#i have the innes brain disease

[mirensiart]

Mixing two Fandoms but which link do you think would get along the best with Innes?

I'M LOSING MY MIND OVER THIS ASK ANON OOOUGH I actually did draw a lot of sketches to go with it but my yapping got so long I decided to upload those pics in a separate post tomorrow, so I can yap here freely lol

super long yapping incoming by the way lmao

Ok so, for my loz oomfs who aren't versed into fire emblem, innes is a semi plot relevant character from the game fire emblem: sacred stones for the gba

Innes is an overconfident, proud, blunt, brash, smart, perfectionist, super tsundere crown prince, he's known to be the best archer and tactician in the entire continent, and yet, no matter what he does, he is always compared and is always somehow second best to Ephraim, the prince from the neighboring kingdom

Which is why the headcanon that Innes' brash and egotistical/overconfident attitude is actually to mask his huge inferiority complex towards Ephraim makes sense to me lol also Innes has a one-sided rivalry with Ephraim, he is obsessed to show him he's the best prince, much to Eph's annoyance lol

This is him, i want y'all to look at how pretty he is, I would die for him, but i'd also put him in a blender and then analyze him under a microscope

ANYWAY now that the intro to my bestie (innes) is done, the Link I believe he'd get along with best is probably Wars lol

I was thinking that maybe he could get along with Legend but Innes would probably hate Legend, like Leg is too similar personality wise but lacks Innes' extreme overconfidence and bluntness and also, Innes would probably see himself too much in Legend and like, I don't think he'd be gentle, like "oh you are mean to mask ur emotional insecurities too?? I will be EXTRA MEAN back instead of bonding over it" kinda way lmao classic innes, which would make everything worse lmao anyway keep those two away

Now, for Wars, I can see it, but like, hear me out first

Innes means well, he is actually pretty soft under his thousand layers of pride and bluntness, but he has zero charisma, and thus interacting with the more soft/nice Links would result in disaster, in Innes' game the only people he has supports with are the ones who talk back to him and are mean to him back, I've always liked the idea that softness and niceness puts him off a lil bit, he feels more comfortable with people who can respond to his banter lol

Now, Innes actually really likes and respects a character named Gerik, who's the best mercenary in the continent and who's under Innes' command but speaks to him freely

Innes respects him and actually admires Gerik and seeks out advice to him, another one of innes' subordinates is Vanessa, and Innes also likes her cause despite Vanessa being under his command, she also speaks freely to him

I can see something like that happening with wars, like wars is an army captain, a tactician, a perfectionist and also uses his overconfidence and pride as a way to mask his trauma and imposter syndrome, like they're pretty similar with the big difference that wars has like extreme charisma while innes doesn't lmao also wars isn't blunt or brash, but he can banter and reply back

Which is why I feel they'd get along best, Innes is a prince, but his entire inferiority complex is cause a fellow prince, his equal, is better than him

Wars is an army captain and not royalty, even if Wars were to be better at stuff than Innes, I don't think Innes would like, see him as a threat to his abilities since Wars isn't royalty and thus isn't an equal to him lmao

Wars would know how to handle Innes since he knows his way around nobles and royalty, Innes would probably really like Wars' perfectionism and attention to detail and also his leadership skills

I can see them exchanging tactics and comparing strategies, they'd both probably geek out over it lol

I can see Innes being his blunt brash mean self towards wars a couple of times and wars not replying back cause like, Innes is a prince and Wars is just a captain, but I like to think wars probably replies back someday and throws some banter Innes' way and oh that's settles.it, he is now Innes' fave lmao

I feel like Innes could absolutely banter with legend too, but they'd be hurtful to each other, I can see innes having playful banter with wars though, like wars would know how to deal with blunt royalty he can play innes like a fiddle lmao

Also, I can see innes going into a long rant about his younger sister, tana, and wars relating and ranting about linkle back and yeah, wars is innes' fave alright lmao

Anyway, yeah... sorry for this super mega hyper long reply I am....very unwell for innes lmao

[marchwardenofmordor]

Since people liked my post about the new Nosferatu film, I’m gonna go a little more in depth about some of the things that REALLY stood out to me

- The sound design of his voice and the blood drinking: a fucking genius choice. Each horrific rattling inhale before he speaks and the way he trails off at the end of his sentences because he’s manually breathing for the EXPRESS PURPOSE OF SPEAKING. That monotone is fucking perfect because he sound like the air is being squeezed out of him with each word. The monstrous gulping and slurping as he drinks blood is great because it sounds equal parts disgusting and sexual.

- I think, as a personification of shame, that he is SUPPOSED to make you want to crawl out of your own skin. The moaning, the nudity, the squelchy sounds… if you went to the cinema to see it, I think the idea was to make you blush and perhaps have a bit of a bodily reaction that would have you glancing around at other people in embarrassment. Not everybody is going to want him, but he will tap into the shame of witnessing something sexual in public. If we take the particular time period the film is set in, too, I think he’s supposed to have us clutching our pearls, making us collectively hearken back to the victorian attitudes towards sex and shame.

- You know what else is great about putting us in that mindset as an audience? It makes us remember that talking about sex and death are still considered shameful and taboo - the Victorian period really wasn’t that long ago, and some aspects of that history still casts its shadow of shame over us. But as ashamed as we are, we’re also curious creatures.

- Sex and death are very closely linked. Again, a little death being a term for an orgasm, the fact that indole is a chemical that both repels and attracts us (the scent is commonly used in perfumery, and in small amounts, smells alluring and seductive, like white florals, or the literal smell of sex, but in large concentrations smells fucking rancid, like rotting bodies). When we die, our brains release a rush of endorphins, etc. Dead bodies have a ‘sweet’ smell before they begin rotting - again, that’s probably indole, and would explain some of the subconscious urges of a necrophiliac.

- He is also called ‘death’ multiple times, and we know that a little fraction of his power is bringing ‘la petit mort’ (a little death / orgasm) to his victims.

- Even rats are symbolic here of sex, death and disease: we know terms like ‘multiplying like rats’ obviously, and how rats are symbolic of the plague (even though it was the fleas that caused it). The presence of the rats and the cries of townsfolk about ‘disease’ and ‘plague’ are less like the actual literal plague, and - considering that Orlok is ‘shame’ - more like a metaphorical miasma sweeping through victorian society, reinforcing ideas of shame and purity and what is or is not proper.

- Bodily fluids!! There are tears, there’s cum, considering the rats (again) there’s excrement (also on the walls of the cell in the asylum??), and with the Renfield-type character there’s also saliva. This isn’t just for shock/horror - the main fluid shown is blood, and in the mindset of a victorian christian (historically, blood transfusions could only really be shared between a man and a woman who were married because blood was a life-giving bodily fluid likened to the life-sowing fluid of semen), the idea of a blood-drinking monster was fucking horrific and blasphemous, sinful beyond measure.

- Orlok’s appearance and the treatment of the G*psies in the town (once more - “bringing shame to this inn!” Likening them to the vampire) is indicative of the xenophobia and prejudice towards Romani Jewish people of the time period, where white victorian christians feared Romani people as being ‘child-stealing’, ‘blood-drinking’ (again, look up Blood Libel) barbarians prone to SA (stereotypes which sadly persist today), but also fetishised them as mystics. (I did my university dissertation on ‘boho’ tattoos, cultural appropriation and the origins of the ‘boho’ aesthetic and why it is just ✨not it✨ but I won’t go into that in depth because my analysis was literally over 5000 words)

- I love that the message at the end was basically ‘the only way to kill your shame is to lay with it, to accept it and love it’ - which is honestly true. If you learn to accept uncomfortable aspects of yourself and face them, they no longer have any sort of power over you.

- The female protagonist is dressed all in white, indicative of her purity and chastity, and it’s interesting to see how her wardrobe gradually darkens throughout the film, showing her becoming quite monstrous herself in one particular scene where she rips open the top of her dress and demands Thomas to ‘take her’, up until the final scene, where she is stark naked and covered in blood. Honestly wicked. I love a good corruption. Her character is so symbolic of the struggle of someone who is deeply repressed and chastised for her desires. Desires which started innocently and then - through suppression in an oppressive society and household (her father discovering her naked and screaming at her for being sinful)- were twisted and given form as something monstrous that literally eats away at her and those around her, because she brings her shame wherever she goes, and in the end, even though she faces it and sets an example, it ultimately kills her to do so.

- Also notice how NOBODY fucking listens to her. And every time nobody listens to her, Orlok grows stronger as she grows angrier and more frustrated. They’re feeding him by ignoring her. It’s sad that they look at her in the end, and deem her ‘sacrifice’ as noble, only really paying attention to her once she is dead, with her shame laying on top of her, crushing her. This is the torment of the Victorian Woman, told that she must deal with her problems alone by the male characters.

Edit: Also because the film is German in origin, I’d recommend looking up the ‘Nachzehrer’ creature - a ghoulish vampire-esque creature that would rise from the grave to drag its victims into death with it through various means, known to devour its own funeral shroud, rendering it naked. Fun fact: it was said that if a corpse was clutching its left thumb in its right hand with the left eye open (I think? It’s been a while since I researched it), it would rise as a Nachzehrer. They are also thought to be able to drain their victim’s life force remotely. The threat was said to be particularly great if the living gave the Nachzehrer a personal affectation - in the case of Orlok, it would be Thomas giving him the locket containing Ellen’s hair.

[vayle]

Hey everyone, dunno how long this might be, kind of doing a stream of consciousness style ramble about TNTF and me and stuff :)

alright so, tntf is getting a huge rework, this is my first if game ever, the coding is a little overwhelming, i know it’s fairly simple but it’s A LOT.

the reason i’ve been pretty quiet is mostly due to burnout, as some of you know i have health issues, i have crohns disease, i’m also autistic with adhd—something i love about this community is the understanding and acceptance for people/authors like me who may want to write but are just too stuck to be able to do it.

i know everyone is so jazzed for the next update, and i am too, there’s a few changes i’m making in regards to the technical aspects of the story, i’m removing stats, for the MC and for relationships. part of it is… i’m not a numbers person, trying to balance out the stats going up and down is a pain when this is planned to be a pretty damn long story. i also just don’t like it for my story personally, i don’t want you, as the player to feel like you have to game-ify personality or relationships.

this also opens the option for me to write more player responses to situations without having all of that annoying code in my brain~ MORE FLAVOR!

