#dead labour process

[gianttankeh]

Travis Johns / Marlo De Lara / Ali Robertson / Dead Labour Process at Reid Concert Hall, Edinburgh: 29/5/23.

Give Monday the slap it deserves with a quadruple-headed bill of real OUT sounds by a visiting artist, a new resident artist, a long-serving local artist and a freshly reanimated artist in a university building that none of them have ever played at before. You can find out more about this show and make a donation for tickets here.

[hinamie]

unconditionally

[timmydraker]

Thinking about Vampire Tim AU and him saving Bruce via turning.

None of the Drakes are actually Vampires, at least not permanently. It was a very strange instance that occurred out of pure chance and coincidence.

A pregnant Janet Drake in a foreign country having a run in with a starving vampire rouge that bite her just a few days before she gave birth.

Instead of the curse spreading to her, the labour of her child pushed and the spreading of lifeform spread to her baby as it was born. The child looked healthy, had no inhuman features, and they assumed her being so sick was simply the fact she was about to give birth.

Tim doesn’t realise what he is for a while purely because his parents are vegan and, until he was seven and had some beef from a classmates lunch, hadn’t had any blood enter his mouth.

Having to teach himself everything, Tim learned to manage both his hunger and abilities as quickly as he could. He studied history and mythos and did several test to figure out the limits to what he needed and could do.

He learnt that he could heal via blood, that he could go without air for days, and that his hearing was normal though his sense of smell was enough to distinguish blood types.

He learn that he could go two weeks without blood before it became a problem, but if he pushed it past three weeks he would start to experience literally decay.

Tim disconcerted his saving grace was that the hunger wasn’t as uncontrollable as people made it out to be in movies and books. At most, it was just like normal human hunger or thirst, and he was aware there was a huge variable in him being raised rather poorly.

He keeps it hidden for years, but then when he’s nineteen Bruce dies.

Not Batman, Bruce.

They got in a car crash of all things, the other drive running after they drove them off the road on the extremely rare instance that Alfred wasn’t driving.

Tim watched the tree branch in his foster father’s chest for several minutes as he thought about his options. Bruce was dead upon impact, gone with only the last wisps of life hanging to him.

Bruce was a father.

Batman was needed.

Even though it would out what he was, Tim forced his several sharp teeth out, all needle sharp and long enough his jaw had to unhinge slightly, and bit into his own wrist. The fangs, an inch long each, dug into his skin painfully before moving to dig into each of Bruce’s wrist and then finally his neck.

Tim smeared the blood into all three wounds and then squeezed as much as he could into Bruce’s mouth.

He had no idea how he knew what to do, trusting the instinct the curse seemed to just… give him.

When Bruce begins to breath again, Clark finally shows up. It’s been a total of eleven minutes and Tim only realises that the other took so long because he had been off planet, yet he is grateful because if he had been there…

Tim instructs Clark on how to cover up the scene, removing the cars and getting Bruce to the cave.

Dick is freaking out, worrying over his brothers ripped clothes and Bruce’s clear injuries, but Tim is quiet.

He takes Bruce’s medical cot and leads them both into a containment cell and then seals it, implementing his own lock as well as one of Bruce’s so no one can open it. He can hear someone banging on the glass a few times but he ignores it to stand over his father’s side and wait for him to wake up.

Naturally, when the older man does he’s panicked and screening Tim’s name.

Tim smiles at him sadly before taking hold of his hand, which Bruce immediately process as wrong.

“Why aren’t I dead?”

Smile growing sadder before fading to an almost formal look, Tim squeezed his hand before pulling away.

“I know you’ve had your suspicions and I thank you for trusting me regardless, but you are right. I’m not human Bruce, and now… you aren’t either.”

He lets the worlds settle for just a moment before continuing, knowing the other will want all the information he can. They’re both so similar in that way.

“I was born a vampire, I will always be a vampire. I will explain that all to you soon, but what you need to know is this: you do not need to drink human blood, you will not loose control over your thirst if you allow me to train you, and yes I had no choice. Gotham needs Batman and I-… I need my father. I will not apologise for my selfishness, but I am sorry you have to be like me.”

Bruce is quiet but he doesn’t move to kick Tim out, nor does he shout at him or cry in betrayal.

He’s surprised, but not more than Tim had ever seen before.

It’s almost an hour of silence between them before Bruce speaks again, “You… you are actually nineteen?”

Tim scoffs and Bruce glares, which makes Tim smile more, “I am. My body will age until around twenty five, at least that’s my hypothesis. If you are turned you stay the age you were, but I was born.”

Bruce nods and after a moment reaches out for his son’s hand.

Another silence before he squeezes it, “Have you told the others about… this change?”

Tim winces, “I tried to keep us separated because I knew you would worry for hurting someone, but I knew Damian would break in if he couldn’t listen so…”

“Ah. Understood.”

Then, in another rare instance that Tim thought he wouldn’t see for at least another few years, Bruce opens his arms to him for a hug.

Naturally, Tim crumbles into his father’s arms and sobs louder than a war drum.

Bruce kisses his head and holds him tight, a vampire embrace.

[luxthestrange]

Incorrect quotes#958 Sol birthed luke-

Solo: I love it when people are like "Aww you look like your dad!~"OBVIOUSLY I LOOK LIKE LUKE-HE IS MY SON!!!

Mc, Sim & Barb*Giggling and chuckling at their boyfriend *

Solo*Showing pictures of luke* THERE WAS NO ADOPTION PROCESS HERE I BIRTHED THEM-WE HAVE THE SAME DNA THEY TOOK MY BONE MARROW OR WHATEVER!?!

Solo:100% ME and you may be thinking~

"Oh that's just a guardianship-"

Solo*Dead-serious stare"*I WENT INTO LABOUR-

Part 2 of:

[dailyadventureprompts]

Dungeon: Grandfather's Hungering Maw

Said to have been carved by an exiled dwarven king after his name and ignominious deeds were stricken from the records of his clan, this brooding edifice contains a darkness far deeper than any normal glacial cave.

The dungeon's name comes from a settlement in the foothills, with a mostly human population ignorant of the monument's dwarven origins. In their myths the face is infact that of a great giant, tricked by the folkhero founder of their village into staying very, very still while he was served a great feast, growing so spoiled and indolent that he was eventually buried by the mountain snow and froze solid. A recent series of avalanches that've buried paths and even destroyed homesteads have put it into people's heads that grandfather might be waking up.

Adventure Hooks:

A merchant caravan the party is riding along with takes a detour up into the highlands, following rumours of a village that's paying a premium for foodstuffs of late. Upon arrival they're strongarmed out of their cargo by a crowd of armed villagers, who heap the provisions on an overburned yak cart set to depart up the mountain on the next day. Fear of the giant has made some of the villagers turn into a panicked mob, emptying the granaries and raiding their neighbour's larders to supply ever larger and hastier "tribute" runs up to the mountain's mouth. Food is growing scarce in the village, and those with the foresight to worry about winter provisions dare not speak up: An old woman was accidentally killed trying to fend off the toughs uprooting her garden, and her still warm body was piled into the yak cart next to her unripe rutabagas.

