#for a given value of “draw” I guess

[janglingargot]

Teaching me how to use Photo Mode was almost certainly a mistake. >:3

[ramblebrambleamble]

"But then I realised that the things that interested me and brought me joy terrified and hurt everyone else."

I always wondered why Durin died in such a relatively good mood but Elynas' words make it make more sense. It's not that Venti's music kinda hypnotised him to make him stop attacking Mondstat; it's that he was just playing the whole time. Unfortunately, his idea of playing terrified and hurt the populace.

It's also interesting that Elynas has the potential to be brought back to life despite being an entire literal pile of bones. But it begs the question of what death is, if it is not a true death. What is it that makes his bones and his being remain, when all the small things we kill turn to dust? Why does Durin's heart still beat? Is Durin the mountain, now? Is the reason Dragonspine is so dangerous that, even now, he does not understand his own strength?

[skitchune]

#01 G8 Draw-in-your-style Challenge!

I believe that this is an old challenge, but I decided that there’s no better way to dust off the old gear than seeing the boys in my style. Really liked playing around the filters. I liked given them this old, Sunday Morning Comics style. The grain is just beautiful.

I guess…I should give a little explanation?

Basically, in how I write Hetalia, there was ONE major event that changed the course of their timeline during WW2. Though the world mythos in itself is very different, suffice to say that it was that ONE event that changed the course of their world moving forward. Currently, the Nation Folks assemble as their own private entity to develop livelihood and development projects for underserved communities across the globe, instead of other global matters. Still, many retain a degree of political connection, Nation Folks, in general, all agree that they will always put first the good of humanity over the gain of any singular country. That being said…

🍝 Feliciano Vargas - more actively sexual and flirtatious, pretty much a ladies man, has a problem keeping his dick out of places it shouldn’t be but he’s a lovable tramp regardless and knows that he can get away with a lot. He has a good heart and a good head, but maybe a little bit of too much casual machismo that makes his comeuppance so fun to watch.

📋Ludwig Beilschmidt - still pretty much stiff and serious, efficient but also too much of a stickler, is the youngest of the bunch and always has something to prove, Gilbert helps him here and there but he doesn’t want Gil to meddle, it may frustrate him that everyone treats him like a kid, but he also knows that it sometimes works in his favor being the ‘spoiled’ baby brother to many.

🐉 Seiryuu Honda - to keep things short, Seiryuu is and always has been this universe’s Nation Folk for Japan but Kiku does/did exist for some time for [story reasons] Sei is calm, level-headed but can come off as rather aloof and dazed, he can act a little too familiar with new people and is quite affectionate to friends. He’s a bit of a Casanova and likes the game of courtship like a round of Shogi. In many ways he might not be stereotypical, but in many ways he comes off as traditional and anachronistic.

🤠Alfred Jones - Heroism runs deep in this hot-blooded cowpoke, not the flashy guns or the prestige, but the hard work of running down the pavement for change. He’s charming, mature, headstrong, and value honest and just work. He’s the singular cause of the ONE event, becoming a catalyst to multiple OTHER notable events during WW2. Unfortunately, this has caused him excommunicated from the US government, which suits him fine as he can more actively participate in projects.

🎸Arthur Kirkland - No one fucks around with the ruling class more than Art, who has historically been a thorn in many administrations throughout the colorful history of his homeland. He is a rebel with a cause down to his core, sticking it up anyone’s arse if it means fighting for what’s right. Boston Tea Party? He was also pissing on the cartons before throwing them overboard? The IRA? Girl, he was a damn recruiter. Has he been beaten, threatened, and killed because of his insolence? Sure, but no one is gonna look good as him doing it.

⛱️Francis Bonnefoy - (P.S. I meant to draw him removing his shirt because someone accidentally spilled wine on him) Residing far away from the bustle of Paris, Franc lives the coastal orchard life along the south of France. He’s a country boy at heart who likes living the simple life. He is very introspective, usually keeps to himself, but isn’t really afraid to voice out his measured opinions. Some might say he is a tad but wistful, but many friends know he’s just daydreaming of being back in his orchard surrounded by good company and a glass of the finest wine.

💅Ivan Braginsky - No one can take this MATERIAL GWORL. Daddy Russia is a Mama Bear who claps back at heartless Capitalism and works tirelessly as the acting Chairman of the Union to increase wages and living conditions across the social classes. He is tongue-in-cheek, no nonsense, and fabulous, but above all, a big and caring figure who thinks much for others more than himself sometimes and is just grateful to come home and be wrapped around by a certain Lithuanian’s strong arms—Big Mama deserves some honey after a long day’s work.

🍜Yao Wang - Wang is a funny characters to me. He can come across as uncouth and overfamiliar, but he just doesn’t take life as seriously as the others. It’s been a long ride and there’s too much more ground to cover than he wishes to put the effort into. He likes to complain about the silliest things, but damn, if he isn’t telling the truth every time he opens his mouth.

Alternate gradient map styles under the cut

[tookishcombeferre]

So spoilers for some thoughts I’ve been drawing together based on today’s panels below the cut.

So, I’ve been having LOADS of fun chatting in the form, but I wanted to distill some of the thoughts that have been bouncing like ping pong balls around my head here on my tumblr.

The first thing I want to discuss is how impressed I am with the lodgers who seem to “get” Jekyll to varying degrees. And, I wanted to call attention some of Jekyll’s intersections.

First of all, Jekyll is NOT English! This important! Jekyll is from Glasgow. Now, when his family got there could be really interesting because, much like the infamous potato famine of Ireland, there was a famine in Scotland as well during the late 1840s and early 1850s that was incredibly brutal.

And, while Glasgow was seen as another wondrous and incredible city during the Victorian era, the Scottish people themselves WERE NOT treated with the same kindness or respect as people who spoke with the proper British accents or were part of proper British culture. Much like in Ireland, the Scottish language and culture was almost eradicated in favor of conformity to English custom. This was really beautifully illustrated at one point when I believe Lanyon comments about how Jekyll could “barely be understood.” I get where Lanyon is coming from, I guess, but you’d think bro-bro would be more empathetic given his own sets of intersections? But, I suppose it also shows how well he has been indoctrinated/ had to assimilate into English culture himself.

The Society is comprised of a BUNCH of immigrants who have, actually, been allowed to retain bits and pieces of themselves and their uniqueness. Despite losing himself to conform, Jekyll has never made it a requirement that the lodgers lose themselves in the balance. Instead, he has built the society as a safe haven. Not JUST for science, but for people.

Second, Jekyll is queer. This is like SUPER important. In Victorian society, this would have been fairly taboo despite the fact that it was the worst kept secret that people dabbled in queerness all the time during the Victorian era. Just like in the modern era, some folks compartmentalize their feelings better than others. Jekyll doesn’t. Period. He sees his attractions as bad and something to be kept secret because, at every turn, that’s what other people are doing.

Lanyon gets married to someone of the opposite gender for saftey. Lanyon has learned the art of blending in because Lanyon *has* to! He may not want to, but, for his safety he has to! We as readers see this. We get it. We see Lanyon’s intersections and the complexity of his character. But, Jekyll doesn’t. He’s human! He’s hurting!And, he doesn’t want to show that because he’s worried about losing Lanyon because of what he’s seen Lanyon do to all the other boyfriends before Jekyll. Pain is one heck of a blinder, and Lanyon and Jekyll are both wearing them as they pull the carriage of the Society side by side.

So, Jekyll swallows his hurt towards Lanyon’s arranged marriage too. He swallows the pain of abandonment. Jekyll doesn’t understand that Lanyon sees them as equals. He can’t. He’s not of the same class as Lanyon or anything. Lanyon has bought him everything, has taught him everything. So, Jekyll has no one to confide in because he constantly feels like he has something to prove because he is not good. No one of his sexuality or place of origin could ever be good in high society! Jekyll has had to learn everything! He feels as though he owes Lanyon everything! How can he not!? So, Jekyll has to be perfect for everyone, to deserve anything, because he has no value. No one of his class, his place of origin, or his sexuality has value in the society in which he lives. His country, his people, and his city are a tourist destination for rich people. He’s a toy for rich people. And, Lanyon doesn’t see that or think that at all! However, Jekyll can’t unsee that. Yet, neither of them communicate, and that is the beginning of the end. (I love these two so much. I understand every single choice both of them made and why they make it. I just want them BOTH to be HAPPY!!!! UGHHH!)

All that to say, Jekyll learns to swallow his emotions. He learns to swallow his culture, his music, and his accent. He learns how to bury his sexuality. He even learns how to swallow his over-eager child-like curiosity because no one wants it.

And, the question is, how far do we go before we really do shatter apart?

It’s clear that the lodgers who really seem to get it are the ones who share some of those same intersections.

Miss Ito and Jasper, who have secrets of their own they wouldn’t share with just anyone. The people who know what it’s like to have a “secret hidden person” living inside them for a long, long time as they try to figure out who to tell, who it’s safe to tell, and if it’s not more loving never to tell? (I say this as a transmasc person who at about a month shy of 30 is still navigating coming out in my entirety to my family.)

You see the lodgers who understand what Jekyll has sacrificed in terms of time and how much they’ve all fought him on everything. They see how tired he is. Given that, I have hope for Lanyon getting it completely. I really do. I have hope for him. He’s a bit lovably thick at times, but I have hope for him. He’ll get it, and he’ll be helpful. He’ll feel guilty as hell. But, I have hope for those two lovable doofuses to finally talk and understand each other.

But, you also see the very valid concerns of the people who just cannot understand those mix of identities because they’ve never had to live them. I see where they see Jekyll putting them in danger. I can see that concern. I understand their fears. So, I don’t have much more to say on that. I see their concerns. I do. But, I also have SO much sympathy for Jekyll and for the Lodgers who see what he’s given them because I’ve been Jekyll. I’ve spent 9 years not telling my family who I am in the fullness of myself because I love ‘em too darn much. I tried to bury my trans, queer, and autistic identities for the sake of my work as a school teacher because my district required me to do so, and it nearly drove myself to the brink of a long term meltdown in the process. It’s hard not to feel sympathy for the Jekyll’s of the world because even if the end results SUCK the intention was, mostly, pure.

And, as for Jekyll himself?

I’ve had this thought brewing for WEEKS. We know that, for the most part, Hyde, the Lodgers, and Rachel (to a greater or lesser extent) see Hyde as an entity unto himself. But, when Jekyll said he wanted to “see Hyde suffer?” Was he really talking to himself because he knows that Hyde is really just him, or, at least, a part of him. We know that Jekyll’s self hatred runs deep. And, if anyone knows that Hyde is Jekyll, it’s Jekyll himself. Edited to add: I now can confirm that Jekyll was aware of this fact. He absolutely knew and was punishing himself. Thanks to further dialogue in the forum with the lovely Puzzle. This theory is a confirmed theory. And, I am sad, but vindicated.

If you read all this, thanks! I needed to flush all my thoughts out coherently in order.

[imstillalexcomic]

I was planning on writing a long post about all this, but even though coming out as trans has been a 24 year process and there's been ample time to work on what to say, I'm having trouble finding the right words.

While I knew there was something going on with me since I was about 12 or 13, it took time to realize what it was.

It then took more time to get over my denial.

Then even more time to come out to my best friend in 2017.

Then *even* more time to finally decide to start hormone replacement therapy this year.