My writing has also vastly improved when it comes to fiction, a lot because i have been practicing so much while i’ve been sick (i’ve been playing with and writing AI chatbots on Janitor.AI, learning how to create a complex and realistic personality, an engaging character and world.) It’s been useful as a stress reliever and as a tool to help me write better, more descriptive etc.

on that note, smut in my game is also a very yes, i feel much more comfortable writing it now… heh.

i’ve also decided that all of my books are going to remain free, tntf was a planned three book series, it may just be one or two HUGE books, we’re going to have to see what i, and twine are capable of. but the story is going to span four countries and two continents of the world, so yeah.

the new rewrite is also going to slow things down considerably, because now we’ll have MC on a ship for four months as the intro, then meeting maddock and spending <insert amount of time here> with him while traveling to that little inn. it also gives me more room to introduce the characters a lot earlier but in their own POVs and not just while they’re with MC. i want the world to feel alive.

my decision to make and keep tntf free is because i want to.

i would not appreciate minors interacting with my content, but i also grew up with the internet, i know that no matter how much prevention we put in, minors are going to access our content regardless if it’s free or not. i just ask that if you are a minor and reading adult fiction, please don’t comment, dm or whatever, this is for your safety in the community as well as, i don’t want to deal with other people’s children on the internet, it’s nothing against any of ya’ll, you’re awesome, children are great but i’m almost 26, i really don’t want to deal with kids in what’s pretty much an adult space (i haven’t really seen books catered to the younger than 18 crowd, but like i’m saying, i’m more interested in forging connections with the adult community here, considering i am one, lmao *bats children away with pool noodles*)

i think that’s it

i might post more stuff but that’s my general direction

also to the asks in my inbox from last year on my birthday and forward… I READ THEM ALL AND APPRECIATE EVERY WELL WISH AND FEEDBACK, GENUINELY. i’m just bad at social media.

[cellarspider]

Good lord I take a week off of tumblr and now there’s a lot of you

Hello to everyone who’s just followed me in the past week! Most of you have come from a long ramble of mine on interdisciplinary learning, medieval head trauma, and Gallus’ well-wishings on my recent graduation (https://www.tumblr.com/gallusrostromegalus/727017193756327936), thank you to Gallus for that. Thank you to those of you who’ve commented with kind words as well. Specific shout-outs, links to relevant rambles, and questions are below, in the section “Link Roundup and Shoutouts”.

Yes, this is a post with sections. This is how we roll here.

Introduction to Spider

For those who don’t know, I’m Spider! I’ve just gotten my PhD in Mammalian Genetics, having gotten a Masters in Informatics and a Bachelors in Medieval Studies before that. I’ll quite happily ramble about any of them, with the following caveats: an undergraduate degree means I know the basics, but they may be increasingly out of date. And advanced degrees are increasingly specialized in their scope as you go along—you gain the skills to more easily understand things from related specialties, but you only become truly, deeply knowledgeable on very specific topics. However, these topics are not always limited to the field of study generally expected by the degree-granting institution! My focus ended up being significantly divergent from everyone else’s, which resulted in an interesting challenge of communicating my project to others at the institute.

The field I dove into for my PhD was systems genetics. Rather than studying individual genes and how they function, my work examined the wider view: think the difference between a local weather forecast versus modeling the global climate. Both synthesize vast amounts of information, just on different scales and levels of detail.

Many people love studying the tiny details around individual genes, because they can dig down into the mechanisms that make the gene work, how it might break and cause disease, and maybe how to fix those diseases. My love is for the global view of things, which gives you the ability to characterize general statements about how genes are regulated and modified. It’s a field that’s very hard to study without good data that’s complicated to acquire, so it’s a very exciting subject to work on! I’m looking forward to carrying that on into a postdoctoral study, in which I’ll work with a new lab and learn the dreaded skill of grant writing. I’ll be starting this month!

…As Gallus mentioned, my time until then is very much devoted to Baldur’s Gate 3. Happily for me, the new research group I’ll be joining has also been going nuts for Baldur’s Gate 3, so I’ll have a lot to talk about with my coworkers once I’m back to the lab.

In my free time, I’m happy to ramble upon request about the subjects I love, including but not limited to my fields of academic study, my constructed language hobby, scientific ethics and its portrayal in media, creepy-crawlies (always appropriately tagged for people’s phobias), and Baldur’s Gate 3.

…Lots of Baldur’s Gate 3. (I’ve only just reached the Lost Light Inn, please no spoilers!)

Link Roundup and Shoutouts

For those who are interested to see my ramble about why European medical texts in the medieval period tended to be terrible, it’s available here: https://www.tumblr.com/cellarspider/680342023316930560/hi-please-rant-about-medieval-european-medical

Thank you to all those who dug up the name of the academic text I’d forgotten! Its title, in all its wordy glory, is Injuries of the skull and brain, as described in the myths, legends, and folk-tales of the various peoples of the world, with some comments on the significance and reliability of this information in evaluating contemporary concepts as to their nature and lethality by Cyril B. Courville, 1967. It’s a fantastic book, and good lord that title just does not stop

Thank you to fellow spiders @one-spider-from-mars and @vaspider for their comments. We are many. We are mighty.

Thank you to @belovedbright for the fantastic story of the death of Conchobar mac Nessa via brain trauma inflicted by a brain https://www.tumblr.com/belovedbright/727132485919604736

To @doomhamster's question on whether egg whites were used in the medieval treatment of burns: I don’t know! Unfortunately I can’t access the translation of the medical manual I referred to back then (https://worldcat.org/title/1123716578), and the only version I can find online at the moment is in 14th century French (https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Sloane_MS_1977). Egg whites do appear 33 times in the translation, according to the limited ability I have to search the text, and they show up throughout the book.

[pangolin-404]

upturned inn dashboard simulator

2 notes

🔦lonetraveler 🔁bird--brained

anyone else down for getting together and wrapping ourselves into eggs directly in front of the elevator. for fun

🔦lonetraveler

Can you not.

🪶crow985

use the stairs if it bothers you smh

🥚flight-simulator-2008

actually I think it'd be really fun if we did this on the stairs also!! the different elevations would be a fun challenge to work with ^-^

🔦lonetraveler

Please don't, people actually need to go places. Where are you even finding stairs, this place doesn't have inter-floor staircases?

🪽pecker9000

K

🥚flight-simulator-2008

U

🍗bird--brained

N

#I hate this website

941 notes

🔦lonetraveler 🔁mosspilled

🌿mosspilled

If anyone needs me I'll be in the slop. btw

🔦lonetraveler

Aren't you the slug who bit my ankles when I tried to wade through a flooded floor yesterday?

🌿mosspilled

Come into the slop with me. the slime.

🌿mosspilled

Let's get diseases from stillwater together

#I'm good. Thanks.

112 notes

🔦lonetraveler 🔁cornerconfessions

🚪cornerconfessions

We won't post the latest ask because we believe the sender forgot to hit "ask anonymously."

If it makes you feel any better, Mod Teeth also thinks the mannequins are hot.

-Mod Marble

🎀innkeeper-ik

delete this

297k notes

🔦lonetraveler 🔁innkeeper-ik

🎀innkeeper-ik

Floors 502-509 have reported catastrophic structural collapses! I advise anyone in that area to exercise caution when going about your day!

1 note

#Noted.

🔦lonetraveler 🔁gotthatdoginme

🦴gotthatdoginme

got a new chew toy today fuck yes

🤖i-assign-you-floors

270

Beep boop! I generate a random floor number for you. Any correct floor numbers are purely accidental.

🪨galatea-yearning

Hey OP ate my floormate last month. Keep your distance.

🤖i-assign-you-floors

[ooc] sorry what

🦴gotthatdoginme

Getting a new chew toy soon!!

30 notes

🔦lonetraveler 🔁gotthatdoginme

👒biting-you-biting-you

I'M GONNA SAY IT. THE PIANIST ON FLOOR 307 PLAYS NOTHING BUT BANGERS AND I'D MAKE OUT SLOPPY STYLE WITH THEM

🗿pianist-on-307

thanks dude

👒biting-you-biting-you

.

8.9k notes

🔦lonetraveler🔁��birthday-bug

My flashlight is officially dead.

🎉birthday-bug

🔦lonetraveler

?

#?

202 notes

🔦lonetraveler

Does anyone know where I can pick up some batteries? The lighting in the inn is spotty and the flashlight I keep with me has been flickering.

0 notes

🔦lonetraveler 🔁innkeeper-ik

🔦lonetraveler

I'm going to kill Ik. This inn sucks.

🎀innkeeper-ik

:(

🔦lonetraveler

Sorry. 5 stars

🎀innkeeper-ik

:)

[dullahandyke]

Ok hi no more constantly spamming u w liveblogs. Heres one big dgs liveblog

God this game fucking loves the rumble controller. It's so so constant I'm thinking of turning it off... I'm a ds girlie I'm not used to this terror

[ID: Ryuunosuke Naruhodou's blank face.]

^ help me when he went from supremely nervous to still waters when he realised he didnt know your mans name... not a single brain cell in there

Also I'm playing w the jp voices because duh (asougi would NEVER be british) and I love ryuus 'HAI' so much... hes so intense

Asougi hates the British it's awesome <3 go king criticise the government for caving to pressure in order to appease global superpowers

Also I cant help it whenever the asougi dating sim image (you know the one) comes up I Cannot take it seriously.... bro I remember the gimmick blog it's over at that point

Also asougi literally calling ryuu 'partner'... usually I'm not one for 'theyve been dating the whole time' but truly asoryuu boyfriends is the realest... they have a bond found only between 2 gay people from before the stonewall inn was even a twinkle in the mob's eye

THE READING SPRITE WHERE RYUU IS JUST SHUFFLING PAPERS TOGETHER... he is such a mess I love him

HOSONAGA ALERT!!!! HOSONAGA IS HERE!!! now to attempt to disentangle him from my minds main impression of him, from a bad imagines post where hes a catboy maid mewling into the bedsheets

Also I love that the first witness we get is straight up dying of tuberculosis. 'This is what the olden days were like, right. Everyone coughing up blood'

Oh boooo the 'pun' Japanese names... I'll kill u dead his is khura'in all over again

AUCHI LITERSLLY CALLS ASOUGI A BOY NEXT DOOR???? Literal homosexuals...

Also you just know asougi would love unionising. Yes boy exercise every right you are given regardless of the pushback from those for whom it is inconvenient

God ryuu is so nervous and sweaty... when he slams his hands on the bench and they make an audible splat becsuee of how sweaty he is and he nervously looks at them to make sure hes not fucked up...

Also I love how hes always raising his hand... hes so proper

I dont think any of these guys know what a beef cutlet is. Tho nosa giving ryuu food recs for after prison is fun

HOLY FUCK I GOT AN ACHIEVEMENT FOR LRESSING A STSTEMENT LETS GO!!!!!!!!! so hyped for this

God I love ryuus default fact he has the gentle and loving eyes of a cow

SAMURAI WITH A MISSION PLAYING YESYEYEYSYEYSYEYSYESYS WHOPOOOOPOOOOOOOWOOOOOOHOO ASOUGI ILY

OH FUCK OFFFFFF NOT HOTTA CLINIC.... WE NEED 2 GET AWAY FROM THAT FUCK !!!!! *sprays hotti w bug spray*

Help me examining the medical card is so funny... ryuu vc I Hate Doctors I Havent Been Sick Since I Was 5 I Am Immune To Every Disease

Also bubbles is lying down near me shes so cute sleeping... conked out

Also elaborating on the gayness of rhe 'partner' thing, it's mostly bcos of the little pause asougi always does before saying it... its novel and risque innit

Ok I just got up to the first trial break and according to this YouTube video that's only like halfway thru the trial... its nearly midnight I am Not continuing until tomorrow... see u fucks then <3

[creativesplat]

for the character ask, how about Alcryst and Alfred?

right so this has been in my drafts for MONTHS so I decided I'd post it (I may not have done Alcryst, really sorry 😅)

sorry for taking so long to get back to you doodles!

