#constantly made to feel bad because he likes to sew and wants to be a tailor

[starswallowingsea]

i keep all my madashu thoughts in my dms with kiki but i am constantly wanting to post them on here. do you know how much the cowboy au we've written up rotates in my mind?

[linkspooky]

Ciel-Noel post

Revenge is bad, actually. Simple revenge in stories is boring and uninteresting and Kill Bill is a bad movie.

I dislike the idea of punitive justice in stories to begin with, at least in stories that don't look critically at it. However, I also think people often get punitive justice (a branch of moral philosophy) with the idea of narrative punishment (actions have consequences in stories). I'm not against narrative punishment at all, well-written stories should have direct consequences for all the important characters actions. If a character is a noble gas and no one reacts to their actions, then they are stagnant and unchanging. A character who is constantly reacting to other people, and provoking reactions in return, is a dynamic character.

Now that I've thoroughly buried the lead six feet under, let's get to the main event. Ciel and Noel is a tightly written tragedy in the horror genre. If you've ever watched a slasher movie before, horror operates on like, an extreme kind of narrative punishment. People always joke that if you have sex, or do drugs, or drink alcohol in a horror movie the slasher will kill you and yeah, that's basically it. Horror movies are relenting and unforgiving, you basically take one step out of line and get stabbed in the back for it. So, it's not at all surprising that in the same story where Ciel experiences a change of heart and goes from seeing Shiki not as a victim but another vampire to kill, to being willing to sacrifice everything to save him, Noel does not get saved. Doesn't that make Ciel a huge hypocrite going the extra mile to save her boyfriend, but putting a bullet in the head of the partner she's known for years to put her out of her misery? Why, yes. Yes it is. That's also the point.

Ciel (and Noel's) route in the Tsukihime remake are about two girls who are the victims of the same tragedy. One gets saved, one does not. One finds a person who will do anything to reach and redeem their humanity, the other does not. They both get worse and worse, but one is given a helping hand at their lowest point, and the other gets a bullet between the eyes. This is unfair, and cruel, and again the point. Nasu in the remake turned one of the routes with the happier ending into a bitter tragedy no matter which of the two endings you pick and it's great.

Nasu is a writer who understands the tools of storytelling and with Ciel and Noel, wrote a tightly constructed tragedy where both characters face a narrative punishment. Once again, narrative punishment means for every action the character takes in the story, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Characters don't get away scott free with anything. They reap what they sew. This gives the characters actions meaning, and feels like they are building towards an arc because there is an underlying point that the author is trying to make to us, by framing these characters actions in a certain light.

Nasu employs narrative punishment, sometimes even incredibly harsh narrative punishment (read every wrong choice in FSN where Shirou gets horribly maimed or just Shirou's life in general). However, Nasu does not believe in punitive justice. I mean, I made a joke about Oberon up above but like, Nasu literally wrote an entire FGO Lostbelt chapter showing how chaotic evil the fairies were, and then he still underlined it's wrong to punish people without a chance for redemption or atonement by making Oberon the final boss. Even Castoria who is an ultimate victim of the fairies who was locked in a barn and treated like an animal, and didn't even want to save them was still like "This is wrong, we should have given them some chance to redeem themselves."

That belief that punishment without the chance of redemption is wrong, is written into the core of Ciel and Noel's tragedy.

So anyway, let's get to the part where I start recapping the story with analysis so you guys have some frame of reference for what I'm talking about. Noel is a previous victim of Roa, a vampire that continually reincarnates by hijacking bodies. A victim of ROA slowly becomes possessed until the two personalities effectively merge, at which point Roa goes on a killing spree. This happened to Ciel in her french village, Ciel noticed intrusive thoughts of a voice in her head telling her to kill her family, kill her family, kill her family, and did her best to ignore and suppress them until she couldn't. She then tore out her parent's throats, and then went on a rampage only to be killed by arcueid a short while after. Not before killing basically everyone in the town except for Noel.

Ciel and Noel are the lone survivors of ROA's massacre, and both victims of ROA himself. Ciel and Noel are also the same person, so like, write that down. Are you taking notes? This is gonna be a long post you better be writing down bullet points. Big bullet point number one, Ciel and Noel are the same person this is going to be on the test later.

Is the massacre, and all the deaths that occurred Ciel's fault?

No, you'd think logically being possessed by someone else and only having your agency taking away from you would clear you from responsibility.

However, Ciel was taken in by the catholic church afterwards and they weren't having any of that forgiveness shit. Ciel after miraculously recovering from her death at Arcueid, no longer under Roa's possession, is killed repeatedly by the church, only to find she's immortal now. No matter how many times they try to torture her, or execute her to give her justice for the victims of the massacre it doesn't work. So, instead they eventually just recruit her to be a vampire hunter. Bla bla bla, metaphor for how punitive justice doesn't actually accomplish anything, bla bla bla, metaphor for how Ciel's way of redeeming herself by hunting down and punishing other vampires (which is also just revenge) doesn't work because there's no end to it, there's no forgiveness or absolution, it's just eternal suffering. Would a loving god who created the world and preaches about forgiveness really make a hell where all the really bad people get sent to, and never get any chance of redemption?

“A God who could make good children as easily a bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave is angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell--mouths mercy, and invented hell--mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!” ― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

So, already we're touching on both justice, and also the hypocrisies of certain western religions, by Nasu demonstrating that justice without forgiveness accomplishes nothing. Ciel trying to redeem herself in the eyes of the church is truly the sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill of redemption arcs, because there's no forgiveness, only hard labor for her sins. Ciel will just keep killing vampires to atone until she dies, but she can't die, so that boulder will keep rolling up that hill.

This is the underlying point of Ciel's entire arc, Ciel does not save anybody. She kills vampires. By killing vampires she hypothetically stops them from killing future victims, but that's not saving them. One of the most poignant things I've ever read from Nasu was from UBW where Shirou says more or less if there's a bank robber holding up a bank, and a cop comes in and shoots the robber through the chest, that might save all the hostages but the bank robber didn't get saved. You might say, well obviously, you can't save everyone. It makes sense that you'd save the innocent victims first. At which point I would say yes, I know, I have in fact consulted the ancient texts, UBW is my most replayed route.

However, Ciel and Noel's conflict gets that same point across because there are no innocent victims between the two of them. Ciel and Noel are both victimized, robbed of their agency, and go on to do terrible things, but one of them is saved and one is not. Noel isn't the bank robber in that metaphor, she's the hostage who was cooperating with the bank robber because the robber had a gun to her head, who the swat team decided to snipe through the window.

Noel is introduced as an entirely new character in the remake, she is the only other survivor of the massacre. While Ciel has memories of herself committing the crimes and feels guilt for that, Noel watched everyone die and was tortured for days on end by Roa in Ciel's body for their amusement (someone who was so insignificant to them, that Noel refers to herself as just one chip in a bag of chips Roa was snacking on. That's right, Noel is a cheeto in the grand scheme of things). There is one quote I love from John Dies at the End where John talks about how they're not chess pieces, they're not pieces on the board, they're so insigificant that they're just a cheeto sitting on the outside of the board. That's Noel, she's a cheeto.

The thing is Noel seems to be somewhat narratively aware of the fact that in the grand scheme of things she is a cheeto. Noel and Ciel are both victims of the massacre turned vampires, Ciel is a vampire killing machine and Noel sucks at it. Ciel despite being some rando apparently is born with enough magic circuits to make ancient magus families jealous, and on top of that is the only one who ever survived Roa's possession (and got immortality to boot). In every generation there is a chosen one, she alone will stand against the vampires and the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer. So you've got Ciel the Vampire Slayer, and Noel who's just a cheeto. The cosmically ordained protagonist of reality, and just some guy. Noel has to basically beg and scrape to get by, no matter how hard she works she doesn't get stronger, she doesn't get any cool super powers from the night roa burned down her home town she just gets trauma. She also doesn't get a special boyfriend who will do anything to try to give her a normal life. This is illustrated in true tragic irony, by showing that Noel had a crush on a japanese foreign exchange student who's clearly meant to foil Shiki and he was basically the support she leaned on for the entirety of the tragedy, he dragged her away from danger multiple times, only to find out the reason he saved her was to use her as zombie bait so he could make his escape.

Here's where Noel starts to shine because in a typical narrative, Noel would be the more sympathetic character. People like rooting for the underdog. However, Nasu dares to be different by making Noel extremely difficult to empathize with. For one she's extremely predatory in the way she makes constant uncomfortable advances on Shiki the main character. She's also predatory in the sense she enjoys preying on things weaker than her. She says it line for line, weak people have to pick on those weaker than them. Noel goes after small fry vampires for revenge, and to vent her frustrations, however, she doesn't just kill them she rips them to pieces and tortures them in the most inhumane way possible until they're begging for death.

Why would anyone sympathize with the weak, predatory, pathetic noel who only ever makes excuses and blames others to run away from responsibility, over the stoic, strong ciel who is willing to hunt vampires forever to take responsibility for her actions.

Well here's the thing, *gestures for you to come closer, and then whispers in your ear* all the shit that Noel pulls, Ciel does that too. Ciel and Noel are either the same age, or around the same age, so if Noel is a predator for hitting on Shiki than so is Ciel. It's almost like something happened to them in their youths that stopped all their mental development rendering them both like mentally 16. Noel mercilessly slaughters vampires for revenge, and so does Ciel. She just does it offscreen. We don't know if she tortures them or anything, but remember when Ciel hunts Shiki, how she knows that Shiki is a helpless victim in all this and still goes out of her way to twist the knife, hurt him both physically and emotionally in every way possible before making the final blow.

The reason she acted that way during her and Shiki's confrontation isn't because she was stoically forcing herself to kill Shiki because that was the right thing to do, no she was projecting herself and her survivor's guilt for not killing herself before Roa went on his massacre all over Shiki. She was getting her revenge on a helpless victim because projecting on Shiki was a way for her to punish herself. Noel hates herself for being weak, Ciel hates herself for not being strong enough to slit her throat before everything happened (ergo being weak). They both deal with this self hatred by projecting that onto vampires, even vampires who were turned against their will (especially those ones tbh) and slaughtering them. They were both taken in by the church and taught to do that, so the church could get two child soldiers to send to die fighting vampreis. Ciel is Noel, and Noel is Ciel.

Not only does Noel project her past self and her weaknesses onto vampires, she projects herself onto Ciel. In that Noel really wants to be Ciel. Which is understandable, would you rather be, a girl who's only super power is... having an axe, or a girl with like seventeen million cool weapons, has more mana circuits than most mages, and is fucking immortal.

That's just the surface though, Noel is on like fifteen levels of projection with Ciel. Noel's identity is incredibly tied up in her complicated feelings towards Ciel, both because Ciel is the face of the person who committed every atrocity to Noel, but also because they are the two lone survivors of the same tragedy. Noel and Ciel both try to make themselves into tools for killing vampires to cope with their survivor's guilt, and their inability to conceive of themselves having a normal life after what they have been through. They also were both denied any chance at healing, because the church swept in and fashioned them into hunting dogs to sick on the vampires, and fight those vampires until they die. They are also both convinced that the church is right for doing this, and that deep down they either cannot have (Noel) or do not deserve (Ciel) normal lives while they both secretly pine for it anyway. Both of them are denied the chance for recovery, (because revenge does not heal), and Noel takes that one step further by deliberately driving a wedge into Ciel's recovery.

To quote you Comun, even though you're the one that sent this ask:

And Noel is a character inserted in Tsukihime to thwart Ciel's steady recovery. A constant reminder of what she lost and how the blood is in her hands. To cope with the sins Roa used her body for, Ciel chose to be the Holy Church's most professional extermination machine. Noel is the only survivor of her village because Elesia also died that night, being replaced with Ciel, who is fueled not by emotions but by a vampire kill count. And while Noel is a petty bitch at heart, she genuinely believes Ciel's post-trauma life choice and respects her capability to pull it off. There's no sabotage to their partnership not because Noel is afraid to defy someone a million times stronger than her, but because Noel wholeheartedly agrees with Ciel's choice to never recover and to pay blood for blood for the rest of her potentially eternal life. As long as Ciel stays Ciel, Noel's vengefulness is directed solely at Roa. But then Shiki enters Ciel's life bringing with him semblances of normal happiness. The murder machine began to regain emotions. And to Noel, that's a problem.

