#c: Dark Shadow

[fireflyflits]

I'm going through some photo albums and found various sketches and doodles I've never publicly posted (I don't think i did anyway)

These are from 2018-2021

[nagichi-boop]

I know that this scene is about Shadow grappling with the fact he has alien DNA, but I feel like his thoughts in this scene are relatable to people with conditions like autism, BPD and NPD (not an exhaustive list) who struggle with feeling and being treated like an outcast or monster at times. For some, it’s because we struggle to operate in a world not designed for us. For others, it’s fighting against all the negative perceptions society has of us.

Shadow sees himself as a monster. But Maria assures him that just because he expresses himself differently, that doesn’t make him evil. I feel like especially for people who struggle with empathy, this really hits home. People often assume that people who struggle with empathy, whether cognitive or emotional, are heartless. And for those with personality disorders, they’re often treated as if they are abusive or manipulative just because of the disorder they have, even though people with said disorders are victims of trauma and abuse themselves.

I hope you all have a Maria in your lives. And if not, please remember that it’s your actions that define you, not your neurotype or disorder. If you struggle with socialising, or emotional regulation, or empathy, you’re not a monster. You’re strong for living in a world that so often seems to outcast and insult you. You’re strong for choosing to be as kind as you can be, even though so many people refuse to show that common courtesy in return. Even when you can’t be strong, you are not a monster.

Please be kind to yourselves. You deserve it.

[terapsina]

Let's talk books. Sorted in threes by vibes.

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I Support Women's Wrongs (murder, slaughter and body horror galore).

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How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying ⭐⭐⭐⭐½ by Django Wexler - A woman from Earth is dropped into a magical realm, meant to save the Kingdom from the FoRCes of DaRKneSSss... except, unfortunately that might have been a thousand years worth of time loops ago, so it's rather time to lose one's temper and decide to become the Dark Lord herself.

Main character -> basically Deadpool (measured in sanity, humor and levels of bisexual horniness)).

Someone You Can Build a Nest In ⭐⭐⭐⭐ by John Wiswell - Shesheshen, a shapechanging monster who's rudely interrupted during her hibernation by hunters. Manages to to eat one of them, unfortunately she also gets shot by an arrow and falls off a cliff. On the bright side she meets a lovely human woman she might end up falling in love with so much... she'll want to build a nest in her (it's possible there's some Cultural Differences that need to be worked through).

Hench ⭐⭐⭐⭐ by Natalie Zina Walschots - Anna's latest temp job for a villain (because even supervillains need office help) ends with her carelessly injured by a superhero, laid off and with injured mobility for the foreseeable future (because human bodies don't see much difference between getting hit by a truck and getting moved out of way by someone able to pick up a truck). Angry, disillusioned, and looking for some vengeful payback she starts compiling the statistics of exactly how much suffering gets left behind the heroes and in quick order finds a new job working for one of the worst supervillains in the neighborhood.

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Extremely Competent Women Show Up to Fix Everyone's Shit (with a whallop of romance which was actually sweet instead of irritating)

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The Witchwood Knot ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ by Olivia Atwater - Winifred Hall was invited to the Witchwood Manor under the pretense of being the governess for a very bratty kid, but when said boy suddenly turns into a very quiet and perfectly bland boy overnight it's very obvious her charge has been stolen by faeries (and it might have something to do with the actual reason she's there). Rescue however is complicated by some factors, one, there being something terribly dark and wrong about the house (normal houses don't have screaming faces in the walls), another, the faerie man posing as the manor's butler who would very much like to make her run screaming the way so many servants had before her (unfortunately for him, she's not even half as scared of him as she is the eyes of the father of her charge).

This one's about dealing with past trauma, and otherworldly terrors paling in comparison to mundane monsters, set in a very beautiful and dark and shiver-inducing Victorian time world where the Fair Folk are very real.

(Same world as her Regency Faerie Tales trilogy that Started with Half a Soul but it's not necessary to read that one first to enjoy this one)

Keeper of Enchanted Rooms ⭐⭐⭐⭐½ by Charlie N. Holmberg - Merritt Fernsby inherits a house only to be immediately taken hostage by what turns out to be a very stubborn and opinionated magical house. Hulda Larkin of the Boston Institute for the Keeping of Enchanted Rooms goes there to facilitate the relationship between the house and its new owner.

It's supposed to be a very simple job. Unfortunately there's a third POV character in this book (no, not the Whimbrel House, though I adore that house and *insert here the Rosa Diaz gif about her new puppy and how she would kill everyone in this room and then herself if anything were to happen to that dog*). Anyway, they're a bit... uhhh... let's go with Bad News.