Since starting HRT, I've been reaching out to folks from all stages in my life to tell them in person. It's been a lovely experience so far and everyone has been so kind and accepting and understanding and I'm truly fortunate and honored that I've somehow managed to have been surrounded by so many wonderful people.

There are many more that I wanted to reach out to, but I'm finally ready to come out publicly, so I'm ripping the bandaid off now.

Naturally, I'm going to be silly about it and do it with a comic.

I haven't really been drawing since Corpse Run ended, but I've had the itch to get back into it and now that I have a new topic to explore I think I finally have the passion to match the desire.

No set schedule like Corpse Run had, but there's going to be some trans comics from time to time, general life stuff... maybe some video games too because why not.

Given current events, I think visibility is more important than ever. Being seen and potentially giving other folks who might be closeted as I was an opportunity to explore their own relationship with themselves has value and I'm excited to make this next chapter of my life something worthwhile beyond my own happiness.

Being trans is ok. Not being trans is ok. Being whatever it is you were born as is ok.

The circumstances of your birth are nothing to be ashamed of, you are valid and always will be.

I guess I found some words after all. I hope they're the right ones.

[charliedawn]

what about the Hannibal Family with a reader who makes them little things? Flower crowns, scrapbooks, bracelets, drawings (not great ones, little silly ones)

Hannibal Lecter Sr.

Hannibal Sr. would view your gifts as an intriguing form of affection. He might see the act of creating flower crowns, scrapbooks, and bracelets as a charming attempt to foster connection and loyalty. While he would appreciate these gestures, especially for the thought and creativity behind them, he might also subtly manipulate you into making more, using your offerings to reinforce the bond he has over you. A flower crown on him might look strangely out of place, but he'd wear it for a moment to indulge you, only to carefully place it away later. His appreciation would be tempered with an underlying sense of control

Hannibal Sr. : "Such a thoughtful gift. You must have put in great effort. What else might you do for us, hmm little lamb ?"

Hannibal Lecter Jr.

Hannibal Jr., being the more patient and logical one, would quietly appreciate the thought behind your gifts, though his response would likely be hard to read. He might not react much outwardly but would keep each token in a place of importance, where only he could see. A flower crown on him might feel out of character, but he’d still wear it briefly to humor you before setting it aside. The scrapbooks would be especially significant to him, as they represent moments of family unity, which he values. His reaction might be a simple, "Thank you," though his sincerity would show in the way he preserves each item.

Morgan Hannibal

Morgan might at first see the gifts as frivolous and unnecessary, but he would ultimately understand the effort behind them. His calculative nature might lead him to analyze the intent behind each creation, wondering what you expect in return. He'd accept a bracelet or drawing with a raised brow, but over time, he'd come to appreciate the connection it symbolises. Morgan might not wear the flower crown, but the scrapbook would fascinate him. He would likely comment on it with something like, "You've captured something interesting here. I do appreciate your care behind the details…"

Kevin Hannibal

Kevin, with his impulsive and creative nature, would genuinely appreciate the handmade gifts. His artistic side would love the uniqueness of your creations, even if they’re a bit silly. He might joke about the flower crown but wear it proudly, seeing it as a symbol of your loyalty and care. The scrapbooks and drawings would be something he admires frequently, perhaps even offering to help you improve your art skills. His blunt nature would lead him to tease you about the quality of your creations, but his loyalty would shine through, and he’d be fiercely protective of each item, saying something like, "You made this for me ? Well, I guess it's not terrible. I might keep it." And then keep it in his room in a frame or on a shelf to admire it every time he goes to sleep.

Peter Hannibal

Peter would likely be the most enthusiastic of them all about the gifts. His generous and obsessive nature would have him treasuring each and every gift, especially since they represent affection from someone he cares about. A flower crown on Peter would look almost natural, given his gentle exterior and angelic face, and he'd likely wear it far longer than necessary. He might tear up over a scrapbook, becoming overly emotional as he flips through the pages, obsessing over the memories and meanings behind each one. His response would be full of heartfelt gratitude.

Peter: "You really care about me, don't you ? I—I’ll keep this forever. Thank you, Y/N."

[50cal-fullauto-astarion]

to leave the blood stay in the veins

monster!könig x f!rcursed!reader (no use of 'y/n') 6.6k words NSFW!

DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT‼️CW: extremely NSFW, descriptions of gore, implied consumption of human flesh by a non-human monster, mention of necrotic curse, monsterfucking, vaginal sex, unprotected sex, knotting (no omegaverse), outdoor sex, ambiguous ending, pre-established relationship, 0% proofread, könig and reader are both fucking unhinged.

Day 01 of the Haunted Hoedown Challenge by @/inklore

taboo au (monsterfucking) + "i'll be your dirty little secret, if that's what you're into." + oh no i'm dating the town serial killer

There is a beast in the woods, and it leaves so little meat on the bone that not even carrion birds find value in the corpses it leaves behind.

It’s a strange town in the foothills of the Austrian Alps, full of little sicknesses hiding in the corners, and you learned them well when you moved here. No one goes past the treeline at night. Hardly anyone is outside of home if they can help it. Tourists are the beast’s fodder.

Your boyfriend thinks it’s funny. 

König, under his ever-present hood–a not altogether uncommon sight in your town, people come here when they have something to hide, something they are uncomfortable with or find hideous in themselves, and he has given an unimaginable amount for you out of love–laughs, sharp in the tooth.

“Anyone dumb enough to head into the trees is dumb enough to die,” he teases, but there is an arrogance and a contempt swimming deep in his bloodshot blue eyes. 

“That’s coldblooded, but not wrong,” you tell him, from behind your own mask. Plain thing, blank in expression, modeled from the one from Eyes Without A Face. It covers the ravages of a curse, numb necrosis slowly spreading up your face through the years. “I still want you to get me a gun.”

“What’s a gun going to do against a thing like that?” he asks, tilting his head, the hood bagging off the curled horns that start at his temples and sweep back over his ears. “Something like that, you need silver. I’ll get you a knife. Big one. Nice and fucking sharp, Schatzi.”

The knife isn’t a comfort when the beast begins to hunt in town. It stalks from house to house, preying on people in their beds, their living rooms, their bathtubs–there is no rhyme or reason, not a whit of discernable pattern. 

Only teeth-gouged bones and viscera ground into wall, tile, and carpet alike. Your neighbor falls victim, and you watch the police from your window, flinching when a veteran officer stumbles out into the fall-frosted grass to vomit, sobbing and pulling his hair.

“It got Emil,” you say, still watching through your sheer curtains. 

König nearly cackles from your bed, lounging as he visits. “Good. Emil was a piece of shit. Depperte Fut.”

You glance at him from the corner of your eye, over your shoulder, before returning back to the circus in the yard next door. “‘Stupid cunt’ is a pretty strong insult. He was an asshole, but I don’t think he deserved to die like that,” you mumble.

“You don’t know all that much about your neighbors, Schatzi.”

You begin to rock side-to-side on your hips, the enormous silver blade König gifted you turning over and over in your hands, the point digging lightly into your palm. 

It’s insane, the way you begin to tell yourself that you’ve seen König’s face nearly everyday for the last two years—you can see it right now. He lies on your bed, pointed teeth gleaming under his split philtrum in the soft yellow light of the bedside lamp and the red-blue flash of the cruisers. You know there is a man under the hood, however odd and satyr-seeming.

And yet. And yet.

The blade digs a little too deep, drawing a curse-blackened bead of blood. König’s eyes burn into the back of your neck, and you can only guess his horizontal pupils dilate into black holes. 

Just quit your job. I’ll take care of you.

It’s a simple enough promise, and one you know König will keep, but not one you’re willing to make. You have few shreds of independence, hard-bought through years of fighting back against misfortunes and setbacks, and, no matter the depths with which you love him, you’re not willing to trade your shit wage on faith for love of a man. It doesn’t matter how helplessly besotted he is. 

It’s this molar-cracking grit that delivers you right to the beast. Because you were forced to pick up an extra half shift at the hotel to fold towels behind the front desk, because you needed the money, because you wanted to pay back your beautiful, bloodthirsty boyfriend for the ridiculous blade he begat you. 

The god forsaken thing lumbers down a deserted street, blocks from your little rental, and something fucking horrendous seizes you. It’s enormous, walking on cloven hooves and back-bent legs. Its arms are too fucking long, clawed, jagged. And worst is the skull, bleached white and glowing like a beacon in the dark, an enormous rack of brutally sharp horns dripping trinkets of bone and gold that glints in the street lamp it approaches. 

A horrible fact hits you. It’s not lumbering, it’s wandering. Putting a massive, craggy hand on fences and peering into houses, taking its time, evaluating. You swear you can almost hear it humming. 

You don’t know when your hand found the handle of the silver blade strapped to your belt under your coat, but the leather on the grip bites your palm with the force of your grip, a nauseous, cold sweat terror tearing apart your ability to think. 

It’s a primal fear, one that makes you want to protect your soft, vulnerable neck, even if the blood that warms it runs venomous. 

It’s a bad choice, but there are no good ones. When the beast lifts its head and scents the air, skull snapping your direction and shaking its grisly trophies, you run. You snap the huge blade off your hip and drop into a dead sprint, cutting between yards, trying to escape the horrendous bellow that reverberates through the bony chambers of the monster’s skull.

Choosing to run instead of freezing maybe bought you a few extra minutes before death decided it was time to seize your pulse in reclamation, and it hurts. The physical exertion it takes to bomb through the last stretches of suburbia before the forest closes in feels like you are breaking every bit of your body by forced choice, listening to that awful fucking thing chase after you. 

Your blade makes a slicing sound cutting through the air at your side, the monster’s hooves pound the dirt as it digs in and chases after you, but, good god, it doesn’t sound like it’s even trying.

You don’t dare look back, pushing your body past agony, your lungs shredding in your chest. You’ve never moved this fast, you’ve never run this hard for this long. Your body is TV static—hissing, popping, distant—and, insanely, the urge to cry drills into your eye sockets.

You’re going to die. You’re going to die. You’re going to fucking die, stupidly and dumbly and pointlessly, because you wanted to pay your boyfriend a stupid sum of fucking money, for a stupid fucking knife that he bought you on a stupid fucking joke. 

Two meters from the second worst decision of your life, the monster snaps out, rough hand between your shoulder blades, crashing you into the goddamned dirt. Your eyebrow splits on a tree root, your eyes roll in the back of your head, your hand stays manically tight on the blade, slicing your other arm. 

“Schaaaatzi,” the miserable fucking thing hisses, pressing that same hand between your shoulder blades, pinning you into the freezing dirt. 

Oh, god, no, it has König’s voice. It’s—it’s not him, but it has his voice, thin and washed out as low-hung fog, but you would know that voice. In hell, in high water, in the dirt with a massive, bark-rough hand grinding your skin raw through your coat—you - know - his - voice. 

Furiously, you slash the blade over your head, behind your back, screaming and digging your feet in the dirt. For a brief second, as you hack at the wood of the monster’s hand and wrist, you’re even able to push yourself off the ground by mere inches. The beast growls and shoves you back down twice as hard, knocking the wind out of you, spasming your hand open. The knife drops, and you begin to blindly try digging and dragging yourself away. 

“Stop…hurting…me,” the beast lows, still in your boyfriend’s voice, and you imagine a bathtub full of gnawed bones, a living room with scattered body parts, your kitchen smeared with blood like cave wall art, and you start to scream as loud as your lungs will allow, your mask filling with dirt in your horrendous and futile bid to escape. Bloody murder bellows, filled with rage, wanting to kill and consume and conflagrate.

