#gilded shadows Jack

[justanaspiringsomeone]

He haunts my mind

So I’m into a new game, Gilded Shadows by @steamberrystudio go check them out!

It’s actually pre fun! This guy caught my eye immediatelyyyy ehehehe

[moonmilkandthydevil]

♡₊・₊✧ A Prose Of Your Essence *ੈ✩‧₊˚

Basically how I would write about you/your essence from the eyes of a lover or as if I were in love with you!

P.S feedback is appreciated :)

‧✴︎˚｡⋆ Pile 1 ➛ Pile 2 ➛ Pile 3 ‧✴︎˚｡⋆

Pile 1

I yearn for you, like a gilded poet in a golden cage. I’m rotting in here, lend me a taste? Oh lover, wherefore art thou, my lover? A bite in my cheek, the taste of blood in my tongue would be less metallic than this. You are charismatic, magnetic, and a fearless leader. I always knew I wasn’t the only one to know that. But lover, put your eyes only on me. Rest those electric conductors of your soul onto me. I’m begging. A sharp tongue but soft on mine. A purveyor of words and a knight of the eclectic mind. But oh, I know you love so thoroughly and so generously. You think you are inept at love but sweetheart, who is love for but the fool? Let me be the only receiver of your naivety. Don’t push yourself away from me. Come to me, for you beckon me with your intellect. Others manipulate with honey but I know your honesty tastes sweeter like cinnamon. You detach as quickly as metal, hot and cold, oh, but I know who you are. The core of your soul builds a home for you and me. With sharpened rocks at the bed you know, always remember a warm sheet for you at mine. With cyanotic lips of yours from the blizzard you knew, always know I’d revive them with mine. Every single time, with my heart at my throat hoping you’d feel the beat at your tongue. Let yourself love. Let the hearth at your chest warm up again. For I know lies there a golden heart extinguished by vicissitudes of life. We’re both in tattered rags and gluttonous eyes looking at church windows looking for a scrap of divine love, without knowing we have it right here—in each other’s embrace and tapestry of luxury. So slow down, my love. I fell in love with your passion but feel no need to be restless. Hold my hand, I’ll be the anchor to your raft adrift at an unforgiving sea.

(Damn, Pile 1, y’all got me yearning for you lol)

Pile 2

The light flickers at our place, violent like a police alarm. Still, it feels like home. Maybe it’s the warmth at your touch, the creases from your fingers as they hold my cheek and the calluses that caresses every fiber in me. I feel so soft and safe in your embrace. Like you’d shield me from the world and lift the curtain at the same time. Your eyes are like a yolk of sunlight at sea. So warm, loving, and just—yellow. If I were a fisherman of the myths, I’d wake up at dawn to catch such rarity at the surface of the waves. Maybe even travel to wherever the sea and sky kisses and intrude upon the lovers just to catch a material of your essence. Let the historians speak of your geniality and how you’d catch everyone’s favor with your smile, and poets of my being enslaved because of it. As you trace the night sky’s Cassiopeia, Cepheus to the north and west, Andromeda to the south—let me trace the pores of your skin in the same loop. You’re vulnerable, so let me be your protector in return. I promise I’ll keep you safe. Show me your shadows, the bones deep in your closet that’s webbed and never to be seen again. I don’t care. Whether you tame, placate, or let loose your inner beasts does not matter. I’ll embrace them with open arms even if the lion gnaws on my flesh. I’ll treat my skin bones as steel when that happens. So generous with your heart and patience, my love. Is it too selfish to wish it could only be directed at me? You can accomplish anything you desire, I only hope I am one of them. Let me be the one to stand beside you as you celebrate your wins with that enchanting smile and be the one to make a sanctuary inside the closet full of secrets you’ll seal your lips shut for. Do not tempt me in if you have no intention to keep me. Who knew the devil spoke no malice but of whispers of strength and promises of love?

Pile 3

If you’re the jack of all trades, I’d be the ringmaster of your fabric to let everyone know my lover is the headliner of every act. How does it feel to light up a room when you walk in? It’s as if the gods carefully crafted a wreath around your head so everybody’s attention is on you. You’re the hero of every epic and the valiant savior of every fairytale. I’d inject your halo into my veins if I could and get high on it. I’ll follow you, wherever you are. Like a shadow warning you of danger, the bane of enemies who wish for your downfall, and a companion in case you decide to step out of the armor you call protection and I call pride. Maybe the tree you climbed up in was more hollow than you thought. Maybe when you planted it, you didn’t realize insects were already infesting on it—the bark rotting inside silently. But that’s okay, I’ll be the pile of leaves beneath ready to catch you when you fall. What’s the burden you carry in your heart, darling? Let it go. Don’t worry, I’ll hold your hand as the kerosene overpowers the rotting smell. And I’ll interlace my fingers with yours as you set the lifeline you built on fire. Let hope be the stalemate of despair.

I am in forever awe of your imagination. Let me into your world? Don’t just let me have a taste or a fraction, let me feast on it. Let me cherish each word borne from that diamond mine like scripture. Let me be your muse even as you become a poet like me’s nightmare. I’ll shed my skin raw for your carnal pleasure, for I know you’d wear it on your sodden form like victory.

[wings-of-ink]

Hi Lunan!!! I hope ur doing well 🫶🏽 I don’t know if this has been asked yet but what are ur favourite fictional characters (or arcs) from other games (including non IF games) or shows?

Hello dear! I am doing well (now that all my Christmas obligations are completed) and I hope you are as well. ^_^

I don't think I've had this question before, but it's a difficult one since there are so many that I love and also my memory for such things can be completely wack, lol.

Let's see...

In The Wayhaven Chronicles, I absolutely love the dynamic with the MC and the romance with M. I really thought that N would be my fav, but M stole my heart, and I just love their character and how they develop relationally.

In Blood Moon, oh goodness, I loved everyone. I have played every romance multiple times so picking a fav is so difficult. The whole story is just amazing. My top two characters are probably Carrie and Marco if you twisted my arm.

In Andromeda Six, I am a complete sucker for Vexx's storyline. Gets me every time.

In Gilded Shadows (one of my favs and probably the only gender-locked game I have ever loved so much), I adored Jack's route though there are a couple other close runners up here too.

In BBC's Sherlock, The Woman - enough said - and also Moriarty. I love extreme and or unique characters and these two really hit it for me.

In Penny Dreadful, I was in love with Vanessa Ives as a character and Eva Green fucking nailed that role for me.

I think these are the main ones I can think of off the cuff. If I sat and thought a while on it, I'm sure I could come up with more characters that live rent-free in my heart.

[maud-blyth-wannabe]

I was thinking about the Newport RI gilded age museums (an important part of my childhood) and how one of them has a massive collection of suffragette memorabilia because the lady of the house was a big suffragette and the museum gift shop sells a ton of votes for women Tchotchkes and things of the like and then I was thinking about maud and thornley hill and what if thornley was to become a museum? Robin isn’t going to have kids, the estate would likely go to one of addys niece’s or nephews and then I really started thinking about thornley as a museum and I got so emotional.

Because there is no way of hiding who they were. Not in a magical way, I mean who they were and who they loved.

Owners of the house, sir and lady Blyth, who lived here accompanied by many adult loved ones but never children of their own.

It’s obvious in every inch of this house who sir Robert, “robin” to family, loved. In the well worn chairs of the library and the words in diaries and the things around the master bedroom. It’s obvious that Robin was gay, and the love of his life was not Adelaide, but Edwin. Edwin, who maintained his own estate in the country, but spent the most of his time here. And from the looks of photos and accounts of staff, Edwin and lady Blyth seemed to truly love eachother as friends, without a drop of jealousy or malice.

The suffragette posters and China and sashes are credited to robins sister, miss maud Blyth. Maud who, by all accounts, was a wild woman. Split her days between this house and one not far away, with the eccentric heiress Violet Debenham. All signs point to them being lovers, by the sepia photographs in a hatbox and the stories told. Maud is one of the first women who went to the University of Oxford, and violet fallowed her there.

There’s another bedroom, a guest room decorated with traveling goods and letters. The room is said to be a favorite of a frequent visitor, and close friend of the family, Johnathan “Jack” Alston. The room, by all accounts, was even referred to as ‘Jacks Room’ when he wasn’t there. letters, often addressed or from a Mr. Alan Ross, are explicit in the nature of the relationship between Jack and Alan. Quite enamored and amorous lovers. There’s letters to maud at Oxford too, ones with a familial lovingness. Brotherlike. From stories, it seems Edwin and Jack were childhood family friends, and became reacquainted when maud met Jack and Violet on a ship from New York. It’s quite fuzzy, but they seem to have grown all very close around that time for some reason or another. Some of Alston’s letters to Ross indicate they may have met on that trip as well.

Just the idea of them being remembered, the way their legacy would be construed. The shadows of love that would be left when they were gone.

[shpen779]

I saw this picture and it freaked me out. a little-little demon with wings, it's so easy to forget he had human flesh for dinner. So I wrote a short fanfic from Will's perspective to let me go

He sits there. In the corner. Like a spider in a web of old books and candle wax. His wings—cardboard, drawn—but I can see them twitch. Funny. Scary. A mix of both. He writes. Scribbling in a notebook with gilded edges, like a schoolboy who has just discovered that words can kill.

“He eats people,” I remind myself. “He has killed, dismembered, prepared. He is a monster.”

