#funerals pre life and death: boring

[thestressedsimmer]

For a child under a year of age, the funeral was not much. She was buried with her mother, who would undoubtedly be glad to be reunited with her - if sad that meant she was no longer living.

The family had come, but their guards insisted that they couldn't stay long and after the mass and prayer for Genevote, they were ushered back into the carriage and whisked away. Robert understood, things were dangerous and seeing as his family consisted of women and a man still recovering from poisoning? They needed to be kept safe. Not to mention his brother is the king.

He stayed behind. He had not been able to cry when they were around; even though he's sure everyone (especially his mother) knew that he felt crushed.

But still, he only felt able to let the tears out when he was completely alone with his girls' graves.

[sojutrait]

Hi soju do you have any plans to play any of the life and death expansion? Your gameplay would be top tier 🥲

ty!!!! tbh i wasnt that hyped about this pack HAHAHAH its just not For Me. like im not really an occult player so the only thing i was kinda interested in was the funeral event. and ngl that was kinda ass KJFGKJGFK i just used it yesterday (spoiler for ronnie gameplay, yeah nate dies hes old whoops)

its like pre-patches mws where no one listens and just kept pissing me off KJFKFG like the "call guests" interaction straight up Doesnt Work.

ALSO idk why sims dont like... react when listening to the eulogy? controversial opinion i love mws HAHAHAH i love how the sims react and smile and cry etc during the wedding but here sims just idle animation and look bored :/

but alas, ill probably still use the event in most of my gameplays and just pray it gets fixed or modded FKJFLGKF

[chaotic-orphan]

Whumptober No.3

Set up for Failure

Wrongfully arrested // fingerprints // “i warned you”

TWs in the extended tags

Ohhhhhhh kay, this one is really super fucking heavy? It’s really fucking dark, it’s emotional it’s very heavy, so just pre-warning to the — i did cry writing it? I don’t think I’ve ever done that so —

Do not read if you cannot handle grief and very intense pain and loss, please

*~*~*~*~*

Villain ran his hand through Vigilante’s hair who was kneeling beside his chair, every now and then catching the ends in a fist and tugging Vigilante’s head back so their eyes met with Vigilante’s throat exposed. Vigilante glared at Villain, but it’s not like he could do much with his hands cuffed in front of him.

“Are you ready for your surprise, pet?”

Vigilante just glared. Villain smiled. He loved the strong and silent types. Loved to watch them suffer even more. Make them crack, make them cry, but Vigilante? He was special. He was different.

He wanted Vigilante to speak.

Then, he wanted Vigilante to suffer.

Feel the same agony that he left Villain with.

The doors at the end of the hall opened and two Henchmen marched a half-conscious Hero in between them. Vigilante looked down, almost bored, and then, he lurched forwards. Villain tightened his hold in Vigilante’s hair until Vigilante was only able to look down his nose at Hero, eyes wide and filled with fear and Villain saw it all.

“See, darling? I told you, you’d love it.”

Hero peered ahead through bleary eyes. Their heart stuttered to a stop before life flooded their body and they ran forwards towards Vigilante.

“Vigilante?!” Hero cried, hobbling as a sob tore through their throat and the Henchmen had to yank Hero back to keep Hero between them. “You’re alive?!”

It was a heartfelt shriek, like a mother at a child’s funeral, a mix between pain that couldn’t be spoken and grief and sorrow, and a disbelieving surprise at the possibility that this could be happening to them. Why them? Why their child?

But Vigilante knew.

“Hero,” Vigilante croaked, his voice barely above a whisper. His voice sounded like shoes scuffing gravel from disuse. In all the time Villain held Vigilante prisoner, Vigilante never spoke, refused to scream or cry, became an emotionless shell of a human but seeing Hero… Vigilante forgot they could feel anything anymore.

How could— how did Villain know? They couldn’t know, Vigilante made sure to keep everything secret! That’s what he did, the last things he did before he went after Villain’s lover. He knew it was a suicide mission, but he— he protected every crumb, every minute detail about Hero, and Hero’s secret identity and their —

Hero fell to their knees, wailing. “I knew it. I knew you weren’t dead… I’ve been looking for so long,” Hero gasped and oh.

Oh.

He didn’t… Vigilante forgot the person he loved — the person who had his heart, his soul, his reason for living — was resourceful too. He was an idiot. He was such an idiot.

A breath on his cheek and Vigilante flinched. He actually flinched, shivering suddenly, desperate and he turned to look Villain in the eye, searching for any sliver of humanity left in him, but Vigilante had cut that out long ago.

Villain’s expression turned into a cold sneer, tears in his eyes as he glared down at Vigilante with the fury of a thousand gods and righteous men. Vigilante shook his head slightly, begging, silently pleading.

“Please,” he whispered. His voice like a recording of a broken man. Foreign and strange even to his own ears, he had forgotten what he sounded like, it was a shock— it would’ve been a shock if Hero hadn’t been marched in the door in chains, covered in blood.

Villain leaned in close, roughly grabbing Vigilante’s cheeks in one hand and squeezing them harshly, yanking his head towards Villain’s who was seething with a stolen hearted rage.

Every word was a dagger in Vigilante’s heart, a ripping of his chest and body and life, every syllable a death sentence, and spoken so softly, as if he was afraid he would split his larynx if he spoke above an inside voice, spittle flying, in Vigilante’s face as Villain kept his head wrenched back with his free hand in Vigilante’s hair.

They were so close their noses touched.

“I warned you,” Villain seethed. “Remember that? Remember how I begged you not to do it, Vigilante? Do you remember what you said? It had to be done.”

Vigilante dissolved into sobs. “Please, Villain. Please don’t do this. Please, please.” Vigilante pulled against the cuffs that were hooked to his ankles but he couldn’t move in any real way like this. He couldn’t defend Hero. He couldn’t get to Hero and even if he could he wouldn’t be able to stop Villain in his vengeance.

“Do you remember when I said those exact words to you?” Villain whispered, agony creasing every muscle in his face. “See how much comfort they bring you. You have nobody to blame but yourself, and trust me when I say: you will blame yourself.”

Villain slammed Vigilante back so he fell onto his side and he screamed: “WAIT!” Then a desperate: “HERO RUN!”

Vigilante righted himself, throwing himself forward, the small chain between his wrists and ankles pulled taut but he launched himself forwards, desperate and clawing and crying.

“Villain PLEASE! PLEASE DON’T DO THIS, Please! Hero, Hero! HERO I’M SORRY! Please don’t, please oh god, please!”

Hero seemed like they were already cast in the glow of heaven’s light, ethereal, serene, had Vigilante ever appreciated their beauty enough? The small dimple that appeared in their left cheek when they smiled, even now when their cheeks were flooded with tears, glistening, their eyes crinkled as they found Vigilante’s.

“I won’t die,” Hero told Vigilante softly, as he scrambled forward shaking his head. Don’t say those words. Don’t say those words! A soft breath as the henchmen released Hero’s arms. “I won’t die, my love, because you have my heart. You always have.”

“Hero— Hero, I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you run please, please, Villain. Let them go,” Vigilante wailed, desperation fuelling his movements, as he grunted between sobs, they were so close. Hero was so close if he wasn’t chained he could reach out and grab them and shield them with his body.

Villain appeared behind Hero, a hand on their hair pulling their head back. “You have my he—”

Hero choked on the words as Villain sliced a blade across their throat. Vigilante flinched as blood spurted and sprayed Vigilante as the carotid was sliced through.

Vigilante who was reaching for Hero, arms out as Hero fell, convulsing on the way down and Vigilante pressed his hands to the wound.

“Hero! Hero! HERO! HERO!” Vigilante cried, trying to staunch the bleeding with their shirt, their hands but the blood kept pooling and the stench of iron filled their nose, their mouth, their body. “Oh god, oh god, oh god Hero, no. No, no! NO! Hero— please, stay with me. Don’t leave me here. Take your heart. Take your heart I can’t— I don’t want it if you’re not here with me, Hero. Hero.”

Vigilante’s hands gripped Hero’s cheeks, trying to keep their eyes open. “Hero look at me, look at me baby, please.”

He was sta— his— the blood, oh god he was staining Hero’s face, their beautiful face and the more he tried to wipe it away the more the blood smeared and it was still pooling and spilling from the wound and Hero was dead. Hero was dead. Hero was dead and he was staining their face—

Hero.

Vigilante hunched over Hero’s body, sobs wracking through him like earthquakes, shattering every bone, every nerve, every source of light in his being.

A hand settled on his back. Vigilante stiffened, grabbing hold of Hero and not letting go. “You know,” Villain said, sniffing himself. “I’m happy Hero had your heart, Vigilante. It’s satisfying. It’s like killing you twice.”

“Kill me,” Vigilante whispered, no, begged, wailed, pleaded. It was all the same now. All this opaque too full emptiness that permeated his body, leaving an absence between his lungs, under his skin, in all the empty space that Hero filled. “Kill me too, please.”

The hand patted his back.

“Oh, no, Vigilante. You and I— we’re not meant to die young. We carry the weight of our past, no. Only the good die, and we’re too wicked to be taken yet. Trust me,” Villain said hollowly. “I’ve already tried to end my grief, but I won’t give you the chance.”

Villain leaned in closer, his hand going to the back of Vigilante’s neck and squeezing it. “You will live with your guilt until the gods decide it’s your time.”

[stromuprisahat]

Slightly incoherent The Witcher S02 rant

(Finished and posted two years later with no Starbucks involved...)

They’re trying so hard to be The Next Game of Thrones, they’re erasing everything that makes The Witcher special. Things are changed unnecessarily, *new* *original* storylines added- much simpler and inferior to source material.

There’s a lack of ~variety~ of dangers. Different kinds, different degrees... It’s all life-threatening, fatal. The writers forgot some things can be dangerous only thanks to specific circumstances. Leshy in the woods can be just that- monster living in witchers’ keep’s backyard, not some weird parasite trying to murder or transform all the witchers.

Another trend I've noticed is "No rest for the heroes.". Characters aren't allowed to have a place and/or time to develop without preasure. The most peaceful part of Ciri's story got turned into parade of incompetent, inconsiderate idiots. It’s the same issue I had with first season of Shadow and Bone, where MC's studies and integration into new enviroment got struck out. Both were lacking "action". Both got cut short and re-written to be more "eventful". In both cases the story AND characters suffered. Characters aren’t developed, they become changed. Netflix seems to have a pattern, and- considering second season of S&B- doesn’t learn from its previous terrible results.

Another huge issue is pacing. The whole season feels like it happened in a week, when Blood of Elves took more than a season of the year.

“I know someone...” As it turned out, we all do.

When we’re at things I hate, there’s the trend of connecting EVERYTHING. You have a minor part to fill? Give it to one of already existing characters to make their path more eventful and memorable. What happened to random soldier, corpse no. 54 or anonymous inkeeper in shithole MC’s just passing through? You don't constantly cross ways with the same three people! Make the world real by houndreds of faces you'll never see again! It’s like the creators didn’t notice this is a TV show, not a video game, where you have to animate every different feature, so more NPC with the same faces are to be expected.

I also dislike the trend of giving some storylines to one-off side characters or making new things up just to make them important enough to keep them around (Istredd, Dara, Stregobor). Why can't you accept some people appear, fuck up your life and you never see them again? Are they pushed to keep some actors around?

The books are mostly following Geralt’s and Ciri’s story, but not exclusively. Show offers a chance to add more background politics, wider picture. Instead they bait us with well-known, already beloved characters that get reduced to something they’re not. I’ve made a separate post about Francesca Findababair, but they didn’t treat Philippa any better. Instead of a badass, crucial for the plot, the intelligence behind Redanian Intelligence, she’s just an owl. Dijkstra’s messanger to keep in touch with some sad little elf kid.

Voleth Mier disaster

There isn’t more genric evil creature in fantasy than “demon”. Then they call it “Mother of Evil”? She’s feeding on fear? I’m starting to suspect someone in the writing room has some serious mommy issues. ... and no imagination.

Apparently Blood of Elves without a final boss fight is too boring to adapt faithfully. There’s no time to increase the stakes gradually. Every season needs to end with a BANG!

Shared dreams? Why is there the need to connect everything even more to make it MORE important and SPECIAL and INTERESTING?

Vesemir and the rest of Kaer Morons

Why the fuck is Coën Wolf, not Griffin? Remember how I talked about unnecessary changes? Why bother keeping names, when everything else is different?

