#he's got everything except bloodthirst

[peaterookie]

a drawing i made for my discord pfp

since demon lupin was on my mind this year, i decided to give him his favorite halloween costume, a vampire!!

[amxthystiine]

limbus martin you say.. 👀

(MOTWE onwards spoilers)

My insane paranoid funny dramatic wannabe detective man who’s got vampire blood in him and has no fucking idea (it’s why he’s so fucking fixated on seeing justice served & why he gets concerningly violent and bloodthirsty at times, almost like he’s in a trance)

I’ve had him as an OC in general for a while now but it’s really fucking funny cause recently I have been thinking of him as a sinner, but he’s A LOT like (our) Don funnily enough 😭 (with maybe a little bit of Sinclair parallels with the slumbering bloodthirst + incredible potential to do their job well but shh)

main sin = Lust, obsessed over a specific job title of people due to seeing justice done [Detectives for him and Fixers for her], has Bloodfiend fuckery going on, probably has to kill their mentor at one point during their canto because they’ve become the opposite everything that Don/Martin stood for, etc

Except he’s very arrogant, argumentative and a show off who sees the others as below him - because to him he has to be right and if we’re talking moreso specifically Limbus lore I’m thinking of I think the guy’s be associated with K Corp because green fluid go brr & because I’m probably gonna make his Canto a murder mystery that he falls into because his promise in his contract was discovering who killed his parents (which is the reason why he’s so determined on becoming a detective - I think in this AU one would be a Seven fixer and the other a Cinq West fixer, they used to tell him tales of their cases all the time and that’s why he wants to become a detective - he wants the glory and to enact justice while also avenging his parents by carrying on their legacy)

The plot twist with him though might be that his current mentor, a Roland-style nihilistic “The City runs on suffering so my bad actions are justified because I’m doing what I need to survive and other people’s problems are not my own” bloodfiend Fixer who leads his own office (maybe a good Grade 3 or so? Idk man) tried to sire him as to force Martin to work under him (because he recognized the kid’s determination and that he was very perceptive and quick-witted) and failed, with his initial hunger being so intense he bit into his parents [might keep this plot point might change it, also lmao another Don parallel FUCK] resulting in him having to deal with Martin following him around and slowly becoming a bloodbag over time, deciding to take the kid under his wing and make him his protégée as to make the most out of the situation.

The reason why I kinda want to make HIM the murderer rather than his mentor is because I want him to just utterly implode internally, because he does a similar thing in his main lore when discovering he’s part vampire despite thinking he was the only normal person around town - because to him others are far more willing to do bad things for themselves, but his bad actions are justified to him, so if he suddenly realizes that the very thing he considers the worst thing to happen to him is actually HIS fault rather than someone else’s, he’ll realize that what he hates most INCLUDES himself, and that according to his own moral code HE HIMSELF is EVIL, so he is NOT going to be ok about that, especially while losing his mind during his canto due to bloodbag brain decay

And yes I have a possible solution to how his bloodbag transformation was so overdue - and that’s the K Corp ampule fluid, because it reverts your body to a state from seconds before, right? It can basically bring people back from the brink of death, so could it be used by said mentor to keep his transformation in check and from happening, with Martin taking some ampules when he eventually ditches the Office for Limbus Company, but they eventually run out in the time coming up to his Canto, beginning his slow descent into blood-craved madness.

Funnily enough I’d probably make his main weapon a gun (with maybe an alternative melee weapon, perhaps a small dagger???), perhaps making him the only ammo base ID, with his being one of the many things I’ve taken from that short time I played as this funny little guy in VTM,, like we know Limbus has a LOT of money in their pockets LET ME HAVE A GUN USING SINNER RAHHHH HE DOESNT EVEN NEED TOO MANY BULLETS

I haven’t decided on a logo or colour (probably a light shade of green) nor a word (probably in French considering he was French-Canadian in the VTM session I played as him and his full name is basically just Mint Martini because of his OG design 😔😔 [Martin Menthe])

God I’m insane about my attempted noir detective wannabe little guy and it’s funny cause this is the part of me that he kinda represents like he’s passion and willpower incarnate in both a good way (strong sense of justice/to his own moral code, confidence, dramatics, etc) while also in a bad way (violence/anger, overconfidence, believing so hard in his ideals being the only right ones, with these aspects of him being broken down and mellowed post/during Canto, when he does admit and realize that he too, can be as bad as he paints others in his mind sometimes)

Yes his mentor would be the final boss and yes the only reason I had insane brainrot about them was because of “It Had To Be This Way” & “Find Your Flame” 😔😔 they fucking bangs tho

Also HE’S A REALLY GOOD FOIL TO MY SELF INSERT LIKE

THE ONE WHO WILL FIND OUT THE TRUTH AT ANY COST VS THE ONE WHO’S FAKING HER WHOLE PERSONA

THE ONE WHO ACTS DUE TO HER EMOTIONS BEING CONSTANTLY IN CHECK, YEARNING TO FEEL MORE VS THE ONE WHO’S EMOTIONS MAINLY DICTATE HIS ACTIONS, DESPITE HIS LOGIC TELLING HIM OTHERWISE

but they also both are heavily repressing a part of themselves and during their Cantos this more unhinged part of themselves comes out in full force and hhhhhhh parallels :)))))))

Lust vs. Gluttony oh yeah baby woooo this shit was way too long lmaooo and I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned all the ideas I have for this little guy yet (here’s his main lore design rn)

[aegor-bamfsteel]

The Dany Grievance to Rhaenyra Grievance pipeline is so real and so funny to witness lol. HOTD was a mistake, but seeing these stans basically double down on yet another Targ woman who's ending they will rage at is astounding lol.

In the Dàny fans’ defense, she’s an actual well-developed main character who isn’t a prop in her love interest’s story (contrast Rhaeneato with husband DemonStu) GRRM said she’s one of his favorite female characters (along with Arya; he admits he likes DemonStu better than Rhaeneato) along with some positive comparisons (to Nymeria of Ny Sar), she’s got an actual platform beyond self-interest (she did free slaves even if some eventually sold themselves back in), the motivation behind wanting the Iron Throne is more sympathetic (she’s never had a permanent home and her family is gone), she’s a teenager rather than a grown woman in her 30s….and also the books haven’t finished, so we don’t know her ending (though the foreshadowing of Dark!Dàny is there). Basically, I can understand why people would be fans of Dány and be upset at her ending in the show.

Rhányra, though, is incredibly flat, self-interested and entitled, cruel (torturing Tyland Lannister, feeding Vaemond’s corpse to her dragon after sending Daemon to decapitate him), doesn’t even pretend to care about the smallfolk (organizing feasts while they starved under new taxes), violent but not a warrior (Demon at least has the skills to back it up; she’s never in battle despite having a dragon), and explicitly has no platform other than status quo (she’s not changing the laws of inheritance for everyone, just so she gets the Throne). We know she ends up chased out of the city by the angry smallfolk, betrayed on Dragonstone, and fed to her brother’s dragon. The show got rid of some of her bloodthirst (still being for peace until Luke’s death when in the book she told Orwyle in response to Aegon’s offer that he either kneels to her or dies; barely being involved in Vaemond’s death and he’s made to look like more of a jerk) and gave her some excuses for her self interest (she had to have an affair with Harwin for heirs because she and Laenor tried but couldn’t! Never mind that Jace in the books was born the year of their marriage in 114, meaning she didn’t try too hard) but at the expense of making her even more bland and passive (she does like 5 things in the novella and the show already cut out like 2 of them. It takes a lot of not caring to make the thinly sketched characters of the Dance even less consistent and interesting, but HOTD writing is sinking to the occasion.) Basically, I don’t understand why there’s a big overlap in Rhaeneato (except in the “well the greens are even worse” sense) and Dàny fans, other than that she’s another Targ woman seeking the throne to which she has a disputed claim, because everything else about her is a lot different than Däny. I can understand why people are fans of a character who has a tragic end (I’m a fan of House Blackfyre partly because they end up dying due to their noble values) but the journey has to give the end pathos, and neither show nor book has given us a reason to care for Rhaeneato the way they did Dány.

[qpr-competition]

i think itd be fair if, after my rallying for 5, i would write a bit on Jon, as i do know and love him!

jon is, in my opinon, just about the funniest character in the magnus archives. i know fandom likes to characterize tim as the tma funnyman, and thats not fully wrong (by which i mean, not wrong as long as this is not everything he is), jon is the one who is unintentionally the funniest. he has that brand of "saying something completely seriously and it turning out to be hilarious" - notable example being "i know what a meme is". another notable example of his hilarity is "okay so the victim complained about being haunted by some supernatural spider, and his body was found encased in spiderwebs, and he has choked on some organic matter, but theres definitely nothing supernatural about this"

at the moment, best i could do is go down the traits and add context to them, because they dont really get less weird from the context.

like, the "goes for a smoke and gets framed for murder" thing? the thing is, he has quit smoking before that point - that was the first time he went smoking in years; and also the murder happened during the time he went smoking. the victim got beat to death with a metal pipe that jon could barely lift

the rib in a drawer? we knew for a bit by then that he does keep it, because we were there when a "monster" (which is a simplification, but i do not have the energy to get into it) took one out, by his own request, but we found out that its in one of his drawers at work when a coworker asks him for a pen and he tells her to look in a drawer. the other thing she finds in the same drawer is a jar of ashes of another "monster"

actually let me look up and append the quote

survivors guilt since he was a child? okay, so the explanation for that should be combined with the one for his refusal to read two books by the same author. ever since jon was a kid, he has loved reading, but reading another book by the same author, according to him, feels just the same as reading the first book - the similarity of style is too boring. so his grandma took up the habit of buying cheap books in bulk to keep him occupied. once, one book she bought was a supernatural book, and jon had started reading it, and almost died because of it - except a bully (ten years older than him, btw) knocked him down, took the book, and was going to laugh at it except accidentally started reading and, as jon was following him trying to get the book back, ended up dying - namely, got eaten by a giant spider. and that is what hes got the survivors guilt over - understandable, but also. jon. jon u were a child. that guy got what was coming for him for picking on a kid less than half his age

impromptu surgery on his coworker? so, one of his coworkers got shot with a ghost bullet of anger and bloodthirst. and would never have actually let anyone get it out. so he cut it out while, im pretty sure while shes passed out drunk??? and got stabbed for it!

also hes canonically ace and mspec

in conclusion. the magnus archives is a cool podcast and jon sims is A Character <3

Round 4, Match 14

Character 5:

Physically disabled

Thinks they’re heartless, very wrong about it

Goes by a codename

Can kill with a touch under certain circumstances

Terrible fashion sense

Character 37:

Goes for a smoke and gets framed for murder

Keeps one of their own ribs in a drawer

Survivor’s guilt since they were a child

Performed impromptu surgery on one of their coworkers

Refuses to read more than one book by the same author

Want to know more? Check out this tag for Character 5 and this tag for Character 37 and peruse the notes of the posts.

