#but that child is still Caleb’s. if Caleb were here then he would kill it. but he’s not

[ara-the-great]

One call away

Tw: slight reference to lores, slight gore (if you squint) fever and delirium, abandonment issues

(here is the request I got for Zayne and Sylus angst. I didn't know what to write so I added my own trauma. I HAVE NOT PROOF READ THIS)

You don't remember most of your childhood. Not that you cared much. The oldest thing in your memory that you could find was screams, the screams staying with your Grandma and Caleb but that too was well into your mid or late teens.

Even then you didn't have many friends, actually you had no one except Caleb. All of them either bullied you or abandoned you, they didn't care about you . You were desperate for any sort of connection as a child and as a adult.

Your dating scene was similar. Though you only had one relationship before you joined the hunters association. Even that was far from a good one. And now when you look back at it you couldn't remember much there either, you had cried so much, so damn much but still he left.

It's only after joining the association that your life started to look up. It was a new start for you. A new environment, new friends do you think they like you? and new opportunities.

You always kept your problems to yourself. You didn't want to make others worry for nothing. It's not like anyone was close enough to tell these problems anyway.

When this mysterious fever started developing you thought you could ignored it, just power though it, right? Wrong.

You could barely stand up. Slipping in and out of consciousness. Your body felt like it was being baked from the inside out. Yet it felt like your limbs were freezing off. You needed help to at least get to the hospital.

Even thinking of the hospital made you feel worse. You could practically smell the antiseptic scent of the sterile rooms. What if something is really wrong with you and you need surgery? Under the harsh flood lights and white coats and screams and they'll kill you this time. They'll hurt you. They will cut you open with a knife.

Sylus

You jolted awake shaking, you can't stop shaking. No one can save you this time. For all you know that kind-hearted boy who helped you is dead. For all you knew his body was stained as red as his eyes.

He answered "look who it is, I didn't think I'd be fortunate enough to get your call today kitten". You weren't sure when you had called Sylus but you already had. You didn't know what to say let alone why you called him. Could he even help? Suddenly you remembered the aether core. Maybe this fever was related to this. Maybe-

"kitten are you alright?" His voice sounded gruff but gave you so much comfort. But you wouldn't want to disturb him. He probably would hate you for it.

"I'm sorry i- I mistakenly called you" you managed to rasp out. Still shaking

"you don't sound well. Are you sick? Where are you?" He spoke cautiously. You weren't sure how he knew. Not sure that you cared because before you could answer a calm swept you into unconsciousness.

You woke up to someone opening your door. Shit shit shit shit shit shit . Someone was here. An intruder was here. You could barely get up and out of bed before stumbling onto the ground, your gun was nowhere to be seen. You kept trying to think where you kept it but you came up blank. You rummaged through your bedside table trying to find something to defend yourself with but your cold shaky hands weren't making it easier. The person outside had started to open your bedroom door when you found a blunt craft scissor which you held up towards whoever was inside. Your sight was blurry and your heart was beating in your ears like a war drum but you could recognize a tall figure approaching. You weren't going to let them take you back. you have to fight. You have to

"DONT COME ANY CLOSER! GET OUT IM NOT GOING BACK I WONT HESITATE TO KILL YOU DON'T YOU DARE TAKE ANOTHER STEP!" You screamed as loud as you possibly could. Tears ran down your face as you shook with what can be only described as pure terror. Scenes from the past kept flashing in your head. You could practically feel every damn cut they cut into you as a child.

You were sobbing and shaking curled up in a corner from fear and yet you kept the knife held up. It tore Sylus's heart apart to see you like this again. In the blink of an eye he was kneeling in front of you cowering form trying to reach out.

"Sweetie, Y/N please it's me. Calm down it's ok you are safe. Look at me. Shh look it's me Sylus. Its ok I won't take you anywhere, I won't hurt you." He held you in his arms even though you were wildly trying to stab him for a second. His normally smooth voice wavered and cracked.

"S-sylus? I- someone is in the house!" You deliriously mumbled from the high fever.

"kitten it was me. I came over because I was worried when you stopped talking over the phone. It seems like I was right to worry. You are burning up what happened?"

"I think I have a fever. It's ok though, I'll be ok" you said calming down. You leaned into his touch as he held you against his chest. His heartbeat was almost as rapid as yours.

"my love, I don't think you will be fine your fever feels well over 105. Why aren't you at a hospital? Why didn't you call anyone? Why didn't you call me sooner?"

"i didn't think you would come"

"all you need to do is say my name and I'll be there for you. Now come, let's get you to the clinic"

You shook your head trying to insist you were fine but the worry in his eyes only made you reconsider your choice

"Can you tell me why you don't want to go?" His eyes and his voice were lulling you to sleep again

"scared" your voice was barely a whisper. You could feel yourself slip into unconsciousness yet again.

When you came to you weren't in your house. Just before you could panic you felt sylus talk. His arms still around you like a shield from everything you were afraid of.

"it's ok you are with me. I'm here. I bought you to the N109 zone. You needed to see a doctor so I called one to my house. So no hospital, don't worry." Sylus explained without you even asking.

"thank you" you said quietly, feeling ashamed of the scene you caused earlier.

"For?" He asked with a brow quirked up.

"For not asking what all that was, and for bringing me here and also for taking care of me."

He laughed softly "You don't need to thank me for taking care of you. I always take care of what's mine." His eyes were ever so soft as he brushed away your hair from your face. "Now sleep. You are still sick"

"but I feel a bit bet-"

"Sleep kitten. I'll take care of everything else" he said softly kissing your forehead.

Zayne

You stared at your phone contemplating whether or not you should call Zayne. Though you were in a relationship you couldn't just disturb him. He was a busy guy. He had surgeries and more serious patients to take care of.

Your phone began ringing. Speak of the devil.

"Y/N? This is zayne. Are you alright? This is the second time you missed your appointment this week." His cool voice sounded across the phone.

"zayne, ah I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I just have a bit of a fever."

" A fever? That gives you more reasons to come over to the clinic does it not? Do not worry about the appointments. I'm coming to pick you up. Are you at your apartment?"

"Zayne its truly not necessary I don't want to burden yo-"

"Rubbish, I was already headed out. So do not worry about burdening me. Worry about taking care of yourself" he cut the call before you could try to persuade him that you were fine. You were just grateful that someone was there. Even though zayne had abandoned you before. He didn't care about you. It was his job as a doctor to care for his patients.

You didn't realise when you had slipped into the sweet embrace of unconsciousness.

But by the time you had woken up your skin felt like it was burning from the fever. This wasn't normal. Glancing over at the clock you saw it was around 1 am. Zayne wasn't here yet. Why did you expect he would be here? You knew not to trust in what people say so why was your eyes tearing up?

As your fever kept increasing it became harder and harder to move around, it was painful to even sit up. He had abandoned you again. Your ex was right. You were annoying and in the end everyone would leave you. Nobody could ever love you.

The memory of zayne flashed across your mind. He had promised to always look after you. To be there for you.

You gritted your teeth kept mumbling "it's ok. I'll be ok" to yourself like a mantra as you somehow got a coat on your back to head to the hospital. You weren't sure how you'd reach there but the first step was to get out. Every promise that has been made to me has been a lie why would this one not be?

Just as you were about to get out of your room, your door softly swung open, revealing Zayne with an apron and a tray of soup in his hands. He seemed taken abac. But perhaps not as much as you.

"And where are you going? You shouldn't be up with such a high fever." He said as he kept the soup on the table. His cold eyes were filled with worry. Even seeing him had you breaking down into tears.

He scrambled to hold you as you collapsed on the floor crying. "What happened, where does it hurt?" He hurriedly measured your pulse and fever trying to find any sort of answer from your incoherent sobbing.