Eskel didn’t deserve this shit. The writers are counting on our pre-existing knowledge of his relationship with Geralt, so his death has at least some impact. Zero effort on their part, merely one (1) flashback. The Wolf funeral is plain stupid, while supposed to look "cool". a.) There isn't many witchers, they tend to die on the Path. b.) I'm sure the mutations just make the witchers tastier. No side effects. c.) Eskel was a fucking tree. Did the wolves just use him as a fancy chewing toy?

Lambs is a dick, but a dick, who loves his family. Not a bully picking on young traumatized girls.

Vesemir’s probably the second worst, considering the whole mischaracterization mess. They’ve changed friendly grandpa into "Let us use Ciri to make more witchers". Not OOC at all.

The writers also kinda missed the whole point of only four witchers living in the gigantic keep, but never mind that...

Why do they bother looking for new stories, when they just grind it into homogenic crap corresponding with The Pattern™?

Since when are witchers training in temples? (So much for neutrality...) And where's the chubby Slavic panímáma? Melitele's tample was about healing and herbs, not magic, that's Yennefer's storyline. Yes, it matters. It completely changes the perspective.

Since there’s no emotional build-up for anything, creators went for low-haging fruit. But Roach had to die for more reasons. Aside from the obvious (Horses aren’t immortal and we can’t kill the bard.), it’s the perfect way to get Geralt on gorgeous black Friesian. Y'no, because other horses are never so cool. And the Hero™ can't ride just some chestnut these days... Don't get me wrong, I love Friesians since I was a child, but this trend is beyond annoying.

Why change 14th of the hill? That’s Triss’ storyline and passing it on Yennefer served absolutely nothing.

Then we have Rience, who is for some reason super powerful- not only he doesn't have a problem drawing from fire, he can teleport to witcher's keep? Place full of magic, the very same one that's hard to find and he's never been to? Compare with game!plot, where Lambert’s dimetrium bombs messed with Yennefer’s magic enough for her not to be able to call someone.

There should be a list of banned words, or words and phrases that are often overused: power, protect, save, curse(d), fault, ~ needs you. ~I~ need you., Together. *meaningful pause*, You can fight this., glowy eyes = evil, suicidal self-sacrifice, not perfect but real, family, I beliiiiieve in you., force, darkness...

Sorry, but using a quote from one of the strongest moments of Blood of Elves in completely different situation will NOT give you extra points. Quite contrary. This is how you ruin one of he best parts of the books- by holding a sword to your SO's (who's been through some serious shit) neck.

Honorable mention of Emhyr var AnotherDumbVillain, for publicly proclaiming Ciri’s his daughter ...now the whole Nilfgaard knows what he wants. Stupid and the easiest way to let his enemies’ spies know just HOW much is she valuable.

Things I liked about this season: Tris and Ciri's meeting, Vereena, Yenneskíer chemistry

If there’s one thing second season of The Witcher taught me, it’s “Keep your expectations low, you’re gonna be let down anyway.”.

[mistchievous]

9-1-1 Podfic Recs

Sharing some of my favorite 9-1-1 podfics (not by me 😂) for @loveryder and anyone else looking for some to check out. 🥰

These aren’t all of the ones out there or all of the ones I enjoy. Just a few faves for people looking for recs. 💃

Putting most of the post under a cut to spare your dashes!

Gen:

volver al punto de partida Read By: @blackestglass & @mistbornhero Written By: @extasiswings Summary: "Eddie’s jaw ticks, shame curling in his stomach as she switches over to Spanish. It’s a deliberate shift, that much is obvious from the way she’s looking at him, and he knows what she wants so he tries.

And fails."

drop your will in the bucket before you kick it (pre-Buddie) Read By: @blackestglass (w/sfx by @godoflaundrybaskets) Written By: kow2 Summary: Six years ago, Buck would have no problem with dying in a wildfire. There was a certain breath of relief he’d get, lying in his bed and dreaming of the call, the time of death, the bell ringing at his funeral, the unfortunately comforting fact that somebody would have to attend his funeral in order to ring the bell. He figured it was just a way to come to terms with that fact that his rate of dying went up ten-fold with his new job.

Dr. Copeland called it a form of passive suicidal thoughts, and the scary part about hearing that term for the first time is that he wasn’t scared of the term at all when she said it. She went on for the whole hour-long session about it, and Buck didn’t really feel anything, more like he thought he should’ve been taking notes, expecting her to tell him there was going to be a quiz over this the next time they met.

The problem now is, that heroic, suicidal dream was six years ago, and Dr. Copeland was almost two years ago. The problem with dying this way now, is that he doesn’t feel like going out this way anymore. He doesn’t feel like going out at all.

Buddie:

i did, i did, i do Read By: @mayonnaisetoffees Written By: @hattalove​ Summary: I didn’t know what it meant when you kissed me up against that counter, Buck wants to say. He wants to name every place that’s hurt to see for the past three years. Wants to remind Eddie of the way they used to be in bed together, quiet and all-consuming, the way their hands would curl together on Eddie’s stomach in their sleep. Wants to ask why Ana isn’t there anymore, why Eddie doesn’t tell him to get out when Buck’s spending the seventh consecutive night on his couch.

Buck wants, and wants, and wants.

Isn’t that the story of his life.

Tentacantata Read By: crawfishing Written By: @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels Summary:  Buck has a... kink. The kind of kink it's embarrassing to talk about. Eddie has some... special features. Features it's kind of weird to talk about. Surely those two facts aren't related.

Before the Night Fades Read By: @burnthatbridge Written By: @milenadaniels Summary: “I have a bottle of champagne, four champagne flutes, one engagement ring to go into one of those champagne flutes, and a note to deliver it all to table 34 with dessert,” Tomas explains, wide-eyed, throwing his hand back to the prep station where said champagne is waiting on ice next to four flutes and a small ring box.

“Okay?”

“Okay so there’s two men and two women and I have no idea who’s getting proposed to. I’m not even 100% on who came with who."

Or, EddieAna and BuckTaylor double date and it ruins everyone's night.

Despite it all, Because of it all Read By: @mayonnaisetoffees Written By: @kitkatpancakestack Summary: He puts the truck in park in front of Eddie’s childhood home. Christopher shifts in the back, already unbuckling his seatbelt. Eddie is frozen with his jaw set, eyes hard and unblinking as they bore holes through the windshield. Buck was here once before, after that relief trip to Texas, but he is under no illusions that this time will be similar. For one, he doesn’t have the buffer of other firefighters to hide behind. This isn’t a visit that will last a couple hours, and so the sugary, superficial niceties will eventually crumble when it’s mid-way through the week and he’s still hanging around. There is also the shadow of everything that has happened since the wildfires skulking behind them, waiting to be found out.

But, this is Eddie and Christopher, needing him to have it together, so he paints on a smile and squeezes Eddie's knee and slides out of the truck. * Eddie's dad gets sick. Buck goes with him and Christopher to El Paso.

from the ground up Read By: @thatnerdemryn Written By: @eddiesdiaz Summary: If he’s honest, Eddie gets why Buck filed the lawsuit.

He does. He understands the hopelessness, the feeling you’re losing all control, like you’re sinking, drowning, desperate for a way out. He knows because it’s the same way he felt when he enlisted.

That doesn’t mean it hurts any less when Buck leaves him, though.

or the one in which, a couple of weeks after meeting each other, buck and eddie fell in love, broke up, and then forgot to fall out of it.

rainbows have nothing to hide Read By: @burnthatbridge Written By: @hattalove Summary: “Glad to see someone is happy I’m here,” Buck yells into the house, and only gets the rustle of paper bags and a vague grunt in response. He leans down and whispers into Christopher’s ear: “Was he being a Kermit again?”

Christopher nods so hard that some of his hair ends up in Buck’s mouth.

“It’s so bad,” he whispers back. “You need to move in with us already.”

how is eddie diaz like kermit the frog? let buck and christopher count the ways.

I Didn't Know I Was Lonely 'Til I Saw Your Face Read By: Matriaya  Written By: @hmslusitania​​ Summary: After the ladder truck and the blood clot and the tsunami, Bobby makes Buck go to therapy before he does something stupid (like sue the city). Buck's not totally comfortable being alone with a therapist, but fortunately he makes a friend and ally who's willing to help him out - Eddie Diaz from the 136 who's just been caught in an illegal fight club.

OR

Total strangers Buck and Eddie go to couple's therapy together to get out of the therapy requirements their captains have placed on them.

Madney & Buddie:

Goodwill is Sent in Snapshots (You Only Get the Full Picture on Return) Read By: crawfishing Written By: @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels Summary:  When both Evan Buckley and Chimney Han are dumped at the start of December, they decide to swap houses - with each other. A nice two weeks in a different location will be a great unconventional Christmas. Certainly not anything life changing.

Then Buck meets Chim's next-door-neighbor, and Chim meets Buck's apartment-crashing sister. (An audio recording, roughly two hours)

[book51ut]

Review of White Nights and Bobok by Dostoevsky

White Nights first. Dostoevsky is quite good at writing lonely men who fall in love quickly. The narrator is quick to point out the similarities in his situation and his newfound love’s, Nastenka’s, in that they are both incredibly lonely. This loneliness allows them to sit around and dream, imagine. He believes that they’re kindred spirits because of their loneliness, but really that couldn’t be less true. The narrator, our “hero” in his own words, chooses his life of solitude. He can make friends (probably, he does come off as a little weird and overeager) and he has money, there is no reason for him to be so lonely but his own desires and fears. Nastenka, on the other hand, is incredibly sheltered. Her grandmother pins their dresses together so that she cannot move on her own. She is being oppressed by forces outside of herself, and she desires nothing more than to break free of them. Her daydreaming has a goal: escape. Our narrator takes no action whatsoever, yet Nastenka takes action over and over, though often rash. She falls in love with one of the first men she ever meets, waits a year for him dreaming about their life together, and when he appears to have abandoned her, jumps right onto the next ship she sees (our narrator). I will say, I also think this is a commentary on youth. The speed at which people pledge themselves to one another, without knowing the first thing about them. The willingness to leave one at the expense of another at the drop of a hat, only to go right back once the tide has changed. In their very inhuman stories, their actions and sentiments are very human.

Now Bobok! These two were in the same book, titled White Nights, I didn’t even know this one was here until I finished White Nights and saw there were 30 more pages. I liked this one quite a bit actually. The concept was amusing to me, recently dead people conversing in their graves with each other. They kept their pre death personalities, but, being dead, let their pretenses fall away. They spoke frankly with each other and certainly spoke in ways that would’ve been inappropriate otherwise. The narrator just sitting, listening in. He was left with a sense that we remain impure even after death, that the world is so thoroughly filled with filth that there is nothing to be done about it. At the beginning of the short story, he was bored and happened to walk past a distant relative’s funeral and decided to process with them. He was disgusted by the grave site and by his family, who largely ignored him. It was only 30 pages so there isn’t much deep reflection, but it was an entertaining read!

[schmergo]

Maybe a unpopular opinion these days, but ceremonies are important to me.

When I was planning my wedding, I noticed a trend of people wanting the least ceremony or shortest ceremony possible. Get the vows over and done with and then focus all the planning on the reception. I enjoy attending weddings like that, but for me, the wedding ceremony was the most important part. I wanted every detail of it to be meaningful and personal. It was about 35 minutes long, which I don’t think of as insanely long, but it wasn’t just the bare bones, either. 

I did maybe feel a little guilt about that because the prevailing attitude I’ve heard from many other couples is that they don’t want ‘all the fuss’ over them or people to have to sit and pay attention to a boring long ceremony. I think ceremonies are seen as old-fashioned.

I’ve also heard similar attitudes about funerals. “I don’t want anyone to make a fuss over me. Just put me in a box. Just donate me to science. I don’t want anyone spending time crying over me. Why would I want a big ceremony? I’m dead.”

I totally think that both weddings and funerals are industries with hyper-inflated pricing and with too many cultural expectations to spend a ton of money. But for me, the areas that feel excessive to me aren’t in the ceremonies themselves. 

I’m someone who deals weirdly with change sometimes. When my family moved from the house I lived in for 17 years growing up, it was a difficult adjustment for me. Starting college was a difficult adjustment for me. Moving out of my parents’ house for good was a hard transition, too, even though I was really excited about it. I had trouble sleeping for months. Heck, even closing night of a show I’ve been rehearsing for months tends to be hard on me. And I’ve noticed that when big life changes happen to me, sometimes it takes a long time to fully accept them. I’ll wake up thinking I’m in a different home, or I’ll think about getting in touch with someone only to remember they’re no longer alive.