Seeking the power of her infamous ancestor, a disfavoured daughter of the dwarven throne has ventured to the Maw with a group of sellswords in tow in the hopes of discovering the means of making herself queen. Down into the mountain's gullet they've found a great labyrinth, hewn over centuries by the still shuffling corpse of the nameless king, unable to fully rest until he has constructed a tomb worthy of his hubris. The would be ruler and her entourage are eating well thanks to the unsuspecting villagers' food deliveries, and have a few agents in town helping the process along while they continue their delve.

There's more than a stone worn skeleton and a few fortune hunters inhabiting the depths. A millennia ago Ahlkenahl the Vanquisher was a feared demon of war, thought invincible before the dwarven king forged a ring with the fiend's true name inscribed upon it and forced the Vanquisher to pledge an oath of eternal servitude. Driven into exile along with his mortal captor, Ahlkenahl has resentfully laboured alongside the king as he descended into witless undeath, even centuries after the ring was lost somewhere in the tomb along with the chipped fingerbone it rested on. The demon's occasional demolition filled bouts of rage cause the avalanches on the mountain's exterior, and they've only grown more frequent as he's attempted to stop the Heir and her underlings from finding the ring.

It's a three way race between the players, the dwarven heir, and the fiend to see who can find the ring first, having to not only battle eachother, but subterranean monsters, collapsing tunnels, and freezing glacier caverns along the way. Of course Ahlkenahl doesn't play fair, as the fiend can revive any body that finds its way into the Hungering Maw (such as dead villagers loaded on the Yak cart or slain sellswords) into undead minions, growing in strength as the situation becomes more desperate. The fiend can even send the undead down into the valley to do his bidding, chasing after whichever group managed to get the ring first or even go on a murder-filled supply run to bring back more bodies.

Simply getting the ring isn't enough to control Ahlhenahl, as the war-demon's true name is written in an infernal script that must be researched before it can be understood and spoken aloud. This gives the party a chance to catch up if the heir makes it out of the labyrinth with the prize and vice versa. It likewise gives Ahlkenahl's undead minions time to become a real threat both in number and as he deliberately creates more fearsome versions.

The Vanquisher can freely communicate with anyone holding the ring, an ability originally intended to allow the exiled king to command his bound demon in the field which now allows Ahlkenahl to whisper temptation into the ear of whoever holds it. Think of what he could do for them if they let him out of the labyrinth, the enemies he could slay, the kingdom he could carve on their behalf. Sure it would mean unleashing a walking massacre on the landscape but what's a little carnage between pactmates?

Art1 Art2

[whencyclopedia]

Lindow Man

The Lindow Man (officially Lindow III) is the top half of a male body, found preserved in a peat bog in Cheshire, England.

The peat bogs at Lindow Moss date back to the last ice age and were formed by holes of melting ice; they are now a tenth of their original size. Bogs often lead to the preservation of organic materials, particularly human remains, being acidic, cold, and devoid of oxygen. The brown colour of the skin, leathery texture, and appearance of human remains preserved in a bog are due to a type of moss that grows in bogs and when dead, lets out a substance that causes a tanning process.

During 1980s CE a series of finds were made at Lindow Moss by workers at a peat shredding mill (peat was then being harvested as fuel). These discoveries were small parts of the human anatomy, for example, a head known as the Lindow Woman and several limbs of other individuals. The most famous, largest, and important of these discoveries is the top half of a male body (the bottom half possibly lost when a digger cut up the bog) found in the summer of 1984 CE and called the Lindow Man. What is noticeable about this example and significant for study is that the hair, skin, and several of his integral organs were preserved. The body and surrounding section of peat were removed whole and taken away for study by a team led by British Museum scientists. Once safe in a laboratory it was the focus of analysis and has caused a great deal of excitement, producing an unprecedented investigation.

The beard, sideburns, and moustache made it instantly clear that the body was male. By calculating the length of his upper arm bone, it was estimated that he would have been between 1.68 m and 1.73 m tall. He was also well built, weighing around 64 kg. He was radiocarbon dated to between 2 BCE and 119 CE and was about 25 years old at the time of death. He was unclothed, apart from a fox fur armband. Using scanning electron microscopy researchers found that his hair and beard had been trimmed with a pair of scissors or shears. It is thought that he did not do any rough work or hard labour, based on his nails which were all manicured. Although the acid in the bog had removed all of the enamel from his teeth, there were no visible cavities, and what was left looked normal. Overall he appears to have been fairly healthy, but had slight osteoarthritis and an infestation of parasitic worms. It has even been possible to discover his blood group, O. Food residue discovered in his upper alimentary tract shows that his last meal was a griddle cake made from wheat and barley.

The reasons and cause of death have caused debate between scholars. There are signs of two blows to the top of the head with a heavy and bladed weapon and also a knife wound to the throat. There is also evidence for a blow to the back, by a broken rib. He had a thin cord around his neck which may have been used to strangle and break his neck, but some have argued that it was simply a necklace, because it is knotted in a decorative manner. Once dead he was placed face down in the bog. This horrific death may have been a ritual killing, a human sacrifice carried out, perhaps by the Druids. Or he could have been executed as a criminal or murdered by thieves, or if he was someone of stature, by his enemies. It is almost impossible to know for sure why he died, but the Lindow Man has provided valuable information and been subjected to more tests than any other ancient human being.

He was conserved by immersing him in a mixture of polyethylene glycol to prevent shrinking and then wrapped in cling film, frozen, and then finally freeze-dried. He is now on display in the British Museum.

Continue reading...

[clarionglass]

so i have been bitten by the sam reich!master bug courtesy of some phenomenal art by @northernfireart and uh. as is too often the case i had to write something otherwise if i didn't get it out of my brain i would go absolutely insane

(there may be more vignettes coming if i have ideas..... there are definitely other episodes i'd like to give the Treatment to, plus with the new dw series coming out on the weekend i may have ideas for how to incorporate the dw gang! however, i promise neither more writing or no more writing. that said, this was a lot of fun so there'll probably be more at some stage :D )

this has full spoilers for the game changer ep "escape the greenroom", but hey that's been out for a while now so,,,, if you haven't seen it i'd highly recommend it as an episode!

so, without further ado:

--

Samuel Dalton was a complete fiction, of course, but that didn't mean that when Sam Reich snuck back upstairs to get tied up in the “out of order” bathroom, the Sam that remained on the monitor, laughing at the contestants, was a pre-recording. And if Brennan, Siobhan and Lou had snorted at the idea of a time-travelling evil magician great-grandfather (for good reason), going in with the actual truth of the matter would have sounded like jumping the shark.