[rataltouille]

LITTLE BY LITTLE

HI IM VERY EXCITED ABOUT THIS SILLY LITTLE STORY. it is:

a feel good lighthearted story about a bunch of kids in high school 👍

one half enemies to lovers romance, other half queerplatonic coming of age 🤨

dual storyline following two annoying siblings who will die for each other 🤱

set in chennai because i want to draw the city i grew up in and have a crisis over not having seen it enough 🤯

me deciding to compensate for my non existent final years of high school via fiction because who needs therapy tbh 🤔

BLURB

It’s Sameera’s last year of high school, and everything’s going her way: she’s a student council head, the captain of the girl’s Kho-Kho team, and she’s liked by almost everyone in her grade. Almost. Frigid, uptight Kayalvizhi, fellow council head, is the lone exception. Their first interaction was a nightmare, and while Sameera is told that Kayalvizhi’s just indifferent to everyone around her, she still feels personally attacked. So when the two of them are paired up as the cultural leaders for their school’s end-of-year ceremony, she’s more than thrilled to prove Kayal wrong by outshining her in everything. Too bad the latter’s determined to shut Sameera up by competing just as fiercely. What neither of them expects, though, is to find common ground, or to realise that the other person isn't who they thought they were, or, god forbid, actually start to enjoy each other’s company.

Anbu is a reserved kid, Sameera’s younger sibling by two years and the apple of every teacher’s eyes. Still just getting used to adolescence, Anbu is, to say the least, a bit disoriented. They’re exploring their confusing world, trying out new hobbies, grappling with their gender identity and pushing the limits of the life they’ve led so far. But right when they think they’ve got it all figured out, change hits them between the eyes in the name of Tamizh—their cool, mysterious neighbour who’s come back from Mumbai years after moving away. Anbu and Tamizh were childhood best friends, but that's childhood, and they know better than anyone else that adolescence upends everything with a rage. As the two’s rekindled friendship begins to deepen, Anbu is left questioning whether they see him as a friend, a crush, or something else entirely.

At least one thing’s certain for them all: this will be an unforgettable year.

CHARACTERS

SAMEERA. she/her, bi. annoying ass extroverted jock mf. everyones fave gremlin. needs constant love and validation or else she will perish

ANBU. they/them, trans. former sweetheart now saddled with a growing bloodthirst. going through too much all at once and is on the verge of emotional burnout.

KAYALVIZHI. she/her, trans, lesbian. moody ass introverted nerd mf. hates every single person to ever grace this planet and i love her so much actually

TAMIZH. he/him, aro. Resident Cool Kid™ except he feels very uncool and very unchill, ball of nerves just barely keeping it together. is unlearning a lot of toxic beliefs on gender and he’s doing it with style.

SO WHATS THE DEAL HERE

idk what happened in the last two years but i’ve gone from being a prose hoe to a webcomic bitch and it has been working out great for me. comics are such a brilliant format for someone who’s equal parts artist and writer and recently all my important all-consuming story ideas have been webcomic ideas and im so excited to get to make them!!

there are two parts to this story, two parallel arcs, one for each sibling: sameera’s enemies to lovers story with kayal and anbu’s queerplatonic coming of age thing with tamizh. i think the main inspiration behind this was a) bridgerton season two which was the first time i actually ENJOYED an enemies-to-lovers romance and which made me go hmm yanno what. i’m going to do the same but without british people. b) me realising that as much as i love romance and writing romantic relationships i also would like to write a queerplatonic relationship please and thank you [it is endlessly amusing to me that my favourite genre is romance despite me being aromantic lmao] and i esp wanted to try writing a qpr from the pov of the non-aromantic character, just for that extra spice!

in the very short time ive had these four they’ve taken over my brain completely and i love it so much!! im currently working to on getting the basic prep work done [character turnarounds, uniform designs, bg models etc etc] and i’ll post updates on progress whenever i feel like lmao

[theregoesmylurkerstatus]

Caleb has, verbally, shown so little bloodthirst regarding the people who wronged him. He doesn’t know how he feels. He doesn’t know what he wants. He wants them to change, he wants the pain to stop. He wants to rehabilitate all these murderers under Ikithon because he was one of them and he wants to believe he’s not alone in this, he wants them to get better.

He also takes three steps into the place where he was sealed away like some kind of animal, full of simple (if skilled) guards who are so much lower on the food chain than the assassins Caleb knows... and for the first time ever he starts crushing people to death. Gone is the soft talk and hesitant hope. He asserts that they knew what they were doing. That they were not innocents.

He spent eleven years there. He can’t remember it. He also can’t think of the people who did that to him as people, whether they were actually the ones that guarded him or not.

I think Caleb’s trauma and his ability to react with extreme prejudice when confronted with it often gets underestimated both by the audience and Caleb himself. There’s a really interesting dichotomy that seems to go on with him, in that we’re constantly taken somewhat aback by these breathtaking displays of violence of his, even though they keep happening.

I realised it when we first met Astrid, actually. I don't know about anyone else, but the revelation that Caleb’s reaction to watching his parents die wasn’t running in to help them, or screaming himself, or even dissociating, but was instead attacking his peers? It surprised the heck out of me.

I don’t think anyone thought that would have been his reaction. All the pieces of fiction or art or meta about that moment that I saw assumed he had a much more passive or help oriented reaction. Even the cast themselves animated that moment as Astrid and Eodwulf stoically walking away from a silent Caleb on his knees in their own animated title sequence.

The fact that we all accepted the image of Caleb, on his knees, silently watching his family burn, is interesting to me. Because I do get why.

When Caleb is forcefully reminded of that moment of extreme grief, he dissociates. He doesn’t react violently when lost in his trauma in that particular way. Add to that that Caleb brushes over the immediate aftermath of his parent’s deaths, which makes it seem like his foggy, clouded state in the Asylum was the instant result of his trauma, and the idea that Caleb reacted passively to his parent’s deaths is a very easy assumption to make.

At this point I believe it’s also indicative of how Caleb sees himself. Caleb hates (hated?) himself, yes, but he doesn’t actually seem to see himself as a violent person. When asked to impress a high level mage from an alien culture, he chose the versatile reskinned Bigby’s Hand, Cat’s Ire. When trying to be intimidating, he uses his words, or points to his friends as threats, or uses Frumpkin as a prop.

He doesn’t seem to give his ease with violence much thought or weight in his own view of himself. I think he assumed he was passive during his years at the Sanitarium, and so therefore assumed that his “breaking” was similar. And if that’s what Caleb thought of himself, why would we think any different?

People don’t tend to think of Caleb as a fighter, least of all Caleb himself. The common view of him is that he’s a hesitant support character. He’s not someone who fans or other characters alike would easily call “bloodthirsty,” especially with him confronting and discussing the man who ruined his life and refusing to commit to killing him.

Everything about how Caleb verbally approaches these traumas shows that he’s not vengeance driven. Revenge has never been part of his game plan, never been something he cared enough to pursue. And because of that palpable lack of bloodthirsty vengeance, because of his soft spoken, cautious demeanor, Caleb is not someone who would generally be picked as having extreme, unrelenting violence as his knee-jerk reaction.

Except that’s exactly what Caleb does when backed into a corner. That’s like his biggest move. Wall of Fire and Fireballing Avantika and her crew on a hair trigger? Bleeding, on the verge of unconsciousness, out of spells, and still managing to deal the killing blow on Lorenzo because he chose violence over any other action? Opening the final fight against Obann by smashing through the window and burning half the cultists to death, because they were that desperate to get Yasha back after two failed attempts?

He woke up after eleven years of being addled, confused and not himself, and immediately killed a guard and broke out of the Assembly’s own Saitarium in the heart of Rexxentrum. He unexpectedly got stabbed by a full-fledged Scourger, and his instant reaction was to beat her over the head with a rock. 

And now, he’s infiltrated that same Sanitarium where he was kept only to flip from his desire to redeem those under the Assembly’s thumb to murdering half the people he came across in there with extreme prejudice.

His lack of interest in long-term vengeance is interestingly balanced by his frequent choices to pursue short-term retribution. It’s both his way of protecting his friends and himself, removing the threat and discouraging other threats, but it’s also, in my view, frequently an outlet for his heavily suppressed anger at the people who hurt him and his friends.

Caleb can be a good diplomat, but Caleb rarely chooses to be a diplomat. Caleb can be charming, but Caleb doesn’t like being charming. Caleb can be a good support caster, and Caleb is a support caster! But when he’s too compromised for strategy, when he stops thinking, he starts burning everything in his way. Because Caleb? He likes the way fire feels.

Caleb spent his formative years training to respond to conflict, physical or political, with lethality, and on a much more fundamental level, he is and always has been a man of action. 

He took action to get out of the Sanitarium as soon as he was capable. He took action in the Bright Queen’s throne room, made a risky ploy instead of letting them be arrested. He wanted to take action retroactively against his parent’s deaths the second he regained coherency.

Despite what we all assumed, doing nothing in the face of his parent’s deaths was never an option for Caleb, and he wasn’t taught anything that was going to help his parents once the house was on fire and the screams started. So what else was he going to do, after two years of growing into the Scourger mould? When he loses his mind, his ability to think, two of his reasons to care?

Of course it was violence. Of course it was lashing out at the people he must have thought, on some level, as being in his way. Of course it was fire. What else would it be?

And though these circumstances here aren’t the same... there are enough similarities. He’s once again in those familiar halls (in that familiar mindset) where he was treated as a weapon, nothing more. He’s with the people he loves and he knows they’re in danger, again. In fact, they’re in danger from the same people he spent eleven years feeling threatened by, that he viewed as obstacles, whether consciously or not.

He doesn’t want his loved ones to be in danger. He doesn’t want to be surrounded by the guards who he associates with his own helplessness. He especially doesn’t want those two things to go together. And he has never been able to sit idly by when he can act. But what kind of actions can he take? What can he do to get these guards away, away from him, away from his friends, out of his way, right now?

The tried and true method. Not burning, not here, not now, let’s not set a building on fire with his loved ones in it again (though it happened anyway). But no matter. He’s learned a lot of tricks in the last few months.

And hey, don’t worry, Caleb’s not angry. He’s not still working through his own pain and rage at these people. He really does want to heal, not hurt.

It’s just that these ones deserved it.

[therealvinelle]

Debunking “Jasper is only a vegetarian for Alice”

There’s this prevalent thought held by Bella, Meyer, and fandom that if it weren’t for Alice, Jasper would be out there eating all the people. He certainly used to, and he’s the Cullen who struggles the most with the diet.

In particular, there’s this paragraph in Eclipse.

It was strange. In the Cullen family, Jasper was always a little on the fringe, part of things but never the center of them. It was my unspoken assumption that he was only there for Alice. I had the sense that he would follow Alice anywhere, but that this lifestyle was not his first choice. The fact that he was less committed to it than the others was probably why he had more difficulty keeping it up. (Eclipse, page 168)

Twilight is a series where we should always pay attention to who is talking, and treat everyone as a potentially unreliable narrator.

