, leaving just one on the opposite side of the great blood-soaked entry hall, with a wounded soldier near the hospital door surely about to bleed out on the ground. I took a chance and let a dwarf out to rescue her, hoping to get her in a hospital bed before the undead got in. Almost worked, too. Got her in, but that experiment caught the walking soldier on the wrong side of the door. The two civilians fuckin jumped into the fray and the three of them together were somehow enough to take it out and get back inside before more came, at the cost of the lives of one of the civilians, who had to haul the military dwarf to another hospital bed before dying themselves.

Which is about when I realized I didn't actually understand how dwarven medicine worked. I had no medical supplies at all, so all that was left to do was wait and hope she got better. Just two soldiers, locked in a room of corpses, hoping the enemy leaves of their own accord. Miraculously, she got up of their own accord, and after so long of waiting I said fuck it and decided to try and take em on one at a time. They got one or two of them this way, on account of them all being pretty injured as well, but the remaining three all showed up at once. They got one of them, they got our brave rescuer from before, and my last dwarf, one who had been one of my favorites from the start, the one we lost the last two civilians to rescue, fought valiantly to the bitter end, but ultimately fell.

then, hilariously, a migrant wave arrived and was immediately slaughtered in the open.

[aita-blorbos]

(TW: Mentions of murder, gore, and cannibalism; the OP is a zombie, after all)

AITA for "Celebrating" After Completing the Final Course?

Forgive me for any grammatical mistakes present here; it has been a long while since I've ever mustered up the words needed to commune with the living folk.

I (Undead M) was found by this kid who I'll call B (10? M) a few weeks ago and, right off the bat, we became what one would dub as "good friends"; I helped entertain and defend him while he provided me with whatever scraps of meat that's left in the world he could find. There is no point in denying it; I had a lot of fun hanging out with that kid- almost made me feel like I was a living, breathing human again. Almost.

Unfortunately, our camaraderie had caught the attention of a sick showmaster whom I shall dub as HS (30's? 40's? M); wasting no time, he had separated both B and I in order to kickstart his twisted plan. In short, I was forced to partake in this sick…contest known as "Rundead" (wow, real classy) with the goal of reaching the end of each and every one of its courses- and what's that waiting for me at the end of each run? B, caged up and terrified, awaiting for his rescue.

I tried to reach him- I did my best to free him, dammit! But the showrunner and the audience- they cared for none of that. They lowered the poor kid's cage through the ground once again after each course's end, and I was taken to the beginning of the next one without fail. I was torn apart, sliced limb from limb, brutally crushed to smithereens, and, worst of all, I was left to starve.

But enough of that self-imposed pity party; it's not like that would do me any good right now.

Going back to the incident at hand, at the final course, I had finally mustered up the strength to defeat HS in his sick game once and for all; watching him fall to his doom gave me the sense of catharsis that was needed for me to make that final push, and, after days of nonstop torture, I've finally found B. That kid…he was shaking like a leaf in the midst of a storm, terrified and cold, but he beamed with that familiar, infectious joy of his as we both reached out and hugged one another.

I wanted the both of us to be happy; that kid deserved the happy ending he was waiting for, and I made it all this way just to reunite with my one and only friend. It was supposed to be a moment of joy, yet…

I was hungry.

I was so, so hungry.

I hadn't really registered what was happening at that time, but the sobs of that damned showmaster had cut through the fog of my starvation and brought me back to reality; there was my friend, bloody and lifeless, and the culprit was none other than myself. In my daze, I had torn out his throat and devoured his flesh without remorse.

HS and his ilk have locked me away- wherever I am now, I have no idea, but I know that this is far from over. There will be more courses, more cheers, more obstacles, but, frankly, I can't give a shit about it right now. My friend is dead- he's gone, and I'm the culprit. I know it was an inevitability and I was left to starve, but…I don't know what to say anymore. Boo me all you want, goodness knows I deserve that and more.

Edit #1: Wait a minute- I…I think B is…still alive? I've definitely heard his voice echoing through the halls...

Edit #2: whoops.

[purplelupins]

Lamb: behind the scenes

-Footnotes, deleted scenes and commentary-

Hello my dear reader. Below you will find many comments and addiction material from Lamb that just didn’t make it in or things I wanted to explain further. Thank you so much for being here!

•spoilers for Lamb ahead•

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For transporting the cookies to the potluck, I originally had reader wait for John to help him as they had agreed in that version. It had a nice little tense moment between reader an Bev, with John coming to readers aid when Bev told her to leave it to her.

It was just another sweet scene between the two and reader and John had a private moment in the rectory where he thanked her genuinely but it was more than just the cookies he was thanking her for. It was for being a good person and for helping Millie.

Then they walked together and commented on very simple things almost like an old couple.

I scrapped it though because I realized that in the grand scheme of things, reader had known this man for all of what…three days? And she was spending too much time with him. It was just getting over-saturated with them being together and wasn’t realistic. Plus I liked making John just sort of pop up constantly because he was this foreign presence, which was just another way of showing how he was a wolf among the sheep. Reader was just an intuitive sheep who really wanted him to be like her. Turned out he was still just a wolf.

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This next scene I had in mind for a couple different times but couldn’t decide where…I was going to put it in place of the conversation reader and John had that first time in the rectory when she tells him she’s claustrophobic of the confessional. I scrapped it because it felt too heavy of a subject and I didn’t really like where it put reader and johns relationship after crafting it so carefully. I know hard conversations are very real and they happen when you don’t mean to, but I just decided against it. Still one of my favourite scenes tho so here it is!

“Have you read the other books of god, Father?” You asked.

Admittedly, the question surprised him.

“I have…years ago when I was young.”

“You should again…the Quran is…fascinating. Strict. There is no room for question or interpretation per se…almost like an instruction manual. I am…very alone here. Time is something I have a lot of. And while I still attend church…I find myself questioning. I believe in god. But I also believe that perhaps there is more to that belief than just the Bible.”

John shifted, “How so?”

“As if…the Bible was just a second edition of God’s message. The Torah was the first, then the Bible, then the Quran. Whether you believe it or not…it’s simply factual that the Quran came after the Bible, and it simply furthers what is already stated in the Bible…like an extended reading but do you know what truly makes me question the Bible, father?” You slowly rose your gaze to meet his, and you found him to be already staring at you intently. Rapt. You wondered if this was how it felt to deliver a sermon atop the pedestal.

“Tell me.” He answered instantly.

You swallowed, “It’s been rewritten and rewritten by men. Not even Christian men too…so much is missing…Did you know that there are parts that have been fully removed? It’s been translated and revised…did you ever play that game “telephone” as a child?” You asked.

He nodded.

“Well…as you know the message slowly gets distorted and changes even if you don’t mean for it to…it’s just human nature. One person doesn’t listen well and passes a message on as they see fit. That’s all it takes…one person and the message is lost. It doesn’t matter if every person told the distorted message after that is the most pious, modest and God loving human to walk the earth…they will still be worshiping the wrong thing and preaching something that wasn’t meant to be preached.” You could feel your heart beating hard in your chest. It hurt.

All your life, you had been seen as a town good girl. Sweet, submissive, giving, modest and joyful.

Never in John’s life would he have thought that you would be sitting before him with a profound and enlightened view of Gods holy message.

At his silence, you continued, “A church is still holy ground. And that is what a god fearing person needs to pray and connect. I believe in god, father. I believe in Jesus just as I believe in Abraham, and his sons, and Moses and Noah, and Muhammad and Jacob. I believe they were all doing gods works. But they were not god. Jesus was not god. He was just a messenger. This holy trinity…it’s just a complication of something that is meant to bring peace and guidance and fear. That is what god is. God was not a man who went home. God just…is. He is our guide.”

John blinked. At a loss for words for once in his life. Since he was 8 years old, he had obsessed over faith. Over his life, growing deeper and deeper into connection; taught by his own pastor and his parents then pursuing priesthood…it was simply a series of steps, one after another, he hadn’t even stopped to question if there was something else.

This entire time, John Pruitt had thought hinself a holy man…a man of god. But here you were with hands holier than his. Bathed in blessedness.