 I did not have that problem with the transition to being married because there was so much time dealing with the preparations, planning, and ceremony that I felt very present that day and had fully absorbed what this next step in my life would mean to me.

To me, even if you don’t have a religious tradition you practice, ceremonies are a way to make sure you stay present in the moment and absorb its meaning, which is helpful to me as someone who’s often kind of zoned out and thinking about a zillion things at once. They’re a way to officially mark life changes, a pre-determined turning point. They mean you’re sharing the same experience with many other people rather than just coming to terms with it on its own. Weddings help you re-conceptualize a person or people you know as part of a new family. Funerals help you re-conceptualize a person you know as having moved on from the world. Heck, even the weird little rituals surrounding midnight on New Year’s are a way to refocus and conceptualize the year ahead.

My favorite YouTube channel is Ask a Mortician. I think the host of the channel, who is a big advocate for personal choice surrounding death and what happens to our bodies after death, is a really inspiring personality and someone who’s made me think a lot more deeply about some of the big transitions that are generally seen as the biggest and scariest of all: end of life. Watching her videos while planning my wedding WHILE during a pandemic definitely made me think about the Other Major Ceremony, not in an anxious and foreboding way but in a thoughtful way.

When I do die, I do want a funeral. I do want a ceremony. I want people to be able to have a shared space to process their feelings. I want people to gather and take time to think about my life and think about what things will look like moving forward. I personally want people to have allotted time set aside to accept and understand that I am not around anymore instead of trying to do that by themselves. I don’t think it needs to be expensive or lavish, and I don’t want a lot of money spent on it, but I do want some time spent on it.

I have no problem with people who don’t need ceremonies to process these things. I think that’s cool and great. But I just wanted to speak up for those of us who do appreciate ceremony as a sort of shared ritual to process transitions. I don’t think you’re boring or self-indulgent or overly superstitious if those things are meaningful to you. There are DOZENS of us!

[sneverussape]

so…petunia dursley

i’ve seen this character get a lot of hate and i’ve always thought it’d be great if people could actually understand the great potential this character has, especially in relation with snape. she isn’t a bad character at all; in fact, i find her hilarious. she and vernon are so amped up in the narrative that it’s practically clownish, and that’s how the text is supposed to be read. their actions are supposed to be exaggeratedly bad because otherwise, harry’s shift into the wizarding world would seem colorless and boring. and i mean…would he even want to be the hero as much if vernon and petunia had been nice or at least decent to him? he’d have probably thought twice about risking his neck each time, and the series would have gone an entirely different route.

(frankly i’d rather harry have been more pragmatic, i can only take so many hair-raising and idiotic schemes as a reader so i really feel for severus, after he was given the task of being Primary Babysitter of the most wayward child in wizarding britain)

but i digress…petunia and her potential, especially in relation to severus snape, is huge.

the fandom is split with lily and while i don’t normally pay attention to whoever likes lily and who doesnt like her as a character, the fact is, she’s dead and can no longer contribute to the main story unless it’s an au or something that refers to their past. thats her main limitation to me and it really sucks but the alternative is actually petunia dursley née evans. the fun thing about it is their dynamic could be totally different.

sure, petunia wasn’t really snape’s friend…but are we really sure? the fact is, we don’t know. petunia shows up rarely in the books and it’s always pre-hogwarts scenes with harry and ones that serve to make harry’s life and living situation as difficult as the publishers could stand. but she grew up with lily, in the same town as snape. she took them, even harry, to cokeworth of all places while they were trying to flee harry’s letters. why? also what would her relationship to snape had been especially when they had grown older? would she have tried to approach him when lily and he had fallen apart? i can imagine a sort of scenario when she’d try to confront him about why her sister was crying into her pillow every night the summer after their fifth year, or even serving as a sort of messenger at some point because she could no longer stand lily’s whining. snape had come to their house often enough as a child so maybe when they were teenagers she decided she’d pay him a visit as well, especially since lily was busy with that tousle-haired pillock, potter. at first it was so that snape would know that they as evanses would never be dealing with the likes of him again, good riddance, but that was the summer she heard that eileen snape had gone while severus had been away at school and tobias snape seemed not far behind, and for goodness’ sake she wasn’t that cruel. he seemed all right, at any rate, if not more sullen than usual, and taller and thinner than she remembered, but he was alive. and maybe she was…relieved? even glad? but heaven forbid she say it out loud.

what about lily’s funeral? would she have gone, and more importantly, would she have invited or looked for him there, knowing that only he could probably understand how her heart felt as though it had been crushed into a tiny billion pieces, but at the same time, how her jealousy of lily, stunningly beautiful and madly in love even at the point of death, still shone through?

and then there’s the question of harry. why did she choose to house harry despite her hating him? taking the narrative excuse aside, it seems like it was a really messed-up way of making amends (to lily? to the boy across the river who she didn’t know was dead or alive?), and the fact that she and vernon had also tried very hard to keep harry away from magic seemed a weird and extreme way of caring for him, somewhat, since she knew magic had taken her sister away, had killed her, and she didn’t want that for her nephew, not even if she said she hated him. i doubt she had even explained to vernon the finer details about what she knew about magic as a concept, and she probably knew more than she let on.

anyway, just consider. petunia dursley is a great character to play with alongside snape. she doesn’t even have to be romantically linked to him, but as someone who knew him as a child, who knows his history, his background, his parents, and how he’s nearly like her: both vying for lily’s attention, jealous, petty, childish, pragmatic…the possibilities are endless.

[kaypeace21]

Will and the car on fire (theories)

*this is just under the assumption this is Will in the pic and not some other character. Which is still very possible .

Why it could be Will (it's for sure possibly not)

But, most of the rebuttals saying it's not Will are iffy. Cause we really don't have much evidence to point to any 1 character. Like the hair counterargument: that the hair is too long to be Will's .Will's s4 body double has a similar hair tuff on the back of his neck. And we know st uses camera shots of the back of Will's neck/silouette ,in past seasons . So doing so here could make sense. And Will of course is the most associated with fire: using fireball for Will the wise in s1 (3 times), the will the wise drawing from s2 had flames on his cloak, Will being being burned in s2,etc.

So...Will looking at lightning. And (Will?) looking at fire. Both have a dark full body sillhouete and red in the forefront .

We also see this character is possibly wearing a watch like Will?

And i've been hearing this a lot here ... but southern california (where the Byers are) does have a lot of trees lol. Not sure why people think otherwise.But, regardless a trip from cali to Hawkins would most certainly have some forrest.

*Also, any movies I’ll be mentioning (in the theories , below) were stated to be inspiration for ST.

So theories...

Theory 1) It's Joyce's car ( and it was rigged  to explode/look like an accident by Brenner or Lonnie). And Will wasn't there but sees it in a nightmare cause it's already happened/or it's a dream vision of the future.

Evidence:  CAR TROUBLES: Joyce’s car model was infamous for exploding in car accidents-being sued by the state of Indianna before the start of the series. We also have Alexi tell murray about a way to cause cars to explode-and turn people into dust (and make it look like an accident). Brenner’s name means “to burn” and he already hurt 1 mother to keep a subject -so not out of the realm of possibilities for him to hurt Joyce (and make it look like an accident to try and get Will and or el). 

In s3, we have Jonathan and Hopper try and fix  the car-and after this cars explode with people inside. Jonathan lifts the car hood- and notices someone rigged nancy’s car . Than,  right after,Billy’s car lights on fire with him inside. With Hopper (he also lifts the car hood) and joyce barely escapes the lit car (but she may not be so lucky next time).

 We also have Joyce tell Will 3x she’s going to be ok... which is a bit overkill if she will be OK ... 

And, notice during the hoodlift we see Will observing- which is similar to Alexi watching and warning them before hand that the car (with Joyce inside) will explode. So it’s possible foreshadowing since Will may predict the future and was was paralleled to Alexi.Alexi ‘can we watch lonnie toons now?. Will : can we play d&d now?

movie inspos: 

It’s hinted s4 will be around Will’s b day: In gilbert grape- Arnie after his b day, has his mom die, and a fire was stagged that lit his mom on fire. ( Before this,Arnie was also raised by his older brother Gilbert cause his dad wasn’t around). stoker-  kid’s parent dies in staged car ‘accident’ on her bday (this allows ab*sive relative closer to kid-since dead parent banned him from seeing kid). The kid  was taught how to hunt, by dad. And is also a painter and bullied at school (like Will). what dreams may come-painter blames themselves for fam dying in freak car accident- the relative was getting a present for them when it happened. so they blame themselves. The descent- also had (right before a b day, the main character’s fam dying in a car accident) .And the sole survivor/family member of the deceased hallucinates a shadow chasing her in a empty hospital hall. Get out-photographer (jonathan)blames himself for mother dying in car accident.

There’s also a lot of other films where the kid (for no logical reason) blames themselves for their mom’s/parent’s death: goodson, dream catcher, analyse this,etc. Of course ... this could simply relate to max and el having survivors guilt after the mall killed their family members (in a fake ‘mall fire’). However, a fake out fire causing  family to die (in s3)  could be foreshadowing for it actually happening in s4?

rigged car explosions: scarface -have guys try and bomb a car with kids and parent inside. backdraft -guy raised by older brother had 1 parent die in explosion and sees the freak explosion occur- later in the film someone rigs a car to explode and masks it as a  freak car accident. Same thing occurs in godfather- he sees family member die in rigged car explosion. The dark knight- rigs car to explode. batman v superman- calls superman a demon and says they need to burn the witch that bore him (aka his mom).

dreams (if in the past): Never ending story (reffed in s3)- starts with kid with bowl cut saying he had another dream about his mother who died. Peanut butter solution- kid has visions in dreams about people he knew who died in fire.  this next movie (emily rose) is  said to be Joyce byers inspo according to Winona - has (kid with 2 personalities) have nightmares from the past  of her and her mother burning in a car fire. while screaming/sleep walking she burns windows with her hands -accidentally using her powers. Some people suspect the videogame “life is strange’ is show inspo too- it has character named max caufield with a ‘never maxine rule’, etc. Anyways in the game prequel queer chloe, who plays d&d, would have dreams/nightmares of her nice parent’s car accident . Despite , chloe not being present for the car accident. After the parent’s death,  she’s stuck with her mean step dad.

dreams (if predicting the future): Will says in s3 Will the wise can see into the future. We also see Will/Will the wise via a dream predict Hopper was in danger-saying  to Joyce “he’s going to die”.  In ‘12 monkeys’ and ‘Rebel Robin st novel’ they mention the myth of cassandra- who could make accurate future prophecies , but was cursed to never be believed by those she warned. In 12 monkeys- he tries warning others of a dreaded event in future- and it’s dismissed as  him being mentally ill. Since, Will’s other abilities were dismissed as his ptsd in s2-and with the Byers fam having a family history of mental illness (they may not believe him over such a prediction). In ‘the ring’-the  movie opens with the guardian saying the boy is drawing the car accident that killed his mom -as a psychological coping mechanism. Only for the teacher to say he made that drawing before his mother’s death (and it’s revealed later the boy is psychic). Terminator 2- sarah conner says she is having future visions, which include explosions, and everyone dismisses it as her being schizophrenic. Like how in s2 a scientist said about Will “let’s see if this boy is a wizard or a schizo”.

If joyce survives the accident she may be hospitlized (and unable to have legal custody). In black swan the girl (with 2 personas) -blames herself for what happened to Winona Ryder’s character (who is in a coma after a car accident. They had had a verbal fight before the accident). In girl with the dragon tattoo- the main character (who is compared to a phoenix and dragon) has 1 parent burned in a fire- and after this her kind guardian is hospitilized so they can no longer take care of her- and she is placed with an ab*sive foster dad (who resembles her bio dad). If Joyce was in a coma - it would further parallel her to terry- and be another willel parallel.

 if dead: Tokyodrift- mom loses custody, and dad who is a mechanic and abandoned the family years ago, later gets custody. Super 8-mom dies in freak accident- douche dad gets custody. Book of henry-mom dies pre-film, ab*sive dad got custody. Outsiders- parents die in car wreck, relative gets custody of teen who he slaps etc.In black swan-girl who blames herself for Winona’s accident is stuck living with ab*sive parent. good son- mom dies, stuck with violent and manipulative relative after this.

Of course-joyce may be fine. And Lonnie may just visit for Will’s b-day and ruin shit that way.

Theory 2) It's an undercover government car that Will uses his powers against in self defense... or in anger after they hurt someone he loves.