"Wh-when, when did you get here" you managed to croak out once you had calmed down a bit

"I got here long ago but since you were sleeping I didn't want to wake you. I was in the kitchen making soup for the fever, knowing you, your stomach is empty." He said as he slowly settled you into your bed.

As he turned around to bring the soup he meticulously made for you, you grabbed the back of his finely pressed shirt, "don't leave. Please don't leave, please stay. Please. I would die if you left me." you kept begged in your fever induced delirium. It broke Zaynes once frozen heart to see such fear and pain in your eyes.

He slowly leaned over to kiss you on the forehead "I won't. I'm just getting your soup. You need to eat something if you want to get better. You can't have medicine on an empty stomach"

Throughout the rest of the night Zayne diligently fed you and took care of you. And when you found it hard to sleep he would cradle you in his arms and read out his medical papers to distract you from your thoughts.

"I'm here, I'm here sweetheart, it will be ok. I'm not going to leave even if the gods demand me to" he comforted you every time you jolted awake. He would be whispering words of comfort to you till you fell asleep again and continue telling you how much he would give up for you. This treatment would go on for days, till you recovered. And even though you didn't remember how you begged him to stay, he would reassure you that he'd be there for you whenever he could.

[literalite]

mistki's the land is inhospitable and so are we (2023)!! as edits featuring mine and some of my friends ocs 😁 had a lot of fun with this project... rough explainer of how/why each song corresponds to each character/s under the cut because i love symbolism and talking! sorry it is long

bug like an angel - sapphire

without spoiling too much of her story and arc... sapphire's life is not easy. she's hurt by people she cares for and who care for her, although inadvertently, and in turn hurts people who she cares for and who cared for her, also not by her own volition. it's kind of a terrible truth that you will harm and be harmed by the people you love, even when you and they truly don't want to. it's up to you how much you're willing to take and deal. you can't keep every promise you make and you can't right every wrong. but you have to keep trying anyway. that's sapphire's strength, and the core of her goodness and why i personally consider her one of my favourite ocs. i chose to depict bug like an angel in mitski's more positive interpretation here and in that light i think it works best for saph

buffalo replaced - heiya

well first and foremost the vibes of the song fits heiya perfectly fhgjk but also lyricism and tone... yep. quick breakdown of heiya's background since i doubt i'll ever be able to do it properly she's an interesting character for me because she like a lot of my other characters has lost. everything. she had a wife and a child and they were both killed and she had to leave her home again and again and unlike how some of my others would have taken this she has never flagged in her unwavering dedication to preserving hope. for herself for her people for the future etc etc. which is a very fucking difficult thing to do! the world changes faster than you can keep up with it sometimes but for heiya she will not let herself tire and be swept away in it all. people rely on her. she's a guiding star as much as she is a woman. she's a lover and a fighter and thats what buffalo replaced means to me! so

heaven - vinny and caleb

i feel like of all my oc couples so far they have like. the sweetest most kind of simply mutually trusting dare i say straight forward love. they just love each other so much and thats all. the world could end around them when theyre together and it'd be okay truly. also yeah vinny is ostensibly in heaven now bye angel i feel like this one was pretty self explanatory. me and who WHEN

i don't like my mind - sunny

he just like me fr (said in denji voice) anyways wow ha. unstoppable unending guilt due to past actions that haunt your every waking moment? throwing yourself into any and all distraction just to take your mind off it, filling your time with other shit so that past sin doesnt for once echo in your awful and hollow brain? this song is perfect for sunny honestly just that sentiment also the "please don't take this job from me".... sometimes the coping is worse. you can be proud of something because you can do it better than anyone else even if that thing is terrible

the deal - wolfgang munch by @gunthermunch

Wolfgang Amadeus Munch. umm this will make more sense later on but it still kind of makes sense now i think. he doesn't want to be himself he keeps . leaving and moving and running away from his own memories his own self in reaction to others. if he could pawn it all off he would. if he could be better in an instant without having to feel every agonising second of change he would! but thats not how the world works. or is it. read munch by gunthermunch thats an order

when memories snow - lilian

i feel the older you get the more your past kind of swells up and trails behind you... at least for lilian that is shes very linked to the different versions of the girl/young woman she used to be. for her its a double edged blade, a lot of her own strength is drawn from who she was and what happened to her throughout her life. they haunt her but she's haunting it back in her own way

my love mine all mine - saige, bellona, ari

stares you down okay so usage of this song very much almost verges into spoiler territory but uhm. uhm. starts twitching basically the whole dynamic here is . sometimes when you love you will sacrifice. and while that is usually a good thing sometimes it is not but sometimes it still is. sometimes you pay your dues for love and sometimes someone else has to pay for your love as well. and whether that is worth it to them remains to be seen. but it's all about love still. whether that's a worthy cause is up to you i suppose

the frost - yoshiki and hikaru from hikaru ga shida natsu

fun fact (or not so fun fact since i had it listed as such) this slot was originally meant to be taken up by a gojo/geto edit and while it still works for them frighteningly well i swerved to do another black and white haired doomed gay pairing gfhjkl; i really recommend yall to read hikaru ga shinda natsu/the summer that hikaru died because honestly it speaks for itself! it's SO good i love it so bad

star - ari and luca by @anjitrait

wow these two did not deserve the horrors the narrative (me) slammed down onto their heads. they're kind of the most married of all time to me but like of course under pressure even the strongest most loving of bonds will warp. they've been together for roughly a decade and a half now. they know and love each other as totally as you could possibly imagine. despite it all i am yours, no matter. are we picking up what i'm putting down chat

i'm your man - nayef and sióar by @lucidicer

after the album dropped like at least 3 people swung into my dms with a ?this you?? about this song which. i mean the fucking dogs that start barking halfway through the song. are you kidding me. but anyways sioyef and devotion. sioyef and putting yourself in your lover's hands and looking to them like they are a god. this is super self explanatory. you know

i love me after you - redacted and ophelia

HM.... all i'll say here is that sometimes the homoerotic tension filled high school friendship where both parties have something very wrong with them but in totally different directions can be. scarring. bad. sometimes love just isn't enough when you don't know what you're meant to do with it and when you've lived in survival mode all your life. but that once the dust clears you can scrape yourself off the ground get up keep going and that isn't gonna be the end for you there. or for love, even. sometimes shit just ain't meant to be and thats ok

[essektheylyss]

You know what I'm thinking about? That trip to Vergessen.

Not the memorable one. The super innocuous one, in which Ludinus and Trent insisted they'd just dug this weird rock out of the ground weeks ago, it's nothing to them, the Bright Queen can have it. The one where Eadwulf told Caleb he looked good despite having just crawled out of an eldritch horror's sludge and then showed off his super muscular, super tatted arms.

Let's return to Eadwulf's arms in a moment.

The scourgers were helping out with the Assembly's research portfolio, which at the time had included Ludinus's pet project of developing dunamantic super-serum. The scourgers had also previously been involved—in their off time, when they weren't doing their primary duties of torture and execution—with human experimentation of methods of augmenting a mage's personal reserves of magic.

Sound familiar?

(Really, Ludinus, are you too old to test your experiments on yourself?)

Back to Eadwulf's well-sculpted arms. By the time we meet him in 836 PD, whatever might've been done to them in 810 PD has been covered with those pointedly geometric tats. Somewhere around the same time span, an assassination attempt is made on the life of the Voice of the Tempest by assassins using what was likely a prototype of Otohan Thull's dunamantic contraption, which is a kind of harness that uses the distilled dunamis created by Yeza Brenatto from studying the stolen beacons. This attack of course left multiple Ashari dead and beyond the point of recovery, among them Derrig and Will.