It sounded bizarre, but the time travel bit was the only part about his new partner in crime that was confirmably real. Admittedly, the jury was still out on “evil”—he gave off a weird vibe at times, but so far, no lines had been crossed, and it had all been funny as hell—so for now, Sam was willing to roll with it. But perhaps most surprisingly, there wasn’t even the possibility of blood relation between Samuel Dalton Reich and the guy who had shown up out of the blue one day with his exact face and a plan to really fuck around with things on Game Changer.

Yeah, the whole alien thing had really ruled out that particular prospect.

There had been various bits and pieces of confirmation that this guy wasn’t human through the time Sam had known him, but the final nail in the coffin for that one was when his doppelganger had looked him dead in the eye and tried on one of the heart rate monitors—sorry, “range extenders”—for As a Cucumber. The damn thing had literally sparked up, then died completely. Trying to process input from two separate heartbeats at once would do that, apparently. 

His doppelganger was a Time Lord, or so he had nonchalantly said one afternoon in casual conversation, though Sam still wasn’t sure if that one was a joke or not. It was hard to tell, sometimes, because he said the wildest things with the straightest face, and so far, most of them had turned out to be one hundred percent certifiably true. The time travel, the space travel, even the changing faces thing—it sounded objectively insane, but the proof was undeniable. 

There were some notable exceptions, though. Saying he’d been trapped for aeons inside Neil Patrick Harris’s gold tooth went just that bit too far to be believable, though Sam did appreciate his double’s slightly warped sense of humour.

It was that offbeat line of thinking that lent itself well to game design, as it turned out. He had a knack for coming up with ideas for Game Changer episodes, albeit with the occasional suggestion that went way beyond the bounds of good taste, and, as in the case of Escape the Greenroom, had devised some blinding twists on concepts Sam had already half-formed. The letter puzzle unlocking the secret door? It was perfect.

Understandably, Sam’s doppelganger had wanted to observe the fruits of their labours in real time, rather than watching the recording later. It happened, sometimes, particularly when it was one of his ideas that had made it through to the episode list—they’d swap places for a session, with nobody being any the wiser. Watching those edits back always felt a bit weird—it was uncanny how flawless the mimicry was—but hey, the guy was right. It was always fun.

Escape the Greenroom, specifically, with its “Samuel Dalton” conceit, provided them with a unique opportunity. Instead of swapping out the camera feed for a recording when the cast piled into the tiny secret room behind the wall, as per the original plan to get Sam in position to be discovered in the bathroom, they could just swap out the people. Sam would go upstairs, and his double would take his place at the podium, ducking out of sight when everyone came back to the main stage to “defuse the bomb”.

Sam was keen—hell, if their situations had been reversed, he’d want to be there to watch, too—but caution raised a flag. “You don’t think it’s too risky?” he’d asked when the subject was first raised. “Both of us being in the same place?”

His doppelganger had shrugged one shoulder with supreme unconcern. “The crew won't notice.”

At the time, Sam had shot him a sceptical look, but right now, Sam-Reich-in-a-purple-tie and Sam-Reich-in-an-orange-tie were standing backstage post-record, clearly visible and and calmly chatting, and not a single member of the crew had given them so much as a second glance. 

…Hardly even a first glance, come to think about it. If anyone looked over their way, their eyes seemed to… not exactly go through them, but slide over the two of them like water. He was tempted to wave to Nico or Ash or someone, just out of pure curiosity, but something in the back of his mind told him that wouldn’t be the world’s greatest idea. He had a funny feeling he wouldn’t like to see what would happen next.

(He’d given the prop bomb back to the crew once the cameras stopped rolling, and though it looked the same as the one he remembered from before he’d headed upstairs, it felt different in his hands. Heavier, more… serious, somehow. He was sure nothing would have happened—but at the same time, he was suddenly very glad that the cast had cut the correct wire with no less than a minute fifteen to go.)

(The jury was still out on evil, after all.)

“Worth coming in for?” he asked instead.

“Absolutely,” his double replied with relish. “Locking those three in a small room for an hour? Brilliant, fantastic. Inspired. It was absolute chaos.”

“Have you seen up there?” Sam asked, a smile starting to spread across his face. “They messed up the set real bad.”

His doppelganger smirked at him. “You know it took literally two seconds from you telling them to escape the greenroom for Lou to smash that guitar?”

Sam shook his head. “Oh my god. Yeah, they were stressed.” 

“Mmm. Some real panic in that room,” his doppelganger agreed, and Sam chose to ignore the faint note of satisfaction in his voice.

He shifted his weight, settling back to lean against the table behind the set, in the exact instant his double decided to do the same thing. It really was freaky how similar they were, down to the smallest mannerism—like looking in a mirror, only weirder, because the face that looked back at him was truly his own face, not mirror-reversed. Even now, it still caught Sam off guard from time to time, but at least it had faded into a more comfortable kind of strange. He had an exact lookalike who was an actual time-travelling alien. Cool. Doesn’t everyone?

The pair shared a companionable silence for a few moments, before a thought Sam had been turning over for a while rose to the top of his mind. He shifted again, this time on his own, and he felt his double’s regard swing up to fix on him like a magnet. 

“Okay, real talk,” he started, and his doppelganger frowned back in an approximation of confused innocence. “What’s all this for?”

“Who says it has to be for anything? Aren't we just having fun?”

Sam hummed, considering. “Yeah. No, I'd believe that, if I didn't sometimes walk into production meetings and find out I'd apparently been very specific about the people I wanted for certain episodes.”

“Point for Sam,” his doppelganger acknowledged with a grin. “You got me. Wasn’t hard to make a few phone calls on our joint behalf.”

“Yeah, but why?” Sam pressed. “I mean, Siobhan, Brennan and Lou are always great comedy value when you put them together, and it was awesome to have them for this, but I get the feeling you’re thinking of something other than making good content.”

“Who, me?”

With that, his double gave him a look of such overdone pantomime innocence that Sam suddenly and thoroughly understood why, not half an hour earlier, Brennan had very seriously threatened to push him down the stairs. 

He rolled his eyes, which earned him a smirk for his troubles.

Dropping the act, his doppelganger continued. “I’m expecting an… old friend, I guess, to show up at some point, and—well, I’d like to put on a really special show for them. I thought it would be a good opportunity to try a few things out, you know?”

Ominous pause aside, that was actually kind of sweet. Sweeter than he’d been expecting, that’s for sure—he was half anticipating the revelation that he and his cast were subjects in some weird experiment. Hey, that still couldn’t fully be ruled out, but still.

“Okay,” he acquiesced. “Well… just let me know, next time? Before you start ordering in my cast like takeout?”