Evidence:

Joyce about ‘Will the wise’: If he’s so wise, why does he need the fireballs? Why can’t he just outsmart the bad guys? Will: cause the bad guys are smart too. Joyce: so he needs the fireballs? Will: Yeah, to burn them to a crisp.

* the fact-this flashback happens at a funeral of a Byers, could also be narratively significant as foreshadowing.

Gov agents in s1 are  called “the bad-men” so Will may use fireball on “the bad-guys”(government agents) . Fire has been used on all the other adversaries relating to the upsidedown-so why not the gov agents (aka human villains) next? 2 movies on the inspo list caught my attention: firestarter & carrie (which are both stephen king adaptions with psychic kids who have fire abilities). 

Firestarter- she has pyrokineseis (firepowers) . And unlike every other psychic in the film- she is the only psychic that doesn't get nose bleeds (aka mini brain hemorages) from using her powers (Will). We know el and kali gets nose bleeds.  

(Anger): She only unleashes her fire abilities on gov agents after they kill her parent...

*And uses a literal “fireball” on them.

Could also be another willel parallel. kali about the US gov:" They took your mother away from you!" El str*ngles man from gov agency that incapacitated her mom . El before str*ngling him: " you hurt mama".

(self defense): While  in carrie  she kills people who tried to run her over with a car. And causes the car to explode.

Also, in s3 Steve does technically cause a car to explode to protect Nancy from being run over by a car (so maybe foreshadowing?). I believe, tumblr user ‘bran-who-writes-theoretically” was the first to point out the Carrie/car on fire parallel.

* This car scene could also be added to the list of Willel parallels. El  in s1 uses her powers to flip a government-car upside down. And looks back at it. And it’s a ref to the film Et. So Will causing a government -car to explode and flip upsidedown (referencing carrie) could be a parallel. 

Of course El flipped over a car in s3 to attack the Soviet agents and protect her friends too ( right before losing her powers). Sort of like Steve using his car as a weapon in s3 to protect his friends. so who knows, if not Will, maybe El (wearing a ponytail) got her telekenesis back and she flips the car and it explodes ? To be honest, I just find this explanation too boring, cliche, and predictable. And I still hypothosize the mindflayer took her telekensis (but not her other powers). Since in d&d mindflayers have ‘mage hand’ (what el is called) and ‘telekenesis’/ along with the ability to steal powers from other life forms. But, we’ll see...

Theory 3) The car flips (maybe caused by a deer jumping in the road) and it blows up after the crash- with Joyce inside. And maybe Jonathan survives it/ Will wasn’t there but had a nightmare /vision about it?

Evidence: in s1 Jonathan sees a dead deer that was hit by a car. This could be symbolic : because it related to Jonathan mentioning the hunting story with his dad and how he cried for a week cause he liked the film Bambi. Which in the film : Bambi (a deer) has his mother k*lled. And after his mother’s death, he’s taken in by his douchey dad who was M.I.A for most of his life ,until his mom passed away. And the hunters are the bad guys in the film . In ‘get out’ the photographer , Chris,blames himself for his mother dying in a car accident - and he sees a dead deer hit by a car -and the dying deer was used to symbolize the guilt he has over his mother’s  death. in ‘the long kiss goodnight’ a character is driving home with a friend- they swerve and hit a deer and 1 of them is ejected from the car into the forrest. But their friend is unconscious in the car and it quickly explodes on the road. The survivor turns and sees the car in flames- disoriented they stumble and kill the dying deer. And it’s left ambiguous if they were helping the deer end it’s pain or if it was vengeful-hunting (since it caused the car accident that killed their friend). Cause their face was emotionless from shock.

Even in the st novel "suspicious minds' rabbits- like jonathan was forced to kill on the hunting trip with his dad (around his b-day) represented the bond between mother and child.And the mother sacrificing herself for the baby-to not get k*lled (by Brenner).

-so maybe?? jonathan before he gets the pizza job/car (may have his car break down , like hinted it would in s3).

 So him and Joyce share the car (once his car stops working) and the accident happens while Jonathan is behind the wheel -with Joyce. And after this he gets the job at surfer boy pizza. Billy was a surfer boy and that memory was used to think about his mother who is no longer around (once he's stuck with his ab*sive dad after moving away from Cali). While Jonathan moved to Cali after his mom passed-maybe stuck with Lonnie.Jonathan's actor in recent pics has a blonde mullet - which sort of resembles joyce/Billy's og hair. This may be why he starts doing dr*gs - which is pretty out of character for him- but it could be a coping mechanism(like in the s4 films). One of many examples was 'enter the void'- the older brother was surrogate parent to their lil sibling and after a car accident k*lls his parents , he starts doing dr*gs to cope. Also ‘hunger games’ was on the list- and Katniss (who was a surrogate parent to her litle sibling, like Jonathan is to Will) in the sequel, saw her family die in an explosion. And it really broke her emotionally.

I've mentioned this before but Billy is used to parallel and foil Will and Jonathan. And it may be more than a ... what if Lonnie had custody scenario. But to show how Lonnie (like most ab*sers) will later bring out the worst in the kids (once he does have custody). Like how s3 has Will mimick lonnie with the baseball bat (and we see in s3 Billy being bullied by his dad to play baseball and flashbacks showing him mimicking Neil). I've also discussed how there's a theme with pretty much every character mimicking their parent- for better or worse.

Killing a deer would certainly hint at Jonathan's possible character regression (and mimicking Lonnie to a certain extent). if he not only blames himself for Joyce's death. But is also stuck with his ab*ser.

The animal k*lling motif , and after that, mimicking an a b*sive father is already shown with el. Brenner , in s1,tried to make her k*ll a cat (using her powers) and she refused (similar to the s1 rabbit hunting story of Lonnie forcing Jonathan to k*ll a rabbit ). But in s2, she uses her powers to k*ll a squirrel (and like a deer- it's typical hunting game). Than in s3 el does literally everything Brenner ever asked of her- she spies on people and repeats the words back (like brenner told her to do), she becomes a weapon to ‘fight the commies’ (which was said to be the reason he k*dnapped her in the first place), and when looking into the void to see the mf (she mirrors the words brenner told her - when he made her go into the void to face the demogorgan).

And some s4 movies are literally about being trapped in a house with your ab*ser and slowly losing your mind because of the ab*se and gaslighting- lighthouse , black swan , good son, are prime examples. But movies like scar face , girl with the dragon tattoo, and book of Henry touch on this theme a bit as well. And ordinary people- is about a guy who survived a vehicular accident but his relative in the same accident didn't- and it causes him alot of issues /survivor's guilt.

The shadowy figure could just be Will in the shot - seeing it in a dream before or after it happens?

Theory 4) Will sees a future vision or has his ’now memories’ of someone else's car.

Evidence: i guess the s4 shot parallels El (in s3) spying on Billy while he’s hurting Heather. During that spying scene: the shot is of El near Billy's car. So it’s possibly a diff willel parallel?

If not Will. Who knows ...if El’s telekenesis is gone maybe her spying abilities strengthened and look different because of it (and now she can see background details)?

Theory 5) it's Lonnie's car and Will escapes from the trunk and uses his powers in self defense

Evidence: I’m pretty iffy on this one. This goes back to how people suspected Lonnie took Will in s1 (and could be foreshadowing). Even the recent rebel robin book-has characters say Lonnie probably took Will. Jonathan suspected Will may be at Lonnie’s - so checks Lonnie’s car trunk (to see if Will is there). We also see how the mf in s3, knocked people out by dr*gs/str*ngulation, ties them up, and throws them in a trunk (to k*dnap them). Or how the cops raided jonathan’s trunk- which had stuff to track the demogorgan (and the demogorgan parallels Lonnie) . And after looking in Jonathan’s trunk-they suspected something fishy is going on.

*heather was described as “another me” by Will- who was thrown in the trunk.

movies: “tangled” was on the s4 list- and had an ab*sive parent later try and kidnap their kid ,and that parent ends up dying. in girl with the dragon tattoo (the girl associated with dragons & phoenixes-  lights her  ab*sive bio dad on fire. In ‘drop dead fred’ (girl who is in love with childhood friend, named Mikey, who she met at age 5) lights a imaginary version of her ab*sive parent on fire - while in a trippy memory world. Chrissy accidentally lights her ab*sive relative (nickname “daddy”)  on fire in self defense- in a trippy hell memory scape. in ‘long kiss goodnight- the girl with 2 personalities (Will/will the wise) was kidnapped and put in a trunk and escapes by jumping into a quarry. Not sure if that could relate to a flashback or something else? like in ‘don’t breath’ the older sibling who essentially was a surrogate parent to the younger sibling-mentions how their dad left the family, and her parent would throw her in the trunk for hours as a punishment.

[icemankazansky]

Listen I haven't seen Thunderheart but I want to know more about your thoughts on Ray so headcanons 2, 3, 5, and 7

Aw yissss, Ray Levoi my beloved

2. a sad headcanon

Things get worse and worse the further into his addiction Ray's father goes, but really his death is sudden. He starts drinking at work, and he falls, and he dies almost instantly. Ray's mother picks him up early from school that day and takes him to his grandmother's, and Ray's mother takes him into a quiet room and sits with him on her lap and explains that his father has died.

From Ray's perspective, one day his father leaves for work, and the next time he sees him, it is at his funeral.

3. a headcanon that canon doesn't disprove

Ray Levoi was born June 22, 1954. Cancer sun, Capricorn rising, Pisces moon. Chinese zodiac: Wood Horse. I believe the events of the film take place in 1981, which makes Ray a little younger than Val when the movie shot, but within the character description in the script. Sometimes you look at him and realize that not very long ago, he was a college kid writing an application essay* to be accepted into the FBI Academy, and that's ... you ordered more heartbreak, right? That's what you wanted?

* This is from an early version of the script.

5. a headcanon that's all but canon, and that's a hill I will die on

Ray Levoi was never in the military. He's just barely old enough to have fought in Vietnam, but he would have been in college during the draft. In the novelization, there's a throwaway line about Ray not having worse coffee since the army, and I literally stopped and put the book down for a minute because that is just such a bad read. The way he acts during the conversation with Coutelle and Looks Twice about Vietnam, and the way he reacts to authority ... Ray Levoi was never in the military.

7. a pre-canon headcanon

As Ray grew into a young man, he took up (or was pushed into) a lot of extracurricular activities. The Colonel wants him to excel, and to be honest it's best when Ray is busy, because he is restless and has a ton of excess energy, and if he doesn't have a healthy outlet for it, it's extremely detrimental to him.

He played baseball up from Little League, and goes to UVA on an athletics scholarship. He plays college ball until his junior year, when he injures his knee—a career killer—and he has to reevaluate his future after that. He hadn't planned on playing pro ball long term, but he thought he could do it a few years while he figured out what he wanted to do with his life. He knows he doesn't want to join the Army, even though it disappoints his stepfather. A friend of the Colonel's is with the FBI, and during Ray's long, painful recovery, he takes him to Quantico mostly as a distraction. It turns out he has an aptitude. It's an accident, almost.

"Give it a few years," the Colonel says, "and I won't ask you about the military again."

After his time at the Academy, and his first year of streetwork, Ray is ready to quit. He's frustrated and he's bored. A handler from deep cover notices him, takes him to lunch. Asks him to give him six months. If Ray hates working underground, the handler will get him a transfer to any other department in the Bureau. Ray accepts, reluctantly.

It turns out he was born for it.

[llyncooljones]

black ink, red petals - rowaelin month day thirteen.

ao3 || masterlist || rowaelin month '21 masterlist

prompt: tattoo parlour/tattoo artist, flower shop/florist au.

word count: 1382

trigger warnings: language, mentions of death.

tag list: @live-the-fangirl-life @rowaelinismyotp @rowanaelin @surielandiareendgame

Aelin tries to ignore the couple sweeping around her store, arms wrapped around each other, cheeks red, hair mused.

She really does try, she promises.

She busies herself in her work, ordering flowers by the dozens, ordering cellophane and tissue paper, ordering c cup of coffee as bitter as she feels whilst watching the couple laugh and point and love in her store.

She’s had an issue with people being happy since she first became massively unhappy, in the few weeks her life fell apart. Her parents died, she took over the store, someone sued the store, her best friend and cousin moved across the world.

And all that was on the fifth anniversary of her breakup with the only man she’s ever loved. Safe to say, she hates that week more than any other week she’s lived through.