Six years later, Otohan Thull of course would kill Fearne, Orym, and Laudna in battle using that contraption, and not long after would also use the same assassination tactic to draw out the Champion of the Raven Queen so Ludinus could press him into an orb.

Still with me?

In Molaesmyr, after the Solstice had been stuck in time, Team Wildemount find a number of interesting items in Gildhollow, Ludinus's forsaken bachelor pad. Notable among them is a chest harness designed to consume various natural sources of power in order to augment the wearer's arcane abilities.

I think it's incredibly likely that the human experimentation component of the scourger program, given its scope, was requested if not designed by Ludinus, in an effort to further his research in the realm of augmenting mortals' capacities for magic. (Mechanically, I imagine this equates to additional spell slots per day, or the capacity to singlehandedly pull off experimental spells beyond the scope of ninth level, i.e. Dunamantic Nap spell, but that's just speculation.)

Primarily my point here is to demonstrate that its entirely possible if not likely that even the minutiae of the Assembly's horrific program to create child soldiers may have been part of Ludinus's effort to release Predathos and kill the gods, in an effort to show how broadly this may touch even other previous campaigns.

Additionally my point is to say that if anyone has reason to lead the vanguard (pun intended) of righteous warfare against Ludinus Da'leth, it's a Liam O'Brien PC, and frankly, at this point, given all of this character reasoning to do so, I do not care which one.

[rilli-luci]

Belos wasn't a child when Caleb left

Okay great now that I have your attention, I will state that of course this is a big thing of speculation between most people in the TOH fandom because quite frankly we only got to see SOME of the portraits in Belos' mind during the episode of Hollow Mind. But since the portraits have been posted for some time now on Twitter, it's about time we look at the facts.

Starting with what we know is true, yes Caleb is Phillip's older brother. We all know this. It's just fact. However there is something that some people overlook and it's that Caleb is not that much older than Philip.

The reason we know this is because of this portrait here.

And this one here

The boys are not that far apart in age. So Caleb probably just took on the role of a parental figure because that is a very common thing to do between siblings with either no parents or abusive ones. The older siblings parentifies themselves to protect the younger sibling.

That being said they were young when they met Evelyn but Caleb didn't just leave immediately. The reason for that is cause when Caleb leaves, Philip looks like this.

Phillip now has a ponytail and a cowlick. He's at an age where he wants to emulate the person he looks up to most and that's Caleb. There are some who argue "Well Phillip could've been a teen" Well so was Caleb. They were both teens then.

In this picture, he still has the ponytail but he has extra stuff. The best bet is Phillip went back to their home to grab things he may have needed (note the lack of mask) but I don't think he stayed behind for years. That's too long to go without looking for his brother. He would want to find him immediately. So he grabbed his things then left. And the Boiling Isles is big. Walking on foot would take time. He's in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people and he doesn't trust anything there. So it takes him enough time to grow a short beard to find Caleb. Cause at the dame time, Caleb is going around with his new witch friend and learning about magic.

This same beard is just longer when Luz and Lilith met him. We don't know how long Caleb had been dead by that point but he was most certainly dead at that time. And Belos looks to be about maybe his early 30s by then. He doesn't too much older than when he killed Caleb. Because of this I believe Phillip Wittebane as at the very least a young adult when Caleb left. He doesn't need to be a child for that event to have deeply affect him. His only family left with who he was told was an enemy for a good chunk of his life. It's not just heart breaking but belief shattering for him.

I know with what Masha told the others during Thanks to Them it looks like there was a sizable age gap but keep in mind this is a story that has been told and retold and retold again and again for like 400 years. There will be exaggerations, there will be incorrect retellings that mix with the real ones. Its more dramatic if Belos was a child its more dramatic if a witch kidnapped the older brother and the younger went to save him but neither returned cause of the witch. They are telling a story that isn't theirs that they’ve been told before. Of course the details would change. And it's really our only evidence that Belos was left as a child if I recall correctly. But considering the fact the town has 2 statues of the brothers AS ADULTS.

There is no way Caleb left him while he was a child. Not really. The portraits and the statues suggest otherwise. There's no reason to make statues of the brothers without being the correct ages relative to each other when they're like with each other. This is the evidence I found and if anyone has anymore evidence to back it up, add onto the post I don't mind. But everything suggests that Belos was an adult when Caleb left and he followed shortly after to save him.

[for-those-who-wait]

Would love to see more of your android Hunter au! Love the idea it just won’t leave my head…

A question I would have for this is Hunter still like a replica of Caleb? Sorta like an Astro boy type thing going on here or what? If so what’s the story behind that if you are willing to share.

Never played become human, despite years of saying I will bc it looks made for me jksskkm, so sorry if I’m missing something there.

Yes I'm so glad!! I'm a very big fan of it and I am very tempted to write something for it (I too have been possessed)

The short answer is that Hunter was made in Caleb's image—as close as Philip could get! Very much an Astro boy situation where he's made as a sort of replacement that was programmed to experience, interpret, and interact with the world exactly as a human would.

As for the long answer and the story behind it, my thoughts are "take canon and replace witches with androids" and that's your initial argument between Philip and Caleb. I haven't thought about it too much but my initial idea is that before the revolution, they both lived in Detroit and worked with androids, and both worked at CyberLife (Caleb because he's naturally fascinated with them and Philip because he's just following in Caleb's footsteps [call it brotherly bonding or unhealthy obsession, take your pick!]), but it's Caleb that sees the early signs of deviancy and sees something more within androids that Philip just can't fathom (that being the capacity for free thought and will). Philip sees this as a betrayal—How dare you see humanity in these machines! How dare you try and extend the sanctity of the human soul to these inhuman bodies of plastic!—and like in canon, he kills Caleb for that betrayal.

Now this all happened in the late 2010s and early 2020s because for some reason, Detroit: Become Human is in a technologically advanced version of our world where CyberLife was founded and androids were first created in 2018 (the actual game and android revolution take place in 2038). I think it would be a few years until Philip does kill Caleb, let's say 2027 or so (because androids pass the Turing test in 2022 and 2027 is the year that a million androids have been sold, so the concept of deviancy was able to marinate a bit and I think that's enough time for the signs to start popping up and for Elijah Kamski, the CEO of CyberLife, to start being weird and existential about it).

So it's 2027, Caleb is dead, Philip is never considered a suspect, is never tried, and the murder is never solved. He is so incredibly not well (my man needs magical levels of therapy and his ass is not getting it). At this point, Philip has been working at CyberLife long enough to have a pretty high status. He totally has the authority and the power to request a custom android to be built off-the-books, probably because of threats or blackmail or whatever other abusive tactics he can pull as a superior to most employees at the company. Because it's freaking weird to make a child android in the image of your brother that was mysteriously murdered.