“Who says they’re your cast?” his double shot back with a twinkle in his eye, and Sam snorted.

“Fine. Our cast, then. But seriously, let me know?”

His doppelganger nodded, which, if not quite fully convincing, was good enough. 

“Oh, and do you know when your friend might be arriving?” Sam asked. “Because if you wanted to plan something, we can—”

“I don’t know,” his doppelganger interrupted. “So yeah, we’ll have to move fast when they do get here. But I’ve got it under control.”

He broke off, then shot Sam a mischievous grin. “In the meantime, though, I’ve had this fun thought about time loops…”

[rentsturner]

The Jeweller’s Hands - AT

Professor!Alex Turner x reader

Warnings: smut, unprotected sex, restraints, sub space, gags, edging, teasing, teacher!student relationship (but they met before that), aftercare, pet names

a/n: this is the dirtiest thing I’ve ever written and it’s not even that smutty, it’s mostly aftercare and fluff with a healthy dose of subspace. this was written for my bestie @martinipoliz . don’t like it - don’t read it

It had been a long night - a very long night.

Teasing Alex while he was teaching your class had not been your best idea, not by a long shot. The expression on his face as he watched you smirk at him from your desk was enough to turn your insides to ice. But you hadn’t stopped with some harmless flirting, no, you were feeling a little braver than that. When he returned your essay, your hand grazed along his, giving him doe eyes as he towered over your sitting form. Then, to top it all off, you whispered ‘Was I a good girl, sir?’

It was just quiet enough to pass over the heads of the other students, but your seductive phrase went straight to Alex’s head and he stopped dead still next to you, his brain trying to process if you’d really just had the guts to say that outloud. When you fluttered your eyelashes at him, almost comically, you heard the lowest, quietest growl slip out of Alex’s mouth. He was not happy, not at all. These little flirtations may seem playful, but to Alex, your teacher, your boyfriend, this was very much not allowed. You were in serious trouble.

So that’s how you ended up spread eagled across his king-sized bed, arms tied to the bedposts by Alex’s various silk ties, and Alex between your legs, his hips pistoning into yours as he chased his own release. You’d finally been allowed to come, after multiple rounds of edging and teasing - ‘Don’t give what you can’t take, princess. You tease me, I’ll fucking tease you.’

Now your mind was fuzzy and warm as the euphoria of your orgasm ebbed away, the feeling of Alex’s damp skin rubbing against yours as he thrust into you becoming a little much, but somewhere in the back of your mind, you knew it wouldn’t be long now, perhaps from the laboured groans emanating from his chest, the way his hands were clawing at your thighs in a way that was sure to leave bruises, the beads of sweat dripping from his brow onto yours. Your jaw was beginning to ache from the spider gag firmly holding your mouth open and you were desperate to wrap your arms around Alex, the floating feeling in your head bringing with it a craving for skin to skin contact.

Finally, you felt the warm release of Alex’s seed deep inside you, felt the weight of him as he collapsed onto your chest, panting as he caught his breath. His unruly hair tickled your nose a little, causing you to whimper as best as you could around the unyielding gag.

Alex heard you though, lifting his head up to look into your glazed over eyes, recognising that it was too much for you now and knowing exactly needed.

‘So good for me, baby, eh? Took your punishment so well, such a good girl.’ he murmured between pants as his fingers gently undid the strap of the gag, slowly removing it from your mouth as you whined in discomfort.

‘There we go, princess, I’m gonna pull out now as well, ok?’

But you shook your head frantically before he could push himself up off your chest, the need to wrap your arms around him becoming unbearable. The words wouldn’t come out, instead another desperate whine slipped from your mouth. It was a good job Alex knew you well.

‘Arms first? That’s fine, baby, here you go.’ He untied the silk restraints with ease, rubbing your wrists gently with his fingers, before slowly massaging your aching jaw.

‘Better?’

You nodded as you wrapped your arms around his frame, dragging your nails up his sweaty back, pulling on the dark locks of hair that were beginning to curl around his ears, before running a thumb over his cheekbone. Alex relaxed slightly as he saw a little more focus come back into your eyes, the skin to skin contact obviously easing your previous discomfort.

‘’S okay, baby, am right here, yeah?’

You nodded again into his chest, inhaling his scent - sweat, sex and cigarettes. It went straight to your head, like your own personal dose of heroin. There was silence for a few minutes as you relaxed into Alex’s arms. He pressed a chaste kiss to your hairline, an apology, before he adjusted himself slightly, his now soft cock slipping out of your folds with a faint pop. You winced at the empty sensation, the fuzziness still crowding your head a little.

‘Need to clean up, love, I’ll be ten seconds, promise.’

You rolled into the duvet, curling up as you heard Alex’s retreating footsteps. He appeared again a few seconds later with a warm washcloth and sat on the end of the bed.

‘Open your legs, sweetheart.’

You whined and shook your head into the duvet. You were tired and you wanted to sleep and you wanted Al’s warm body back next to yours.

‘Come on, princess, I need to clean you up. The quicker we do this, the quicker we can go to sleep, ok? I know you’re tired.’

You shook your head once again, but Alex stroked along your thigh slowly, calming you a little, and you lifted your head to look at him with blurry eyes.

He smiled at you, his cheeks still a little pink from exertion, his hair messy and falling into his eyes. ‘For me, princess? Please?’

A little nudge on the inside of your thigh was enough to persuade you and you whined softly as the cloth brushed against your sensitive cunt, but it was over quickly, Alex stroking your thigh the whole time.

‘All done. Such a good girl.’ he cooed into your ear, pressing his hand to your back to pull you into his chest once again.

He threw the cloth away, grabbing your pyjamas from under the pillow and helping you into them with steady hands, whispering praises whenever you seemed a little fragile. He tugged on a fresh pair of boxers before settling into the bed, tucked up behind you so his chest was pressed against your back, his face buried in your hair, legs tangled together under the covers. The huff of his breath against your hair helped to ground you, almost as if he was blowing away the cotton wool in your head.

After a while, you turned to face Alex.

‘Back with me, princess?’

You murmured a small ‘yes’, trying to stifle a yawn at the same time. He chuckled and you felt the vibrations in his chest.

‘Was it alright? Didn’t go too hard on you, did I?’

‘No, Al, I loved it. I’m just knackered now, that’s all.’

‘That’s when I know I’ve done a good job.’ Alex chuckled again and pressed a kiss to your forehead.

‘You’re hot when you’re angry, y’know?’ You smirked up at him.

‘Yeah well, that’s what happens when you tease me while I’m trying to teach.’

Your smirk grew even wider at this but Alex knew exactly what you were thinking.

‘Uh-uh, don’t you dare do it again. Did I not just teach you that lesson?’

——————————————————————————

Thanks for reading! Hope yous enjoyed

[walking-loather]

"liberals want abortion at 9 months!"