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ by Heather Fawcett - As one might expect from the title, Emily (a Cambridge scholar) wants to write the first ever encyclopedia of faeries. And she's brilliant enough to do it, what she's terrible at is people (*insert autistic character alert here*).

Someone else might then say it's lucky that a fellow scholar with a far easier time at charming people has stuck his toes in her reaserch trip into the Hidden Ones... that person however doesn't understand how irritating, frustrating and maddening her academic rival Wendell Bambleby actually is.

What follows is a story filled with winter snows, some terrible fae, some adorable fae, some not-very-secret fae, the goodest of good dogs, and lots and lots of squabbling. It's the best.

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Dark and Impactful Stories about Children Who Decide on Their Own Paths

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A Skinful of Shadows ⭐⭐⭐⭐½ by Frances Hardinge - Kate, an orphan and the illegitimate daughter of some stuffy (and evil) aristocrats runs away because being a bastard doesn't mean she didn't inherit the family magic that allows her to get possessed by the dead.

A dead bear ghost is one thing, a Get Out situation is something else entirely.

A Sorceress Comes to Call ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ by T. Kingfisher - Cordelia isn't allowed friends or the privacy of closed doors, and whenever she's done something she shouldn't - a category too unpredictable to guard against - she's not allowed power over her own body.

Because her mother is an evil sorceress (think Regina and Cora... except somehow even worse). An evil sorceress that has found herself a Squire to lure into a marriage.

Hester is an old maid living with her brother, a Squire (well look at them coincidences), when said brother acquires a woman clearly set on his fortune. The plan is only to save her brother, except Hester can't help noticing how the woman's daughter keeps flinching in her mother's presence.

In The Lives of Puppets ⭐⭐⭐⭐ by TJ Klune - A family can be an android inventor, his human son (*homoromantic asexual alert*), a sadistic nurse droid, and a very emotional roomba.

And it can be a very happy family. Until one uncovers and wakes up an android that shares a very Skynet past with one's father, said father gets kidnapped, and one has to go on a journey to get him back.

(A book I like to call Sci-fi Reverse Pinocchio)

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Unraveling an Unjust System (and a hero that - on a scale from occasionally to constantly - hears a disembodied voice directly in their heads okay the connection between these three is a bit of a stretch but they're all great books so shut up)

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Hell for Hire ⭐⭐⭐⭐½ by Rachel Aaron - 5000 years ago Gilgamesh conquered the heavens, enslaved the demons and made it so that the only road to magic humanity had access, was through him.

Now, however a mercenary team made up of free demons gets hired by a Blackwood witch to protect him (and his familiar, the talking cat named Boston) while he puts down roots (literally) inside the new forest grove he's about to start so that he can stand up against the warlocks after him.

The witch quickly becomes the best client Bex and her crew have ever had (after all, warlocks under the rule of the Eternal King Gilgamesh are slavers of their kind, they are delighted at the chance to kill some).

Vespertine ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ by Margaret Rogerson - In a world where the veil between the living and the dead has been kinda broken Artemisia (*another autistic character alert*) is training to be a Gray Sister (magic nun).

Until her convent gets attacked by possessed soldiers and she has no choice but to pick up a Saint's Relic containing a malevolent revenant to protect it.

Problem. Only a Vespertine is supposed to do it. Another problem. The only one "alive" who can teach her to be a Vespertine is the revenant. Another another problem. The revenant cannot be trusted and if she loses control to it, the death toll will be counted in cities.

Terminal Alliance ⭐⭐⭐⭐¾ by Jim C. Hines - Post Zombie Apocalypse, where some aliens showed up, sort of cured the zombies and took the (mostly) cured zombies into their military.

Which leads us to Marion Adamopoulos, also known as Mops, the Leutenant in charge of Shipboard Hygene and Sanitation of the Earth Mercenary Corps Ship Pufferfish.

Right up until a bioweapon turns the entire crew except her crew back into zombies. Congratulations, she's the captain now.

(Space Janitors save the universe story).

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[caleod]

16-7-24

[shannonallaround]

Pardon me while I go weep for three hours

[generic-sonic-fan]

@shadedlittlepastaboy you are SO correct. Shadow would have been a band kid in high school. I personally think he'd play clarinet just because he stumbled into it in 6th grade and now it's too late to change to any of the "cooler" instruments. (but I'm open to other suggestions.)

Rouge was 100% a choir girlie and you can't change my mind. She has the exact level of cattiness required (can confirm as I was a choir kid). Like, she was never a soloist (she was never that good) but she was an alto that pretended to be a soprano so that she'd always get to sing the melody and not have to work as hard to learn any harmonies.