But Hunter is made like a regular factory-set android with no personality, no emotions, etc. but Philip of course knows exactly how to fix that (he's been working at CyberLife for nine years, he can do these things). It's his version of a sort of middle finger to Caleb, giving an android emotions and free will. Kind of like "Hey, you know how you thought androids were capable of having human emotional intelligence and conscious individual thought and a soul and humanity? Well actually I'm going to give these 'emotions' and this 'humanity' to your android and show you that they aren't real." And he does this by just being the absolute WORST android/child/whatever caretaker in the existence of the entire world in every single possible way because "See? Its blood is blue and it's not dying when I bloodlet it, it's clearly not human. Ah, see how it's become completely catatonic as a result of repeated trauma? Clearly this is just malfunctioning software. It's obviously just broken. See, Caleb? See how wrong you were about androids having humanity?" This man is evil and stupid

Hunter doesn't have Caleb's memories or anything, and let's call the tooth gap a manufacturing error from doing things under the table that Philip (who doesn't do chassis repairs) can't fix without CyberLife setting off alarm bells. It's probably in 2028 or 2029 that Philip packs up and moves to Gravesfield and that leads to the rest of what I talked about in my other post, where Hunter is completely isolated and kept ignorant of the ongoing revolution come 2038, and still doesn't obtain freedom until a long while after that

Thank you for the ask!! I will happily ramble about this AU whenever somebody asks about it. You should totally play the game if you can. I'll be the first to admit it's got issues as a civil rights allegory (thanks, director David Cage) but it is a fun time and such a cool concept and the characters are great and we love Detroit: Become Human in this house. Sorry if any of the terms weren't explained well, I will happily specify more so if anything is unclear, just let me know! Planning on making more content for it at some point :))

[thebest-medicine]

64 with ler Fjord & either Caleb or Molly? 🥺 dealers choice, but as soon as I saw that one I immediately thought of Fjord being a bully

Prompt 64 - “Relax, I’m not gonna kill ya, I’m just gonna make you wish you were dead.”

A/N: i love this for fjord. OMG. also, so… there’s this 6k ler!fjord lee!molly slightly fjolly decently mean interrogation fic im working on for tickletober and this line fit into it reaaaally well for a part where molly is in the stocks and… well… consider this my fic preview hehe (I’ll tag it here eventually when it’s posted in oct.)

,,,

“EheheHEHEHEHEEHEE- YOHOHOU’RE KILLIN’ MEEHEHEHEHE!” Molly whines through frantic laughter.

“Oh relax, don’t be so dramatic. I’m not gonna kill you.” Fjord speaks calmly, as though soothing a child. “I’m just gonna make you really, really wish you were dead.” His voice is sweet as the words drip out like honey, and Molly shivers from more than just the tickling sensations lighting up his soles.

“PFFFAHHAAHFUCK!” Molly cries — both in the sense of crying out aloud during his cackling, and in the other—more literal—sense, as tears bleed into the cloth tied over his eyes. He clasps and unclasps his fingers. He presses deeply into the seat and strains uselessly against the stocks — all for nothing. His laughter rings out boisterously as Fjord continues to scrub the brush up and down his foot, then switch to the other. Back and forth. Back and forth. Overwhelming, but never enough to get desensitized to in any one place.

“PLEHEEHHEEASE!” Molly shrieks.

“What happened to that attitude of yours?” Fjord snickers, looking up from his feet to take in Mollymauk’s squirming, desperate form.

“Don’t knohohohHOOW! I dohOHON’T know wHERE—” Molly babbles incoherently, still trying to bargain with his captor.

“You don’t know where your attitude went?” Fjord laughs, pulling the brush away from his soles for the first time in far, far too long.

Molly heaves in deep, shaky breaths. “I- heh- I… What?”

Fjord hums, sounding amused. They sit in the ‘silence’ of Molly deliriously catching his breath.

“Maybe I should believe you…” Fjord says after a little time passes and Molly sounds less frenetic.

Molly tries to give his best hopeful, honest smile. It’s hard without the eyes.

Molly picks up the sound of Fjord getting up from his seat, a little relief washes over him.

Then the brush is back, and Mollymauk is wailing out a surprised bark of laughter. “WAITHAHAHA— WAIT!”

“But, on the other hand..” Fjord sighs, bringing his other hand to tickle along the sole of Molly’s right foot as he brushes up and down his left. Mollymauk almost wishes for a gag with how loudly he shouts and shrieks through desperate laughter. The hand and brush switch. They switch back a little while later.

“Hmm.” Fjord says, stopping again after a few minutes. “What do you think?”

“I thihihink I am going to die here.” Molly whimpers, smiling defeatedly.

“Not if you tell me the truth.”

“I am telling yohohohou the truth.”

“Well, I have to make sure you’re not lying.” Fjord says, and then the terrible brushing starts up again.

“Whyhyhyhyhy would I still behehehe lying- hehee?! Plehehehehease!” Molly argues as much as he can get out as he’s laughing.

“You tell me.” Fjord replies, not letting up. “Maybe you’re just a masochist.”

Molly definitely does not hate being on the receiving end of an evening like this, it’s true. He would take a moment to consider that if he had a brain cell that could focus on anything other than the incessant scrubbing of the hairbrush along his soles. It scrapes across the balls, the arches, the heel, up and down, up and down, over and over. The slick oily liquid covering his feet lets it glide with almost no resistance. All tickles, no resistance — yeah, Molly is probably going to die here.

He’s wheezing by the time Fjord stops again. He hesitates, half-pleading through his laughter, wondering when it’s going to start up again.

It doesn’t… And Fjord doesn’t say anything.

It still doesn’t… And then, finally, Fjord’s pulling down the blindfold. “Hey, there.”

Molly’s eyes adjust weakly to the light, the blindfold is damp with his tears. He mutters some kind of reply before closing his eyes again. “Fjord…”

“Mollymauk.” Fjord says, leaving the blindfold down around his neck and standing back up.

…

[UPDATE: read the full thing here!]

[more sentence starter fic prompts]

[other sentence starter fics]

[read further CR drabbles on ao3]

[totaldrama-showdowns]

Unused Submissions for the Favorite Rivalry Showdown!

justin and trent

please im so tired of seeing fluffy ship art of them THEY DO NOT LIKE EACH OTHER

justin literally got him eliminated i cant imagine they had a good relationship after action

"one time justin threw a tambourine at me and that kinda hurt >:|"

THE GUITAR SNATCH AND GLARE IN CELEBRITY MANHUNT

you know they had the nastiest most jawdropping arguments in the recording room during drama brothers recording sessions

uhh yeah they hate each other they should get to fight to the death as a treat

Alejandro and duncan

they're perfect

Scax

is this a rivalry? idk

Dave vs Leonard

IT'S ME! I DON'T BELIEVE IN YOU! NOW PICK UP THE PIG!

Lindsay vs Courtney

it was brief but it was enjoyable

Izzy and Justin

They're sooo funny, especially cause they're exes

Julia vs Priya

I don’t actually think this is the best one I’m just putting it here because we need more reboot characters in this bracket

Whatever Lindsay and Beth had with Heather after Island

you go girls

Geoff and Trent

hockey bros vs birds

why do they get beat up by birds so frequently

Dawn and Scott

Ok sure they lasted for two scenes but THEY COULD'VE BEEN SUCH GOOD RIVALS MAN

Julia vs Every Other TD '23 Blonde

Nominating this because I think it's funny

Julia and Caleb

I don’t actually gaf about them but i like when julia hit him with a frying pan or something

the roti writers and gen 2 female characters

they did them so dirty :(

bowie vs straight people

he's seen enough

chris vs blaineley

divorced enemies sweep

lightning vs cameron

it was ooc but it kinda slayed

Chris and Sierra

The New York episode. Please Chris should've been a hater the whole season and Sierra wouldn't notice it would be funny. See my vision

Ezekiel Vs Death

I just know Death keeps snapping those bony fingers any time Ezekiel escapes death

Emma and Julia

white on white violence

Terry and Chref

We saw that tweet

Mal and Julia

Mal plays the game really well and Julia's getting insecure. But I have faith Julia will triumph

Marmaduke and Garfield

I love tti

Me vs Blaineley

We are currently fighting over who gets 2 date Kelly (I'm winning)

larry v chef

chef’s gotta defend his man what can I say

Everyone (- Priya) Vs Caleb

He literally has no friends.

priya's personality versus the writers

season 2. need I say more?

Heather Vs Blaineley

I cannot tell you how funny it is that Blaineley turned up to the TD jumbo jet and chose violence against a girl half her age

Ezekiel and Chris

demolish that monster zeke

Sky vs Dave

He tried to kill her I think this counts as a rivalry at least a little bit

Damien vs Millie

Yeah! The finish line!

