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dragongirlpoet · 1 month ago

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Corrupt

Sylus x reader (not mc)

I changed the title fyi

Synopsis: Feared, ruthless and agonisingly attractive, Sylus infuriates you like no other. Yet, you work for him. As you immerse yourself in a life of vice with the Onychinus leader, you soon uncover secrets darker than the shadows he wields. Perhaps, just perhaps, you got more than what you bargained for…

Themes: Enemies to lovers, angst, sexual tension, slow burn, violence I Words: 2.1k I Semi made-up lore/cultural facts

“Drinking on the job? Tsk, that’s the third infringement on company policy you’ve made tonight, kitten.”

He took a sip of his whisky — aged in sherry cask, distilled just right with spherical ice. It was how he liked it. I knew, because I was having the exact same drink — his choice of poison at every revel, every meeting, every reclusive night alone.

Sylus threw me a derisive look, cherry eyes surveying me over the glisten of his glass.

“Intentions become more blatant, after a drink or two. Or in your case, five.” I challenged the man who’s kept me hired for the past year.

I was grateful. My work at the Hunters Association had turned trite. Clockwork really, — detect Wanderers, eradicate them, aid the wounded. Righteous, lawful, and so…moral.

My heart had staged a mutiny long before my mind resolved for change. And so I left my woe of comfort and dived into the hellfires of felony. He had found me scavenging for Protocore fragments in the N109, attempting to make my mark with abysmal self-made weapons.

Trinkets — Sylus had called them. Indeed I was a stray cat vagrant in the dominion of vultures.

The leader of Onychinus circled me as I downed my glass, eyebrow cocked at my words. His handsome face gave nothing away — a classic Sylus signature.

“Dance with me?”

A loaded question. One with threat and agency lurking beneath.

I took his outstretched hand and let him whisk me into the centre of the dapper nightclub — exclusive, accessible only to the most premier, and despicable, of criminals.

Sylus was one of them.

With expert grace, he spun me into an embrace, one gloved hand intertwined with mine, the other at my waist. Our steps fell in harmony with each other at once, like missing chords finding solace in a melody.

“So? What have you heard? You seemed thoroughly engaged with that halfwit over there…” his words trailed away as his gaze dipped to my silver dress. Being his right hand had me acquainted with his quirks — sometimes endearing, more so disturbing.

The subtle smirk dissipated as soon as it came.

“They have ties with the Ever Group. Something about a nitrogen spectrum…a capsule…Kenshi and his men have been on the hunt for it for a whi…”

“You look divine in this dress. I had it picked out just for you. Do you not like it?” his impertinence interrupting my mid-sentence.

I huffed a breath. “It works similarly to a Protocore, quite li…”

“Damask rose, isn’t it? With a hint of honeysuckle…out of all my spies…” he lowered his head, “you’re my favourite scent.” A roguish smile accompanied the wanton glint he cast into my eyes.

It had always been like this. Sylus would send me on missions, most times by his side. I was never granted the elucidations of tasks, only that I’d to “act as good bait…suss out whatever information you can…kill if you have to…”

I would probe, and he would reply with a curt, “Not safe. Just do as you’re told.” It was in those moments where I thought I’d witnessed fragility in his demeanour. He would catch on, and he would put on his mask of aloof and asshole, like right now.

I rolled my eyes, vexation apparent on my features. Sylus seemed content that he got under my skin. Not giving me a chance to reply, he twirled me around, the warm velvet of his coat now a flaming singe against my bare back. So that’s why he chose this dress…

“Come on, don’t look so incensed. I heard you. You’re doing a fantastic job, kitten. Always giving me what I need.” The last word came out huskier than intended beside my ear.

The club was cold. Sylus was conceited. It was a perfect match. As much as I abhorred his arrogance, I welcomed the warmth of his body to mine.

I remembered defrosting at my fireplace after I’d been caught in a snowstorm. I had sat there for hours, letting the crackling heat appease my frozen limbs. It felt nice, comforting. And with Sylus’ arms now wrapped around me — he was my fireplace.

“I’m just trying to make this spy business enjoyable for us both. Even if you’re unhappy, at least act it. After all, you’re good at pretending, right?”