This gift given to him was not for him. It was for you. For him to give to you to preach to those who would listen.

“You came here thinking you were having difficulties with your faith, correct?” He asked.

You nodded.

“Well, young lady I think…I think you are in a very important place right now. You are questioning and examining and teaching yourself…You will find your way.”

“You don’t- you’re not…angry?” You asked.

He smiled, “Why would I be angry?”

“I just- I…well I just told you I’m not fully believing everything you stand for.”

“True. But like I said when you asked me-we are human. We question things, it’s actually one of Gods favourite things about us as humans is that we are always analyzing things. Looking for the right way. Looking to be guided. Looking for our way to heaven…or out of it I suppose there are satanists after all. But you yourself said that you love God and his messengers and that is much more than a lot of people can say.”

You nodded.

“I have faith in you that you will find your way.” He murmured.

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I made a little mistake and I decided to keep it in because it was so important and I couldn’t rewrite it. It was just too perfect and it didn’t change much. Basically I added a day for Easter- in the series, it goes Good Friday (the day where Millie runs out with Sarah) and then the next day is Saturday where Paul and the Scarboroughs and Bev are planning the vigil, and then that night is the vigil. Well I moved the vigil to Sunday NIGHT instead of Saturday because I needed that moment of reader realising that she’s being indoctrinated (for a lack of better words) and that she isn’t thinking straight. A true moment of religious fear. It really bugged me that I made that mistake but in the end it was really crucial to this story and so I kept it.

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For the second part I grappled with how I wanted Paul to be after the vigil. I kept Sarah’s death and sort of built off that…this is how I felt things might go down after that. I did almost approach this as more of a cult, so Paul was still idolized but I think realistically he realized what he did and so did everyone else so I think he would be a bit of an outcast. I think he would have a lot of guilt and would be a bit of a recluse. He removed his collar when Sarah died, and I think that was a sign of him giving up his place as a priest in that he couldn’t hold that sort of profession anymore. He betrayed God and he can’t preach something when he doesn’t wholly follow it. I think he realized how skewed his theology was.

He really thought he was helping but he ended up ruining the lives of so many.

I had Mildred kill herself because losing a child is devastating, and she was given a life she didn’t want. She was a woman of faith, and I think that even if she did stay with John, there was too much resentment there. In that final moment in Midnight Mass when they kiss, I think she forgives him because she doesn’t want to go to the grave with that on her conscious…but since I didn’t have that happen she had to survive knowing her daughter was dead and she would never see her again. Yes she loved John but love is conditional…he did something horrific and selfish and it cost her her daughter. And it’s not like she could just leave to start a new life on the mainland (okay maybe but it would be difficult) and so she did the only way out she could see. Death. In hopes that she might see her Sarah again.

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This next bit was originally going to be how the story segued into a more intimate relationship. Reader woke up after hiding in the rectory (before the attack) and he convinced her to sit with him and she basically cried as she told him she hated him and he let her then she fell asleep and he shifted her into his lap and they sort of wordlessly shifted into her sitting on him and then talking and then this scene, but it didn’t feel right. I actually wrote these stories separately but then they naturally merged into one so I had to go back in this part and edit a lot since their relationship became very difficult thanks to the build up….

John nosed at your hair, holding you close like his last piece of hope. You could feel him inhaling.

The two of you sat there just a hairs width away from eachother. John leaned his head up and kissed your forehead, then leaned his against yours. A small sense of piece filled you, but it was quickly replaced with surprised when you felt a pair of soft, dry lips caress yours fleetingly. You opened your eyes to see John with a sheepish and nervous look on his handsome face.

“What are you doing?” You murmured. It was barely a question.

“I don’t know.” He whispered back, but didn’t make any move to draw away from your space.

“You’re not a good person.” You said. You knew in your heart that it was true, but your words sounded hollow. You knew it wasn’t that simple.

I’m just here to help.

You could still remember those first words he had said when he showed up that random day. So fresh and invigorating.

You remembered how you had thought it a little heartbreaking that such a beautiful man had chosen to serve god and take those vows…now it made you almost laugh. You felt a little silly now recalling how you had confessed to him things that you would never have said to the Monsignor…that was when his name was Paul Hill and John Pruitt was healing in a hospital. Now…well now you were in the very man’s arms, weighing his soul with your gaze.

“I hoped I was. Now, I think I have to agree with you…a good person would have left that thing in that cave and told a single lie about an island’s beloved Monsignor’s passing…but I chose instead to lie over again and bribe and smuggle…and I see now. I see what happens when you think of helping gods natural order. Too little too late.” His voice rumbled.

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The following are just some lines of random dialogue that I liked but didn’t fit.

“Don’t you miss the feeling of sunshine? Warmth on your face?” You asked, staring out through a partially opened curtain at the winter sun.

“I used to…but I see sunshine every day now.” He smiled and looked over at you.

——————

{This one I chose to take out because the moment was very touching and I didn’t want to make it funny}

“What…what’s it like?” You asked, looking out at the water.

“It’s…it’s beautiful unlike anything I could describe. Clarity and vibrance in things that you see every day…the world hums and sings…smells and colours you never thought of…halos around lights that seem to breathe with you…”

You sat for a moment, “Sounds like having an astigmatism…I have one in my right eye.”

————————————

{this one was one of a few parts where I toyed with them talking about his name change.}

“God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.”

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I had a lot of rough drafts for their intimacy scene. I tried a few different ways but I just never felt right. And I found that it was because it was using too much literal and blunt terms and descriptions. Their relationship was tender and fragile…so I made the depiction of them being together just as delicate. It was honestly my all time favourite intimacy scene that I’ve ever written so far.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

So…I am sorry about the ending. When I first started the story, I wanted it to have a happy ending. I had originally wanted her to leave him and try to run away, and he lets her go and is all depressed. But then he opens the door one night, and she’s standing there in the grass, all red eyed from crying and realizing that she needs him, and runs to him and they would live happily ever after. But t every time I tried to make it happy or that they ended up together, it just felt forced and unrealistic. My whole idea for this fic was for John to redeem himself and for reader to heal, but stay true to herself. And in the end, they couldn’t do that together. It would have been selfish for him to keep her, and it would have eventually ruined her. She would have ended up resenting him all over again because he would have kept her from living how she wanted to and seeing the world and being human and following God’s plan.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

That’s all! Thank you so much for reading and being here. Please ask questions if you have them!! This has been a wonderful experience to share with you. Thank you for enjoying Lamb.

-Nora

@littleredwritingcat @zaunite-leo @f4er1e-g1rl @purplemotif @vampyre-kin @hamishlinklaters @spacechupss @pansexualpamandabear @ebiemidnightlibrarian @erialuna @nilla-bear @vintageglassheart02 @ethanhoewke @dancingisdangerouss @cherrysugarx @daisychainsinknots @thesoundresoundsecho

[formula-fun]

hi there, let me walk you throught the last few days of my life

saw a list of history recommendations here on tumblr last Friday, saw the series if I had words there and thought "well let's give it a shot!"

started reading Friday night, got obsessed with it, couldn't stop, finished max's part Sunday, a little after the race.

got sad it ended and then VERY happy when I remember about the other part!!

started reading Sunday afternoon, got obsessed with it, couldn't stop, finished charles' part five minutes ago

All of this to day, I AM IN LOVE WITH YOUR WORK 😭😭😭

like WTH IS SOO GOOD

the construction, the order of the events, seeing everything fall into place after reading both parts, max learning to grow older and softer, charles understanding his feelings and letting himself have nice things, their mom's, the packs, the I love yous, oh my GOD 😭😭

broke my heart when I reached the end because I could keep read more and more and more of those two maybe forever??

definitely interest in a sequel or spin off or any little crumb showing just a peek of them again

again, amazing work, absolutely brilliant all around (and I was always laughing at your notes hahaha)

sending love !!