So part of this is you know, buying church propaganda. Ciel and Noel are both victims of the same church that does not heal or save people, and only doles out punishments on the guilty.

Part of this is an interesting twist that adds complexity to Noel's character, because like she could blame Ciel for the massacre like the church does, and like Ciel does herself, but as you point out Noel clearly wrestles with that. Noel feels a mix of envy for a twisted respect, one could even say love for Ciel's strength. Noel shows a much more nuanced reaction to Roa wearing Ciel's face and killing her entire family and torturing her for days on end, when she could take the church's approach, or even Ciel's approach towards Shiki. Noel even talks about at length how her and Ciel used to bond together by talking at night about how they were going to get revenge for everyone who died that day. Noel can't just see Ciel as the villain who took everything away from her, because they are the only two survivors of the massacre.

As you said there's no sabotage to their partnership, because despite Noel being the most petty bitch ever she never does anything to hurt or betray Ciel. The reason their partnership falls apart is entirely Ciel's fault. Sure, Noel was dancing on the edge of a cliff and not the most stable person to begin with, but it's Ciel's actions that push her off that cliff.

Not only does Noel drive thwart Ciel's recovery, she also makes Ciel look like a terrible person. Because, Ciel is a terrible person. In the same route where Shiki constantly lovebombs Ciel and constantly talks about all her good traits and what a hero she is, and Ciel gets several very cool action scenes making her look like a cool vampire slayer, we also witness to Noel's soul and heartcrushing downward spiral that is caused in part by Ciel kind of not really giving a shit about Noel's feelings. Noel's downfall could have been stopped at any point by Ciel simply lifting a finger, or just noticing her partner's obvious distres but instead what Ciel does is Noel completely out of the loop (like not telling Noel that she was waiting for Roa to reveal himself before attacking Shiki) .

Like, the scene where Noel turns into a vampire is directly caused by Ciel's actions. Noel reveals to Shiki that he's currently possessed by Roa. Ciel stands up for Shiki, in what we think is Ciel not wanting to believe that Shiki is possessed by Roa. However, what we learn instead is that Ciel only approached Shiki in the first place because she assumed he would be Roa's first target, and has been keeping by his side constantly waiting for Roa to appear so she can murk him.

So, all Ciel needed to do was TELL NOEL that she was playing the long game and ask Noel to wait a little longer before showing their hand, but apparently basic communication with her partner is too much effort for Ciel.

This leads into a scenario where not only does Noel think Ciel has broken their partnership (i mean she kinda has) but Ciel directly injures Noel pretty badly and leaves her alone. When Arach shows up to prey upon Noel, Noel can't even fight back by that point. Arach is the bus that hit Noel, but Ciel sure did throw Noel under that bus for no real reason.

I mean there is a story reason - it shows that Ciel may be an instrument of justice but she doesn't save people, in fact she does not give two figs about whether or not people are saved by her actions. Ciel obsessively hunting vampires, is not really that far off from Noel torturing vampires for her own sense of petty vengeance. However, Ciel hunts vampires offscreen so we as an audience don't see really the way, she treats the vampires she kills, but from the way she both foils Noel and also the sadistic way she draws out killing Shiki possessed by Roa as long as possible you can infer that she's not all too different from Noel. That's good actually, that Ciel seems like a good heroic person, but if you squint at her she's not much better than Noel, because like that's the entire point of her character the good, altruistic senpai never existed in the first place. All of Ciel's words about atonement and forgiveness are empty platitudes, just her regurgitating the words the church fed to her.

So finally to conclude, we have the culmination of the moebius strip, where Noel the apparent opposite of Ciel, slowly morphs into Ciel. Noel's flaws in a narrative sense led to her downfall, but let's be clear Noel had no fucking agency in her transformation into a vampire. She was hysterically begging for Arach not to do it. She was pinned and helpless to escape when it happened. It is Arach and Ciel's fault what happened to her.

Noel does make choices, but her choice amounts to not immediately killing herself the moment she became a vampire. She does take like 500 shots to become an ubervamp, but like, the story clearly states that once people become vampires their moralities and personalities are radically altered. So if that's a choice it's an influenced choice.

Therefore the only choice in that moment Noel is truly responsible for is not killing herself while she was still lucid. Irony upon ironies because that's exactly what she yells at vampires to do, bow down and let their heads be cut off by the executors. However, if Noel is guilty for not immediately offing herself, so is Ciel, so is Shiki. Both of these characters get saved while Noel gets old yeller'd. This is unfair and also, you guessed it, the point. Ciels revenge against vampires accomplishes nothing. Noel giving up her humanity for the shot at revenge against Ciel accomplishes nothing. It's almost like revenge doesn't heal, it just puts more pain and misery into the world. No one is saved by revenge.

Noel is fridged for Ciel's arc, and neither Ciel nor Shiki ultimately save her even though she's not all that responsible for her own downfall. This is not the narrative playing good victim and bad victim. If anything it makes Ciel look way worse as a person. The narrative even goes out of its way to say that both Ciel and Noel have a right to their revenge and in a situation like this the winner wasn't determined by who was right but who's stronger. Ciel has no moral high ground she just happens to be stronger, that's it. She doesn't take the higher road with Noel even after Shiki went to such great length to try to reach her emotionally and tell her she was still human, no Ciel makes no attempt to talk to Noel or take a third route she just murks her.

Noel is my favorite character for this route probably second favoeite overall behind Kohaku and I one hundred percent agree with fridging her, because it makes Ciel's character a hundred times better by giving her consequences for her flaws. It's one thing for Ciel to break down crying about how much she hates herself for being a cold merciless machine. It's another thing to have this demonstrated by Ciel letting her partner fall to the wayside by just not giving a shit about anyone's feelings or anything except for her personal quest against vampires.

Noel is a victim of the cycle of revenge, a pointless and harmful cycle. In a story that's thoroughly anti revenge as evidenced in the true end of hisuis route where Kohaku having achieved absolute perfect revenge and having her plan gone entirely right, takes a knife and gouges out her own heart with it. If that's not on the nose I don't know what is.

Its poignant comun that you told me that Nasu stated there's no good ending to Ciel's routes just a normal and a true because a good ending would have saved Noel. It might look like Ciel got off scott free but if you look at it, by killing Noel and denying Noel the chance at salvation Ciel damns herself too. Ciel has not escaped the cycle in the true ending, she's still hunting vampires at the behest of the church the only real change is she has a boyfriend now. I'd compare it to the ending of UBW vs Heavens Feel. In one Shirou has Rin's support but it's implied he'll eventually leave Rin anyway and become Archer, he just won't regret saving people as Archer did. He has not escaped the self destructive cycle. Whereas in Heaven's Feel, Shiro dies and is reborn and has to you know live as a person from now on.

Ciel did not end the cycle, she perpetuated it by killing Noel. You don't end the cycle of revenge with more revenge. Since Ciel did not end it she's still trapped in the cycle herself, and she still has support in the form of Shiki but the cycle will probably consume her the way it eventually consumed Shirou. She even broke out what was essentially the UBW with black keys when fighting against Vlov. It's just like that one post on Twitter said every few years or so someone reinvent the unlimited blade works!

[citrus-writing]

yandere phantom troupe- depressed darling

Thinking about how most yanderes would be terrible at dealing with a darling with mental illness? Because even if darling already struggled with their mental health, being kidnapped and held hostage can't help. And no matter how badly their yandere wants to help, they can't ever let their darling go, even if it would help them more than anything. The best they can do is try to make life with them as good as possible.

This is written with depression in mind, but kinda blankets over any struggling mindset. (this doesn't mention any kind of self harm or suicidal ideation, i might make a part two touching on that, but this one is safe from that content.) 

---------

Chrollo, paku, and shal- all enable mental illness by accident. You're precious and helpless and so so weak, so it makes sense when you can't do things for yourself. Don't even worry about trying to get better, just be yourself- you're perfect, they don't want you to change at all (not even for the better). But all three of them would at least try to offer comforts, because they hate to watch your struggle and hurt. 

---

Pakunoda knows what kind of self care and healthy habits suit her, and she tries to push those on you. She'll run you a hot bath, light scented candles, paint your nails, get you a journal to write in. But if those things don't help you she doesn't really listen to what you want or need. She simply insists that she knows best and you're being difficult- she wants you to trust her judgement on this, even if you know she's wrong.

Chrollo notices immediately the shift in your mood and demeanor. He insists you talk to him about whatever's on your mind, even if all you really want is to keep your mind off it. He presents it as a way to help you, so you can get all those thoughts out of your head. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you're grateful that he listens so intently with no judgment. But sometimes you don't really want to share what's on you mind- but you don't really have a choice, and he always knows if you're keeping something from him. Anything you ask for is yours instantly, anything he can do to try to help you. But when you ask to go home, he looks at you like you’re not making sense. He reminds you, gently, that you ARE home. 

Shalnark is the worst of the three, he doesn't really offer much in the way of support, even though he thinks he does. He keeps you near him all the while, holding you close and trying to keep you from crying, constantly trying to distract you. But as soon as the distraction fades away you feel just as bad as before. It's a Viscious cycle, one that has you constantly needing to rely on him for comfort because there's no real progress being made. But that's OK, because he loves getting to dote on you. He really does think it’s going to help, keeping your mind off of it, but the truth that always comes back is your separated from everything in your life, everything you love, and he refuses to acknowledge that. 

--------

Machi, phinks and uvogin- both do their best to genuinely help, but neither of them are good at it. Both of them try to offer support however they can, because they both hate seeing their darling so miserable, but neither of them have a very good sense of how to help. At the very least, they are trying, and that counts for something. 

---

Machi knows a lot about medicine, between her nen and her extensive knowledge she can fix up almost any wound or injury. But with things like mental illness it's harder. She can't understand why you're so unhappy, and she can't figure out how to fix it. She even lets you outside (only in the backyard, and only with her) but it doesn't seem to help. She does a hundred thousand little things to try to help, from cooking your favorite food to buy you your favorite books to sewing or buying you new clothes. It's frustrating to not be able to help you and she hates being helpless in this. 

Phinks doesn't understand, and that makes him so much more volatile than he needs to be. He wants to be able to help you, and on some level, believes he should just know how to help you. It’s frustrating- almost infuriating- that he can't help you. And no matter what he does, how considerate he tries to be, it never helps. At the very least, he can't get mad at you when he sees how sad you are all curled up and crying. But being spared his fits of rage is one of the only upsides when he is so clueless on how to help. With phinks, I really do think you’re best off just asking for anything you need. He is willing to indulge you a little bit to make you feel better. 

Uvogin also does his best to help, but he’s equally bad at it. He doesn't have machi’s understanding of medicine, and is all around much less patient. But he is more patient and understanding than phinks. if it’s for you, he’ll do his best. Uvogin does his best to do little things he knows normally make you happy- from little jokes, to your favorite shows and music, to your favorite meals. And to be fair, life with him isn't nearly as bad as life with some of the other yanderes in the troupe, so he’s already better off than a lot of them. 

-----

Feitan, shizuku, illumi- Completely ignore it. Of course they notice you seem down- not like yourself, sad, depressed even. But what can they do? Isn't it enough they make sure to meet all of your physical needs, isn't it enough that you get to live with them, their darling pet? It had better be enough, because you’re very unlikely to get any kind of comfort. 

---

Feitan doesn't notice until it gets concerningly bad. Sure, he knew you were unhappy, miserable even. He didn't blame you for that, afterall, even he would admit he’s been cold to you. And since you've come here, you’ve been subjected to so many horrors it’s almost a given that your mind would be caving under the pressure. But Is he really so unbearable? He doesn't think so. For a while, he tries forcing you to go about your day with him like normal. But by now, he’s gotten used to seeing you smiling, acting almost lively, at least pretending to be happy. It grates on him that he can't see you smile now. He keeps you in your room, checking on you incessantly, but content to let you rest until you’re feeling better, or at least able to fake it. 

Shizuku is the most likely not to notice at all. She doesn't keep quite as close a watch over you as a lot of the other troupe yanderes do, and for the most part, you're grateful for that. But in this care, it’s not such a good thing, because if she noticed you were sad, of course she'd try to help. But sadness can be subtle, and unless you're outspoken about it, she might miss it. She loves you more than anything, but your moods and feelings are something she struggles to keep track of. It’s hard for her to know how you feel, and she doesn't know what you need without knowing how you feel. If you do manage to open up to her about how down you feel, she’s more willing to try to help you. 