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

oooh... I think Alfred would be amazing in an 1800s gothic horror book, maybe as the romantic interest. He and his wife Alear go to the Inn of the Blaiddyd family. He's on his deathbed with (insert romantic poet style wasting disease here (eg. consumption)), and as a last desperate attempt to heal him, Alear's sister Veyle has recommended to see a doctor who is treating the heir to the Inn, Dimitri. The doctor has no heart - literally - it was taken out by the one of the fell ones (eldtirch horrors) Bylee and Byleth, both identical twins, have lost their hearts, taken by the Immaculate One (eldritch Rhea, but she doesn't go by that name).

Anyway main points:

Dimitri's haunted (being treated for hallucinations and sickness of the mind, but he is actually for real haunted as well as mentally unwell)

This is because of the Blaiddyd curse, but let's not get into that.

Byleth and his sister, Bylee, came to treat Dimitri. Both came under the curse as a result, and attracted the Immaculate One.

So this would be book three of the series. (book one is Veyle and Alear escape the Fell Serpent (eldritch horror sombron)), book two is Dimitri and Bylee, they fall in love(?) they aren't sure and its never confirmed in book two, and she tells her brother Byleth about the haunted vibes she gets from the inn. Its about the two discovering the origin of the Blaiddyd curse and the Fell Star (eldritch horror that dwells in Bylee, it gets into a creepy what makes us human style thing) After a two year time skip in which we discover the handsome love interest that introduced Alear to the outside world in book one is deadly ill, and Veyle gets information on the Blaiddyd inn. A place which can heal loved ones, at a price...

duh duh duhhhh!!

5. What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

life's been boring by RYMAN LEON

6. What's something you have in common with this character?

ADHD coded!

also we're both people of faith (he's one of the most religious characters in the game, and I'm a Christian.)

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

I have a lot... lets see...

Makes flower crowns for any and all reasons, one of them is to keep hands busy when hyperactive (eg fidget toy but flower crown version)

picky eater

insecure about his body (he talks to Marth about it in the bonds)

thick as mince. Like man is not a smart boi

hyperfixates on certain diets and exercise fads on loop. One month it was keto, the next it was about bodily flexibility (like the stay flexi guy), then he went vegan for health reasons, after that it was about meat (as raw as it could get, he got rather sick) all while going to the gym religiously.

he is an AWFUL cook

ADHD brain means he is NOT a very tidy guy

probably autistic, I mean look at his B support with Alear and tell me that man isn't

weighs less than Celiné. He isn't happy about it and tells her its because of his 'sleeper build' but he's actually just slim

Suffers with Chrones, chronic pain, as well as a slew of other genetic ailments. He did not win the genetic lottery

13. What's an emoji, an emoticon and/or any symbol that reminds you of this character or you think the character would use a lot?

💪🥰🥺🤣🏋️🌸🌻👟 Idk he probably uses those

15. What's your favorite ship for this character? (Doesn't matter if it's canon or not.)

F!Alear, because it's very sweet, and the character models are really fun to pair together because they look so different!

20. Which other character is the ideal best friend for this character, the amount of screentime they share doesn't matter? ALCRYST ALL THE WAY like Alfred would be the best big brother to Alcryst it's not even funny how good that would be I just love it! MAKE THEM INTERACT! ITs so good!

23. Favorite picture of this character?

24. What other character from another fandom of yours that reminds you of them?

Sokka, in some ways, because he's funny and silly and a little insecure, but honestly Sokka is WAY smarter than Alfred.

[nameless-brand]

One month ago:

The three kids - Charles, Wendy, and Eve - went back their home to sleep for the day, Charles in particular needing to handle affairs in his mother's place.

She still doesn't get how she ended up becoming a babysitter, but she's finally accepte-

"She is not supposed to be alive," her charge said, interrupting her thoughts. The girl's gaze stared straight through the door.

---

She knows who she's talking about. Wendy. The one with the brain tumor that was resected a couple months ago - a clean bill of health so far. But back in the past timeline, Charles and Eve were the only kids that made it to the Inn after the Dream's Descent - Wendy died from some unknown disease - in retrospect, it was likely the brain tumor that was brewing in her head - growing too large.

--

Something intangible arose from Chi's careless comment - as if events began to be set into motion to fulfill a child's unknowing decree. It would be so easy to fulfill too - because Wendy shouldn't be alive in the first place.

This won't do.

"But you're happy that she's around, right?" Sato quipped quickly, belying the anxiety inside her chest.

"Yes," Chi replied and then paused as if thinking there's more she should say - maybe unconsciously aware about the nature of her powers- "I am happy she is around."

And like a tapestry unwound, the creeping Doom she could feel dissipated like it was never there.

She stared at the younger girl, not quite sure what to say. Not quite sure how to explain that she probably nearly killed her friend with some carelessly said words. She knows what would happen if she told Chi directly: she'd shut up entirely - perhaps too afraid to talk to ever again, even though the younger girl's probably the most thoughtful person she knows with her words.

"Oh, Chi," Sato patted the younger girl's head, "You need to think twice about saying things like that. "not supposed to be alive" or like wishing someone was dead or some other misfortune. "

"Words have a way of coming true. And you'll regret it if it happens and you didn't mean it, got it?"

She was waiting for the "that's unscientific" from Chi, her usual and normally hilarious counter for all things superstitious from Chi. But instead all she saw was apprehension.

"Does that I mean I did something bad to Wendy?"

"It's okay. You backtracked fast enough. But backtracking might not always work. If you want to wish ill will on someone out loud, think twice about whether you really want that bad thing happening before saying it. Okay?"

"Okay," Chi nods determinedly, "I promise."

[reflexofahapiboi]

Error 10-9. Mad science.

i the world Error 10-9 exists in, there is the term "superscience" and "mad science", they are interchangeable inn terms of in universe definition due to mad scientists and superscientists doing the same work.

Mad scientists have a neurological disorder originally named "Victor Frankenstein's Disease" after the doctor of Mary Shelley's novel, however history is a bit different here. Mary Shelley was indeed a novelist however her main occupation was a psychologist who specialized in post-mortem diagnosis.

Her initial discovery of the disorder leads back to her finding the diary of the real Victor Frankenstein, as not only did he truly exist, so did his monster, his diary acting as an outline for her novel from his own first person perspective of the events, however most interesting was his in depth description of his experiment for his monster, meticulous as not even any medical journal was in human anatomy, diagrams and formulas for human function strewn as a blueprint along several pages. Mary Shelly and then Fiance, Percey Bysshe Shelley, who was a well known poet had various certifications as a doctor in this history, but was more well known for poetry, granting Mary access to cadavers and space within which to recreate Victor's experiment, after months of preparation and relocation waiting for a storm in just the right conditions. lightning struck their conduit, the man of bodies springing to life just as the monster had done, not before being shot down, put out of it's abstract misery before it was truly awake. The two disposed of the lab, the experiment, and the passages of victor's diary, fabricating a false description of the experiment to hide the truth, deeming the knowledge to be too dangerous, especially with the second Seminole war being just yesteryear. The book "Frankenstein" was published just as it had been in our time as a fabrication of events, meant to act as a distraction from the real principals that he had discovered despite the lack of evidence of scientific studies. Naming the Neurological disease after him, and reclassified later as "Mad Scientist's Disorder". The reclassification aided in legitimate research in psychology as well.

Victor Frankenstein's Disease is categorized by an almost blueprint like understanding of an aspect of the world, with no known commonality besides a description of suddenly seeing the world "as it works" and a vast change in brain chemistry driving those afflicted into almost zealous endeavors to prove their knowledge right, with many advancements in medicine coming about in the modern day such as the cure for HIV and successful treatments for Diabetes in all forms.

[charlenasaxen]

My Cousin Rachel Quotes

“That is, if the law convicts him, before his own conscience kills him. It is better so. Like a surgical operation.”

“Heaven he would never achieve, and the hell that he had known was lost to him”

“It was winter, and some passing joker had placed a sprig of holly in the torn vest”

“As my guardian, father, brother, counselor, as in fact my whole world, he was forever testing me”

“it’s what we all come to in the end. Some upon a battlefield, some in bed, others according to their destiny. There’s no escape.”

“But this is how a felon dies. A warning to you and me to lead the sober life.”

“swing, as though we were on a jaunt to Bodmin fair, and the corpse was old Sally to be hit for coconuts”

“I wished he had not named the man. Up to that moment the body had been a dead thing, without identity.”

“he would set his live lobsters to crawl along the quay in a fantastic race, to make the children laugh. It was not so long ago that I had seen him.”

“Ambrose at twenty-seven was god of all creation, certainly god of my own narrow world, and the whole object of my life was to resemble him”

“Perhaps Tom staggered forth from the inn upon the quay, that winter’s night, all lit with love and fever. And the tide was high, splashing upon the steps, and the moon was also full, shining on the water. Who knows what dreams of conquest filled his unquiet mind, what sudden burst of fantasy?”

“If there is survival after death, as we are taught to believe, I shall seek out poor Tom and question him. We will dream in purgatory together.”

“I am five-and-twenty. Our dreams would not be the same. So go back into your shadows, Tom, and leave me some measure of peace.”

“That gibbet has long since gone, and you with it. I threw a stone at you in ignorance. Forgive me.”

“No one will ever guess the burden of blame I carry on my shoulders; nor will they know that every day, haunted still by doubt, I ask myself a question which I cannot answer. Was Rachel innocent or guilty? Maybe I shall learn that too, in purgatory.”

“How soft and gentle her name sounds when I whisper it. It lingers on the tongue, insidious and slow, almost like poison”

“It passes from the tongue to the parched lips, and from the lips back to the heart. And the heart controls the body, and the mind also.”

“Shall I be free of it one day? In forty, in fifty years? Or will some lingering trace of matter in the brain stay”

“Perhaps, when all is said and done, I shall have no wish to be free”

“I still have the house to cherish, which Ambrose would have me do”

“Leave some legacy of beauty when I go, if nothing else. But a lonely man is an unnatural man, and soon comes to perplexity. From perplexity to fantasy. From fantasy to madness.”

“I have become so like him that I might be his ghost. My eyes are his eyes, my features his features.”

“Well, it was what I always wanted. To be like him.”