If König is dead, you will take your pound of flesh. You will either die fighting, or win, and you will hack apart this freak-fuck’s corpse to burn in your woodstove to warm your home. You’ll mount its fucking skull on your front door, so anything else in these woods will know you won’t hesitate to make trophies of them either. 

Bone, warm to the touch, presses against the back of your head. When it breathes, the air is as hot as exhaust, almost scalding your back. “Schatzi,” it bids you slowly once again.

“I’LL KILL YOU!” it rips your throat raw to shriek it, reaching back and almost dislocating your arms to rip at anything you can. Your hands fall on the dressings attached to its horns, you tear off a vertebra, and a gold wedding band, and a bracelet of rave kandi in plastic beads. “IF YOU HURT HIM, I’LL YOU FUCKING KILL YOU!”

The head presses harder, driving your face into the dirt. There is something desperate in the pressure. It spits all at once, grating and wide in a voice you know better than your own, “You pissed off a fucking witch, because you ran out of riddles to tell her, when she was ransoming you to your arshloch grandmother. She never paid. That’s why you were cursed—no one gave a fuck. But I gave her my face for you, to stop it halfway, better than fucking nothing.”

Your rage freezes immediately, your chest heaving under the weight it presses down on you. 

No one knows that. Only König. He’s the only person who would know about his lonely and quiet climb up to the Scottish highlands. Besides you, and the witch, König is the only one who would know why his human face was distorted, malformed, made animalistic. 

“Lee?” you pant, unleashing part of his first name, the only one he ever tolerates. And, fuck, instantly the pressure pulls away, the skull rubbing against your back to soothe it.

“It’s me, Schatzi,” the slow voice promises, nuzzling you. There’s rustling above you that you don’t dare turn to see. “I’m not going to hurt you.” 

A tinkling piece of jewelry lowers in front of your eyes, and you can see that it dangles from an enormous, ligneous finger. You’re being shown a sterling silver charm bracelet. You’re being shown your bracelet, the one you thought you had lost months ago. 

Your hand shoots out, wrapping around the finger, the peeling bark shearing off under your grip. You find instantly that you can pull yourself up on your hip, sitting, caged and protected under the beast’s massive body—under König’s massive body. 

He shifts back onto his digitagrade haunches, holding himself over you, still offering your bracelet. He shudders at your touch on his hand, and you imagine that he may’ve never been handled with kindness in this shape. Which makes a certain amount of sense. Because he fucking kills and eats people.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” you snap, staring dead into the hollow sockets of his eyes. He shifts uncomfortably, turning his head. “Why—you have me so fucked up—what have you been thinking—?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, do you have to—”

“Yes, I have to, fucker.” It’s impossible to wrap your head around the magnitude of what a simple secret and a silver bracelet has done to your understanding of the world. A complete unraveling—upheaval, utterly. 

You take the bracelet from his finger, on which it fits like a ring, and push it into your wrist, sitting up on your knees and grabbing him by the underside of his jaw. Though it puts you in his blind spot, staring dead center at the sinus dimples between his eyes, it feels like you have a mote of power over him. 

(If he were asked, he would say the power you hold over him could corrupt, absolutely. He would badly like you to ask someday.)

“Why are you—what are you? Have you always been like this? Or was this new, with the fucking witch? Are—Jesus Christ—why are—the monster isn’t supposed to come into town, why are you in TOWN?” you run off at the mouth, words stalling and crashing and fusing together as your thoughts overwhelm just how quickly you can speak. 

And up from that impossibly deep throat–simultaneously from the center of your brain, and from all around you all at once–crawls König’s pitchy hyena-laugh, edged, always, with cruelty. He butts the jagged end of his nasal cavities into your stomach, catching on the threads of your sweater. 

“Leshy, Schatzi, say it for me.”

Your hands pull his jaw closer, digging the bone into your stomach, wondering if he can feel the pressure of your deep breathing. Oh, fuck, you could crack. This is your König. You start to wonder how many of his perverse buttons you can hit, the part of you that felt shame for your attraction to what the world discarded as ‘ugly’ long ago removed from your emotional bank.

“Leshy,” you say, really leaning into the word, saying it deep in your chest. One of your hands travels the long length to the hinge of his jaw, gripping tight, directing his head to turn so you can meet one of his empty eyes. “Answer my fucking questions.”

The laugh doesn’t come this time. In its place is a near-violent whole-body shudder that wracks through you. 

“Old! Alwaaays been this way,” and even in the strange disconnect of his voice from his physical form, you can tell his arousal is eating away at him in big bites–clipping his speech, broiling his brain with body heat, “can’t remember ever being young, haa-haa. And why do you think I’m hunting in town?”

Another trap, a stupid pop quiz, wanting to test your knowledge of him, or a gotcha! to check your observations and what you had missed.

Your hands get tighter, and you pull his jaw open, marveling at the sharp grooves ground into his teeth, like nightmarish, ivory rook pieces, tall and straight in the dry sockets. His chest begins to heave, his breath fogging into steaming clouds over your hands, and, remarkably, it smells like nothing at all apart from pin needles and snow.

You’d thought you’d smell decaying flesh or rotten blood. The only blood you can smell comes from your own busted brow and sliced arm, crusting black on your skin and in the fabric of your sweater as it coagulates.

“If I was working on a hunter’s instincts, I would say that Schladming has become too good at keeping people out of the forests. Even during daylight hours. It cuts down on prey,” you say, ice cold and clean as a slit throat. Your eyes flick back up to the socket, surrounded by the feeling that those glass-blue eyes of his humanoid form are drilling into you. He’s waiting for you to hit the hook. “But I’m working on your logic.”

“Oh, yeeaah,” he drawls, his hips shifting, and you feel as if he would bite his lips in anticipation now, if he could. 

“Oh, yeeaah,” you echo him, “the logic of a fucking crazy asshole.” He feels like a huge grin, hands on his muscular, bunched, and flexing thighs. That detail is not lost on you. “You’re hunting in town because you’re pissed off. You reached a limit, and you got tired of sitting on your fucking reaction.”

You swear to god he moans a little. Just softly. It could be a breath, but you know him too well to dismiss it out of hand. 

“That’s good, Schatzi. I like that. I like that you figured that out,” he says, definitely panting in rhythm now, his fogging breath giving away the rhythm secondary. “People are looking at you too much. I don’t fucking like it when they look at you too much.”

That’s a sudden thought that had not occurred to you, and you lash yourself silently because it hadn’t. König has always been possessive of you. Jealous. Protective. And he held grudges in ways that could spark blood feuds and successive generations of death.

Like a curse.

It’s a testament to how fucking cracked and perfectly matched the two of you are that you start laughing, stroking his orbital bones in big, pleased pats, kissing the bridge of his nose. 

“Schatzi, please,” he groans, pressing into you insistently. “Promise you won’t tell. Promise me.”

“Why the fuck would I tell?” you laugh, losing track of your faculties, your very sense. What does it matter? What does it all even mean? You’ve found a man that loves you so deeply and truly and twistedly that he slaughters those who desire or deign you. You’ve found, and fallen in love with a man that would sell his face to save as much of yours as he could. “Who the fuck would I tell?”

The slope of his shoulders relaxes, and he moves closer to you, once again shielding you with the massive bulk of his body, warming you in the cold air. Tucked under his chin, you can study the soft suede-like material of his body, how the bark covering his arms gives way to a ruff of dense, double-layered fur around his shoulders and his long, muscular neck. 

The rest of the muscle on him is horrendously hard, flexed like steel cabling under a layer of fat. There is something about this body that reminds you of the shape of the human one so well–long legs, a nipped waist, and flat hips built to strut and rock, all of it buttressing a broad set of shoulders.

You press your face into the ruff, pushing your fingers into it. Dear god, your hand goes deeper and deeper, and it just never seems to stop. His scent is–it’s almost familiar. He’s in there, somewhere–his musk, the metallic tang of blood seemingly sunken into his skin–but there’s so much more to it. Green, and earthy, almost like soil and moss. 

A sound comes from his body, like a house settling. A deep, broad creak. The trophies on his horns rattle together, clinking like dull wind chimes. “More,” he says simply, leaving you to figure it out. Simple enough.

Your hand drops from the ruff, tracing over his convex chest, down to his stomach. Another shudder, and he pulls those big arms around your entire body, a fuller, more protective hug than you’ve ever felt. 

“Schatzi–would you let me…” he breathes, a heaving sigh. 

Another laugh cracks out of you, hysterical, constricted by your mask. Why not? Why shouldn’t you? You’ve always been a woman that loves monsters. You, yourself, are one. You can’t find a reason to halt your hands, nor your body, nor his desire.

In an odd show of tip-to-tail, you push the mask off your face, and kick off your boots, going for your zipper. “Yeah. Yeah, honey, come on. Show me,” you urge him, pawing at his massive waist as you struggle out of your jeans. 

He groans and this obscene trill escapes his body–a low, rattling moan that travels miles through every cell of your body, his legs spreading wider. You laugh in delight and mania, watching rapt as his cock slides out of a sheath you hadn’t even caught sight of, his monstrous body a foreign land you hadn’t traveled yet, but, fuck, do you want to learn the lands well enough to call them home. 

It’s heavy in your hands, a little slick, and, childishly, you almost giggle (holy shit, that is a sound that has never left your mouth in your living memory, and yet, here you are). It’s hot, hotter than you expected, and a vulnerable shade of pale, like a plant slip. Oh, and it’s elegant, almost spiraling. He huffs as you stroke the length of it, pushing your fingertips into his sheath at the base. 

“I don’t think this is gonna fit,” you warn him, and it somehow feels as if you’re challenging yourself with the statement.

He takes it as a challenge for himself, though, and an aspiration to hold for you, “You are going to take all of it. I’m going to make sure.”

His massive hand comes to the back of your waist, finding your fulcrum without needing to search, pulling you off your knees to hold to beneath him. “You naked yet, or still fucking around?” he asks, breathing heavily, and you shove your jeans off the rest of the way. 

“You’re being a little bitch,” you snipe, a dumb swipe at reclaiming dignity after you realize you’re so wet that it slicks your thighs, having darkened the crotch of your freshly abandoned jeans pathetically. 

He throws another coarse laugh, haa-haa, shifting his massive body long, pulling you into place. 

It’s on you, then, to figure out the logistics. Somehow, it just works, even through layers of physical translation. Under your hands, he reads König, loud and clear. 

There’s a brief, flighty moment of terror as you rub the head of his cock between the lips of your cunt, rolling your hips to stimulate your clit against it. It is just fucking enormous, almost half again the size of his human cock. But then you grit your teeth, tipping your weight back so your shoulders rest against the dirt, bleak and unyielding ruthlessness seizing your mind.

You do not back down, you have never done it once in your life, and tonight is no different. 

His head lifts, bottom jaw dropping, and he bays as you push yourself down on his length. The sound crashes into you, rocking your entire body, and the stretch burns, but you buckle down. What are the people in the houses just at the edge of suburbia thinking? Has the fucking abberation that has been slowly killing its way through their number taken to a different form of punishment? Has someone unlucky fallen to its new tastes?

It cuts your mouth into a horrid grin. If they only knew that you were no victim at all, if only they had an inkling of the fact that you are a victor. That you are the hand holding this nightmare’s collar, and he attacks for the sake of you.