There was an edge to his words.

“I saw how you brushed his hand… that spineless leech….unless you were thinking of fucking him tonight?” His hiss was loud enough for the crowd close to us to hear. They turned, throwing us looks of disdain and outrage. I doubted Sylus realised how hard his fingers were digging into my skin.

Cheeks flushed both from the whisky and his risky display of assertion, I shot him a warning glance. “You’re insane, Sylus.”

“So quit then. But do it later, not now, not while everyone’s watching. I don’t want an audience I didn’t ask for.” He was taunting me again, wholly unfazed by the almost furore.

How much did he drink tonight?

Maybe it was the alcohol, but I was in no mood to counter his transgressions. Instead, I snaked my arms back, cradling his neck, fingers threading through his silver head of hair. Sylus stiffened at my touch, likely taken aback by my insolence.

Soulful, sensual beats reveberated through the club, patrons — descendants of the devil themselves, wives, mistresses — all caught up in the fervour of the music. Couples were fondling and kissing on the monochrome floor. And well, I didn’t find a reason why I shouldn’t join the hedonistic heist.

So into his body I pushed mine. Gripping my hips with his right, his left hand slipped down to my abdomen, tracing the lining of my underwear. As I let my head fall back into his chest, his own came lower to nudge my face, burying his nose in my temple. A flutter flushed in my core.

There was a sort of courtliness to the way Sylus moved, a kind of elegance you could find only in Kings and Queens. Yet the way he was guiding my hips to sway in rhythm to his held such lewdity. To the frolicking outlaws here, we looked very much the part of reigning besotted lovers — timeless, transcendent.

Enthralled by the song and how Sylus was spooning me like I was his revered ruby, I ground myself indulgently against his leather pants. He grew hard at once, length prodding at my back.

Our combined excitement was short-lived, though. The silver dress he gifted me caught in the buckle of his belt, hiking the silk up. My black panties were exposed in wondrous glory, earning hungry looks from the men around.

The Onychinus kingpin tugged my dress down immediately, struggling slightly at the fabric fastened to his metal. His reflexes were swift as the time I aimed a loaded gun at him.

A loaded gun, one that was now hoisted towards the crowd. He really was insane.

“Look away, or I won’t hesitate to blow your brains out.” His decree thundered over the booming of the speakers.

Several men smirked, others pretended to ease back into their cavorting. Assault, drugs, murder — it was just another night here at the N109. Being threatened with a revolver? — A mere parlour trick.

But perhaps that was what Sylus wanted to let on. “Never reveal your hand. Remain powerful by appearing meek.” That was the first lesson he had taught me.

“Sylus…careful…you could’ve put us in jeopardy…” I cast a concerned glance his way, only to find him polishing his pistol with his coat, his face a nonchalant calm.

His tone however, was one of annoyance, as if reprimanding a child. “I wasn’t fond of the little show you just put on.”

I put on a show? He was the one who…I sucked in a breath to abstain from an outburst. He was getting on my last nerve.

Pretending the best I could, I instead riposted, “Oh no, it’s not for them. I put these on just for you.”

Two could play at that game.

I watched the silver-haired devil pin me with his gaze, the dark of his pupils rising up to swallow me whole.

“I ought to punish you for violating company rules. Seems you’re breaking many of them tonight.”

“That’s why you hired me in the first place, isn’t it? I don’t play by the rules.”

There was a pause. The music seemed to fade out into a distant void, drowning the chatter along with it. Strobe lights danced around his face, illuminating the reds of his eyes. His right iris appeared to…glow?

A faint disorientation overcame me. In between blinking and regretting what I said, though, I thought I noticed Sylus inch closer — as if a subtle act of want. Only I had the privilege, or burden, to be sentient of his every complexity.

I regarded his stare as they roved over my eyes, my lips, closing the space between us…

“I want to go home.” I muttered.

Sylus straightened himself. If he was peeved, I couldn’t tell.

—

The ride on his motorcycle was spent in silence, save for the roaring of his modified exhausts. I refused to hold him, choosing instead to grab onto the fairing of the tail. So was another night of ambiguous motives and aimless flirtations, one in which I had grown increasingly restless.