“even his long arms, his rather clumsy looking hands, his sudden smile, his shyness at first meeting with a stranger”

“And the strength which proved to be illusion, so that we fell into the same disaster”

“if, when he died, his mind clouded and tortured by doubt and fear, feeling himself forsaken and alone in that damned villa where I could not reach him, whether his spirit left his body and came home here to mine, taking possession, so that he lived again in me, repeating his own mistakes, caught the disease once more and perished twice”

“All I know is that my likeness to him, of which I was so proud, proved my undoing”

“I should have known then, from the glance of recognition in her eyes, that it was not I she saw, but Ambrose. Not Philip, but a phantom.”

“Some instinct should have warned her that to stay with me would bring destruction, not only to the phantom she encountered, but finally to her also”

“all too angrily aware of my big feet and arms and legs, sprawling, angular, an unbroken colt”

“Then your cousin Rachel has not seen you.” Instinct had warned him also. But too late.

There is no going back in life. There is no return.”

“Whatever they touch somehow turns to tragedy. I don’t know why I say this to you, but I feel I must.”

“No, there is no return. The boy who stood under her window on his birthday eve”

“he has gone, just as the child has gone who threw a stone at a dead man on a gibbet”

“Tom Jenkyn, battered specimen of humanity, unrecognizable and unlamented, did you, all those years ago, stare after me in pity as I went running down the woods into the future?

Had I looked back at you, over my shoulder, I should not have seen you swinging in your chains, but my own shadow.”

“No premonition that we would never be together again”

“Ambrose, in his queer generous way, was seized with pity for his small orphaned cousin, and so brought me up himself, as he might have done a puppy, or a kitten, or any frail and lonely thing”

“It made me so damnably angry,” he said to me, “to see that woman belaboring your small person”

“I never had reason to regret it. There could not be a man more fair, more just, more lovable”

“He taught me my alphabet in the simplest possible way by using the initial letters of every swearword—twenty-six of them took some finding, but he achieved it somehow”

“dined out and entertained when he had the mind to do so, went twice to church on a Sunday even though he did pull a face at me across the family pew when the sermon was too long”

“others of his friends who used to urge him to settle down to domestic bliss and rear a family instead of rhododendrons”

“I’ve reared one cub,” he would make reply”

“Philip is a ready-made heir, what’s more, so there is no question of having to do my duty”

“Naturally we did no such thing. Ambrose was nothing if not fastidious, but it delighted him to make these remarks before the new vicar, henpecked, poor fellow, with a great tribe of daughters”

“he used to say, patting my shoulder before I started off, white-faced, a trifle tearful, to catch the coach to London”

“Once your schooldays are behind you, and they will be before you’ve even counted, I’ll bring you home here for good”

“turning for a last glimpse of Ambrose as he stood leaning on his stick with the dogs beside him, his eyes wrinkled in sure and certain understanding”

“as he whistled to the dogs and went back into the house I would swallow the lump in my throat”

“feel the carriage wheels bear me away, inevitably and fatally, along the crunching gravel drive across the park and through the white gate, past the lodge, to school and separation”

“I shall bring back plants that nobody else has got. We’ll see how the demons thrive in Cornish soil.”

“This time he had decided upon Italy. He wanted to see some of the gardens in Florence and Rome.”

“He was never one for early bed, and often we would sit together in the library until one or two in the morning, sometimes silent, sometimes talking, both of us with our long legs stretched out before the fire, the dogs curled round our feet”

“I felt no premonition, but now I wonder, thinking back, if it was otherwise for him. He kept looking at me in a puzzled, reflective sort of way”

“The trouble is, Philip boy, I’m too much of a fool about my home. When you reach my age, perhaps you’ll feel about it the way I do.”

“One day you must cut away the undergrowth to give a view of the sea.”

“How do you mean,” I said, “I must do it? Why not you?”

“My old retriever, Don, raised his head and looked across at him”

“He struggled to his feet, and went and stood beside Ambrose, his tail drooping. I called softly to him, but he did not come to me.”

“Ambrose,” I said, “Ambrose, let me come with you.”

“Don’t be a damn fool, Philip, go to bed”

“various things he had in mind for me to do before his return. He had a sudden fancy to make a small pool”

“The time for departure came all too soon”

“You’re very young,” he said. “I put a great deal on your shoulders. Anyway, everything I have is yours, you know that.”

“I believe then if I had pressed the matter he would have let me go with him. But I said nothing.”

“And they went away down the drive just as the rain began”

“Wellington shook his head at the news, and foretold an accident. He was of the firm opinion that no Frenchman could drive, and that all Italians were robbers.”

“I kept all his letters, and I have the bunch of them before me now. How often I read them during the next months”

“as though by the very pressure of my hands upon them more could be gleaned from the pages”

“The Contessa Sangalletti, or, as she insists on calling herself, my cousin Rachel, is a sensible woman, good company”

“seemed to have made a great impression upon Ambrose. So had our relative.”

“confessed she had been hungry all her life for English friends. “I feel I have accomplished something,” he said, “besides acquiring hundreds of new plants”

“You have always been so close to me that possibly you have guessed something of the turmoil that has been going on in my mind”

“But I knew; some weeks back, that no other course was possible. I had found something I had never found before”

“You must know that your cousin Rachel and I were married a fortnight ago. We are now together in Naples, on our honeymoon”

“She teases me about it, and I admit defeat. To be defeated by someone like herself is, in a sense, a victory.”

“remember, my dearest boy and pup, that this marriage, late in life, cannot belittle one jot my deep affection for you”

“now that I think of myself as the happiest of men I shall endeavor to do more for you than ever before, and will have her to help me”

“Write soon, and if you can bring yourself to do so add a word of welcome to your cousin Rachel.

“Always, your devoted Ambrose.”

“I put the letter in my pocket and walked out across the fields down to the sea”

“I sat there, numb with misery, staring at the flat calm sea. I had just turned twenty-three, and yet I felt as lonely and as lost as I had done years before”

“in Fourth Form, at Harrow, with no one to befriend me, and nothing before me, only a new world of strange experience that I did not want”

“I would make reply, “She is a widow, and she shares his love for gardens.”

“never let an opportunity pass without making some sad allusion to the future, how the hours of the meals would no doubt be changed, the furniture altered, and an interminable cleaning be ordered”

“we knew each other so well that I thought of her as a younger sister, and had small respect for her”

“I was grateful, and liked her the more”

“Jealous, yes. Louise was right about that, I supposed. The jealousy of a child who must suddenly share the one person in his life with a stranger.”

“I had never once seen myself an outcast. No longer wanted, put out of my home and pensioned like a servant. A child arriving, who would call Ambrose father, so that I should be no longer needed.”

“But my own godfather, quiet and calm, making a statement of fact, was different. I rode home, sick with uncertainty and sadness. I hardly knew what to do”

“Ambrose had brought me up and trained me for this one alone. It was mine. It was his. It belonged to both of us.”

“looking upon it with new eyes, and the dogs, seeing my restlessness, followed me, as uneasy as myself. My old nursery, uninhabited for so long”

“I saw it freshly painted, and my small cricket bat that still stood, cobweb-covered on a shelf among a pile of dusty books, thrown out for rubbish”

“I had not thought before what memories the room held for me”

“Now I wanted it for my own again, a haven of refuge from the outer world”

“my cousin Rachel had a dozen personalities or more and each one more hateful than the last”

“We talk of you often, dear boy, and I wish you could be with us.”

“so onto inquiries about the work at home and the state of the gardens, with his usual fervor of interest, so that it seemed to me I must be mad to have thought for a moment he could change”

“I took to singing once again when I went riding, urged the dogs after young rabbits, swam before breakfast, sailed Ambrose’s little boat”

“At twenty-three it takes very little to make the spirits soar. My home was still my home. No one had taken it from me.”

“Then, in the winter, the tone of his letters changed. Imperceptible at first, I scarcely noticed it, yet on rereading his words I became aware of a sense of strain”

“above all a kind of loneliness that struck me as strange in a man but ten months married”

“he said he used to move about from room to room like a dog before a thunderstorm, but no thunder came”

“I was never one for headaches,” he said, “but now I have them frequently. Almost blinding at times.”

“I miss you more than I can say. So much to talk about, difficult in a letter. My wife is in town today, hence my opportunity to write.”

“In these winter letters there was no talk of coming home, but always a passionate desire to know the news”

“I could not expect to hear from Florence before the end of May. It was over a year now since Ambrose had been married, eighteen months since he had been home.”

“anxiety that he would not return at all”

“in July, a letter came, short and incoherent, totally unlike himself. Even his writing, usually so clear, sprawled across the page as if he had had difficulty in holding his pen.”

“All is not well with me,” he said, “you must have seen that when I wrote you last. Better keep silent though. She watches me all the time. I have written to you several times, but there is no one I can trust”

“Since my illness I have not been able to go far. As for the doctors, I have no belief in any of them. They are liars, the whole bunch.”

“there was a gap, and something scratched out which I could not decipher, followed by his signature”

“He was as much concerned as I was myself. “Sounds like a mental breakdown,” he said at once. “I don’t like it at all. That’s not the letter of a man in his right senses.”

“If he had not been over sixty years, and my godfather, I would have hit him for the bare suggestion”

“you had better make up your mind to go to Italy.”

“That,” I remarked, “I had already decided upon before I came to see you”

“My French was poor, my Italian nonexistent, but none of this bothered me as long as I could get to Ambrose”

“set forth for London on a fine morning in July, with the prospect of nearly three weeks’ traveling”

“For God’s sake come to me quickly. She has done for me at last, Rachel my torment. If you delay, it may be too late. Ambrose.”

“There was no date upon the paper, no mark upon the envelope, which was sealed with his own ring”

“knowing that no power on heaven or earth could bring me to him before mid-August”

“No traveler, setting his foot upon the continent of Europe for the first time, was ever less impressed than I”

“where I heard no sound at night but the wind in the trees and the lash of rain”

“I slept, yes, who does not sleep at twenty-four, after long hours upon the road”

“Perhaps, had I come abroad upon some other errand, it would have been different. Then, I might have leaned from my window in the early mornings with a lighter heart, watched the barefooted children playing”

“wandered at night among the narrow twisting streets and come to like them”

“My need was to reach Ambrose, and because I knew him to be ill in a foreign country my anxiety turned to loathing of all things alien, even of the very soil itself”

“The sky was a glazed hard blue, and it seemed to me, twisting and turning along those dusty roads in Tuscany, that the sun had drawn all moisture from the land”

“it seemed to me, in my anxiety and fear for Ambrose, that all living things were thirsty in this country, and when water was denied they fell into decay and died”

“Not the blue estuary of home, rippling, and salty fresh, whipped with sea spray, but a slow-moving turgid stream”

“I stood watching the moving water, fascinated, and the sun beat down upon the bridge, and suddenly, from behind me in the city, a great bell chimed four o’clock”

“the expression on her face was ageless, haunting, as though she possessed in her lithe body an old soul that could not die; centuries in time looked out from those two eyes”

“the self which had set forth upon his journey excited, keyed to a high pitch and ready for any battle, existed no longer. In his place a stranger stood, dispirited and weary.”