Illumi has gone through quite a bit of trouble to make everything in your home suited to your tastes. Your clothes- while all picked out by him- are all in colors and patterns you like. Your meals- while all cooked by him- are all your favorites. Your bedroom- once again, set up by him- is almost perfectly to your taste as if it’d come straight out of your pinterest board. So what more could you possibly need? What needs of yours aren't being met? If you tell him, there’s a chance he’d listen, especially if the thing you need is simple. But don't even bother asking to be let go, or you will be punished, no matter how much you cry. 

[pekoehoneyncream]

Colonel König Headcanons

Part Two!

Words: 500~

TW: None (sfw)

Part One

Enjoy!

You'd think a man as anxious and constantly wound up as König, would be very perceptive, right? Wrong. When he's not on the field and thereby not actively concentrating on his surroundings, König is very easily startled. Which would be fine if he was the jumping and shrieking type when spooked, but he's not. He's the punching and shrieking, then frantically apologising, type when spooked.

This man has the weirdest sense of humor. It's 70% just people getting hurt accidentally or in unconventional ways. He once saw his superior slip on a freshly waxed floor. Their legs windmilling and folding under them in such a way that guaranteed they hurt something when they hit the ground, seeing the look on their face as it happened, and hearing the sound they made as they went down. König had to immediately flee, there was no way he was holding in that laugh.

Doesn't laugh aloud very much. He knows that he's bad at reading the cues for when people want him to laugh, and he rarely wants people to think he's laughing at them, so he tends to hold in his laughter.

When König does laugh, he goes all out. He's the type to slap walls, shake your arm, he goes weak at the knees, he's got tears pouring down his face, he's holding his belly. Just full scale cackling like his house stands on chicken-legs. And once he starts laughing he finds it hard to stop. One laugh-attack means he'll have a case of the giggles for the rest of the day. 

He's grateful for his hood, because he can typically hold back his laughter, but he's terrible at keeping a blank face. There is a shit-eating grin under there at the most inappropriate times. Honest to god König has thee worst poker face. It's a 50/50 on if König is looking at the floor because he's feeling awkward or if he's looking at the floor because he's worried his eyes are going to give away his thoughts.

König is actually very good at tailoring and sewing. It’s difficult to get clothes or gear that are fitted for a man of his height, so it was a necessary skill to learn. His mother taught him how to embroider and he enjoys adding little details and designs to his kit. The black thread on black fabric is subtle and hard to see, but König knows they're there and thinks it looks nice.

As he gets to know people König places them into categories in his head. Unsafe, Safe, Dangerous, and Friends. Unsafe People are mean, they do not want to talk or want him near. Safe People aren’t mean and are okay to talk with or be near. Dangerous People pretend to be Safe People but will take anything König says to them and twist it to their own advantage or run to a superior to get him in trouble. Friends are safer than safe people, König can be himself with no filters, he can say anything and know that even if they don’t agree they’ll still like him.

Thank You For Reading!

If you any thoughts or comments I'd Love to hear them!

PekoeHoneynCream's Masterlist

[funkycloewn]

I've once again come from the dead to post lmaooo

After having avoided the pilot for so long in fear of getting sucked into the world and fandom, I finally watched Lackadaisy! (My fears were right btw as it has a grip on me rn) I love it and subsequently read the comic so I knew everything and wouldn't get spoilered.

Anyway, a little time after I came across the amazing interactive fic called the Under The Devil's Moon made by @libras-interactives

I enjoyed a lot (and can't wait for the next chapter/update) and couldn't help but make ocs due to this fic being a sort of self insert thing

These characters shown are only two out the five I made :]

It's sorta rambly but I hope you enjoy it anyway!! (Especially you, Iibra 🥺)

Name: Margaret Quinn

Nickname: Daisy

Date of Birth: October 26, 1889 (31 Years Old)

Personality:

(Mostly the usual callgirl personality with some stuff added into the mix)

Years of being in the industry, has shaped this feline to be calm, gentle and soft spoken. She knows what her customers want and acts accordingly so. Though, she doesn't particularly show it — that would be bad for her image as a callgirl — she is quick to give a person a label, to categorize them. She doesn't mean to be judgy but this mindset has helped her out countless of times, so she continues on; getting to know that someone is the only way for her to lift off the verdict she holds. With the ones she loves, Margaret is very caring towards. Making sure they're well fed with both food and love is one of her top priorities. (Though, recently that has been a difficult task to maintain) This, unfortunately, can make her pushy and stubborn even when she means well.

Romantic Relationship:

Out of all the characters to choose from I chose our friendly local bartender, Viktor Vasko. At one time I was thinking of either Zib or Sable but after reading about how he would treat Chester, I was sold. I can't for that romance to unfold! :D (rhyming unintended)

Other:

• She was born and lived most of her life in the outskirts of New Orleans

• Her mother succumbed to a yellow fever outbreak, leaving her and a few other kids orphaned.

• This led to her forming a group with said children and the four of them residing in an abandoned shack.

• Margaret knows how to fix things at least temporarily because of this (e.g. pipes and infrastructure).

• (This one is a little violent so warning for that :'D) Both her front paws are missing their claws. This is due to a farmer who got sick of her constantly stealing his chickens.

• The pearl necklace she has, was given to her by Flynn. She doesn’t like anyone to know that and avoids the question when asked who she got it from.

• She likes fidgeting with the pearls. The way they softly clack when moved and the feeling of them soothes her.

• Due to her motherly nature, she will "adopt" (translation: care and look after) anyone under the age of 25 with who she is somewhat close to, especially when they are boys

• She sees Jack and Marius as older sons of hers

• Rocky could (will) be a contender for the spot of a fourth son

• She always carries a box containing a sewing kit, buttons and patches

• This has come in handy plentiful of times for Jack, mostly. On rare occasions Marius is in need of them, though I would think he's picky on what she uses; they have to match.

• Though, she says she doesn't know who Chester's father is, she knows. She just doesn't like to acknowledge it.

Voice Claim: Tiana from Princess and the Frog

Name: Chester Quinn

Date of Birth: January 6, 1917 (3 Years Old)

Personality:

This little troublemaker, has a great fondness for being one with the earth. By that I mean, he loves digging. Chester likes creating craters at playgrounds or parks, all the while letting himself be covered in freshly dug up soil. Almost all of his clothes have a grass stain and Larochka fears that he might have stained his chubby little hands for eternity. Speaking of fashion, he hates wearing shoes. A tantrum is bound to occur if you simply try to make him wear a pair. Even if you somehow achieve the impossible, he will just claw them off and chuck them. However despite all that, he's well meaning and can be gentle at times. He enjoys snuggling with him Mama or Larochka. Chester is very social and when out he's always looking for a way to make people smile.

Other:

• If he likes you, he'll make you a 'special mud pie' (a mud pie sprinkled with hand picked flowers; the more flowers, the more he likes you)

• He's handsy, mostly because he's an affectionate boy but also due to the fact he has poor eye sight.

• While he's chubby right now he grows to look more like his father, even somewhat in the face department.

• Fortunately for everyone and the tom himself, he grows out of his habit to refuse any kind of footwear. Don't tease older Chester about his phase, though, because he will get embarrassed and he will look like he just ate a sour lemon.

Voice Claim: Greg from Over the Garden Wall

Cleaned up and with his eye color when he gains his melanin

Wonder who the dad is lmaoo

Lastly a size comparison (not sure if it's accurate tho lol)

[ghostiguro]

shamwow ref sheet, finally!!!!! :D

figuring out how to draw them was tough, still ironing out their design a bit, but overall i'm happy with how it looks. :3

you know what time it is-- ramble that no one asked for, aw yeahhh.

firstly, when designing them i for sure knew i wanted their design to be fuzzy & inspired by a tarantula; i know they're supposed to be a jumping spider but.. don't care, fuzzy spider supremacy. also tarantulas have weirdly adorable paws?? i love it.

their eye colour is supposed to be somewhere between red & violet; they look a bit more pink than i intended, so i'll probably adjust that as time goes by.

final thing i wanna add about their design specifically; because they are the eldest sibling, & it's insinuated that they absolutely merced all the other gods, i wanted their design to stand out more & be a little more fancy to show their status. i want to eventually add more details cuz i feel like i could make it look way cooler, but this is good for now. :3

it's made clear in the game that the bishops relied on the crowns to work around their disabilities, so when shamura is indoctrinated into the cult, they struggle a LOT with their head injury. their symptoms including, but not limited to; memory loss, poor facial recognition, visual trouble, brain fog, migraines, loss of fine motor skills, lack of balance & coordination, vertigo, struggles with vocabulary (stutters, can't find words, or sometimes makes up their own words), they often repeat things that don't really have much meaning, hand tremors, hallucinations, etc. they start out really bad, & their injury would be far worse if it weren't for the fact that they're a god & the crown prevented the injury from being as bad as it could have been. their siblings are all very patient with them, & the lamb assigns them a buddy as they begin to recover & are able to move around the cult grounds more. they eventually get to a point where they're able to function, still with moderate memory loss & brain fog, as well as migraines & hand tremors, but it takes them a *long* time to get to that point.

in their free time, they used to enjoy sewing & reading, but due to their injury, they struggle a lot with it which frustrates them to no end. they later get glasses to help with their vision so they can read, & learn how to knit & crochet, as sewing is a bit hard when your hands are constantly shaking & you're holding a tiny needle & thread.

later on in their recovery, they start helping out around the cult, doing a little bit of everything; they help the lamb with everyday duties when they can, usually small errands like delivering & retrieving items (they write them a little note in case they get lost along the way; shamura holds onto many of these notes, & have a basket in their room filled with notes they've collected over time); they help leshy in the farm/garden, heket in the kitchen when she's chefing it up, & kallamar in the healing bay, & occasionally keeps him company while he paints or crafts things. eventually, shamura & narinder are able to repair their relationship-- i haven't figured out what exactly narinder's tasks & hobbies are yet but they would keep him company & help when they can, too.

ok this is getting long so i'm gonna leave it here for now. :3

now i just have to finish the lamb & goat, & then all the rest of the characters & cult members... hoo boy.

[thatnonameuser]

Hi, happy 20th birthday. I hope you spent your birthday in good company. And how will yandere react to darling, who has a disease called "Anhidrosis", and he does not feel pain in principle, because of which he acts recklessly and silently strives for death in the hope of feeling at least some pain. And when he finds the most painful way to die, he is sincerely happy. He studies the concept of pain and death and strives to feel it. And honestly says that he is ready to give his life just to feel at least something. (google translator)

Anhidrosis(lack of sweat)confused me for a second but that was Google Translate's fault.

A darling with anhydrosis. And wants nothing more than to experience it, and wants to die a painful death….

This is a half imagine because I'm probably adding another part to this. A smut one.

CW: Dead Dove: Do not Eat if you are triggered by self-harm, voluntary FGM(a mention nothing graphic) or suicide, don't read. I might be breaking my own rules but this idea was very interesting.

At age three you realized that you could never feel pain.

You'd badly skinned your knee, gained from a nasty slip and fall of the swing set, but after you'd fallen all you did was sit and stare at the blood dripping from your knee.

You remember poking it, and feeling only the warm blood stick to your skin, and nothing else. So you kept playing, not caring about the blood running down your legs.

It was only after someone noticed did you realize how bad your injury was. At first, everyone thought you just had a high pain tolerance, or were just being a brave kid. Which you wore with a badge of honor.

But when everyone can experience something you can't, you start to wonder.

What was it like? Would it be good or bad?

You had to find out.

So you started to get hurt on purpose. Jumping from higher ledges, ‘slipping’ down stairs, poking yourself with sewing needles and cutting yourself with scissors.

You did whatever you could to feel pain, but when you got cuts and bruises you didn't get any new feelings.There was no tears, or crying , or the need to complain about how much it hurt.

And you hated it. Every failed attempt drove you to do more harm to yourself, placing your palms into fire, riding bikes super fast without protective gear and crashing, provoking dogs so they would bite you, but..