“Why is everyone looking for the spectrum?” I asked at a traffic stop.

Silence.

“How is it even related to a Protocore? What’s so danger…”

“You really should hold on to me. I can’t risk my best spy falling off…” once again disregarding my questions, crimson eyes glaring at me through his side mirror.

“What is wrong with you? It’s been a year! And yet you don’t trust me enough with details of your dealings?” I yelled over the muffle of my helmet, my own voice ringing in my ears.

A low rumble sounded in the distance, quite like skyscrapers being blown apart by covert dynamites. The loud whirring of Sylus’ motorcycle remained, the combined knells throwing us into a pit of trepidation.

“Kitten.”

I knew that tone.

Drawing out my gun, I swung myself off the bike and fired. The Protocore-infused bullet buried itself in the recesses of a Wanderer, shredding its power source, erupting shards of alloy projectiles. Some of the pieces lodged themselves into other Wanderers, causing them to convulse violently, teetering on the brink of destruction.

Behind me, Sylus fended off several monsters, his Evol wrapping ominous tendrils around their form. In a mere furl of his hand, they disintegrated into dust, leaving clouds of ash in their wake.

My weapon was formidable enough, having been altered with a Zenith Core — a deviant design forged by Sylus himself. “I made this just for you,” he had surprised me in my first month of training. “It’ll keep you safe. Though you’ll always be so long as I’m around.”

Another shot was fired, this time by Sylus, barrel of his gun aimed over my shoulder. The creature at my back let out a piercing snarl before it crumbled into pieces. Our eyes met at once, the animosity from earlier now a muted thrum.

Hostility, however, chose to emerge in a different form — more Wanderers. Hoards of them. I spotted Foulwings and Magma Knaves, both species not known to spawn here.

I unsheathed my blade, but we were ringed in. Their screeches and grunts enveloped the night, like a fathomless blackhole draining all levity.

“There’s too many of them. We need to leave now.”

In a swift grab of my arm, Sylus tugged me into a whirl of nothingness. Red and black sworls engulfed us, and the last thing I remembered was being thrust in such nauseating force that I blanked out.

—

“Kitten. Kitten, wake up.”

I’d have recognised that voice anywhere.

Sylus was staring at me, hints of distress plain in his electric eyes. I was propped up against his arms in the middle of an empty street. It looked familiar, but not quite. Dim streetlamps cast an unearthly glow to the pavements, their shadows prostrate like spindly entities on a night prowl.

The buildings were far from towering ones in Linkon and the N109, carved instead, out of bricks and stone no more than five stories tall. Rickety signboards flickered on and off, as though a visual alarm to caution that we were not welcomed here.

“Sylus, where are we?”

A deep sense of rue loomed over his face.

“N109 Zone.”

“120 years in the past.”

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snailchimera · 14 days ago

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Having watched Nightmare on Elm Street for the first time last night, with no other context for the series, I have a proposition I would like to put forth to you:

The real actual human being, Fred Kreuger, may have been innocent.

Whether he was or not, the dream monster Freddy Kreuger actually originates from the minds of the parents, as the feverishly paranoid idea of an outsider predator lurking in a Nice Suburban Neighborhood amplified by the real lived experience of having a serial killer in your area growing up, and the necessary justification for burning a man to death in his own home and stealing his weird art gloves as a trophy you keep in your basement for some reason.

I don't really have enough of a functioning brain right this second to do a full essay right now, but. There's something about how the parents of the targeted kids in Nightmare on Elm Street are antagonists in a similar way to the mayor in JAWS, ignoring, dismissing, or misappropriating blame for the problem of Freddy Kreuger even once it becomes obvious that something out of the ordinary is happening. I'm not saying it actually makes sense to jump straight to "my daughter really is being attacked by a Dream Murderer", but throughout the film there's not only this intense insistence that Everything Is Fine Now even after multiple murders have occurred, there's a deep hostility towards any action implying that things are not fine now or acting like a problem still exists after it's been "dealt with", and an ongoing theme of looking away from the problem and acting like that makes it fine when it doesn't (which even helps make sense of that strangely abrupt ending).