But now… now he looks like a child. The child he never was. His fingers carefully turn the pages, his lips moving soundlessly. Is he composing poetry? Or a menu?

I stand in the doorway. He knows I’m here. Always knows. But he doesn’t turn around. He keeps writing. His back straight, like a pianist before a concert.

“Why does this feel… endearing?”

The thought burns. It’s treacherous.

He has consumed more than sixty people. Sixty. Sixty lives, sixty names, sixty stories turned to pulp and served with a sauce of Nietzsche quotes. But when he sits like this—hunched, absorbed, pencil in hand—he seems… fragile. Like a porcelain doll that someone is bound to break.

“You are the one who will break him,”

I whisper to myself. But I don’t move.

He licks the tip of his pencil. Just like back then, in Jack’s office.

“Eye contact is violence, Will.”

And now he himself creates that violence—on paper. Writing, writing, writing. About what? My dreams? How I tossed and turned last night? How my hand trembled when I cut the meat at dinner?

“He knows. Always knows.”

His temple isn’t a room. It’s him. Walls made of ribs, an altar of skulls, stained glass windows of memories of the sister he devoured to keep her with him forever. But now… now he is neither god nor devil. He is a boy. A boy afraid of the dark and so he created his own—from blood and poetry.

“Why can’t I hate him?”

Because his hatred is perfect. Because his love is a knife that cuts just enough for you to feel alive. Because when he looks at me, I see that child in him. The one who cried when Mischa disappeared. The one who decided that if the world took everything from him, he would take the world.

He turns around. His eyes are two embers in ash. He smiles—not with the grin of a cannibal, but with the smile of that very boy.

“Are you going to stand there long?”

He asks. His voice soft as silk on a blade. I don’t answer. He knows the answer.

He extends the notebook toward me. On the page—a drawing. Me and him. We stand back to back, but our shadows merge into one being with wings and fangs. We are a Rorschach test, one entity, whole, indistinguishable.

“Beautiful,”

I think. And immediately want to rip out my tongue.

He has killed. He kills. He will kill again. But as he draws our shadows, I… I want to sit beside him. To take the pencil. To add details.

It’s so easy to fall when you’ve been in the abyss for so long.

[bromcommie]

the beloved name, exiled free verse poem (?) for @catws-anniversary, day 8 | april 2nd theme: bucky barnes | prompts: ghost story, memories, revenge | on ao3 here

Listen: this is a ghost story. Are you listening?

Good. Let me set the scene: here we are at the beginning of our path, here we are at the mouth of the river, still cool and smelling of salt and rotten fish and not gasoline. And here we have our protagonist who is like all other protagonists, which is to say he is handsome, maybe, or he used to be and he is young, maybe, or he used to be  and he is unimportant and mundane and utterly  human, maybe, or he used to be.

What about a name? This can get confusing, so let's call him Yuri or Yevgeny or Yakub, let's call him Joe or Jack or Jimmy— overplayed, overused, there's too many of those just running around all over the place, trust me. Let's just call him the universal name of all history, meaning let's not call him anything at all. Most of the real protagonists are nameless, and all history ever does is pile them atop each other, dead faceless weight on neat numbered lists, pour them out into shallow unmarked graves, send them home as bits of hammered metal and pairs of over-mended socks, meaning: 31 GOVT=WUX WASHINGTON DC 845PM 3-8-45

THE SECRETARY OF WAR WISHES ME TO EXPRESS— Hello? Everybody home? Are you sitting  down? Sorry for your loss, ma'am. Sorry about the caked blood on his boots, about all the ugly, festering parts that nestled in the chest and grew outwards, stretching towards the sun. You should probably make it a closed-casket funeral, you should probably make it a nice picture on the mantle, a gilded frame for grief, because you won't like the thing the search party digs up from the snow.  Sorry for your loss, ma'am, truly, but know this: никто не забыт и ничто не забыто, meaning vechnaya pamyat, memory eternal, meaning we will forever honor your unnamed hero of a son on neat numbered lists and in the worn, earmarked pages of history. And don't that just beat all. Except for the ones that make it. Except for the rare ones deserving of a title, the ones left to carry history's weight, left to tell the story; left to be immortalized as the writing on the wall. They get to keep their names. You saw it, too. Not really, not the fleshy, messy parts between the syllables, not in a way that counts, and we're not here to talk about him, anyway. I'm the one calling the shots, I'm the one telling this story, so listen. If you say so. So we have our protagonist— tell me about the monster, then. Every good story needs a monster. Except I didn't say monster, did I, I said ghost: something caught in the  doorway but never fully in either room,  something that has a body which is never whole but always wants to be. The body which knows without knowing, which occupies the space between awareness and understanding; the nuclear shadow of longing.

But you don't want that, do you. You want something with clean-cut lines, something with teeth and a mean streak that adds up to more than just the disjointed sum of its parts. I don't blame you for that. So here: have your handsome young unnamed hero while he was still handsome and young and without the weight of a title for a name breaking over his back, sweating in summer heat. Have a scene drawn by a boy on a fire escape with a red-bellied bird over blue water that hasn't caught on fire yet; have a scene in which all the lights add up, in which there are no creeping shadows and the scenery makes sense.

Here is your kindhearted hero who walks tall and straight and shares his chocolate with the children sheltering in the basement of the shattered house, the thousands of children on whose bony backs the mythos of Leningrad was built— which is a thing our protagonist doesn't know then but will learn in time, with  practice and repetition beaten raw into the skin: pain, the mother and father and  inheritor of all earthly knowledge. And here is the monster which is, of course, a house with one too many locked doors, one too many broken windows and not enough light getting in to see his face clearly, to map into memory the places  where the glittering armor's cracked, where the boy's expression bleeds into the  bird on the page. The edges all crooked. The spine tilting to the side. The bird's not flying.

How can it, the boy who is not a boy but a man says, when its wing's broken? And our protagonist says: you're the artist here. Can't you make up a better story,  for a change?

I'm sorry. I tried to keep it simple. Let me start over.

There's something about the house you're keeping out of the picture. How did they get in if all the doors are locked? Where did they come from? Where did the overlap come from? The other side of the river Lethe, maybe, except that's just another myth our protagonist doesn't remember learning but knows anyway. Head stuffed full of stories, passed on in hope and bread and blood head stuffed full of cotton, gasoline-soaked waiting decades for something to  spark, except someone's cut the connecting strings, you see. Someone's hacked off the fuse. A lighter's useless if you can't even light a candle with it. A tool loses its value when it stops doing its job well, when it becomes nothing but the disjointed, disloyal sum of its parts and bites the hand wielding it, which is usually when the hand tends to get pissed. You know. I don't need to tell you this. The voltage wasn't high enough to burn out the fear of failure. If someone's cut the fuse, where's the flame coming from, then? Shut up, I'm getting there. We were talking about the scenery, about the roses next to the blown out window, pink on red on tablecloth white; we were talking about the dark-eyed girl in the basement with the one-sided dimple, the one-sided shyness, the handful of picked wildflowers when he walked back through the door, wanting to go back to a time when his body was a gentler sum of its parts.

What color were the wildflowers? Now you're getting somewhere. Pink, white, yellow; blue, maybe, the color of kindness. That is what they were fighting for, you understand, one and all: a kinder world, a world where little girls never end up hungry in basements again. That's what they were told over and over again by the same men in different suits.

I know what you're about to ask. No, the children never got out of the basement, and yes, the girl's eyes were blue back then, not brown a mirror of belonging, and in another version of events her hair was red, but that's a story for a different time. And the world? Well. Depends on who you ask. Anyway, we were talking about the boy on the fire escape and the boy in the shattered house drawing the same bird. Mythology carries weight even without proof of it ever happening, but this is different. Is it? What makes you say that? Well the birds looked alike, and the two boys didn't look alike at all except for all the ways in which they did, the lip caught between teeth and the line cutting between brows and the soft scritch-scritch-scritch of stubby pencil on cheap paper, a faint looping sound that should've driven our protagonist mad but didn't. Echo of a life repeated, of a sound as familiar as his own heart, which is the closest thing to proof of existence you can get.  I beat, therefore I exist. I am  beaten, therefore: there's still something permanent about this body that can't be taken away.

The boy's body wasn't permanent, or at least it turned out malleable despite its innate unbreakability, despite the hard-earned slouch of the shoulders and the same old broken nose and the twist to the mouth; not smiling, but close.  The eyes; not looking at, but not looking away.

Maybe it's not the boy that changed, but the looking. Maybe that's the part the protagonist made up after: the looking back. Explain the flame then, explain the devil in the details, explain the hunger cutting through the ribs, spilling the contents out into the world to be pecked at. If none of it was real, explain how all this light is getting in. Oy vey iz mir, I'll never get to the end if you keep this up. You sure ask a lot of questions, don't you? I don't like when you do that, just repeat words you heard once or twice— or a thousand times. Isn't that all storytelling is? Do you even know what they mean? Do you? They mean, enough already They mean, didn't I tell you to buzz off? They mean you've been at the wheel too long but I've been here longer, so let me talk for once, let me set some roots down in this shifting landscape you're running from and be more than just a collection of wild old hungers. I thought you said this is a ghost story. That's all ghosts ever are.