At nine months they don't "abort" the baby, they induce labour; they deliver it. If the infant dies, it was either already dead in the womb, or it was dying.

"liberals want late term abortions"

Let me make one thing very clear. If an abortion is happening at 7 months, 8 months, 9 months it is because something has gone catastrophically wrong with the pregnancy. Do you think women who carry a baby for more than half a year decide on a whim they don't want their child anymore? Because that's what it is at that point to them: a child.

Late term pregnancy complications are treated in two ways. They either induce labour to remove the baby from the mother -- at which point it is born, legally considered a living person, and therefore illegal to kill (infanticide) OR they abort the fetus. Why do they abort? Because the fetus is dead.

If you need an abortion late term, the fetus is dead. If the fetus is dying, they do not abort, they deliver the baby. That's what happens. If the baby dies after being removed from the mother, or in the process of being removed from the mother, it was already going to die. It is a stillbirth. If it dies hours or days later, it is a tragedy.

You abort a late term fetus because it is dead. You abort a late term fetus because it has catastrophic developmental abnormalities. You abort a late term fetus because it is killing the mother.

Abortions only occur when there is no other option. At that point in development -- if the baby is dying in the womb or putting the mother's life at risk -- they opt to do an emergency c-section instead.

Every woman who needs a late term abortion WANTED her baby. She didn't carry that pregnancy into her third trimester without imagining that child in her arms. These are families who have built cribs, bought clothes, and picked names. Imagine going through the worst experience of your life -- losing your child -- only to then find out your life is hanging in the balance because doctors cannot remove a baby from your body; a baby that is already dead or soon to be. Imagine the grief being compounded by a life threatening medical emergency.

It makes me furious when conservatives deliberately spread misinformation about what abortion looks like in the third trimester. Doctors will not abort unless there is no other option, they will just deliver the baby. This is not a case of women deciding to maliciously kill their children for the fun of it, and to insinuate such is disgusting.

-----------------------------------------------

Additional context bc tumblr is a hellfire and I know someone is going to read my statements in bad faith: I am giving my opinion in black and white terms. There is obviously nuance in regards to certain things I say, but generalisations in this instance is more impactful. I care about describing the experience of the overwhelming majority, rather than strategically using my words in order to provide a perfect opinion that applies in 100% of all cases all the time. No one desires to have a late term abortion. No one plans on having a late term abortion. If a woman had the ability to terminate a pregnancy she didn't want -- as her right should be -- then no woman would carry a fetus into the third trimester only to then decide she doesn't want to anymore. When women have the right to choose, they don't choose late term abortion for the hell of it.

However, I am also of the opinion that a woman should be able to change her mind about being pregnant at literally any point during her pregnancy. I wholeheartedly support a woman's right to choose, no matter what. No. Matter. What. But please use Occam's Razor. Which is more likely? That she has literally no other option than to abort late term, or that she suddenly decides she doesn't want a baby anymore at the 11th hour? Please exercise critical thinking.

I also deliberately chose to use the word woman. Once again, I'm focusing on what is the case for the overwhelming majority rather than trying to use less impactful language to be perfectly accurate 100% of the time. Abortions are only performed on female-bodied people, and ~98-99% of the time, people with that anatomy identify as women. Talking about it as a gender neutral issue obscures the misogyny and sexism that underpins the matter. Conservatives don't want women to have the right to choose because they have reductive gender values and believe that women should be pregnant for a multitude of reasons, but the most maddening of which stems from the belief that childbirth is divine retribution for Eve sinning against god. They don't believe women should have rights or autonomy because they are patriarchal and their sexist ideology demands women be baby makers. They want women to be property, and as long as they desire to assert reproductive control over women, abortion is a women's rights issue.

[cosycafune]

DON’T YOU SEE?

you’re scared, terrified. no matter where you go, ryomen sukuna’s always capable of finding you. you curl, hiding within every corner — but he discovers every limb of you. you long to run, but outrunning someone so powerful refrains from doing you any wonders. don’t you see? why won’t you see?

royalty sukuna x cursed user y/n. book acts: eventually smut, ptsd, terror, abuse, violence, murder, hysteria, breakdowns, distraction and more.

this is simply a small teaser. epilogue: fate’s fool. chapter 0.5.

Thunder etches upon your tainted environment. Your limbs are quivering with shock, dazed and heavy with blasphemous sins. There’s not a fragment of purity that reigns upon you, all of that is stored within the perished body at your nude feet.

Everything’s an ample, twisted sick mess — in the way your eyes exhibit fear, confusion and unshakable distraught. Nothing’s bound to measure up anymore, as you’re left with the choice of eternal punishment or a swift death.

You’ve slaughtered Lord Sukuna’s favourite royal advisor, all because he’s fingers longed to grasp upon you. You, someone who Lord Sukuna deemed as an innocent, untouchable muse — bound to be protected until the end of time lays.

However, you’re tarnished. Your ivory dress’ smeared with anchors of the wailing dead man’s blood. The blood’s taunting your haphazourdly self, glancing down at him — your fingers licked upon with fear for the first time.

Desperately, your eyes are abnormally wide — deathly hope flooding your pounding ears. All you could process is the light wisps of sound, the laughing thunder and the sound of your creeping demise.

Every sick act’s fated to fall in place, but you’re not fate’s fool today.

“Lord Sukuna’s going to murder me, the person he says is the face of innocence,” Frowning, flinching at the intensifying thunder, you mindlessly whisper.

“I was supposed to be his wife, freed of any sins for him,” Silently shrieking, impatient at the lifeless dead body, your heart swirls as your hoarse words fall.

“But now, the end of my reign is here,” Speaking with determined anger, you harshly kick Sukuna’s advisor’s defenseless body — your anger ruling the submissive thunder.

Unwilling to fathom your image being tainted by the sin of man, you continue to kick the man. Kick him for attempting to steal away your innocence, longing to romance you — only to threaten you with planned death.

The young man was keen on you being his own, accustoming to his unknown home and becoming his wife. Becoming a labour machine, delivering his children and raising them until they’re capable of individualism. Not once did you long to mould into his unworthy standard, you’re more than that.

You were.

“I fucking hate you, you greedy pig,” Stirred with disdain, you glance down at your bloody nightgown with a grin — feeling an ounce of sickly freedom.

“I’ve got to leave now or Lord Sukuna’s going to punish me, making me his eternal servant,” Fearful of the idea, you glance at the cooling thunder — looking outside towards the escapable garden.

After all, Sukuna gifted you the second best room — in hopes you one day become his betrothal. A betrothal he was bound to elope when you both turn twenty-one, but you had to leave now. There’s no future in a place that would discriminate against you, shunning you from the purified eternity that once longed for you to cosy in its parted arms.

“If I pretend to have died, too, Sukuna’ll find someone else,” Mumbling with levelheadedness, you search your room for your savings — picking out a stupidly large amount of money and a black clock.