Prior to Bella being introduced to the Cullens, Edward told Jasper to keep his distance. Then, in New Moon, we had Jasper’s infamous loss of control, which proved he can’t be trusted around her.

From Bella’s point of view, Jasper is barely there. It’s because he’s trying to keep his distance when she comes over.

Which is exactly what Edward asked of him, and certain to be of his own accord after the New Moon disaster.

Notice also her thinking Jasper is less committed than the others. 

I would wonder where she gets that from, except this is Bella swan, who doesn’t know what vampires are. She doesn’t take bloodthirst at all seriously. If she did, she would be worried about how she’ll fare against it as a vampire, but she couldn’t care less. As far as Bella is concerned, then, the fact that Jasper struggles means he’s got an attitude problem.

We the readers know this isn’t quite the case - when vampires lose control, they lose control in the literal sense. They black out. Emmett and Jasper have both been there, and newborn Carlisle got so hungry he ate something he didn’t even know he could eat. It doesn’t sound like Carlisle was home, and Emmett explicitly states that when he smelled his singers, Emmett wasn’t behind the wheel anymore. If anything, I’d consider Jasper’s tenacity a compliment to his character. It’s harder for him than anybody, and he’s still trying.

Bella refuses to get this, however, because if she did then that would mean vampirism isn’t the solution to all her problems the way she wants it to be. So, if Jasper’s got a problem with blood, the problem has to be Jasper.

So, with that out of the way, why does Jasper do the diet?

Soon after Bella’s above musing, he tells her himself.

I’m just going to quote a full page from Eclipse because he says it better than I could, and it’s better you hear it from the man himself anyway:

“I traveled with Peter and Charlotte for a few years, getting the feel of this new, more peaceful world. But the depression didn’t fade. I didn’t understand what was wrong with me, until Peter noticed that it was always worse after I’d hunted. 

“I contemplated that. In so many years of slaughter and carnage, I’d lost nearly all of my humanity. I was undeniably a nightmare, a monster of the grisliest kind. Yet each time I found another human victim, I would feel a faint prick of remembrance for that other life. Watching their eyes widen in wonder at my beauty, I could see Maria and the others in my head, what they had looked like to me the last night that I was Jasper Whitlock. It was stronger for me — this borrowed memory — than it was for anyone else, because I could feel everything my prey was feeling. And I lived their emotions as I killed them. 

“You’ve experienced the way I can manipulate the emotions around myself, Bella, but I wonder if you realize how the feelings in a room affectme . I live every day in a climate of emotion. For the first century of my life, I lived in a world of bloodthirsty vengeance. Hate was my constant companion. It eased some when I left Maria, but I still had to feel the horror and fear of my prey. “It began to be too much. 

“The depression got worse, and I wandered away from Peter and Charlotte. Civilized as they were, they didn’t feel the same aversion I was beginning to feel. They only wanted peace from the fight. I was so wearied by killing — killing anyone, even mere humans. 

“Yet I had to keep killing. What choice did I have? I tried to kill less often, but I would get too thirsty and I would give in. After a century of instant gratification, I found self-discipline . . . challenging. I still haven’t perfected that.” (Eclipse, page 171-172)

This is not a man who’s doing the diet for Alice.

If anything, he was on track to become Carlisle 2.0. I mean it, the parallel to Carlisle’s story is strong here. Had Alice never found Jasper, he would have lost control around deer sooner or later. That, or he would have killed himself.

What’s certain is that this would not have continued indefinitely.

He was at an extreme low point in his life, too miserable to stay with his friends, caught in these desperate, doomed cycles of starving himself, only to kill again. I think suicide attempts would have been next on the agenda.

Jasper is incapable of living on a human diet. He tried, it was unsustainable. Of all the Cullens, he’s the one who can’t live on human blood. The fact that he struggles so much is merely another way in which Twilight is a pit of despair.

With this I’d like to conclude the meta on a novel concept: Alice is the one who’s doing the diet for Jasper.

(I lied: I can’t conclude on something so black-and-white. Jasper is one of the reasons why Alice is with the Cullens. She has other reasons.)

[ask-hunterxhunter]

Illumi

If you think Illumi can already be creepy or scary now, then you don’t want to see him in a situation like this. Remember when he first saw Nanika’s power and laughed? This would be worse. Obsession can make people unbalanced, and I don’t think we can say Illumi doesn’t have enough issues as it is.

 To put it simply, he would become a lot more deranged than he already is.

 It would be a frightening sight (even to his parents). Once he got over the initial shock, Illumi would mourn you, keep thinking about the past, missing you while wondering why you were so stubborn, why you kept trying to escape, perhaps romanticizing the few moments of peace between you two as a sign that you were falling for him (he will never let go of the delusion that you did love him)… Those thoughts and memories would twist inside him day after day.

It wouldn’t be that obvious when he is away from home. Despite everything, Illumi would be able to pretend that he has everything under control, still keeping that emotionless stance of his, while in truth he would alter between fits of psychotic rage and deep silence (different from his usual quietness, this would be a mourning, dark sort of silence that just screams of insanity). We can’t say there wouldn’t be any sorrow involved, but it’s anyone’s guess whether this would come from his belief that he loved you, the loss of his possession, or everything mixed and more. It’s not easy to be exact with those matters, after all.

 Illumi would become even worse than he already is, which might be expressed by him becoming more obsessed with controlling Killua (he already lost you, he won’t lose anyone or anything more in his life). It’s also possible he would dedicate himself to somehow control Alluka, so he could use Nanika’s power to bring you back (don’t try telling him it wouldn’t work, for your own sake). If he had to kill the entire damn world to get you back, he would.

 Hisoka

In a normal state, Hisoka would grieve and learn how to deal with the pain of losing you. It’s hard to say if he would ever “move on” (since he almost never forms emotional attachments to anyone). Even on the chance of his reaction being intense, it would still be at least normal. With the Yandere level of obsession? Not so much.

 There would be almost no chance of him just accepting that you’ve died and, as a result, Hisoka might become even more violent and full of bloodthirst. Oh, he might hide it, but some people would be able to feel he is way worse now than he used to be. He wouldn’t become reckless during his fights, but he would become a lot more vicious and sadistic.

 This, however, would not be out of some “seeking death” sense as one might think: It’s his obsession getting out of control, as he lost you forever, now being channeled into the only thing that brings him pleasure. And the more time passes, the worst it would be.

 It’s not that he would become an insane person with no control whatsoever over his impulses, but depending on how obsessed he was with you and how much this is affecting him, Hisoka may let go of the few principles he had.  

 Chrollo

If Senritsu ever heard Chrollo’s heartbeat after your death, she would be even more terrified than she was the first time she heard it… There is sorrow in it, yes, but it’s also as if something has snapped, setting free a new sort of darkness from deep inside him. You have to remember that this isn’t about people losing a loved one, this is about deeply obsessed people losing the target of their obsession forever.

 Chrollo way of mourning you would be… Disturbing. Remember the “requiem” he offered Uvogin? It would be similar, only he wouldn’t care for who he is killing. Burn a library you loved or a park? Kill everyone who was inside your favorite café? Anything goes. He would even burn a church with people inside, all while considering those to be pyres he’s making in your name.

 After that, Chrollo would become… Somewhat unstable. No one would be able to realize it except maybe, maaaybe Machi, due to her intuition and that she knows Chrollo quite well (even she would be a little disturbed by what she is getting from Chrollo’s behavior). It wouldn’t be obvious, but there would be signs of times of how much obsession can screw someone’s mind.

 He wouldn’t forget his goals or the Spider, but in a really messed up sense, your memory would become part of it. It's not that he would start to consider your arguments against what he is doing or start thinking about what you would have liked him to do, far from it. It’s a bit as if Chrollo associates his goals to ways that would have made you accept him, more or less.

 If he ever, ever, suspected there might be a way of bringing you back… He would seek it. And may God have mercy of whoever got in the way.

[diablo-that-first-spark]

I'm trying to figure out what kind of angel is Eli and he might be a Bravery and because Eli has two big swords and also all the demons and all of the prime evils are afraid and scared of Eli because he is the most powerful and strongest angel and he is not afraid to kill the prime evils and until Eli was exiled from The high heavens to a another universe and he was stuck on Ethan and he meets my OCS and after Eli was exiled His friend Tyrael was upset and sad to see his friend Eli to be exiled from the high heavens

Also here is a picture of Eli with his swords

(also going to make a post Soon when I get out of school and how Eli got his swords)

If it is advice you seek on how to create characters, I am happy to help! :)

However, I can only give advice on how I personally tackle the task, I cannot get inside your head. I can see our styles differ greatly, but it might still be useful to you in some way.

The allure to create all-powerful OCs who are the best at everything is always a strong one, and we have all done it before. However, with experience (ideally) comes a realization that perfect characters are boring at best, and downright infuriating at worst. Unfortunately it is a trap many people fall into, even professional writers, if the crap that is on tv and in comics lately are any indication, dear lord...

The thing is that people relate most strongly to character traits, struggles and learning. Not power levels. You bet I have no physical similarities at all with Tyrael (hell I don’t even know how to hold a sword properly), yet I relate greatly to his journey of leaving everything he knew behind and taking a plunge into an unknown new life, so that he may be able to do what he feels is right. This is a rule I always do my best to hold myself to, and I really do believe it should be a universal rule, even when one creates a character just for fun. I have plenty of “OCs” that will never see the light of day, whom I only created for fun but I did not forget to give them failings and opportunities to learn. You can still have fun while making them more human.

I take it by "Bravery" you meant "Valor", which means Eli is/was an underling of Imperius, right? Making Eli the strongest angel, when it is canonically Imperius who is the mightiest warrior, and making the Prime Evils fear Eli, even though the Evils fear absolutely no one because they are blinded by their bloodthirst and power hunger - these are a thin ice to tread on, in my opinion. If you have seen the animated short “Wrath”, you know that Archangels aren’t actually afraid of executing the Evils, but they understand (except Imperius) that killing them isn’t always the best course of action in a war.

Imagining weapons and powers is hella fun, I will never deny it. But it is even more fun to imagine how those powers would actually hinder the character, create conflicts and obstacles he has to overcome (Quiet). Or another route - make the character weak, his skills limited and then make him solve a problem creatively with only the available tools, no insane powerups (Lyndon and his limited Nephalem powers). There are two reasons why I chose to make Quiet a child in my story:

To give Inarius a proper new chance and clean slate.

To make sure he is relatable. Had he been an adult from the start, with all of the Worldstone’s power at his disposal, he would have  been incredibly difficult to make relatable or even interesting. His journey to adulthood is (hopefully) a much more human trait anyone can understand, even if the end result inevitably will be a “god among men”.