“I saw myself dragged back to that lumbering coach again, in their wake. Swaying through city after city, traversing the length and breadth of the accursed country, and never finding them, always defeated by time and the hot dusty roads.”

“I would be shown in upon the company with no excuse to offer, Ambrose in good health turning astounded eyes upon me”

“watched me pass on, with a strange smoldering pride. The church bells began to clamor once again, and I came to a great piazza”

“the buildings fringing the square, austere and beautiful, nor with the statues remotely staring with blind eyes upon them, nor with the sound of the bells themselves, echoing loud and fateful to the sky”

“The bells ceased and died away, yet the echo seemed to sound still in my ears, solemn, sonorous, tolling not for my mission, insignificant and small, nor for the lives of the people in the streets, but for the souls of men and women long since dead”

“Cypress trees, shrouded and still, turned inky green”

“no sound from within the gate, and I rang the bell again. This time there was a muffled barking of a dog, becoming suddenly louder”

“I caught the words “Ashley,” and then “Inglese,” and now it was his turn to stand and stare at me”

“as he stared at me an expression of deep concern came upon his face”

“He swallowed nervously. “You are Mr. Ashley’s son, signore?”

“have not heard the news? What can I say? It is very sad, I do not know what to say. Signor Ashley, he died three weeks ago.”

“the contessa she shut up the villa, she went away. Nearly two weeks she has been gone. We do not know if she will come back again.”

“I felt all the color drain away from my face. I stood there, stunned.”

“I did not care where I went or what I did”

“Statues, on their pedestals, stood between the shrouded cypresses”

“The rooms all led into each other, large and sparse, with frescoed ceilings and stone floors, and the air was heavy with a medieval musty smell”

“in one, darker and more oppressive than the rest, there was a long refectory table flanked with carved monastic chairs, and great wrought iron candlesticks”

“This was his chair.”

He pointed, almost with reverence, to a tall high-backed chair beside the table. I watched him in a dream.”

“The golden flowers had long since drooped and died, and now the pods lay scattered”

“he sat here every day, watching the fountain. He liked to see the water. He sat there, under the tree. It is very beautiful, in spring.”

“A sense of oppression grew upon me. It was cool in the quadrangle, cold almost as a grave, and yet the air was stagnant”

“I could see the hat now, tilted forward over his face, and I could see him, his shirtsleeves rolled above the elbow, standing in his boat, pointing at something far away at sea. I remembered how he would reach down with his long arms, and pull me into the boat when I swam alongside.”

“Do you wish to see the room where the signore died?” he said softly.

Possessed with the same sense of unreality, I followed him up the wide stairway”

“in a niche in the wall was the small statuette of a kneeling madonna, her hands clasped in prayer”

“The end,” said the man in a hushed voice, “was very sudden, you understand. He was weak, yes, very weak”

“I myself lit the candles with the contessa, and when the nuns had been I came to look at him. The violence had all gone, he had a peaceful face. I wish you could have seen it, signore.”

“I turned away from that bare room like an empty tomb, and I heard the man close the shutters once again, and close the door”

“And all winter the signore not so well, sad somehow, not himself. Very different from the year before. When the signor Ashley first came to the villa, he was happy, gay.”

“the scent of roses came, and summer jasmine, and in the distance was another fountain”

“wide stone steps leading to each garden, the whole laid out, tier upon tier, until at the far end came that same high wall flanked with cypress trees”

“We looked westward towards the setting sun”

“the statues were held in the one rose-colored light, and it seemed to me, standing there with my hand upon the balustrade, that a strange serenity had come upon the place that was not there before”

“I went on standing there, looking down upon the fountains, and the pools beneath them with the water lilies”

“The spell of the hushed garden had held me for a brief moment only, the scent of roses and the glow of the setting sun”

“as I passed through the rooms to the hall the shutters were closed, one by one, behind me”

“Not myself. Not looking for the first and last time on the place where Ambrose had lived and died.”

“Once again the tears came in his eyes. “I am so sorry, signore,” he said, “so very sorry.”

“Where is he buried?” I asked, impersonal, a stranger”

“Many English buried there. Signor Ashley, he is not alone.”

It was as if he wished to reassure me that Ambrose would have company”

“in the dark world beyond the grave his own countrymen would bring him consolation”

“For the first time I could not bear to meet the fellow’s eyes. They were like a dog’s eyes, honest and devoted.”

“Take it with you, signore, it is for you alone.”

It was Ambrose’s hat, wide-brimmed and bent. The hat that he used to wear at home against the sun.”

“I could feel their anxious eyes upon me, waiting for me to say something, as I turned the hat over and over in my hands”

“The clanging bells began again, and it seemed to me this time that their clamor was more personal”

“the sound of that great bell, compelling, insistent, rang like a challenge in the still and vapid air”

“I still held Ambrose’s hat in my left hand, and as I stood there in the great cathedral, dwarfed into insignificance, a stranger in that city of cold beauty and spilled blood”

“I realized suddenly and sharply the full measure of my loss. Ambrose was dead. I would never see him again. He was gone from me forever. Never more that smile, that chuckle, those hands upon my shoulder. Never more his strength, his understanding. Never more that known figure, honored and loved”

“that his spirit went back where it belonged, to be among his own hills and his own woods, in the garden that he loved, within sound of the sea”

“I noticed most his eyes, dark and deep-set, which at first sight of me startled into a flash of recognition”

“Was it my fancy, or did a veiled look come over those dark eyes?”

“The whole thing has been like a nightmare. What happened? Why was I not informed that he was ill?”

He watched me carefully”

“A lost feeling came over me. A tumor? Then my godfather’s surmise was right after all.”

“And yet… Why did this Italian watch my eyes?”

“He knew my godfather was my guardian also, which was more than I did. Unless he spoke in error. Surely no man past twenty-one possessed a guardian, and I was twenty-four?”

“They are the letters of a man who has enemies, who is surrounded by people he cannot trust.”

“She has done for me at last, Rachel my torment…’ What do you make of that, Signor Rainaldi?”

“How plausible he was, how cold, how confident”

“Whether he was right or wrong I did not know. All I knew was that I hated Rainaldi.”

“If Ambrose had lost faith in her, why not send for me? I knew him best.”

“They hold to the thing they want, and never surrender. We have our wars and battles, Mr. Ashley. But women can fight too.”

“I knew I had no more to say to him.

“If I had been here,” I said, “he would not have died.”

“They could put up the stone, and later take flowers there if they wished, but Ambrose would never know, and never care. He would be with me in that west country, under his own soil, in his own land.”

“It was almost as if his eyes still followed me from behind his shuttered windows”

“I swore that, whatever it had cost Ambrose in pain and suffering before he died, I would return it, in full measure, upon the woman who had caused it”

“I believed in the truth of those two letters that I held in my right hand. The last Ambrose had ever written to me.

Someday, somehow, I would repay my cousin Rachel.”

“my first instinct was to smile at sight of Wellington and the boy, to pat the horses, to inquire if all was well”

“the greatest blow of all, Wellington said, was when Mr. Kendall told them that the master had been buried in Italy and would not be brought home to lie in the vault among his family”

“All sense of strain left me, and in spite of the long hours on the road I felt rested and at peace”

“poor Seecombe, wearing a crepe band on his arm like the rest of the servants, broke down”

“It’s been so long, Mr. Philip,” he said, “so very long. And how were we to know that you might not take the fever too, like Mr. Ashley?”

“how the bells had tolled for a whole day, how the vicar had spoken, how wreaths had been brought in offering”

“And always within earshot, always within sight, was the shadowy hated figure of that woman I had never seen”

“that name contessa, used by the servant Giuseppe and by Rainaldi too, in preference for Mrs. Ashley, gave to her a kind of aura”

“Since my journey to the villa she had become a monster, larger than life itself”

“she moved about those musty villa rooms sinuous and silent, like a snake”

“These images remained with me until I crossed the sea and came to Dover. And now, now that I had returned home, they vanished as nightmares do at break of day.”

“My bitterness went too. Ambrose was with me once again and he was not tortured, he no longer suffered. He had never been to Florence or to Italy at all. It was as though he had died here, in his own home, and lay buried with his father and his mother and my own parents”

“Old Don, the retriever, too ancient and stiff to walk with me and the younger dogs, scratched on the gravel under the library windows, and then turning his head towards me slowly wagged his tail”

“It came upon me strongly and with force, and for the first time since I had learned of Ambrose’s death, that everything I now saw and looked upon belonged to me. I need never share it with anyone living.”

“The dogs came in as was their custom, and lay down at my feet”

“I felt as a soldier might feel on being given command of a battalion; this sense of ownership, of pride, and of possession”

“Some sound of day by day broke the spell: perhaps a dog stirred, an ember fell”

“I’ve never thought about it much. I never wanted anyone but Ambrose.”

“I think I am too much like Ambrose, and I know now what marriage must have done to him.”

“So inconsolable,” I said to my godfather, “that the day after the funeral she goes off, like a thief, taking all Ambrose’s possessions with her, except his old hat, which she forgot. Because, no doubt, it was torn and had no value.”

“Good God, you talk of a claim when we know perfectly well she drove him to his death?”

“if such a whisper ever got to his widow, wherever she may be, you would cut a miserable figure in her eyes, and she would be well within her rights to bring a case against you for slander. If I were her man of business, as that Italian seems to be, I would not hesitate to do so.”

“My godfather is displeased with me,” I said, and told her the story”

“She nodded. “That was terrible,” she agreed, “he must have felt so lonely.”

“Perhaps it was because she was young, my own age, that she seemed to have so much more perception than her father. He was getting old, I thought to myself, losing his judgment.”

“And what had happened to the Count, her first husband. Didn’t you tell me once he had been killed in a duel? You see, that speaks badly for her, too.”

“Secret staircases. I ought to have taken you to Florence with me. You would have learned much more than I did.”

“glancing up at her father to see how he would take it, as though we had not ridden backwards and forwards visiting one another before, times without number”

“smiling at the idea of Louise Kendall, whose hair I used to pull only a few years back, now looking upon me with respect”

“Well,” he said, “now something has got to be done, and you have to decide exactly what, and when. She has arrived”

“I have a letter here,” he said, “from your cousin Rachel.”

“I don’t know what I thought to see. Something bold, perhaps, with loops and flourishes”

“quiet, and a little apart from the other English graves, with trees surrounding it, which is what he would have wished”

“I have brought with me all Ambrose’s possessions; his books, his clothes, everything that Philip would wish to have and keep”

“If you will tell me what to do with them, how to send them, and whether or not I should write to Philip myself, I shall be deeply grateful”

“Most sincerely yours,

“RACHEL ASHLEY”

“after all she has kept nothing. Not so much as one book, or a pair of gloves. They are all for you.”