A red clock, just so you could pair with the cloudiness of your untamed sin. A sin you have to coddle because of the greediness of someone else’s heart.

Out the balcony door you go, fleeing from an environment that once caged you within the best ways. Yet, now, you’re set to flee towards a secret cottage you built — away from everything you’ve ever known.

All you pray for is for Sukuna to not find you.

—

Don’t you see? Prologue status: completed.

—

Don’t copy, modify or claim my work to be your own. all rights reserved: cosycafune. 2024.

[blubberquark]

Auto-Generated Junk Web Sites

I don't know if you heard the complaints about Google getting worse since 2018, or about Amazon getting worse. Some people think Google got worse at search. I think Google got worse because the web got worse. Amazon got worse because the supply side on Amazon got worse, but ultimately Amazon is to blame for incentivising the sale of more and cheaper products on its platform.

In any case, if you search something on Google, you get a lot of junk, and if you search for a specific product on Amazon, you get a lot of junk, even though the process that led to the junk is very different.

I don't subscribe to the "Dead Internet Theory", the idea that most online content is social media and that most social media is bots. I think Google search has gotten worse because a lot of content from as recently as 2018 got deleted, and a lot of web 1.0 and the blogosphere got deleted, comment sections got deleted, and content in the style of web 1.0 and the blogosphere is no longer produced. Furthermore, many links are now broken because they don't directly link to web pages, but to social media accounts and tweets that used to aggregate links.

I don't think going back to web 1.0 will help discoverability, and it probably won't be as profitable or even monetiseable to maintain a useful web 1.0 page compared to an entertaining but ephemeral YouTube channel. Going back to Web 1.0 means more long-term after-hours labour of love site maintenance, and less social media posting as a career.

Anyway, Google has gotten noticeably worse since GPT-3 and ChatGPT were made available to the general public, and many people blame content farms with language models and image synthesis for this. I am not sure. If Google had started to show users meaningless AI generated content from large content farms, that means Google has finally lost the SEO war, and Google is worse at AI/language models than fly-by-night operations whose whole business model is skimming clicks off Google.

I just don't think that's true. I think the reality is worse.

Real web sites run by real people are getting overrun by AI-generated junk, and human editors can't stop it. Real people whose job it is to generate content are increasingly turning in AI junk at their jobs.

Furthermore, even people who are setting up a web site for a local business or an online presence for their personal brand/CV are using auto-generated text.

I have seen at least two different TV commercials by web hosting and web design companies that promoted this. Are you starting your own business? Do you run a small business? A business needs a web site. With our AI-powered tools, you don't have to worry about the content of your web site. We generate it for you.

There are companies out there today, selling something that's probably a re-labelled ChatGPT or LLaMA plus Stable Diffusion to somebody who is just setting up a bicycle repair shop. All the pictures and written copy on the web presence for that repair shop will be automatically generated.

We would be living in a much better world if there was a small number of large content farms and bot operators poisoning our search results. Instead, we are living in a world where many real people are individually doing their part.

[gianttankeh]

TFEH presents: Mariam Rezaei / Mariam Rezaei & Ali Robertson / Marlo De Lara & Euan Currie / Off Brand & Stewart Smith at Fruitmarket, Edinburgh: 20/12/24.

Sack off yr office Xmas party once again and head to Fruitmarket for TFEH's annual non-denominational non-idiomatic festive celebrations. Also just added: Some Prepared Remarks Concerning Christmas Music and Bourgeois Irish Subjectivity by Colm Linnane.

You can find out more & buy one of the last few tickets here.

[year2000electronics]

For the reformed(?) Bill au, how did he end up with the Pines family? And on relatively chill terms with them? After all the manipulation and betrayal and torment, I wouldn't think they'd ever trust him, even if he oresented himself as a powerless human. (He could be lying! It's what he does!)

Did they just find him in a sad little heap somewhere? Did the Axolotl themself droo him off and ask them to keep an eye on him for therapy purposes? How did it come to pass that they even tolerate his presence after all he's done?

OKAY SO. a lot of people have reformed bill aus and a lot of people will give you different answers to how he ended up there, but this is my personal take on it and the au i like to call the funcle bill au!

i really don’t like it when people have the axolotl unceremoniously dump bill on the pines or the mystery shack without warning. it feels like the pines get demanded to do a lot of emotional labour for someone who really hurt them with no consulting them beforehand, and i just feel like that’s just so not my style :(

so what i like to imagine is that this au takes place a year after the summer we see in the show, so that everyone has had some time to breathe and reorient a little! it’s around this time that the axolotl starts visiting them in their dreams, just to, y’know, check them out. bill talks about the pines family a lot and axie wants to see what the family who defeated bill is like. but of course, the conversations slowly go from very detached and info-gathering only to the axolotl actually kinda befriending the family :) their enthusiasm is infectious

so sometime after that, the axolotl confers with all the zodiac in a shared dream and basically asks “hey. i have bill in the theraprism where he can’t hurt you anymore but i wanted to ask you if maybe you guys wanted to take him because he’s being really stubborn and has already cut off all his friends and the lack of connections is only making him worse. he would be human and have no powers and if he causes you enough distress i would take him back to the theraprism but i think the weirdness and positive spirit of this town might be able to help bill where the theraprism can’t. only if you want to tho ✌️” and all the zodiac spend a LONG while discussing it in the days after before agreeing, especially as both sets of pines twins are staying in town again for the summer

so bill gets dropped off in human form and gets a job at the shack, typical stuff, and he knows he has to behave otherwise it’ll be BORING GROUP THERAPY CHATS AGAIN. the road ahead is long and arduous and there’s DEFINITELY a lot of tension between bill and the rest of the zodiac, i just haven’t really had the creative juices to show it because i think it’s a very long and complicated process and requires some very skillful writing. just know that bill isn’t just getting auto-forgiven it’s just that most of that stuff is currently happening “offscreen” for me :V

BUT YEAH. mostly it’s my excuse to have bill and the pines hanging out cos i really do believe that more than anything else, that family is the closest bill had to true companionship. the henchmaniacs were his friends but also his enablers, his parents are super dead, the axolotl probably was wary of him due to his mean streak, but he sees himself in each pines and loves to bother them more than any other human. and i think there’s potential there. but i think it would require respect and patience from the axolotl, a “don’t try anything or you’re going in the time out corner” for bill, and the willingness to reach out a hand for the pines

^funcle bill and axolotl’s human disguise

thank you for the question!!

[livefromcastledracula]

Gothic literature fanons I wish would die a death and disappear from pop culture, here we go...incoming ramble.