Duncney

toxic yaoi

Noah anf Harold

autism on autism violence and we love that

do alejandro and noah count,,, if not im voting leshawna and heather

brainrot says so

jasmine and shawn

just being a hater here, they were much more tolerable (but still crappy) when she hated him over them being a couple

dramarama ella and dramarama max

why couldnt this be their dynamic in the canon show

Damien & Julia

WE WERE ROBBED OF THEM!!!!

MK vs the bear

They literally fought in a duel together

Geoff/Bridgette and blaineley

Ma'am that's a child. Leave him by

Mal Vs Duncan

They suck I hope they get in so they're elimination fodder so someone else can go forward easily.

alejandro puppet and heather

1984

Wayne and me

I hate you little white boy! Get a job

[critter-genfic-events]

Genfic Horror Recs

Spooky season, be upon us! Here are nine horror recs - from haunted houses, possessions, werewolves, and lots of body horror. Check them out under the cut, mind the tags, and of course - comment and kudos if you like them!

SOJOURN (the house that caleb built) by Mikkeneko (63860,Teen) Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, body horror, vomiting, drowning, burning, institutional violence Pairings:

When the Mighty Nein find themselves stranded in the middle of a journey, Caleb tries out a new spell for his friends – Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion. Then Caduceus wakes up in the middle of the night with to find the mansion hideously changed and Caleb… gone.

Reccer says: Written long before Caleb made the tower, this imagines the mansion as a haunted house created by Caleb's trauma and is fascinating

Let me in by Fruitbird15 (2636,Teen) Warnings: child death Pairings:

The Forest is not the only thing the blight stole from the Clay's

Reccer says: The idea of there being a dead Clay sibling that is infected with the savalirwood's rot and the Clays just dealing with it is just.. chef's kiss and terrifying

trapped in the walls of my skin by grayintogreen (3538,Teen) Warnings: None Pairings:

Lucien's return to life rapidly becomes a horror story.

Reccer says: This fic takes a brutal look at the absolute body horror that returning to life and realizing that someone else has been using your body while you were out of it would be.

Dead is the new alive by PryingBlackbird (50511,Explicit) Warnings: Graphic Violence/Torture Pairings: Vax & The Briarwoods, Background Vox Machina Ships (not focused)

When Vax sneaks into the Briarwoods room at the banquet, they kidnap him and take him to Whitestone

Reccer says: All the angst It's unfinished, but I have it on authority that the author is going to continue it soon.

Autotomous, We by InsanitySilver (53978,Teen) Warnings: None Pairings:

Kingsley seeks to disentangle himself from the Chained Oblivion by involving himself in a ritual that will take him through the deepest recesses of his mind alongside all the people he used to be.

Reccer says: This is an absolutely beautiful story that is both character exploration, tragedy, and horror story that still culminates into a bittersweet (but mostly sweet) ending. One of my favorite CR fics to date.

Itch by pigflight (1487,Teen) Warnings: None Pairings:

The first time Deliliah showed up in Laudna's head

Reccer says: I love the way that Pigflight writes Delilah and Laudna's relationship, and this is certainly horrifying!

I won't be your casualty by PryingBlackbird (1686,Teen) Warnings: None Pairings: Laudna & Delilah Briarwood

Laudna wakes up on a tree, and slowly reclaims her life.

Reccer says: There's not enough fics about what happened to Laudna the night she died, and what followed. This is a good one.

It'll Be Over Soon by NKMLN (27898,Mature) Warnings: vomiting, character death, amnesia, body dysphoria, self harm Pairings: Fjord/Jester Lavorre

When a trip to check on Bwualli goes wrong, Kingsley finds himself marooned in the Shattered Teeth, far from the reach of the gods. World history ensues.

Reccer says: Extremely good exploration of the purple tiefling. Amazing

Bitten by sparklegem (7429,Teen) Warnings: body horror, graphic depictions of violence Pairings:

A rough-and-tumble gang capture Percy and Vex and exact their vengeance on Vex for past deeds. Rather than kill her themselves, they infect Percy with lycanthropy and trap her with the ticking timebomb that is a newly turned werewolf.

Reccer says: I liked it

This is one of our weekly communally-generated gen rec lists. Every week we announce a new theme and allow anyone to submit a fic recommendation. Please note that the summary and content notes are provided by the reccer, and may be different than what the author has provided. Please assume good intentions all around. <3

And hey, anyone includes you!

October 1st, it'll be time for Taryon Darrington - followed by Alternate Meetings, Beau, and then One shots!

Any fics coming to mind? Well, then use this form to submit!

If you're looking for some more, check out some fics written in the critter genfic bingo tag, or the older rec lists! Or you can request your own card and join in on the fun!

[drabbles-of-writing]

“If Belos knew the Clawthorne’s were still alive, why didn’t he kill them?”

Simple: his brother is dead.

He still owns the knife that killed him. He could use any other knife, one that doesn’t twist his chest every time he sees it. But it’s the knife that killed Caleb. It was the closest to his lungs as he took his last breath. It carries the dried blood of his heart. In a way, it holds Caleb’s life, and with that knife, he will always hold that life. He can’t be rid of the knife. He would be ridding himself of that life all over again.

His brother is dead. He needs his brother back, so he remakes him. He builds him back from his own corpse and suddenly, he’s not dead anymore. But, he’s not alive, either. This is not Caleb. This is a puppet that wears a makeshift mask of his face. He does not love it. And so, he must kill it. But he keeps making them, over and over. Caleb is not alive, but he is not fully dead, either, and that’s the closest he’ll ever get to having him back.

His brother is dead. His survivor is a demon spawn that carves just as masterfully as him. Their very existence is a reminder of what was taken from him. Their very existence is a reminder of Caleb. There is nothing that truly survived of Caleb except for that child, and that child’s children, and so forth. The demon realm has only one memory left of Caleb, and it is what forced Belos to kill him. The human realm will have Caleb, it must, it will have houses and people and that tree they carved masks out of. But here, there is only one memory. A memory he will not need when the world comes to its end, but that will not be for a long, long time.

His brother is alive. He is living wrong, in stained metal and fake masks and tainted blood, but he is alive. Once he’s home, then he will be living how he should. He cannot kill his brother until he knows he’ll come back. He almost made that mistake once, he will not risk it again.

[astriiformes]

Throwing meta thoughts at the wall here because I was musing on the fact that a lot of my favorite stories these days (TOH, Pentiment, the Locked Tomb series) are all at least a little bit about grief. But one interesting thing The Owl House specifically did with Luz and Belos was make both their stories about grief and mourning, but in the opposite directions.

I love stories where the protagonist and the antagonist are both grappling with the same question or difficult experience but differ drastically from each other in their answers to it. And in both Luz and Philip's/Belos' cases, that experience is the loss of a family member, and their relationship to the Boiling Isles is defined by that grief.

Belos sees the Boiling Isles as a corrupting force that needs to be eliminated because in his eyes, they're the thing that lead his brother astray. He probably would have had a problem with them regardless, since his fervently held religious beliefs are the other source of his antagonism towards witches -- and of course, the real source of the rift between him and Caleb. But they clearly became a scapegoat for his brother's running away and abandoning their world, as well as the reason he decided the Isles had to be destroyed at any cost.

And he never processes that grief. He creates the grimwalkers instead, killing them when they echo that original loss and trapping himself in a cycle where he never actually mourns, just tells himself he'll get it right the next time and finally have his brother back -- all the while projecting that same loss onto the Boiling Isles and letting it fester into an even worse bitterness towards everyone there in his attempts at genocide.