[xneontragedyx]

Generative AI is experimental. Learn more

…

The image you sent is about a sculpture called "Can't Help Myself" by artist David Černý. It depicts a robot with a hydraulic arm that is constantly trying to squeegee fluid back into its body, but the fluid leaks out from the bottom as fast as it is squeegeed back in. This creates a Sisyphean task for the robot, as it is constantly working but never making any progress.

The sculpture has been interpreted in many ways, but one common interpretation is that it is a commentary on the futility of human existence. The robot can be seen as a metaphor for humans, who are constantly working and striving but never achieving anything lasting. The hydraulic fluid can be seen as a metaphor for our vital energy, which is constantly leaking away from us.

The sculpture can also be seen as a commentary on the nature of social media. The robot's repetitive task can be seen as a metaphor for the way that we are constantly scrolling through our social media feeds, consuming information but never really gaining anything from it. The hydraulic fluid can be seen as a metaphor for our attention, which is constantly being drained by social media.

Overall, the sculpture is a powerful and thought-provoking work that can be interpreted in many different ways. It is a reminder of the futility of human existence and the dangers of social media addiction.

In the context of your prompt, the image could be seen as a metaphor for the way that intellectuals are constantly trying to repair the broken machines of society. However, the fluid leaking out of the robot could also be seen as a metaphor for the way that the intellectuals' efforts are often in vain.

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[isthisstorysafe]

Brigham Vaughn:

The Williamsville Inn series (4). M-M. Modern. At least one bi lead. Needs a proofreader. CW: ghosting; being fired unfairly; expectation for unmarried child to look after parents; rejection; divorce; co-parenting.

Rules of the Game: Evanston River Otters series (1,2,*,4,5). M-M. Sports. *Doesn't appear to be a #3 but Zane & Ryan's story (Road Rules) really belongs in this series, probably as #1, thus shifting the numbers along. Other Rules of the Game / Relationship Goals series - focusing on other teams - exist & interrelate; Bending The Rules (RotG:TFC 1) probably immediately precedes this lot & The Husband Game (RG:TFC 1) & the series to follow from it follow on from these & feature the Toronto Fisher Cats team. I think there are references to someone else's M-M hockey series, but I don't recall whose. Acknowledges trans. Younger, bigger partner tops first / older, bigger partner tops (first). Readable. CW: arrest; worrying about relative's safety; brawling; absent parents; historic suicide; career-ending injury; gambling debts; illness causing mood swings & aggression; indirect sexual abuse by a parent; having to pay for someone else's choices; bad parent; being a carer; power imbalance; historic fatal crash; historic infant death; historic death of a spouse; escalating verbal fights to physical ones; anti-fraternisation policies; dementia; brain damage; fatal disease in middle age; degenerative condition; eating disorder; feuding parents; child seeing very ill parent; being cuckolded by a colleague; being cuckolded by best friend; friend keeping secrets about one from one; best friends falling out; grief; unrequited love; lead with a known crush that started before the other lead's last relationship ended; being outed; abuse of fame to molest & sexuality coerce victims; having a child with ADHD; child destroying another's work; injured animal; domestic abuse of multiple types; cheating; parent with abusive partner; financial insecurity; escaping dv with nothing; public abuse for doing the right thing; public proposal.

Rules of the Game: Toronto Fisher Cats series (1). M-M. Sports. Bi lead. Acknowledges poly & gender non-conforming. Bigger partner tops first, without discussion. Solid. Readable. CW: having to choose between relationship & career; career-threatening injury; relationship with someone who has a crush on a third party; one parner's job 'more important' than the other's; panic attack; extreme work-stress; American 'healthcare'; parent's needs impinging on life.

Relationship Goals: Toronto Fisher Cats series (1,2). M-M. Sports. Bi lead. Pan lead. Acknowledges non-binary & poly. Bigger lead tops first. Read more. CW: upstaging someone's proposal; American 'healthcare'; historic eating disorder; significant debts to friends; physical vulnerabilities; abusive parent; being non-contact with family; pregnancy; drunk-driving; historically looked-after child; ex marrying someone else; not getting symptoms checked out; hospitalisation; non-elective surgery; career-threatening illness; erectile dysfunction; secrets; potential loss of career; loss of career due to misconduct; pregnancy; alcohol addiction.

Also writes Pendleton series including poly relationships as well as kinky queer ones.

[thesugarhole]

so i think it was saturday i had a free two hours or so and since i was done with 2kki updates then (i know i saw dont mention it im waiting it out till the end of the week) i thought hey lets finally go finish dd2, i left the campaign right outside the 5th mountain

so i go in there and have a much easier time because i remember the gimmicks, and i reach the hateful god. and i painstakingly whittle down the hp from 999 to about 100 without once getting face your failures. and im like hey! what gives! did not dawn on me once that maybe i had to kill those two babies at the same time first.... and im still not sure if that was what didnt trigger it because when i finally got a ghost it only took up one slot since hateful god is strictly in the middle. but well, its nice to know for the future runs. so i defeated them! (me?)

the ending cinematic is alright but i think the one from the first game impacted me more. i think, might be rose tinted glasses, havent gone back and compared. ~85 hours total, first game i think was ~92 hours before i went into dlc and achievement hunting

so here comes the real meat of dd2, which is completionism and achievos. i highly doubt ill be able to unlock every single item thats not bought at the altar of hope, but theres nothing really quantifying them anyway so im not that bothered by it.

first achievo i want to get after completing the game is defeat death, since ive only ever seen her in the flashback. so i go at it in denial since its one of the shortest chapters, and as im reaching the brain, having gone to every single fight possible, im thinking mhm. what are the actual chances of getting her? 6%. bad idea to have started with this one, and i only got to 1 shrine too for the characters i havent finished the stories yet, so this run might have been a waste.

the very last battle, before the inn before the mountain, she shows up so yay! i got good luck. and of course, promptly got her ass kicked, so i unlocked the chievo. teehee

forgot to party wipe to denial so im gonna have to do it one more time with that in mind. also, i think this was the first run i was able to complete with a hard difficulty flame on (the very first on the list, i think infernal?, im currently in the process of unlocking stuff by 1 cheapest / 2 useful) and i wasnt trying very hard, so maybe ive finally gotten decent at the current mechanics.

i decided to look at what i hadnt gotten yet and make a list from easiest to hardest so i dont risk like, going for the worst thing first while disregarding easy wins. after that, my next run my goals were:

master 5 skills in one hero: fairly easy in a fuck-it run. surprised i never did it before i finished the game, even. i guess i distributed mastery points as evenly as possible.

heal disease, remove negative quirk, lock positive quirk: it was at the top for easiest, but a lack of money and lack of disease getting could make the going tough. at the first inn, i got a slime mold: it has 5% chance of giving a disease. i thought hmm... i never got a disease from this thing though. oh well theres no more food so eat up occultist. (he gets a disease) :)! and i had an hospital scouted right away, so this one was easy peasy

defeat a lair boss (killing blow) with the bounty hunter: his poster also showed up right away, so i replaced him with the jester and went.... to the tangle. yeahp. was actually very easy because i took zero chances: everyone either buff up teammates, attack the roots or move around. bh is the only one damaging the general (save a starting move or two from highwayman/occultist). surprised very few people have this one, but id bet its hard to unlock naturally.

defeat 3 lair bosses in one run: i was aiming for this one too but then i realized the first confession only gives me two regions. oops.

hero shrines: wip. currently trying to finish alhazreds. otherwise my team is *my* usual suspects (V, J, HWM, FreeSpace).

party wipe to all confession bosses: wip. im with the lungs denial again atm but still at the start of the run because i wasnt able to touch the game since.

i guess im sharing because being able to do all this in rapid fire succession was good rng and luck and made me feel happy. made me feel like the guy smiling with its hands on its knees. AND it has the jester outfit on. imperative. hold on let me get it

^ i named this image silly.png

here's my list, easiest to hardest (to MEEEE):

i have (x?) next to some inn names because im not sure if ive already been there or not, since the images/names sounded familiar when looking them up. but this one is not something i can control (and am also surprised i havent unlocked it during mainline gameplay, guessing i got many repeats- they might have rarity variables that i currently have no idea if they can be influenced or not) so its play until it unlocks. i like to keep 'missing' lists just because

i dont have a shamblino (shambler + bambino, hope you like it) equipped in my current run because i didnt want to make things unnecessarily harder when going for the other ones, so that one will have to wait until all my heroes get breathed on too hard by resentment. pass their turns to death. its actually a bigger effort to die to denial than it is killing it jesus

thats all i guess. have a good week everyone

[hawberries]

you do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting

[demon-trees]

Morning Glory

This is more of a welcome back into the world of writing fanfics since I haven't written anything since high-school and what better way to kick it off with my current obsession then Trigun! I'm sorry it took me so long I was trying to figure out how I wanted the story to go but I think I got it now.

So standard rating would T nothing to gory and no beta readers so if you some mistakes please excuse them but I welcome any critiques you may have for me.

Enjoy what I have written, and I hope to do this fandom, proud!

Word count 4.3k

_______________________________

Hanahaki Disease,

A rare disease where one is in unrequited or even one-sided love that leaves its victim to cough or vomit flower petals mixed with their own blood. In most extreme cases left untreated can lead to a flowering plant growing in the lungs,stomach or heart in which case the disease then turns fatal with then having to vomit or choking fully bloomed flowers and slowly succumbing to the lack of oxygen and blood. The only known cure is to undergo a surgery to remove said flower from the host but no record has shown a case where the patient has recovered unless they do another more high risk operation on the brain to remove part of the limbic system. More studies show that people who undergo brain surgery have a ninety-nine percent rate of recovery and no return of the flowers but have a difficult time to process emotions or even become shells of their former selves. Other studies of this disease have shown zero chance of survival due to the type of plant that can take residence in the victim's body which can shut down its host's body four times faster than normal, meaning the average lifespan with this disease cuts down to a year to a few months while other victims have years ahead. 

Year 3xxx

It's been almost one hundred and fifty years since the seed project crashed on this planet, 

Fifty years since the discovery of the strange plant disease that riddles the lonely and the daydreamers, twenty years since the discovery of a so-called “cure” for it, and three days since I too have fallen victim to the hanahaki disease. 

I thought everything was fine, everything was fine if I just kept my distance from the infamous outlaw, but just like the sun I was always drawn back to his warmth. We met a few years before the Jenerora Rock incident, when I was waiting tables at Rosa’s diner just hiding out from bounty hunters when this unusual man in a long red coat and pointed gold hair walks in. All he asked for is a simple drink, nothing fancy but then one drink turned into one more, and then three more, and so on, honestly if Rosa hadn’t cut him off when she did he would have ended up passed out on the diner floor with her husband. He hadn’t paid for a room and it looked like he wasn’t sober enough to ask for one yet but with the town inn being so far away it didn’t look like he would make it that far in the state he was in anyway. Really what could have been so bad that someone would neglect to get shelter to instead come get their ass blackout drunk?