Omega is not in band or choir or orchestra as he is too busy hitting other puny highschoolers like a goddamned truck as a linebacker in football and as a wrestler in the off season. Bro would actively choose to do P.E. all four years of high school solely because it means he gets to hit other people with dodgeballs.

[berisims]

We all danced in fire Trapped in this machine

[widowshill]

BURKE DEVLIN & ROGER COLLINS. — It isn't really amazing if you know what love is about. — Well, yes, I suppose I don't know anything about love. I guess that's why she married you ten years ago and not me. — I'll go one step further. I think you've gone beyond the point of even knowing what it is.

[redratt]

so the supposedly last arc of ginga is out -- Ginga Densetsu Requiem -- and while the series has gone downhill, it was a childhood fave of mine lol. I decided to draw some of my Garou in the style-- first there's Tala up there with a fake little bio page, and then the second is Mors/Little-Lightning-Lash holding ground against some sabbat.

[akkivee]

from kaigen to terminus, i feel like that’s one crazy switch up on kuukou’s part lol

[wikitpowers]

livvy's death hits so hard bc she had a whole freaking life to live, she had moments she was yet to experience that were taken away from her: her first huge solo mission, her first love (my heart breaks for her and cameron), her first driving lesson, like she won't ever be hugged by julian again and she won't travel the world or ever get to experience her first true kiss, or get to be beside ty until she is old and grey or get married or live the rest of her life with her family right by her side in a peaceful cottage with two doggos,,, and that makes me fucking sad :(

[oblakdark]

𝕭𝖑𝖔𝖈𝖐𝖆𝖌𝖊

“𝙸 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎’𝚜 𝚋𝚎𝚊𝚞𝚝𝚢 𝚃𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎’𝚜 𝚊𝚕𝚜𝚘 𝚙𝚊𝚒𝚗 𝚃𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎’𝚜 𝚜𝚘 𝚖𝚞𝚌𝚑 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚎𝚡𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚜 𝚃𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚗𝚎𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚍𝚘 𝙸 𝚕𝚎𝚝…”

© OBLAK

[anemoiawithatouchofobsession]

carried away

by a moonlight shadow

[blackjackkent]

Our final quest item for Grymforge (as far as I can remember) is checking out the little side area off the forge, which is absolutely full of lava.

Rakha makes short work of the lava elemental keeping the place all agitated. It's vulnerable to cold damage, she is running Mourning Frost which does extra cold damage, and she has Ray of Frost; she two-shot it before it could heal itself or get close enough to strike. Beautiful.

Not overall a satisfying moment for the beast urge - too easy to kill, and no blood. But at least they didn't get melted into slag, so that's something.

Investigating the island at the center of the lava pit, Rakha finds something far more perplexing than the elemental - a tightly locked chest, seemingly untouched for quite some time. It takes some doing, but she manages to jimmy the lock open and is even more perplexed by the nondescript amulet inside.

She reaches in and carefully pulls it from the box...and immediately a voice rings in her head, piercing and gleeful.

"Thou has come! Hee. Hee. Hee-HEEEEEE!"

Narrator: The amulet is heavy, but holds a subtle warmth, like it was left under the sun.

Narrator: Suddenly, the metal surges with heat. You feel great power and an overwhelming urge - to laugh.

Her face strains, her lips curling up at the corners without her volition. It is like those early moments when she first encountered a corpse, when the beast woke up and smiled and her face smiled along with it - but this is a far stronger impulse, a madness, hysteria. The laugh rises in her throat, unbidden, frightening in its immediacy.

"Haaaaa!" wheezes the voice, mad and eager. "Can thou endure?!"

She can't. The desire to laugh is like an ache in her chest, her stomach, up her spine, every muscle of her face. It is so uncharacteristic, so unlike her, and yet she needs it, everything has been so dark for so long, the tension strained to the breaking point--

"What is happening?" she gasps out. "What are you-- doing to me?"

Narrator: The urge to laugh intensifies. Talking jewelry? That's hilarious!

The Weave swirls and surges around the amulet. She can see the way it ripples with each burst of the urge to laugh. This is not like the beast, which seems to exist separate from her own thoughts; this comes from within her, a spell working on her very being. Her eyes show the whites, an expression of terror above her twitching mouth.

"ENDURE!" cries the voice within the amulet.

She's hanging on by her fingernails, the hysteria threatening to swamp her. Endure. Endure. Endure. The word rings in her head, echoing.