Luz, meanwhile, associates the Boiling Isles with her dad, who encouraged her interest in fantasy and even left her the Azura books, which were one of the primary reasons she decided to stay and learn how to be a witch. To her the Isles represent someone she loved, and now almost has a piece of back. Her wonder at everything there -- and her finding belonging and other people who love her, which she was clearly longing for after her dad's death -- is in part a wonder at rediscovering a happiness that had shattered when Manny died. Of course she ends up wanting to do anything to protect them.

We even see Luz try to suppress her own grief, which is probably part of why she worries she's too much like Belos -- she can see echoes of her own fears in his, even if they both have different relationships with them. But ultimately his story is one about going insane and destroying himself with unprocessed grief -- and an unwillingness to admit his own part in his pain -- whereas hers is about coming to terms with it, as well as with the guilt that comes from not always being able to protect the people you love from harm. It's one reason her conversation with the Titan is so lovely, because it's her simultaneously talking to a dad who never got to have a relationship with his own child and her talking to the Isles that gave her back some of the same joy as her own dad, as well as the courage to remember him the way he would have wanted.

And of course, both their mourning narratives are accentuated by the Collector, who has no real concept of grief and ends up learning about loss as a result of Belos' attempt to destroy the Boiling Isles clashing with Luz's attempts to save it. His confusion about death ties both their narratives together at the end, which works perfectly for an antagonist-turned-protagonist -- something that's really driven home by Luz and Philip's first "chronological" interaction occurring in large part because Luz offered to help him find the Collector in the first place.

I just!!!! It's about loss it's about grief it's about spying someone in the mirror that's almost-you-but-not-quite it's about learning to tell the difference and to be better than them even if you still understand something of the shape of what made them the way they are, about how misery is easy and hope is hard, especially when the world has taken something load-bearing away from you, but one is poison and the other is ultimately healing.

It's about grief and about how it can be the end of you or the beginning of a whole new story.

[eljeebee]

The woman dashed to them, and as she neared them, she pushed Percival away from the Overlord's hand. He almost flew with the push, but he landed on the ground with a grunt, ungracefully.

Straud never moved, his hand still raised. He sighed as he dropped it. Right in front of him was the woman.

"Valentina Asvang," Straud said. "You're awake."

Valentina ignored him. "I will not let you kill him. He is of Asvang descent, and I will not let you kill him for he is my family. An oath with a little spellcaster isn't enough for me to stop you!"

His brows slightly raised. "I know."

Valentina was taken aback. "So you know."

He nodded. "And so it seems like you know about my spellcaster friend."

She scoffed. "I noticed your energy signatures around her."

"Only a vampire as strong as I, as strong as the noble families, will notice that, child," he said, solemnly. "For thousands of years, you only show that now?"

Confused, she asked, "What ever do you mean, Overlord?"

He chuckled lightly. "Look at your hand, Valentina. You have earned the Mark of the Beaus."

Valentina softly gasped.

"Thana would be proud of you, child."

She can't help but scoff. She looked at her mark with contempt. Why now, she thought. Why hasn't it showed up before? Before, when she was the Beaus' servants? Before, where she stomached all of Lady Beau's games? Why now? She could've had this before, and she could've prove the others that she's powerful. That her clan is worth something.

"Do not worry yourself anymore, child," Straud said. "I hope this will make you stand up for yourself from Lana."

"I am standing up from her," Valentina defended.

"You are, but you can't help but continue following her whims," he said, shaking his head. "Why don't you start now, Valentina? Tell me, how did you know we were here?"

She thought for a moment.

"I will not kill you, child. I am exhausted from killing."

She laughed dryly. "I asked this spellcaster friend of yours. She bypassed the oath by...I don't know, but I heard whispers. The whispers probably protected her from the oath. Anyway, she told me the visions. Young vampires, an old man, and a newborn."

"Whispers, huh?" He looked away. He saw Percival laying down from where he landed. He saw Lilith still resting, and Caleb and Helen sitting side by side, watching them. He nodded at them.

"Are they the young vampires and the newborn?"

"The blonde one is the newborn, yes," he nodded. "Is that all she said?"

Valentina nodded. Then, Percival stirred awake. He suddenly got up on his feet, and when he saw Helen, he growled. He was about run to her, pouncing, and Valentina was about to grab him, but Straud held her back. With his other hand, he casted a charm on Percival.

Percival's knees buckled. Groaning, "Nnnghhh, no more talking. No more whispers. No more. I don't want this anymore. No more."

Caleb and Helen sat there dumbfounded.

"I assume you know that he was involved in the slaughter of two prominent families," he looked back at Valentina.

She nodded. He continued, "And I assume you know that the group who killed them was your brother's descendants."

"Yes."

"He was contracted to kill the newborn's family," he glanced at Helen. "I helped her escape, along with her niece. Sadly, my children and I had to terminate your other descendants."

"Yes, sadly," Valentina echoed.

"However, this...," he took a deep breathe. "Percival evaded us. He had grown strong, proving that greatness in your clan is true. You are not just an "isolated case", your blood had truly evolved."

Percival groaned again, shaking his head. He blinked, looking at his hands. "It's...it's quiet..."

All eyes were on him. Percival had glanced at Helen, and he feared that the cloud would be back again. His face contorted in confusion, when his head remained clear and silent.

"What...what did you do to me?"

"A charm to calm you down," Straud stated.

"Shit," he breathed. "Thanks. I...You've made my mind calm. I don't even go mad whenever I see that woman."

He pointed at Helen. Helen glared at him.

"What do you mean?" Valentina asked.

"It probably has to do with the contract," he replied. His shoulders sagged. "We were contracted to kill that woman's family. So, we did. But then the family that paid us to do it got angry when we couldn't present any proof that everyone was killed, even the baby. My sisters decided not to kill that woman and the baby, you see. They pitied them. Personally, we should have," He continued.

"Anyways, they belittled my sisters, they hurt them, so I killed them too. I don't know what came over me, I woke up with my sisters telling me to flee. Then I heard whispers, telling me to finish the job. The contract. Turns out that contract wasn't just measly paper. It was magical too. My sisters and I suffered with this...condition. But then you had to kill them. And I felt angry, and the whispers became louder. I figured this would stop if I finish the job. And then the rest is history."

Straud whispered another charm. "There. This shall last you for at least a year. We shall solve that "contract" of yours soon. For the meantime, Valentina, what do you need him for?"

Valentina raised a brow. "What? I said he's family."

"There is more to it, is it not?"

She sighed. "Lady Beau. She wants to use Percival to wake her older sister."

"So she's awake, too," Straud shook his head. "And why wake her sister?"

"She plans to rebuild the House with her sister. I cannot let her do that. I've suffered enough, I do not want another Asvang to suffer, much more die from her."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Percival groaned, falling back to lay down. "I wish the old man killed me instead."

"What else is there to rebuild? Our age is done."

Valentina grimly nodded.

"Bring me to her," Straud said. "I will wake up her sister myself."

previous | next

[aroacemisha]

Listen I'm trying to be supportive of RL Belos here, but if I was Evelyn and he tried to kill me I wouldn't be ten feet near that guy and I sure as hell wouldn't allow my children near him even if he was my BIL.

Did he try to kill her while she was pregnant? Did Caleb have to stop him? Did he ever apologise/make up for it? Because even though he's better in this au he still majorly annoys me like he does in canon and I cannot find it within myself to pity him much at all.

(Was gonna say this at the end, but I think it's kinda silly to follow an AU where a character you find annoying is one of the main characters and is thus heavily focused on. It's also a little rude to come and tell someone how much you dislike a character they really enjoy, it's better to keep that on your own blog. But I digress)

Anyways, I'd like to clarify some things here/give a more detailed timeline of the dynamic.