I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about our hero and I'm just trying to prove a point here, anyway. I'm trying to say maybe the birds weren't the same bird, maybe the bird wasn't even a bird and maybe the boy was something he made up, too, clinging onto hope like a thing with too many feathers, like a rope that could very well hang him. Maybe it's still enough on its own, anyway, the feeling that flutters through at the not-story, a robin's broken wing against the windowsill, the aftermath of a struggle; tender and violent and utterly unkillable. Sounds like a nice story. So why are you so angry?

Am I? Well, fear can sometimes cause an irrational reaction. Fear can make people dangerous, make them behave unpredictably. This is all empty rhetoric, of course, but you should understand. You're not people, either. Your lethality is not irrational. It's been hammered into a precise shape, like all things born out of a binary are— I know this story, too. It goes: Yes or no. Success or failure. Dot or dash. You finger's on the trigger: you pull it or you don't. What's your choice? Report. Never mind, I don't want to talk about this. 

Report status. Dot or dash? The choice of a small, bloody animal backed into a corner, which is to say no choice at all. The choice of go fuck yourself with the constant  interruptions, I was telling a story here.

That's not one of the options. Your finger is still on the trigger. The house is still on fire. What do you save?  What are you trying to pull? You know how this story goes so why rehash it why poke at  infected tissue, why— Because you won't talk to me plainly, you won't look at the thing head on, because I'm trying to be helpful, like I've always tried to be helpful, because the story goes:  We want to help you, you have to let us help you, you have to let us, so:  report.  I was getting there, why did you have to— Report. Answer the question.  You know, sometimes I think you liked it when they— Sometimes I think you like getting— Answer. Sometimes I think you— .-. . .--. --- .-. - two GSWs one to the stomach one to the thigh critical condition - .... -.-- / .-- .. .-.. .-.. / -... . / -.. --- -. . broken ribs shattered cheekbone pneumo thorax 32557038 you’ve known me your whole life exfil at 38° 46' 57.50" -77° 00' 54.22" you hear that assholes home by christmas and lying dead asleep on the couch lying dead sinking in the water lying strapped to a table when война закончена, слава героям Красной армии subject uncooperative try it again 32557038 sergeant 191 pts in most recent drill recommendation for additional training 3255 --- -. / . .- .-. - .... / I said .- ... / .. - / .. ... try it again / .. -. / .... . .- ...- . -.  he’s still talking  7038 initial report stated the body pulled from the Potomac was nonresponsive stated subject’s cardiac arrest lasted 176.83 seconds so try it again stated edelweiss, ein kleines edelweiss stated I give thanks before you for you have mercifully returned my soul within me stated 32557—

.-. . .--. --- .-. - Record skip. There's fuzz on the damn needle again. Where's it keep coming from? What was I talking about, again? You were about to tell me where the light keeps coming from. The light is irrelevant, the light casts shadows that don't make any sense, I told you, the light's just there for dramatic effect. Our protagonist is not an artist, he's not thinking about the light.

You're lying. You're leaving the important parts out again. You're ignoring what's happening in the house, you're ignoring the red string that's supposed to be leading the way, time-adherent. Of course. That's because all strings can be cut, all strings can wind up dead ends, all things can be taken away, including time. The string's not red because of the poetry of it all, bub. It's red because someone's bled all over it. We both know this, so  what's the point in reopening old wounds? That's how people hemorrhage. That's how the needle starts to skip. That's not how stories work. Why won't you tell me what he's thinking about? Fine. Fine then: he's thinking about the damn light, how it makes him look all translucent and tired and too human this man that used to be a boy that used to be a David long before they turned him into a Samson, and he tries not to think about how that story ends. He thinks about the light and he wants to say, keep your temples standing—the world's had more than its fair share of heroes and legends, and look  where that got us. Nothing good ever came from making a fallible man a myth. He wants to say: if there's someone who could knock them down blind it'd be this boy, but he'd rather look at him in this ghost light until the day he bites it than read his name in history books and over the tombstone of a hero's grave.

He wants, but that's not something fit to send back with the socks and the hammered metal, that's about as useless as crying over spilt milk, about as useless as the thoughts that lead nowhere but deeper into the pit our hero keeps crawling out of. And so he goes back to the numbers and the angles, to the sounds right outside the door, to the piece of metal in his hands because he was always so much better at that kind of thing, anyway. Things that can be taken apart and put back together, new from the old; things that can be forced into a form or a binary are so much easier to control. You know this, too. You're living, breathing proof of it.

Anyway, that's what he's thinking about at that time: speed, math, probability. Gravity, maybe. He drifted— wandered— walked purposefully so close to the edges of this man that he ended up wanting inside him, close enough to know him like his blood knows him, close enough to get warm and to shield from the draft through the broken windows snuffing the light out of them both. He'd ended up afraid of pushing too hard and ending up on the other side of him, afraid of falling off one hell of a cliff. And the boy who hasn't been  a boy in a while looked at him and said, Are you— and our man with no face said: Let's not do this again.  And they both carried on dealing with  things easier to handle, like smart numbers and smart maps and smart hands that did things they were good at but tried not to think about too hard at night.

He still ended up falling, of course. And then, well— a shot bird can't fly if its wings've been broken, a shot bird can't fly if its been fucking shot.

Someone lied to our protagonist, you see. It was a long time ago, but it still stuck.

But what about the light? 

Why the rush? Look, whichever end I tell the story from, we'll end up at the foot of the same cliff, the same river. I just don't know what more you want from me.

I want you to stop dropping the thread, I want you to stop playing dead already— that shattered house is on fire, and you keep trying to put it out with buckets full of bullet holes while I'm not looking and the water's all gone before you can even see it evaporate. The house is still on fire, the house is caught in a thunderstorm too many charged particles too close to the eye socket and the smell of crackling ozone and burning flesh and you need to get out— That's enough. Change the topic, I'm not doing this again. Please. Look, I'm  being nice about it. Fine. Do you remember who first told our unnamed hero that old Lie? No, but it starts like this: dulce et decorum est, except there's nothing decorous about flies on too-thin bodies, about the taste of fear like iron at the scraped roof of the mouth, about the things you saw your hands do; there's nothing about our hero that makes him a hero. Blood under the fingernails. White little petals high up in the pale mountains, white little petals on lapels, crushed to bits. You still remember how brown his eyes were, how young how quick the light behind them was snuffed out when all your muscles locked up, animal instinct. Mind you, it wasn't unwarranted— the motherfucker's knife was in your stomach. The pretty pale mountains were a screen for a world set on raging fire. Mind you, this was before the invention of a gun out of living flesh, before they gave you a title instead of a name. You were bleeding then, too.

I thought we were talking about the story.

We are, pay attention: Do you remember when you first realized the awful Truth? I know you don't, but it goes like this: you don't remember giving your life and you don't remember believing in something bigger than yourself, but your trigger finger does. Picturebook blue and gold over the river's surface, stretching yourself too thin towards the sun. Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori. (Only one part of this sentence is a lie.)

You still haven’t told me where the light is coming from. And you still haven't told me why you want the answer so bad. I don't know. Is that what you've been wanting to hear? I don't know. You don't want to know. There's a difference. You're scared shitless is what you are, you sorry old thing. Falling back on old habits. I want to know how our protagonist ends up.

I’m working on it, alright. The road is long and potholed and roundabout and the story’s not much better, you see: the pictures are all there but the colors are too bright, the linework's all off, I still can't get the shadows to make any goddamn sense. Too many different mythologies, I think; too much static on the channel to pick the thread of the drama up clearly, and someone keeps cutting the transmission lines, anyway. It's downright sabotage, is what it is. Friendly fire. But our protagonist is getting weary, he needs a moment to lay his head down, so let me wrap up, will you, let me get a word in edgewise and put it in a way you will understand. Stop asking questions and let yourself sit in the house with one too many doors that you didn't notice before, one too many rooms and not enough hallways to connect them all. Make a place for yourself by the warmth of the fire in the burning house, and pay attention:

The doors are there for a reason. Did you hear what I said? Have you been listening? Someone's cut all the strings. Someone's left them to smolder in the ash, someone's bitten the hand that used to hold them raw, and now the monster's asking questions. Now the monster's off its leash, and it wants what all angry, abused abandoned things want, which is someone to be afraid of it for once, which is a way out of the maze, a clear path into the sunlight. It wants its due. I thought you said it was a ghost. Gimme a break— there's no place for semantics in this discussion, there's no place for a discussion at all. I'm telling you now: ghost, monster they're all just different words to say— something that's other, something on the outside looking in, something with no belonging. All different words to say: something that used to be something else once.

That's why our hero is no hero, you see: no Samson, no Oisín, no Theseus; at best, he's the minotaur. At worst, he's the ship. Something new from something old, over and over until it's unrecognizable. A gilded frame for grief masquerading as an honor. That's where the light is coming from, you understand. That's where all the strange old hunger is coming from: the blue of the wildflowers carved into bone; the beloved name exiled to the other side of the river Lethe. That's what the monster wants. A way back home. Monsters don't get to make demands. Only heroes do. You think? You still haven't figured it out yet, have you? You're still thinking in binaries. Who do you think I've been flapping my gums at all this time, who do you think our tired nameless protagonist with all that blood on his boots is? And who's the one out of the two of us here asking all the goddamned questions? Open your eyes. Put your ear to the ground. Listen: I lied. This isn't a story. This is a warning. Someone's cut all your red strings and that someone was you, pushed out of a century of quiet by the wrong dead body in the wrong burning river and a feeling you didn't understand in the shape of a name cutting your ribcage open to the sun; which is why you're so angry, which is why you're  scared shitless, which is why you've got more questions than answers. The needle's still skipping, so we’re flipping the whole thing over to B-side. Can you hear it? Can you mouth along to the crackling words? It seems to me you've heard that song before, so: wipe the record and start over. Maybe this time the melody'll actually stick.