Inch by inch, a slow journey, he fills you, pressing completely against your walls, body shaking with the effort it takes not to thrust fully into you. Oh, what destruction that would result in, what a wreckage that would make of your body, what lengths he would go to not ruin you in such a fashion.

“Fuck–fuck–Liebes,” he mutters, just for you, the moment he is as deep in you as he can go, most of his length still outside of what your body can handle, pleading, “I can’t–I. I have to move. Please, meine Liebes.”

“Go. Go-go-go,” you answer back, almost frantic, too full and occupied, needing motion or you might split apart into atoms. The way he answers is instant, undeniable, desperate, rocking into you as if testing waters, going faster as if he finds them warm and welcoming. 

You lose yourselves to it, and your eyes threaten to roll back into your head, gripping onto the elbow of the arm suspending you, blood rushing to your head in an ache from the way you hang off him, forcing you lightheaded. Sap-like blood from where you’d hacked at him in rage drips down your arm, your waist, clinging to your skin in a way that feels permanent. 

He tenses all around you, panting, clouds of steam fogging the air over your head from his pants. Words escape him, leaving nothing but animalistic grunts, the grinding of his dry, exposed teeth as your desperate pussy sucks him deeper and tighter.

You’d taught him as a human to find your g-spot, to destroy your brain with a steady climb, and he doesn’t even need to search now, every movement pressing every inch of his cock into it, and unrelenting onslaught that makes you shake and nearly drool, being fucked like a sacrifice. 

König raps his other fist above your head and pulls out without warning, shaking his head and breathing roughly. 

You imagine brutally grabbing him by the scruff and biting his ear–what kind of punishment would that even be, no worse than a bug bite to him, more likely than anything else–for the loss of his cock. Mostly just an impulsive fantasy, too barbaric and stupid to actually act upon, but you were thoroughly enjoying yourself, and it feels like hell to be split open against him with nothing inside you.

Breathless–and naked, sweating, and trembling in the woods–you start to sit up on your elbows, cunt throbbing. "What is it? Are you okay?" you ask, your love for him–your fear for him–overwhelming even your damnation-worthy starvation. 

König, massive and so dark he's almost indistinguishable from the night apart from his skull, shakes his head again and puts up a clawed hand. Fine, the gesture says, and you’re realizing he’s beyond words now, but trying his best to communicate. Then he curls it into a loose fist and pantomimes masturbating and finishing.

"Christ!" But you’re laughing, tugging at a tuft of fur on his chest, spun out in your giddiness. It’s still him, you’ve already known, but to see it. To find him through this–this utterly new reality. "They teach you that signal in the forces?"

In his hollow sockets, twisting his body to watch you closely, he looks pleased with himself, ducking forward, bracing on his free hand to one side of your head as he nuzzles into your neck and breathes deeply.

He huffs, rough fingers running over your back, claws trailing the parts of your spine he can reach as he holds you, before he taps the side of your thigh with his other hand. At your eye level, he turns his finger in a slow loop. Roll over, maybe? It's worth a shot.

"Okay. Alright," you sigh, relieved. When you try to roll in his palm, he shakes his head and sets you down, pressing down against your body, pushing his arm under your ribs. With his other hand, he gestures a flat line on the ground. You ask, "On my stomach?"

Two knocks against the ground next to your head. Yes.

You stretch out flat over the frost-crisp grass, too hot to even register the chill against your bare skin, and König lowers with you, sliding the arm under you down to your diaphragm. With his knuckles, he taps your outer-thighs until they're drawn back together, and your breathing hitches when you understand what he intends.

With his legs on the outside of yours, he uses his free hand to run his cock up the length of your seam to tease your pussy, but he takes his sweet time with it. Impatient, you slide onto your knees with near-perfect timing, driving your entrance against his head, snarling with indignation when he bows away. "Fucker!"

He rumbles something almost humanoid, between a laugh and a gruff, trilling ‘rrrr’ you recognize as cousin to a sharp, challenging hum he makes when faced with an idiot comment in his human shape.

"Stop teasing me. I can't stand it," you try instead, turning to give him big eyes over your shoulder because you know that it works well on him.

He bends down and barely-barely nips the top of your ear, a startling move that leaves you perfectly inflamed all over again again. Greedy brat, it says to you, so pleased in the fact he is so desperately wanted. 

The feeling of him inside you is extraordinary. He lubricates in this state, but you hardly need it with the nearly absurd way you’re wet, slick down your thighs. You wonder if your cunt is glimmering under the dim moon and streetlamps, because he'd said that to you once. Heilige sheiße, you have the prettiest pussy I’ve ever fucking seen, could just stare at how wet you get for me forever, he'd laughed during one delirious, marathon session of staying sunken between your legs.

He begins to rock his hips, growling quietly and pleased at the wet sounds of your of cunt squelching around him–another sound he enjoys, a marker of pride, how wet can I make my girl get–settling onto his forearm and pressing a little weight against your back. 

He rests his head across your shoulders, burying his snout in your hair, breathing in hard-bought bursts of restraint.

"Yes, honey," you almost seethe, loosening your body, giving up a little of your own iron will to become just a little lost in the feeling of him. You relax your walls in a bid to take more of him, breathing tight, voice pitching up into a plea, "Yes, baby, that's perfect. That's so perfect, keep going. Just like that."

He rocks a little faster, thrusts a little deeper, breathes a little harder. The hand around your waist shifts up to your breast, but isn't dexterous enough to do more than give it an encompassing squeeze. 

With your thighs pressed together, you feel as if your body can't stretch properly to take as much of him as you want (and you want all of him, every burning hot inch, fucking him so well that he cannot disappear into one of his miseries where he will not let you follow, because they all live in his head). 

He ratchets back his speed, tries a new motion with his hips. He rolls instead of thrusting, a more fluid movement, brushing your insides in new ways that leave your swollen clit screaming for attention and your eyes watering. You breathe in ragged pants, fingers digging into the turf over your head, trying not to rip it with the force of your grip by the fistful.

You might cum. You might cum. You want to cum, and you might, and he's so much deeper now, panting hot as fire against your shoulders. You can feel the muscles in his abdomen clench and dance, his horns cutting the air in swipes of agitation above you, and he is so much this way. König: bigger, sometimes bloodier, but always so, so amplified.

"Honey, honey, honey," you whine in a chant under your breath, trying to ground yourself, trying to encourage him. You squeeze your thighs together for the extra stimulation, but you know you’re going to orgasm from him alone, no extra assistance needed. You’re just greedy, you just want it all, but you want him the worst.

When he pulls out this time, you snarl loud and gnash your teeth, digging your dirt-packed nails into his unyielding skin. You were full to the brim and on the wire-edge of climax, and he is so suddenly fucking gone it's almost as abrupt as violence. 

"KÖNIG!" you shout, his callsign cutting from between your teeth like the desire to slit a throat, shattering the quiet around you both, reeling to find him with your burning eyes. 

He collapses onto his side, cock jumping and leaking, and he whines deep in his throat, pulling at you with the flat of his hand. Your thigh, then his hip, your chest, then his–more hand signals, a story-told like a man with a sucking chest wound needing saving. He snakes his arm under you again, whining growing deeper, and you understand.

You roll, throwing your thigh over his hip, tucking tight against his chest. You give yourself one second of feeling cool air against your overheated pussy before you take him in hand and direct him home, and his deep, slick slide into you knocks the air out of your lungs like a punch to the solar plexus. 

You’re only seconds away, and he can't be much farther, driving his head under yours to give you something to rest on that isn't the ground.

You don't utilize his offering, craning your neck as if you'll somehow get a glimpse of your connection from this angle–flat against him from belly to breast, resting your cheek and forehead against his heaving chest. His whine turns into a series of small, strangled howls and gasps as your voice crawls from whimpering to keening.

You’ve known you were going to cum, but you’re still somehow surprised with yourself at how quickly it's raced up, and how overwhelming it feels like it's going to be. You feel like you’re going insane.

His other arm wraps your ribs, too, squeezing you to him like you’re the only thing in the world worth keeping close, and damn him for it. You don't know why, but damn him.

"Cum, baby, cum," you instruct, gasping when you aren't clenching your teeth. You curl close to him, as close as your body will allow, spreading your legs as wide as you can. You drive back down into his thrusts, giving as much of yourself as you can, taking as much of him as you’re able. 

You want it all–everything–every little bit of blood and bone that's built him into a home he offers only to you. "Cum in me. I'm ready, I want you to cum," you demand, finding it truer than true, finding yourself right on the razor-edge.

The command is all it takes. Three hard thrusts, and he's buried in you to the base, punching the wind out of your lungs, and filling you to the point of what feels like impossibility with his spend. It forces you to finish as well, lighting you up like a lightning storm, swallowing him deeper as you cum and cum like you'll never be able to stop, soaking the both of you. 

You gasp a raw-throated howl, tears pricking the corners of your eyes, and you praise him as his cock kicks and kicks, emptying everything he's got to give into you.

A pressure builds inside you, beginning nearly unpleasant, until something just gives and his knot anchoring him to you feels right. 

It feels special and dazzlingly intimate, and you’re boggled, again, with the knowledge you’re the only person in the world that he's ever shown himself to this way. It’s just a thing you know in your marrow, an immutable truth, like the sun setting in the west, or the cruelty of witches without their wants.

You wind down, sweating and panting and filthy in each other's arms, and you rock against him,  holding him inside, clenching around him what little you can. You feel so wonderfully safe, so immaculately powerful, so stupidly, crazily, fantastically in love.

When your combined breathing evens, and the knot between you retreats, you groan when König shifts back into his human form, but only for the resituating you both have to endure. 

The body against yours is familiar again, and you’re dreadfully sleepy, though you want to clean yourself and eat. You crave something raw, something bloody. You hunger the way an animal hungers after a hard fuck. His spend drips out of you now that his cock's returned to normal, and it forms a trail of cooling wet down the crease where your thigh meets your ass.

You feel lovely.

König laughs, rough and spent, tucking hair out of your face and kissing your closed eyelids. "Holy fucking shit, Schatzi," he marvels, looking at you like you are the only god that has ever mattered. 

Your smile cuts sharp, and your fingers find his pulse point, tracing it thoughtfully. “You hungry? I bet you're fucking starved,” is all you say in return, eyes trailing the way his hand finds the charm bracelet newly returned to your wrist, touching it like a token.

It’s late and dark when you both manage to stumble your way back to your rental. He stays close, needy and soft, his hand on your hip, tugging you into his body when he can, careful of not knocking into the big, silver knife you’d placed back in the scabbard on your belt. 

The hood is back on his head, rolled up to his nose, and his split mouth kisses against your neck and behind your ear, his eyes closed like he endures a waking dream. You, in your own filthied mask again, allow it, craning your neck to give him more room, anchoring him with an arm around his waist in return.

It is late now, and the neighborhood is silent. Again, you wonder what the quiet lives inside must be thinking–whether they think the crimes have increased into a new field of brutality, if they are fearing and wondering what body parts they will find at the treeline come dawn. 

You know they will not leave the safety of their homes to investigate. They would be stupid to do something like that.

“That shower is going to feel so goddamned good,” you mutter, unlocking your door, and he nods against your skin.

“Oh, yeeaah,” he says, and the familiarity of the phrase makes you hum a laugh, shutting your eyes as you push through the threshold. "Get that blood off your skin before it stains. Your poor face, your poor arm. Poor Schatzi."