😭😭😭😭😭😭 thank youuuuuu i literally cannot tell you how much i love this, hhh. I DO NOT HAVE WORDS

this fic is truly my child, i put so much time and attention into it and i love the way it turned out so much <33 ive never allowed myself to just take my time on something and keep scrapping it over and over until it was exactly how i wanted it, but i'm so glad i did! it makes me really happy that other people appreciate the care that went into it and appreciate the way everything falls into place. i promise it was HEADACHE inducing at times to write two different stories about the same event but it was also really really fun

and thank you abt notes ahhahsahs i do NOT put as much effort into my notes. i usually write my notes at the last second after editing for like 3 hrs straight and just roll on vibes, so im glad you enjoy that <33

dfkjdfksd i'm running low on crumbs but you can have this!! it's from a version of the final chapter in which jos DID tell the press about the miscarriage

Max wakes him up with a kiss at the base of his neck, and then one on his mouth that lingers sweetly. His hands are hesitant on Charles’ waist, his touch light and skittish, which Charles always hates. Charles tells him so, and Max lets out a husky laugh.

“You want more?” he asks, his tone still hesitant even when his eyes are dancing. It makes Charles roll his own eyes, and then roll him; pin him down into the mattress by his wrists and bite at his jaw.

“I want you to touch me like you mean it,” he mutters into his skin.

Max’s wrists flex beneath his grip, muscles coiled and ready to fight. His mouth is curved when Charles kisses it, but he bites Charles’ lip anyway.

“Mean what?” Max whispers against his mouth when they part.

That I’m yours, Charles thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He can’t say it. He can’t really admit to something like that, yet; can’t allow himself to, even if he already knows it’s halfway true. He wants to mean it when he says it, and Max—Max hasn’t chosen him yet.

“That you want me,” Charles says instead. He brushes his nose against Max’s jawline; against his pulse point; follows the line of his throat down to the spot where his mark would go and lets his breath dance over it. Max’s chest goes stone still beneath his own.

Charles ducks forward and brushes a chaste kiss there, as softly as he can. Max shivers beneath him, his eyelids fluttering shut. His tendons shift under Charles’ palms as his hands clench into loose fists.

“Do you—”

In a blink they’re rolling over, Max pressing him down, one hand at the small of his back and the other beneath his knee. Max kisses him hard.

“Like I couldn’t,” Max hisses against his mouth when they part. “What kind of question is that?”

Charles just quirks an eyebrow. “Show me,” he says simply.

For a while, he’s able to forget about it all.

Of course it only lasts as long for it takes the two of them to shower, get dressed and part ways; as soon as he arrives in the paddock he’s swarmed. It’s not the fans—they’re not allowed back here today—or even that people are yelling questions. People know not to try; not when paddock passes can get revoked and fines can be given.

They don’t do anything so stupid, but it doesn’t matter. The scrutiny is just as bad; two dozen cameras following his every move as if waiting for him to do something.

He breathes a sigh of relief as he ducks into the Ferrari hospitality. Andrea slips in after him, and he’s kind enough not to say anything about the way Charles is morosely stuffing biscuits from the coffee bar into his mouth.

“I called your pack off,” he tells Charles, making himself an espresso. He almost manages to look disinterested while he does it.

Charles just raises his eyebrows. “Did you?”

“Well, Pierre did. They didn’t really listen to me.” He dumps two sugars into his coffee, stirring a little aggressively, and then rolls his eyes at the look Charles is giving him. “Oh, leave me alone. It’s been a stressful morning. How are you doing?”

Charles shrugs. “We knew this was going to happen,” he points out.

“Yeah, I know. That wasn’t really my question.”

“I’m,” Charles starts, then looks down at his biscuit; the crescent bite taken out of it. “It’s fine. I don’t think it has fully hit me yet.”

Andrea purses his lips. He nods. “Fred said they’re not allowed to ask any questions about it in the presser. You’re with Pierre, Alex, Oscar and George, so even if someone tries something, you won’t be alone. It was the best we could do.”

“Max?” Charles asks, in spite of himself.

Andrea’s lips somehow purse even harder. “The FIA was strongly advised to give him a week off.”

“But not me.”

“You wouldn’t want a week off.”

Charles hums. That’s true.

“Besides,” Andrea adds in an undertone, “I know you will want to set an example that this is not to be discussed in the paddock. It’s not Fred’s decision, obviously, but…”

“But you don’t trust Max to be able to do the same,” Charles finishes for him.

“I trust him,” Andrea argues. “I trust him to say what we’re all thinking, which is that this is stupid and everyone should fuck off. I just also know that will only make things worse.”

Charles tilts his head, conceding the point. He breaks a crumb off his biscuit; pushes it past his lips.

“Is he alright?” Andrea asks after a beat, his voice quiet. “After last night?”

Andrea had been the one to check on them when they hadn’t reemerged from the bedroom suite, only to find them curled up on the bed, Max having finally passed out. Charles had kissed his forehead before slipping out to join the media strategy session; had pulled the duvet over him as he went. He’d called room service after everyone had finally left, coaxing Max into eating comfort food in bed with him, some meaningless travel show playing in the background, giving Max’s red-rimmed eyes somewhere to drift when they refused to meet Charles’ own.

“He’s fine,” Charles mutters, then scrubs at his hair. “Or he will be fine. I don’t know. He has this stupid idea that he has to be the strong one all the time. He doesn’t feel like he should need me when I am the one who everyone is talking about, and when he thinks it is all his fault.”

“Why does he think that?” Andrea asks.

“Because Jos was the only one who could have told them. Nobody else knew. And Max was the one who told Jos.”

Andrea chews that over, sipping his coffee.

“I don’t know why it matters,” Charles adds. “It is out now. It doesn’t matter how it got out.”

“You could always sue Jos,” Andrea muses. “Defamation or whatever.”

“It’s not worth it.”

“Isn’t it?”

Charles shrugs. Maybe it would give him some sense of satisfaction; probably not. “It would just give the media more to talk about,” he says. “It would make Max feel worse. I would gain nothing. It was going to come out eventually anyway,” he adds. “It was always a matter of time, wasn’t it?”

Andrea grimaces. “It’s hard to say,” he admits, “but these things tend to not stay secrets for long.”

[budgetbuildsystem]

Small rant about hazbin hotel. Please note this is based on information I've been told and my own opinion.

SPOILERS

The pilot released years ago was a great idea, showed off beautiful amature work, and felt like it was made by a person who cared about what they made.

New hazbin started out chaotic and hard to follow, so many showtune type songs and barely followed the original idea at all. Every single voice was recast and it makes me a bit sad. It feels like a company attempted to take that original idea and make it more palatable. Alistor has a completely different vibe, and in the end just... RAN AWAY?? Got beat in less than a minute and ran after they spent the season building up to be a terrifying being? And then there's the actual production team. Animators received less than minimum wage for this show. And treated poorly. Had this show never been sold off to a different company I would have loved to see the original story idea. To wholeheartedly support this show. But instead it became a corporate cash grab to take over a fun different idea because they thought they could do it better.

Also why were they sing discussing the issue of getting into heaven? Why sing about Vag being an angel? I get wanting to incorporate songs but that really just felt awkward to sing through?

I truly wish I could have seen the original project to the end because this one had a lot of plot holes, swapped out a lot of good voice actors, too many showtunes that really weren't placed well, and paid the employees like crap.

Idk I just really regret watching it knowing that the original idea was mostly scrapped and the employees barely see any money coming from it.

EDIT:

Thank you to the person in the comments talking with me. I want to adjust some statements.

So first of all, Alastor. I love his character design and it was explained to me just how his power and staff works, so I can better understand why he lost that battle.

Secondly, the pay thing was a lie. I heard this very early in production from someone who I trust with information and didn't really question it. So thanks for informing me.

And lastly, music does very much hig differently for everyone. An example I can think of is Iron Man by black sabbath is calming to me while it may be a scary/hype song for others. Personally the songs in hazbin didn't really hit right but a few really did well.