Everybody loves a hero who earned his powers. Sadly, modern day writers often do not understand this. But it is never too late to learn it. :)

Now I understand it is all advanced stuff in character writing. I get it. We all want to have fun and to try out crazy insane ideas with no restrictions or “rules”. Thankfully with more experience one can learn to combine insane fun ideas with relatability. It doesn’t hurt to strife for that from as early as you can. I’m sure you will learn, and I hope I could give some pointers. ^^

In the end, have fun, go crazy, and I wish you the best of luck with character creating! :D

2022.04.22.

[nightowlfandom]

Vampire! Hyung Line BTS- Bloodthirst (Part 1)

I was making some preferences and it got waaaayy too long. So each of the guys will be in their own post. Next part will be the Maknae line...If i remember

CHECK OUT MY MASTERLIST HERE!

Leggo!!

...

JIN- “J-Jin!” you voiced echoed through out the alleyways. Your attempt at a late night sexy roleplay that had you pretending to be an unsuspecting damsel in distress led up to Seokjin holding you up against the brick walls while he thrust into your sopping wet heat. Your shoulder was burning from the open wound that was his mark. You had many like it decorating various parts of your body.

Your walls tightened around his cold-blooded shaft, causing him to grunt in response. “Fuck! Do you like this, human? Do you love being taken by me like this.” he growled in your ear. “You love being used.”  He drove his fangs into your shoulder again. You could feel his scalding hot seed pour into you and drip down the length of your thighs. The temperature different sent you over the moon. You dug your fingernails into his bare back as he drove himself into you one last time, spilling everything into your . “You love this shit.” he snarled.

You were shaking under him, convulsing as you hit multiple highs. The feeling of your body between his chest and the cold brick had you dazed and confused.

You went limp in his arms, feeling his hold on your tighten. Jin laughed as he himself broke character. He loved playing with his human. His ran his sharp tongue down your neck again, inhaling your metallic scent. “Baby, I love you so much.”

HOSEOK- “F-fu-” you moaned as you felt his fangs dig into your inner thigh. “Hobi-” you whined. A sadistic laugh echoed off the walls of the room. “I thought we said no biting!” His version of foreplay had gotten you two into trouble so many times, and this was no exception. You were lifted up onto the kitchen counter with your legs spread. Your clothes were sprawled everywhere, not that you wore much around him in the first place. You barely had any clothes at his house because he never wanted you covered. You were always on display for him.

“You know how it is.” he moaned. He drove his tongue into your heat again. “It drives me crazy.” he giggled. “And it drives you crazy too.” he wiggled his tongue against your sopping wet flesh. “Since when do I ever follow rules?”

“That’s the point! It’s n-not far!” you whimpered. He lapped up the lines of blood that trickled down your thigh. “Hoseok! Come on!” you whined.

“When did vampires ever play fair?” he giggled. “You know you love it.”

“That’s not the point,” you groaned. “Teasing bastard.”

Your vampire lover dug his nails into your delicate human skin. If you were gonna talk back, you’d receive some sort of punishment. “Aww baby, I don’t like your tone” he looked up at you biting his lips. “Add five minutes.”

Another cry erupted from your chest as you felt his fingers slowly thrust into you. “Not f-fair!”

NAMJOON- You watched in semi-amusement as Namjoon threw the body of the idiot who tried to mug you to the floor. He smiled at you, his blood stained fangs kind of grossing you out.

“That never fails to disgust me.” you winced.

“Hm. How bout this then?” he rolled his eyes. In the blink of an eye he stood in front of you. He gently wrapped a hand around your neck, the palm of his hand resting upon the base of your throat. He traced his tongue along your jawline. You instantly squeezed your legs together and he took note of this. His free hand stopped you from fully closing your legs. “Oh no you don’t...open up for me.” He began fumbling with your jean zipper and button. 

“Namjoon, are we really gonna do this now?”

“Fuck yeah, whose gonna stop us.”

YOONGI- Your chains jingled around as you struggle to move across the room. You shook on your hands and knees and Yoongi played with the different functions on the tiny remote that controlled the vibrator.

You were on all fours, ankles chained together to stop you from moving too fast. Your wrists were handcuffed as well. You were completely naked other than the remote-controlled vibrator tucked into your panties. You were going crazy.

“Isn’t this fun?” Yoongi’s delighted laughter rang throughout the room. It scared you to no end because he was NEVER that happy-sounding. “Answer me, human.”

“N-no! This is torture.” you moaned as you felt the vibrations get stronger.

“Hm, this is your punishment.” he hummed. “Awww...baby can’t stand up?” The vibrations calmed down, but never stopped. “Come on baby, craw over to daddy.”

You tried, really you did. You managed to get halfway across the room before you felt the vibrator go haywire. Yoongi had put it on it’s highest setting.

...

[fragmentwitch]

Spoilers of higu ahead. Read at your own risk if you haven't watched today's ep. Buckle up and probably grab a drink, this is a long one.

I still am not on board with the "Satoko is the mastermind" theory... but I do believe she has more awareness about this than the other people who have come to kill Rika. By now it's getting clear that the real culprit is manipulating other characters into delusions that can only be satisfied by killing Rika. No, "Never leave Hinamizawa and you'll be happy" isn't what Ryukishi himself is pushing onto us theough the narrative-- that's simply preposterous and is a myopic way of looking at his works, which have always been fairly layered in awareness. It's too reductive otherwise and completely forsakes every character's struggle if we handwave it as one of Rena's cultlike ramblings being true.

That is what the unseen culprit wants Rika to think, they want to traumatize and deceive her into a stockholm syndrome state and hold DEATH over her head if she steps out of line. Notice how after episode 16's last bad end, and Rika just decides to enjoy her day as a normal kid, everything seems to go perfectly fine because she hasn't concerned herself with the possibility of someone going crazy and dying. It's rather odd these things go so swimmingly (at least up until the cliffhanger) right after the most heartbreaking bad ending involving her own friend.

Saikoroshi-hen (OVA and VN) is rather similar: Rika must decide for herself what to do without Hanyuu, and she was worried more about getting back to the Matsuribayashi fragment but from a normal 'pure' fragment (Hanyuu also intentionally made her dream this all out while she was comatose). Rika decides to live out her last day with her friends and it comes and goes without a hitch... until she wakes back up in the hospital. Hanyuu concludes that the 'sin' inside Rika was finally purged.

Except in Gou, we're expecting something bad from Takano in 17... but I don't think she's still our enemy.

The Deceiver

Somebody who knows Oishi and all the villagers is able to 'trick' them into believing that they must kill everyone, especially Rika. This unknown person X feeds into their delusions that Rika knows everything or is in on the curse. In other cases, they appeal to their victim directly through their fear of Oyashiro-sama.

Rena thinks if she kills everyone and then lets herself be demoned away, her dad will be happy. X knows about Rena and her dad's situation.

Satoko is told that killing everyone and sacrificing Rika will ensure she won't leave the village. Note that she is the only HS patient they have who's recovered to sanity just before the lethal stage 5, and this is shown by her lack of bloodshot eyes and maniacal bloodthirst the others have exhibited. X knows that Satoko was overly dependent on Satoshi and now clings to Rika as the only person she has left. X knows Satoko has HS and used it to manipulate her into paranoia.

Oishi thinks Rika knows the truth behind the Watanagashi cases. Uncharacteristically has L5.

Akasaka thinks he's 'helping' Rika by killing her and then himself to get the maggots out of his throat.

Akane Sonozaki kills everyone including her daughter. My best guess is that the stuff about Onigafuchi and how the villagers all have demon's blood in them, Akane is cleansing the world of their filthy bloodline. As to why or how X does this is irrelevant since every new killer is totally OOC

Kimiyoshi also thinks he's saving Rika from a cursed world or whatever. I wasn't really paying attention because I myself got annoyed at this scene being so stupidly drawn out.

Mion/Shion (no I dont recall who is who by the end of it) thinks Rika is behind the mysterious murders, but is sane enough to try protecting Keiichi from whatever is trying to get her.

Keiichi literally becomes a fuckin demon. Idk how to explain that other than handwaving it as lolinsanity.

Invariably they all have a look of glee for doing what they're doing and it is completely out of character. But notice how much Satoko doesn't WANT to do this. She's crying and screaming how much she didn't want to do what she did, that X basically forced her hand (she even killed the other 4 just so nobody would stop her. How she could have done it is irrelevant ig). Clearly, someone who knows Satoko is the most cognizant at an L3/L4 state has been feeding her a delusion that only she can stop Rika from leaving Hinamizawa. That's what best friends do, they look out for each other even if said friend doesn't think you're helping them. Satoko even mentioning she's good at injections is a confirmation the Syndrome is 'real' in Gou's lore, meaning the Clinic's secret research is still canon.

Who is X?

We can look at it from both perspectives using Umineko logic.

X is a Human:

It's hard to say if Takano is still behind it-- she preferred carrying the ritual out herself when the supposed deaths and disappearances by Oyashiro-sama would happen. This time the dates are all over the place... Rika got spawn-killed on the 12th, definitely not the 3rd sunday of June. Plus, she and Tomitake on screen always seemingly disappear and never come back... but they are never found dead, they just are totally uninvolved with most of the fragments or turn up missing and Oishi seeks them out as though they are persons of interest. In fact, she might just be the 2nd looper who got caught in the middle-- the flashback to the end of Festival Accompaniment Arc in ep16 might be hinting at her getting a potential redemption arc.

Yes, I know, she killed Rika and friends but think about it. She as a child was no different than Rika-- all these bad things happened to her and she didn't know why, she hated being alone so much she didn't even care if lightning struck her to kill her. Takano's villainy is a product of her very tumultuous childhood where she had an earnest and innocent wish to honor her adoptive grandfather... somewhere down the line as she grew, she lost the ability to feel at odds with the ethics of what she was doing. Because she'd gone through so much unfairness in life, as an adult she shrugs off what she does as "well, life's not fair and other people have done worse than me in the name of science". But even as well written as it is, plenty of people who are survivors of abuse or were orphaned typically don't become serial killers with a delusional sense of grandeur. so I wouldn't be surprised if Ryukishi wanted to use Gou as a redemption arc for Takano (as Gou means 'Karma', it would be pretty thematic I think). She and Rika did literally nothing to deserve what they were dealt. there have also been other fragments where Takano didn't kill Rika herself or the great Hinamizawa Disaster didn't occur: see Onikakushi, Watanagashi, Meakashi, and most of the 'damashi' arcs in Gou where Keiichi survived with Rena or Mion as another survivor.

X is not a Human/Witches theory:

Takano may only be a villain when the Witch(es) want her to be. Unlike in Umineko where everyone on the island is killed regardless of the order, Hinamizawa's outcomes are not always perfectly consistent. In this context, there are a few fragments that aren't much more than a variety of bad ending in a typical visual novel. The Hinamizawa Disaster, however, can have plenty of forgeries where the order of deaths don't matter since everyone is killed or only 1 person is a survivor and they either go crazy or we get an entirely different future arc.