And then? And then, you get your due. No gods, no mythologies, no more fucking stories, just this: you, blowing up the burning house and clawing your way out into the sunlight.

[sundove88]

Introducing Anime Ever After!!

Ever wanted to experience classic fairytales but through the lens of legendary and lesser known anime?

Well, Anime Ever After is for you!!

Synopsis: An anthropology of famous stories from around the world retold through the lens of legendary and lesser known anime, with modern twists, turns, and lessons about. From the depths of the sea in DBZ: Waves of Freedom (The Little Mermaid) to the realm beyond the clouds in One Piece: Beyond The Sky (Jack and The Beanstalk), this ever expanding treasury of tales has something for everyone.

Framing Device: An anime loving teenager is telling classic fairytales to the kids they babysit as bedtime stories- with a twist!

Side Note: Nursery Rhymes being adapted is more for Shrek. So they won’t be here- sorry about that. But they do a good job at it. This anthology is meant for readers 12 and up, due to some of the themes in some of the stories.

Btw, look for the posts that have anime ever after on them as one of their tags. Here’s the list of tales (So Far):

Dragon Ball Z: Waves of Freedom (The Little Mermaid)

My Hero Academia: Heart of Glass (Cinderella)

Attack on Titan: Red Hood (Little Red Riding Hood)

One Piece: Beyond The Sky (Jack and The Beanstalk)

Naruto: Sleeping Shadow (Sleeping Beauty)

Sword Art Online: The Match Player (The Little Match Girl)

FullMetal Alchemist: Iron Wolves (The 3 Little Pigs)

Fairy Tail: Mirrors of Deceit (Snow White)

Inuyasha: Soul of The Beast (Beauty and The Beast)

Bleach: Brushes of Fate (The Magic Paintbrush)

Fruits Basket: The 12 Dancing Zodiacs (12 Dancing Princesses)

Black Clover: The Frog Knight (The Frog Prince)

Hunter X Hunter: Spreading Your Wings (The Ugly Duckling)

Demon Slayer: Demon of The Northern Wind (The Snow Queen)

Black Butler: Beyond The Tower (Rapunzel)

Yu Yu Hakusho: Sweet Temptation (Hansel and Gretel)

Doraemon; Fearless Feline (Puss in Boots)

Gintama: Peachy Keen (Momotaro)

Sailor Moon: Lady of The Waxing Moon (Princess Kaguya)

Haikyuu: Bear-ly Faltering (Snow White and Rose Red)

Railgun: Little Warriors, Big Impacts (Thumbelina)

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All That Glitters (Rumplestiltskin)

Yu Gi Oh: Diamond in The Rough (Aladdin)

Konosuba: The Royal Test (The Princess and The Pea)

Tokyo Ghoul: The Crimson Amulet (The Red Shoes)

Akame Ga Kill: Fashion Gambit (The Emperor’s New Clothes)

Ouran High School Host Club: Wings of Perseverance (The Wild Swans)

Rurouni Kenshin: The Ronin’s Trials (The Steadfast Tin Soldier)

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagan: Cage of Steel, Heart of Platinum (The Nightingale)

Cowboy Bebop: Written in The Stars (The Weaver Girl and The Cowherd)

Death Note: The Golden Pen (King Midas)

Neon Genesis Evangelion: No Strings Attached (Pinocchio)

Fate: The Chosen Sword (King Arthur)

BanG Dream!: Melody of Deceit (The Pied Piper)

Code Geass: The Princess and The Pig Man (The Swineherd)

Jujitsu Kaisen: The Light Within (The Buried Moon)

Blue Exorcist: Blazing Bonds (The Firebird)

Spy X Family: Secret of The Statue (The Happy Prince)

Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic: The Enchanted Key (Alibaba and The 40 Thieves)

Re:Zero: Gilded Feathers (The Golden Goose)

Saint Seiya: Divine Trials and Godly Tribulations (The 12 Labors of Hercules)

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: Claws of Gold, Hearts of Gold (Goldilocks and The 3 Bears)

One Punch Man: A Hero’s Humility (King Thrushbeard)

Future Diary: Wishful Obsession (The Fisherman and His Wife)

Sket Dance: A Tale of Three Tricksters (The 3 Billy Goats Gruff)

Precure (All seasons): The Sweetest Holiday Ever (The Nutcracker)

Food Wars: A Recipe For Courage (The Brave Little Tailor)

Spice and Wolf: Against All Odds (The Princess on The Glass Hill)

Noragami: Stolen Sun (Amaterasu and The Cave)

Monogatari: Secret Confidants (The Elves and The Shoemaker)

Steins;Gate: Azure Secrets (Bluebeard)

Tokyo Revengers: Neverlanding, Never Faltering (Peter Pan)

The Promised Neverland: Emerald Truths (The Wizard of Oz)

Toriko: Sweet Pursuit (The Gingerbread Man)

Kill La Kill: A Royal Mix Up (The Prince and The Pauper)

World Trigger: The Silent Springtime (The Selfish Giant)

The Seven Deadly Sins: Curse of Shade and Malice (The Shadow)

Cardcaptor Sakura: Salt and Sugar (The Salt Princess/Cap O Rushes)

Assassination Classroom: Honeyed Words (Diamonds and Toads)

Way of The House Husband: Out of The Cage (Jorinda and Joringel)

Danganronpa The Animation (It covers all the games): Makoto in Wonderland (Alice in Wonderland)

D Gray Man: Song of The Sparkling Swan (Swan Lake)

Persona 5 The Animation: Way Down We Go (Hades and Persephone)

Soul Eater: United We Stand (The Six Who Went Far)

Puella Magi Madoka Magica: The 5 Magical Musketeers (The 3 Musketeers)

Aggretsuko: Four Man Band (The Bremen Town Musicians)

Tokyo Godfathers: A Holiday Journey (A Christmas Carol)

Revolutionary Girl Utena: Emotions Set Free (The Princess Who Never Smiled)

Sonic X: True, Blue, and Noble (Hans The Hedgehog)

Magiknight Rayearth: Noble Flame, Changing Tide, and Guiding Wind (The 3 Princesses of Whiteland)

A Silent Voice: Beyond All Boundaries (East of The Sun, West of The Moon)

A Whisker Away: A Feline Fairytale (The White Cat)

Your Name: A Little Bird Told Me (The Singing, Springing, Lark)

Love Live: A Fateful Adventure (Journey to The West)

Captain Tsubasa: Winging It (The Seven Ravens)

The Ancient Magus Bride: Entrapped Beauty (The Lindworm)

Overlord: Seeds of Trust (The Juniper Tree)

Delicious in Dungeon: Cooking Up Trouble (The Magic Porridge Pot)

Medaka Box: The Truth Above All (The Goose Girl)

Chainsaw Man: Demonic Assistance (The Golden Bird)

Taikobo: Legend of The Lost Kingdom (Urashima Taro)

Revue Starlight: Masked Secrets (Phantom of The Opera)

Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin: Path of The Canine (The Boy Who Cried Wolf)

Dr. Stone: Into The Wilderness (The Jungle Book)

Fire Force: The Flames of Charity (Robin Hood)

Shaman King: Mystery of The Marsh (The Marsh King’s Daughter)

Rave Master: Cloak of Secrets (Donkeyskin/Many Furs)

Ranma 1/2: Loyal, Brave, and True (Mulan)

Karakuri Circus: The House Within The Woods (Vasilisa The Brave and Beautiful)

Devilman Crybaby: Three Hairs of Gold (The Devil With 3 Golden Hairs)

The Irregular at Magic High School: Ring of Enchantments (The Bronze Ring)

Bobobo: One Hairy Tale (Prince Hyacinth)

Shakugan No Shana: Three Dogs, Three Heroes (The Tinderbox)

Nisekoi: Yellow With Affection (The Yellow Dwarf)

Kaiju No. 8: Don’t Get Salty (Why The Sea is Salty)

Kinnikuman: A Mission in Patience (The Tortoise and The Hare)

Oshi No Ko: The Price of Stardom (Little Brother and Little Sister)

Case Closed: Stolen Hearts and Stolen Fortunes (The Master Thief)

Pokemon The Series: An Electrifying Rescue (The Lion and The Mouse)

Hyperdimension Neptunia: The Animation: A Tale of a Thousand and One Nights (1,001 Arabian Nights)

Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Ribbiting Adventure (The Frog Princess)

Dr. Slump: A Quacktastic Journey (Drakestail)

Katekyo Hitman Reborn: Windows to The Soul (One Eyes, Two Eyes, Three Eyes)

Kochikame: From Faux to Genuine (Don Quixote)

Yo-Kai Watch: Cat Artist Unknown (The Boy Who Drew Cats)

Kaguya-Sama: Love is War: To Love and To Be Loved (Turandot)

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Feathers of Joy (The Blue Bird)

DanMachi: Forgotten Evil Unleashed (Pandora’s Box)

Hellsing Ultimate: Blood Ties (Dracula)

Claymore: The Monster Unleashed (Frankenstein)

Thanks to @sam-rexian and @crystallinedreamsfinelypowdered for helping with some of these!