The parents want simple actions and simple answers, and they want to not have to deal with the situation anymore. The clean even slashes on Tina's nightgown must be from too-long fingernails. Rod was the murderer and he killed himself, case closed. Nancy's acting "crazy", she must be dangerous herself. Would it be that surprising if people with this approach to danger, who know themselves to be in danger and crave a simple solution, two of whom grew up to be a cop and his daydrinking "learn to look away" wife, looked at a man acquitted of murder and decided that him being wrongly acquitted was an easier, more comfortable answer than still not knowing who the threat actually was? Would it be that far-fetched for people with these thought patterns and behaviors to have cemented said thinking and behavior by enacting horrifying mob violence (because burning someone to death is a hell of a thing to do, and to witness, regardless of who's burning to death or why) and needing to be able to live with that afterward?

And Kreuger doesn't act like a real person. Sure, yeah, it's a slasher movie, you're not necessarily going to expect a slasher killer to act like a real person. Also, horrible people can in fact be horrible in uncomplicated, unsubtle, over-the-top ways (see Donald Trump). Kreuger, though, is practically a distillation of the child predator and murderer as imagined by the kind of person who legitimately believes people are putting heroin and razor blades in Halloween candy, you know? Outsider, dirty and disheveled, visibly marked as Different (by their own actions), flat and seedy hypersexual behavior, a person whose only motive is to instill fear and who has no internal or external justifications otherwise. He's the, word choice intentional, reality-disconnected nightmare of an upper-middle-class centrist-to-conservative white suburbanite, a perfect subhuman threat of a monster, the kind you can look at and go "yeah, setting this guy on fire was a fair call".

(Speaking of, it's... interesting, the way he reacts to being set on fire, isn't it? Everywhere else he's either implausibly resilient and unconcerned, furious and still threatening, or has a hammy movie villain sort of distress when threatened or thwarted. But he sure does act like an actual person who's on fire there, doesn't he? Like the sort of scene that might be indelibly marked on someone's memory, if they watched a real person burn to death?)

And he's also pretty explicitly framed in the movie as a construction of some kind, much moreso than as a vengeful ghost. The (weirdly casually racist but period typical) lucid dreaming explanation, and Nancy's approach from that point on, certainly support that framing, as does the fixation on (drawing strength from?) fear and belief. Nancy seems to think he's coming from her brain, and maybe he is by that point, but Nancy didn't know who Fred Kreuger was when all this started. Her parents and her friends' parents did.

I dunno. Like I said, this is a ramble, not a coherent essay. But I think there's a decent argument to be made that the real Fred Kreuger was never involved here at all, except as a fossilized impression in the psyches of a nightmare's true source.

#Snail babble #Freddy Krueger #A Nightmare On Elm Street #now watch the extremely dedicated franchise fanbase completely shred this lol #suburbs are creepy though #I'll stand by that at least #Useless Hostile Cop Dad was also distressingly realistic

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syoddeye · 6 months ago

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sy's reading recs

hi. i read a lot of fanfiction for COD and i love spreadsheets. i try to track my reads, and thought i'd make two reading rec lists. you are currently viewing the non-darkfic list. i've included blurbs from yours truly. the blurbs are short because there are a LOT of recs below the cut. now then.

beyond the read more, you are responsible for reading tags, warnings, and summaries.

pairings are indicated where applicable, although these may change or may not be established yet.

similarly fic ratings may change! again, it's your responsibility to read tags and warnings.

i've checked all the links, but if they're broken, i blame tumblr. there's enough info to find the fic if need be.

do not harass authors with "next part when" bullshit. it's tacky and i hate you.

previous lists: one, two | banner by @/cafekitsune

gaz x reader

Lavender Skies by @yeyinde

Late to the party but gd if you haven't read this, put it at the top of your list. Kebabs, back-up shoes, the feeling of someone knowing you, the pain and sublimity of being in your late 20s...Chef's kiss.

childfree!reader thoughts by @pfhwrittes

Tooth-rottingly sweet bit about finding someone with the same priorities and not being made to feel bad about it. Love it when the boys match-make a lil bit.

The Gym by @secretsynthetic

Very cute piece about meeting trainer!Gaz at a workout class. Kudos to Reader for making it through the class because I would've had to bail if Gaz perceived me for half a second. Love how observant and sweet he is in this.