Evil Adult-sized Hanyuu (not Featherine) isn't impossible I guess but that wouldn't make sense. In fact, it seems sort of implied Rika hasn't seen Hanyuu in years when she comments about not getting to share a drink with her like old times. In Saikoroshi, Hanyuu said that a world without her likely meant that she was satisfied with it and ascended to the land where other gods would be.

Rika may have been killed before being sent back in time, but it's just as possible a godlike being actually transported her. Remnant Hanyuu spoke as if Rika was 'allowed' to grow up a bit only for the sake of recovering her heart-- as if someone was intending on throwing her back into the loops anyway.

I don't think Hanyuu is the mastermind either. I do believe she is Featherine's piece rather than Featherine herself though. But that does dig up a lot of Umineko-logic questions I'm unable to provide answers for... such as WHAT IS THE FUCKING LOGIC ERROR and IS RIKA ACTUALLY FEATHERINE'S METAWORLD READER WHO HAD HER MEMORY WIPED (total tinfoil theory)

Thats enough rambles for today. Told you it was long. Lol

[emerald-echeveria-plant]

I feel as though I will get to or motivate myself to finish my little series of the crossover I made. So here are some things that would've happened

- Bonnet asking Ironbeard if he's a good captain. Ironbeard lies that he is so that he won't ask him again. Bonnet having an underlying feeling that he was indeed lying.

- ePiC fight scene between Octavia and Sao. Sao wins.

- Fleance trying to flirt with BEN and BEN ends up hurting his feelings with his sass.

- Cletus and Erik playful bantering with each other and might end up being possible frenemies.

- Bonnet and Haggis fist fighting

- Bonnet deciding to let Haggis live after beating the heck out of him. Lol he shouldn't have done that.

- Davy Jones cameo

- Billy and Islay knowing each other from being apart of an old crew, where they were once friends. Sorta implication they liked each other then but Islay was too emotionally closed off to start a relationship.

- Baozhai trying not to be a creep towards Flint so that he could actually like her back

- Flint slowly liking Baozhai as a friend.

- Baozhai and Flint sharing cute moments together

- Flint denying he's in love with Baozhai, even though he kinda is.

- Baozhai sharing her past with Flint. Flint kinda gets uncomfortable after she carefully describes how she murdered two families that ruined her life and mental state.

- Flint sharing a bit of his own past with Baozhai.

- Islay slowly letting herself open up emotionally.

- Islay and Billy having some of their own romantic plot line going on. Baozhai poking fun at Islay.

- "awww did someone get bit by the love bug or are you feeling all of that on your own? 😏" - Baozhai

- "oh shut up!" Islay

- The squad coming across an abandoned village. They see skeletal remains of the villagers that once lives there. Sends chills down some of their spines.

- A large beast attacking the four. Billy gets pretty messed up when trying to fight it. Islay and Flint trying their best to kill the beast. Baozhai is the one to slaughter it if it weren't for the help of her friends.

- Islay patching up Billy and they end up sharing a rather tender moment with each other.

- Baozhai having a mental breakdown about how she hates being insane and wishes she wouldn't have thoughts about wanting to hurt other people. How she misses thinking like a regular person. Flint trying his best to comfort her. It works and she's all okay again.

- Flint and Baozhai cuddling together ლ(◕ω◕ლ)

- Flint worrying he's getting too attached to Baozhai.

- Islay and Billy getting caught making out lmao

- Bonnet sharing with Leonid that he was once apart of a war. After he left said war, he made a promise to himself he wouldn't kill another man ever again. Makes it clear why he couldn't bring himself to kill Haggis in the first place.

- Leonid suggesting he may or may have not been apart of the Russian mafia.

- Erik getting revenge against Leonid for kicking his ass by cutting off his hand.

- Noëmie having to solve puzzle with Sao while they're stuck in some sort of death trap that's causing the room to get smaller. They survive and both swear to never speak of helping each other.

- Baozhai and Flint weirdly acting like a couple. You know like hugging, semi flirting, and laughing

- Archie after spying on Flint and Baozhai, finds out that they're getting too close with each other. He doesn't know what to think so he tells someone about what he saw. Archie telling Cletus about what he saw. Cletus then telling Noëmie, Noëmie then telling Fleance, Fleance than telling Leonid, Leonid telling Ironbeard, and Ironbeard telling Bonnet. It comes off as a rumor which Bonnet doesn't care too much about. He thinks Baozhai isn't truly in love with him and that its just a short-lived crush.

- Haggis on the other hand, hearing through the grapevine goes: >:O

- "One of MY crewmates was caught flirtin' with one of Bonnet's BASTARD crewmates??? Oh I'm gonna teach that boy a lesson alright >:(("

- Baozhai acting less insane and bloodthirsty.

- Her obsessive thoughts of wanting to be with Flint actually turn healthy.

- Baozhai and Flint sharing a tender moment underneath the stars.

- "I know this is going to sound weird but.. when I'm around you.. I feel sane." Which means a LOT coming from Baozhai.

- Baozhai and Flint damn near kissing only to be interrupted by Islay and Billy walking in on them.

- Islay sharing a story about how she was almost killed by Warden.

- Baozhai sharing some of her own stories and pieces about her own personal life.

- Baozhai daydreaming about being married to Flint and sailing the eitherium.

- Flint knowing he's too far in with Baozhai and doesn't know wether to back out or not. Tries to get advice from Billy but he's unfortunately stuck in same situation except it's with Islay.

- They all arrive to the cave that holds the lost treasure of the Paititi. Just as they do, so does everyone else. There's plenty of treasure but not nearly enough for two pirate crews to share it. Everyone starts fighting. Again. For like the third time.

- Bonnet getting his ass beat by Haggis again and this time Haggis almost kills him instead.

- Flint and Baozhai fight even though they don't really want to.

- Baozhai doesn't want to hurt Flint, causing her to confess that she loves him. Everyone gasps in pretty surprised and stop fighting. Flint already knew because it was damn obvious from the start.

- Flint doesn't know what to do. Does he choose a girl he's been with for a few days or possibly getting his ass beaten to death by his captain. As much as he would like to be with her, he knows he can't.

- He ends up stabbing Baozhai in the chest. It doesn't kill her but it's symbolic of him breaking her heart. (I like symbolism ok aksskskkw)

- Haggis's crew wins and take all the treasure for themselves. Bonnet's crew get beat the fuck up and head back to the ship to get their wounds patched up.

- so basically Haggis: 2 Bonnet: 1

- Octavia manages to fix everyone up then save the lives of Baozhai and Bonnet. even her own. (Goddamn she's a great doctor someone give her an award..)

- Baozhai doesn't talk or interact with anyone for a few days. She's very emotionless and empty from what happened.

- "Christ, she's never been this way before. You think she'll be okay?" - Cletus

- "Who knows. That heart break sure must've messed her up real bad, poor thing.." - Noëmie.

- "Well, it was the first time she's ever been in love before. And I guess this makes it her first heartbreak as well." - Octavia

- Bonnet now laying in his bed must of the time because of how fucked up he got by Haggis. Although he does try to be a leader for his crew. Even if it hurts for him to stand up.

- Meanwhile...

- "WHOOO WE GOT THE TREASURE! FUCK BONNET AND HIS CREW! WHAT A BUNCH OF PUSSIES!"

- Haggis chuckling and patting Flint on the back. Essentially congratulating him for manipulating that "little harlot" aka Baozhai to get to the treasure.

- Flint getting drunk off his ass to get rid of his guilt for betraying Baozhai.

- Billy not knowing what's the future of his and Islay's relationship going to be.

- When Bonnet about to go to sleep, the twins tell him an eerie prediction.

- "Don't you think an iron plate would go well with your slumber..?" - Liliana

"Yes, to protect oneself from the demons that lurk in the shadows of your room or in your mind?" - Lenny

"It certainly would, especially when the clock hits at twelve." - Liliana.

- "uh.. no..?" - Bonnet

- "You'll bring a dark omen upon this eitherium if you don't." - Lilliana and Lenny.

- Bonnet slowly enters his room, paying no mind to what the twins told him. He never truly believed in their predictions...

- when the clock struck twelve at night, Baozhai entered his room and stabbed him to death.

- In the morning, none of crewmates couldn't find their captain. He wasn't anywhere on the ship or in his office. It wasn't until Baozhai told them of his fate, all while she laughs her ass off with her back turned to them.

- Fleance immediately wants to have Baozhai killed or thrown overboard for betraying their captain. In response, Baozhai punches him and stabs him in the shoulder with a dagger. She holds the same dagger against his neck.

- Fleance ends up getting to have a good look at her face. It's covered in many scars and damn near mutilated.

- Baozhai tells Fleance to never disrespect their captain again or he'll be the one thrown overboard.

- She tells everyone that she's had enough of this crew getting their asses kicked and that things are going to start changing now that she's in charge.

- How they'll overthrow the monarchy and make the eitherium a better place for all..

- Baozhai then demands them to get back to their stations as she walks back to her new office.

- Stunned with this revelation, the crew do as their told to not upset their new captain.

- At night, Islay is on the deck trying to smoke her pipe then Baozhai comes to join her.

- "Islay, just the person I wanted to see. Mind if I smoke with you?" - Baozhai, pulling out a cigarette

- "Um, sure." Islay says uncomfortably.

- "You know I didn't really except for myself to take over the role of captain. It just sort of happened."

- "You stabbing Bonnet to death just sorta happened..?"

- "Yes! It did. After feeling empty for so long, I couldn't help but feel a strange combination of rage and bloodthirst take over that night. I just had to put my hands on something. Anything. And watch the life drain from it's eyes. It could've been Noëmie, Leonid, or even you. Heh, yet I went with Bonnet.. He was a weak link of the crew anyway."

- "I mean I guess he was.."

- "... I just wanted to tell you something."

- "What is it?"

- "You were right. About everything."

- "... About what-"

- "Love. It is truly a terrible thing. First you feel that high of dopamine and the butterflies fluttering around in your stomach then the next.. the guy you like breaks your heart. Quite literally."

- "Bao, I know what I said but don't take that it first awful experience-"

- "First? Heh, you really think I'm going to go through that again???"

- "No, I'm just saying that-"

- "YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT I WON'T. I'M NEVER LETTING MYSELF GETTING BETRAYED AGAIN. FIRST IT WAS MY OWN FAMILY THEN IT WAS LETTING THAT BASTARD GET INTO MY HEAD! NO, I WON'T LET ANYONE MAKE A FOOL OUT OF ME AGAIN!"

- it's takes a moment for a Baozhai to calm down but when she does. She laughs for moment before telling Islay goodnight and heading off to sleep.

- Islay was a little shaken up by that. She tries to smoke her pipe to calm down then she sees the twins.

- "This is only the beginning of her madness..." - Liliana and Lenny

- "..."

- "Fuck my life." - Islay

So yeah that's what happens! Pretty sad but I wanted to keep that rivalry of Baozhai and Flint lmao. I wanted to write this stuff out but I never go the energy to do so. I didn't want to leave the series on a cliffhanger so I made this instead. I'm sorry that I couldn't finish it. But maybe I'll end up having the motivation to do so. Someday.