[see-arcane]

More Halloweeny paint jobs!

Found another nice skull mask to recolor (the inner padding is extremely helpful for the glasses) and an old prop sickle to pair with it. Felt like giving gilded grim reaper aesthetic a try. The mask itself has no Mod Podge layer to keep the texture non-shiny and vaguely bony/papier-mâché feeling

Prettied up a little gothic rose decor and made a very simplified action figure for Mr. “Quinn Morse” of The Vampyres even though he lacks a hat for the dramatic shading.

Hey, if vampires can go around with no shadows then maybe the anti-vampire can have excessive shadows, who knows?

Last, a little stuffed animal eye surgery with Hallowcat, the quintessential Hallowe’en black cat with hair puffed, eyes pie-wedged, and palette jack-o-lanterned. 🎃 🐈‍⬛

[frystsnow]

❝ your expectations for me have been set way too high. ❞

ㅤwhen a child's crib is made, is it the father who decides when his son is old enough to graduate to a mattress that's still far too big for his body? when builders put together stone and wood for a kingdom, do they have the foresight to build for the generations of royal blood who will sit upon the throne? stoick's throne becomes him—vast and foreboding, as foretold by the title he earned. now empty, the seat feels uncomfortably spacious. a freckled hand lingers on its armrest in reverence, but the verdant gaze cast upon it belongs to a mourner's. håkan's voice sounds resigned, defeated,ㅤyour expectations for me have been set far too high.

ㅤwith a breath, jack's steps are quiet as he approaches the newly hailed chief of berk from behind. his fingers trace the gilded patterns of the seat, frost ferns growing into the crevices, but the throne is already cold without the winter spirit's influence. he was not been there to witness stoick's—death, as it is rightly described, but jack sees what has been left behind. berk's viking queen returned to a throne that is still alone, relearning motherhood for a son still synonymous with stranger. the monument of stoick standing tall, now to stand witness at how berk will flourish for centuries to come, stone remaining polished even if it has been weeks since his passing. toothless, standing tall with his claim to protect dragons like the kin he never had, yet withdrawing wings around himself when his own best friend comes close.ㅤand then there is you—

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ“håkan.”

ㅤberk's pride is vulnerable.ㅤhåkan, with the dark circles that hollow his eyes. the expanse of freckles darker with the way his skin has become pallid. fingers with the minutest tremor that itch to busy themselves with another project, another errand, another request, another, another, another, each tireless task a welcome distraction. jack's hand slides down to settle beside hiccup's own, but it inches away like a reflex. a defense mechanism. shying away from his touch. though håkan has already taken the mantle that he was always meant to bear, a shadow in the shape of his father haunts him still. more a poltergeist of his own manifestations than a ghost that only seeks to watch. his father has been endlessly proud of what his son has become, and jack is sure he rests easy in the hall of the gods to know his wife is alive and a son that has exceeded his legacy. but does håkan realize this haunting is his own craft?

ㅤgrief is not a new weight on his body.ㅤthe steel prosthetic glints in the dim candlelight shifts when håkan drags himself in front of the empty throne. wintry eyes settle on hiccup's hunched form, a posture made only in private in contrast to håkan's raised chin and squared shoulders when the eyes of berk exalts him as the first dragon rider / a friend of dragons / the chieftain of berk. yet he carries his burdens all the same: quietly, punishingly, that his pain should be his own to bear. a leg for his people is nothing, perhaps that is what he'd like to believe. what is one man lost in the grander scheme of things? what of a tear through his soul when his life can and will continue without it?

( and by gods, he is ever stubborn even through his lamenting. he is not alone in his grief with a subsidence as cavernous as stoick himself. a blank to fill that is known to jack, to berk, yet denied by håkan:ㅤ everything, everything. )  

ㅤthey have had this conversation before.ㅤworthiness:ㅤwhat should it mean? more than that, hasn't håkan always been worthy? he has always worn titles bestowed by others as if they were hung on the walls of berk's long hall. yet, all håkan sees are trinkets without meaning if he cannot live up to the name they bring.ㅤa soldier, poet, king—who among them is called forth first in war?ㅤalas, the order does not matter; loss and ruin come fairly and equally for them all, no matter how the tale unfolds. perhaps the true question to ask is this:ㅤ is he worthy to grieve a death with its ashes dusting his hands?

ㅤ“håkan.”ㅤjack repeats, as if to remind him that the name belongs to him alone. but what is in a name? who is hakan, and the great expectations of this name?ㅤ“you're everything.”ㅤhe offers a truth, one that jack finds certainty in this world.ㅤ“stoick—saw you as his entire world. you're more than the pride of berk, than the first dragon rider the world has seen. you're his son, and he loved you so much. you're enough.”ㅤgreen eyes squeeze shut, wincing and impaled by jack's words. by the mere utterance of stoick's name. shouldn't a name remembered and etched to remain bring relief and joy? jack glides to håkan's side, and pale fingers cup his cheeks.ㅤ“kærr min, look at me.”

( and he will look at you with those searching eyes. eyes that once searched horizons / destinations / skies and depths / the edge of the world itself, look to you for answers. you lose your words, your breath, lose your way into his grief. you don't have the answer. your answer has always been him.ㅤhow do you salve a festering wound?ㅤwith time, with patience, with stinging. )

ㅤfingers wrapping around his shoulder. the touch is gentle, but the crack is instant. håkan's expression crumpling / fists unfurling / the sob he suppresses still, even now. arms wrap around his frail form and jack holds him as he falls, his hair the smell of blood burning. jack kisses his forehead, the corner of his eye. oh, to kiss and bear his heavy heart if he could. ㅤ“come here. gods, gods, you've been through so much.”ㅤand they crumble in front of a dead man's throne, holding on because it is the best they can do. hold on.

[justanaspiringsomeone]

More Gilded Shadows Headcanons

disclaimer: this is for fun and the characters belong to @steamberrystudio with that in mind, lets go:

Jack Headcanons

Is a chaotic bisexual

Look at this man and then tell me to my face he does not have bisexual energy

Ironically, never been with a man himself, he has crushes though

It was Caleb and Caissa, he will take those secrets to his grave though

Caleb never knew but I feel like Caissa was aware to some degree

To which i say, good taste Jack

Is def more muscular than the other LIs, almost always on the move no matter what

Lashes are longer than you’d think

The dog energy is strong with this one, more wild rather than fully trained

Fluctuates with nihilistic thoughts and wanting to live still

Emotional intimacy is far and in between for Jack, so he’s… not well skilled

Or rather, he keeps emotional intimacy at bay? I dont think it’s on purpose

At least not always

He thought of getting a tattoo, but somehow managed to convince Caleb into getting one

Or at least thinking about getting one

Has stupid amounts of luck, like there are so many situations he’s been in where he definitely shouldn’t be alive

Lowkey, people have a nickname for him, Lucky Jack or Jack Rabbit

He kind of hates it tho

His sense of fashion is quite literally the badboy your dad warns daughters about HAH

No sense of fashion to speak of when you’re busy surviving though

Likes loose fitting and breathy clothes though, or something that won’t snag or be grabbed on

Gets both flustered and confused when referred as ‘pretty’ or ‘beautiful’ like h u h

Does he look anything like that to yall–

Lowkey doesn’t get genuinely complimented a lot so it sends him for a loop sometimes

Can code switch like none other and it freaks some people out

Rowan Headcanons

Mmmm eldest sibling trauma go brrr /j

Good with his hands and fiddles around with things whenever he’s anxious or bored

Gay

Not a fan of being touched i think? Def not by strangers at least.

Likes his hair being played with, Velli only tho

Bitter about his parents so he chooses not to think about it

Annoying people is his way of showing love

He worries about Celeste a lot, the two are like siblings

Genuinely likes flowers and gardening, don’t tell anyone

A theater kid in disguise

When he first realized he had romantic feelings for Velli, he admittedly freaked out

To the point he purposely avoided Velli until Velli sought him out

They quickly hashed their feelings out

has a customer service voice he accidentally used in the Court and no one let him have peace for WEEKS

Velli Headcanons

Only child

Kind of an attention whore to some extent

Will actually let the world burn for his loved ones (Rowan)

Pansexual

Kind of reminds you of a panther

Likes silver, while Velli likes gold

Job doesn’t let him wear jewelry for obvious reasons

But keeps a ring in his room from Rowan that he absolutely treasures

Velli is shorter of the two but has carried Rowan before

finds Rowan's attempts to spoil him sweet ngl

Celeste Headcanons

She likes lizards, she just hits me as a lover of reptiles

Ties her hair back whenever particularly gruesome injuries are seen

Her and Rory are companions, def close

She can sleep anywhere and it’s nigh impressive

Rory frets over her i think

Feeling aro/ace to some degree

Or maybe she’s just tired constantly

Practical to the point it whirls back around to being a problem

Big trans girl energy

Has a knife on her at all times

And has used her biokensis to kill before

She doesn’t like using it for that and it's a clear indication from inexperience

But she will if needed

[forasecondtherewedwon]

Fair Days

Fandom: The Artful Dodger Pairing: Hetty/Jack Rating: T Word Count: 2092

Summary: Jack's troubled by questions of love and fairness. Hetty knows something of both.

Jack says “fair” and it sounds to Hetty the way Prof’s Latin looks. She knows it has a meaning, and she’d have to look it up to understand Jack’s particular usage: “fair” as in “fair, how is any of this.” She can’t be angry with him. It’s actually a sort of miracle that he can still ask the question when she knows enough of where he comes from (a place where he was cold, a place where childhood wasn’t) and what he was there (desperately, cyclically poor).