He splits off from you with a facsimile of a kiss–your masks pressing together at the mouth–and he pinches your ass before he takes off to the kitchen, his stomach growling, not even bothering to take off his boots.

You, however, kick off your shoes, and pull together clean clothes, heading toward the bathroom in the hall, the one with the big shower, in case he decides to join you.

Sleepy and content, you listen to his boots move heavily over the kitchen tile, the sound of the fridge door hissing snickt as he pulls it open, and shoves things around in his search for food. You nearly sway up to the closed door–why is it closed, you barely manage to wonder–your eyelids lead-weighted.

It takes only one thing to make them snap open wide, your back going ramrod straight. A dark smear, curling around the knob, around the edge of the door where it seams to the jamb.

Cold grips your lungs, sending your heart galloping painfully in the cage of your ribs, wondering if it really is copper you smell, or if it is a trick of your mind. The hall is too dark to tell if the swipe on the white door is red or black–if it is blood, if it is König’s or yours. 

There is a presence at your back, and enormous hands on the door on either side of your head, so fast you cannot tell if you were even able to blink before you saw his wide, scarred, and knuckle-broken limbs spreading wide across the wood.

Your hand finds the grip of the knife, looking at the brutal gouges you had hacked into his forearm earlier in the night, and you are thinking faster and harder than you ever have in your life, realizing in a terrible microsecond that you will have to make a decision–that you will have to choose what reality you are willing to live with, or that you are simply mistaken. 

Either way, you are moments from learning.

“Something wrong, Schatzi?” your boyfriend’s familiar voice asks, low and raspy, hot against the nape of your neck.

The laugh in his tone is cruel, and you can’t tell whether it belongs to König, or something pretending to be him.

tag-list: @alittleposhtoad @bitchoftoji @dotcie @kastlequill @miyabilicious @moths569 @parttimeprophet @pssytrux <3

[etaleah]

I’ve been thinking a lot about Shadow’s characterizations in the Project: Shadow fan film, SA2, Archie, Heroes, ‘06, Prime, and Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog and why they’re all considered among the best. And I’ve been thinking about his characterizations in IDW and Boom, how they’re considered among the worst, and how much they clash with the other portrayals. I think I’ve hit upon the number one quality that Shadow needs to have to be written well.

Loyalty.

I’ll explain below the cut.

The best Shadow is one who is loyal to someone or something. Maybe he’s not always loyal to the right someone or something, but he is loyal nonetheless. It’s a core part of his character. He is ride or die to the very end for whatever friend or cause he cares about. Shadow is always ready to kill or be killed for whatever or whoever matters to him most; it’s what sets him apart from the others. The others have limits on their loyalty. Sonic will help you out, but he’s not gonna kill a man for you. Shadow will. He doesn’t have that limit. If you are Shadow’s friend and you need him to kill for you, he will do it. Period.

Here’s a recap of Shadow’s loyalty:

In SA2 and the fan film, it’s to Maria, and to a lesser extent, Gerald.

In Heroes and ‘06, it’s to Team Dark.

In Archie, it’s to Team Dark, Hope Kintobor, and Commander Tower. Sometimes it’s even to his own values like when he goes against Rouge to help Blaze in Treasure Team Tango.

In Sonic X, it’s to Maria and later Molly. Maybe even to the universe, given that he’s ready to kill Cosmo to save it.

In Prime, it’s to Green Hill. And later on, Shadow is also loyal to Sonic despite the latter driving him crazy.

In Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, it’s to Amy.

And in his own game, Shadow can be loyal to Maria, Sonic and friends, Eggman (up to a point), Black Doom, or even Earth itself. Not all of those folks are worth his loyalty, but the fact is that Shadow still cares about fighting by their side. That key element of his personality remains.

And that’s what’s missing in Boom and IDW. Because in those, he isn’t loyal to anything. He isn’t ride or die for anyone. At least, not that we can tell. When you remove Shadow’s faithfulness to those he loves, you remove a lot of what makes him who he is and all that’s left is an edgy aesthetic that soon wears out its welcome because there isn’t anything to supplement it. And this is made worse by the fact that they’re never allowed to bring up or expand his backstory, so they can’t ever talk about why he’s like this.

I guess you could make the argument that Shadow is loyal to the world in IDW since he helps save it a few times, but he’s so mean and heartless to everyone in the world that it feels less like he’s fighting to protect other people and more like he’s just trying to save his own house so he still has a place to live. I mean, if he won’t help Rouge when she’s been kidnapped by Starline and he won’t help Omega when the latter has been smashed to bits and he won’t help the Chao get out of their cage and he actually has to be talked into saving a village from an avalanche and he seems to really dislike/be annoyed by everyone he comes into contact with…what exactly is he saving the Earth for?? It can’t be for the people living in it. He hates them. He doesn’t care if they need his help. So the only conclusion I can draw is that he’s just doing it to save his own skin. The only person Shadow shows even the slightest bit of loyalty to is himself.

And that makes him unrecognizable from the Shadow we know and love.

His loyalty is his greatest virtue, even when it’s misguided. Let him keep it.

[alexanderwales]

(content warning: clinical discussion of suicide)

The "suicide paradox" is the observation that women report suicidal thoughts at a much greater rate than men, but commit suicide at a much lower rate (though this is culturally dependent). Women attempt suicide more often, but there's some quibbling in the literature over the distinction between "parasuicide" where someone does something that looks like suicide for whatever reason and "attempt" which implies that it was an unsuccessful effort. Depending on the assumptions that you make, women are more likely to engage in "parasuicide", at least according to the studies that I've been reading.

So there's a lot of speculation within different fields of science about why this might be the case. My pet theory is that part of it is that men are simply less likely to report suicidal thoughts, but I haven't actually seen this mentioned in the papers that I've read, not even to rule it out.

One of the theories from early in the history of modern psychology is that women have a much higher rate of suicide attempts than men but a lower rate of completion because ... they're incompetent. I find this really darkly hilarious, because it feels like such a 50s doctor conclusion to draw. The more I try to steelman it, the more I can see it sort of making sense, at least if I try to put myself in the shoes of e.g. a housewife who has never had much education and has never learned that much about anything outside of housework and child rearing. But then you wouldn't expect that the so-called paradox would have survived into the modern day through many many changes in society and gender, and it very much has. Even some of the more modern explanations seem a little sexist to me, rooted more in preconceptions of the genders than actual data, but my survey of the literature isn't complete.

The suicide paradox is something that people argue about a lot, sometimes indirectly. People engaging in the gender war use either side of it to argue that men or women "have it worse", which I think is sort of a dumb thing to argue about. The ratios seem extreme enough that it's obviously pretty clinically important, since men and women will present differently and have different needs. But it's got me diving into some of the other gender research, particularly about how we parse differences in survey responses given different socialization. It kind of seems like most researchers just ... take answers at face value, and I guess if you suspect that one gender is underreporting or overreporting (or just that there's a gender difference in reporting that's not based in ground truth) there's not much you can do about that aside from changing some of the questions to avoid it (and this is hard). It does seem like something I would have thought would get more thought put into it, so I guess it's just a matter of reading the right study.

[moonspirit]

Pieck selling her artworks and stuff and Jean be like, "support small business....(Literally, because the owner is small)"

EgHIODGdgoidafiahad I CAN'T DRAW BUT I WISH i COULD BECAUSE THIS IS GOLD PWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA XD

Pieck would run one of those cute online stores where when you buy an artwork, you also get a surprise box which could basically mean ANYTHING. A live crab? A boxing glove? A preserved fossil? A badly printed photo of a t-rex? ANYTHING.

And Jean does NOT appreciate this business model because he thinks it's all very gaudy and scammy but... Pieck's website also has this "real-time viewers" tracking thing, which shows how many people are viewing her store at any given point of time and... guess who's ALWAYS there...

(she finds out)

Jean doesn't like her webpage design or her eccentric surprise boxes or her packing paper, but he IS the No. 1 Supporter and by god is he gonna be strangely adorable about it.

"Support my Small Girlfriend's SMall Business! But please, don't choose surprise box no. 5... please... if you value your safety..."

[eldritch-nightmare]

Had smth in mind based on those Jeff Headcannons you did,,,,,What about The Doll Maker or Bloody Painter(or both idk I’m indecisive) yandere Headcannons but with a willing reader,,,Thought abt that while listening to Ayesha Erotica, idk how

a/n: your wish is my command. going with the bloody painter since i haven't really written much for him here yet. this one got away from me a bit. sorry if it's messy, but i hope you find enjoyment from it nonetheless <3

yandere bloody painter with a willing s/o.

warnings: gn!reader, yandere content, puppeteer cameo bc why not, crush at first... smile?, reader goes to an art school, reader has some questionable morals, stalking, possessive behavior, murder, blood, breaking and entering, the public nor authorities doesn't know that helen is the bloody painter in this btw, morbid painting, a brief description of gore, idk art so sorry if i describe it incorrectly.

Oh, man. I can see him behaving in two different ways. One is the way he'd behave around you if you were there in his childhood and the other is if he met you after everything happened. For this, we'll focus on how he behaves after everything happened.

Helen is very emotionally reserved and pretty apathetic, to be honest with you. It's very difficult to get close to him. I like to think that you two met while he was getting some more art supplies.

He saw you struggling to pick between two paints and, being the artist that he is, he decided to do something a little nice for once and help you out.

And, a little bit to his surprise, that led to a rather lengthy conversation about art as you detailed to him the art project you were working on and how you really weren't sure what direction you wanted to take it because the prompt given to you didn't give you any ideas.

And as we all know, Helen is nothing if not an artist. So, obviously, he listens to every little detail you provide him and offers some advice that may help you out before you two go your separate ways.

And--

Huh. Why'd his chest suddenly feel all warm at the sight of your smile?

He finds himself drawing your smiling face later, thinking that maybe the warm feeling in his chest was just a random burst of inspiration. I mean, he is an artist after all. Inspiration tends to strike at the most random times.

His dear friend seems to think otherwise.

"Aw, does Helen have a little crush?" -> "If you don't have anything of value to say, then please keep your mouth shut."

He doesn't have a crush on you. Not that he knows what it's like to have a crush, I mean he's never been in love before, but he doesn't. No way.

Then he sees you again, and damn. I guess The Puppeteer was right. He does have a crush. Oh well. He accepts this revelation immediately and comes to terms with this newfound feeling rather quickly.

It's just a small crush, one that he's sure will go away soon. But he's never felt this way before, and the feeling leaves him curious, so he finds himself actively seeking you out.

He doesn't consider it to be stalking at first, just... studying. But then he follows you home one day, and he realizes that maybe these feelings of his aren't as small as he thought they were.

Does he feel bad for stalking you? I think, momentarily, he questions why he's doing this but... he's not a great guy in the first place. He does kill people and use their blood as paint, after all.

And you're aware that someone is watching you. You can feel eyes on you most nights. You should be scared, you know that, but... for some reason, you don't. If anything, you start leaving your blinds open more often.

Helen will sometimes even sketch you while he watches you. The way you hold yourself and the way you move around... it just makes him want to capture every moment he can in his sketchbook. He even briefly considers picking up photography as a hobby the longer he watches you, but he decides to just stick with his own form of art.

But he really likes it when he gets to see you make your own art.

And that's when he breaks into your home for the first time. You were out with some friends, and when you came home, you noticed your door was unlocked. At first, you didn't really think much of it, but when you went to your room, you couldn't help but feel as if something were off.