Evelyn has met Philip before. During her initial visits to the Human Realm, she (~18 years old) pretended to be human, and she befriended Caleb (17-18 years old) - and she was on friendly terms with Philip (13-14 years old) as well, although they weren't close. The relationship went on that way for a couple years, and over that time she started to visit more frequently (originally she started at once every few weeks).

When she finally revealed she was a witch, it was only to Caleb, and both were unaware that Philip was spying on them. Upon seeing her perform real magic, Philip didn't hate her at first, he was just scared. He didn't report either of them, and didn't tell either of them that he knew Evelyn's secret, but was becoming worried that she was dangerous to Caleb.

At one point Evelyn (~22) and Caleb (21-22) were found out and Caleb was about to go on trial, but Evelyn rescued him and they ran away to the Demon Realm. Philip (~18) later followed and found them a few months later, being convinced during his search that Caleb is in danger.

He tried to attack Evelyn in that initial encounter, and she was startled for a bit, before realizing that she can handle him if she just uses magic, since he's human and doesn't have magic of his own. That was also the only time he tried to attack her in that way.

After being calmed down by Caleb and, after a very long conversation, begrudgingly agreeing to give the Demon Realm a chance (for Caleb's sake), Philip remained hostile to Evelyn for a while, but that hostility was mostly bratty child behavior, feral cat behavior (growling, etc) and passive-aggressive prayers. She found some of it funny and once wondered if her beast keeping magic would work on him.

He'd get into some arguments with her, but wouldn't try to physically fight her, in part because he knew she'd just trap him in abomination slime, vines and/or stone if he tried. Caleb's presence was an additional mitigating/soothing factor.

She also figured that if Caleb could change his beliefs after coming from the same place, Philip likely could too, and if he isn't trying to murder or attack anyone, why not give him a chance.

She knew he was only hostile due to being indoctrinated as a child to believe that witches were evil, and only attacked her due to being convinced she was a danger to Caleb, so if that belief was to be dismantled, he would probably become friendly. And it did happen, and he gradually came to accept witchkind as a whole. Realizing his own queerness also contributed to his old beliefs falling apart.

The birth of Caleb and Evelyn's child also helped soften him. By the time the child started to say their first words and learned to call him uncle, it was really pulling on his heartstrings. At that point he was already on generally friendly terms with Evelyn and was allowed to hold the kid sometimes. He was already showing hints of his protective parental traits back then with how he treated the kid, although he would only become a parent himself many decades later.

And yeah, Philip apologized for everything at multiple points during his deradicalization. As for what he did to make up for it, given Evelyn's playful personality, she probably asked him to do something silly to entertain her as an apology. He'd also help her and Caleb fix stuff that broke in their house, and he was showing early signs of his interest in engineering, as he really liked fixing mechanical things.

They ultimately ended up becoming besties, and their personalities meshed well. They only drifted apart and eventually lost touch after Caleb's death, mainly through Philip drifting away, since he blamed himself for the accident in the mines and was particularly ashamed to be around the child.

Also the reason he continued trying to build the portal door even after he accepted the Isles wasn't because he wanted to go back (he felt safer and more accepted among witches), but because he wanted to spread the truth to other humans, and hoped he could change their minds too and end witch hunting, so no witch or human is harmed by them again (this later fed into his developing belief that the realms should be united). So he wanted to fix the systemic problem as well, although his expectations for how it would go and whether it would even work were too idealized.

[dent-de-leon]

@garnetgh0st Oh yes, definitely! They're facing the same trauma from polar opposite ends, but I think it's just tragic that they ultimately still feel the same--in the end, they both just want to bring their families back.

For Caleb, family is...everything. He tries so hard to protect the Nein and keep them all together because the family he had before is already gone. Because he can't bear to lose anyone else. And it pains him when someone is fortunate enough to still have a loving family, yet pushes them away."Young man, you do not take your mother's love for granted." He'd give anything to get that back.

And yet, even though Caleb believes so firmly in family and prioritizes his at every chance--he knows not everyone was raises by parents like his. He was there when Beau faced her father, when she was finally given a bit of the justice she deserved after years. More than that, Caleb knows what it's like to be a child that was taken advantage of; someone abused and tormented by his own mentor, betrayed and used, turned into weapon. He's still haunted by all the people he was coerced into torturing and killing under Trent's influence.

And Lucien was much the same. The only difference is, his parents weren't victims--they were complicit in all of it. His father giving him lists of names, targets to lure to a witch in the woods. Forcing his child to pay the price for his devil's bargain, staining his hands with the blood of countless victims.

And all the while, Lucien loathed and regretted every moment of it, always looking for an escape, a way out of this hell. Before he became another empty husk, the witch's next puppet:

"'We did owe her. Mum and Da did, I mean, but I was the one who paid that blood price.' I'm not surprised you remember the way. His stomach lurched. 'I'd…lure folk out to her cottage. Da would hand me a little paper slip, and whoever it said, I'd convince them to come along, get them near her cottage, and she would charm them. You saw what happens after that.'"

"'We were punished for seeing what they couldn't. After a while I couldn't let it go on, couldn't look at myself or live with myself, so I burned down the caravan with all three of them inside, took my sister, and that was that...No more little songs. No more farces.'"

And when Lucien is finally free of the witch who tormented him for so long? He just...doesn't know what to do. He's still shaken by the trauma of all the deaths he'd seen, all the faces that still haunt him. He doesn't believe she could just be dead, that he could ever really be free of this nightmare so easily. For a moment, was he gutted by the realization that she was gone so easily, and yet Lucien had already lost all his family? That she'd taken so much from him he'd never get back, and any taste of revenge left him terribly empty?

I think it's likely Caleb might have felt a bit similar, when he finally escaped Trent for good, and yet was still coping with his trauma in the aftermath. Grappling with everything he'd lost to get here, and trying so hard to believe that perhaps he and his loved ones would finally be free of this monster.

As for Lucien's parents--"After a while I couldn't let it go on, couldn't look at myself or live with myself"--when Lucien finally decides to end it all, his breaking point sounds a lot like Caleb's own breakdown when he realizes his parents are gone. "But it didn't exactly go according to plan, because as soon as I heard my mother and father screaming inside...I was so sure. I was so sure. Until I wasn't, and...I broke a bit..."

I don't think Caleb would be a stranger to Lucien's immense self-loathing and guilt, even though they both lost their families for very different reasons. I feel like Caleb would probably pity him; Lucien never even got the chance to have a happy family, to experience the childhood and memories that Caleb so treasured and lost. All Lucien has is empty promises from higher powers he can scarcely understand, otherworldly beings who are still just using him; the hollow comfort of a dream, a fantasy. And I think it's his desperation to bring them back, even if it means tearing reality apart at the seams, that Caleb would find so painfully familiar:

Lucien going all the way to Cognouza because he thinks it could give him the fantasy of a loving, happy family. Caleb following Lucien to Aeor and stumbling upon the one thing that could bring his parents back--they both find what they've always wanted, are both tempted by it more than anything. And when Lucien has that chance, he seizes it immediately--even as he destroys himself, spiraling beyond all recognition.

He's exactly what Caleb would've become if he never had the Mighty Nein, never had the chance to escape and heal. "Anybody can make lights. Anybody can send a message through a wire. I want to bend reality to my will." They're both so desperate for the same thing, the same impossible dream--willing to do anything to make it a reality. I think they'd understand each other on a level perhaps no one else in the Nein could; they both started the fire, but then they spent years still consumed by those flames.