She knows that he’s afraid, and that “fair” and “fear” are never far from one another. “Fair” is the colour of pages containing notes in a language neither of them can read, the colour of some people’s skin. “Fair” is the colour of linens that get thinner without getting much cleaner because you scrub them and scrub them but can’t afford proper soap. “Fair” is almost meaningless, certainly thin, and not really that attractive next to the gilded things that only seem fair, like spending however much time, performing however much research, opening up however many cadavers, to save the life of the golden-haired governor’s daughter while a dozen others lie in the wards, waiting to even be looked at, let alone looked after.

Hetty cares for Belle. Belle’s brought ideas into the hospital, where they’ve become real. Hetty can confidently say that, since Belle inserted herself, there has been less suffering and more lives saved. Belle herself ought to be saved. Maybe any other outcome would be unfair.

But Hetty doesn’t know every shade of fairness, just the one on the linens that got thinner without getting much cleaner. She remembers watching them flap on a line above her head as the meek sunshine poured through, her little sister’s head on her lap as she darned her knee-high socks the way Hetty showed her. She’d been wearing them when she’d tried joining the race the older boys were having and tripped, tearing a hole in the rough wool. Their brother stood on the other side of the gap between the tired houses, practicing pugilism against his shadow in the pale-yellow light Hetty could pretend looked as luxurious as cold butter if she squinted just the right amount.

“Like that?” her sister asked, swinging her arms up to present the sock below Hetty’s nose and then dropping them again before Hetty could really look.

Still, she said, “Exactly, my dear,” and smoothed a hand across her sister’s forehead.

“Going to tell me I shouldn’t have let her run?” their brother puffed, intimidating the clapboard with fists that miss it by inches.

“No,” Hetty promised, “only that you should’ve realized that’s what would happen when you took her along.”

“She should know better. Since that cough she had last winter—”

Hetty pillowed her sister’s head in her apron. The way it covered her ears might’ve been an accident.

“You are fourteen, she is four,” Hetty singsonged, parroting their mother. She was sick, you are well.

Hetty remembers, still, seated on Jack’s bed, the terrible coughing that battered the second-floor set of rooms her family lived in. How it was wild, like a trapped bird that was trying to escape and kept colliding with the walls. How her mother arranged for her to stay with the rich people whose children she minded (how “stay with” meant “do light work for,” changing white bottoms and laying silver rattles out straight on a tray). How she was brought home again when her sister’s suffering had eased enough that their mother and father felt the danger of Hetty catching it too had passed. How she would sit her sister up at night before the soft tickle could become a hacking that would wake their exhausted parents and slip in behind the beginning-to-wake three-year-old, letting her fall back to sleep propped up by Hetty’s own body, her hot back to the front of Hetty’s nightgown—linen worn thin.

Her brother’s still hands marked his contrition. No matter their ages, at eight, Hetty was the boss of them both, counted upon to stitch up her sister’s socks before the littler fingers knew how and, just a week previous, her brother’s cheek when a boy up the street had decided punching the air was an invitation to get punched back.

He started to move his feet instead, somewhere between the action of the sport he was so taken with since sneaking into a match a month ago and dancing. Their father had shown them that and Hetty hadn’t forgotten either, even though it had been a while since their father last danced.

“What do you think—”

Hetty shushed him.

From the second-floor window, their parents’ voices sang down. They were arguing. Her brother heard it too, which was why he didn’t protest being silenced.

“What’s ‘manumission’?” her sister wondered, but Hetty didn’t answer, and she went back to work on the sock.

Too rare. That’s what manumission was, according to their father. It was a word that didn’t come from any of their own histories. Hetty’s mother had been born free in England; her father had been born into enslavement in Haiti, seven years into the revolution, six years before its end. Both halves of Hetty’s parentage had their heritage in West Africa. Her father had named Hetty’s brother George (after the king who’d ascended to the English throne in the year of his birth) and Hetty’s sister Adelaide (after the next king’s queen) because, as he’d told them, those names were powerful. Her mother had given them their middle names—George Kayode, Henrietta Nkechi, Adelaide Bola—because, as she’d told them, those names were powerful too.

The argument, from what Hetty could hear, head resting back against the side of the house, eyes on the waving linens, was about her father’s impatience, her mother’s bid for safety. He was deeply involved in the abolitionist movement; that was one word they had all heard many times. There was always more that could be done, and now he wanted to do it abroad, to go to America where people were still enslaved.

“What about your children?” Hetty heard her mother demand.

“What about theirs?” her father shot back. “In America, the children of the enslaved continue to be born into the institution!”

“Your children, here, have the chance to have a family. A mother and father. If you leave them, how would that be”—and here it came, whooshing through the linens, the word forever dyed their colour— “fair?”

“My love…” Her father’s voice lowered, but she strained to hear. “…fairness for one family is not fairness.”

In Jack’s room, Hetty tells him that to love is to peel the skin off your heart. Her father, the child of revolution, did it when he sailed for Massachusetts. Born into upheaval, he was always restless. He went from Massachusetts to New York. Dangerously, to Maryland. Worse, to Georgia. He spoke at abolitionist events, printed pamphlets, taught people to read. He knew how because he’d learned alongside George—George, who adopted a solemn sense of responsibility when their father kept delaying his return, going north for work in order to send more money home. He wrote to them, and they could see that it peeled the skin off his heart to be away from their warmth. Hetty stayed with their mother and sister, becoming a nurse. An opportunity arose to do good in Australia, and to do it with perhaps more dignity than she was afforded in England. Hetty felt the blade’s edge inside her chest as she left her home and took her powerful names.

When her mother died, Hetty was surprised to be written to and told, not only this hard news, but that Adelaide was choosing to follow Hetty rather than George, after whom she’d always trailed as a child. Her sister, still a teenager, was coming to the colony under the protection of a friend of their mother’s. Except the journey by ship was so long. Except Adelaide’s body had been disadvantaged against illness so young.

“You’ve never really loved anyone, have you?” Hetty questioned Jack a moment ago.

It’s mixed up in her head, whether she held Adelaide again, whether she nudged her upright in the middle of the night to stop her from coughing and let her fall back to sleep propped up by her own body, Adelaide’s hot back to the front of Hetty’s nightgown—linen worn thin. Or if that was only once. If Adelaide arrived in the colony as a memory and a long box, one of sixteen the crew had made by the time the illness receded from their vessel. Did Hetty ever say Adelaide’s name with joy on this soil, or only scream it in pain? When Adelaide was a child, they’d called her Lady.

“It always hurts,” Hetty tells Jack. “No matter what you do.”

He thanks her for the notes she can’t read and leaves.

She should go; they’ll be needing her downstairs. But it’s a miracle that Jack can still expect life to be fair, another miracle that there’s still somebody Hetty wants to love when love is such a merciless, heart-peeling thing.

Because it’s good too, love. There’s so much more good than pain in it. It’s George unashamed to dance in front of his friends, saying, “We do this at home,” meaning three streets away, where their father taught him the motions, saying, “We did this at home,” meaning Haiti, where his mother taught him the rhythm because she couldn’t teach him to read, saying, “We did this at home,” meaning back across the ocean. It’s Adelaide watching Hetty sew until Hetty teaches her how, boxing George’s unsuspecting shadow when George sits down to eat the dinner their mother, in another show of love, made for them. Love is her father’s letters from Boston and George’s letters from Manchester. Though the peeling hurts, it's astonishing just how much heart there is to peel.

Hetty’s been at this hospital longer than Jack has, and she remembers when he was new. He used to put instruments into his pockets, used to the tilt of a ship making things slide away. She told him it wasn’t smart, wasn’t clean, and he stared at her because clean hadn’t been a priority when water was pouring in and men were bleeding out. Eventually, impulsively, Hetty snatched a pair of forceps back out of his pocket during a surgery. He instinctively grabbed her wrist; she instinctively cuffed him on the ear—call it the latent training of having a brother always practicing his boxing in front of her. She’d been stanching the patient’s wound and the contact left blood in Jack’s hair. Some of their audience in the theatre that day erupted in fury at the insolence, others roared with laughter. Hetty was sure she would, at minimum, lose her position at the hospital, but Jack just let her go without a word and continued with the procedure. Afterwards, he shook her hand.

Is that when it happened? Was it when some bastard tried to grope her in the street and Jack accidentally sent him tumbling down a flight of stairs into the below-street-level door of the mercantile? Was it when Jack told her quietly that reading doesn’t come easily for him, trusting her to help him, never assuming, as others had, that she wouldn’t know how? Was it when the small child who’d coughed through the night was deathly still in the morning? Was it then? When Hetty gulped down the first cry and fled the ward at a run? When Jack found her heaving with the sobs that would not expel her sadness? When he didn’t know what to do, but he stayed? Or the day a patient died on the table and Jack left the theatre looking calm, but at the wash basin he was trembling with rage, so Hetty took his face in her hands, and his came up to hold her the same way, but they were dripping wet, so the water ran down the sides of her face, and she remembered the day with the blood in his hair, so she said something, but then they were kissing, and she was the one trembling. Was that when?

She’s been in love too long—all her life—and she does it really well, sitting here in Jack’s room by herself. She gazes out the window. The sky looked like rain earlier, but now, the day is quite fair.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Do you have any HR with the hero having a profession instead of being nobility?