Pluto by @groguspicklejar

Late to yet another party, but I got sucked in by the premise: 'vampire!Gaz is smitten with a girl who has no desire to be around his kind'. I love how the relationship progresses, the later chapters had me gigglin'. Except for that last chap. I got GOT.

ghost x reader

child free @391780

I tag it from time to time but one of my favorite things to see in fanfic is the love and intimacy of caring for someone. And that's what this is. Among my favorite oneshots I've seen shared in this fandom.

Roommate Simon by @tacticalgirlboss

Roommate Simon could go in so many directions, but I love this particular take. The slow evolution of the relationship from roommate to something else. Made me feel mushy as hell by the end.

Through Me (The Flood) by @peachesofteal

Another drop everything to read fic. Seeing Simon embrace a role he was not expecting to ever fulfill is both heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. Me with every installment.

soap x reader

mic work by @glossysoap

I have four words for you: Erotic audio artist Soap. Soap's hard at work (🥁), imagining best friend!Reader as the subject of his latest scripts. He is COMMITTED to his job. submissive Soap by @doeidawn

Dizzying. Schedule time to take a lap after reader. Something about that man begging. It needs to be studied and somehow distilled. Into what? I don't know, don't ask me, I can't think straight after re-reading this. bad reservation by @the-californicationist

I think I summed up my reaction to this in my tags: "reader's getting that michelin star dick". A prompt filled by Cali that made me giggle furiously for a smooth ten minutes after reading.

price x reader

Storm Chaser by @/the-californicationist

Save me, biker!Price...save me... Caution: You may need to lie down after reading. Truthfully, I'm terrified of motorcycles. But I would reconsider for this Price.

A Case of You by @alittleposhtoad

One of my favorite new series. A zombie apocalypse where you're hiding out on a remote island in Canada, and who finds you? Just my favorite man. Really enjoy the pieces of worldbuilding and seeing Price interact with what's left of Reader's community.

Words Like Violence by @deadbranch

BodyguardxBodyguard. Two professionals wanting one another and their jobs kind of getting in the way. Suits. Gear. Gloves. Pure catnip. An appearance from Simon that made me laugh, re-read, then rub my hands together like a raccoon.

141 x reader and other pairings

GhostGaz Week by @dragonnarrative-writes - gaz x ghost

Dragon knocked it out of the park on GhostGaz week. I love all of them, but 'afraid of the dark' and 'sweet talk' are two of my favorites.

An Offer You Won't Refuse by @lovifie - gaz x price

You know that clip of Kylo Ren screaming more? That's me, because this makes me want more GazPrice in my life. Delectable. Mean!Price and Gaz calling in a victory.

SCP!141 by @ghouljams - gen tf 141

Incredibly fun and freaky AU that I think has half of my lil circle of friends on here willing to overlook their personal safety to get at SCP-141....I may or may not be among them.

Fancy by @swordsandholly - 141 x reader

Subtle delicious morsels of worldbuilding and bleak, dystopian vibes with vampires. That should be enough to get you started. Had me at the Reba reference.

Tradie 141 by @/pfhwrittes - mix

The way I would be quickly banned from any worksite if they were real. The Tradie!verse is very, very important to me and I eat up every piece that comes out of P's big brain.

Autumn Embers by @/dragonnarrative-writes - 141 x reader

One of the most nuanced takes on the omegaverse paired with some of the hottest smut. The meta is a good place to start, imho, as it underpins the fic and bolsters the plot.

Mission Shenanigans by @kyletogaz - gazsoap x reader

Here's a taste: “You’ve got your tongue shoved in my pussy and you expect for me to be quiet?” Got it? Scurry on over for the oneshot that made me bluescreen at the end.

Service Dog Johnny by @void-my-warranty - ghoap x reader

Interesting spin on Ghoap x Reader that shows a level of intimacy between Simon x Reader (and by extension, Ghoap x Reader), that goes beyond the sex. Yes, the smut is fantastic, but the relationship dynamic hooked me.

Cool Girl x @/peachesofteal - ghoap x reader

As a former 'Cool Girl', reading this is both therapeutic and painful, and fuck me if I don't run to read every update. You will cry, laugh, tear your hair out, and enjoy it.