I think Lucien and Caleb mirror each other in a lot of ways. And it makes me happy that, through Molly, they were able to help each other heal in some way. And I really love how Molly/King gets to have the family now that Lucien always wanted--Caleb telling Kingsley to stick with them, admitting that he Nein have a fondness for "strays." I like to think he and King are still close, and maybe one day, Caleb will be there to help Kingsley reach out to the last of his family in Rexxentrum--

[salmonoah]

Oh my god, okay, im watching the new season of total drama and. Wow.

Spoilers below, here are my thoughts on the first episode! They were literally written as i was watching the episode

-i didnt think i would hate Chris’ voice as much as i do, but wow, it uh. It isnt good

-WHO CHANGED THE INTRO SONG??????? I JUST WANT TO TALK.

-the animation has noticably improved, which isnt very surprising given how much time has passed since the last season

-chris and chef just gave eachother the gayest look on planet earth.. ok guys…

-they brought back the classic 1 by 1 intro scenes like they did on the original TDI, which is actually pretty awesome

-theyre really trying to sell the whole “gen z” thing

-ok, axel. Love her voice, and i actually kind of love her whole survivalist thing, even if its a bit of a rip off of whats his name (forgive me for not remembering his name rn,,,)

-i love zees voice. He is so high right now

-i also love rippers voice. This episode so far still has not taken the nowen child idea out of my head (or at least Owens sibling, maybe??)

-love damien. No other notes

-“lauren”. Ok. Slay i guess. “You should stop looking at me :)” i love her actually

-BOWIE…… DUDE I LOVE HIM, THESE CHARACTERS ARE ACTUALLY GREAT. Those heart glasses are sooo real

-emma is ready to kill

-oooouu ok mk. Ready to commit crime

-caleb is just another pretty boy but i guess we have to have an obligatory one every generation

-WAYNE AND RAJ WAYNE AND RAJ I LOVE THEM. God they’re so Canadian

-why have i met 17 people like Julia

-“can i switch to the team that has death in the name :)”

-“do you scream in your sleep? :)”

-alpha male ripper

-OHHH MY GOD YES EMMA BOWIE FRIENDSHIP

-heheehg. He said “boobie”

-damn these challenges are complicated as hell 😭

-“i dont speak nerd 😡”

-LMAOOO BOWIES HEART GLASSES SHATTERING 😭😭😭

-“straight couples are messed. Up. 😧”

-the pacing is strangely rushed, even for total drama. Is it just me??

-DAMNNN Caleb eliminated first episode?? I wasn’t expecting that actually

-OH MY GOD BOWIE. GIRLBOSS

[the-owl-house-takes]

As a Collector fan I've seen this a couple times and it always drives me insane. But like, in AUs where they make Phillip not a bad guy (rolling my eyes so hard they get launched out of my fucking skull) they tend to make The Collector the bad guy? What. Dude. You were so preoccupied with making a genocidal asshole a nice parent to Hunter that you didn't stop to consider the first child Belos ever interacts with for an extended period is The Collector.

So there's a few possibilities here:

You didn't really think beyond Belos being a nice person to hunter when you concocted this AU, so you decided to villainize the child he canonically abused for a minimum 300 years

Belos is still a bad parent because it would be his fault if the Collector became more actively malicious to the point of taking the place as the primary antagonist since he was the only person who had access to them for THREE HUNDRED YEARS

It makes me so mad that even though I hate Belos I've been tempted to write a story in the "nicer" Phillip AU where he's still mostly a dick but being around the Collector makes him a better person and instead of wanting to kill all witches he genuinely just wants to go home. But after he meets the Collector he is like "I can't just leave this child trapped like this" so he instead dedicates 300 years to trying to free them (he would still do fucked up stuff in the pursuit of this tho). Also, Hunter still exists, but instead of being a grimwalker, he can be another descendant of Evelyn and Caleb from a different family line because Phil didn't kill his brother in this timeline. Like you'd have to SUPER change his character, but my POINT IS

Making the Collector the Evil Big Bad Villain in a "nice" Phillip AU is both a bad look because you're making his victim into the villain and it undermines the premise of him being a good parent because if he had a parental role to any child first it WAS The Collector

-

[comet-soda-lite]

Everything (that I could think of) left unanswered after the TOH finale!

Please feel free to add onto this! I’m sure I’ve missed a ton of stuff!

Regarding the Owl House, Eda, and the Owl Beast:

What are the origins of the Owl House (did Eda build it or did it exist before her)?

What’s the history of Hooty? Was he always a part of the the Owl House or did he move in at some point? Why was a mini-Hooty in the Titan's eye socket??

What's the history of the Portal Door & Key? Who originally made them and how? Who's hands has it passed through over the years?

How did the Portal Door end up buried where Eda found it?

What is the Owl Beast and what's their story? Where are they from, are there more of them, and exactly how powerful are they?

How did the Archivist who trapped the Owl Beast lose the scroll they sealed the beast in?

Does the Owl Beast's consciousness also exist within Lilith now? How??

Regarding the Titans and Collectors:

What was the Demon Realm like during the era of the Titans?

What are the Archivists up to nowadays? What are the specifics of the Archivists' overall mission (like, do they want one of every living being or do they try to freeze whole societies in stasis or what?)? Are they a looming threat for the future?

What are "the stars" like?

Why did the Archivists leave the Demon Realm when there was still one Titan left to kill? Did they even know about King? The Titan Trappers who worshipped the Archivists knew the Boiling Isles Titan had a child, so you would expect the Archivists to know about it too, right?

Were the Archivists even the ones to eventually kill the Boiling Isles Titan? If not, how did the Titan die? What's the exact timeline of events here?

What exactly is the Tower Glyph (the one that King carved on his collar) and where does its magic come from?

Can people use glyphs to perform Collector magic like they can with Titan magic? (I personally think that the Draining Spell was Collector magic, since it was taught to Belos by the Collector, it used unique glyph patterns that don’t match the Titan glyphs, and it also relied on a celestial event—the eclipse—to function!)

Regarding Palisman:

Who did the Bat Queen belong to?

What are the individual backstories of Ghost, Clover, and Emmiline Bailey Marcostimo?

How did Lilith get to keep her palisman when joining the Emperor's Coven and what is their relationship like?

Regarding Evelyn, Caleb, & Phillip, and Gravesfield:

What are the nitty gritty details of the Wittebanes & Evelyn's story?

Is Evelyn a Clawthorne? (We all know the answer is yes, but it's still technically not been explicitly confirmed).

What are the details of Flapjack’s origin? Whose Palisman was he exactly? (My personal guess is that Evelyn carved him for Caleb).

How did Evelyn originally travel back and forth from the Human & Demon Realm? Was it the Portal Door (most likely imo), raw Titan’s Blood, or some other means?

What's the history of the shack in the woods? Does it have any direct relationship to the Owl House? Who used to live there? The Wittebanes? Evelyn?

Who stashed the Titan's Blood in the graveyard?

Regarding Emperor Belos (more like Emperor Boo-los, amiright?):

What is "Artificial Magic" really?

What age was Hunter born at? What does he actually remember from his past?

What’s the story of the previous Golden Guard? How did he die? How much did he figure out about Belos? How much did he tell Darius? How did Darius initially react to Hunter showing up after the previous GG died, looking so similar to his predecessor?

What exactly is Belos' curse?

Was it a consequence of him trying to give himself the ability to use magic by consuming Palisman? Or by drawing glyphs directly on his skin? A combination of the two?

Or was the curse inflicted by some other means entirely, and the Palisman-eating and body glyphs actually came afterwards, solely as a means to stave the curse off? If so, who cursed him? Did he inflict the curse upon himself to give himself power?

Considering all the parallels drawn between the two, does his curse have any actual relationship to or similarities with Eda's curse, or is it just an entirely different thing altogether?

Basically my point is that Belos' curse and his magic (and their exact rules and properties) are super ambiguous and unexplored and I want more clear answers!