Yes, def! I love non-noble heroes.

Lisa Kleypas writes a lot of self-made men, with some of the most prominent books I'd recommend (there are other ones, these are just my favorites) including:

Dreaming of You. Derek Craven runs a successful gambling club; he was born in a drainpipe!!! He named himself!!! He lived on the streets, he totally made a success of himself, and now he can't deal with his sense of inadequacy and his dirty, dirty hands sullying Sara (though he will for sure do stuff to her... I mean, if she was wearing a mask and they got started and he realized it was her during... he might as well finish it...)

Secrets of a Summer Night. Simon Hunt is self-made, and he comes off as a super successful industry tycoon. It's hOT. And of course, the conflict of his book is him asking the poor but blueblooded heroine to be his mistress, while she's like "omg he's so COARSE!!!"

Marrying Winterborne. Would recommend reading Cold-Hearted Rake, which does have a noble hero, beforehand for context. Rhys Winterborne is Welsh (!) and owns a department store and he's always like "spend my money babe".

Seduce Me at Sunrise--Kev Merripen is kind of like... a servant for the Hathaways? But he's also grown beyond that. He's most definitely not nobility, and nor is Cam in Meet Me at Midnight (which is also good, but I don't love it quite as much).

Again the Magic--McKenna was a servant for Aline's family, was sent away because of their romance, and made his money abroad

Lorraine Heath has some, which I love:

Between the Devil and Desire. Just re-listened! Jack Dodger was a child thief (the bEST child thief! He's Dodge!) and now owns a gambling club that's super successful.

Midnight Pleasures with a Scoundrel. James Swindler was also a child thief/con artist (a swindler perhaps) and is now an inspector. There's also a novella following this book about their friend, Dr. Graves, who's obviously a doctor and was a graverobber as a child--but I haven't read that one yet.

Her Sins for All Seasons series has 4/6 heroes who were born illegitimate and therefore aren't noble--Beyond Scandal and Desire has Mick, who runs a club, The Scoundrel in Her Bed as a hero who does similarly but is kind of halfhearted about it (and was a horse slaughterer when he was younger), and The Duchess in His Bed has a hero who runs a club for WOMEN!!! There is another self-made hero I've yet to read in Beauty Tames the Beast (I think?).

Elizabeth Hoyt has a lot of heroes who aren't noble:

Scandalous Desires--Mickey O'Connor is an extremely successful river pirate.

Thief of Shadows--Winter runs an orphanage for poor lil babies

Sweetest Scoundrel--Asa is trying to build up a pleasure garden (he's Winter's brother)

Most of Joanna Shupe's Gilded Age heroes are not noble, because American. Special shoutouts to:

The Rogue of Fifth Avenue--the hero is a former thief-turned-lawyer/fixer for a rich man, who falls for his boss's daughter

The Prince of Broadway--Clay Madden runs a casino and begins mentoring his hero (in a revenge plot)

The Devil of Downtown--Jack Devlin is a gangster lol

In the Fifth Avenue Rebels, the first three heroes (basically everyone but Lockwood) are not noble but they do come from money. Shoutout to The Lady Gets Lucky (Kit is rich but demands to be taken seriously by starting a supper club) and The Bride Goes Rogue (Preston is Vague Tycoon Man).

Grace Callaway has:

Pippa and the Prince of Secrets--Cull runs a band of CHILD THIEVES and lives on the criminal/vigilante edges of society

Glory and the Master of Shadows--Wei is a martial arts master who is recovering from some pretty severe trauma, while also handling some dirty dirty deeds on the low.

Sarah MacLean's first two Bareknuckle Bastards books (Brazen and the Beast and Wicked and the Wallflower) have criminal underworld heroes, and Knockout has an inspector hero!

Stacy Reid's A Scoundrel of Her Own has a hero who was born poor but has risen up in society (which is now why he wants to claim his upper class childhood sweetheart as his own muahahahaha--)

Beverly Jenkins's heroes generally are not noble, because she doesn't write about white Brits, but they do often come from money. Galen Vachon in Indigo comes from a wealthy, influential Creole family, and the hero of Forbidden is passing for white, but is actually the biracial son of a plantation owner.

[aarcanechaoss]

Answers to Seek

Masterlist

She is the prophet with the answers you seek.

Warnings: none

Note: meet an old OC who can see the future… but she’s not allowed to just TELL you - let me know if you want more because ngl I love her and ALSO this is currently not part of anything just a taster of her oddities

Calypso was not an ordinary Magic Knight. Even when she had joined the Grey Deer Julius rarely sent her on missions- and when he did she was in a large group (usually accompanied by William Vangenace, the Faust twins, Yami and Jack) and left as the healer when needed.

No one ever asked why Julius was so wary to let her out of his sights. They had no blood relation, she was not his child of any kind and her water magic was not to be underestimated … but she was meek and wary of all and hardly spoke a word.

Jack said she looked like she wasn’t wholly there once as they ventured through a dungeon. That had been the first time she had let her expressionless facade fall as she sent a stream of water at his face.

“I am here and I am not.” She said. “But I am not deaf Mantis.”

She always said odd things, very rarely did they make sense and yet Captain Julius always wrote down the ones that came with an empty look in her eyes- though they weren’t a team Morgen at least thought of her as part of it and worried endlessly for those empty eyes.

“There is a mask that’s not a mask.” She said one day as they passed by a lake- another group mission- William’s head whipped towards her, the others following suit. “It is not gilded it is flesh.”

“You make no sense.” Nacht sighed, drawing her attention away from the lake. His hand curled around her bicep.

“Your mistake will cost you.” The shadow mage frowned. “Devils cannot be tamed without a price.”

He let her go and stumbled back.

“What…”

“It will dim the light.” Nacht went pale, paler than his hair as some sort of switch flickered in his mind.

“Nacht?” Morgen frowned at his twin, before looking back at the brown haired woman. “What does she mean?”

“How do you know…. What do you mean?”

Her mouth remained shut, eyes that same emptiness that Julius always took note of. It was like she couldn’t say more not wouldn’t.

Her eyes widened as she looked over the group, like she hadn’t meant to speak aloud at all and then she blinked and a fog seemed to pass over her as she took the group in.

“Calypso can you explain what you mean?” Morgen took in the worry in her eyes as she looked over each of them.

“It is not me who should explain.” She turned from them, continuing on the path they were trailing… it seems she was done with the conversation.

“Nacht? Keke.” Jack poked the shadow mage who only watched the woman walking away. “What did you do?”

“I found an old spell and I wanted to try it out… she must have seen me preparing it.” An excuse, a reason… nothing else made sense she had to have seen him in passing with the old spell book, perhaps she looked through it while he was resting one time… why bring it up now- how did she know he would attempt it so soon.

“What spell Nacht?” The shadow twin said nothing.

“I’ll show you later we have a mission to complete.” Morgen watched on as something unsettling curled in his gut and yet at the same time… something made him feel lighter than ever.

[follyglass]

Follyglass : Hang

“All of the frames in this museum are merely stringent tradition, a mirage that plagues me in its constancy,” sniffed the gallerist eying the carved wood and gilt. No matter how many times she had said it aloud now, the gallerist had yet to encounter a like mind. After all, most people were culturally conditioned regard frames as a mere device in service to what really mattered: the delicacy, the pretty visions made by mixing powdered jewels in oil and swishing them about to mimic light and shadow and magnificent life rendered on a smooth piece of wood or copper. Most often they were portraits of those that were and now were nevermore.

Everyone remembers the cake that’s here and gone, nobody gives notice to the plate, unless it is filthy or cracked.

The gallerist thumbed the pendant at her collar, a small silver capsule that housed a gilded splinter; it was what remained of a work by Wm. Goodricke.

One day, she would find another frame by Wm. Goodricke, that bastard.

Ages ago, those that crossed the ocean did so with portraits of their loved ones. Since passage was prohibitively expensive for a whole family, there was one chosen to safeguard their surname, and then paintings were made and frames were carved. It wasn’t a cheap bit of magic at all, but it saved room and feeding. Shipwrecks and fire were fervently discussed. Children were calmed with cakes laced with laudanum. The painter worked their oils in a bid for the most realistic rendering down to the wife’s wry smile and the son’s plaid coat. When the painting was complete, the framer bound them so as to constrain their comings and goings… unframed portraits would awaken whenever they so chose, but a ship was not the place to reawaken. The one trusted family member carried them aboard, silent, careful.

On the new shores the frames were split and a family could spring forth groggy– but whole– from a painting to begin a new life away from what troubled them.

For many, this was a blessing.

But even the most benign of tools are found to be weapons by those that figure out how to wield them thusly.

The fearful Jack Westbury, known around The Ditches as Hollow-Eyed Jack, was eventually captured. The justice sentenced him to be painted, and so a rather glum-looking forest scene was painted, and Jack was placed behind a particularly crooked and particularly dead tree. The framer that bound the painting even signed his work: Wm. Goodricke. Many rejoiced. It was a punishment that required little of the taxpayers’ or crown’s money, and was not as distasteful as the crowd-pleasing tortures; surely, this was a kinder way to mete out justice.