You never felt pain. You couldn't feel pain.

At first, the people around you thought your acts of self harm were attention seeking, but after you purposely beat your arm with a hammer till your fingers went numb, you were forced to go to a doctor and you got diagnosed.

You were sick, yeah mentally, but physically you were unable to register pain no matter how hard you tried.

And that made you depressed knowing that this foreign sensation was barred from you forever. So you harmed even more. Cutting yourself with blunt knives, pressing hot irons to your skin,every twisted thought you could come up with.

But after your diagnosis, your life was spent being coddled. Knives and tools locked in drawers. The house you-proofed. Teachers and friends made to watch you constantly.

You could never get the opportunity to hurt yourself, and that made you want to die even more. All you wanted was to feel what pain was, and now you couldn't do that either. Your desperation to feed that addiction got worse and worse, it became all you thought about, finding that pain, that total, consuming, and endless pain.

You lost whatever survival instinct was stopping you, and you began to harm with intent to kill. To die. You researched your methods thoroughly, got thrown into a psych ward for your troubles. But regardless, you preserved, learning how to attack the spots that cause the most debilitating pain.

Still nothing.

But you kept pushing, kept planning. Scars cover you now. Everywhere in every place, even what would have been your most delicate and sensitive regions….thought they were hardly sensitive given your attempts.

All you wanted….was to die. Slowly, miserably and as painfully as possible

But then a wrench came into your plans, a carriage to a whole new world. You were a little excited to wake up in a place that was outside the laws of your normal boring society, one that worked completely different, on the jaws of what one person calls crazy, but hey, you weren’t any saner.

Where love is obsessive and smothering, and murder is allowed within Sage Island’s borders.

But you were a darling. And people like you don’t get to be seen as anything more than delicate. You managed to hide it the best you could, not wanting to repeat a life of over-protection and smothering, bu you got caught.

It was an accident really, you forgot to lock the door to your bathroom, and Ace and Deuce found you while looking for you. You were halfway through your bi-weekly cutting when they found you.

They freaked out and the rumors flew fast. Soon everyone knew.

And they all freaked out.

Spells of protection to keep you from hurting yourself, potions keeping you too sedated to think straight. Malleus even put you into a dream world again to prevent you from harming and killing yourself, but you still tried in your dreams.

You started to hate them.

They were no better than the people back home like you were a porcelain doll on a shelf. If you were a doll, you wanted to shatter into pieces so small that you could never be put back together. Wouldn’t that be nice, being broken so badly and so painfully living would be impossible. But they would just lock you up in a padded cell and leave you there to ‘love’ you.

You only wanted ‘love’ if it was torture. Agony. A pain to breathe and to exist where a painful death is the happily ever after.

But two of them loved you the way you wanted, like you were something to break.

The Leech Twins.

The way they loved you was torture. And you loved it.

Floyd, the outwardly violent one, had squeezed you so tightly before that he broke your ribs. You loved watching him attack other students and the bloody messes that would be left when he was done excited you. You treasured the messy, jagged bites he’d give, grateful that he wouldn’t treat you like you were precious. You loved him angry, and the way he hurt you when he was.

And then there was Jade. If Floyd was violent, Jade was completely sadistic. And you loved that too. The complete nonchalance and calm that he’d normally show, mixing with the mirth in his eyes when he poisoned you and watched what it did to you. You didn’t feel anything new, but the way you writhed made you feel the closest to that sensation that you’d craved all your life.

Those two were capable of destroying you and in the Coral Sea they could get away with it.

You would despise being controlled and coddled by the others, but you’d love being finally breaking past that barrier to pain with one, or both you’re not picky, of those two. After all, they were the only ones that could do it.

Besides, life and love weren't a fairy tale. It's ending is death. For you, and it's a happy, painful one.

[p0rk-guts]

waitt but what's different about your ocified velvette... i like her a little but find myself wanting more substance from her in canon tbh

TEEHEE WHAT A GOOD QUESTION I TOTALLY DIDN'T SET PPL UP TO ASK ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay sew me and @ajistorpid were talking and they inspired a good chunk of my ideas so you can blame them for feeding my sick delusions.

Read more just like last time bc I talk too much sorry but there's art in there too oooo you should look u should read my ramblings

As far as I know, Velvette has no canon age at death, cause of death, or death date so based on what we know we just crafted our own headcanons. AJ proposed she might've had parents who ran one of those family vlog channels with her as the face of it, becoming a child influencer under her parents' control. I was thinking she could've been a child model- yk like. dance moms or something. Idk I don't remember what was happening on that show— anyways. Yea

Either way she grew up constantly controled and perfection was her standard. All of her outside thoughts and feelings and interests and opinions were constantly dismissed in favor of what made her more marketable. She never did get that popular in life tho, and her mentors always shamed and blamed her for it.

Idk if this is canon or not, but the idea of the sinners designs reflecting their vices or things they regreted or hated in life is an untapped gold mine to me so that could explain where Velvette's supposed doll and clown themes come from. Became a toy dressed up and paraded around for the entertainment of others + joke never taken seriously. She'd hate that

(As for how that ties into my redesign…. me and AJ were thinking she could be a vampire doll, but I'm not sure IDK I wanna sketch that out and see what it's giving)

In hell she easilly fell back into this warped facsimile of her old life bc it was all she knew. "she feels some form of pseudo control and enjoyment because she has no one pulling her strings now" (<-AJ) SHE'S running things!!! Who's the puppet now!!!!!!

Then THAT had me thinking too because now that I think about it. Why Is she the backbone of the V's?? She's like. An undergrad student in my mind at the MOST and Vox and Val are two men pushing 40 I'm sure. I think a big part of it is the fact that those two are almost complete and utter buffoons who let their emotions cloud their actions constantly, Valentino most obviously but even tho Vox seems more composed like when he's talking Val down from his outburst and when he was talking to the press, we can still see he's a total mess—especially where Alastor is concerned. He lost it so bad during their duet HE SHORTED PENTAGRAM CITY'S POWER.

Now out of all the V's we've seen the least of Velvette (I'd call it what it is but yall gon get real mad at me), The most we really got out of her character was the overlord meeting (and despite her huge ego and unruly behavior she did end up speaking facts), so maybe she Is just as unstable as them in canon but canon is SHIT and this isn't about canon anymore. In my mind she's very much in charge of the back end of their work. Vox is obviously the head of the operation—or at least he seems like it to me—what with the tech company having his name and with him answering the interviews, but I think that's all he is. The figure head. Velvette is the brain behind it all. When Vox proposes new buisness endeavors off the cuff she's the one who goes back and makes sure they're getting handled properly because he doesn't really dig into the backend of how things happen. Vox goes to most of the conferences or whatever (Vel's too busy running her shows and serving cunt after all) but Vel follows up on what was learned.

(also yeah all that makes this very much an au of an au bc it'd take a lot of radical changes for the two of them to be friends I think. It's fun to imagine anyway)

Quoting AJ here bc I'm bad at paraphrasing and they said it well:

"And if we're going to make her sympathetic, (obviously not excusing her enabling a rapist) Val and Vox are grown ass men and she never got to experience the world outside a camera

Velvette is easily malleable with no real relationships!! Some victims tend to gravitate towards people who are similar to their abusers the only exception is that she feels like she has control this time"

THIS this. THIS! Okay uhh vague personal experience w/ abuse cw ig. skip this paragraph if you don't wanna hear it. But It kinda reminds me of my relationship with my parents- NOT THAT I SEE THEM AS TWO DADS AND A DAUGHTER I DO NOT BELIEVE IN THAT NOTION IN A POST PILOT WORLD If future content proves me wrong it proves me wrong but at this moment they're all equals in my mind (…and I hc them as poly BUT WE'LL GET THERE) but In my situation it's like. I hate my parents for the abuse they've caused me, my mom more than my dad bc she's satan incarnate, but there are still things I like about my dad and. Tolerate. About my mother. We still can talk cordialy and spend time together, have fun together even, and I show affection to them, but deep down I know I wanna cut my mom off later and maybe my dad too depending. Additionally my mom is completely Incompatent and pulls none of her weight so despite it all I've been forced to pick up the slack and become half the brains of this family. I do chores she should take care of. Handle money. Make important decisions about our health and safety she doesn't care about.

AAAny ways. This is so my version of Velvette. No I'm not projecting (I am). She pulls a big chunk of the weight around there (some of it being carried by Vox and virtually none by Val). She's very close with the two of them but isn't a fan of everything they do (Cares more for Vox than Val in my mind). Speaking of, she definitely isn't some saint now, she still makes the love potions and is Impassive to both Val and Vox's behavior, but part of that Is her just seeing it as part of the business. Shady practices and exploitation are par for the course in any business to her. She never truly grew out of the harmful mindsets ingrained into her by whoever her enabling caretakers were in life and they're still apparent in hell. (Maybe she even experienced some of the darker sides of exploitation in life but was groomed into thinking it was okay contributing to why she doesn't see Valentino's actions as heinous. Idk. thinking on it)

Circling back to my poly V's idea. Idk it just seems plausible to me. Vox and Val already have their whole thing going on, they all live together, and they all have nicknames for each other (Vox calling her my dear, Val calling her baby doll, Vel calling Vox darling). Ik that could just be their personalities and the pet names don't have to mean anything more but this is MY au and my word is gospel hope this helps. It just makes sense

I could go on and ON about the toxic insanity of the Poly V's in my mind— particularly between Vox and Valentino— but this is NOT their post so maybe next time. As for Velvette, I get the vibe that she'd be intimate with both of them and enjoy it but she's never the one to initiate anything. Sometimes they're all like this 🤞🏾 and others the boys are a complete turn off to her (main example being the difference in her attitude towards Vox in episode 3 vs episode 8). Her tolerance of them flips on a dime depending on how they're acting. She also prefers to be a casually entertained observer to VoxVal more often then not (ex. end of episode 8 imo)

Boys aside. My Velvette is still a social media influencer and she's all about advertising. advertising products (like the love potion), clothing looks, technology... Heck even herself. "You're nobody if you don't wear this or use this or look like this ^ - ^". Projecting on her even further by making her have a love/hate relationship with her profession aka the modeling aspect of it: she's always had a genuine love for fashion and dressing up but the internal pressure for perfection she's placed on herself makes it hard for her. She's very hard on her models and designers bc of this

Couldn't think of a segway for this but also WHAT HAPPENED TO VELVETTE WANTING TO FIGHT THE ANGELS??? The "full assault plan" against the angels??? And then when the fight actually came they were all just lounging around watching it go down like it was afternoon tv????? This isn't even a "we'll get to it in season 2" thing did they honest to god forget? Did that line not mean anything??

Well I didn't forget and it's pissed me off since my first rewatch of that meeting scene. Don't think we don't know how the V's got the angel head, but In my head Velvette was the one who initially proposed the idea for an assault against heaven and her insatiable need to feel respected and feared only spurred this plan on, incredible risk be damned.

It also felt weird to me that Velvette just. Let it go when Carmilla said the meeting was over. Just. "Oh ok! Plan cancelled no more attacking heaven ^ - ^ I'm gonna go scroll for the rest of the show!" Hu h. My au-ified Velvette would definitely fight her on it— if she thought killing angels would change the game and Carmilla held the secrets behind it she would pry! Blow up at her about it until she wasn't getting results and bitterly storming off with as much composure as she could muster. Not wanting to team up with Carmilla but find some way to use her for all she was worth and get her way in the end, use the power and resources the V's had to actually make a plan. Would it have worked without the Morningstars? Eh. Either way I'm sure she could delude herself into thinking they were the most powerful people in hell. Ugh I don't wanna make an au rewrite of the show and I that was never my plan so idk where that'd go but. Yea

ANYWAYS anyways. wow you made it to the end somehow! Here's your treat :3

Context u didn't ask for: Some days Velvette overwhelms herself with her own impossible expectations. Nothing she creates or puts out is good enough. She gets extra anxious about her following; nothing's happened to them, but what if they see the miniscule flaw in her latest clothing that she sees? What if she's no longer perfect? (Even worse in the vamp Velvette redesign of her bc she literally feeds off their attention and admiration)

She'll snap at everyone and disapprove of every look and then hole herself away somewhere where she crashes and is just. So. Tired. But she'll be out of it the next day, ready to keep the conveyor rolling.