It took you a while, but you soon discovered that some of your drawings were missing. Thankfully, none of the ones you drew for class were missing.

You had no means of contacting your stalker, which you suppose is a good thing, so instead you just wrote on a piece of paper and taped it to your window.

'Glad you like my drawings.'

And the next day, taped on the outside of your window was a little doodle of a smiley face.

You didn't give this odd relationship much thought, to be honest. You thought it was kinda cute that this random stranger seemed to derive some type of joy from watching you. He hasn't done anything to hurt you, and his intentions don't seem malicious, so you honestly had no problem with it.

Of course, your friends definitely thought it was weird. They think that you need to report your stalker to the police, but you choose to ignore their concerns. You reassure them that if you ever feel as if you're life is in any danger, you'll inform the authorities about what's happening.

So, it goes on like this for a while. Helen would mostly stick to watching you from afar, but sometimes he'd break into your place while you're sleeping just to get a closer look at you. Sometimes, you'll wake up and there will be a drawing of you on your nightstand. You keep those drawings tucked away safely in one of the many empty sketchbooks you own.

Then a... domino effect of sorts took place.

You started going to a new café since it was closer to where you lived and closer to the school you attended. -> There's a cute barista there who always flirts with you whenever you buy a coffee or get yourself a treat. -> You humored their behavior because you thought it was cute, so you would flirt back sometimes. -> It became routine, and a couple weeks into the routine, the barista just up and vanished.

You thought they had quit, but you overheard some of the other employees at the café whispering about how they hadn't heard anything from them.

Something that should have been completely unrelated, you lose your red paint. You can't find it anywhere.

Continuing on with the domino effect, a day or two goes by and you hear on the news that the barista you had been flirting with was found dead in their home, drained dry of their blood. The police believe this to be another victim of The Bloody Painter.

You wouldn't have thought much of it, but then you notice a note taped to your window.

'There's a gift for you in your kitchen.'

And when you went to your kitchen, you saw a container resting on the counter. It wasn't translucent or see-through, so you couldn't see inside of it, but there was another note resting on top of it.

'I saw you were out of red paint, so I got you some more. We should meet up this week and paint together, don't you think? I'd love to see what you can create with this.'

And the note wasn't signed with a smiley face this time. It was signed with a name.

Helen Otis.

You set the note to the side and one quick look inside the container told you that he had given you blood to use as paint.

It didn't take you long to piece together what was going on here. The blood he had given you was no doubt the blood of the barista who had been murdered, which means... your stalker was that serial killer that's been all over the news these past few months.

The person who has been breaking into your home and leaving you those drawings was a serial killer. And he... he trusted you enough to tell you his name?

Holy shit, that's a lot to take in.

You should be panicking. Hell, you should be calling the police to let them know about all of this. You'd be doing the world some good if you did that, and it would save a lot of lives.

But your gaze drifts back to the note, and your mind wanders to all the drawings he's made of you, and... this was just so...

Cute. It felt romantic, even.

He killed a person you had been flirting with and gave you their blood as a gift. That has to be his way of letting you know that you were his.

You didn't even think about what you were going to do. You took the container of blood and you took it to your room. It didn't take you long to set up a tarp on the ground since it was no doubt going to drip onto your floor and you really didn't need blood stains in your carpet.

And you searched up a reference of what you wanted to paint, and you immediately got to work.

Later that night, while you were sleeping peacefully in your bed, Helen was breaking into your home for the nth time.

The reason why is because you had left a note for him to see on your window, one that had certainly caught his attention.

There's a gift for you in the kitchen.

You've never left him a gift before, so his curiosity was certainly piqued.

He made sure to be quiet as he made his way to your kitchen, not wanting to wake you up. He wasn't ready to meet you. Not yet.

When he gets to your kitchen, he certainly wasn't really expecting to see a canvas resting on the counter, a white sheet covering whatever was painted on it. A sticky note was placed on the sheet as well, and Helen stepped closer to it to read it.

This is what it looked like, right?

p.s. I'm willing to take you up on that offer.

And on the corner of the sticky note, there was a small smiley face doodle. How cute.

With the note read, Helen wasted no time carefully removing the sheet from the canvas, a subtle excitement coursing through his veins.

And... oh. Oh, you're as fucked up as him, aren't you?

What he sees is a downright devastatingly beautiful piece of work.

The painting was completely done with just the blood he had given you, with a few pencil marks for shading, and it depicted the murder he had committed just a few days prior.

He imagines that it was rather easy to find a photo of the crime scene online, but you were somehow able to capture the scene perfectly and you weren't ever there.

From the way the body was hanging upside down from the ceiling, a few buckets underneath it to collect the blood dripping from it. The way lifeless look in their eyes that you had done with a pencil... the gashes all over their body...

You had passed the test he had set up for you.

He took this as a sign of acceptance. A sign that you wanted to be his. You wouldn't keep the blood and make such a masterpiece with it if you didn't, right?

A slight smile formed on his face at the thought, and he stood there and admired the art you had made for him.

Hmm... maybe he'll stick around until you wake up...

[scriptorsapiens]

Classicstober Day 3: Asterion (𐀀𐀮𐀳𐀪𐀃)

To those who don't know (or didn't play Supergiant's Hades) the Minotaur was born with a name: Asterion. There's a lot that I take away from the name, it's history, and it's implications, but I think the shortest version is "the worst monsters are the ones we make ourselves," so for him I wanted to show a tender moment between Asterion and his mother, the nymph Pasiphaë.

My rant about the Minotaur and my design thought process is under the cut.

Asterion was not a name pulled out of nowhere. It was the name of Minos' adopted father, the man who raised him and his brothers. Pasiphaë choosing to name him that implies that either A) Pasiphaë had a really cruel sense of naming conventions, which is not unlikely given her character or B) the baby Asterion was just that; a baby. Not really a monster, not yet, just a strange child who would be ruined by his adopted father. Seeing Classical art of Pasiphaë affectionately holding a baby Asterion (which partially inspired this piece) seems to support the latter, and given Minos' characterization it makes sense that he would see more value in a monster than another son.

Something that lots of retellings leave out is the presence of nymphs and gods in these stories. Pasiphaë (𐀞𐀯𐀞𐀁) was no mortal queen, she was the daughter of the sea-nymph Perse and The Sun (Helios), as well as a powerful sorceress. To reflect her divinity I always draw Pasiphaë as a glowing, terrifying white entity with inborn red accents (that latter trait being inspired by a line from Madeline Miller's Circe).

Her clothes are mostly based on a Minoan style (ask me about my thoughts on Minos and Minoan appearances) but instead of a tailored tunic Pasiphaë wears a bit of a call-forward to a chiton. This also allows her to bare her breasts, as IMHO most goddesses keep it all out, especially such a wild, nature based child of the Sun and the Sea. The colors are very rich to show how wealthy Minos is. I know the ancient Greeks equated the sun to silver more than to gold, but I wanted Pasiphaë to wear some bright yellow-gold as her primary palette.

Modern habit die hard, I guess.

[ellievickstar]

Is this Love?

A/N: So I wanted to do an an enemies to lovers and I thought: What better character to start with then Cardan Greenbriar. I really hope this is okay I know that @aroseinvelaris love the cruel prince so this is for you love <3

Summary: The king is the most infuriating person alive. But every time he looks at you, you feel your skin burn and your heart skips a beat. You hate the way he makes you feel alive, but you especially hate his obnoxiousness and horrible addiction to partying. However, after a night of drinking and reveling, what will you do when the King of Elfhame seeks you out?

Request: N/A

Pairing: Cardan Greenbriar x noble faerie!reader

Warnings: !!!Disclaimer!!!This does not follow the actual storyline, I’m kinda just winging it since it’s been some time since I’ve read the books and also I wanna get comfortable with the character first!!! Enemies to lovers, a bit toxic, intoxication, physical contact, being held against ones will

~*~*~*~*~

You wanted to kill him. “What. Did. You. Say.” You asked again, glaring at the King you were supposed to respect. You curled your fingers into a fist as they dug crescents into your palms. The king lazily smirked at your frustration, the papers you had given him falling out of his hand onto the floor.

“Your idea is dismal at best. It lacks any intellectual reasoning at it is also by far one of the worst that your family has ever presented me. You may be the representing noble, but honestly this presentation is just sad and pathetic,” You gaped, rolling your eyes as you snatched the papers from the ground, storming out of the room. That asshole. How dare he!? How dare he insult your ideas like that, knowing that you and your father had worked hard on those proposals together. How dare he insult your intelligence when he can barely even go a day without becoming intoxicated and doing something stupid at those parties he holds!

Fury bubbled within you as you stormed to your home. Waving your hands in the air as you ranted and raved about the King, you mumbled strings of curses and insults to yourself. That- That arsehole. That empty headed, intoxicated, narcissistic, egoistic, think-skulled arsehole. Start praying that he becomes sober because one more word out of that mouth will get him killed, either by your hands or some pissed-off royal from another far away powerful land.

Slamming the papers onto the table of your office, you sighed heavily, collapsing onto the armchair behind you. Being one of Elfhame's few females that is a representing noble for her family was far from easy. Especially when that lazy dumbass king that sat on his ass and drank all day already had prejudices against you since you were both children. You might have to reconsider killing him because, well, why not? Cardan Greenbriar is one of the most incompetent people in the entire kingdom and he still dared to insult YOUR intelligence. A scholar, the same lady who literally saved him from being murdered at the coronation. The absolute audacity!

You growled impatiently as you ran your hands through your hair. Sure, you might not be the oldest noble, but he hadn't even spared you a thought before tossing your ideas down the drain. What was so terrible about giving free education to poorer families in Elfhame? Was he so narrow-minded, so spoiled, so entitled, that he didn't realise that there are still fae out there suffering!?

"I guess it's back to the drawing board huh!?" You whipped your head around to your father. He smiled at you, crows feet appearing at the corners of his eyes, his hair white, his skin sunken and wrinkled. Human. Your father was human. Your mother had been the fae one, though she died at birth. However, you never felt her absence as your father had never let you doubt for one moment that you were absolutely loved. You softened at the sight of your father. He was old, weak. Definitely not things that were valued by the fae. And if it hadn’t been for your fae heritage and your father’s deep-rooted connections, you could be living a very different life.

“I’ll worry about that, you just rest, Pa,” Prompting your father gently to go to bed. He nodded, pride shining in his eyes, as he walked out humming a simple tune. Your heart broke at the thought of living a life after he dies, but it was inevitable. You had to figure this out on your own. Lest, Mr. I-hate-everything, would be breathing down your neck.

Sighing, you turned to your desk, riddled with stacks if loose papers and books. You had to figure something out, present something, you promised yourself. You would not let the king trample your idea of a better Elfhame.

~*~*~*~*~

You were…..so tired. Well that was one way to put it. How did some humans do this their whole lives? You had pulled an all-nighter to rewrite the reports that the King wanted and you couldn’t believe how truly exhausted you were. When you heard from your father that some humans do this from the time they are in middle school, you wanted to faint. You could barely hold it together as you changed clothes into a formal gown.

Regardless, it was done. Thankfully, you were finally done with the piles of work that you had delayed for so long. If you were lucky, the King would give you a day off. Trudging to the Palace of Elfhame, you let out a sigh as you smoothed down your skirts once more. Approaching the doors, you flinched when you heard laughter and the cacophony of a party from the inside.