But now, it’s hitting a year since she’s lost her parents and took over  Kingsflame Bloomsmy thriteenth , her parents’ florists. The store is large, the flowers sorted by colour and type. Pre-made and made-to-order bouquets available, centre-pieces, wedding flowers, funeral flowers.

Aelin thinks the year anniversary of things is special, her one-year anniversary with the aforementioned only she’s ever loved had been one of the best nights of her life, and she’s never forgotten the details of it. From the shady cabin in the forest to the wine, he had poured for her, to the shade of blue his dress-shirt had been.

On the one-year anniversary of their breakup, she visited their old apartment and made best friends with the girls renting it out and had never regretted the decision, until they started to bug Aelin as to why she was there in the first place. She’s never told.

And now, it’s the one-year anniversary of her parent's death and she’s decided to make a conscious decision to do something. And she knows what she’s doing.

It’s another part of the reason why she’s pissed off with the couple, the ill-timed pair came in just at the second she was standing up to put the ‘closed’ sign on the door, and then head next door for her consultation.

She was supposed to have left twenty minutes ago, but the two love-struck fools have taken so long in her store that she’s tempted to kick them out on the grounds of... tampering with the displays.

They finally approach the checkout desk, a plain and boring bouquet of roses clutched in the man’s hand, his credit card in the other while his girlfriend hangs off of him still, her head tipped towards him like no one’s fucking business.

She charges them, allowing the man to pay contactless, despite wanting to annoy him by telling him to use the chip and pin machine.

They leave, finally, and she hurries to the door, everything she needs for her consultation on her person or in her pockets and puts the ‘closed’ sign up in the glass doors Hopefully, no one decides to pull a fucking move and shatter her glass windows, glass windows that she loves so deeply she spent too much money on them.

Her coat is wrapped around her, the December weather in Orynth being no joke, you step out without a coat, you are going to get hypothermia or frostbite.

She doesn’t make the rules.

She furrows her eyebrows under the cover of her fluffy coat hood, staring into the tattoo parlour just next door to her, the outside is painted a dove grey that she’s always envisioned on her kitchen cabinets. Across the top of the storefront is a scrawling sign that reads  Ink Theory, and just beneath it,  piercings, and tattoos.

The sign is painted black, and a red and white swirl faintly appears through it and she really loves the design. The front windows are the same as her own, only these are frosted until halfway up, and Aelin guesses it’s to give clients some privacy from the nosey eye of the public. She walks in, smiling when an old-fashioned store bell rings to announce her entrance.

“Hi, I’m here for a consultation with one of your artists, at three o’clock. I’m late, I know. It's just had too many people in the store, I won the florists next door by the way, and they wouldn’t get out and I didn’t want to kick them out because I didn’t want a bad Yelp review or some shit, but I was really snappy with them, and it took me a while to debate whether or not to charge them an extra dollar for every minute they made late, but |I didn’t so I'm a good person, I guess. Sorry, I ramble when I'm nervous.”

“First tattoo, huh?” Asks the blonde sat at the reception desk, his blonde hair contrasting with his skin tone perfectly, “They are always daunting, not knowing the pain and how it’s going to feel. I get it don’t worry.”

“It’s actually, no, it isn’t my first tattoo. I have other tattoos, but they were all done by my boyfriend, and they didn’t really hold the same meaning this one does. The first one he gave me was a tattoo that said bite me, I like it on my ass cheek. Then it was some quote I liked on my ribs, a few others here and there. But then we broke up, and tattoos kind of felt like our thing, so I didn’t get anymore. And now here I am, shitting my pants and getting my first tattoo in six years.”

The blonde guy shifts a little in his seat, his eyes searching the wall behind him, the drawing and already-used templates sat behind frames on display. She saw them as she walked in, admiring the three frames filled with tattoos done in the Old Language.

“Also, uh, who did those tattoos in the Old Language, I was hoping to add some to my tattoo. But I couldn’t find an artist near enough who specialised, or who even knew the Old Language beyond hearing about it in history. I’m going to leap at the chance to get them to tattoo me,” her words are happy and frantic and nervous.

The only thing that ever calmed her beforehand had been the soft praises he’d always whispered, the steady weight of his hand just beneath the area he was tattooing, the scent of his cologne surrounding her.

In other, simpler words, him.

The blonde cups his hands around his mouth and sets to shouting in the direction of a black-painted door, “Yo, bird boy, there’s some chick out there who wants to check your work out. Come on out, you hermit.”

A thump on the door sounds throughout the studio, and a second later a taller, larger, seemingly very pissed off man walks through the door next to the other, nodding in greeting to the blonde before leaving the studio.

“I’m coming, don’t worry your pretty little head, boyo.”

The voice is similar to one she’s never forgotten, but the vowels are drawn out for longer, the words rolling over his tongue for a while longer than they used.

Swinging open, the door reveals a body she’s always thought of and a face that she’s never forgotten–not even on her benders.

His green eyes are bright and laughing, his eyebrows thick and light and somehow the perfect shape. His jawline is hard and sharp through his stubble, his cheekbones much the same. His nose is still bent from that punch she’d thrown at him in the second grade, the faint scar above his lips from the cut she’d gifted him in addition still there.

“Rowan?” breathy and vulnerable, she curses herself and the way her heart is beating too fast in her chest.

“Oh shit, this is the boyfriend you used to have, damn. Rowan, my man, good catch.” The blonde receives a burning look from Rowan his eyes sharp and focused now, the edges a green that verges on being black.

“Not good enough to keep, though.” She can’t stop the words, they’re pushing from her mouth before she can stop them and she wants to die when he stares her down, his eyes searching hers for answers she used to give him.

This isn’t good.

[help-im-a-gay-fish]

The Night of the First Mistake

Sequel to

Synopsis: pre X-orcist, almost a year after Nightmare's death, Dream is still not on top of his grief and causes him to resort to desperate measures.

Tw mentions of death/dead loved ones.

X-orcist au belongs to me and @zu-is-here

Dreams, Demons and Desires is by me.

Enjoy

Almost a year had past since he'd last seen Nightmare. The skeleton couldn't say he had mourned him, but the news of his death had been unfortunate to say the least. Who could have seen someone like Nightmare dying in such a preventable way? Not him, that's for sure.

He was a friend... Or at least a friendly acquaintance, clearly he'd not been quite close enough to Night's inner circle to be invited to the funeral. He'd never even met Night's brother. Despite that, the news of his parting had deeply saddened him and every so often, he thought of him with a sigh.

A good customer and a good person.

This evening, Nightmare played at his thoughts again, probably drudged up by the anniversary of the accident approaching, he hadn’t meant to make note of the day, but he had. a few weeks would be the anniversary of the day he heard the news. 

He thought back to a year ago, a few weeks before his death. The words he’d said about his brother and the increasing frustration about his sinful thoughts. Killer didn't judge him for such feelings, he was no stranger to sin.

Other then that, there was nothing at all strange about this night.

Tonight, just like any night, he was in his shop and the counter. It was a cold October and pretty soon he'd be closing up.

It was dark and chilly in his shop and had a strangely pungent smell, which hit the moment you walked in. A mix of crushed herbs and spices, old books and stale coffee.

An old set of scales sat on the counter top in front of him, as did a till, several glass jars and containers and a large collection of dirty coffee mugs.

Behind him there was a large book case full of many strange books. Ones with faded titles, ones with thick leather bindings, some with large strains spreading across the covers or pieces missing. If you asked him, he'd liked to have said that he'd read all of them... But there were a few he hadn't. He wasn't much of a reader outside of this collection.

As he nursed yet another cup of coffee from the café next door, he tapped his slender skeleton fingers on the counter top. He was bored.

With a glance at the clock, he decided today that he could close up early. It was his shop after all, he made the rules. A small collection of trinkets and charms hung around his neck and clinked together against his old coat, as he got to his feet.

Just as he prepared to take today's earnings from the till to count it, he heard the door and a jingle of the shop bell, indicating someone had entered.

He set an empty eye socket in their direction as they froze, looking nervous.

The person was new, but also something about them was strangely familiar. After scanning them for a moment, his face twisted into a sly smile upon realising who the new comer could be. He turned his face to them fully, staring his pitch eyes right through them. They tensed, which amused him slightly.

"well hello Little Light.... How may I help you"

Dream seemed taken back slightly by the pet name. It wasn't something he was used to. His hands fused with the fastening on his coat.

"uhh Hello.....I’m..... Uh.."

The shop keep chuckled again. Such nervous behaviour wasn't something he saw often from his customers. Looks like it was going to be an interesting night and to think, he was going to close up.

"nervous Lil light?"

Dream once again tensed and shuddered slightly.

"Please.... Don't call me that" he stammered slightly before taking a breath "My name is Dream"

The shop keepers grin got even wider and it made a chill run up Dream's spine. There was something extremely unnerving about this skeleton. Maybe it was the emptiness of his eyes or the strange carvings around them, but Dream was sure that it was more then that.

The atmosphere of the shop was very unsettling and kind of cramped in Dream’s opinion. There were many trinkets, stones, crystals and small animal bones stacked neatly on the shelves. It was this, along with bags of salt and bundles of sage and garlic, that reassured him he was in the right place for what he needed. 

"Dream huh?.... Thought so" he said in a low tone "I'm so glad to finally meet you"

The nervous shifting of his hands continued, as Dream once again tensed even further. He was acting friendly, but it still felt ever so slightly...off.

"h-how do you know me?"

"I knew your brother and I'd recognise that pendant I sold him anywhere" he said, with his eyes looking at Dream's chest.

Dreams fingers quickly shot to the star charm hanging from his neck, and gripped it tight. Looks like this was the right place.

"Not to mention there's your golden eyes" he  continued, shifting his gaze straight into Dream's eye sockets. It was strange how Dream knew where he was looking, even without eye lights.

"he often talked about them......He was right when he said they were very beautiful if I do say so myself~"

Dreams face blushed slightly, but he felt a familiar twist in this chest at the mention of Nightmare and a sinking feeling when he was reminded how Night felt about him. His brother had often complimented his eyes.....

He'd just never really understood it was more then brotherly affection. At least until now.

"I.... Uh" Dream said before clearing his throat "You're Killer.... Aren't you?"

Flexing his fingers, Killer nodded. The grin didn't leave his face.

"looks like my reputation proceeds me"

Dream let go of his necklace and a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "I thought it might be you.... Based off something he wrote in his diary".

Before Night's accident, Dream had never even considered reading his diary. That was just a basic code of conduct. However, after his death, it became something Dream had often thought about. The diary, and everything else Nightmare owned, now belonged to him. For that reason he'd taken the book out of Nightmare's room.

However, he'd just kept it on his bedside table for almost a year before he finally had the courage to read it.

It had mostly been a fond look over some old memories, some good and some bad. But there were also passages about his feelings for Dream, sometimes written confessions addressed him. Every word was full of truth, longing and pain. Dream had felt it all.

Those had been hard to read, but he'd not skipped a single page and read them each through several times.

Nearer the end of the book, Nightmare had started talking about his interest in the supernatural. Dream remembered his twin getting fascinated in that and spending long evenings talking with him about it over tea and biscuits.

One thing Dream hadn't known about, where his trips to the next town over, where he wrote about finding this shop and the shop keep. This had been where the interest started. It was this that had lead Dream to come here.

"right..." Killer said, downing what was left in his coffee mug and setting in on the counter top.

"well.... What can I help you with?"

Yeah.. Nightmare had written that Killer was always one to cut to the point. Dream knew that what he was going to ask sounded insane and he wasn't even fully sure if Killer was the right person to ask. But at this point he was desperate, he just needed to know. With his grip returning to his brothers pendent, he remembered who he was doing this for.

He took a deep breath.

"Can you bring people back from the dead?"

Killer didn't react visibly to that. But he drew out a long silence. After a little Dream was sure he saw his jaw clench. The silence was completely deafening, broken only by the sound of Killer's fingers tapping the counter top. Dream figured that he was probably struggling to think what to say. After what felt like a life time, he spoke.

"I specialise in charms and equipment for preventative measures to stop spirits inhabiting homes....I do not....." he paused

"I don't try and bring the dead to the living realms".

Dreams face fell. He really shouldn't have been so disappointed, it was a crazy ask. But with the way Killer spoke and what he sold in the shop, he'd felt so close to what he wanted. But maybe it really was just impossible.

He felt tears threatening to spill, he just couldn't take all this guilt anymore. All he wanted to do was tell his brother he was sorry. That night. That kiss. That dam horribly wonderful kiss...and that car. 

"however...." Killer continued.