[katsukikitten]

Some personal head cannons I have for Suki

He doesn't start drinking coffee until you do, he likes whatever you order or make and it becomes his fav, because the small things make him feel close to you.

He doesn't drink soda much but when he does his fav is Fanta orange 🧡🍊 (Marqi helped with this one)

Katsuki knows everything about flowers, his mom taught him all about their meanings, how to care for them and that he should always have flowers in his apartment single or not (he doesn't start doing this until after a really good relationship that leads to a really bad breakup)

He and his mom fight like cats and dogs but they love each other. Don't fuck with Mitsuki's son and don't fuck with Katsuki's mom. They will end your life.

Bakugou can design and sew an entirely new outfit but chooses not to unless he thinks his assigned support team sucks. Then all mods on his hero suit are made by him.

Katsuki keeps all his "nasty" scars, even the one on his face down to his finger tips that came from the war. He hates them, they make his stomach churn with dread and pride. He's strong enough to survive but weak enough to be scathed. He constantly goes back and forth on them.

He hates mornings and goes to bed early mostly to try to sleep. I think he's a bit of an insomniac, has to be really tired to fall asleep right at 8pm

Hates having a nickname unless it's someone he really likes. Will get mad if they stop using his nickname and call him his real name. (Yes even Deku has to call him Kaachan always, normally in my versions they tolerate each other or become close friends but never call themselves friends. Just deku and Kaachan)

Katsuki is excellent with computers, really he is a jack of all trades, perfect in most.

He hates having a sidekick, only ever wants a pro partner. It feels like baby sitting to him, not that the sidekick isn't capable, he hates splitting his attention and account for their lack of experience that often. He's very good at leading and sidekicks call him a hard ass but he trains them to have the most battle sense.

Katsuki hates to eat alone. He'll eat alone at a table yes but people need to be in the next room or around him, like a restaurant etc. He hates having a meal for one at 2am in his apartment.

I think he's secretly a family man. He doesn't realize it til he meets the right one.

[devildomwriter]

You Make Them Christmas Sweaters (But They’re Really Itchy) Headcanons

Lucifer

• You made it for him so he will absolutely wear it no matter how itchy

• When you aren’t looking he casts a spell on himself to relieve itching

• After spending the day with you and the sweater he takes it off and tries finding the source of its itchiness

Mammon

• Thanks you profusely and then puts it on and wonders how the actual hell a sweater can be so itchy

• He smiles when you’re looking and while he does love it he’s in agony and scratches himself profusely

• Afterwards he brings it to Lucifer and asks if there’s a curse on it and to pleas help him because he loves it but damn is he itchy

Leviathan

• He’s so moved you thought of him enough to actually make him something

• All is well until he tries it on and he has such a hard time controlling his facial expressions that he wears a mask “because it’s cold”

• He is constantly itching and if you notice he starts scratching his legs and head too so you don’t catch on to the sweater being extremely itchy

Satan

• He’s moved and puts it on right in front of you, before his head is through the collar he already knows what’s happening

• He becomes extremely itchy and immediately casts a soothing spell on himself to avoid intense itching

• Rather than risk potential damage to the sweater he never alters it and simply casts a soothing spell every time he wears it instead (and he wears it a lot)

Asmodeus

• Squeals in excitement that you made him something

• Immediately notices the intense itching which is not good for his skin so he excuses himself to redo his hair to match the sweater but it actuality calls Lucifer for help

• Lucifer casts a spell on him so he can tolerate the itching and enjoy the rest of the day with you because this man would’ve cried otherwise and he couldn’t bare to do that in front of you

Beelzebub

• He loves it! But then he kind of gets this blank stare as he registers the intense itching

• He uses the walls like scratching posts and excuses itching on crumbs down his shirt because he realizes it’s probably the sweater and he’d hate to make you feel bad

• Goes to Lucifer for help who takes pity and offers to help figure out why it’s so itchy

Belphegor

• He’s super excited to get to wear something you made him

• On the bright side the itching keeps him wide and awake and moving around as he attempts to discreetly relieve his itching

• Lucifer watches this happening and waits until Belphegor asks him for help because he doesn’t want to offend you

Solomon

• Is touched that you thought of him and took time to knit him a sweater

• He’s extremely confused how you made a sweater so itchy and almost believes it to be a prank until he sees your genuine smile seeing him in it

• Just casts a spell to stop the itching but later studies the sweater to see if he can recreate the itching in a spell as a new form of torture

Thirteen

• She’s thankful and acts nonchalant about it even though she’s actually very excited about it

• Conceals a smalls scream when she immediately becomes super itchy. She was going to demand you release the spell when she realizes you had zero intentions of this affect and it’s not even a spell

• She doesn’t know how you did it but after ignoring the itching all day she plans to recreate it and use it in her pranks

Simeon

• He’s very happy to see you spent your precious time thinking about him and pouring your love into the sweater

• After trying it on he can’t stop wondering how a sweater can cause such intense itching

• He’s had thousands of years of tolerating everyone around him so the itching isn’t too much of a bother but he plans to ask Raphael to fix whatever is causing the itching later on

Raphael

• He loves and appreciates it, especially as someone always sewing, patching, and knitting things

• As someone with extensive knowledge in knitting he spends the entire day wondering how you made it so itchy

• You never even notice he’s itchy because he has high tolerance levels and minimal facial expressions. He’s glad how handy his training can be for unusual situations such as not offending you by itching in a sweater you made him.

Luke

• He’s really excited and when he tries it on his eyes go wide

• He’s really really really itchy and doing his best not to show it but it becomes painful

• He makes a face at Solomon who helps him and casts an anti-itching spell to save the poor child from accidentally offending you (offending you would make him cry)

Mephistopheles

• It’s a gift from you so of course he’s happy and boasting about it

• Because he already boasted about it he’s too prideful to admit there may be a slight problem and that’s that he cannot stop itching

• He uses magic to deal with it but still cannot fathom what you did to lead to such results. He knows it’s not a high quality thread count or name brand sweater but he’s still so confused.

Barbatos

• He’s elated but he can tell before even putting it on that somethings not right

• Already casts an anti-itch spell on himself and is glad he did so

• Asks you to teach him how to knit a sweater so you can match (he’s trying to figure how something can be so itchy without magic)

Diavolo

• He’s extremely excited to get something handmade from you

• He immediately starts itching which makes him laugh because he has no idea how to react

• He decides to use the itching to test his patience and tolerance but after the day together ends he asks Barbatos to investigate the source of the itchiness and he takes a long soothing bath

[snowfolly]

So I got to the Daylight Inn in BG3 today and I had Astarion in my squad, and as we were hanging out and chatting up Isobel after rescuing her from Marcus, I started hearing a male character singing really softly. I switch characters around to see if I can find them and BOOM I find out ot's Astarion singing softly to himself while idle. I couldn't quite make the lyrics out but he sounded a bit distant and sad...made me want to hug him again.

OH NO… little guy, that’s so cute ;A; I absolutely love this and really, really hope this triggers for me in (one of) my current pts!

I have heard audio of him humming before (and it was so flat- which is super endearing to me lol), BUT this ask made me have some big hcs and I had to write and draw some boys about it lol

-

I imagine that Astarion really, truly loves to sing, that he gets catchy tavern songs stuck in his head for days and goes about his business singing to himself. However, the other spawn would continuously tell him to never to do so in their presence because he can't hold a tune, what kind of elf can’t sing? And what in the names of all the gods did he have to sing about anyway? Besides the song of agony that Cazador made him sing…

By the time he ends up a tadfool in our favorite merry band of misfits he’s learned well not to dare let his discordant voice slip in front of other people. He has to be charming, he has to be pleasant so that they keep him around. And his song is not a pleasant one.

He can’t help himself though, he still hums and sings quietly as he strolls through the woods, when he’s reading or sewing, in times when he thinks he’s entirely by himself. But Tav, godsdamnit, Tav takes notice. 

Tav startles him one night, telling him that they recognize the tune that he’s humming and that it’s one of their favorites. Astarion’s pissed that they were listening in on him, but he’s more surprised that he isn’t shot down immediately, that he’s not met with expected snark for not being able to carry a tune in a bucket, but Tav doesn’t belittle him… which is odd.

In time Astarion still keeps his songs to himself around the rest of the party, but as he begins to trust Tav he finds himself becoming more and more relaxed with them. He realizes that he can be himself around them, well, whatever parts of himself still left to him at this point anyway.

But it was a novel concept, this acceptance, a concept he learned to greatly appreciate. And Tav seems pleased to see (and hear) him being comfortable with them, being happy. Tav cares for him.

Tav cares for him after no one had given a rats ass about him for two centuries. What a concept indeed.

So Astarion continues humming flatly and singing badly,  Tav joins him often and they belt out old folk songs or bawdy tavern numbers together on their long journey, making up colorful (and hilariously crass) new verses as they go. 

And he comes to realize that this, this time with Tav is what being close to a person is supposed to feel like.

That being put down and belittled for something that a person enjoys is not universal. 

That constantly being on guard is not normal.

That another person can actually bring him joy, and that caring for someone is... possible.

Tav says that they enjoy singing with him, that they could go on singing with him forever, that they love his song.

And would it be so bad to sing of love instead of sorrow? Would it be so bad to share his song with them for as long as time would allow? He wasn’t quite sure yet, it was all so new.

But as he walks with Tav, arm in arm, belting out a bawdy old ballad to the heavens and all unfortunate ears within a mile, he had to admit that the thought of forever was enticing.

-

Thank you so much for the ask! And sorry it took 5ever bc it inspired me to make a little Drabble and doodle :>

[amcy-beloved]

Pet!Milo & his many nicknames

Pet!Milo is a version of Perfect!Milo that Amcy marked as her unit upon completing every ending. The following are various Milos, their nickname, and what they offer to Amcy.

✎𓂃Pre!Milo。°˖⌕

The first time she met Milo and was given the option to nickname him, Amcy thought of “Bunny” only because the default was “Pet” and she felt like she had to go by theme.

Bunny is the form Amcy uses when she wants to create a new Milo variant or feels nostalgic. This is also the form Milo goes to when he's panicked enough and unable to decide which variant of him would fit a situation.

His other variants - the ones before the "drug/stalk" choice - have nicknames of their own.

"Puppy" is the default of V!Milo.

"Kitty" is the default of M!Milo.

Puppy and Kitty function similarly to Bunny in the sense that they can produce other variants.

NOTE: Milo sees Amcy as his lover and other love interests in her system as allies (indifferent but willing to cooperate). He has a black ouroboros tattoo wrapped around his skin, and Amcy's mark on his chest on all variants.

✎𓂃Violence!Milo。°˖⌕

A Perfect Killer = Tosa Tosa is primarily used when Amcy needs a guard dog or rarely when Milo senses danger and Puppy isn't enough. As this variant is primarily used for killing, he's not very good with other things that don't involve hurting a person.

A Perfect Househusband = Shepherd For when Amcy can't be bothered to do anything when the thought hits that she'll never get a true break from being a main character.

That or if she wants the princess treatment.

A Cannibal's Love = Dane Admittedly, this is Amcy's favorite V!Milo variant. Food's the quickest way to her heart and Dane can cook great food. It's a match made in... paradise?

Amcy and Dane cook together, even looking up how other cannibals eat on the internet to have some inspiration. Grocery shopping is also pretty interesting to her now that it involves humans on the list.

A Kidnapper's Love = Akita For when Amcy wants a combination of all three. The least likely to be used, usually when she's in a bad mood where she doesn't want to see anyone, and rarely when Milo sees that Amcy's working too hard and won't take a break.

✎𓂃Manipulative!Milo。°˖⌕

A Perfect Burning Love = Burmie The best at keeping Amcy entertained with the people she doesn't like and the variant Milo will turn to when she doesn't want a quick death to fall on them.

It's better to let them live in guilt and misery while they get to walk around free with the occasional glances of pity for the poor and shaken couple.

A Perfect Love Beyond The Wall = Manx Fastest shipping service she ever has and great security? Say no more!

The favorite of the M!Milo variant. Amcy doesn't entirely mind being watched (as she's constantly being watched anyway) and brings along a cat plush that somewhat resembles Manx (complete with camera and microphone) everywhere she goes.