Fuck-ass mohawk by @sentientcave - ghoap x reader

Reader finally saying what I'm thinking. Fuck-ass mohawk. Hilarious piece. I definitely didn't finish this and think "oh dang I want Reader to be mean to ME". 👀

"romance" in the age of technology by @/pfhwrittes - soap x gaz

Let it be known that Johnny MacTavish is a giver. A good friend. So thoughtful of others. So while Gaz recovers from top surgery, obviously our Scottish saint takes it upon himself (literally?) to cheer him up. Funny and WHEW.

#sy fic recs #cod fic recs #cod fic #i'mma post the other one at a later date #authors if you want your work removed or tag removed please do not hesitate to let me know!

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crystalskiesandcherrywine · 8 months ago

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And all the pieces fall, right into place // Part One

So Feyd Rautha is still on my mind and that’s my second try of writing about him and an Artreides!Reader.

This will get smutty later on, but not in this chapter.

Summary: As the Princess of House Atreides, you don’t shy away from what ever must be done for your family. Your impending union with a Harkonnen, though anticipated, doesn't unsettle you. However, the events take an unforeseen twist, placing your fate on a precarious edge. This sudden shift brings about consequences far beyond what you could have ever envisioned.

English is not my first language.

All feedback is welcome <3

Part two // Part Three

----------------------

There are so many songs that make me think of our favorite psychotic Harkonnen, but I stick with „Found“ by ††† (Crosses) for now.

_____________

Na Baron Feyd Rautha x Atreides!Reader

FxM

1.349 words

___________________

The dim light wandered through the corridor, veiling most of the space into a velvety dark. The earthy brown and green tapestry on the wall illumined ever so slightly by the flowing arms along the wall. But even if there would be no light, you know the way by heart, having followed it more times than you can remember. Your feet shuffled along the floor, finally stopping at a closed door almost hidden at the end of the passage. Before your knuckles can touch the polished wood, a slight gap appears.

„You are late“ Paul says, and pulls you in, closing the door behind you at once.

„Well, you can take it up with our Father. I love him with all my heart, but with him being in the library for so long there was no chance of getting past him earlier“

„He seems to spend an awful amount of time there nowadays“ Paul muses and lets himself fall on a cushion on the floor.

„That’s true. I believe he hides from Mother.“

Both of you cannot suppress a laugh. Since Lady Jessica is with child she seems quite easily irritated with everyone, especially with the Duke.

„Well, at least she will have a new baby to take care of when we are gone“

„Let's drink to that“ Paul says, and produces a bottle of wine and two glasses from a cupboard.

The liquid is the perfect ruby color, reflecting the light on the walls. It feels like all of your home planet has been distilled into the glass in your hand: the sweetness of the sunshine rays, the vibrancy of the hills covered in forests, the deepness of mountain lakes you wandered with Paul & Duncan, the acidity of the soreness after training with Gurney and the light twinge of bitterness of the goodbyes Paul and you were to say so soon.

„We have about a fortnight still“ he says, as if reading your mind.

„How about you stay out of my thoughts, “ you reply, but there is no sharpness to it. He is right, your future is about to unfold, but now you are here still, far away from the harsh and unforgiving Giedi Prime where the man you were promised to awaits.

„I really should go there and tell them off“ Your father sighs, his eyes still resting on the book he has had for half an hour without reading a single word.

„And what good would it do? Let them, they will need the memories to sustain them through what’s to come“ Lady Jessica says with a benevolent smile.

Her hand rests on her belly, instantly protective of the new life. But she feels the same unease as the Duke, with hints of trouble in the air being almost tangible to her.

_______

You regret the last cup when you wake up the next morning. Your mouth feels dry and ashy, your head throbbing. Your handmaidens say nothing, but a vial with medicine is placed wordlessly on your nightstand. You gulp it down and rush to the private dining room, where your mother and Paul are already there.

A servant plates some bread on your plate but is dismissed by Lady Jessica with a stern look.

„No, please. Not now“ you whine „ We practised for so much already“

Lady Jessicas looks at you sternly „And yet there is a need for more“.