DracuMina and tragic, romantic Dracula is a big one. It's just not who he is. There are plenty of other vampires who live these tropes. It's not Dracula. It's Barnabas Collins and Louis de Pointe du Lac and Angel from Buffy and Edward Cullen. It's not Count Dracula. Count Dracula is a bastard and his bastardy is what makes him scary and charismatic and compelling as a villain in the same way, say, the Joker or (pre-Angelina) Maleficent is. He doesn't need to be suave or soft or secretly a woobie out for love to be interesting. He is a smug, smiling monster to the bone and we love him for it.

If there's any tragedy at all to Dracula the character it's the vague hints Van Helsing gives that he was once a great man and that man's soul might still be trapped somewhere in this hollow, monstrous husk of a creature, yearning for the release of true death.

But that man is long gone. What Dracula is now doesn't feel any guilt or remorse or compassion or grief. He is, he schemes, he hungers, he preys. He is Vampire.

Okay, Carmilla...well the big one is that she is in any way not a lesbian. Adaptations that make her an equal opportunity seductress. Ha ha ha no. Book Carmilla shows absolutely zero interest in men. They might as well not exist to her. She is ALL about young women her own (apparent) age. There is that vague anecdote about the Baron's male ancestor in her backstory, but at the time 'lover' was also used in a more one-sided context of romantic admirers, of which a beautiful young noblewoman would have many, so it could as easily imply she'd never even spoken to him. Vampire Carmilla, the one we meet and interact with, is all about the girls and especially about specific girls; like Laura.

Frankenstein... oh there's a bunch, pop culture Frankenstein is probably the farthest away from the book. Let's not even go into "Frankenstein is the monster's name" or "Doctor Frankenstein" or "Igor" or "the monster is a mute lumbering zombie" or even the animated with lightning thing...

...the one that actually irks me is the pervasive idea that Frankenstein is resurrecting dead people, or that the Monster is / has the brain of a specific person who just doesn't remember who he is. Even Penny Dreadful did this one! Even the musical did this one!

Nooo, the Creature isn't a frigging zombie. He's not a revived human. Frankenstein specifically says that he can't revive the dead but that someday if his "creations" are successful he might also discover that secret:

'I thought that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.'

Also very worth noting that despite the frequent fanon that Victor used a random hanged man for the Creature and Justine or even Elizabeth's body to build the Bride, this absolutely does not happen in the book, at no point does Frankenstein consider 'reviving' his dead loved ones. It doesn't even cross his mind. He's not Herbert West 😆

Back to Creech, Frankenstein specifically says he made him eight feet tall because human parts were too small and detailed for him to work on quickly.

'Although I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to prepare a frame for the reception of it, with all its intricacies of fibres, muscles, and veins, still remained a work of inconceivable difficulty and labour.'

"...As the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make the being of a gigantic stature, that is to say, about eight feet in height, and proportionably large...."

You can't do that just by chopping up a few dead people. You can't get an eight foot giant by stitching together a bunch of smaller dudes. You can't make a bigger heart and bigger bones and bigger organs just by stitching together smaller ones. So what the heck IS Frankenstein doing?

I had returned to my old habits. I collected bones from charnel-houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of filthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a conclusion.

Okay so we know he IS collecting flesh to use as raw materials, but slaughter houses interests me. This suggests that the Creature isn't necessarily being built of human flesh.

And that makes more sense, doesn't it? How do you build a humanlike body with bigger-than-human bones, muscles, veins and organs? What if you got them from a bull, a horse, an ox?

But here's another point of interest:

...After having formed this determination and having spent some months in successfully collecting and arranging my materials, I began... ...The summer months passed while I was thus engaged, heart and soul, in one pursuit...

Months. It's taken him months at least to build Creech.

This book is set in the late 1700s. There is no refrigeration and Victor is working out of a loft apartment at a university.

How. The HECK. Is his glorious Creation not a pile of rotting meat falling apart on his table? How is he preserving it?

Does his magical mad science also extend to preservation? That's never mentioned, but I could imagine that it might involve a fair bit of, well, pickling. He does compare him to a 'mummy' at least once.

So...

Book canon Creech is an eight foot tall giant with flowing black hair, nice teeth, shrivelled yellow skin stretched over his muscle and veins, and watery yellow eyes in 'dun white' sockets. He is probably a bit 'pickled' and potentially a chimera built partially out of animal bones, muscles and organs, though don't think Dr Moreau, Victor was TRYING to make him look human and nobody ever comments on any visibly animal parts.

I wish the 'serious' movie adaptations would go harder on his makeup and effects. As OTT and steampunk Karloff inspired as the Van Helsing movie was, that's actually the level of "oh shit that's not a human" I expect from a canonical Creech, just ditch the steampunk cyborg bits and give the man some hair. Penny Dreadful did good with his alabaster skin and yellow eyes, and Rory Kinnear's still my favorite performance of this character, though they could've stood to use some LOTR-style forced perspective to make him Huge. If Creech could pass for a tall homeless war vet with a lot of scars, he's not 'creature' enough for me. There's probably something poignant to be said there about him thinking that his mistreatment at humanity's hands is because he's an inhuman monster, But Actually people he meets think he's human, they just treat him like they'd treat any other large, disfigured, confused, potentially mentally-ill homeless person they'd meet.

But that's not Mary Shelley's intent, I don't think. He's not a revived, amnesiac human. He's something much more terrifying, poignant, and mysterious. He's an entire new creature, a newborn, earthbound alien species, and that's what makes it interesting to me, because ... what even IS he? Creature is born as a total blank slate, he doesn't know what he is. Victor doesn't understand him, doesn't really comprehend what he's created, so he can't tell him.

So there's no-one alive that can, and there never will be, it's not an answerable question.

There's a deep, abiding existential horror in Creech's existence that is dumbed down to 'came back wrong' if he is a resurrected human. If he isn't, what the hell IS he? Frankenstein is grounded in science fiction rather than the supernatural, but if there's such a thing in its universe as a soul, does he have a soul? Where did it come from? Is he an amalgam of all the people/animals he's built out of, potentially hundreds of them? Is he something that came from somewhere else to inhabit this meat-husk? Is he something else entirely? He doesn't know and never will, Victor never will, no one ever will.

That's haunting, tragic, and terrifying.

[jelzorz]

Oh boy oh boy if you're taking ficlet requests, how about Opeli making sure Soren doesn't collapse of exhaustion while he's supervising rescue efforts and providing aid in the aftermath of Sol Regem's attack?

193.

It's all kind of a blur afterwards. Soren chalks it up to being exhausted from, well, everything, but it's not like there's been time to rest between it all anyway. There are too many wounded, too many dead, too few supplies to share between the too many refugees, and he has enough to deal with without the grief creeping along the edges of his mind, waiting for him to feel it and to process it on top of everything else. The physical labour is hard, but he's used to that. The emotional labour...

Well. It can wait.