[werezmastarbucks]

c a r e

kai parker x reader brutal fluff oneshot

Kai’s bleeding out ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

word count: 1920

warnings: language, mentions of suicide, kind of au

You opened your eyes and winced, closed them again and decided to smell the room first. It’s been a while since you got hit on the head last. In fact, the last heavy blow that might have been dangerous for you, you received here, in Mystic Falls, five years ago. Outside this wretched town, danger was virtually non-existent. All the crap always happened here. Did you really have to come back, did you, really? There went your silent rant as your feelings were coming back to you, the tips of your fingers stinging, your limbs, sore, and the smell of burning curtains in the air. The sun was on your face, burning the cut somewhere on your forehead. You lifted your hand and touched it gently, still keeping your eyes closed, and put your finger in your mouth. Blood.

You sat up carefully, and looked around.

“Anybody alive?” you called. The house seemed to be empty. A slender streak of smoke came out of the fireplace. You pictured the last thing you saw before you blacked out: Liv Parker, her great mane of blonde hair waving and messed up, with her arm outstretched, screaming some latin shit in your face. All they ever said while chanting sounded like intricate swearing, honestly. Then, you got up on your feet and started assessing the room, sure that there’s supposed to be something else.

There he is! Another Parker, the psycho one, laying on his back, his white shirt soaking in blood. In a flash, his life ran before your eyes. You thought of the way he spoke to you and that article you read about the night he killed his family, and how there’s so much more to it.

You sprinted to him – well, walked, fast. He was going pale, losing the color, becoming like the shirt he was wearing. When he didn’t talk, and didn’t roll his eyes around, he looked almost like a child, almost quiet. You tried his neck – if there was pulse, you didn’t catch it, because your hands started shaking. After all he’s done, where he’s been and everything he’s seen and was about to see, that was not the way he’d go. Stabbed in the stomach with a poker? Please.

“Can you hear me?”

You looked around and took off your own jacket, pressing the wound in, and the blood started coming even faster, like you were squeezing a lemon.

“Shit”.

You felt for the phone and didn’t find it. You tapped his jeans and pulled his iPhone out, calling for the emergency services. The lady’s voice startled you because you got distracted immediately as you were trying to close that huge hole in his abdomen.

“What’s your emergency?”

“I- I’ve got a guy here who’s very stabbed, he’s like bleeding out”.

“What’s your address?”

You spat out the Salvatore mansion address, deeply surprised you had it carved somewhere on the wall of your skull; his blood was hot, which was probably a good sign, right? His face was glistening with sweat, and your palm was warm on his cheek. You bent over Kai, putting your ear very close to his face, and it sounded like faint breathing.

“Is he awake?”

“No, he’s out, and he’s getting very pale”.

“Okay, I’ve dispatched the car, they’re going to be there in fi-ive-minutes”, the girl said reassuringly.

“Thank you, what do I…”

“How much blood is there?”

You threw the phone on the floor and put her on speaker. The boy was dying. It was funny to think that! He’s died like a bazillion times back in his prison world, by his own confession. When you asked him which way to die was the worst, he said that was relative. The first might have been the most stressful because he really thought he was going to end it all.

As a suicide survivor, you knew what it felt like, and you thought, did I look like this? If someone stumbled upon me that day, would they see what I’m seeing now, a kid whom you want to save? You got such a dire desire to save his life, regardless of how he’ll pay you, you stopped listening to the 911 girl. Damon’s gonna be so pissed, you imagined with a smirk. He was dying, you should have just left him there! Such a convenient disaster which solves the Parker problem and takes out the biggest pain in the ass of all.

Then you looked at his face again, and realized that even through his morbid sleep, as he bleeds out with his arms outstretched, he knows no one cares about him. He knows he’ll die without making a single person ever care about him.

“Are you there, miss? Are you resuscitating?”

“Uh, yeah”.

You hit him in the chest.

“Wake up!”

His head moved as you pressed on the jacket again, like he was stubborn to get up.

“You need to do the heart massage, five times, then mouth to mouth”.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m doing that”.

Your wrists were hurting from how much you were trying to get him to breathe.

“Come on, you’re magical moron, you gotta help yourself”.

Aren’t witches supposed to die harder? Or is it already harder than normal? How much blood is Kai Parker supposed to lose until his headstrong soul finally decides it’s not worth it?

You hit him in the chest with two fists, trying to knock through the ribs and straight to the heart.

“What is that sound?” the girl asked. You puffed and hung up on her, threw his phone away. Kai’s eyes swung open and he stared up as his mouth opened slowly in the grimace of pain.

“Hey! Yes! Can you see me?”

Kai’s eyes shifted to you, irises huge like two black moons.

“Don’t die yet”.

“Am I?” he whispered.

You pressed the jacket again, and he moaned. Your hand twitched, fingers spreading in the gesture to comfort, and laid on his shoulder.

“Not yet. Don’t get me wrong, I still hate you”.

He took a very careful breath, like a sip of hot tea, with his mouth.

“Why?”

You thought for a second. Why? Is he stupid? Is he a child? Why? Why do people hate him? When he’s spread here like a fish, sweating through his clothes with freezing blood, white like a sheet, helpless like a kitten, human more than anybody else. Does loathing apply? Where’s the set of moral rules? Does him being a first-class Kai Parker apply?

“By default”, you offered. He looked through you, almost transparent, like a veil with eyes.

“Hold on, dude, this is too embarrassing for you”.

“Agree”.

You felt his hand move next to your thigh, and let your fingers crawl to his palm. It was losing heat.

“Heal yourself”, you pulled his hand and put it on his chest. “Come on, witch. If I had anything, I would help you”.

He turned his head to the side slowly, and the apple in his throat rolled grievously.

“It doesn’t work like that”, you rather read it on his lips than heard.

“Yes, it does. Heal yourself”, you squeezed his hand. There was the sound of wheels screeching in the yard.

He turned his head back and gave you a look from under his brows. The eyes refused to go unblack, and it felt like all the color from his body was draining right through them.

“Don’t let me die, Y/N”.

People were running through the corridor, certainly getting very hyped by spectacular destruction in the house.

“Over here!”

The doctors appeared in the living room, blue jackets and gloves, and you were pulled from Kai, letting go of his hand. You couldn’t see if he blacked out again as they surrounded him, velcros scratching and voices filling the space.

“Are you hurt?” a man appeared before you. You looked at him dumbfounded as he reached for you with a piece of white wool in his fingers. The cut on our forehead stung.

“What the hell happened here?”

“Family dinner”.

______________________________________________________________

“Is he going to make it?”

“If he’s strong”, the nurse replied. The doctor left the emergency room and raced past you, his hands covered in blood like in a movie. You sat on the chair prepped against the wall, and realized you had nothing to do here. It’s not like you’re going to sit here like a girlfriend while they operate on him, or call the time of death. Caring and solidarity is all sweet and good, but let’s not get carried away. This man tried to push you down the stairs like yesterday to create a distraction. He wouldn’t think a second before gutting you if he needed to. That’s how he made it so far, actually.

You left the hospital, walking slowly towards the bus stop and looking at the cloudless blue sky. Then your phone rang, and you realized it was in your back pocket all this time, and Damon was going to be real furious. For a second there you hoped Parker doesn’t make it so that you don’t have to go through mental beating. You tried to think of one way he can still be useful to the Mystic Falls folk and therefore eligible for preserving.

______________________________________________________________

They said, you saved that fucker, you babysit him.

You tried to explain that the majority of work was probably done by the doctors who closed his bleeding wound, and the said fucker’s impeccable will to live no matter what. The guy has that precious survivor’s gene that cannot be pulled out.

But while he’s in the hospital, he’s technically unmonitored, and somebody has to be there when he wakes up. To cuff him or whatever and let Damon know so that they know where he is. With too many Parkers still alive and running around it’s dangerous to let Kai just roam. It’s like, what was the point of all that fuss in the living room? you asked. Exactly, Y/N, Caroline said. Exactly. You were stunned by their bloodthirst. It’s all understandable though – and, at the same time, no. Klaus was free and happy living in Tyler’s fucking house. Katherine was alive and sleeping like a baby somewhere in the old Fell crypt. Rebekah was having the time of her life pretending to be a college student at Whitmore. These were all un-people who commited unspeakable things and hurt all of you personally. Everybody seemed to have come to terms with the fact that they’re here to stay. What made this one different, except eating too much?

You sat in a comfortable armchair in his hospital room like a disgruntled mum, waiting for him to wake up, but the little criminal took his time.

On the day he finally woke up you lost your patience and walked to him, laying in bed. He slept, and slept like a baby, like he was in a witch coma, face peaceful and open, almost good for conversation.

“Here’s one you missed on while you were kicking it in prison”, you said, putting your airpods in his ears. You found it personally quirky that you could torture him with your music while he was out.

You turned the volume down and returned to your chair, listening to the song in your head as the dot on your screen was crawling right.

Summer has come and passed The innocent can never last Wake me up when September ends

[turtletotem]

Morph

For the “transformation” prompt, an Animorphs AU! I gave up on getting it all finished today, so part two will follow soon.

Charles and his friends had been through a lot of awful stuff, since the night they found a crashed spaceship and a dying alien. The night they learned their world was under attack, and received from the dying alien's hands their only weapon against the invaders—the power to morph. Morphing gave them the ability to take animal forms that were a thousand times more dangerous than their fragile human bodies, forms that hid their true identities from the Yeerks and let them absorb unbearable damage that would simply vanish when they de-morphed. Since that night, they had all endured amounts of pain, terror, guilt, and strain that probably should have killed them.

It hadn't killed them yet, but it had warped all of them—sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Charles's sister Raven had once cared too much about having the best hair and the most fashionable clothes, about being pretty and popular; now she was a fierce, unstoppable fighter whose bloodthirst scared them all, even if they wouldn't say it. Erik, who had always been sharp and steely, was ruthless and pragmatic to a fault, now—except how could it be a fault if it kept them alive, kept the human race alive and free?

And Hank… poor Hank suffered more than any of them, trapped in morph as a gorilla. Barring a miracle, he would never be human again. If only he'd been in a smaller, less exotic morph, the day that he couldn't get to safety until long after the two-hour deadline, perhaps he could have still been among people in some way—someone's dog, a wild bird, something. Instead he had to remain entirely hidden, entirely dependent on the rest of them for everything. And any wounds he sustained in battle had to heal the hard way.

As for Charles himself, he had nightmares all the time now, flashbacks—not so much to the terrible things they'd endured, but the terrible things they'd done. All the bloodshed and suffering, the lies and secrets. Was it worth it, if they succeeded? What about if they failed?

All of which made it very easy to forget that morphing could also be fun.

Charles's claws clicked over the floor of the candy shop, a tiny noise to go with his tiny mouse body. Mice were nervous, hypervigilant little creatures, but Charles was an old hand at controlling the little rodent's instincts. Mouse morph had turned out to be almost as useful as his tiger battle-morph, if for very different situations.