Your eyes wander to your brother

„Don’t look at me for help. I had earned my breakfast already“

With a sigh, you sit upright and focus on your mother

„Give me the plate“

Like in a trance, her hands move as she grabs the plate from the servants' hands and puts it next to you.

„Good, now what else do you want?“

_______

Days pass by in training, between the library and the combat space, with afternoons free for you and Paul to do as you please. To sit at the cliff just outside your ancestral fortress, with seagulls rushing over your head, while you look at the waves crashing at the shore is something you cannot believe to be able to leave without. The hours spent in comfortable silence are so precious to you that you almost can’t find back the tears prickling in your eyes. A servant comes running to you one of those afternoons, visibly distressed.

„My Lord, my Lady“ he finally gets out between snapping for air „You are requested at the guest hall at once. Please come“ Paul and you get up, exchanging a glance. In the hall, the fireplace is lit and everything is a buzz with servants carrying silver plates, candles and chairs. Your father stands next to the fire, his hands clasped behind his back with the message scroll he holds so tightly his knuckles are almost white. He turns around, and his expression is carefully neutral.

„There has been news for you today, my children. Paul, you are to leave for Arraki with me in a week. We will meet the Fremen delegation there and your wedding is to take place in Arrakeen. You, my daughter, however, will be gathered by Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and Na Baron Feyd Rautha here. Baron Vladimir and his nephews will arrive the day after tomorrow. They will take you to Giedi Prime after the wedding“

Paul seems as confused as you are. You were to travel as a family to Giedi Prime so that your wedding could commence after Na Baron's Birthday celebrations. But now he and his family make the effort and spice to travel to your home. This news leaves you puzzled and unsettled. „Now go to Lady Jessica at once“ he says and with a bow of your head, you rush to her chambers.

Lady Jessica seems calm, compared to you. But she has years of Bene Desserts training that you are yet to acquire. She holds out her hands to both of you. „Something is not right“ she admits, „but there is nothing to gain in worrying now. We have too much to do“

And with this, your packing begins.

_____

Metal plate touches the ground with a soft thud, revealing a row of Harkonnens soldiers, all in their full combat gear, looking out of place in the middle of the green field their vessel landed on. „Quite a show“ Paul signs to you and gets a „Behave now“ as a reaction from your mother.

They march in unison and behind them a grotesque floating figure is revealed, followed by multiple tubes, connected to dark glass orbs. Baron Vladimir Harkonnen floats, with his drape touching the ground and collecting the morning dew on the edges of it. His face is soft and plump but also full of hardness, small eyes beading at you with a hostility you cannot understand. Glossu Rabban, a mountain of muscle, follows slightly behind him, glancing between your family and the surroundings. Light breeze reaches you, carrying the smell of the sea foam and shells and raising the banners of your House behind you even higher. You lift your chin a bit, trying to mirror it and your gaze falls on the man next to Glossu. His skin is so fair that it looks like snow on a mountaintop, unblemished and almost sparkling. His uniform is tight, with black leather at his shoulders, knees and boots, which only makes his skin more striking. You are aware of his reputation, so his calm pace doesn’t fool you. Behind this facade of tranquillity is a person who is rumored to be the most ruthless soldier in the known universe. His eyes seem to look straight at your parents when suddenly his head turns to you and his dark blue eyes meet yours. For a split second, the corner of your mouth twitches nervously and he catches that, causing a hint of a smile on his face. He doesn’t look away as if to test you, so you try to withhold his gaze with the same amount of pride. His lips form a proper smile now, with the promise of a story yet to begin.

________

to be continued ...

#dune part ii #feyd rautha #feyd rautha imagine #feyd smut #feyd x reader #feyd x you #dune movie #paul atreides #feyd fanfiction #arranged marriage #no cannon in sight #shameless smut #smut #dune smut #feyd rautha smut #feyd rautha harkonnen #austin butler #i can fix him #no but seriously

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jadedresearcher · 1 year ago

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Thoughts on Liminal Horror

So this has been kicking around in my head a while, and I woke up with some actual coherent thoughts on it that I'm trying to capture before I lose them.