Dream felt hope flush through at those words and stood up slightly straighter. Killer turned his back to dream and started looking over the bookshelves behind the counter.

He didn't say a word, as Dream curiously watched him. He ran his thumb across the spines of several of the oldest and most dusty looking of them, eventually plucking out a large leather bound book with silver straps.

He walked back over, blowing dust off it as he did, and set it down on the counter with a light thud. The cover was extremely dusty and the leather was cracked and split in several places, yet the title still read fairly clearly and Dreams felt his heart skipped a beat.

The Practice of a Necromancer. Vol one of three. Summoning, Controlling and Banishing.

"I've not read this one fully, but it's been in my collection for years.... I suppose this would be the right place to look"

With that, he slowly opened the book and very carefully started to turn its pages. The paper was completely yellowed and clearly very fragile. There were no photographs, only hand done drawings of various items and also what looked like people, but with strange and uncanny faces. There were also other frightening images that Dream was trying not to look at.

Killer eventually stopped and ran his finger across a page.

"ah ha" he said "to summon a spirit into the living world"

He read over the text for a moment, as Dream watched impatiently. Killer knitted his non-existent eyebrows and narrowed his eyes.

"this stuff sounds overly complicated to me..... so I guess I'm not sure really"

But Dream didn't really seem to be playing much attention to Killer's words now. He was so desperately trying to read the text upside-down. Reading was something that Dream always struggled with anyway, so reading upside down would be near impossible. He reached forward to try and pull the book to him.

But he jumped back in surprise as Killer slapped his hand across the book, sending some dust into the air.

"now now now not so hasty Lil Light" he said returning back to a sweet tone, as he said the a pet name that made Dream's toes curl.

In his haste Dream had forgotten that this was a shop, not a library, so of course he wouldn't just hand it over.

The smaller skeleton knew that the book was probably pricey so it's not like Killer would just let him have it. It was clearly very old and Dream worried that he wouldn't have enough for it, but if he had to pay all the money he had to buy it. He would.

Reaching inside of his pocket, Dream pulled out a bundle of paper money and placed it on the counter and next to the book. Killer looked at it for a moment, before he took it and counted how much money was in the bundle. He ran his fingers across the notes, looking as if he was very tempted and contemplating his next move.

But then, much to Dream's disappointment, he put it back down on the counter.

"I don't want your money dream... That's not what I meant"

An unhappy wine left Dream's mouth, as Killer proceeded to hand his money back to him. Just as he was about to ask why, Killer cut him off.

"it's not for sale"

"but what if I just borro-

"or for rent or loan"

Dreams soul twisted. This felt so Incredibly unfair. He wasn't ever one to really get angry or feel hatred for people. But why had Killer gotten this book down if he didn't intend to sell it? Was he just trying to mess with him?

It was that moment that he wasn't sure he really liked Killer all that much.

He sighed.

"h-how come? Can I do anything to change your mind?"

Killer sadly shook his head.

"Dream....... I like to read the stuff for research purposes not for a practical use"

Dream opened his mouth to object, but killer silenced him.

"and I don't care what you say... but I don't think you're just interested in the topic"

Dream tried very hard not to show disappointment on his face, but of course Killer picked up on it. It upset him that his intentions were so easy to guess. Then again he'd opened with 'can you bring people back from the dead'.

He really should have asked in a different way. Feeling like an idiot, he tried to say that he wasn't intending to use the book in practice. But Killer once again shook his head.

He stood up slightly and gave Dream a sympathetic look, or a sympathetic as he could make it through his cold eyes.

"look....I know you miss him and that's ok I've lost people myself to" he said in a uncharacteristically gentle tone, which sounded fake. 

Dream looked at his feet.

"but the dead need to be left dead. Trying to bring them back never ends well, Nightmare wouldn't want you to get hurt trying to help him"

Dreams eyes stayed fixed on the floor, not wanting to look at killer any longer. He didn't want him to see him cry. He didn't want to look like a baby. Just as he was going to try arguing again, behind him he heard the shop door open and the bell ring

He looked back at Killer seeing he'd straightened up.

"K-killer...." came a soft but slightly panicked voice.

Curiously, Dream looked over his shoulder at the source of the voice. It was another skeleton stood by the door.

In all his life, Dream had never seen someone look to tired. They seem to be slightly younger then Dreams age but it was hard to tell how much. Their appearance was clearly young, but the huge bags under their eyes aged their face several years. The most notable thing about them was that their eye lights where small, indicating that they were on edge.

They were wearing a oversized cream knitted sweater and had a maroon scarf decorated with a paw print pattern tide around their neck. They fiddled with it as their eyes a looked at Killer and then to Dream.

From where he was, Dream could also see them wearing several of the necklaces and charms that Killer a sold, as well as a few layers of bandages around their arms.

Killer hastily exited from behind the counter and approached them.

"Hey Cappuccino......." he said, trying again to sound soft.

Ccino wasted no time in burying his head to Killers chest and wrapping his arms around him.

In response, Killer stumbled slightly and looked momentarily taken back and very uncomfortable. After a moment he sigh, before gently placing an hand on his back.

"hey.....it's ok ya wimp... I'm guessing they're back right?"

Ccino simply nodded, Killer sighed.

"Dream can you show yourself out? I've got to take care of this, we're closing anyway. I'm sorry I couldn't help you better"

As Killer attempted to comfort the shaking skeleton, Dream turned his attention back to the book in front of him. It was just within his reach, the page was tantalising.

It was so clear, a set instructions of the exact thing he'd need to do to reach his goal. 

Killer's warning played in his mind. 

But he knew what he was doing right? It was his brother, what did Killer really know about what Nightmare would have wanted. He didn't know how.... Close... They were. At least he thought he knew.

It was a split second choice.

As Killer continued to try and comfort his companion, he saw Dream hastily exit the shop without saying another word. He stared at the door.

It didn't feel right. 

He narrowed his eyes and stepped back from Ccino slightly.

"hang on"

He walked back to the counter and was relieved to see that the book was still there, however a moment later he noticed something else that make him freeze and curse under his breath.

"what's wrong?" Ccino asked, walking up next to him.

Killer didn't answer and instead picked up his book and looked at it closely to confirm what he saw. When he saw he was right, he near growled.

"Killer?" Ccino asked not seeing the problem.

"look....."Killer said quietly.

He ran his finger down the spine where the pages joined together. Once you looked closely you could see the remnants of torn paper sticking out.

"he took the page"

references coming soon.

[haikkun]

Kill The Rabbit

It is wear a halter tank-top when playing pool and never wear a v-necked shirt when scooping ice cream at work and it is a Lion King sunset over a concrete viaduct and it is someone taking a steak knife to your heart to check for “doneness”

It is the smell of lager and skin-so-soft and denim burnt to the knees and it is suckling Trixie Beldon books between migraines and mothy sheets and it is “mail my ashes to him, I meant it about the same grave” even though you know he’ll rinse them down the drain and

It is the exhaustion of never being bored and it’s cigarette sounds after the macaroni and cheese and it is the thorn in your paw and you were the lion AND the god and it is always being asked out by the friend of the guy you are chasing and it is being kissed while you are sleeping and it is Hanna-Barberian drawings of men making you think you have no interest

It is trying to look more bored when people peel out at intersections, and it’s being afraid that someone will reach around the back of your neck and find the zipper that you didn’t even know existed

It is “are you a cat person or a dog person?” And it turns out… you aren’t a person.

And it’s been “good answer” and it’s been “the hour of your death” and it is hating every. single. person. who “did a thing”

It’s been “it’s been’s” and it’s been “trying to be’s” and it’s been thinking I might read my shade between the lines and dreaming I could be anything worth writing about and I was already in love with you before you coup de grâced me like that and it’s saying your name under my breath when I don’t want to and FUCKING SCREAMING at myself to fuck off, and…

It is laying out on the grass and it occurring to me that the sun might actually be basking in us and it is thinking you are hot or cold when everything is relative to space dust and it is something dumb that happens when I’m in love

It’s people with “baby on board” stickers who also claim that “all lives matter” and it’s finding out “the sign” was merely “the driver” the whole time

It’s never being as dedicated as the Florida man who died in an explosion after attempting to microwave a microwave and it’s raise your hand if you raised your hand and

It is being so hungry for signs of life you track your own footsteps around the block and it is a multisyllabic mind that cannot cram into a 140 character Twitter count or a picture poem on Instagram and it is being tagged by my tumblr handle on platforms others stole my name on and not being able to receive any of the glory and I don’t do it for the claps but the lack is also the most efficient way to to get down on myself lately

And it’s taking shots while the kids you babysat napped and it’s the sensation of feeling watched all the time even thought nobody’s ever been looking, and it’s a pre-guilty look on your face driving past cops like you’ve been caught even though you haven’t done anything lately (well, that’s a lie) and I always wanted to be turned into my favorite tree when I die but I’m so bad at staying in one place and I’ve been thinking maybe I should be rammed into a firework instead and then I contemplate the cost-savings benefit between them, after all, it’s MY funeral and then people who loved me too little in life can get tattoos of the explosion, and it’s been clear I’ve been depriving myself of being truly beautiful because I haven’t given birth, and it’s being responsible for all of the plagues of the world because we were two people’s more swol halves and even at 50% I am responsible for one and a half persons that never made it to this earth, and it’s playing chicken with the lightning and hoping every single wave pulls you under or that something somewhere will take pity on the world and dispatch you and it’s realizing it would be easier to just stop feeding yourself but that’s different and unacceptable but what really is the difference and it’s finding out that pain is what’s art to somebody else and it’s comparing myself and coming up short and it’s leaving out half of everything since we met because I can’t lose you yet and

“It’s a circle…” she coughs. “You run as far and hard from death as you can that you don’t realized you’ve wrapped yourself back around again…” and it is not feeling qualified to be here, ever, and here is everywhere

____________________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

[xx-katya2]

The purple eyes with the blonde stripe hair.

It started with a fire. Then everything changed. The sweet & happy moments started to fade away quickly. The chaos finally arrived in my kingdom. Now all the kids knew was fire, darkness, violence and misery. The war started unexpectedly , well no one expects war. Well I hope so. The war between light & darkness. The dark king, Zaos Vara the twin brother of the queen of my kingdom. Is the most twisted elf on this land in centuries. Everyone thinks elf's are mature, super intelligent, elegant, peaceful and almost good at everything. Mostly it's true but Zaos contradicts everything. He ran away at the age of 16 with some of his guards that believed everything he was saying. But everything has reason. Nothing just happens like that, there is always a cause. Well let me tell you, how he turned the way he is now.

Zaos & Zaleria Vara being born the 13 December 1331. Everyone celebrates because the queen gives birth to twin and it was worth celebrating. In Zaos was a very cute and sweet, shy child. His father always thought that him being like this would make him such a great king in the future. The king and queen were the nicest and greatest rulers on the land. Everything was perfect. What changed? Zaleria & Zaos being already pre-teens, were starting on studying to become the next king and queen. They enjoyed studying kept them from being bored in the castle. Nothing was unusual. But one day the queen became suddenly became very ill. Well the queen was sick since she was born, she was always ill however it was habitually in the condition to slow down her illness. This time was different, the doctors said that she was at her last moment of life and that this time they couldn't slow it down. Finally the illness killed her. The kingdom fell into a deep silence for a couple days after they learned about her death. She was loved by everyone. She was an angel on this rotten land. Her funeral was the biggest funeral they ever did for the royal family. Till this day people leave her white roses, her favorite and her birthday is now a small holidays, we call the white rose festival. My favorite celebration after the new years. Okay back to Zaos. After his mother death, he became very sad but since he was raised by not hiding his emotions, he very quickly got better and the realm became as it was. But then, the king fell in love with a lovely woman Nyana. The kids loved her and not to long they got married. In the beginning, everything was going smoothly however out of the blue something clicked in her and she started to abuse her power. With that change of attitude, she realized how emotional and soft Zaos was. So we all guess what she did. She started to abuse him, physically and mentally. With that abuse, he started to change rapidly. He wasn't the sweet little boy anymore. He was now a cruel and abusive boy that changed his mind set on the world changed. Now he saw darkness but not in everything, there is hope in everything. That's what the queen always said. That hope was in a girl that Zaos was deeply in love with. Leena was his sunshine, his world. He would do anything for her. At the age of 16, Zaos already knew that this girl was his soulmate and his future wife. With her, he was his old self that everyone loved. But there is an tragic ending to this love story. His step-mother Nyana found out about Leena. She had a twisted mind, she invited Leena for a "dinner" but instead it was her last moment alive and the last time Zaos saw her. Nyana invited Zaos too but without him knowing that Leena was there. When he came there, he saw that his lover was brutally beating up and Nyana being a crazy psychopath was bragging of what she did to her. Zaos of course couldn't bare hearing all the atrocities coming out of that monster mouth. He was about to attack her but the guards stopped him. Then his worst fear came to life. Nyana put Leena's head on a piece of wood and cut her head off. Silence... Then an evil laugh came along. In Zaos eyes came darkness, rage & chaos. He snapped and after a few minutes no one was alive in the room beside the him. That day changed him into a man we know now. We don't know how he build a new kingdom but that doesn't matter. Not anymore because when he realized he was powerful enough to start a war. He did not hesitated, he wanted to everyone to suffer, just like he did. No one on this earth deserved happiness beside Leena. But she was dead. He had no love in his body, just darkness. He didn't even love his only son. Sylvar. Poor little boy. Well not really little he is 19 years old already. he is almost the same age as the duration as the war but the war is a little older just 101 older then him.