It was also sort of neat. Charles couldn't say exactly why he enjoyed being so small, making his way through a world grown suddenly massive around him. Chairlegs like redwood trees, jellybean containers like granaries, expanses of black-and-white tile like the surface of an alien world. It made him think of a dollhouse, except that was exactly backwards. It was as if he was the doll.

Outside the shop, he knew Erik would be getting impatient. More accurately, he would be getting worried, and masking it with impatience. It had taken Charles longer than he expected to get into the building; he supposed he should have expected that a candy store would be fortified against mice. Mice with human intelligence, however, were not so easily stopped, and Charles had finally made it inside, tick-tick-ticking across the whimsical tiles toward the security system keypad on the wall.

Up, up the enormous furniture, claws scrabbling and nose twitching at the tantalizing scents of candied fruit, peanut butter and sugar, sugar, sugar—No, no time for a snack. Charles pulled his attention back to the keypad, which he could just barely reach by climbing the display of licorice behind the cash register. It had taken three weeks of surveillance to get the code, and Charles had repeated the numbers until he heard them in his dreams. Now he typed them in, throwing the weight of his entire body against the buttons.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. And—boop, the security system disengaged.

<You're clear,> he called to Erik.

Within a minute, the lock on the front door turned and the door opened. Erik was terrific at anything machinery-related, including lockpicking, and that had come in handy just as often as mouse morph.

"Took you long enough," Erik muttered as he crossed the shop. "Are you all right?"

<Of course I am.> Charles crawled into Erik's extended hand, snuffling instinctively at his fingers, which smelled like Cheet-os.

"Of course you are." Erik rolled his eyes. "Are you going to demorph?"

<No. I've still got an hour and a half, and I'll have to reset the alarm when we're done, and go out the same way I got in.>

Erik grunted and slipped Charles into the front pocket of his jacket, over his heart. Charles could feel it thudding gently behind him. It was silly for him to enjoy that so much, but he did.

They slipped into the shop's back office. Charles had wondered if they would need to look for false drawer-bottoms, hidden safes—but no, the candy shop owner kept the paperwork for his activities with The Sharing right in his normal file cabinet, in a folder marked The Sharing.

"My mother's gonna kill this guy if she ever realizes how careless he is," Erik said lightly, pulling out the folder and turning on the nearby lamp so they could see what it contained.

<Not your mother,> Charles corrected.

Erik didn't reply, and Charles didn't push it. The woman everyone thought of as Edie Lehnsherr was a high-ranking member of The Sharing, the "community engagement" organization the Yeerks used as a front to gather hosts. Erik's mother was a Controller, a prisoner somewhere inside her own brain while a Yeerk lived her life. Cooked in her kitchen. Volunteered at her synogogue. Kissed her son on the forehead. If joking about "Edie's" ruthlessness against her subordinates kept Erik from losing his mind, Charles wasn't going to stop him.

"Here," Erik said after a minute. "That's what we need, right there." He took out his phone and took pictures of the pages. The pictures would be deleted later, once the information on them was memorized; they'd all adjusted their phone settings to prevent anything entering 'the cloud.' They couldn't be too careful.

<Anything else interesting?>

Erik flipped through the rest of the folder, taking one or two more pictures, but there really wasn't much they didn't already know. The candy shop owner was pretty new to The Sharing, and his Yeerk wasn't especially high-ranking.

<He might have more later,> Charles said.

"I was just thinking that," Erik said, a hint of excitement in his voice. "The guy shouldn't be able to tell we were ever here. As long as he doesn't change the alarm code, we can come back…"

But on their way out of the office, that all went wrong. In the dark shop, glancing over his shoulder, Erik ran right into a display.

A dozen different kinds of candy cascaded to the floor with a sound like an avalanche. Jars shattered, shelves flipped, boxes tumbled, and Erik's foot slipped on a bag of gummy bears. He fell hard, managing to turn so as not to crush Charles in his pocket.

<Are you all right?>

"Are you all right?" Erik asked at the same time. He sat up, surveyed the damage, and started swearing. "Do you remember what all this looked like? Can we put it back together?"

Charles crawled from Erik's pocket onto his shoulder, and surveyed the damage with a mouse's superior night vision. <Too many things are broken. We could work all night and he'd still know someone was here.>

More swearing. "Fine. Fine. Okay, then. This is what we're doing."

Erik crouched down and began scooping candy into his jacket.

<Erik… are you stealing candy?>

"Yep. Gosh, this poor guy. Some idiot kids broke in and robbed his candy store. Stuff like that happens. No reason to think they went anywhere near his file cabinet, though, right? Idiot kids stealing candy don't care about The Sharing's secrets."

Charles couldn't help laughing. <I'll help. You need to take enough of a haul that no one will question the story.>

He hopped off Erik's shoulder onto the floor and demorphed. Only when he was standing barefoot on black-and-white tile did he remember that neither of them had brought any clothes for him. He had planned to stay a mouse.

"Well, you're not gonna be able to carry much," Erik said dryly, looking him up and down.

Charles knew he had to be blushing. This wasn't exactly the circumstances under which he'd imagined Erik would first see him naked. Not that it was appropriate to think about that anyway. Erik could never feel that way toward him.

"Chilly in here, isn't it," Erik said with a smirk, and Charles gasped in outrage and turned away, covering his chest.

Erik snickered, and returned to filling his pockets with taffy and gumballs. "Get that bucket over there, start filling it up."

Charles dashed over to the bucket of lollipops, pulled out the styrofoam filler that kept them upright, and started sweeping chocolates, gummies and packages of Pop Rocks into it. The display cases under the cash register were full of chocolate truffles—was it locked?

Another horrible avalanche crash, and Charles jumped out of his skin, whirling around.

Erik grinned at him from the wreckage of a second display. "Verisimilitude."

Charles rolled his eyes. "Come help me get the truffle case open. They're my favorite; if we're going to steal candy I want truffles."

Erik, cramming packs of jellybeans from the second display down his shirt, joined him at the truffle case. He poked thoughtfully at the lock, then reached for a huge novelty lollipop. "Stand back—"

"Don't you dare!" Charles swatted the lollipop out of his hand. "You'll get glass in the truffles!"

"Oh my gosh, say that again. Come on, say it again, you sound so adorable when you say 'truffles' with that accent—"

"Shut up! Just open the lock!"

Erik squeezed past him to the cash register and pulled a key off a nail. "There. All the truffles your heart could desire."

Charles opened the case, grabbed one of the cardboard boxes used by the cashiers, and filled it to the brim with every flavor of truffle, stopping to sample his favorites. "Mmm!"

"Hedonist. You have chocolate on your nose," Erik said, grinning, and stepped forward to wipe it with his thumb.

For a silent, inexplicable moment, they stood there together, Charles's pulse pounding and his mouth full of chocolate, Erik's sleeve brushing his bare shoulder.

"We should go," Erik said, turning away abruptly. "We'll have to set off the alarm, for ver—versim—what I said before. Idiot kids would only have time to grab so much before they ran for it."

"I've got to morph again," Charles said. "Can't run out there like this."

"Back in my pocket you go, then."

They re-armed the security system, put mouse-Charles in the hood of Erik's jacket—all his pockets were full—and Erik went out the door, carrying the bucket and truffle box. The alarm went off behind them as soon as the door opened.

Mission accomplished.

[jhaernyl]

Kiri meta (and a little bit about Suna)

 Me: I had an idea about Kiri and their death toll of shinobi. 

(Which is, if you ask me, another piece of bs from Kishi that is actually an unsustainable practice in any kind of society)

@shetanshadowwolf: Absolutely

Me: So I was thinking that while literal deaths do happen, what usually happens is one of the various levels of 'death'.

Which can be a damnatio memoriae of traitors (Roman Empire practice were convicted criminals/traitors of the state were removed from all official documents and any likenesses of them were destroyed, effectively striking them out of existence by excising their memory) or it can be that by being beaten by someone else you ended up in the other person's position in the rankings or even at the bottom of the rankings (depending on the differences between two people's rankings and the kind of duel and the stipulations in place beforehand) and so the operative you were before 'dies' and the one who beat you takes on your title and job or it can be a way to terminate a specific identity and either go back to your life or start your life anew.

It can also be a death of the person that you were before and then you have to abandon all previous ties, friendships, favors owned, debts incurred, etc. and you have to start your life anew as a new person and the old you is considered dead to the world or you it can be the death of the person that you were and then not only you have to abandon all previous ties / friendships / favors owned / debts incurred / etc. but you also have given your life over to the one who won the spar / showed how much superior to you they are to do whatever they want to it (which fits with Zabuza taking in Haku as his Tool and it turns that sorta-adoption into a cultural Kiri practice).

So when a Kiri shinobi says that someone else 'died' it can mean a lot of things that depend on the context of the 'death' and while sometimes it is a literal cessation of life even within Kiri, usually the literal cessation of life part happens when dealing with enemies.

But it also makes a great fear-based propaganda tool to wave at outsiders, to make it sound like Kiri kills their own indiscriminately and without any kind of logical sense to it.

@shetanshadowwolf: The second one sounds a bit like what the. Fuck. Brain. The whole "I was the sole survivor of my team/ class" stuffs. Like. If they put four chuunin-ready teams to pit each other and one ones who make it out are down to just one or two operatives. If you really wanna strike fear you brag that the rest died

Maybe they didn't really- they could be broken down in ranks y made to wait longer, etc

But I always felt that kiri shouldn't have, in practicality, been literally chumming thru their genin

Me: Or you can always dump a whole class of graduates down to get re-taught because what the fuck was that, you are not even close to the standards we want you to meet, except you Zabuza, you did great.

And then you reward Zabuza with the 'Monster of the Mist' title because Zabuza should have been way the fuck scarier than he was in the manga/anime (but he was basically the first main antagonist and I know Kishi hadn't even planned or wanted to do that arc so I can see why Zabuza, and hell even Kakashi in that arc, doesn't hold up to other big antagonists in retrospective) and surely had a fuckton of promise and bloodthirst.

@shetanshadowwolf: Yuuup

And an "if you're gonna have a reputation, kid. Make one that makes your opponents flee the battlefield. Short of that, make them fight with fear in their hearts"

Tho admittedly I think a lot of the continuity issues / hey why are things keep getting worse" is just a bad mix of how long everything got and backfill on things end up twisting into mad BS

Me: Oh I absolutely agree on that point, I just have fun with filling in the plot holes and colouring the lines.

I also think that Kiri could have a communal society that is not structured the way the land villages are.

From the maps I've found online, Whirpool (if it's placed on a map at all) was probably costal to the Land of Fire but Mist is his own island surrounded by other islands.

So, to blow some dust off that old theory of mine about ninja making deals to get kekkei genkai, the Mist people probably made deals with water spirits/gods.