She has spent too long with voices in her head. This new one - paralyzing and mocking and cruel - feels intolerable. Rage shoots through her - her own rage, not the beast, not anything else but her - and she feels all the power in her body rise up to meet this invasion and force it backwards.

[SORCERER][WISDOM] Close your eyes and let your magic flow through you in all its wild and beautiful glory.

Narrator: Your pure, raw power rips through the urge to laugh.

Her body spasms, and a wave of energy bursts outward around her like a supernova, blinding, prismatic, raw, the unchanneled Weave that is her very soul fighting against the spell's attempted control.

For a moment she hangs on the edge of it, gripping on by her fingernails...

And then the desire to laugh eases. The muscles of her face unclench. Her breath steadies.

Free. Safe. No more. No more...

"Thou hast done well!" cries the voice gleefully. She can still feel it pulling at her, calling to the laugh, but she has control of it now. She can feel the amulet digging into her fingers with how hard she is gripping it. "For what is a laugh, if not one step toward madness!"

Another pulse of energy - from the amulet this time - and a strange figure sizzles into being in front of her.

"Return me!" it cries. "Take me home, and thou shalt glow with blessings!"

Rakha squints at the figure, trying to ignore the laughter compulsion and focus on the facts. It's the figure of a human man dressed in simple, well-fitted clothing, bare-armed. There were dead men in the Lathandrian monastery who wore something similar. A monk then, perhaps.

This man, however, has none of the stoicism she associates with the word - he too is caught in paroxysms of laughter, and the twisting of his face calls to her, tries to summon up that helpless reaction in her again. She sets her jaw against it fiercely, groans with the effort of keeping control.

"Return you where?" she rasps out. "To whom?"

"To my granddaughter!" cries the apparition. "Shirra Clarwen! Serves Ilmater, she doth! She waits in Wyrm's Crossing! Take me there, and thou shalt bathe in her golden gifts! O, thou shalt be blessed indeed! He he heeeeee!"

Rakha lets out a soft whimper as her breath catches on the hint of a giggle, and her eyes narrow in rage. "I could barely hold my laughter," she snarls shakily. "What did you do to me?"

"The Sharrans tormented me!" the ghost wails. "And I laughed at the pain 'til ne'er couldst I stop! Is there affliction more terrible than eternal joy? This is my pleasure. This is my curse! Ha. Haha. Ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!"

Shadowheart and the others have been watchign this play out with increasingly troubled expressions. All of them know Rakha well enough to know that whatever laughter this thing is drawing from her, it is not by her will.

"That thing's tainted," Shadowheart mutters grimly. "Better to leave it than bear a dead man's grudges."

Rakha is rapidly coming to the same conclusion. The request has been made and she is sure Wyll would want her to help this man, whoever he is... but she can't. It hurts. It hurts too much, struggling against this new voice, this new manipulation. It is too close and too deep; she can't fight it and the beast both, not for long.

She clamps her jaw tight, squeezes her fist around the amulet-- and with an effort of will that takes her whole body to muster, she hurls it away from her into the lava.

Discard the amulet.

"You mustn't!" she hears the monk's spirit cry as it drifts away from her into the scalding liquid. "Hee hee hee heeHEEE HEEEEEEEE!"

Rakha sinks to her knees, staring at the point where it disappeared. She feels like she's been beaten all over, and her face aches.

"What the hells was that?" she whispers. "Never mind-- nobody answer that. I don't want to know."

[cntroversialcinemapod]

Let us set your Election Day mood 💩

[chloristoflora]

Beyond, the sands gave way to bare mounded granite which descended to a lake of smooth water that reflected the dull sky like a mirror. An immense wall of ice reared on the opposite shore; the glacier that earlier had been nothing more than a distant line on the horizon. Now the ice stretched like a vast plain. Lights played over it such as she had seen in the southern night skies: rainbow banners and curtains that flickered, dancing.

Had she moved, or had the ice? "This is Shadow," she told the being. It inclined its desiccated head in agreement. "I shouldn't be here."

"Yet you do seem most persistent."

She studied the empty dark sockets where its eyes should have been; had that been a joke? "And you can send me back again?"

"You may say that is my duty."

"Before you do - what is it? That thing?" Kiska gestured to the quartz-like heap of crystals.

"That is Shadow House. The heart of Shadow, so to speak."

"Really? That? But it's-"

"Alive. Quite so. And very dangerous."

"Dangerous? But what of - of those who would claim it?"

It shrugged its thin shoulders. "Occupants of the throne come and go." It raised a clawed hand to the glacier across the lake of meltwater. "But that. That is the true danger."

Night of Knives, by Ian C. Esslemont (Novels of the Malazan Empire #1)