Thank you for your patience and never lose that passion @diamondkat 💚💚💚

[dayurno]

hiii dayurno I’m a big fan !! In general but also of the name of the game which is what this ask is abt

Somewhat of a directors cut question bc the kevjean brain worms are eating me from the inside out - do u think there’s a version of the name of the game where Kevin turns away from Andrew and Neil and ends up with Jean - although I guess I don’t mean that kevjean need to end up romantic rather than simply the most important relationship in each others lives

Although I guess a broader question is if there’s a version where Kevin turns his back on Andrew and Neil and if so what happens then

its always touching (but crazy!) when people tell me they like tnotg because looking back on it its been 3 years and theres a lot of things about it i dislike 🫡 mostly writing choices and typos and whatnot, but its very sweet to me that people still care about it and are willing to look past those….. tch! i am nonetheless all too aware of the flaws in it but i’ll edit it one day. eventually. 4 sure

as for your question hmmm lets see! if you’re asking if there’s an universe where kevin rejects andreil — i think so! i think if kevin hadn’t slept with river, hadn’t moved to charleston, hadn’t befriended robin at the time he did, he probably wouldn’t have gotten to the yes he gives them in chapter 6. it wouldn’t necessarily be a finite forever no, but it’d definitely be a very uncertain Maybe andrew wouldn’t have wanted to work with it. at that point they would’ve stopped pursuing him unless neil thought he could convince kevin, but i’m not sure andrew would’ve been on board with that

now an universe where he ends up with jean….🤔💭 when i wrote tnotg there was little to no information (or really content) about jean and most of the kevjean friendship was based off of guesses and headcanons. this is i think made obvious by the fact that jean is older than kevin in it and was already a year into his contract with the stingrays when kevin signed with them. he wasn’t the one to suggest they move in together, but he offered kevin a place to stay while he looked for apartments, which led to the conclusion of kevin asking if he wants to be roommates. part of it was kevin scared of living alone, but the other part was simply because kevin wanted to be closer to jean again, and he thought close proximity could mend the parts of their relationship he thought were still off

which is all to say: yes! there can be a world where kandreil don’t get together and kevjean do :) my original plan 3 years ago was to involve jean with their captain in an out of wedlock affair (3 cheers for yonah’s shitty fiance), but it was scrapped pretty early in the writing process. i still think jean and yonah could have casually dated or hooked up on the side, and eventually river would have figured it out and told kevin, which would make him look at jean. Differently. i think. at the point of kevin’s first season he’s not really thinking about jean as an adult so much as he’s thinking about the memory of him as a teenager, so it’d be a bit of a shock to hear jean is fooling around with a teammate, which would put associations in his head he would Not Like To Deal With

the thing is that i don’t know if tnotg jean was in love with kevin the way tsc jean was. i think it was definitely There on the back of his mind, but i’m not sure if that version of him would have acknowledged his feelings, and it’s likely he’d have suppressed them much more than he did in tsc. but, by the time the tnotg timeline starts, jean is in a much better and calmer place, and i think he would eventually reevaluate those memories if kevin showed any sign of interest in him. and then it’d be free real estate

[quivm]

— Together till we're not.

Isagi x gn reader angst content!! minors can interact. no spoilers. no specific time settings (*ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ꕤ*.ﾟ

wc: 0.9k

genre + content warnings:

angst, sfw, breaking up, hospital, mention of injury regarding stairs, bad bf

notes!! hello quinn here sorry for not posting in a while! i made a medium ish post as a sorry almost 1k. i maybe want to do a part 2 at some time for this bc i love angst. this beta read/edited my the amazing @misiiio_x on ao3 ( check her out her work is amazing ). repost are appreciated ty <3 (๑•ᴗ•๑)♡

The bleakness of the apartment swallowed you up.

The walls hung with distant memories and past emotions crying for you to reach out again, to him. The door crashed open, a minute reaction was all that came to you.

“You’re late again.” The words could barely cross the barrier of your lips. You were hesitant to say something. Afraid for the response, afraid for the fight, maybe even afraid of Isagi himself. What this relationship had become, what he’d become.

“You know I’ve been at practice.”

The cheers coming from the TV almost blocked the annoyance that radiated from his voice. His tone was business formal as usual, one couldn’t even think you were anything more than acquaintances.

“I know but why are you back at 10pm…practice ends at 6?” The words jumbled in your mouth, tears pooling and threatening to spill as they always do.

Both of you knew the answer to the question, the very question which continued to wreck your thoughts. The question not an ounce of reassurance could overcome, the goliath that wouldn’t fall in your relationship, the very plague filling your head with delusions. The trophies lining the wall made sure of that.

For the first time in this bleak night you faced the man you came to love all those moons ago. Your very own starboy, all grown up. Different but the same, yours but just quite out of reach. Broken, choked sobbing was all that came out at sight of his defiant self in front of you. Steadying yourself you mumbled, “Am I even enough for you?”

Finally, at your words his stoic facade fell away.

“What?”

Dumbfoundness was all Isagi could muster. The porcelain walls around your relationship finally seemed to splinter under all the pressure, the truth waiting to burst through.

“Am I enough, Starboy?”

Starboy, the nickname Isagi got all those many moons ago, originally represented your love for him and his dream and your love for each other. It was meant to show his potential to go the same very stars up in the night sky, to help him believe it. However, now it was a remnant of the past, a forgotten relic of another time. Some time ago the nickname was scrapped because of a fight that occurred because of the same reason as this, you found it nothing but ironic.

His quiet demeanour caught you off guard, so you asked again.

“Am I truly enough for you?”

Were you this repulsive to him? Did he want to see you fall this low, the absurdity of it all made you scoff while fat tears slid down your cheeks.

As desperately as you wanted the answer to be yes, that you were enough and he loved you, no matter how much you needed it, you both knew the reply. The silence that came next knocked the wind out of you. This meticulous world you built collapsed around you, no catharsis, just an endless stream of grief and betrayal flooded in.

“I KNEW IT YOU SHITTY BASTARD!”

Your screams echoed against the walls, the same apartment that was supposed to be the first stepping block in your relationship. The sight for some time had started to make you feel sick, it reminded you of promises he had never tried to fulfil for you. You didn’t know what to do, whether to cry and scream or fall in a heap on the floor, rip everything in sight apart?

Where did everything go wrong you wondered, what had you done that made you deserve this, what karma was this fulfilling. In blue lock Isagi unlocked his ego, his insatiable hunger for football– for winning. But of course, why on earth would that ring alarm bells for a dumb girl who was completely infatuated and lovestruck? Isagi was your world, his dream was equally yours. You’d let go of so much, the long practices, the missed dinners, the heated arguments over football, but no they weren't the worst. That wasn’t what broke you.

October 21, you fell down the stairs, the date of one of Isagi’s team matches and landed up in the hospital. The first thing you woke up to was not your attentive and loving boyfriend who you would have dropped everything for. But, Isagi captivated by the TV, almost as pale as the walls with anxiety, but not because of you in the hospital gown bandaged up but because of the fact his team was losing.

“Why today?” You vividly remember him saying.

Deep down you knew he was actually angry with you for getting hurt and taking him away from the game, and for a split second while bandaged up in a hospital bed you wanted to feel guilty for causing a blip in his winning streak for this season. You never forgot those two words; they tore your soul apart, and every day after your love for Isagi spilled out with nowhere to go.

Eventually, there just wasn’t any left.

It was apparent that football was Isagi's love in life and you would only be a fool to try and measure up to it.

[morningstargirl666]

I just finished reading through The Big Bad Wolf and have loved it. I can’t wait for more!! Any updates or news?

Hi! So happy to hear you loved it! ❤️✨

I'm currently in the process of editing/rewriting TBBW right now! I've also outlined chapter 36 and started writing some of the dialogue, but I'm hesitant to start writing it in its entirety because I feel like I'm going to end up changing a lot of TBBW and want it all up to date before I fully commit my attention to the next chapter. I'm not changing anything plot-line wise, but I am making tweaks to the lore, character development, etc. It's still the same story, but now that the first 35 chapters are written, I find I'm going back and adding bits that you'd normally see in 'filler' episodes. Anything and everything that develops characters, relationships or lore - or even just there simply because I find it fun and enjoyable. I keep reminding myself that writing these first 35 chapters was me stuffing sand into buckets and now, with time to edit, I can finally make the sandcastles: carve turrets and staircases, mount flags and add seashells, adding every scrap of detail that will ultimately make this story come alive.