Yes, the war is already during 120 years. Honestly, the only reason the war isn't done, its because Zaleria has a weakness for her brother even if he is killing her people. Everyone thinks that she should be mature at her age. She reached that age of knowing what's good for her people and not being weak over her twin brother. After all she is 175 years old. For example Zaos, totally doesn't have any sympathy for his sister and would kill her in seconds.

Okay so now, I'm gonna introduce myself and my relation to this story. My name is Rina Daxalim, I'm a witchelf, that's how I call my people. We are elf that are wizards too. We are not a lot but we are staying strong. The dark lord is been killing my people the most, saying we are cursed and that the we have to die. Since the lack of our kind, we became the queen right arm. We are safe, "safer" then the people outside the castle walls. Most of my people feel embarrassed for being born like that. They are actually believing that them being wizards is bad but I don't think so. I think it's a blessing and something that we should be proud of. Something about us that is different apart of the magic is that all of us have blonde strip no matter what hair color you have unless your blonde, they have a ginger or black stripes and also we all have grey or light purple eyes. The other elf's say that we have an immaculate beauty but I think other wise, I think everyone is beautiful and I find beauty in everything. Even in the black castle of Zaos. Unfortunately, I was taken away by the enemy but me being me. I let myself live with the stupid offer I gave Zaos. Not gonna lie, the dark lord is really hot. But back business. The offer I gave to the king, is to help his son to become worth his thrown when the king decides to leave and also not look like a disappointment in front of him. I basically offered him to make Sylvar a man. Zaos agreed instantly and that made me happy but he told me that I'm free in the castle and I could do anything but I was not allowed outside the castle walls and if I want to go in the garden I need to be followed by a guard. Honestly best conditions for a poisoner so I obviously agreed and like that I survived but we have a slight problem I have no idea how to make his son, the next king. So now I'm stuck in a library reading everything that could help me. Never read and wrote this much in my life. So we finally arrived at my current life situation...

hi it's the author here, I'm here asking if you want me to continue the story and if you like it please comment and like. And you have a comment about how I can make the story better don't be shy and tell me I would love to hear your opinion. thank you and enjoy part 1 I guess :). Also forgive me for my grammar, I try my best. English is not my first language. Thank you and enjoy:)

[prismadog]

Found Family AU character facts (part 3)

apparently, I can't just leave this at one or two, I have to do more than is required for this au - such is the way of life I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

for these, I'm only doing a sort of pre-story type thing, ya know, like their origins, who the characters were before they all knew each other. if I didn't condense these down to that point, well, we'd be here all day reading practically an entire book on one single character [I think I'm exaggerating here?]

this one got a bit long so I'm putting it under the line.

hey uh, are any of you actually interested in their backgrounds? idk if that's something that interests people or not but I'm writing these and it just makes me wonder, y'know? [of course, now that I've started, I can't just stop, there's still so many characters. but still...curiosity and all's got me wondering]

Sausage

Sausage is a dwarf of Mythland who was born a single child to the Dwarf King. ever since he was a child, he dreamed of being a mighty sorcerer that could use all kinds of magic but being a dwarf, magic comes a lot harder to him than it would a human or another magical creature - such as his good friend Gem.

the kingdoms of Mythland and the Crystal Cliffs were close allies and have been for generations - the Grimlands does not exist at this time. Sausage grew up alongside Gem and fWhip of the Crystal Cliffs - he revered Gem and her magical abilities, and found a close friend in fWhip due to neither of them being able to wield magic. Gem did try to teach Sausage magic despite the lessons never producing even a spark of magic - that of course didn't stop him.

he and fWhip would often get into trouble, playing pranks and whatnot on the people of the two kingdoms, and sometimes they could convince Gem to join in with them.

the trio stayed close friends through the years, and when Sausage's father was slain in battle against a pillager raid the siblings were there mourning alongside their friend. he took vigil at his father's final resting place for an entire day, as is tradition, then the next day he held a celebration in honor of the fallen King, with a feast to finish off the night.

Sausage was crowned the new Dwarf King within the week and his friends were there for his coronation - fWhip, ever the tinkerer, set up a firework display for him, and Gem gifted him with an old spell book written by a Mythlandian and enchanted rings that provided protection.

things became hectic around this time, what with being a new king with new duties and protecting his empire from pillagers, and he can't see his friends as often. Gem also gets busy with her studies and fWhip starts exploring the mountains - something that the people of the Crystal Cliffs don't do. in this time, he also adopted a pup that he named "Bubbles" and she became his second in command.

several months later, he gets word that his friend fWhip has gone missing. he drops everything to travel to the Cliffs and be at Gem's side - she tells him that fWhip has been missing for quite some time and she blames herself that she never noticed. he comforts her and they go out on a search for him, which unfortunately results in nothing but a few belongings found deep within the mountain and a journal.

Gem holds a funeral for her brother and Sausage stands vigil once again for a loved one. he offers Gem any aid that Mythland can provide and she graciously accepts. he visits her from time to time after the event but eventually, he just gets busy and more time drags between each visit.

his kingdom prospers with a plethora of new buildings - an iron farm, a forge, new docks, bigger and better homes for the people, and all kinds of other things. one thing that stands out from the rest is a summoning circle - this, he uses to sacrifice the crimson sheep of the land in the hopes, not for power, but for knowledge and guidance, and that one day the gods - whoever may be listening - will return his friend to him.

he gains quite a bit of knowledge in the ways for forging weapons imbued with magic and using anothers' magic to alter ordinary everyday things - such as a dark oak tree or even a mushroom. this is all for the benefit of his kingdom so he doesn't see a problem with his sacrifices, despite what his advisors may believe.

he met with other rulers, some he'd been neglecting to talk to, and others who were just coming into power. one of the first new rulers he met was Pearl of Smallholding - a chaotic girl with flowers in her hair and a grin that never fades. another was the Codfather, Jimmy Solidarity-Shadow - one of the merfolk who's kingdom rose slowly from the swamps and without anyone seeming to notice. months after meeting these two, another kingdom arose, this time practically overnight, and the ruler was none other than fWhip of the Crystal Cliffs - his best friend - but this time, fWhip was the Count of a near-barren plains dubbed the Grimlands.

the trio celebrated fWhip's return and Sausage, once home, thanked whatever gods that had brought his friend back. visits between the three kingdoms became commonplace again, as well as visits to the new Cod Empire - though, those were to pick on the new ruler there.

Sausage did learn not to take things too far in teasing the Codfather because one day, he and fWhip had set up a "minor, harmless" trap and when the Codfather got injured and bedridden for a few days, well, they found out that Queen Lizzie of the Ocean Empire was not someone you wanted to anger. after, they did continue their teasing but they kept it well below danger levels.

a year or so after fWhip's return, Sausage met another new ruler who had just come into power and who's kingdom had been lost to the world for ages - King Joey Graceffa of the Lost Empire. Joey took interest in his sacrifices and his borrowed magics, maybe a little too much interest if the bloodlust in his eyes was anything to go by.

Joey

Joey is born the youngest of three children to the Emperor of the Maztec Empire - his siblings being the princesses.

he, like all others of the royal family, are born with parrot wings to match the local parrots of the jungle. he often used his wings to escape his lessons, though being third in line for the throne, he was allowed lenience to goof off and have fun anyway since the throne always went to the eldest.

but, Joey was the jealous sort as well and would often play dirty pranks on his sisters, and most times, they ended in some injury. though, he was also quite intelligent and could almost always pin the blame on another, usually on someone of the lowest class - the mudbloods who were more of a hybrid of cat and human.

one such dirty prank went horribly wrong and his eldest sister lost her life. it had involved a cave, the cave collapsed, and she got caught in it. he watched her struggle for some time, oddly curious about it, but eventually went and got help. the healers tried to help her but she soon passed on.

a funeral was held for the princess days later and she was cremated - as is tradition for royalty. life moved on, as it does, and the second princess became next in line.

after the death of the first princess, he became a little more interested in the act of dying than a boy should. he was curious and wanted to find out more about death, and the mudblood people were right there for him to experiment with. he made sure to only take one person every so often for experiments - the jungle could be a dangerous place and was often unkind to wanderers so if one or two people went missing every few months, then who was to know?

aside from secretly pranking his sisters and stealing away the lower class, he would spend time with the gentlemen of higher standing - the purebloods who were humanoid cats and certainly looked it. he would pick one to mess around with, or two or three if he so desired, until he eventually grew bored and discarded them like they were yesterday's trash.

his remaining sister, nearing her adulthood, started dreaming of leaving the kingdom to explore the world - she'd always wanted to but their parents would never permit it, nobody entered the kingdom and nobody left. he would stay up late with her on the nights he grew bored of gentlemen, and talk to her about her dreams.

with her becoming an and their parents getting older, he worried that soon, she would be taking the throne. so, he thought up a plan and talked with her about it - he could get things set up and all she would have to do is follow through, and before she knew it, she'd be exploring to her heart's content.

she was nervous, of course, but Joey is a charmer and used that to his advantage. he convinced her it was the best option for her if she didn't want to be tied down, and she could always return if she wanted. she agreed, wrote a farewell scroll that she gave him for safekeeping, and followed him one night to a secret area where a boat and some supplies were waiting, as well as one of his callers.

this she was confused about at first until Joey showed his true colors and killed her in cold blood. he then casually sent the gentleman off in the boat with his sister's body, promising him great rewards for his return if he got rid of the evidence.

he then returned home and set out the farewell letter in her room where it would be found, and went to bed. he awoke to the news late the next day, and also with a visit from his accomplice.

a few weeks later and there was no word from the princess and the guards sent out to search for her found no trace. though his parents prayed she was well, they still mourned her leaving. Joey was to be next in line should the Emperor and Empress pass and he celebrated in secret with the gentlemen who helped him - then when he got bored shortly after, he killed him too in the same cave his eldest sister died in and left his body to the mobs.

when he neared adulthood - only months away - he started his next plan for his rise to the throne. he acquired a poison that would imitate a deadly disease but not be curable by any known remedies. he used this on his father over the next several weeks and watched with secret glee as the Emperor grew weaker and weaker and the healers floundered about trying to cure him.

preparations were made, the Emperor passed on with few final words, and days later a funeral was held for him as well. his urn was placed next to the eldest princess' once everything was done. the Empress mourned the loss and Joey stood at her side.

he watched as her grief began to consume her, she spoke of loss and wishing she could join her husband, Joey listened to her words and wondered about what Maztec would do if she left too. she said it would be in good hands - he was a capable young man and if he ever needed help, there was a council of advisors at his side.

over a week later, the Empress took her own life, leaving behind a letter to her only remaining child. a third funeral was held, his mother cremated and laid to rest beside his father and sister, and he was crowned Emperor of the Maztec Kingdom.

Joey was free to do as he wished and he gladly accepted the freedom - everything was good and he was King.

but over the next several years, he found himself growing bored - not even building new temples kept his attention for long. he eventually started exploring, just a little ways, from his home and eventually came across the edge of the jungle which met the edge of a more barren land.

he visited the boarder a few times, curious about this other land, but never crossed it. then one day he met Count fWhip of the Grimlands - the name of the barren land. they spoke for some time at the boarder of their kingdoms, and set up a couple future visits to one another's kingdoms - fWhip visited his first, then he visited fWhip's.

at the visit to the Grimlands capitol, fWhip invited him to the next Gathering of Empires - apparently there were 9 other rulers out there besides the two of them, and one even had wings too!

he accepted the invitation without a moment's hesitation and at the next Gathering, his kingdom - the Lost Empire as it was written in old history books that an ally of fWhip's had found - became known to the rest of the world.

he found that the other winged ruler - Scott Smajor of Rivendell - was a very cold and distant person. but, the others were friendly enough, especially the Dwarf King - J Sausage of Mythland - and he took an interest in the man and the magics he was studying.

they became friends, and he by default joined an alliance with fWhip and Gem who were allied with Sausage.