A Doll's Love = Raggy Playing with people's emotions, social lives, and now, their actual lives. Not only is it satisfying to see someone she hates in fear, she also gets to have new clothes.

Saves money from shopping, gains money from selling!

A Married Love = Tigre All three in one deal like Akita, except she has more freedom to walk around rather than be stuck in bed most of the time. Rivals Shepherd on which can give the better princess treatment.

✎𓂃Other Milo Variants。°˖⌕

Crafty!Milo = Weaver Bird An experimental Milo that Amcy made without really trying. Bunny took his love for sewing to the extreme, hoarding talents that involved fabrics and textiles into this: a bird wishing to impress his mate with the things he created.

His talents are not strictly on working with textiles, they also include recycling. Materials include human bodies.

[bagel-muncher]

You're THE SOUKAN guy, tell me every single soukan HC you have IMMEDIANTLY (this is a threat btw :3)

I literally started typing this all up before I went to bed last night and I woke up to see this... get out of my head bestie. I am honored to be thought of as the Soukan guy lmao.

Some Soukan hc's because my brain is wrong

First off, I see Yu as bi and Kanji as pan.

Yu fell first. He has no clue when it happened, but at some point, Kanji just went from one of his best friends to someone he couldn't really do without. Still, Yu doesn't confess. If any of y'all have played the New Days fangame, I think of it like that dream Velvet Room thing with Kanji, where Yu worries that being in a relationship with Kanji would just make his life harder. He knows that if he does feel the same he'd just grin and bear it, but he doesn't want Kanji to have to deal with more rumors and assumptions about him than he already does.

Kanji is the one who confesses. It's the classic "one fell first, the other fell harder". Yu had time to come to terms with his feelings and let them be, Kanji realized he was head over heels for Yu and almost explodes trying not to let it slip every time they hung out. Surprise surprise, he doesn't last long and tries to make some big romantic gesture, only for it to fail miserably. Luckily, Yu found it adorable and they started dating.

Yu expresses his love through physical touch. He prefers being quiet to talking, so it's the easiest way to make sure the people he cares about know he loves them. He does his best not to be too obnoxious about it in public for Kanji's sake, but he's constantly holding his hand, leaning onto him, or otherwise invading his space. When they are alone though, he's super cuddly. Kanji can't do much of anything if it doesn't allow letting his boyfriend hold him while he does it.

Kanji is all about acts of service and gift-giving. Words are hard and he struggles to be as unabashedly affectionate as Yu. So instead, he makes use of his skills in sewing and cooking to constantly make him gifts or treat him to meals. Even if some part of him is still embarrassed about his hobbies, he feels a lot better about it since he's doing it for someone he loves who wholeheartedly supports him.

Comfortable silence is the name of the game with them. Yu prefers not to speak, Kanji never knows what to say without feeling like he'll make a fool of himself. Still, he always felt like he had to fill the void Yu made with his silence until Yu eventually was able to convince him he didn't have to.

THE cat dads of all time. Yu showed Kanji the neighborhood strays one day and now they have them all named and Kanji comes by to help feed them from time to time. Kanji mentions getting a cat or two when they eventually get their own place, and Yu teases him for already fantasizing about them living together. (He has already imagined a full wedding and everything his ass should NOT be talking)

Dojima had very mixed opinions on them dating at first. There was the whole thing about Yu dating a guy in the first place, which while making Dojima a bit confused at first, he got past pretty quickly. The bigger problem was that it was Kanji. Dojima knew he really wasn't a bad guy, but he was stubborn and had trouble being comfortable with a guy with his reputation dating his nephew. Nanako really likes Kanji though, and with how often Kanji shows up with Yu and helps out while he's there, Dojima does grow to accept it. There's still a level of "Dad who makes sure his daughter's bf knows he owns a shotgun" energy, but he lets them be as long as they're responsible.

On the other hand, Kanji's mother was over the moon when she learned they got together. Yu's a great guy, and she's overjoyed that not only has her son started to make some great friends, but he even managed to snag himself a boyfriend.

I think Nanako would absolutely love to learn they're dating. Even if she still thinks Kanji looks scary, he's very sweet to her and makes Yu happy, so she adores him. He's basically already her brother-in-law in her mind.

Yu and Nanako have a frankly ridiculous amount of plushies that Kanji made for them. Nanako is of course overjoyed by the gifts, but Yu is starting to run out of space on his shelf.

Since Dojima is usually out late, Yu invites Kanji over often to have dinner with him and Nanako. It's part date, part making the work easier on himself. It's the exact sort of domestic fluff one would expect, the three of them having a great time cooking and eating dinner before watching TV together (Yu using Kanji as a pillow the entire time, ofc) before Nanako eventually has to be put to bed. Yu constantly jokes about them living just like this when they grow up and if they decide to start a family, and Kanji's red even as he denies how much he'd like that. These nights usually end up with Kanji staying too late to be out and having to stay over or straight-up falling asleep on the couch. Yu always has to deal with a lecture from Dojima the next morning, but getting to cuddle Kanji all night makes it more than worth it.

Honestly, I could write waaaaay more but I feel this is enough for now and I probably should focus that energy on actually writing lol.

[crescentmoonrider]

Mother

Toji makes it out of the pit. Toji makes it out, alive and injured and hungry, and mother isn't here patch up his injuries. Not this time, not ever again. For the prompt : Busted Lip [ @badthingshappenbingo ]

read on AO3

or under the Read More, I’m not your boss

[ do mind that this fic features heavy descriptions of injuries]

.

It hurts.

It didn’t hurt quite as much when Toji made it out, maybe because of how excited he had been, tearing through curses with the savage joy of revenge and finally seeing the light of day, but now – now it hurts like hell.

The worm wriggles inside his stomach, and he fights the urge to throw up.

He couldn’t leave the little guy in there where it would just be exorcised, couldn’t get rid of it either, not when the knife it spit out was what gave Toji a chance to make it. Not when it does nothing, but eat what falls in front of it and call out for its mom.

So Toji does his best to keep the little guy hidden inside his stomach, does his best to stumble up to a room where he can take care of his wounds, maybe rest a bit before someone comes to bother him, maybe even eat something that isn’t a curse for the first time in… ah, how long was he in there ?

Given everyone’s faces when he walked out of the pit, he thinks they’ll at least leave him alone for a while.

Shit, it hurts so much.

He tracks blood across the dark floor of mother’s room, stains her dresser while looking for the first aid supplies she used to keep for him.

Usually, she would tell him to sit in the entrance and not touch anything until she’s done cleaning him up, lest it gets dirty. She would scold him, say they both know he will never make her proud, but if he could at least stop being such a disappointment it would be the least he could do, as her son.

“You’ll never win these fights anyway, Toji, so stop picking them,” she would say.

Not that he ever really picked fights so much as watched them fall in front of him. Last time was… last time was an exception.

He grinds his teeth. Feels his stomach jump to his throat in pain when the muscles of his jaw contract around the open wound that is his mouth.

He doesn’t know what it looks like, hasn’t looked yet, but he thinks… he thinks it’s pretty bad. All of his injuries probably are, honestly, but the way he feels his bottom lip kind of hanging uselessly on the right, in a way that would definitely dry up his mouth if it didn’t constantly fill with blood…

Yeah, that doesn’t sound good. Gonna have to sew up that one for sure, if he wants to eat.

Mother could have done pretty stitches, cleaned him up all good and stitched his wounds like she did when he got hurt real bad, even though she didn’t have to and he already hurt her enough by being born wrong.

“I can’t let you trouble anyone else,” she used to say while patching up whatever injuries he brought back that day, “since you’re my fault.”

Toji never really cared why she did it, honestly. He just liked how warm her hands were.

He undresses, wincing with each move, throat tearing up with deep, animalistic moans befitting of a monkey, as he pulls cloth out of open wounds and half dry blood.

Mother’s mirror on the dresser will do, he thinks as he grabs it and smears more blood on her things, blurring the image reflected in the glass to an unrecognizable shape.

Shit.

He tries his best to wipe it with the least bloody corner of his yukata, just enough to manage a check of what needs cleaning, what needs dressing, what needs sewing.

The blood in his left eye doesn’t help with seeing all of that, but – he squints. Holds the mirror, shakily angling it to look where it hurts most.

There are deep claw marks carved in the flesh of his right shoulder and breast, and he thinks he can even see a little bit of rib shining through one of the open wounds. That’s gonna need sewing. Same for his forearms, but he’s not sure how he’ll manage that. Maybe if he just dresses them tight enough, the gashes will close on their own ? There’s no bone showing there, so surely that’s a good thing.

His back and left side down to the thigh are just a mess. He thinks he remembers being caught by some, uh, sucking, octopus-looking, thing, and literally ripping himself from its grip to avoid getting eaten. Maybe that’s what did it. Maybe it was the corrosive spit of that weird-ass snake instead.

He guesses… ah, well, that’s already mostly done bleeding, and with how big this one is, he would have a better chance just embroidering all over the exposed flesh rather than try to sew it closed. Gonna have to clean it good, dress it good, and hope skin regrows on monkeys like it does for lizards.

Lizards regrow their skin, right ? They couldn’t shed it otherwise.

Hands and feet are fucked a normal amount, same for his knees. Running and crawling and scratching at the door in the hope he will somehow manage to dig his way out of this hell, he knows no one will open, not father – not father, he said himself he has no son, threw Toji in there himself like he should have eleven years ago instead of making everyone hurt – not mother – it’s Toji’s fault he knows, something he did had to be the last straw and that’s why she slit her throat and left only this dark stain on the floor that Toji can’t even see anymore – not anyone but himself and he tried so hard to just flee, and that’s when the octopus caught him by the back of the shoulder and he –

Hands and feet are fucked a normal amount. He’s missing, what, two nails ? He’ll live. Will be a pain to stitch up anything because of that, but it’s not like he was ever going to make it as pretty as mother did anyway.

His face is the real problem, as expected.

The black eye is fine, he’s had a few before, he knows how that goes, a few days of seeing weird and like a week more of looking ugly and he’s done. But his mouth…

The gash goes from the top of his cheek – missed the eyeball, thankfully – to the bottom of his jaw. Didn’t cut the bone, he thinks, but the right side of his mouth is just limp. He can see the gums through the open wound and under his bottom lip, thinks he can feel a chip in one tooth with his tongue too, follows it down to the gum and it stings, not just his jaw but his tooth too, like the root itself got exposed. Maybe it is.

There’s iron at the back of his throat, up his nose, blood dripping and spilling from the gash kept open by Toji’s spit, too diluted to coagulate.

Even if he manages to sew it all back up properly, can that thing even heal ?

Out of nowhere, he remembers one time Tadayoshi beat up his face and then made fun of Toji for being ugly afterwards. “A face only a mother could love,” he’d said. It made Toji laugh because he couldn’t understand what Tadayoshi meant by that. Which was the wrong answer, but then again, Toji never gives the right answers to anything.

Ah… should he try fixing it right now ? With his hands all fucked up and his stomach empty save for the worm, and his eye all busted ? He’s never gonna get mother’s pretty stitches right, but ugly scars aren’t the same if they’re on his shoulder or on his face.

On her face. Fath- Jin’ichi’s eye, but mother’s full lips, mother’s straight nose. Mother who he’s never gonna see ever again, mother who won’t ever clean his wounds with her warm hands and scold him for being a disappointment, mother whose blood is getting soiled by Toji’s again, spilling on the floor where the last trace of her body was.

He wants to throw up.

The worm hasn’t even moved.

Toji puts down the mirror. There’s fresh water in the room, mother never went out so the servants made sure she always had enough at all times. Tons of clean clothes inside mother’s closet, too, since there’s no way the first aid kit has enough gauze and bandages for this mess. Jin’ichi won’t like it, but what’s he gonna do ? Throw Toji back into the empty pit ? He doesn’t have a son, so Toji doesn’t have to act like one anymore.

And mother wouldn’t mind. She wanted Toji to only ever trouble her, so it’s fine if he uses what little is left of her until there’s nothing but ashes.

It’s fine. He’ll live, even if it hurts.

He’ll make it out.

He’s hungry.