For example, chapter 5 on its own, has 6.5K of entirely NEW unseen content added to it so far (it's not posted yet, nor are any other edits for TBBW, so don't get too excited). And that's not counting the scene between Sam and Kiera on the phone, which has been re-written completely for the most part. There is also at least one more new scene I still want to write. If the chapter gets too long, it might mean splitting it in two and re-organising the chapters again, like I did for chapter 11 and 12 a while ago when I edited them.

Chapter 5, I hope, is an outlier and most chapters won't have as much done to them. Chapter 1 is edited and finished, yet its mostly the same except for grammar corrections. Though Chapter 2 has a deeper insight into Klaus' mindset - particularly his pure dislike for doppelgangers - purely because it's fun for me, as well as highlighting the development of his character between The Little Wolf and the start of TBBW. There's also going to be an extra canon forwood scene at the end of that chapter, as I want to develop them more, in preparation for when I destroy the relationship in the future chapters after 35. But who nows - all the chapters centered around the Mikaelson Ball I'm eyeing hungrily, my mind whizzing with a few ideas on how I might expand on them a little bit. I also want to focus more on the hybrids, which until now I've kinda ignored.

I know it may be a little disappointing, to hear the next chapter update is a long way off yet. But I don't want to rush this. I want to savour it, every single second. And who knows, by the time you get chapter 36, you won't just be getting a 20k chapter - you'll be getting a 50k bonus update of brand new content as well, sprinkled throughout the first 35 chapters. The word count is going to be over 400k by the time I update the next chapter, probably closer to 450k, I'm almost sure of it.

I can't promise when the next chapter will arrive, but I can promise this:

It will be worth the wait.

[nat-seal-well]

Wip Wednesday!

I was tagged yesterday by @aztarion

Tagging: @agentnatesewell @evilbunnyking @nsewell @serenpedac @serial-chillr and anyone else who wants to share <3

This fic is done, but I have to edit it when I get home from work today. In the meantime, have some fluff as Elena makes Ava some hot chocolate (against her will)

Unable to find a way to escape—not that she would, even if she did; Ava knows this about herself even if she does not want to fully admit it, not yet—she sinks down into a chair at the table. At the counter, Elena busies herself with filling the kettle and setting it on a stove burner. She’s quiet as she keeps busy, focused, and Ava finds herself drinking in the way her brows furrow as she digs through a cupboard for the right container.

“To the left,” she says. “It’s kept with the tea. Nat reorganized the kitchen last week.”

Her interjection is worth it. Elena smiles at her, warm like a summer day, and tells her, “Thanks. See, you don’t want me to go back to bed, after all.”

And Ava doesn’t. Even if she knows she should. The Detective is a balm, something soothing and comforting. When she was human, so long ago, her family kept cats. They chased the rodents away, and Ava’s siblings always liked to sneak them scraps from their plates whenever their father wasn’t looking. More than once, she had woken on a cold morning to find a small, furry bundle pressed up against her underneath the blankets, purring with content ferocity. It always brought her peace.

Elena feels like that: soft and steady, constant.

There’s something calming about watching her work. She sets two mugs down on the counter, and two spoons, and scoops entirely too much powdered drink mix into both. While the kettle rumbles steadily, Ava is entranced by the way Elena’s fingers move as she unwraps two little chocolate candies and drops them into their mugs.

Ava won’t be able to handle more than a few swallows. She knows that for certain; she can smell the stuff from all the way over where she’s sitting. For some reason, though, she finds that she doesn’t mind.

[alis-the-narwhal]

Soul Bond Marriage Scrap AU

These are going to be just straight out of my docs so don’t expect good editing or anything like that. We’re going oldest to newest btw so, enjoy!

~~

Or; An AU where marriage merges the souls and Charlie is finally starting to learn what it means to be human.

~~

Tags as I’m thinking of them so i don’t forget:

Dehumanization, Panic Attacks, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Dysfunctional Families, Charlie is Slime, Disassociation, Established Relationship, Soul Bond/Soulmates, Las Nevadas References,

~~

Notes: You have no idea how incredibly hard this was to write. How do you describe sleeping without using sleeping terminology??????? How do you describe panicking without saying he’s panicking??

~~

Charlie is not human. That is fact.

Sure, he’s treated as such. Ever since the day when he found the corpse of a fallen human and consumed it- merging with it.

Usually, this wouldn’t happen. Slime don’t become the things they eat. They simply eat.

What was different about this human- he does not know. He simply knows that suddenly he had legs to run with and lungs to breathe with.

But looking like a human does not make him one. This fact was painfully obvious when he stumbled into the city of Las Nevadas, oh so long ago.

He had watched humans parade about on the surface for so long, while he sat just under the soil. It should’ve been easy to pretend.

Quackity saw right through him.

He supposed his impressions needed work, and watching Quackity and the other people he interacted with, Charlie learned to act human. He was so good at it in fact, that when he arrived on Quesadilla Island, people thought he /was human. Or at least partly human.

(Hiding his slime was always the most difficult part of his act.)

In the comfort of his own company he could let the mask drop. He could relax his shoulders and slump back into himself.

He wanted to be human. He could act and pretend as much as he wanted, but he just wasn’t.

Charlie was only slime.

And then Mariana came into his life.

~~

He met Mariana on his first day on Quesadilla Island. Honestly, Charlie didn’t think much of him. He was just another person invited to live on the island, now stuck here forever along with the rest of them. There wasn’t much interest in him at first.

Not until the island paired the two of them up together to raise an abandoned egg left behind by a dragon.

It was hard to adjust at first. Charlie hadn’t ever really paid attention to the loving couples and their children during his time as a slime. He never figured that he���d find himself in that position. There was no need to study or practice how to /love someone.

The only knowledge he had on relations were the fighting between the residents of Essempi. Even the people romantically involved always succumbed to anger and vitriol. It was the only basis he had for love.

So, his relationship with Mariana followed what little he knew about love.

They’d made a mutual decision to get married, for the sake of Juanaflippa. The first few days were /great. Charlie was riding a high and his chest felt light. He almost felt like this /could be what happiness felt like. But, he was only slime. Slime could not feel.

To cover up the problem, he began to do what he did best. He began to act. To put on the mask of being human.

Fights began to break out between the two of them. Screaming late into the night and going to bed alone, wide awake at the ceiling. Slime don’t sleep. Slime don’t feel. Slime don’t love.

The next couple of months were awful. Charlie couldn’t describe it. It almost felt like the feeling he got when he sunk into the earth. An all encompassing feeling of being /squished and forced into a too tight box. Some days his gut would twist and ache in ways it never had before.

And then he started feeling /wrong.

~~

It started one afternoon when his body began to disobey him. A shakiness in his limbs set in and his brain felt more like sludge than usual.

The door of his home was solid, and it took him a solid good few seconds to realize he’d actually made it home. He remembers that he had went to go get something for dinner, and he feels the weight of it in his inventory. The walk here is a vague memory, images blurring out in his mind. The only thing he could focus on was the need to get home.

As steadily as he can, he braces himself against the wall to the side of the door and opens it. It creaks horribly in his ears and he swears to himself that it’s not usually this bad. He manages to get past the door which swings closed behind him with a /thud. He leans his back against the door, vision swimming and eyes blinking too slowly.

From deeper into the house, the sound of footsteps begin to pick up and then Mariana is standing in a far doorway, looking quite unimpressed.

“You were gone for three hours. Getting dinner shouldn’t take that long.” He sounds annoyed as he settles into the kitchen with an expectant expression on his face.

Three hours? Charlie swears it didn’t take that long. An hour, max. But, to be fair- he barely remembers the walk home. Was he really out of it for that long?

“Sorry. I have it, right here.” Charlie musters, not bothering to put the mask on. It just feels like too much work. Mariana’s expression twitches for a moment, but Charlie can’t comprehend any meaning.

After a slow moment of hyping himself up, Charlie pushes up off the door and moves towards the kitchen. His legs feel weak and he has to steady himself once more against the island. He puts the food he gathered onto the island; avocado toast- Juanaflippa’s favorite.