[anakinisvaderisanakin]

Evil Unmasked Part 4 AU (aka Vader visits Padmé’s tomb)

Darth Vader was, in a word, exhausted.

Truth be told, whatever slim patience he had had for the machinations of Palpatine’s propaganda machine and the role it had carved out for him was all but gone. He could no longer recall how many interviews he had been forced to play along with, how many holo captures he had had taken of his visage for Imperial distribution. He had figured Palpatine would use his compliance as a tool to promote the Empire as the righteous governmental installment, and himself as the rightful Emperor. Still, it was becoming both grating, and infuriating. Vader was relieved that the media circus had, for now, been foiled and was beginning to die down. He had lost count of how many times he had been pinned down to denounce the Jedi order and explain why he had turned against them, as well as why he had changed his name.

Eight months post the fall of the Republic, and the calamity of the aftermath had begun to settle into the new normalcy. Vader was no longer hounded by hoards of reporters, no longer approached solely to speak out for promotional purposes. This was his first break from the obligations of either hunting down and eliminating stray Jedi, or speaking out on Palpatine’s behalf to praise his leadership. As soon as the opportunity arose, he asked for (demanded) his first day off. Palpatine had given him a quizzical, mildly displeased look but allowed it with a disinterested hand wave. The location he’d chosen for his travel had been decided long in advance, constantly pushed to the back of his mind but never truly forgotten. Vader hadn’t been anywhere near the sector for years; the planet’s sunny skies, vast green fields of grass and tranquil environment seemingly welcoming him with open arms. The nature and its beautiful trappings knew nothing of his past, nothing of the dark deeds he had committed - nor of the fact that he had stolen one of its most favourite daughters away.

Naboo was a beautiful place, with its lush scenery and its vast crystal clear lakes. Even with the sombre intentions behind Vader’s visit in mind, he found it a refreshing and peaceful break from the insanity life had become. The serene, bedazzled home world of Emperor Palpatine was nothing short of a paradise. But it was also the home world of Vader’s beloved, lost Padmé.

That Palpatine could be the native son of such a stunning planet was irony in its highest form. Padmé was much more suited for the inviting greenery, and the richly bedazzled background most citizens of Naboo had enjoyed. The gungans, shut out from society and equality before the Separatist attack, seemed so far removed from the background Padmé and Palpatine were of. Padmé had been born a Naberrie - that in itself a prestige; elected Queen at fourteen, and then continuing to become the senator and ambassador of her birth planet. The planet’s inhabitants had adored her. They adored her valor, her beauty, and her compassion. Her childhood made such a stark contrast to Vader’s own. Padmé had been raised in harmony; with her own autonomy, with responsibilities, yes - but with the power to make lasting changes. With her inherited money and her stunning appearance, her heritage and her wit - Padmé had had all the trappings sufficient of making a just, good woman.

Vader had come from nothing, with no legacy, no father, and no autonomy. He had lived impoverished as a child slave barely scraping by, fearing either death by starvation or illness, or by extermination. Watto, as his master and owner, had threatened him into submission by reminding him of the chip in his neck; reminding him of that fact that would he revolt - both he and his mother were doomed. Padmé never had to fear for her parents’, or her sister’s lives. Not even when she was with child, was the terror of her dying in childbirth that occupied Vader’s mind every hour of every day, of any concern to her. She did not fear death, but then she had never been faced death as Vader had. Perhaps, if she too had been raised on a desert planet, no more than an item to be exploited, with only her mother as a guide and confidant would she have understood his plight. Maybe if she, too, had lost her parents and failed in her valiant effort to save them, would she have understood his fear of watching her fade away. In the end, as yet another cruel twist of fate; Vader himself had brought about her demise. In the end, all he had was himself - and perhaps, that was for the better.

The tomb of senator Padmé Amidala was a vast monument in and of itself, but at the same time surprisingly sparse on decor. Padmé had never been a woman of simplicity when it came to appearance or presentation, but her final resting place was almost humble. Solid stone encased her now, protecting her withering bones from the harsh light of day. Now, as night reigned supreme and the stars peppering the skies provided the only light; Vader thought it a bleak and gloomy sight. He would have envisioned something more grandiose. The style was simple; cream coloured alabaster pillars supported a raised, arched roof. Vader traversed down a winding path or marble stairs, resolute in his resolve despite the unwanted guilt that was constantly nagging at the back of his mind and wearing him down. It made his skin crawl, and he stopped when he came face to face with the single ornament guarding his wife’s grave. Beneath the arched ceiling, a monument had been erected in her honour. Large, lifelike and meticulously detailed; it too was cut from sandstone and alabaster. It was a magnificent statue, portraying Padmé as she had appeared in life during her years as Queen and regent of Naboo. Its face seemed to peer down at Vader, as if to condemn him for trespassing. As if to demean him for daring to disturb her eternal peace.

Ignoring the judgmental stare he could not shake, Vader hurriedly brushed past the statue. With one wave of his hand, he let the Force gently guide the heavy stone door blocking the entrance to the mausoleum portion of the monument aside. Inky darkness pooled inside the small crypt, the starlight barely spilling past the threshold. A cold breeze seemed to emerge from within, both as a plea asking him to leave; and a lull, begging him to enter. Vader shut his eyes for a moment, allowing bith the crisp chill of the night and the stuffy air from within the tomb to wash over him. The breeze ran through his hair, and for a second, he recalled the gentle touch of his wife’s slender fingers combing through the unruly curls. He remembered her soft skin, her plush lips. Opening his eyes, he knew what he must do. He held no fear of the dead, and he was convinced that Padmé’s ghost would not be enraged by his visit.

But neither would she be pleased. Vader imagined she may weep if she could see him now.

Not surprisingly, Vader had found himself unable to attend Padmé's funeral wake. He had watched the holo screen broadcast of the procession in real time, as it was distributed to the public grieving an icon lost. The ceremony itself had been lavish; Queen Apailana dressed in the regal mourning attire. Emperor Palpatine had made it more than clear that there was no way for Vader to be present without drawing unwanted attention by his pre-Empire affiliation with Padmé as - what the public thought to be - a very close friend. Indeed, his absence may have been even odder but in hindsight Vader couldn’t have changed his lot had he tried to. And he had tried, to no avail. At the same time, it hadn’t stung as much to give into his master's wishes - knowing it was his fault Padmé would breathe no more. He had killed her. Part of him thought then, as did he now, that he hadn’t deserved showing his face in such a sacred rite. She was so far above him, and he was so far beneath her.

She was an Angel, and he was her murderer.

Entering the crypt with trepidation and reverence, Vader paused in the doorway. He had to duck to fit through the narrow entrance; the additional height of his new cybernetic legs was still cumbersome, and he hadn’t quite gotten used to the equally freshly fashioned prosthetic arms either with their larger hands and longer forearms. It was just a matter of time, really, but Vader felt it to be an unwelcome hindrance. He had been promised unlimited power by his master, instead he had been maimed and left for dead by Kenobi - and he alone bore the blame for Padmé’s demise. Padmé, whose remains were just within his reach. Padmé, whose spirit must surely despise him now. As he traversed with a solemn unease farther into the cavern; Vader became aware of two things.

First was the stone coffin holding his beloved’s lifeless body. Its lid was adorned by yet another skilfully crafted sculpture; this time a likeness of Padmé’s visage as she had been presented during her funeral wake. Her hair had been loose and wavy as she was paraded through the streets, decorated only with tiny, brittle flowers. Clad in a flowing blue gown, hands clasped over her swollen belly; face so lifelike she had seemed to be merely asleep. As Vader had made himself watch the painful holoscreening - witnessing his beloved one last time from afar - he had entertained the notion that if he’d only been present, he could have kissed her cold lips and she would have woken up. So many fairytales spoke of true love’s kiss, and of it raising a seemingly dead lover from their eternal slumber. Vader’s last kiss shared with his wife had proved to be the kiss of death. This blatant mimicry of Padmé’s visage - a far cry of her beauty - had been expected.

What Vader had not expected was the glass showcase propped by the coffin's side. Upon an indigo satin pillow rested Padmé’s japor snippet. Slightly faded with wear and tear, wooden and as intricately hand carved as the day he had given it to her. It had been granted its own separate display, and Vader scoffed at the notion that any of Padmé’s many handmaidens or realtives would have understood but a sliver of its importance to her - and, subsequently, to him. Still, it had been singled out as a token, and it had been clear even to those not in the know that the simple jewelry had been cherished by its owner.

Swallowing hard, Vader slowly approached the small cased necklace. Even in the dull darkness, his iridescent golden eyes helped him focus on the tiny trinket. A mixture of shame and bitterness welled up inside as his gaze took in every painstakingly crafted detail, and for just a moment - his serious expression softened. Gone were the harsh lines, gone was the composed and well rehearsed authority he had adapted since his shift. For that brief moment, Vader’s chest felt tight and a strangled, choked breath escaped his parted lips.

Anger was quick to overthrow the suffocating sadness. Pursing his lips, Vader forced himself to turn away. Instead, his eyes fell again upon Padmé’s stone grave. He didn’t deserve to be here, he didn’t deserve this attempt at paying her respect with meaningless, silent apologies. He had put her in that coffin, he had snuffed out her light. As if moving of their own volition, he found his legs were carrying him closer to the cold marble against his will. One gloved hand reached out to hesitantly touch the surface, but all Vader's cybernetic fingertips could detect was hard edges. Nothing concrete, no nuance. Vader was bereft of something as simple as the smooth, cool kiss of masterly crafted sandstone. The soft curves and gentle lines came off as no more intricate than the billions of grains that made up the sands of Tatooine.

Clenching his jaw shut, Vader's hand curled into a tight fist. It shook as he squeezed it shut; Padmé’s desperate, pleading hazel eyes flashing before his inner vision. She’d been so frail, so distraught, so horrified. She had never betrayed him, he had betrayed her. This was all his fault.

Padmé was dead because of him. Only him.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Vader wished for nothing but to be offered the chance to retrace his step and right his wrongs. He wished to relive the moment in which he had lashed out, if only to forgive her and believe her words. If only to take her in his arms, to heed her warnings and run far away. Just him, her, and their child. Together. The child that had perished alongside his mother, never allowed to get to know her tender soul.

An unyielding, intense burn spread like a wildfire up the bridge of Vader's nose, and bled into his cheeks. A stinging prickle settled behind his eyes, and despite his stubborn attempt at remaining calm and detached, dismissing his pain - scalding tears welled up to pool at the corners of his eyes. In one fell swoop, they disregarded his wishes and rolled in heavy globs down his pale cheeks. Vader allowed his anger and his despair to mingle with his guilt. In an act of rare surrender, he let his walls crumble to dust and acknowledged that he had made a terrible mistake. He had allowed Palpatine to twist his mind, to entice him with empty promises. But it was he who had believed those lies; he had been the one to choke his own wife in blind rage.

Covering his face with his free hand, Vader did his best to restrain his grief in a feeble attempt at maintaining dignity. Biting back sobs, he wept silently - shedding the final pieces of his past with each tear. A burden that was his alone to carry, but its weight slightly lighter to bear despite the dull ache it left behind.

When he eventually vacated the tomb; daylight had begun to spill over the fields and hills, its orange glow warming the dew lining every straw of grass and creating a thin veil of mist. The air was sweet, its scent a jumble of flowers. No trace of his secret visit did Vader leave behind, but something inside of him had changed irreparably. Something had been left behind, laid to rest alongside the lost Queen.

If he could destroy the one thing he had loved more than life itself, what mattered any other life on his conscience. If his Angel was dead, Vader was already cursed. Whoever stood in his way was but a stepping stone on his way towarda greatness.

Every citizen in the Galaxy was but an animal - and he would slaughter them as animals, if need be.

*****

I wanted to write something sad, and I figured since this iteration of Vader is quite different to the canon one - this would be yet another way for him to shed his past, and to become even more of a propaganda and political tool. Also, I felt like writing something sad and angsty and I seldom write about Padmé, so consider this a little treat for those of you who - much like I - enjoy sadness and pain.

Ao3 link below:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32029582/chapters/79632736