#hi they are on my brain again

[bitchfitch]

Years ago now Esti's mentor had warned him that there would come a day he no longer thought of the home he grew up in as his. He'd said it as a warning against taking his yearly break from training for granted, after Esti complained about having to return to his parents. Esti knew the take away Pavo meant was "You will miss your parents, their home, and their roll in your childhood when you are grown," but he had long since stopped thinking of his parents' home as his. It had been a miserable prison he was forced to return to year after year since the second year of his training when a fight between him and his father about what kind of influence Pavo was blew out of proportion. He had spent the rest of that winter locked in his room.

Home was at his mentor's side studying and learning everything the vastly more experienced man had to teach. Home was a place of spring flowers and summer rains, and autumn leaves. Here there was only isolation and blinding blankets of snow.

Esti had been a man for years now, long overstaying his apprenticeship which had been meant to end the moment he was an adult. He'd begged to continue his training, both at his mentor's and his parents' feet, just to avoid having to leave all his joy behind.

Esti was allowed to stay only because his apprenticeship had always been a tool of barter. A way to feign goodwill between his clan and Pavo's until he could be married off to seal a more lucrative alliance elsewhere. Pavo had said it was just the way of things for nobles to live unhappy lives and then die obscenely wealthy. He joked the only way he had managed to escape such a fate himself was by being too ugly and mean for anyone to marry even out of desperation. Esti had hoped being a halfbred bastard son would have made him an equally unappealing match despite his family's wealth and reputation.

He sat on his parents front porch while he waited for his fate to be decided by two people who never cared much for their eldest son and one who made him the man he is.

The ribbon he pulled between his fingers in an idle fidget was crinkled and worn from years of use. It was tradition for young women to give their soon to be betrothed one of their hair ribbons before their families negotiated their marriage. Something about luck and it making the talks more likely to work out in their favor.

Her name was Raven. She was as shadow demon like Esti but she was from one of the lower noble families. He'd met her when they were both fifteen, when her governess brought her to Pavo's village to train for a few weeks alongside the boys who would one day command armies. She was bold and brash. The sort who charged first and thought later. Always happy to speak her mind but clever enough to know when to hold her tongue. Everything Esti wasn't and so much more.

He'd nursed a crush on her that entire week, but so did basically every other boy in their training group and a fair few of the village girls who all suddenly became extremely interested in watching the training sessions when they never had been before. Raven was just that awe inspiring. The sort that didn't need years of training to have armies ready to kneel to her.

Despite that, despite everything wonderful about her, it wasn't her ribbon in his hands. She was the match their parents picked out for him. He did have her ribbon, but that shiny red thing she had clearly never worn once was tucked away inside his pocket.

This one in his hands was Pavo's ribbon. The one Pavo had taken out of his own hair when they arrived to tie up Esti's. That had been a nervous fidget too, in its own way, Pavo grooming him like he was still a mud stained pre teen in need of an adult to do their hair and straighten their clothes before they were put in front of someone who mattered more than them.

He wondered if the tradition was on Pavo's mind like it had been on Esti's as his thick fingers combed through his hair. He wants to believe it had been.

The door behind him slid open and shut again. The well worn floorboards creaking as Pavo stepped out onto them.

"Esti? Are you near?" he glanced around, the mirrored silver of his faux eyes glinting in the evening light.

"Sorry," Esti forced himself to calm down, supressing the inky black shadows that tended to cling to his skin when he got nervous. For most people they did nothing to conceal him, while rendering him totally invisible to whatever spell work let Pavo see through his prosthetics.

Pavo sighed when he looked to him then, his face losing almost all the tension he had been carrying.

"Come on then. I want a guided tour before we have to go hear their verdict at dinner," Pavo brushed past the moment of quiet emotion as he stepped down from the porch and into the icy grass. "Start with how we get to your room I know the maid already showed me but- Your mother and her shadows- I swear that woman has set up much of her home to irk me specifically."

"Yes sir, Master," Esti bit back a small laugh at his mentor's expense. Standing and leading the way to the corner of the estate his room was situated in. "Did the talk go well?" he would ask after long moments of only their footsteps crunching through the year's first snow to fill the silence between them. He was still worrying the ribbon between his fingers while they made the walk, finding solace in it when he found himself too cowardly to reach out and take Pavo's hand.

"It went as well as we expected it would," Pavo shrugged. "They don't want to say yes, because they want Miss Raven's lands, but they also know I'm not leaving without a yes. I'm sure they considered just killing me for such insolence, but killing a king's brother would be plenty excuse for said king to finally start that war your apprenticeship was meant to avoid. Plus such a conflict would be hugely unpopular amongst your people for how pointless it would be," he prattles off the details. "So, they don't want to say yes, but they know they have no real choice. I even tried to lay it out plainly in a way that would let them feel like good people. Said 'Marry him off to her and have land, a guaranteed war, and none of your son's love. Marry him off to me and you'll have an alliance with the only military strong enough to turn this entire land to ash, and a guarantee that as long as I live there would be no war between our clans.'"

"You would prevent the war?" Esti had always believed it a forgone conclusion. Their families had been rivals for centuries but only recently did Pavo's gain the power needed for a quick victory through ruthless conquest of a few of Esti's clan's former allies and their surrounding neighbors.

"For you? I'd fight it alone if I had too," he put a hand on Esti's shoulder, squeezing it before pulling him to his side. "And maybe I've already confirmed it with Truthahn. He wants a peaceful reign now that our father is gone, and a marriage between us is probably the fastest and easiest way to guarantee that. He even offered to come to these talks on my behalf, if you can believe it."