Mariana’s brow is furrowed when he chances a glance up at him. “Slime?” He asks, softly.

Charlie hums a response, but his brain feels like it's disconnected itself. At this point, he’s slouched himself over the counter, cheek pressed against the cold marble. His breath is warm, and a little humid against his face.

“When was the last time you slept?” Mariana whispers to him, which- weird. Charlie doesn’t do that. Slime don’t need to /sleep. They get all the energy they need from eating.

“I don’t do that.” Charlie replies. Distantly, he realizes that this was the /worst possible way to answer the question laid before him. He’s trying to hide the fact that he isn’t human, not reveal it like it’s common knowledge. Gods, life was so much easier when he was still a small blob, simply watching.

“Do what, sleep? Of course you sleep.” Mariana tells him, reaching forward and placing a palm against Charlie’s forehead. “Are you sick or something?”

“I don’t do that either.” Charlie answers, truthfully. There are a lot of things slime don’t do. Mariana scoffs quietly under his breath. The hand against his forehead disappears and then suddenly something is lifting him up off of the counter. He’s leaned up against something /warm and it both feels like it is and is not helping his situation.

Then, all too soon, he’s pushed down onto something soft. He’s surrounded by warmth and cloth. His body seems to melt, falling completely limp and his eyelids fall closed. Faintly, he hears Mariana say something, but then he’s swallowed whole and for a moment- he ceases to exist.

At least that’s the easiest way to describe it. One minute he’s feels /drained and on the verge of collapse and the the next-

The sun is shining through the window. His body feels better, like it did yesterday before the shakiness set in.

He doesn’t know what happened. This has never happened to him before. He’s never lost /hours of time like this before. He’s been aware of every moment of his existence until now. The idea that he wasn’t in control of his body for as long as he was-

There’s a thumping from his chest. He knows it’s there, it’s been there since he gained this body. But now, it steadily begins to pick up, he can /hear it. He’s never been able to hear it before. What’s worse is that his skin feels sticky.

Charlie knows what sleeping /is. In the sense that he’s seen other people do it, but he himself has never experienced it.

Was that what that was? Did he sleep? Or is it something worse.

If it was sleep? The better question is /why? Why now? Centuries after gaining this form. Why /now?

What else could change?

~~

Mariana’s sitting in the living room when he finally makes it downstairs. There’s a cup of tea or something in his hand and he barely twitches when Charlie comes into the room.

For a moment, Charlie can only stare, before he sighs and moves into the kitchen. The tight feeling in his chest is back. Maybe food will help?

The avocado toast from last night is stuffed into one of the cabinets, and he pulls it out with little finesse. Slime can eat practically anything. Everything has energy that a slime can consume, Charlie just quite prefers human food. It tastes better than most of the stuff he’s consumed and he has consumed a /lot of weird things.

He eats in relative silence, only the sound of breathing and faint chirping from outside the window. He chances a glance up at Mariana, who has stayed resolutely still in his place. For a moment, Charlie wants to do what usually does- start a fight and then storm off, but-

The tightness in his chest only worsens at the thought, and for a moment he struggles to take a breath. Not that he needs to.

Instead, he tosses the thought away and decides something else.

“Thank you. For last night. I don’t-“ He hesitates when Mariana glances over with a raised eyebrow, “I don’t know what happened.” He finishes lamely. Mariana purses his lips, but sighs before dropping the teacup to his lap.

“It’s fine. You should take better care of yourself. <My husband dying is the last thing I need.>” He replies, mumbling the last bit in Spanish, but the translations give him away. The words give Charlie a weird little feeling, and he sorts it away in the ‘Deal With Later’ box he’s steadily filling up.

“I will.” Charlie promises, half wondering if that’s something he /can promise. He has no idea what’s happening to him right now. His mother and his siblings never experienced something like this. He’ll have to figure it out before it gets worse.

Mariana nods and then a strange expression crosses his face. “Last night, you said something. About how you don’t sleep.” Charlie’s heart drops. “What did you mean by that?”

Shit. Shit. Shitshit/shitshitshit. It’s fine, Charlie. Play it cool.

“Uhh…. It’s hard.” Great. Perfect. He can practically feel his mental facepalm.

“You have <insomnia?” Mariana questions, starting to sound genuinely concerned. Charlie hops on the bandwagon, nodding his head and slumping his shoulders in relief.

“Yeah, yeah I have- uh ensohmnia.” Charlie nods again- reading from the translation above his head- just to /really drill the point home.

“Insomnia.” Mariana corrects.

“Right. That.”

They stare at each other for a solid, awkward minute.

Thankfully, there’s a ping from Mariana’s communicator which redirects his attention. Charlie breaths out in relief as soon as Mariana looks away, slumping into himself. He watches as Marina texts back and forth for a moment before he huffs out in annoyance. He stands up, leaving his cup on the coffee table and makes his way over to the door, with barely a glance back at Charlie.

Just before Mariana opens the door, he glances back at Charlie for a moment in consideration.

“I’ll be back. Later.” Mariana tells him before leaving the house. The sound of the door closing feels too harsh for Charlie. Less like a goodbye and more like an end.

Charlie stands still, a little caught off guard, but he watches the door for a few seconds.

Apparently food does not help with the twisting in his gut. It almost makes it feel worse.

~~

When Charlie drops Juanaflippa off at school, he feels a little lost. Something is /clearly wrong with him, but he doesn’t know what. He can’t think of anything he’s done recently to warrant the symptoms he has. Should he ask around?

It would be a good idea if he was human. But he isn’t. So, he’ll have to figure this out on his own.

This all started around when he married Mariana. He hadn’t really noticed at the beginning, but it has steadily escalated into something serious. Is it Mariana’s fault? Did Mariana do something to him?

No, that can’t be right. Even if Mariana did something like that- Charlie is slime. Most things that would work on a human don’t work on him, so there has to be another reason.

He huffs a breath, feet crunching on the path back to his house. He can see it up ahead, illuminated by sunlight and casting a large shadow over the earth.

He’s about to start up a slight jog when- from the other side of the wall- he sees Foolish.

And Mariana.

They’re just talking, nothing too strange. But then Mariana /laughs, looking so bright and carefree. Nothing like how he is around Charlie.

He stutters to a stop, just watching as Mariana and Foolish get further away.

Something bubbles in his gut, feeling like a sharp twist and pull. Like Charlie’s been poked by something too sharp and his slime is pulling it in. The place in his chest where his heart is supposed to be /burns. The fire gets a little stronger, seeming to spread around his chest.

He gasps, hand clenching into his shirt- right above his heart. His thoughts swirl again- the feeling leaving him breathless and strange like the other morning.

Maybe he /should talk to someone.

~~

The only person vaguely aware of his.. condition, is Quackity. So Charlie sends a text to Mariana, asking if he’ll watch Juanaflippa for the night. Mariana’s response is devoid, but an agreement nonetheless.

When Mariana arrives after a couple of minutes, Charlie is pacing the floor. Juanaflippa is sitting on the couch simply watching- eyebrows twitching in a way Charlie can’t understand.

The door clicks open, but Charlie barely registers it- too focused on the /wrong in his chest. What if he’s dying? Quackity /has to know something. Or know someone who does. This can’t be-

“Slime.” Mariana calls out, standing in front of him. Charlie startles, because he could’ve /sworn-

“Yeah?” Charlie croaks, throat weirdly dry. Mariana’s face twitches.

“Are you… alright?” He asks, hands hovering in the air like he’s concerned Charlie will fall over again. Charlie’s not 100% sure he won’t.

“Yeah, yeah. Just fine.” Charlie claims, wiping sweat from his forehead. And /sweat? Charlie doesn’t-

“Maybe you should stay here.” Mariana offers.

“You’ve got her?” He asks instead of answering, motioning to Juanaflippa still on the couch.

Mariana nods cautiously. “Of course, but-“

“Great.” Charlie cuts him off, already moving towards the door. “I have to go.”