Which explains why so many of them have sharp, shark-like teeth and the Hozuki can turn into water and the Yuki clan was basically a cross between ice spirits and ninjas and it explains a lot about Kisame.

So this is the map I'm going off of (mostly because it has Whirpool in it in a position that makes sense to me) and the thing about Mist is that they could have easily not become a village, just remained a set of Clans with their own land, away from the mainland and the squabbles of the other newly founded villages, right? They are away from there, they have the sea in between them and the rest of it, why would they have banded together to form a village of their own?

And what my brain threw at me (which doesn't have to be in contrast with anyone else's idea, this is just my own headcanon) is "Trade and Fear of Raiding."

Hidden Mist is clearly self-sufficient, they can afford to survive in their islands, but they have to have some materials/production that nobody else has because what you find on the coast is not the same kind of things that you get from the deeper sea and so they have stuff that they can trade but that can also be taken by them and while I would headcanon that they had trade with Whirpool, the moment Whirlpool went into a marriage alliance with the newborn Leaf, who is a village of ninja clans that falls under the command of the Daimyo of the Land of Fire, the Mist Clans probably looked at each and went well, fuck.

Because now their trade partners not only are a smaller village full of badass seal masters who can pop chains out of their bodies but now they also have the support of the Clan of A Thousand Skills, aka the Senju, and the scariest motherfuckers around, aka the Uchiha, and they are collecting other powerful clans, like those noble assholes who were all cozy with the various Daimyo's and could see through most shit, aka the Hyuga, and the scary as fuck Nara and their merchant buddies the Akimichi and those scary rip-your-brain-out Yamanaka, as if they are prizes at a fair.

That's ... that's fucking scary is what it is.

@shetanshadowwolf: When presented that way, yes

Me: And then other Villages start to form, including Cloud at their north (which I headcanon other villages formed exactly because the newborn Konoha was a huge threat to all other Clans and also because some Clans were shafted because their rivals joined first and they weren't allowed to and what are they going to do, play sitting ducks for their enemy clans? Fuck no, let's talk with others and make our own village and that's how we get to rival villages) and okay, hold your fucking horses, do we all agree that we are sitting ducks here? I mean, we are the toughest, nastiest motherfuckers around, we have done our deals with the spirits of the wind and sea, we are strong, yes but we are also one isolated, large island with smaller islands around and no way to easily decamp, not that we would if we could. This is our land and fucks everyone else if they try to take it from us.

[For an example of 'potential a clan who wanted to join Konoha but was not allowed' see the wasp people who have a beef with the Aburame and who apparently had the first Tsuchikage as a clan member. Those two clans reciprocally look down on each other and are bitter enemies and it would come to no surprise to me if the Aburame joined as long as those assholes don't. Not everyone is Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara and is either mutually willing or mutually able to convince their clan to bury the feud and so of course they ran and so the other Clan Head went 'fuck you all, I'll make my own damn village and it will be better structured and truer to our ideals than yours could ever be' and that's how we get Iwa being founded.]

So, being faced with the various land Daimyo's getting their own militias and with the chakra-wielding Clans thinking they were faced with the threat of other Clans banding together and being able to overcome them and either assimilate them or steal their trade/islands/people the Mist Clans probably met together and a deal was made for a Hidden Mist Village to be founded (possibly with someone playing as a puppet Daimyo so they could argue for political sovereignty over their own territory and nobody could use a lack of Daimyo as an excuse to invade or 'bring them to heel' or whatever shitty propaganda reason would be found).

@shetanshadowwolf: ... Valid points. (And had not zoomed out to note that some of the country to country rivalries might be as strongly tied to the previously vicious clan rivalries)

Me: They are pretty isolated.

So what they know is that some time ago, how much time ago differs from person to person, the Senju and the Uchiha buried their differences and founded a village and other Clans joined them and then some more Clans formed their own villages and now every Daimyo has a village and here they are, isolated from everyone else, behind on information, surrounded by potential enemies, with probably some pretty good trades.

Kiri is the place the Seven Swordsmen hail from that means that they have to have figured out how to make the Seven Swords which means swordsmanship and swordsmithing and probably good smiths in general on top of precious, luxury materials like mother of pearl, pearls, corals, healing methods/productions that are based on either product of the sea or things they could grow on their island etc.

A bunch of Clans working with each other and making mixed Clan teams and teaching chakra-wielding civilians how to pull off techniques and working for their Daimyo? That's a fucking problem.

@shetanshadowwolf: Yuuuup

Me: Kiri's people were hard, to begin with, because life out at sea, even on a big island, is a pretty isolated and self-sufficiency-requiring kind of system and they were probably close-knit, to begin with, a community that supported each other and because they were comparatively small and had less access to the resources of the other Villages they made themselves harder still.

Balls to the wall, we are the scariest, nastiest motherfuckers you will ever meet and you have better leg it before I chop your legs off and sink my teeth into your throat.

(Which is not to say that Kiri is necessarily nice or soft or home to a lot of sane ninja. Ninja as a general bunch are pretty insane people and Kiri was hard, to begin with, and got harder as they made deals with ice spirits and sea spirits and got even harder as a Village but it's not the outright let's throw together a bunch of scary tropes without rhyme or reason because they look cool bs I got from the canon)

@shetanshadowwolf: Kiri is not soft

Me: Not at all.

They are pretty much feral whenever someone Not One Of Us is around and they are hard as hell but tight-knit too when it's Just Us.

At least until Madara came around and screw them up and over and fucked with the Clans by destroying them and basically did everything he could to stoke them into becoming the hell pit every outsider thought they were, pushing them into being what Obito had grown up hearing about.

@shetanshadowwolf: On the scale of "we are our element/affinity" sand and kiri are some the baddest bitches, per se

Sand with its puppetry and poisons and the desert WILL devour you

And Kiri with its mist and feralness

Me: And, I would argue, water as well.

Zabuza did a few water attacks on top of the swordsmanship as did Hoshigaki Kisame.

So Sand is puppetry and poisons and the desert WILL devour you and Kiri is mist and feralness and swordsmanship and the sea WILL swallow you up

@shetanshadowwolf: Yes. Desert dehydration and water's all-powerful consumption

Two different sides of a brutal coin

Me: And since Suna is considered one of the weaker villages, big enough to be one of the 'Big Powers' but also inferior to Konoha / Iwa / Kumo I would say that Suna, like Kiri, was a village founded in direct reaction to the Big Three founding themselves.

Desert is not welcoming, like Kiri it's an isolated kind of living and I could see their Clans initially being nomadic, except that with those encroaching powers (especially highly militaristic Iwa at the north with two unnamed regions between them on the left side of the map that do not seem to have enough importance to be labelled or have a village that could be crossed by the Iwa people to spill over Suna) they also felt they should pull together and form their own village.

Consolidate their territory, make sure they can support each other and defend themselves in the face of outsiders and probably under pressure from their own Daimyo, since we know that there is a Daimyo of Wind that was turning his back on Suna and outsourcing missions to Konoha in Naruto's time.

What politician would want to be the one of the Four Great Lands (Five once Kiri declared itself a sovereign territory of their own) without its own standing militia? Especially with an aggressively militarized neighbour at the North and someone in the East who can not only capture and hand out Bijus but has also managed to entice both of the all-seeing eyes clans and has the sealing masters on their side.

[lurkingteeth]

Look away, kids and friends! Maws is having a fucking breakdown!! :)

I fucking hate my life I hate everything I’m always teetering on the edge of what little sanity I can pretend to have, sure our cool and joy is genuine but look how fucking close our neat and tidy bliss is to the abyss. I want to die. I want to die now, but that’s against our rules! We always follow the rules :) except no matter how strictly we follow them we still end up here because of a fucking video game. Stupid fucking doctor had us lower the dose of antidepressants to see if we can avoid some nasty side effects that drive me crazy but I go crazy without the pills anyway so what’s the fucking point? Just wait till all these new cool friends you love so much see you like this. Maws isn’t so fucking sweet and innocent he’s just disciplined for the most part but no matter what he’ll always lose control at some point and they’d better stay away when it happens. I don’t care right now. I really don’t. I’m smart enough to know I should stay away from them for my caring future self’s sake, but if one approaches me they get one warning that talking will get ugly and if they choose to listen I’ll gladly spill all the ugly blood in their face and they’ll see. The Deep Maws Lore™ that we joke about. It’s a deep fucking Deep Wound™ that never seems to heal fully cuz just the smallest movement of a muscle will tear it right open but if I don’t move I might as well die I can’t just live in a vacuum of perfect happiness so instead we live trying to work around this gaping hole. They wanna know their good pal Maws? We’ll tell them the official story, but I won’t hesitate to give them the director’s cut with all the nasty details if someone asks why he’s hurting.

Oh, Heart wouldn’t like me being nasty, would he? He’s so nice I really despise him right now. It’s probably envy that he’s so fucking happy with our life but what do I care.

I’m constantly running simulations of what those sweet little people from that server would think reading this. Oh I’m sure you’ve got your nasty sides too, but don’t try to tell me we’re on the same fucking level, you wanna know some Deep Dark Lore? I tried to kill my mom in her sleep when I was 11. She wasn’t the best mom or anything but that was in no way self defense. It was bloodthirst and curiosity. And this “Heart” I mentioned? You know nothing about Maws. Did you ever wonder why the name is in plural? Did you think it was just a cutesy nickname or something? I’m not even sure half of you know it’s a word at all. Maws isn’t even a person. “He” is a system of alters, AKA multiple personalities. Heart is that sweet lovely caring guy you’ve talked to like 90% of the time and the other 10% were probably Kim. I’m not them. I’m Taciturn. I haven’t been given much time in the front lately on account of my destructive tendencies, but we don’t always have a lot of control over this. Last time we knew I was out, I cut the poor body. I’ll try not to do it again but oh do I want to hurt it. I could beg them to let me hurt it. Or I could hurt you, hurt our sweet little friendship, to hurt them. If you’re reading this, it’s probably already hurt. Heart tells me he has faith in you, and I’m sure he’s got a point. You probably pity us more than you hate us, but I could make you hate us. Must of us are very good at making people feel how we want them to feel. You liked us, didn’t you? Grew quite fond of Maws? Quirky, sweet, funny Maws? Heart’s work is impressive, but I’d much rather show you something hideous. I want so badly to send this to the people he cares the most about. Heart did say you deserved to know our secrets after all... Now tell me, Heart, what wouldn’t they forgive? Can I just tell them about how we tried to kill another kid at age 9, the several planned murders at and the nazi phase at 12, and how Grin and I so longingly dreamed of torturing and killing people through most of our teens? Or do I have to actually do something to them? Speaking of which, why don’t I just go get us permanently banned from your favorite place in the whole world? Just go harass people real quick and bad enough no one trusts you? Wouldn’t that be nice? Then you could just die. Just cut everyone off and then DIE! WHY CAN’T WE JUST DIE?!

Yours forever, at least until we die

-Taciturn

Edit: set a link to this as his discord status. Please dm him to let him know you read ;)