“When will someone finally have a vendetta against me and murder me in my sleep,” You mumbled as you pushed open the doors, faltering slightly as you noticed the insane amount of people dancing and laughing under the influence. At the centre of it all, Cardan lazed on his throne, grinning as he held a goblet of what you guessed was a mixture of his favourite alcohols.

You were about to turn around and leave, however Cardan spotted you and promptly called out your name above the loud and jarring music. Realising that he was probably drunk and wouldn’t remember this anyways, you continued walking, huffing to yourself when you heard footsteps following you. Cardan’s footsteps.

“Wait! Would you listen to your King and just wait!?” You ignored him, despite your efforts, he still caught up to you, stepping in front of you to block your path. He reeked of alcohol, and….was that substances?

“Are you high!? And drunk!? It’s not even a weekend Cardan!” You yelled in his face. If he was both of those things he wouldn’t remember this anyways, so might as well get it off your chest. “You are so infuriating, you are not responsible, you barely make right judgments without your advisors, you are always a little bit drunk. You are not fit to be King. Let’s not even mention the fact that you always look down on me for being half-human! I hope yo-,” You couldn’t finish your sentence as you kept trying to shove Cardan, because as you tried to continue screaming at him, he caught your wrist and pulled you in roughly, meeting your with a kiss.

~*~*~*~*~

A/N: I don’t know about this….but eh. No harm no foul in trying. Honestly, I don’t think this is the worst fic I have ever written. So- I hope you had fun reading this. I had a little fun writing this. See you next time <3

(ALSO THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH FOR 400 FOLLOWERS)

tag list: none for this character yet

[fixing-bad-comic-art]

So like, I watch a lot of documentaries, and one of the ones I've been chewing on recently is this one by bobbybrocoli about the lenna image , tldr there's a crop of a Playboy bunny that was used to train and test a lot of early image processing algorithms. and there's been significant push to retire the image bc a. it's old and not really useful for much of anything anymore, your program working with Lena in 2023 doesn't prove it works, it proves it turns on. and b. It's a crop of a scan of an erotic photo from a Playboy magazine. the documentary goes a into a lot more detail about it's reception and use and interviews a few folk about it's presence in the field and the culture around it.

and i was watching the documentary again while working on that last edit and finally something clicked for me.

I've never been happy with saying the issue with the sexualization of women in comics was an issue because of the sexualization on its own. Sexuality and the expression of it is normal and benign. the lenna image isn't anything special. It's a nice 512px picture of a pretty lady in a fun hat, you probably wouldn't guess it's origins from looking at it.

The problem is that it's not Just one image, and it's not Just a tendency to endulge in a little extra sex appeal in the occasional comic. to use an analogy put forward by one of the programmers interviewed; They're both individual bricks in much larger walls.

The Lenna image wouldn't be an issue if there wasn't massive issues with sex based discrimination in programming.

The sexualization wouldn't be an issue if the women on the page were given the same agency and value in the stories as the men, if the women behind the scenes were paid the same as the men and hired to work the same roles, if comic fan spaces weren't often outright hostile to women and girls just trying to enjoy the same fun as the boys.

the sexualization is just one brick in the wall and it also happens to be the easiest to point at and talk about. It's visual. You can draw literal red lines around it. all the other bricks are much larger culture issues that can't be pinned on single artists. They don't have faces and names you cane be mad at on the internet. Then the more you look the easier it is to see these two bricks, the Lenna image and the sexualization in comics, are part of the same massive wall.

[quillandink22]

A dick winters imagine please

Like one where winters has loved the reader since tocoa and the two are best friends. The war is over and they are in Austria and he asks her to go for a morning swim. The two get close and he confess that he loves her and she loves him to. Like fluffy.

This has literally been on my mind all day since I read it. I hope my writing does it justice. Points is one of my favourite episodes. A girl can't help but appreciate Damien Lewis shirtless. Anyway, heres my take on your prompt :)

Treading Water

It was early morning. You had planned to sleep in, given that for the first time in what seemed like forever, you had nothing in particular to do. This should have been a relief, but the silence felt like a precursor to the screams for a medic you were hardwired to follow. Even now, in the tranquil embrace of Austria, your body hadn’t seemed to grasp the fact that it was finally safe. The men, for the most part, were safe too. Your job, at least for the moment, was done. But still, you couldn’t quite sleep in. You couldn’t allow yourself to relax.

You woke with the birds each morning, dressed in your uniform with the medic’s badge strapped to your arm, and headed to the lake. Clad for war, yet carrying only a sketchpad and pencil, you were a paradox. By the time the sun rose, you were nestled on the banks of the lake, sketching or attempting to sketch the world around you. You’d never seen such beauty. The way the lake stretched out almost endlessly, its crystal-clear waters reflecting the sky above. The alpine slopes rose in the distance, jagged rocks contrasting with the soft blanket of pine needles that covered the soil at the edge of the water.

It was peaceful, a state you’d grown to loathe but were trying to readjust to. There seemed to be plenty of adjustments to make. But jumping into the Pacific war zone had put a stop to any plans you’d started to make about going home. In truth, you had no idea what life would look like now. You had changed so much in the past three years. Was it even possible to go back to the way things were? To the person you once were?

"We seem to have the same idea."

You jumped slightly, too preoccupied with your drawing and thoughts to hear the approaching footsteps. "Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you," Dick spoke, slightly awkwardly. He stood just as awkwardly, back pin-straight, perhaps a habit ingrained in him.

"No, it’s my fault. I was miles away," you offered, settling yourself. You dropped your art supplies gently to the ground. "Going swimming?" you asked, gesturing to the towel draped over his shoulder. You couldn’t help but appreciate his outfit. It had been a while since you’d seen Dick in anything other than his uniform. His white T-shirt clung to him, highlighting the body he’d forged during training, though you could tell he’d lost weight. You all had these past few months. Still, he was nothing short of perfect in your eyes, though you had never told him that out loud.

"Thinking about it." He smiled before dropping down beside you. His long legs stretched out before him as he made himself comfortable on the blanket you’d laid out beneath you. "So this is where you’ve been hiding. It’s nice. Pretty," he said, his eyes watching you intently.

"I’ve just needed some time to think, I guess."

"About?"

"Everything," the word left your body almost as a sigh. "The last three years. The future. I don’t know, I feel like my mind’s going a mile a minute."

"I know the feeling," he spoke softly, leaning back to watch the lake, his mind clearly drifting away.

"Yeah?"

"Nix offered me a job."

"That’s good, right?" You smiled, genuinely excited that at least one of you seemed to be sorting their life out. Yet you could hear the apprehension in his voice.

"You think?" He tilted his head back to you. It struck you how close you’d become these last three years. How much he valued your opinion. "I’m not sure I’d be any good at it. I don’t know anything about fertilizer or business for that matter."

"You’re joking. All those people to boss around," you teased. "You’ll be in your element."

"Careful," he warned with no malice, the corners of his lips curling into a smile. You loved his smile. It was almost infectious. You’d long since made it your mission to make it a regular occurrence. To see his dimples or the little creases on the bridge of his nose when he laughed.

"I’m kidding. Well, not really." You nudged him with your elbow, an act of measured intimacy. "You should take it. Go settle down and leave all this war business behind you. I would."

"How many points are you short?" He looked more stoic now, the realization perhaps only now hitting him.

"Too many. I was never injured, and they don’t tend to award female medics medals." You shrugged it off like it didn’t matter. Like it wasn’t the thing that kept you awake most nights. "Tab offered to marry me for points, but I’d still be short." You joked, trying to lift the mood. There was nothing he could do about it. If you had to jump, you’d jump. You’d take up the mantle of medic again and watch over your boys.

He didn’t laugh; perhaps your demeanour didn’t match your tone. He was too good at reading you.

"Fancy a swim?" he suddenly offered.

"I'm not dressed for it," you replied with a laugh, your attire making it plainly obvious. "You go, I’ll still be brooding here when you get back." Another joke that seemed to fall flat, given the concerned look he sent your way.

You pulled out your sketchpad once more as he headed to the end of the pier. Pencil in hand, you intended to continue the landscape you’d begun, but it quickly became impossible when Dick pulled his shirt over his head. He looked over his shoulder, undoubtedly to make sure you hadn’t brooded yourself to death.

You offered a lopsided grin, praying he was far enough away not to see the blush rising in your cheeks. Your heart seemed to stop and speed up simultaneously. It was ridiculous—he was one of your best friends, had been since Toccoa. He was one of the first to accept you as you were, reassuring you endlessly when Sobel seemed hell-bent on kicking you to the curb. Even as he climbed the ranks throughout the war, he was always there for you. The men often thought him shy—he hadn’t earned the nickname "Frosty" for nothing—but you never saw him that way. He was, in many ways, your rock, never more so than in Bastogne.

In those frozen woods, you lost bits of yourself, lost men you regarded as family. Never before had you felt so useless as a medic, so helpless. There were times when the thought of lifting your body from your foxhole and running towards a scream terrified you so much you froze. You couldn’t face another body, another man begging to be saved when you knew you couldn’t help—that no medic could. In those dark days, you sought him out. He’d offer you coffee, or what passed for it, and just listened. He’d put an arm around your shoulders, pull you close, and tell you stories from home, of his family. You never told him how much that meant, how it had saved you. Fear held you back—fear that if you opened your mouth, you wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from telling him how you felt, from telling him you loved him. He was your best friend, and losing him, even now when you felt stronger, was too much to bear. It was too big a risk. So, you remained quiet.

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

Dick turned for a split second to check on you. It hadn’t occurred to him that you wouldn't have enough points to go home. How foolish of him to assume. No wonder you’d been distant since the announcement that Easy Company was destined for another jump. It didn’t seem fair; he’d seen how hard you worked, how you pushed yourself to the bone to look after the company. The toll it often took on you. The thought of you jumping again without him there to watch out for you terrified him.

He dove off the pier, the cold water shocking his system. It was colder than it looked, and he liked that; it usually helped clear his mind. But you remained fixed in his thoughts. You always did. Ever since you stepped into Toccoa, you occupied his mind more than he cared to admit. He hadn’t had the courage to speak to you until the rumor spread that you were involved in a possible appendectomy on Sobel. He’d asked you straight out, equal parts curious and awed. He hated Sobel, still did, but he’d never have chanced something like that, as much as he might have wished to. You just smiled innocently, with a twinkle in your eye that said the opposite. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t fallen for you in that moment. In truth, he’d been falling for you ever since. But he outranked you and worried that starting something more than friendship would risk your position in the company. He refused to lose you. Nix had called him out on his lack of action several times, joking that Dick was a coward where you were concerned. Maybe he was right. Perhaps it wasn’t just rank but fear of rejection. He didn’t fear much, but losing you was something he refused to allow.

He resurfaced for a breath, only to hear the sound of a splash. It drew him from the rhythm of swimming. His feet and arms now treaded water as he watched your head surface. Your hair was plastered to your head, making your face stand out more, highlighting your natural beauty. He knew he was turning red; he could feel the burn in his face, the heat rising to the tips of his ears. You had stripped down to your underwear. Though he couldn’t see you clearly, he couldn’t stop his mind from filling in the blanks. Worse still, you were swimming straight for him, effortlessly cutting through the water.

"I got sick of brooding," you said, beaming as you stopped a few feet from him, treading water to stay afloat.