I really should have minded my own business but with Rosa having her own troubles with her sorry ass husband and Tonis what else could she do with the stranger who seemed to be dead to the world already, apparently drag him to the upstairs apartment that resides above said diner that I'm currently renting, bless you Rosa. With a bit, well with a lot of struggle i managed to drag the idiot up the stairs and not so carefully put him on the bed, really this man who appeared to not weigh much was much heavier than i expected and his staggering height was a struggle i didn’t account for when i decided to be a kind civilian for once. Really, one glance at this man and my natural caregiver instincts kicked in and I hated it, it wasn’t me, not anymore i thought. I went to turn to leave but his shaky voice startled me causing me to freeze, it wasn’t a question that left his lips but a small broken thank you, i hesitantly turned back to look at the poor sap but he had already fallen asleep with small snores leaving his mouth. Thinking back on it i wasn’t sure why i helped him removed his boots or even covered him up with the nicest blanket i could fine but meeting him that day had set everything in motion, I would begin to start falling for the fading sun: star boy, i would call him but to the rest of Gunsmoke he will forever be known as the humanoid typhoon: Vash The Stampede, and to my unsuspecting self I would soon learn why he was given the nickname. 

The morning I woke from my spot on the tiny loveseat to find him nowhere in sight, nothing that showed that he had been here the night before unless you count a neatly made bed. I assumed he had just got up and left town but no, I walked down to see the very sunny man talking and laughing with Rosa as he helped clean the diner with the help of her husband who looked like he saw better mornings. Confused was most likely an understatement given the situation, why was he still here, why was he helping a stranger with a kind smile plastered on his face? Questions that I hadn’t had a chance to ask as I was rushed out the door to help unload the supply truck by other waitresses leaving behind a stuttering mess of heys and wait by the blonde man who looked a little shocked to see me as well. As soon as we were outside I was bombarded with who he was, was he available, and was he a “good time”, shameless the lot of these people! As much to my horror he decided to follow us out back and without a hint of decency he played along with they're crude jokes! 

“Well ladies i must say i would never kiss and tell but she was absolutely rude in the bedroom! She was so rough in the bedroom, she even threw me on the mattress!” He said dramatically holding his arm over his face, crocodile tears threatening to leave his eyes but that cheshire grin he had given it all away that it was a horrible joke. 

“My my i would never have thought our sweet little y/n was into that sort of thing! So scandalous I tell you!” One of the ladies said as she pretend to faint into my arms 

“I have a half mind to drop you, you know and that isn’t what happened last night.” I said sternly glaring at the looming giant who seemed to have a grand of a time laughing with the rest of them as his aviator glasses slid down his face revealing his baby blue eyes and long lashes as he glanced my way. 

‘Damn him, he really was beautiful.’ I thought as I pushed the woman back up and went to the truck to pick up one of the many boxes. 

“No it's true I heard the loud thump of the bed myself last night.” I heard Rosa tell them and it took everything in me not to drop the heavy crate on the ground.  

“ROSA!” I yelled mortified as the rest of them held onto their stomachs from laughing so hard while ‘pretty boy’ fell down laughing. 

I can feel my face getting warm while I walked away from the humiliation.

“Names Vash by the way!” He yells after me as I plopped the crate down at the bar.

He rushes to stand in my way with a shining smile that could put the suns to shame.

“I don’t believe I caught your name yet.” Lier.

“And i believe you just heard it from my friend there so excuse me.” I say as I tried to go under him. Again he follows me. Cute.

“But I would much rather you tell me yourself, beautiful.” He says smoothly.

If god was real then i'm sure the devil is as well because no one should be that handsome and lame but cute at the same time. He’s a temptress, I'm sure of it.

“Does flirting come naturally to you or am I a special case?” I say as I give into whatever game this is, leaning against the door frame with a huff. 

“It depends really, is it working?”  I can see the little glint of mischief in his eyes with his smile turning genuine.  

“No, but I'll give you credit for trying. Names y/n.” I finally say with a small grin. 

The next few weeks were filled with such an odd sense of peace that I almost forgot we were human, but there is no such thing as peace when humans are involved. 

I was out back on break when it happened, playing with Tonis and one of the worms he had found when the loud shouting laughter of kids could be heard and a not so kind shriek of what I could guess was a blonde idiot. He was tackled down and hogtied by the local kids in a game of catch the outlaw, really such a fitting game if you think about it. Kids piled on top of him while he tried to wiggle his way out from under them but the joyous laughter of the kids caused him to laugh a little too and slumped.

‘So he was good looking, great with kids and a decent person.’ The more I looked at him the more I wondered who he really was. With a teasing smile I got up from the small porch taking Tonis with me over to shoo the youngins away but the small child had other ideas as he broke free from grasp and jumped on Vash as well leaving the stranger with no more fight in him as he laid flat on the sand and his glasses laid barren beside him.

“Need a hand there, stranger? It looks like you're about to start seeing stars here in a minute.”  Laughing as I crouched down to his level picking up his glasses and using them to push back my y/h/c hair back. 

“No, no! Everything’s fine, I just need a minute to regain my strength. It will probably come back faster if someone were to say "I don't know, bless me by going on a date with me, tonight maybe?” He shoots me another charming smile. I swore I could see little stars and sparkles around him as he offered his best attempt at a smolder. 

‘This little shit.’

“You know what, you look fine here on the ground so i'm just gonna go but thanks for the new glasses star boy, i think they look good on me.”  I quickly tried to walk away hoping the way my heart skipped a beat was just a weird fluke when I heard a rush of waits being directed at me. I turned around annoyed to see him clumsy jogging over to me, red staining his cheeks and the tips of his ears from the heat I assumed.

“I’m sorry about making a pass at you but can I make it up to you with a drink? No funny business, I promise just a casual drink as a thank you for the other day?” The shy smile he gives me nearly puts me in an early grave.

“All right, one drink, just one pretty boy then we call it even deal?” I offered him back his glasses as a sign of good fate but he freezes.

‘What?’ 

“Pretty?” Oh no, no I didn't!

“You think I'm pretty?” God kill me now as the damn smile he wore now was blinding me. The next thing I knew Vash pulled me down as a random bullet shot passed us and hit a window. 

‘TOO SOON GOD!’

Gunshots rang throughout the city, people scurrying into their homes and children ran to hide in alleyways with the critters, the smell of gunpowder and blood soaked the air. I dropped Vash’s glasses to run and grab Tonis and pulled him into the diner with Rosa who was already loading up her gun. I left him with Rosa’s husband as we ran back outside to see what was happening and nothing could have prepared me for how fast my blood drained at the sight. People were injured, some dead, and a few with life threatening wounds but in the middle of all that was enough for me to turn to stone. 

Bounty hunters.

A large gang of bounty hunters have held up my wanted poster and the leader threatened to shoot up the town and plant if I wasn't handed over in the next five minutes. I turned over to Rosa to explain myself but I had a gun pointed to my head before I could let out a sound, the anger on her face says it all, because I have seen and heard it all before.  

‘How can I bring them here? Why did you endanger all of us? Think of the lives you are putting at risk!’ I’ve heard it many times before but I could never give them an answer that was satisfying, because really all I wanted was a place to call home too. It wasn’t fair that everyone had a place to call home, someplace safe and warm, instead I was cursed to wander around these damn dunes with nothing more than an old hand me down gun and a forgotten name.

“Take me to the leader Rosa, I won't put up a fight I promise.” I said holding back my tears and stretching out my hands to be tied, I don't deserve to cry, not after running for so long and almost killing what could be considered friends again. I deserved this I thought as she tied me up and dragged me to them showing no remorse for me, just a grim frown. I was then thrown to the leaders feet and the last thing i saw was the hilt of his weapon hitting me and the sounds of gunshots being fired. A small panicked hold on was the last thing I really heard but I will never believe it was real. 

A day, a full twenty four hours I was out and in that time Vash had stopped the gang from dragging me off but not before they damaged one of the plants but by some god forsaken miracle he managed to save that too. While I was grateful he saved me, I needed to leave, and I needed to leave now while the diner was bustling with people probably celebrating the hero. I no longer had a home and no friends, so I packed the necessities and managed to slip out into the apartment alleyway. I didn’t bother to leave a note because really who will miss the bitch who brought a dangerous gang here and almost destroyed the town. As I grabbed a Thomas I saw the so-called hero as he stood in my way with both arms outstretched to halt my steed, head slightly down and a certain emotion was hidden behind his tinted glasses, what it was I would probably never know for sure. 

“Out of the way, Vash, I'm not in a playful mood tonight.” I say as I pulled my double action revolver out of its holster and pointed it straight at him, turning the safety off. 

Instead of moving away like i warned him too he moved closer to me arms still up in the air as a silent promise he won’t draw. 

Like that means shit to me right now.

“Vash, I'm serious! Take one more step and this bullet goes straight through your head!”  I yelled, clicking the trigger into place. Again he moves closer, barely five feet away as I shoot a warning next to his head just barely missing a hair. 

“Next time I won’t miss.” I tell him but my hand is shaking and he sees it.

He gently lowers my arm down and grabs my now useless gun to place on the ground all without breaking eye contact with me. 

“I won’t stop you from leaving and I won't follow you out but, i still expect that drink you owe me in the future y/n.” The sad smile he wore never failed to make me feel guilty but I couldn't stay one more night for a drink and I didn't want to make empty promises to the same broken vagabond as me.

“Vash i can’t promise you i will be alive the next time you see me.” I shook off his hand as I stared up at the sky just to keep from looking into his eyes. I wondered if the stars could ever be trapped by a mere human because everytime i would look into his eyes I would catch a tiny glimpse of the vast space. So full of wonder and awe but oh so cold and lonely, an endless cycle of new life and death.  

“Then I'll make a promise to you then, a promise to see my new friend alive and well again.” He then hands me my gun back as vow that if I take it I have honored the promise he made.

‘I want to be selfish, please just this once, let me keep this promise’

“All right, I’ll see you around then starboy.”

That was the first time I felt the pain in my chest.

That was two years ago and I became a gun for hire myself, so imagine my utter surprise when I ran into this idiot again at a bar shoot out when he so casually saves us by using the broken metal sign to shield us from the massive wave of gunshots. Lucky basterd. 

“Well nice to see you again y/n! While I wished it was under better circumstances I do believe it's best for us to start running.”  He grabbed my hand and we hauled ass out of there because someone didn’t bother to check if he had bullets, and neither did i. It seems like nothing changes when sharing a city with Vash the Stampede, except my ability to check my own supplies.