More grotesque cases were found to be fit for The Painting, and eventually there were enough to fill out a gallery. Wallpapered in damask with tasseled curtains, this jail held no danger of stench or violence, and so many paid coin to witness not only the criminals themselves, but also to wonder at the skills of the artists and to see the rare but celebrated frame-breaking and freeing of those who had served their time. Most gallery-goers nibbled on thyme cakes and sipped ginger fizzes while guessing at crimes.

One-by-one more galleries were added, and people like the dishonest baker (guilty of padding his breadloaves with sawdust) found themselves hanging in gold among the crowds’ hush. Many took pleasure in the portrait of a rather ugly dog that nipped at people’s heels, relieved they could stroll Cotton Lane without being chased after. A father who had sent their eight-year-old son off with a tin of tea and a kiss in the morning had found his son the next day in the galleries, staring blankly from a lovely lake scene, for the crime of approaching the queen’s swans. The guards sternly reminded him that there were to be no outbursts in the gallery, lest he wanted to stand the same shore as little Henry.

Among the cruel jokes, there arose mutterings about justice, about liberty. A plan was enacted under the belief that cruelty of the system would not reach for the gloved hands of a group of lovely young women.

So, the gallerist and what she would come to think of as her sisters protested. They too, were hanged, bound by a frame crafted by the magic of Wm. Goodricke.

It was then that the public realized a wrong word, might cause them to spend more time in the galleries than they meant to, and so the galleries became vacant. Without the public funding, they closed. A fire took the records, and the nobles – eager to own the rare, the curious – exchanged anonymous money for paintings. Hollow-Eyed Jack was said to reside above the fireplace at a castle in Luxembourg. The baker was spotted at an auction.

Over decades, some frames cracked. Some were simply removed for cleaning or in exchange for something more fashionable, and those that were painted were set blinking out into a world that they knew nothing of. But they were free.

Through luck, the gallerist had found and freed the boy only three years ago. She helped him to learn the ways of the new world, even though she herself was stumbled daily by things that the modern folk found commonplace. And now she spent too many weekends of her young one-hundred-and-twenty year life searching for what might remain of her sisters in little shamble shops and museums and estate sales so that she might do them justice.

[davidtennantgenderenvy]

The Rest Of My Cast Picks for an Actually Good Live Action Adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist

I couldn't really find any big names who are the right age and the right look for Edward, I would ideally imagine him being like, a River Phoenix type but I want someone who's. You know. Alive

So I ended up finding two up and coming young actors who are currently close to Ed's age at the start of the show who gave performances that really impressed me! First one is Cameron Mann, who played Jullianne Nicholson's son in Mare of Easttown, and the second is Jack Nielsen, who played a young Prince William in Spencer!

Walker Scobell might also work once he finishes puberty

I'd love to go back in time and cast season one of stranger things era Noah Schnapp as Alphonse, but for now I think Gregory Mann (voice of GTD!Pinocchio) could be a great choice

I also wish I could go back in time for Winry bc my DREAM choice is Saiorse Ronan from like ten years ago, I also put Sadie Sink and Amybeth McNulty

Obviously I'd probably just cast unknowns for the Resembool trio but I wanted to find examples for fun anyway

please give me options for Armstrong bc right now the ONLY person coming to mind is John Cena

Same with Envy! Aiden Gallagher is the one choice I could think of but I'd love to think of some actual nonbinary actors who exude that chaotic energy

Michelle Yeoh is SO perfect for Izumi on so many levels, I also put down Sandra Oh and Laura Donnelly (True in The Nevers)

Robert Sheehan is a really good fan favorite for OG Greed, but I also think Kit Young (Jesper from Shadow and Bone) and Blake Ritson (Oscar in The Gilded Age) would do really interesting things with the role

Pedro Pascal as Scar is THE typecastiest typecast (Buff emotionally constipated antihero who accidentally adopts small child) but I just couldn't resist. I'd also love to see what Naveen Andrews (Sayid in LOST) would do with him

Sean Bean and Liam Neeson are fan favorites for Hohenheim for a very good reason!!! But I'd also love to see Andreas Pietschmann (Dark, 1899)

SPEAKING of 1899 Fflynn Edwards would be SUCH a perfect and creepy Selim

He's obviously too old now but LOST era Josh Holloway would've been such a fun Havoc. Also put Aaron Paul down as a treat

PLEASE PLEASE give me actors for Ling Lan Fan and May I clearly haven't watched enough things with good East Asian rep so I couldn't think of anybody who really fit their roles. That said Ling and Lan Fan were PERFECT in the live action trilogy we actually got so honestly I'd just keep them

[juliiwrites]

Currently Watching

Krank Berlin | season 1 episode 3

The Residence | episode 7

Apple Cider Vinegar | episode 4

Stuck On These

911 | season 4 episode 12

Abbott Elementary | season 1 episode 6

Beef | episode 3

Daisy Jones and the Six | episode 5

Girls5Eva | season 1 episode 4

Grace and Frankie | season 6 episode 11

Platonic | season 1 episode 7

Strange Planet | season 1 episode 5

The Magicians | season 3 episode 8

The White Lotus | season 2 episode 4

Wedding Season | episode 4

Re-Watching

How I Met Your Mother

Friends

Watchlist and Finished Series are underneath the cut 🤗

last updated: 25.03.25

Watchlist

911 | seasons 4-5

Abbott Elementary

After Life

Agent Carter

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D

Always a Witch

American Gods

Anxious People

Arcane

Atlanta Medical

Babylon Berlin

Bones | seasons 11-12

Breaking Bad | seasons 2-5

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina | seasons 3-4

Crashing

Damaged Goods

Daredevil | the new series! he’s back!!

Der Tatortreinger | seasons 2-7

Desperate Housewives | seasons 5-8

Dexter | seasons 6-8

Downtown Abbey | season 3-6

Dr Who

Dynasty | seasons 3-5

Elite

ER | seasons 2-15

Extraordinary

Fakes

Fleabag

Flora and Son

Girls

Girls 5 Eva

Glow

Grey’s Anatomy | seasons 12-19

Heartstopper | season 2

House of Cards | seasons 3-6

House of the Dragon

How I Met Your Father | season 2

How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast) | seasons 2-3

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia

Jack Ryan | season 3

Jerks. | seasons 3-5

Kaulitz & Kaulitz

Little Fires Everywhere

Loki | season 2

Love

Love & Anarchy

Marvellous Mrs Masel

Money Heist | parts 3-5

Mythic Quest

Narcos

Never Have I Ever

Not Dead Yet

Once Upon A Time

Outlander | seasons 3-5

Ozark

Parks and Recreation

Parlament

Partner Track

Peaky Blinders

Platonic

Queen Charlotte

Ragnarok | seasons 2-3

Roar

Rick und Morty

Riverdale | seasons 6-7

Scandal

Scream Queen

Selling Sunset | seasons 6-7

Selling the OC

Seven vs Wild | seasons 2-3

Sex Education

Shadow & Bone | season 2

Space Force

Special | season 2

Stranger Things | I’ll only watch once the series is wrapped

Succession | seasons 3-4

Superstore

Sweet Magnolias

Ted Lasso | season 3

The Bear | season 3

The Bold Type

The Brothers Sun

The Diplomat

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

The Flight Attendant

The Gentlemen

The Gilded Age | season 2

The Good Fight

The Great

The Handmaid‘s Tale

The Last of Us

The Morning Show

The Mandalorian

The Night Agent | season 2

The Resident

The Rings of Power

The Witcher | season 4

This Is Us

Tiny Beautiful Things

Valeria

Wedding Season

Workin’ Moms

Finished

Arrested Development

Bad Sisters

Baymax!

Below Deck

Below Deck Mediterranean

Bluey

Bridgerton

Brooklyn 99

Champion

Community

Criminal

Cunk on Earth

Daredevil

Dash & Lily

Dead to Me

Derry Girls

Die Schwarzwaldklinik

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

Doctor’s Diary

Don’t Fuck With Cats

Emily in Paris

Fate: The Winx Sags

First Kill

Friends

Game of Thrones

Get Even

Ghosts

Gilmore Girls

Golden Girls

Good Omens

Good Witch

Gossip Girl

Grey’s Anatomy | season 1-12

Hacks

Half Bad: The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself

Heart of Dixie

Heartstoppers

How I Met Your Mother

IKEA Heights

Iron Fist

Jane the Virgin

Jessica Jones

Jury Duty

Killing Eve

Luke Cage

Lupin

Loki | season 1

Modern Family

New Girl

No Good Deed

Obliterated

Only Murders In The Building

Please Like Me

Pretty Little Liars

Rebel Cheer Squad

Resident Alien | season 1

Santa Clarita Diet

Schitt’s Creek

Sherlock

Shrinking

Soundtrack

Supernatural

Superstore

Teen Wolf | season 1-4

The 7 Lives of Lea

The Actress

The Afterparty

The Bear

The Big Bang Theory

The Buccaneers

The Circle

The Defenders

The Mole

The Night Agent | season 1

The Office

The Perfect Couple

The Queen’s Gambit

The Recruit

The Sandman

The Umbrella Academy

The Vampire Diaries

The Witcher

Tiger King

Too Hot To Handle

Treason

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Unnatural Selection

Wednesday

Westside

You

I will not watch

American Horror Story | … horror isn’t my genre, but I have heard only great things about this series!

The Boys | I know, I know, the hook is great and the series is supposed to be amazing, but I’ve seen the very first scene and did not expect it 🙈 it really shocked me so I might need a while to get over it.

Law and Order SVU | I have tried watching it but I cannot stomach it