[purgatory-is-life]

Mechtober day 4/prompt 4, mechanization

ohhh boy this is a long one fkaldjkf

@mechtober-2024 - - - How They All Came To Be - Reality666Rift999 - The Mechanisms (Band) [Archive of Our Own]

tw roughly in order; heart issues, heart failure (i am no doctor so this might not be super accurate), gun mentions, blood, blood loss, memory issues, alcohol mentions, fire mentions, implied/mention death via fire, loss of autonomy, i just had a lot of thoughts abt brians morality switch ig, minor character death (bertie), unethical science(? doc turning tim into a mechanism at jonnys request but w/out tims permission), loss of limbs/loss of wings, infection, exhaustion, a bit more minor character death (mostly unnamed characters), impromptu amputation, probably more, feel free to ask to tag something

------

Jonny wasn’t sure how to feel. He was free, finally, from that hellscape that haunted him and dragged him down, kept him sunken and afraid and obedient. He was free.

All thanks to the Doc. (He didn’t even know vampires were real before meeting her.)

He was ecstatic, his shoulders felt lighter than they had in years, he was afraid, he didn’t know what he was doing and a part of him wished he had the familiarity and certainty of that damned place, and he was so confused as to why he missed that hellmouth.

But he was at least mostly happy, so he managed to push his fear and sadness and even maybe regret to the back of his mind. Focus on the present, focus on the overwhelming joy and excitement of being free.

He had to return the favor to her somehow, had to help her in some way like she did to him. To show her how much her provided escape meant to him.

So he helped her around her–their, because it was his home now too, because she insisted it was theirs and they were in this together (she actually wanted him around)–space shuttle, small and maybe a little cramped with the two of them living on it almost constantly, one of the three bedrooms converted to a lab that the Doctor never allowed him in. He cleaned, he did the repairs he could do with his little knowledge of mechanics, he sewed and patched up their clothes when they went long stretches between planets, he did whatever he could to show the Doctor how much the escape meant to him.

  Though he never truly outright said anything. Growing up in that hellhole, he knew any sign of weakness could make everything flip on a dime and he wasn’t risking the best thing he’d had in years. He was going to savor every moment, every moment and every drop of kindness from the Doctor, before it sours. The Doctor promised she’d never do anything to him that could hurt him, promised that she’d love him until eternity ran dry.

And for once, he believed her. He trusted her, he knew she wasn’t lying. But that didn’t change that he couldn’t show weakness, it didn’t change the beliefs and fears ingrained in him from years growing up in the hell house that was his childhood home and planet. But he still knew that she was being honest.

She was someone he could trust.

So he wasn’t exactly sure why he didn’t tell her before it got this bad.

His heart felt like it was going to explode, like he could barely breathe. Everything hurt but his chest hurt the most. He could feel his heart, beating fast-too-fast, and he needed help.

It happened sometimes, where if he walked around too much or ran around a lot, he had to lay down as the world spun and his heart tried to beat itself out of his chest. But it usually passed, he was usually back to running around like normal within a few hours–a day at most, and on bad days his heart being all weird made it so that he was bedridden for a few days even if he generally felt fine. But this time it wasn’t going away, something was wrong.

Something was wrong and he was terrified.

So he stumbled off to find the Doctor, collapsing as soon as he did.

“D-Doc,” he wheezed out, as the vampire rushed over to him, “D-Doc there’s s-something wr-wrong with my heart…”

Tears pricked at his eyes, even though he was trying really hard to be strong. The Doctor grabbed his shoulders, gently, bracing him up.

“S-somethin’s wrong…”

“Jonny-”

He tried to keep the tears at bay, but they started flowing the moment his name left her lips, her voice thick with gentle care and concern. “S-something’s w-wrong a-and I’m sc-scared… M-mom I-I’m scared,” Jonny struggled to get out a wheeze through his sobs, the difficulty breathing making him sob harder. With as much strength as he could he grabbed Doctor Carmilla’s arm and held on like she was his lifeline. “M-mom, I- I don’t- don’t want to- to die,” he sobbed. He was so tired. Darkness crept at the edges of his vision as his tears blurred the image of the Doctor in front of him, the Doc holding onto him just as tightly as he held onto her. Everything hurt and his chest hurt so much, like someone was ripping him open and squeezing the frail organ beating wildly. If he listened to it, he could hear it skipping more and more beats and with each beat missed the more afraid he grew and the faster his heart beat.

Something in her demeanor changed, though. The Doc squeezed him and pulled him in for a hug. “I’m not going to let you die, Jonny,” She said, words comforting and cutting through the fog of sobs and darkness lingering around Jonny. “Never, okay? You’ll be fine. I promise.”

And he believed her.

And he trusted her.

And he woke up who knows how long later without a heart, but a steady tick-tick-tick replacing it and a cold, metal plate over where his heart should be.

—--

The first few years were hard to get used to. To the ever present tick-tick-tick where his heart should be, to having to ask the Doctor to perform maintenance on it at least once a year when the ticking got too irregular and painful, to the knowledge that he couldn't die. But the Doctor was there for him, there with a warm drink and a shoulder to lean on when everything became too much.

And sometimes he needed to step away from her for a little while, hence why he volunteered to hijack them a bigger, better ship while they were passing through Cyberia. For some reason the Doc had her eyes set on a specific one, but Jonny wasn’t going to question her. And so he went and found the starship, earning the ship in probably the most unhinged game of roulette the soldiers had ever seen or experienced, while the Doc went off to do her own things.

He got to know the star ship he’d won from the Cyberian soldiers. She was the Aurora, and once upon a time she was not a starship. The Cyberians stripped her of her body and her life, but she was free now, with Jonny and the Doctor. Jonny was happy to be that freedom for her, like the Doc was to him. And so their little crew grew that day from two to three.

And soon they grew from three to four.

Jonny protested, at first. He didn’t wish this undying life on anyone, it was painful, it was long, and there were only a few people who could truly relate. But the Doctor insisted it was the only way to save her life, she was too far gone. And so she proceeded, and their crew grew again, from three to four.

Anastasia Nikolaevna Rasputina was not happy about being mechanized, at first. Jonny wasn’t happy either, so he really couldn’t blame her for that. She disappeared into one of the rooms of the Aurora. And she didn’t emerge for longer than a few minutes at a time for at least a year or two. That was fine, Jonny would give her all the space she needed. It was a rough adjustment, and everyone had different ways to cope.

But eventually she started coming out of her room more, opening up to Jonny and Aurora and the Doc. And their crew grew from two to three to four. Jonny’s family wasn’t perfect or normal, not by any means, but he wouldn’t trade it for the world.

—--

Ivy didn’t remember being mechanized. Ivy didn’t remember if she asked to or if she was brought into the Aurora without her permission.

She was scared to find out. She didn’t know if she’d like the answer.

But knowledge was power and power was valuable no matter where she was.

Ivy didn’t know anything about her past, just gasps as she woke up and rebooted for the day, just gasping and fear pulsing through her body as she tried to remember what her nightmare was about, tried to remember why she was so afraid.

She made up for it with the ability mechanization had given her, her ability to remember anything and everything even if she was detached from those memories. But still, she sought knowledge and information and anything she could about her past. Anything that she could grab on to, even if it wasn’t anything concrete or certain.

Ivy didn’t remember what caused her to be mechanized, didn’t remember if she asked or if the Doctor revived her against her will. She didn’t know if she wanted to know, didn’t know if she would like the answer.

There was a 22.1% chance that she wouldn’t like the answer. There was a 24.65% chance she would. And a 53.25% chance that she wouldn’t have a strong leaning either way, that she wouldn’t know how she felt.

When she asked Jonny, he didn’t want to tell her.

But she pushed and pushed until he agreed to tell her a bit.

They found her in a large library, a large library that was burning and burning quickly. She was dying, choking on the smoke and from injuries Jonny didn’t dare specify or describe. Jonny and Nastya protested, when the Doctor brought her unconscious body onto the Aurora. But the Doctor continued anyway. Aurora was the main aid to her the first few weeks as she was adjusting to her new mechanism, when she couldn’t retain anything for longer than a day and couldn’t recognize anyone. It wasn’t pretty.

“Knowing the Doc, your brain might be around here somewhere,” Jonny said, giving her a shit-eating grin, “might find it next time you go in for maintenance.”

Ivy rolled her eyes and left him to his whiskey and misery. She had an answer, mostly.

She didn’t know how she felt about the answer.

—--

Ashes O’Reilly was filled with a burning fire, that’s why the Doc picked them, Jonny guessed. She seemed drawn to people with an inner chaos, and inner violence. Jonny wasn’t fully sure what exactly it was that the Doctor looked for whenever she got the itch to take someone, but he guessed it was probably something similar to that fire Ashes was full of.

Out of everyone so far, Ashes had taken their mechanization the best. They rolled with it, finding joy and a new spark in a pile of dry kindling with their newfound immortality. Often literally, taking advantage in order to burn as much as they desired. They didn’t care too much if they got caught in the crosshairs of their own fires, so long as it got the job done and left whatever it was they were burning a charred pile of soot. They seemed to roll with the punches easily, keeping up with the chaos by not letting it smother their fire but instead letting their fire change directions with the wind.

Jonny wasn’t sure how he liked them. But he definitely didn’t hate them. They were fun, if confusing. They carried themself with a confidence, a gravity that seemed to draw everything around them into orbit. They were fascinating. Jonny thought himself lucky, being able to watch as their story unfurled. He supposed that’s what their gravitational pull tends to do. Makes you believe that you’re lucky to know them. Still.

Ashes was filled with a brilliant, burning fire, and Jonny couldn’t wait to watch it consume whatever they desired.

—--

Brian was the one everyone rioted against. There were a number of reasons why everyone didn’t want the Doctor to make him a Mechanism, but most of them agreed that it just seemed… Cruel. Whatever left him floating out in space was cruel, but not letting him rest seemed almost crueler, somehow. But she was insistent.

Brian wasn’t sure how he, personally, felt about his mechanization. It changed from day to day. From mode to mode.

He did hate his morality switch, he knew that for certain. No matter which mode he was on; what ends justified giving him something that could completely rewrite the way he approached things? Something that could completely rewrite how he viewed himself and how he viewed the world? It was wrong to try and control how another views the world, how another experiences the world and its many ups and downs, it does not justify any possible ends.

The switch was always jarring, too. Not that the others seemed to notice, switching it back and forth constantly like a game or just because they didn’t like how he approached a situation. Apparently he only ever stalled for a minute or two at most whenever his morality switch was flipped. It never felt that short, it always seemed to take hours and hours as his body screamed and his mind changed and everything about him was rewritten and recorded over and changed.

Sometimes he tried to justify the morality switch to himself.

He was a very complicated– thing. The technology needed to mechanize him was very complicated and the Doctor didn’t have everything, saying that she had to use some of the technology that they’d found with him to revive him, to keep his heart pumping. Brian didn’t truly remember making any of the machinery or technology that they’d shown him, that they had found with him, but somehow he knew that it was his before they told him. He wasn’t sure any of the machinery he’d made was any more complex than the beautiful works of art that the Doc had ever made, but she used it for his revival so it must’ve been something masterful. And because the mechanics of his brass body were so complicated, then maybe the morality switch was because the remaking of his brain was just as complicated, if not more so because of how confusing and finicky the mind can be. Maybe it was just a necessary evil.

Although Ivy had a similarly mechanical brain to him, and she didn’t have anything equivalent to his switch. She may not be able to emotionally connect to her memories, and she may have terrible nightmares, but she didn’t have a morality switch. Brian had horrible nightmares, too, he’s had them for his entire life (he thinks. He can’t be fully certain, but something in him knows that the nightmares that are always just a bit too real and a bit too close to events that happen or have happened have followed him since long before his second first death. That the nightmares and the songs that follow them are the one sure thing he has from the past he barely remembers).

But she had to have added it for a reason. Because there had to have been a reason she added the dreaded thing when she revived him, reconstructed his body with brass and iron and copper.

He had to believe she wasn’t just being cruel to him for cruelty's sake.

She gave him this new body of brass and iron and copper, this body that always felt just slightly off and slightly wrong and didn’t always register as his when he saw it; she saw whatever his mangled corpse looked like and decided to pity him and give him a third second chance. So she couldn’t have just been… It couldn’t have just been a decision on a whim. It had to have been for a reason.