"That's an image. The two of us sitting on that porch together waiting for them to decide our fate." Esti couldn't stop the laugh this time. Pavo, a man so regal and confident in himself, made to sit outside in the cold while someone else argued that he be allowed what he wanted.

"Oh no, had that happened we would have found somewhere to sneak off to. If they aren't going to respect me, I'm not respecting them; I'm fucking their son in the snow and making absolutely certain they hear him screaming for me."

"Pavo!" Esti exclaimed while his brain tried very hard to work under the strain of such a mortifying image.

"Yeah, like that."

[saints-who-never-existed]

“In the war film, a soldier can hold his buddy—as long as his buddy is dying on the battlefield. In the western, Butch Cassidy can wash the Sundance Kid’s naked flesh—as long as it is wounded. In the boxing film, a trainer can rub the well-developed torso and sinewy back of his protege—as long as it is bruised. In the crime film, a mob lieutenant can embrace his boss like a lover—as long as he is riddled with bullets. 

Violence makes the homo-eroticism of many “male” genres invisible; it is a structural mechanism of plausible deniability.”

–Tarantino’s Incarnational Theology: Reservoir Dogs, Crucifixions, and Spectacular Violence. Kent L. Brintnall.

[hansoeii]

crowley!

[lylahammar]

Randomly thinkin about Chilchuck today, and how he tries sooooo hard to self sabotage

like for example, other half foots on the island think that he's a greedy asshole who only cares about money, and he does nothing to try to disprove that

but then there's this omake at the end of book 9 that shows that people treat half foots fucking TERRIBLY and chilchuck started a union to protect them

and then in the bicorn chapter, he doesn't want Marcille to keep digging into his personal business so he tells her he CHEATED ON HIS WIFE

but he just COMPLETELY fuckin lied about that and made himself sound so much worse than he is bc he's afraid of being vulnerable with people and would rather everyone believes he's a shitty person so he can keep them at a distance

and the thing that's memed so often is that he refuses to help with fighting most of the time because it's not part of his contract

but if you take this lore into account (not gonna add those particular images to this post simply bc I've used them in so many posts already LMAO) along with this tidbit from the world guide:

then it's like. yeah he has to keep his weight low so if he gets killed or severely injured and has to be healed, that could be really dangerous for him. and even if he was healed at that point he'd end up being a burden to the party after that point, he would be too dangerously thin/sickly to be able to help.

Like, Chilchuck has so many things about him that APPEAR to be character flaws, but every single one of them has a very reasonable explanation. He just leans into the mischaracterization bc he's emotionally withholding and can handle people thinking he's an asshole more than he can handle opening up to anyone. he's such a well thought out and interesting character

[hinamie]

spiraling

[wombrion]

mama & hatchling thing

[obsessedwithstarwars]

Okay you can’t tell me that Vlad doesn’t have an organ somewhere in his mansion. Upon learning of this, Danny would teach himself how to play the Haunted Mansion theme on the organ and play it at 2am.

Vlad Masters is away on business in Gotham, and the Fentons are coincidentally there for a symposium on ecto-activity. So it’s perfect! Except he goes to the wrong house, er mansion.

Honestly, Danny thought it was one of Vlad’s many mansions. Scaring the old man is his favorite activity after all. There’s a higher amount of ectoplasm here, so it has to be Vlad’s place right?

When Bruce comes out (on one of his few nights off) and sees his carbon copy playing the organ, all thoughts fly out of his head. Danny finally looks up and also blue screens. They stare at each other for what feels like an eternity until Danny’s cell phone rings (the ghostbusters theme??) and he panics. He jumps up and makes a break for the other door rushing through apologies “SorryWronghousegottagobye!” And runs out of the room. “Wait! Who are you?”Bruce exclaims as he rushes after him. They’re on the second story in one of the rooms he rarely uses. How did he know where the organ was? No matter. He’ll catch the kid on the stairs.

Except the kid is already almost at the bottom. How did he get down so effortlessly? The kid practically floated down the stairs.

Bruce gets to the foyer just in time to see the kid realize the door was dead-bolted in multiple spots. He won’t be able to undo them all before Bruce catches up to him.

He slows down and stands behind a pillar, assessing his next move. He needs to be careful here. This is a child after all, no need to spook him any more than he already has. He needs to slowly approach, and ask his questions.

But then the kid does the unexpected. After looking around frantically, he takes a deep breath. Two rings form around his middle and travel up and down his body. His black hair turns ghostly white. He looks back, almost directly at Bruce. His eyes widen as if he realizes he’s being watched. He whispers, barely loud enough to hear, “I’m so sorry, please don’t follow me.” Then, he backs through the locked door and vanishes.

[mischiefbuckley]

abc really said let’s go ahead and make wikipedia late night deep diving Buck who’s trying to learn all he can about current hyperfixation canon and I love it here so much

[timethehobo]

Thinking about that concept sketch of the companions around the table again. Emmrich’s fancy posing. 🤭

[lotus-pear]

mourning black and the death of ideals

[le-poofe]

Smoochie woochie 💋✨ (his words, not mine)

[yingxtkm]

Anyone ask for aeriseph sibling nonsense? No? Well too bad they live in my head rent free.

[wishchip106]

i’ve been using my brain more than its used to

gonna think about gay mutant road trip hope my brain doesn’t explode

[skyenish]

Jamil doodles for warmup (it’s 2 am)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Normal Friend Behaviour.

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[hinamie]

domain expansion