So he heads out to the castle ruins with different groups of soldiers and volunteers to salvage what little they can. He moves rubble and bodies and supplies, helps pitch tents and herd children, tends to the wounded with the limited training he has. He's worn thin and he knows this. He hasn't slept for more than a couple of hours since the attack and he knows this too. He knows because Opeli keeps telling him to rest and Corvus keeps telling him to sleep and they're just as tired as he is, but neither of them stop, so why should he?

It's been a week. A little more he thinks, but he doesn't really know because the days have started to bleed to into each other and the rise and fall of the sun doesn't really mean anything in light of everything that's going on. He knows that the others had all come back the morning after the attack, and he knows Ezran had given the order to move everyone to the Banther Lodge after a couple of nights at the temples, but beyond that, all Soren knows is the ache in his muscles and the precarious uneven rhythm of his next step, and the one after, and the one after that.

He's sitting by the fire tonight. There's a pile of damaged armour beside him that he doesn't really know how to repair but the blacksmith didn't make it and the Banther Lodge works, but they're still sitting ducks out here. Damaged armour won't do them any favours. There's no room to lose anybody else. He's fixing the leather in a bracer when they find him, Corvus and Opeli, both tired, both weary, both obviously concerned.

"'Sup," greets Soren absently.

Corvus and Opeli glance at each other.

"We've been ordered to rest," says Corvus.

Soren snorts. "How's that going for you?"

Opeli twitches her lips. "I can't refuse an order from the king," she says drily, "but more importantly, neither can you."

Soren pauses in his work and raises an eyebrow.

"You need to rest," says Corvus, taking the bracer from him and shoving the pile of armour over with his foot. He takes a seat next to him without waiting for an invitation and Opeli does the same on his other side, already frowning at the bandage she'd placed over the cut on his forehead.

"You've split your stitches again," she says, her disapproval obvious.

"I'm fine," mutters Soren. He tries to snatch the bracer back but Corvus holds it purposefully out of reach.

"You need to rest," says Corvus again, tossing it back into the pile and kicking the whole stack of it further away. "We all do," he adds pointedly to Opeli, who wrinkles her nose petulantly and draws her knees to her chest.

"I'm not arguing," she mutters. "But whether or not we do relies on Soren, doesn't it?"

Soren stares at them both. Corvus actually smirks.

"We made a deal with Ezran," he says somewhat smugly. "I don't need a break—"

"Yes you do," snorts Opeli.

"But I wouldn't take one unless Opeli took one—"

"And I won't take one unless you do." Opeli gives him a look then, her usual stern-faced glare laced with something stubborn and a little sour, but something hopeful too: an opportunity to rest mandated by someone else that she won't feel guilty for taking. "So whether or not we get to take a break is up to you, really," she says.

Soren pauses. Then he scowls at them both. "That's a dirty trick."

"It's pretty fair actually," says Corvus, stretching out beside him. "You need to rest, Soren. If not for yourself, then for the people who care about you."

"And you do have people who care about you," says Opeli. "You must know that."

There's another pause. Corvus leans into him on one side and, hesitantly, Opeli does the same on the other, their warmth a comfort against the evening cold, their weight a ward against the feelings he isn't quite ready to feel.

He doesn't remember closing his eyes, but when he opens them, it's dawn. The morning is quiet. The fire is out. Corvus has shifted so that his head rests on Soren's shoulder and Opeli has tucked herself under his arm in her sleep. The blanket draped over them is scratchy but warm.

Soren lets himself go back to sleep.

[celestialseawitch-ff]

Under the Moon

Harry tugged on the thick iron cuff around his ankle. 

“Come on. Come on. Come on.”

It was getting darker in the forest now. The moon would be out soon.

Of all the ways to go, massacred by Fenrir Greyback hadn't really been on the list. Dementors had been higher up on the list. Actually, Seamus’ explosive magic during transfiguration class was higher than the famous werewolf.

Fenrir Greyback was a ghost story. He was the boogeyman under Remus Lupin's bed. He wasn’t supposed to be an actual threat to Harry. That honour was still tightly held by Voldemort.

Harry closed his eyes and sighed. 

The Death Eaters had come out of nowhere while he was at the park. He spent most of his summer there before being forced to return to the Dursleys. When he was younger, lingering around the house meant he'd get locked up under the stairs or forced to do labour. Now that he was older, loitering tended to get him beat with a belt. He could still feel the lashings healing on his back from his uncle's latest temper tantrum.

The Death Eaters pounced before Harry even knew they were there. One moment he was sitting alone in a park and the next thing he knew, he was wandless and unconscious on the floor of an unknown forest. 

Voldemort stayed only long enough to gloat.

“I want you to suffer,” he told Harry. “The way you have made me suffer for years.”

“Fuck you, Riddle,” Harry spat back.

Voldemort smiled coldly. “Let's see how much fight you have left in you when Greyback is done with you.”

Harry's eyes widened.

Voldemort's smile widened. “Oh yes,” he seethed as he bent down so they were eyelevel. “You've heard the stories, I'm sure. More wolf than man. Our furry cannibal is going to eat you piece by piece. He's special among wolves. He retains his human mentality and control without the Wolfsbane potion. He's assured me he'll make it a long, horrible process. You will live until just before dawn breaks. And then,” he clenched his fingers into a fist and Harry flinched, “he'll eat your heart out.”

“I thought you wanted to kill me.”

“My mind has finally settled since the restoration potion. The prophecy will shatter once you die. That's all that matters. Then the only one who can stop me is Dumbledore and he will be dead by the end of the year.”

“You can't beat the Headmaster.”

“I already have. He fell for a dark curse I cast as a young boy. It's poetic really. He was always so terrified of me as a boy. Now my youth will be his death.”

“Just let me go,” Harry pleaded quietly.

“You're the final piece, Harry. But how about this. If the prophecy is destroyed before you die, I'll let you live.”

“The prophecy was shattered during the battle.”

“Oh? Well, I suppose you'll die then.”

The Dark Lord stood and strode away. Harry closed his eyes and bit his tongue on the desperate pleas that bubbled up inside of him. They would fall on deaf ears. Voldemort had no pity. 

The air cracked with magic as he disapparated and Harry was alone.

He opened his eyes and glared at the metal cuff on his ankle. His skin was raw underneath and starting to bleed. His fingers had begun bleeding from tugging at the rough metal ages ago. Tears stained his cheeks.

He had never felt so hopeless. 

“Please,” he cried. 

His eyes fell shut and he prayed to every god and deity he could think of. The Weasleys worshipped a goddess, he knew. He thought it was a prank at first, but Hermione had looked unsurprised and curious at the revelation. He knew she'd read up on it. He wished he had too. 

“Please,” he begged into the forest as night began to fall. “Please. Please. I don't want to die.”

Not like this, came the unbidden thought. Because of course he was going to die. Probably soon. Probably painfully.

But not like this.