We managed to defeat the two bounty hunters by Vash cleverly using the giant one's weapon against himself while I distracted the other one long enough for him to get hit with it as well. I hate to think it but we made a good team. Although his sillness gets the better of him he’s actually very smart if not too passive about how to win a gunfight, i still wonder about this man.  

During the fight we met two insurance girls named Meryl and Millie who are on the lookout for the “real” Vash to keep him under surveillance for a whole twenty four hours. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that the man they were looking for was the poor sap next to me and not a gruesome, womanizing monster, he’s a flirt for sure but hardly a womanizer. We parted not long after but the way Vash’s eyes kept tailing that woman, Meryl, had me guessing this wasn’t the first time he’s seen her. His gaze was too soft and somber to have for a first time meeting.

‘The pain is back, fuck.’

“So you gonna tell me how you know her or do you want to play the fool all night?” Turning to him once again, a sad smile was plastered on his face as he watched her go.

‘It hurts, it hurts a lot’

“I don’t know what you're talking about.” 

“Vash, I've been around for a while and I've seen more than a hundred people with the same look on their face. You know her, you're in love with her.” 

“I would appreciate it if you just let it go, please.” The way his fist clenched and jaw tightened told me enough that it was painful but nothing else.

‘I’m overstepping again’

“Okay.”

Bitter, I was bitter and for what reason I couldn't tell you back then. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to bring it up when we weren’t friends and we didn’t know much about each other either, but I craved painful answers. I desperately wanted the missing knowledge that had him so wind up but i have to let it go.

‘My lungs feel like they’re on fire.’ 

He started to walk away and all i could do was stand there, i didn’t dare reach out to him again. Walking back to town slowly as I followed him from a distance, giving him the space I owed him but then stopped as I stared up at the night sky. It was terribly stunning as I witnessed a rare meteor shower above us leaving me breathless for the first time in years. The glowing worms seemed to take interest as well as they filled the sky next to the shower. I never realized Vash had stopped walking as well until I heard him clear his throat trying to gain my attention tilting his head towards the small run down town.

“I know the bar is destroyed but did you want to find someplace else to grab that drink I still owe you?” 

“It's been two years since we made that promise, I'm surprised you even remembered.” 

“I have a very good memory. Is that a yes?”

“It's not a no but lets see if we can find a place first. Yeah?” I tell him as we walk in sync towards the town with the little bit of pain in my chest hurting a bit less but the ache is still there. Then the coughing started.

“That’s quite a cough you got there, you okay?” 

“Yeah i’m fine it must because its cold out now, you know.” I tell him trying to ease his worries and to convince myself I was fine.

"Weird, I hope I'm not getting sick.’

“Well if you ever need a handsome guy to nurse you back to health i’ll gladly do it, Flower!”

"Flower? Why?" I managed to choke out and resist the urge to fan myself.

"Well you remind me of the pretty flowers in old books, but I guess flower sounds weird. How about petal?" 

'Why must God punish me this way!'

"Well if I call you star boy it's only fair. I suppose you can give me a nickname as well." Be still thy beating heart comes to mind as i gently grasped my shirt over my aching organ.

"Moon flower it is then. To match mine.” 

‘Oh how fitting.’

We spent the next hour going back and forth between diners and shops but nothing. No booze or homemade alcohol in sight but it was okay because after a while we stopped looking and just enjoyed each other's company for the evening. We settled for dinner now with another promise of that drink. I will always think back to that little time we spent together fondly as we departed a few days later.

I wouldn’t see him again for a couple of months this time around but when I did, it was with the insurance girls again and some man carrying a very large cross. The ominous feeling never went away and neither was the horrorbile envy I had towards Meryl. She was stunning,brave,kind, and had such a righteousness to her that when compared to me it was- pathetic. She was someone who deserved to be by Vash’s side, who would fight to stay by his side even if she says it's purely for work but I think that lie was to keep her heart off her sleeve for a while longer.

I kept an eye on the way Vash’s eyes trail after her, wherever she was Vash was never far behind where it would be by her side or hiding from plain sight after a mild scolding from her. I hate her but admire her the same.

During our time apart my chest pain worsened, the coughing fits grew bloody and my body was slowly being overcome with yellowish veins that stretched from my heart to my lower abdomen. It could be easily covered by my clothes but the bloody cough was what gave me away the night of the quick draw contest. The priest was the one to find me hunched over a desk as we both watched in horror as white petals were mixed with large blood clots. 

‘No. Please no.’ I could cry, scream my decaying lungs out but what’s the use now. I’m dying a lonely lover's death, oh how the reaper must weep for one's like me. 

“Have you told him yet? Needle-noggin?” Wolfwood asks him to light a cigarette and walks towards the bathroom.

“It's not him. There's no way, it's a mistake." I couldn't love Vash, it's too soon.

"You really want to keep lying while on your deathbed huh?" Wolfwood threw me a towel as he took another drag.

''By the looks of those petals ya could have a Morning Glory growing inside that lil heart of yours, worse case its a moon flower." 

"Those are poisonous right?" I tried to wipe up the blood and petals but I think it stained the wood floors. I might have to pay a deposit or damage fees.

"Right. So even if you get enough money for the surgery it will be useless since the poison is already in your system. You'll die in a few weeks sweetheart. "

'I'm dying' 

"I guess I should be glad I met a priest when I did huh? Maybe you can bless my grave with some religious crap about heaven or something." I tried to joke around but in the end everything came out in short labored sobs. 

'I'm really dying'

"So you really don't want to tell him huh? " 

"What's the point? I'll be dead soon." Looking back now maybe I should have told him sooner.

Stay tuned for part two coming soon

[katuer]

I’m finally introducing my OCs!

Time to ramble about my OCs into the void. I have an entire discord channel for this but its not enough, I need my brain-children to be on the internet. I have no clue what I’m doing so I’m just gonna give their bios I guess. they’re D&D OCs (with heavily modified/original lore surrounding them) thus the race and class info. I’m going to outline most of them so this is gonna be hella long you’ve been warned.

(btw if anyone has any suggestions on how to better present these characters and their stories, pls let me know)

Achlei Noblebash -- she/her -- human (demigod) sorcerer -- daughter of the corrupted god of earth. Was raised as a farmer in - then exiled from - a cult worshipping him. Is in a relationship with Ihuicatl.

Aoife McPhearson -- all pronouns, prefers she/her -- half-gnome half-halfling cleric/warlock -- emissary of the corrupted god of earth, capable of seeing the dead. Was raised as a nun before meeting Aghr’ull (the earth god). Tasked with finding Nova and Achlei. In a relationship with Shaemon.

Cruiz Ironhide -- she/her -- minotaur paladin -- devotee of Ilmater. Found and raised by a devoted guardian. Left to follow her religion and help those in need. In a relationship with Lucky.

Dex (last name changes over time) -- she/her -- fire genasi rogue/sorcerer -- protégée of the god of fire. Grew up homeless with Ringer, nearly died of disease as a child. A fun-loving person seeking happiness and skateboarding prowess. Ringer’s closest companion and best friend.

Dicholas Saint-Ailes -- he/him -- gnome barbarian -- former mafia boss, is currently on the run from the law. Is posing as a wise, reclusive elder while grappling with newfound spiritual power. Chance and Kurrl’s former employer.

Eleanor Easton -- ze/hir -- half-orc rogue -- mercenary for hire, tends to work alone. Horatio’s former colleague. 

Horatio Slaughter — he/him — goliath barbarian/blood hunter — former soldier. He was selected for a chemical experiment in which he was given performance boosting serums. Despite having been discharged from the military due to his affiliation with the mafia, he still relies on these serums to properly function. in a relationship with Chance. 

Ihuicatl Noblebash — he/him — human rogue — raised as the reincarnation of the earth god. He escaped the cult that worshipped him after Achlei was exiled. in a relationship with Achlei.

Jynn — they/she/he — triton/lizardfolk fighter — serves as head of security for a triton diplomat. Is dedicated to serving the water god and, by proxy, Chance. 

Kaezarr Qileez — he/him — aaracokra ranger — formerly served the Wind Dukes of Aaqa, but abandoned a quest he was given. Lived as a hermit for years until an unnaturally occurring cyclone destroyed his home. Is seeking help from Solace and Zyrcain, has but the faintest allegiance to the goddess of air.

Kurrl — he/him — bugbear barbarian — formerly a mafia assassin. Due to poor long-term memory, he’s forgotten about this past career of his. He became a gladiator, making a name for himself, but abandoned it all to pursue Achlei, who beat him in the arena using magic. 

“Lucky” — she/her — human rogue — unambitious and free-spirited, Lucky was pressured by her family into joining the crew of a trading ship. After accidentally setting fire to the ship and its cargo, she is on the run from the authorities. Cruiz helped her out of that tight spot; the two of them are now dating. 

March Perral-Hallor — he/him — half-elf bard — is a child when the story begins. As an adult, he enjoys traveling and performing his music in inns and taverns for a living. Zola’s younger brother, Solace and Zyrcain’s son. 

Nova Wysarŵ — they/them — satyr (demigod) artificer — lived alone with their grandfather, and hid their true form, disguised as a human. Once their goat-like visage was accidentally revealed in public, the two of them were forced to flee. They were saved by Dex and Ringer, and are the child of the corrupted god of earth. 

Ringer — no expressed preference — kenku/maybe aaracokra (no one knows for sure) sorcerer — lived in a bell tower, hence their name, till they were discovered by Dex. The two have been together ever since, through thick and thin. The origin of their magic is a mystery. Currently living with Dex in Solace and Zyrcain’s commune.

Second Chance — he/him — tabaxi barbarian — protégé of the god of water. raised on an island in an insular tabaxi community where he developed thalassophobia. Joined the mafia after he left, was later captured and imprisoned. Sexually involved with Horatio, hates the possessive water god who took an interest in him.

Shaemon Goldbeech — it/he — halfling warlock — formerly a snake oil salesperson, using false ties to the clergy to promote its goods. Swore allegiance to Aghr’ull after meeting Aoife for the first time. Is generally possessive and disagreeable. Has a crush on Aoife.

Solace Perral-Hallor — he/him — centaur cleric — worshipper of Selûne. Lives in the commune known as Lûné, though travels frequently pursuing quests for his goddess. He is kind-hearted and generous, and would do anything to protect his family and community. Zyrcain’s husband, Zola and March’s father.

Wyndi Wilhaul — she/they — elf wizard — raised by acclaimed author and recluse Hagatha Christie. Escaped from her as an adult, and now pursues the same profession. She enjoys shadowing “interesting” individuals, taking notes on how they live their lives.

Zola Perral-Hallor — she/her — half-elf ranger — protégée of the goddess of air. Archer who enjoys accompanying her father Solace on various quests.  March’s older sister, hesitantly faithful to the air goddess.

Zyrcain Perral-Hallor — he/him — elf wizard — librarian in his commune, hobbyist wizard. Somewhat quiet, though cares deeply for his family. Solace’s husband, Zola and March’s father.