Charlie ignores Mariana calling his name as he descends the stairs- already hyper-focused on getting to Quackity’s home.

The walk is vague, practically static in his mind. He’s relying a lot on muscle-memory right now to navigate. Too worried that he’ll get distracted with anything else happening to him.

When he gets to the door, Quackity is there to greet him.

“Hey man, I got your text. What’s-“

Charlie pushes past him and into the house, too scared of anyone outside hearing the conversation. Quackity seems a little stunned, but takes it in stride and closes the door behind them.

“I need help.” Charlie starts, glancing over at Quackity.

“Okay?” Quackity drags the words out. “With what?”

Charlie breaths out, not quite knowing how to even get started.

“Something’s.. /wrong with me. The other day I felt- drained? Or something. I don’t know. But I- I /passed out.” Charlie looks up at Quackity, frantic. “I don’t /do that! I’ve never slept in my life! And then! I’ve been feeling this /twisting in my chest and it /hurts.”

Quackity’s face is carefully blank, and he opens his mouth to speak, but Charlie barrels over him.

“And today, I saw Mariana with Foolish and it felt like my chest was just on fire. And I was /sweating earlier. Something is like /really wrong with man, and I don’t know where it came from or how to fix it and-“

“Charlie.” Quackity cuts him off, hands landing gently onto his shoulders. There’s a tiny smile on his face.

“What?” Charlie asks, sounding like a strangled cat.

“You were jealous.” Quackity tells, sounding quite amused.

“Jealous?”

Quackity hums in agreement. “And tired. And sad. What you’ve been feeling are /emotions Charlie.”

Something inside of his brain /drops. Emotions? No. He can’t- He doesn’t /do that.

/Slime don’t feel/.

So why is he?

“That’s not possible. I’ve never been able to..” He trails off, feeling helpless.

Quackity tilts his head in consideration. “Frankly, I have no Idea. You’re the slime here, so. This is more your territory than mine.”

“I guess.” Charlie replies, feeling numb and like all of this /emotion has abandoned him.

“This is a good thing though, right? I mean, you’re /finally starting to be human. Like you’ve always wanted.”

And Quackity is right. Charlie has always wanted to be human. Watching them wasn’t enough, he needed to /be one. But now-

This is terrifying and new. It’s sudden and against his will. Charlie had come to terms with the fact that he was never going to be like the other people he’d made friends with. He /knew that he was always going to be an outlier. He’d accepted that.

So why now? Why after /centuries of wishing is his only dream coming true?

His breath is coming in fast and he’s sweating again. All the /emotion that had left him is crashing back down onto his lungs. His vision is blurring slightly and he can only kind of hear Quackity calling his name out.

“Charlie. Charlie, you need to breathe.”

But Charlie doesn’t /do that. He feels like he doesn’t know how anymore.

There’s a cord around his throat, tightening and tightening and /tightening.

He can still feel Quackity’s hands on his shoulders, applying pressure, but now he can also feel hard wood against his back and the bottom of his thighs.

He’s.. sitting down now. He wasn’t before.

“Charlie, I think you’re having a panic attack.” Quackity’s voice comes from above him.

He doesn’t know what that is. He doesn’t think he knows /anything anymore.

“Charlie, just- just /listen to me. Alright? Simple enough?”

Yeah. He can listen.

“Okay, I’m gonna tell you about my day with Tilin? Is that alright?”

After a quiet moment, Quackity’s voice begins to fill the air, talking about his day with Tilin. It’s easier to focus on his voice rather than the swirling vortex in his mind. His body starts to feel better, less like it’s trying to kill him and the tightening on his throat steadily eases up.

Soon, Charlie can focus on other things in the room. The crafting table has some spare sticks lying on top. The furnace is cooking /something and it makes the house smell like smoking embers. The windows show the trees outside, stray leaves drifting to the floor gracefully.

“Hey.” Quackity redirects his attention, looking concerned.

“Hey.” Charlie responds. Quackity breathes a sigh of what seems to be relief.

“You’re back, that’s good.” He mumbles to himself. “You okay?”

Is he?

“Yeah. I’m great.” Charlie assures, more for himself than for Quackity. Quackity looks like he doesn’t believe him but thankfully stays silent.

“Maybe you should sleep here tonight. I don’t feel too well about letting you walk home like this.” Quackity tells him, standing up and heading to a spare bedroom.

“I can’t. I told Mariana I’d be-“

“I’ll text him. Let him know you’re staying here.” Quackity assures, practically lifting Charlie out of the chair and pushing him into the spare bedroom. “Just sleep.”

Charlie nods, too tired to put up a fight anymore. He slumps down into the bed, watching as Quackity pulls his communicator out as he shuts the door.

When he’s left with silence, Charlie turns onto his back and stares at the ceiling, hoping for another night of watching. Maybe Quackity was wrong. Maybe he’s still normal. Maybe he won’t have to worry about getting any worse. Maybe it’ll all go away overnight.

His eyelids start to feel heavy after a while, and honestly it’s too much work to keep them open. He can just close his eyes. It’ll be fine. He won’t fall asleep.

~~

When he opens his eyes next- sunlight is pouring through the window. The sudden brightness causes an ache to form in his head. He groans aloud as he sits up.

“I am not going to get used to that any time soon.” Charlie comments to himself. He feels better than last night. There’s not this overwhelming feeling of- what did Quackity call it? Panic?

There’s a solid moment where he simply stares at the opposite wall and then-

Someone is slamming on the front door. The thumps echo throughout the house and he can hear Quackity call out a couple of swears in Spanish as he goes to answer the door.

Charlie stares wide-eyed at the door as the shouting grows a bit louder and is that-?

Stomping footsteps trail their way up to the door of the room he’s in and then-

Mariana is forcing himself inside, looking a mix of angry and irritated. For a split second Charlie is worried he fucked up but then Mariana seems to finally notice him on the bed. His face goes through a complicated series of emotions before settling on worry.

“Quackity told me you freaked out last night. I /told you that you should’ve stayed at the house. <What was I thinking letting you go out when you were freaked out like that>?” Mariana begins to scold himself in Spanish, pacing the length of the room.

Stunned, Charlie can only watch- almost not noticing Juanaflippa climb up onto the bed and force her way into Charlie’s lap.

‘Are you okay?’ She signs, eyebrows furrowed and scaled cheeks scrunched.

Charlie /hates lying to her, but not answering is worse.

“Not really.” He tells her. Mariana cuts himself off when Charlie speaks. “I’m-“

How does he even describe what’s going on?

“There’s a couple of things I’m having to deal with right now. Not all of them are good, but-“ Charlie trails off, staring down at his daughter.

His chest isn’t twisting. Instead it feels /warm. Not the warmth of the fire that he felt when he saw Mariana and Foolish. But warmth like a reprieve from shivering cold.

“I’m gonna be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”

Juanaflippa nods. ‘Me too.’ She signs and Charlie laughs.

The bed creaks slightly from Mariana sitting down in front of them. He sighs but his hand reaches out to take Charlie’s.

Charlie feels like he’s aware of every place they touch. His skin /burns where Mariana has a hold of it. But it also feels like the comfort of the caves he was born in. It feels like relief and something Charlie can’t exactly name but feels so /right.

“Don’t scare me like that, <asshole.” Mariana tells him, sounding annoyed and aloof, but the way his hand tightens tells Charlie that he doesn’t mean it.

“I’ll try not to.” Charlie promises, feeling like maybe he should tell Mariana the truth. That Charlie isn’t as human as he seems. How would he react? Would their already strenuous relationship get worse with the knowledge that what Mariana married isn’t even a real person?

It’s not a good idea to risk it, Charlie thinks.

~~

Part Two

~~

When Mariana was young, marriage was something /coveted in his town. There were always stories of how you needed to pick the right person. Your forever. Because they were. Forever, that is.

It was like this: Two souls bonded by the ties of holy matrimony become one. In every aspect. Sure, the bond would form differently for every pair, but more often than not you were much more aware of your spouse.

(Mariana gets glimpses of Slime’s emotions sometimes. It’s how his bond formed. He’s not sure how Slime’s has formed, they don’t talk about it.)