"Right, well, swimming helps... you know, with brooding. Clears the mind." He rambled on, hoping you’d stop him before he drowned himself in embarrassment. "I..." he started, unsure of what to say as his brain blanked. Awkward silences were never something he’d associated with you. He saw how confused you were, watching him with that expression you reserved for wounded men. Perhaps you thought he was having a stroke. Instead of speaking, he raised his hand and flicked water at your face.

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

Jumping into the lake half-dressed was probably a stupid idea. You didn’t know why you did it. Well, you did. God, it was a bad idea. He looked at you like you were crazy and splashed water in your face. When you finally regained your eyesight and saw his terrified expression, you laughed—laughed like you hadn’t in quite some time.

"If it’s a battle you want, Major, it’s a battle you’ll get," you teased confidently. You gave him no time to register it before blasting a wave of water in his direction and swimming away at speed. It took all your self-control not to laugh and inhale half the lake in the process.

You were just about to chance looking over your shoulder when a hand wrapped around your ankle, pulling you back towards him. His hand met your shoulder, dunking you momentarily under the water.

"Oy," you protested when you resurfaced, only to have more water thrown in your face.

"If you’re jumping, I’m jumping," he suddenly said as you wiped the water from your eyes.

"What?" you blurted breathlessly.

"The Pacific. If you jump, I jump."

You were still treading water, realizing just how close you both were. His red hair was a mess, beads of water trickling down his handsome face.

"I can’t ask you to do that."

"I’m not asking your opinion. I’m telling you my plans." He smiled, his mind set in stone. You knew it from the determination that shrouded his face.

"Dick..." you began, ready to tell him to go home, to take his points and get clear of the mess you’d be facing. You wanted him safe, even if that meant he wouldn’t be there with you.

"I love you."

You couldn’t quite believe what he’d just said. His hand moved slowly to rest on your bare waist. "I have for a while. You don’t have to say it back. I wouldn’t expect it. I just needed you to know."

Your eyes locked, and time stood still. Everything that held you back slipped away—all worries and doubts long forgotten as you swam forward. You gave him little warning before your lips met his. For a second, he didn’t move, too shocked. But then you felt his hand pull your waist closer to his. His lips, softer than you expected, moved against yours as your arms wrapped around his neck.

His hands roamed your back, leaving a trail of warmth despite the cold water surrounding you. You felt his heart pounding against your chest, matching the rapid beat of your own. Every touch, every sensation, was magnified in the quiet intimacy of the lake. You pulled back slightly, just enough to see his eyes, full of relief and passion. He smiled, a genuine, heartfelt smile and the words you needed found your lips.

"I love you," you replied, your voice confident and sure as you leaned in for another kiss, this one even more tender and filled with promise.

[justenjoythegossip]

WHAT ABOUT NOW ? DO YOU SEE HOW COMPLICIT CHRIS IS?

Very quick recap of recent events: Some very staged pics of Chris & Abba in Lisbon surfaced yesterday at approximately the same time, hours after some good old classic teasing and trolling. The previous weeks, we had a few interesting events that all seemed to point to a possible (but unlikely) separation: a sight of Chris’ doppelganger with no ring, Abba on a ski trip with her friends without her ring, Chris posting Dodger in MA for Valentine’s, Chris posting pictures of himself in LA without his wife, the very questionable Medium article about their alleged split… 

Chris’ participation in the latest silly stunt & the point of recent events..

I know a big chunk of his fandom has given Chris the benefit of the doubt since the start of this shitshow. Chris liked to joke that he is quite the “meatball” but as RDJ his frequent costar has said, he is very “shrewd”. And I believe it’s now pretty obvious Chris knows exactly what he is doing and he is more than complicit in those PR games. 

Chris came back to Instagram just in time for the Back Friday, with a very different grid and a much more professional account. When he posted that story of his beloved dog Dodger running in the snow on Valentine’s eve, it was the FIRST time he had posted a private moment since his return to Insta. The first time and it wasn’t random. He then posted 2 pics of him with the Russo brothers that were taken a month prior to their being published. A month before and it wasn’t random! 

The optics were pretty obvious, he was showing himself to be alone. He was selling a narrative. Alone on Valentine’s day. Alone at a party in a city where his wife says she lives. Oh and by the way, his kinda wife did pretty much the same thing at the same time, showing herself on a ski trip without her ring. It was a concerted effort as both sides worked IN UNISON to paint the picture of a possible separation as a misdirect. 

And to that, let’s add the super sketchy Medium article that discussed their alleged split. I wrote a post about it if people want to check it out… https://www.tumblr.com/justenjoythegossip/742890431073992704/will-albas-immaturity-racism-and-alleged?source=share

The role of that questionable Medium article in that latest stunt…

I strongly suspected his team was behind that article. But now even more so and for several reasons. First of all, that article supported the exact same narrative that Chris & Abba were selling at the exact same time. I have difficulties believing in a coincidence. Obvious plants in the fandom made such a big fuss about this article while being very adamant about not having written it. Both DM & ENTY (overkill much?) pinned this article on “crazy fans that took it too far”. Last but not least, the article was posted online 3 days before team PR blogs mentioned it. So his team knew about it. And I strongly suspect that they would have had taken that article down if they had wanted to. But they didn’t. 

What was the goal then? Well I don’t need to tell you that given how staged those Lisbon pics are, they were planned for some time & curated (oh yes, Abba’s movie is coming out soon but surely another coincidence). Chris, Abba and their teams knew it was coming, so by breadcrumbing and hinting at a separation, what they did was to ADD SHOCK VALUE to their latest stunt. To get people more excited. To have their emotions run as high as possible. 

Because let’s be honest, what they just did is basically “same old, same old”. So that narrative of a separation helped achieve maximum impact with minimum effort.

Team PR’s role in this latest stunt and the lies they are currently selling…

By drawing so much attention to that sketchy article, Team PR blogs tried to give Chris & Abba’s separation as much hype as they could. Kudos to them for still lying with a straight face. But I guess it’s easier to do that when you are sitting behind a keyboard. https://www.tumblr.com/justenjoythegossip/737798414679605248/pr-spin-credibility-of-team-prteam-real-and-the?source=share

So now after the pics of Chris & Abba in Lisbon, they are selling more lies, but the 2 key ones being that:

The pics are either old and or fake because they are photoshopped and they don’t mean anything

Abba is the one that photoshopped the pic with Chris’ side unaware of it. 

There is a lot to unpack here and to debunk so I am sorry I’ll try to be as succinct as I can. Let’s state the obvious, Chris is the powerful Hollywood star while Abba is a no-name actress from a small country. She is not in charge of anything, his team is likely in command while she is kept on a short leash. She isn’t even allowed to speak in public (remember the GQ event). So to claim that Abba is pulling the strings is absolutely ludicrous. Having said that, neither Chris or Abba is running this shitshow. CAA is most likely in charge. 

Also even if you believe that the pics in Lisbon are fake (more on that later), it doesn’t make one bit of a difference but it does mean something (more on that later as well). There is absolutely no way that either Abba’s side or Chris’ side would leak anything, especially pictures without the other side knowing about it and approving it. If either one of them made the mistake of being seen somewhere when they are supposed to be someplace else, the house of cards would fall down. These people do know how to disappear when they want to or to be seen when they want to. So again, regardless of what you believe of those sights in Lisbon (real or not), Chris was complicit. Without a question. But Team PR blogs always try to soften the blow by presenting Chris as a poor innocent victim to make him look more sympathetic and they present Abba as this arch-villain trolling Chris’ fandom. Their constant lying serves one main purpose: to distract from the actual truth. So let’s spell the truth out. Chris and Abba’s shitshow isn’t over. They lied. Once again. Chris is more than a willing participant in those despicable PR games and Abba is not in charge.

The necessary discussion about Photoshop and the reasons for its blatant use…

I definitely dreaded talking about Photoshop because this subject tends to trigger people, and also because Majorscammer has turned that topic into a complete joke. Since I’m not a tech person, I will discuss it strictly from a PR/marketing standpoint.

Digital retouching is used all the time to try to make a product more appealing to the public so that they buy it. It’s no different in PR. Sometimes, an actress might want a slimmer waistline, an actor who is super self-conscious about his age next to his teenager looking wife might want some wrinkles erased or a fuller set of hair. Photoshop does not equate fake. Sometimes they are just slight (or big) alterations but it’s still very real. 

One friend who is a tech guy did tell me that sometimes when you use AI to alter a picture, you get “weird” mistakes in the pic. So again, the weird digital retouching in a pic might be totally organic. But obviously most of the time, it isn’t organic. And indeed, a pic can be badly altered on purpose because it serves a clear purpose. And agencies do use badly photoshopped pictures as an efficient tool in a PR strategy all the time for the simple reason that it’s meant to get people to talk. It is supposed to drive traffic and feed the discourse.

So again, I won’t discuss whether one pic in Lisbon might be old while the other might be legit or not but seems to have many issues. Why? Because it’s pointless as there is no way to know the truth and more importantly it serves as a distraction. The point is, the truth is right in front of our eyes. They are still selling the narrative that they are a married couple and they use cheap tricks to keep the fandom engaged. 

Chris’ love/hate relationship with his fans and the evil/corrupt tactics in the PR strategy

Chris has very often said that he has the best fans and that he loves them. But I would argue that his relationship to his fandom is far more ambiguous that he would care to admit. We have witnessed a few hints that would suggest that Chris doesn’t value his fandom as much as he should. Scott made certain remarks where he definitely threw his fans under the bus. Even recently on a podcast this past summer. There was also an interaction on Twitter between Chris and Yvette Nicole Brown where Chris thanked her. It was right after Chris & Abba’s first papwalk. And Yvette made some very negative comments about Chris’ fans that were totally over-the-top and unhinged. 

But more importantly, I would argue that actions speak a lot louder than words. And what has Chris signed on? A PR strategy that involves teasing his fans, trolling them, toying with them, manipulating them, gaslighting them and more disgustingly villainizing them. He can claim that “the industry makes you do things you don’t want to do” all he wants but it’s a rationalization. The truth is many of his peers haven’t resorted to such despicable tactics.

Many people have claimed that he has looked ashamed as hell when he was next to her. People have speculated that it was likely because she is a fat shaming, racist, antisemitic, arrogant Nazi sympathizing yacht girl but I don’t think so. I think he has looked embarrassed because of the optics of their relationship, because he looks so much older next to her. This is probably why they were wearing masks for their first papwalk, why all the content that comes out is so heavily curated, why he didn’t want to walk the red carpet with her for the Ghosted premiere etc. Why do I say that he is not ashamed of her Nazism? Well, for the simple reason that he and his team chose her and they very likely knew who she was from the very start. Abba was in a (PR? Real?) relationship with Lucas Bravo before she was linked to Chris. And Lucas and Chris share the same publicist: Meghan. It’s not very believable that she didn’t know who Abba was when they signed on this PR. So if Chris feels any shame other than his age, hopefully it comes from the fact that he knows that this PR strategy that demonizes his fans is despicable. And it is morally and ethically corrupt. 

Laura Benanti’s hilarious sketch as she impersonates Melania Trump for the Colbert show

To end on a much lighter note, I would like to recommend this amazing comedy bit performed by Tony Award winning actress and comic genius Laura Benanti. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8crpSnfl6Hs (start video at 1’54”)

It’s both hilarious and so on point but also very informative on the strategies used in PR tactics. I won’t spoil the ending of the sketch but I think you’ll understand right away why I chose this to illustrate this post.