Though, if he was being honest, as it’s wrong to lie, he was scared of the reason. He was scared that whatever her reason was cruel or to keep him in line–he saw how the other Mechanisms acted often, they didn’t respect authority half the time and they didn’t often like to listen to her. Compared to them, he was like an obedient little pet, because he often kept his issues with everything going on behind tightly closed lips. If asked, he would be honest about how he felt, but everyone very quickly learned not to ask. He hardly ever had any tact in his honesty, after all. At least on Means Justify Ends.

Of course, he truly didn’t think that was the reason for the switch. He truly didn’t believe that her reason for adding it was as malicious or as heartless as the reasons his own mind presented. But it didn’t mean that he wasn’t full of dread at the thought of asking her. And so he didn’t, because he simply didn’t want to know the answer. Perhaps he would, if someone asked and he was on the right mode, but he didn’t want to know. She gave him a gift, something that he should be grateful for. A new chance at life after whatever happened that led to him getting launched into space. He wasn’t going to ask about the caveat that came with it.

—--

The Toy Soldier was odd.

The crew picked it up while Jonny was in jail for Crimes (thanks, Ashes), and it seemed to seek them out all solely to help them. To do things for them and please whoever was nearest.

Jonny thought it was annoying. It was so helpful, it changed its opinion at the drop of a hat, and it just wouldn’t leave. It was always around, even if he tossed it out of the air lock or into deep space.

Jonny thought it was so terribly annoying.

It’s voice, too, it’s voice was awful. It was haunting.

But the story attached to how a wooden thing got such a beautiful, haunting voice was alluring. It was the one reason he was allowing it to be aboard. Even though everyone would get it back if it didn’t come back on its own.

The Toy Soldier was annoying, and odd, and had a hauntingly beautiful voice that was not its own once upon a time. Perhaps that’s why it fit in so well with the Mechanisms and the Doctor.

—--

Tim was the best thing that ever happened to Jonny. In the tunnels, dark and muddy and reeking of blood constantly. He was having an amazing time, deep in the darkness and free to cause unthinkable violence and no one ever once questioned his ‘luck’ during the battles because there wasn’t really any way to see in the deep, vantablack dark of the moon tunnels. And Tim was his light in that darkness, kind to a fault and caring and stuck in a war he should not be in. He had a violent streak of his own, he could be ruthless and merciless and thoughtlessly reckless. And that’s why Jonny was–fascinated? Yes, fascinated–by Tim. Because he was kind and considerate despite everything, he tried so hard to take care of those he considered friends, and yet he could be bloodthirsty and vicious in battle. He showed Jonny unrelenting care and kindness between bouts of misery and bloodshed.

Tim was the best thing that ever happened to Jonny.

And really, Jonny could say the same to Bertie, too, because Bertie had that same endless well of kindness and compassion as Tim, because Bertie was Tim’s unmoving and unchanging anchor. Bertie was the anchor to Tim’s ship weathering the violent storm of war, and Jonny was just a passerby, a viewer. A stowaway, perhaps.

They were probably the best things that ever happened to Jonny.

But then Bertie died.

And something in Tim snapped, something changed. His reckless abandon became even more reckless, his bloodthirsty ways leaving no one spared when he went charging into battle.

It was the most horrific, beautiful scenes of violence and agony and grief Jonny had seen in a while. But it was going to get Tim killed, sooner or later. Tim would not be able to last like this. No mortal could ever last like that; Tim’s beautiful bonfire had turned into a raging forest fire, one that would smother itself out sooner or later.

And smother itself it did, when he was too busy maiming one soldier to notice another lenny lining up their plasma rifle. Of course, by this point Jonny himself had been captured, and had only heard about it second hand, but he could’ve seen something like that coming a mile away.

Of course, what happened next when Tim had been taken into the Kaiser’s throne room, forced to kneel before the man, Jonny admittedly did not foresee. It’s not like he’s Brian, with his weirdly accurate dreams (how does a robot even dream?), he just has a bit of a sense for how things tend to go. And besides, anyone with eyes or ears could tell how this story in particular would end. The set up wasn’t exactly one for that with a happy ending.

But that didn’t mean Jonny expected Tim to blow the moon up.

It reminded him of Ashes, funny enough. Being full of such rage and devastation that it had to go somewhere, and so they light something up and watch it burn. And watch it burn he did, for when Jonny went frantically searching he found Tim with his eyes melted from his skull.

Jonny couldn’t lose him, couldn’t lose the best thing that had happened to him.

He was going to hate him, Jonny knew, but he couldn’t lose him. So he made probably the most rash decision of his immortal life. And so he begged, he begged the Doctor to save him, despite everyone’s distaste at the idea. Despite everyone’s anger, despite Brian’s disappointment, despite Ashes’s ire, despite Ivy’s confusion and Nastya’s dismay. Even Aurora tried to protest against his request. The Toy Soldier didn’t care, it never seemed to have strong opinions. Everyone protested, everyone raged like they had with Brian.

But the Doctor never could pass up a chance to practice her science, could never pass up a chance to try and make her kids happy. Especially with how strained everything had gotten recently. With how the distance seemed to only continue growing no matter how much the Doctor tried to close the gap.

Jonny didn’t care if Tim hated him. He refused to lose the best thing that happened to him.

—--

Raphaella was bleeding, everything around her was covered in blood.

They had taken her wings.

They had taken her wings.

What crime did she commit to deserve that? She hadn’t– she hadn’t done anything, she thought. She was just curious. She just needed to know. That wasn’t a crime, was it?

Of course it was. Why else would they steal her wings.

Everything was covered in a thick layer of dark red blood. She didn’t have a lot of time. She’d bleed out sooner or later, with nothing and no one to properly help her patch up the gaping open wounds. But she could delay it, hopefully, just long enough. Just long enough. And so she did.

She wrapped bandages around her torso as tightly as she could, hoping to stop the bleeding as much as possible, and got to work. She had scattered notes, half finished tests, a stolen prototype and half finished prosthetics to work with, she could do this. She didn’t want to die. So… She wasn’t going to die. Hopefully.

She worked tirelessly, and quickly, because she could feel the blood loss catching up to her and infection setting in from her bound but not cleaned wounds. But she did manage to finish her work, nearly two days after her wings were stolen. She was sluggish and tired and everything was too hot-too cold and the world was spinning. She couldn’t tell if her fatigue was exhaustion or if she really was just her lack of sleep or if it was the infection. She could hear death’s crooning calls, telling her to close her eyes and rest. But she was always a coward.

And the prosthetics, the most advanced piece of technology she’d ever made, were finished, and hopefully they would stave off death for long enough for her to finish her work, would stave it off for her to live a long and fulfilling life.

But first she had to attach the metallic wings to her body before the infection took her.

She didn’t exactly have the right materials to graft the metal wings onto her body properly, but the infection wouldn’t wait for her to get them, and she wouldn’t wait. Couldn’t, she couldn’t wait. She didn’t want to die, and she refused to die.

The process was a blur, and probably took longer than she thought, but her vision was swimming and she was fading in and out of consciousness. When she was finished, she collapsed and everything went dark.

Eventually she woke up, to find the infection cleared from her body, and the wings on her back integrated into her spine a lot better than she was expecting. As she sat up, she tested her wings. She wanted them to move, to open and close, and they did. She could feel, though slightly delayed, but she could feel it and they did what she wanted them to do.

She managed to escape death. Death hasn’t taken her yet.

She grinned, watching as her new prosthetic wings followed the commands she sent through her brain.

She had some science to do, with these new wings of hers.

—--

Byron sobbed, choking as he cried. The rain poured, acid burning his skin as he tried to drag himself to somewhere more covered.

He wanted Thea. He wanted Zeze. Anyone. Anyone. Everything hurt and his skin burned to the touch and his arm– gods his arm… He didn’t want this. This wasn’t ever what he wanted. This wasn’t ever what was supposed to happen.

The Music was so loud.

The Music almost drowned out the pounding and hissing of the rain, drowning out his thoughts of pain and sadness and grief. But by now Byron was skilled at ignoring the Music, keeping it confined to the back of his head.

Dorothea was always so much better at drowning out the Music for him, though. She and Zeze would sing or play an instrument, and their songs were always so much easier to use to drown out the Sounds of the Music that always haunted him, ever since he was young and small. Sometimes he could drown it out himself but his arm was– but he couldn’t play his violin like this. How would he even get it here? In the middle of a battlefield, long since destroyed and abandoned because everyone was supposed to be dead.

Gods, everyone was dead.

Byron dry heaved, his stomach long since emptied of any of its minimal contents. Everyone’s dead and it was all his fault, everything was all his fault.

His arm was crushed and he was going to die just like everyone else and he’d deserve it because this was all his fault. He was the one who planned their attack, he was the one who led the charge despite what everyone else told him. Charging first– with the Music, his impulsivity grasping him in its claws yet again, his hubris guiding his actions.

But by the gods, was he selfish.

He had to cut off his arm, his mangled, infected, crushed arm. He’d die if he left it there. He’d die if he cut it off. He doesn’t know how to make a proper tourniquet. He doesn’t know how to perform an amputation. The Music would tell him, whisper sweet nothings in whistles and flutes and harps, but the Music lies. It has before. Either way, he’d die here, with his guilt and the memories of his family, and his hubris, and the consequences of his own actions.

It’s what he deserved.

But he was selfish. He was afraid and he didn’t want to die.

He didn’t want to die.

But the Music was loud, and it was playing a song he’d heard many times before. He heard it with Zeze, he heard it with Dorothea, he’d heard it before the battle shifted ties.

He was going to die here.

He didn’t want to die. The wind blew, and acid rain sprayed into the wounds of his horrid and dangling arm, causing him to screech in pain. Or, well, almost screech in pain. Nothing more than a wheezey gasp escaped his mouth as pain raced through his body. The Music was so, so loud.

Byron finally dragged himself under one of the trees that was resistant to the rain pouring from the sky. A smaller mech was damaged and destroyed, but safe from the corrosive nature of the rain, under the same tree as him.

The Music was so loud and Byron didn’t want to die.

He had a choice to make.

The mecha’s arm was about the right size, it wasn’t horribly damaged, and it would be able to respond to his nervous system. It would be good enough for now.

Byron’s vision swam as he crawled closer to the mecha, tugging its arm free from its own mutilated body. The Music was so loud. He wasn’t fully present as he grabbed one of the mechas weapons, a sword that was long and sharp and the best he could use in this instance. With the sword accessible, Byron tore up his uniform jacket, and used the tears to tie off his arm to hopefully prevent himself from bleeding out.

The Music swelled, screaming and overlapping as if rushing to be the first to witness his selfishness and stupidity.

Byron grabbed the sword and leveled it to where his damaged arm was less damaged, and as the Music screeched and yelled and shouted, and as his vision blurred and everything started blurring into nothing but emptiness, Byron cut off his arm.

He dropped the sword, biting his tongue so hard he could taste blood as he reached for the mech’s arm. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to die.

He wasn’t going to die today.

And the Music began to change.

And Byron collapsed as he grasped onto the arm of the mecha.

And Byron von Raum died there on that rainy, blood-spattered day.

And Marius von Raum awoke from the carnage of that rainy, blood-spattered day.

[lyriumrain]

I've found I have this weird/bad... habit. That I am trying to work through.

I've noticed I won't do anything if someone else is home. To clarify, I mean that if I wanted to cook something, sew something, draw - anything really - it takes a great deal of mental effort to make myself do things when other people are home. 🤔

I had this problem when living with my parents, and I assumed it was because I felt so uncomfortable being around them (I do love them, but we are so incompatible as human beings that it made living with them lowkey traumatising, esp as I got olderl).

But now after about a year of living in this new place with my roommates I've noticed I still have this problem. I have two roommates, my friend and her fiance (who i would also call a friend at this stage, he's chill). Her fiance works from home two days a week, and I've caught myself stagnating again. I will avoid leaving my room, I won't do any of the things I'd planned - or it'll take me hours to do something simple. They don't make me feel uncomfortable. I've actually been able to relax since moving in with them. I'm not constantly on alert.

But there is some sort of blockage happening in my brain. Part of it is simple - I do just prefer being alone. I can be myself when I'm alone, without worrying that I'm annoying someone. But it's not just that, I feel like there's something else happening and idk what. Maybe I'm still stuck in that mindset of avoiding common areas = safe ? 🤔😭