Mariana’s sense of normality is- shifted at best. Living with Charlie Slimecicle will do that to you, he supposes. Slime is different than anyone he’s ever met. There’s something /off about him that sometimes makes Mariana want to run and hide.

But, they have a daughter together. They’re married. They share a soul. It doesn’t matter how much Slime makes him feel. Mariana has a vow he will stick to.

Charlie Slimecicle is not normal, is what he’s trying to say. He doesn’t need the bond to know that.

But recently, Slime is dealing with something that Mariana can feel intimately. A sense of panic. Confusion. Helplessness. It pulls and tugs at the place in his chest that their soul is settled.

Mariana doesn’t want to lie and say that he’s not worried. He loves Slime. He wouldn’t have married him and become his forever if he didn’t.

The problem of the matter is that Slime’s soul feels like its changing. Mariana’s never been able to feel Slime so intimately. Usually, Slime’s emotions and pain are muffled by something that almost feels like sludge. Which, Mariana thinks, is quite ironic.

The Slime sitting in front of him right now feels helpless but hopeful, and Mariana can /feel it.

There’s a sense of relief too, and Mariana wants to pick and dissect at everything that makes Slime /Slime. He wants to know everything that goes on in his head. He wants to know Slime inside and out. Wants to understand why Slime’s soul is becoming clearer and clearer as the days pass. Wants to be loved by Slime like he loves him.

He wants everything that Slime is willing to give him, and right now- it’s not much.

Mariana will change that, but he has to be patient.

~~

Getting Slime home is a lot easier than he thought it would be. Juanaflippa helps by leading him along and rambling with her hands. Slime listens intently and Mariana can feel his contentment that- for now- is overshadowing the panic he’s been feeling the past couple of days.

Once they finally make it inside, Mariana practically forces Slime onto the couch in order to make breakfast.

It’s the only way Mariana can offer support at the moment. /Feeling Slime’s panic last night and not being able to do anything was physically painful. So, for now, he can offer comfort in the form of a freshly cooked meal.

—————

At the end, as a way of making Charlie feel more human, Mariana stops calling him Slime. This happens after the reveal (which I can’t decide if it’ll be angsty or not yet) of Charlie being, well a slime lol. But it’s supposed to feel like Charlie is finally human instead of just pretending to be one.

Charlie changed into a more uhh sentient? version of slime because he consumed the corpse of fallen SCU!charlie. It gave him life in kind of the only way it could- a functioning (mostly) body. This is just a fun fact cuz I can’t think of a way to work this into the story besides vaguely implying it at the beginning.

Charlie’s just a scraggly lil guy that has NO idea what’s goin on with him rn, and I want it to be so visibly apparent that even the reader is confused.

—————

Marriage soul bond mariana thing

Maybe angst with charlie being a slime pretending to be human and the bond gives him his first set of emotions and stuff,

I wanna do more eldritch stuff

Maybe like charlie is gen a slime and being married to mariana starts kinda making him feel more human- maybe even hes turning into one because of the shared soul

Idk

They go on date with jaidens suggestion

It's just them like, trying to fiz their relationship and Charlie absolutely suffering because he has no idea what emotions are and they like- hurt?

[17redeye]

Tabasco Pt. 3 A post-fall #Hannibal drabble

"I thought we were past trying to hurt one another." Hannibal announced, looking put out as he pulled the bottle of Tabasco from the paper grocery bag Will had just set on the counter.

Will tried for levity as he petted the dogs that crowded around his legs. "Listen, I gave up Jimmy Dean for you. The least you could do is let me have my Tabasco." 

"Considering this is the first you've ever spoken of Mr. Dean, how important could he really be to you, Will?" was Hannibal's bitterly spoken response.

Will felt the potential for this to spiral out of his control, and worse yet, they were in the kitchen. Will wouldn't go so far as to say he had PTSD, but he could admit that being in kitchens made him feel skittish—kitchens that also held Hannibal even more so.

Hannibal told him he did have PTSD, but Will had learned to tune out his psychoanalysis a long time ago.

Eyes trained on Hannibal's hands and thinking fast, Will decided that opening up emotionally was preferable to being opened up physically.

"I worked there, okay? When I was still in high school," Will gritted out, loathe to reveal any more of his childhood than necessary to a psychiatrist, particularly the one he lived with.

Compassion for Will did not stop Hannibal from analyzing him incessantly, and even when he wasn't foisting his analysis of Will upon him, he easily read it on his face.

Hannibal, predictably and without any shame of that predictability, latched onto this scrap that Will offered up.

With a notably lighter tone, he asked, "You made hot sauce?" while contemplating the boxed glass bottle he still held in his hand.

Will did his best to mentally fortify himself: “Yes, my dad picked up steady work at the port of Iberia, and we stayed close to Avery Island for two years.”

Hannibal was watching Will now, absorbing the information and editing his mental picture of the young man he’d been, while Will did his best to avoid his gaze and nonchalantly pet the dogs.

“Is this what your past tastes like Will?” Hannibal asks with the barest hint of a smile.

Will weighed his options; he's reluctant to reveal anything else, but dodging the questions might lead to this fight reoccurring. Ultimately, he'd like to get this over with, keep his Tabasco, and maybe Hannibal will not use it to annoy him too much.

“Those two years in Louisiana were the best I’d ever had. We had enough money that I ate regularly, and I was able to make a couple friends.”

Hannibal sobered considerably at that. “Is that when you met Jimmy?"

"Jimmy?” asked Will, befuddled.

"Yes, the Mr. Dean, you're so fond of." 

Will gives Hannibal an incredulous look: "Jimmy Dean is a sausage company, Hannibal! Not an ex-lover. Christ, didn't you live in the U.S. for, like, twenty years? How do you not know Jimmy Dean?"

Hannibal glowers at him while ticking off his fingers. “Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Buffet, James Dean—it's an incredibly common American name, Will. Do you honestly expect me to remember them all?”

Seriously contemplating making another attempt on Hannibal’s life brings a smile back to Will’s face as he looks at him and says, “Will you let it go if I tell you I like your sausage better?”

Hannibal looks pleased enough at that.

***

Thank you so much for reading my silly ficlet.

I've posted all three parts on AO3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51791779

[windchimeplays]

idk if this should still be labelled as a leak since mhy decided to change his entire design for 4.4 cny/lantern rite event

i first saw this leak before fontaine was even released and i immediately fell in love with lion boy's design, he is based on the mascot for the lion dance, a traditional chinese dance mostly performed on cny and for important personal events like weddings, company openings, etc. to bring in good luck and fortune.

i definitely did not expect them to completely change the design tho

i personally don't like that one random orange strand on his fringe lmfao (his hoodie is so cute tho!!!), i love his first design the best, but the recent leak for the lantern rite event banner which reveals his potentially finalized design disappointed me a lot.

i've never seen a white and blue lion irl, i've always seen either red and orange lions and since they're much more common, it might be why mhy decided to change his colour palette. another that i just realized after mopping around was that they decided to not use white is because it's associated with death and mourning in chinese culture (in opposition to black in the west).

but even so, they could've just changed the colours and not touched his design, now he just looks so basic and lacks the features of a lion mascot unlike the previous two designs ;-;

perfectly understand that these are merely concept arts and are highly likely to change, but as someone who had been waiting so long for him, you can't expect me to not cry over it hahaha

its kinda like the fanart heizou almost two years ago ig, tho most of us are aware that it was a fanart so its different but similar

oh well, looks like i won't be using him, and maybe i can use his first design as a ref for an oc hahaha

edit: i've calmed down a bit sksksk, anyways i saw that there's people who actually prefer his finalised design (which is shocking to me, maybe they're not chinese so they didn't understand)! half a year ago, when i first saw him, i was extremely grateful to mhy for making another culture-ly important character after yunjin who i still love and use for my ayato. while it's hard to tell from the lantern rite leak, bro def didn't have the lion ears anymore and his attire doesn't have any lion design so def a big fat F. idk how to articulate my feelings properly via words (even worse in eng), but i just gotta accept the fact that mhy scrapped an amazing design.