There was a tumblr post I saw before that I have long since lost about how liminal horror should NOT have a monster and isn't just "oh you're alone somewhere". And I couldn't agree more! But I haven't been able to articulate exactly why. Liminal, as a word on it's own, means transitional. Liminal spaces are real things that are places where you are on the WAY to somewhere. Liminal doesn't mean infinite spooky mazes, is my first point.

A liminal space could be hallways on the way to an office. Maybe you're trying to get some government bullshit completed. Maybe you're on the way to a doctor you're not entirely familiar with. A liminal space could be the terminals in an airport, as you try to make it to your flight in time. Or a highway you're driving on while looking for a particular exit. Or a carpark as you look for where you had parked among seemingly identical cars. You've been in liminal spaces so so many times. The point is that the spaces themselves aren't what you're really paying attention to. You're thinking of what you'll do when you get there, or going over the things you'll need to keep track of when you arrive. The directions you have to get there, maybe.

So in your MEMORY, and especially your dreams, these spaces take on a peculiar quality. They're SLIPPERY. It's hard to remember any details of them, because you weren't really focused on them. It's just a miasma of "i was in a hallway" or "i was on a road". Maybe a few weird details jump out on you, but it only serves to blend together the rest of the journey. So, when we elevate liminal spaces to HORROR, the first thing we do is lean into that. Impossible spaces because your memory genuinely does not care what any part of them is like save the ending.

Impossible spaces because we tap into that part of you deep down that is unsettled if you try to remember them, and wonders if maybe they really HAD been so weird when you were in them, and you just didn't notice.

This is getting longer than I thought, so may as well put in a cut!

So. I've explained WHAT liminal spatial horror is as well I was going to be able to, I think, but I haven't really articulated why a MONSTER feels like it kneecaps the entire premise.

Have you ever been lost in a liminal space? Keeping in mind that "liminal space" is a thing we all encounter constantly and not shorthand for creepy pastas. Have you ever wandered unfamiliar areas that normally you wouldn't even be paying attention to, increasingly desperate that you won't get to your destination in time? Are you going to miss your flight? What if you can't get your government bullshit taken care of in time? Or your doctor's appointment will skip you and you already waited so long to get it. Did you already miss your exit?

That fear is what I'm focused on here.

It's hard to make you feel that fear in an artificial way.

Even if we give a character in a game all sorts of motives to reach a destination by a certain time, you only feel annoyed at the time pressure, not really *scared*. And although the person lost in a liminal space rarely can just give up and leave, YOU, the player of a game, can.

So liminal spatial horror tends to distill it down to a single fear: where is the exit.

Of course, simply "wanting to leave" is rarely pressure enough to *rush*. And I can see why adding a monster is a quick trick to add that 'going so fast you can't navigate' vibe to the experience.

What I'm saying here is that the time spent is the POINT. That you can slowly build up to that desperate pressure to rush.

You can emphasize that desperation a more subtle way, a way my favorite instances of liminal spatial horror do: bodily needs. You are in a space clearly created by humans, and yet without a single human need met. There are no water fountains. There are no bathrooms. There are no vending machines. Nowhere to comfortably rest. If any of these things do exist they are empty or corrupt in some way.

The temperature, in my favorite experiences, is noted to be wildly incorrect. It's freezing cold. It's burning hot. It's not even remotely the temperature you'd expect an office building full of humans to be.

At first, this leans into this desire to reach a destination, ANY destination. Maybe you can't find the way OUT but maybe you can find out "The Truth"? Maybe if you keep going and going and going you can figure out why this place is LIKE this.

If a human made this space it had to be intentionally to torture people. How fucked up do you have to be to sink this many resources into doing something like this? How long did it take to make? Why did no one notice?

If a non-human intelligence made this space maybe you can find out WHY? Maybe... maybe they were trying their best but didn't realize how uncanny valley and dangerous it would be to a person? If no intelligence was behind it at all, maybe you can find out HOW? Maybe it's a reflection of our collective unconscious, or the planet mimicking the increasing amount of man-made works on itself? But as you continue on and on, as a real living human being in an impossible liminal space horror situation, you realize it doesn't matter how or why or when or any of the questions you dangled in front of yourself like a will-o-wisp driving you ever further in.

Because you realize you're going to die in here. Maybe it'll be the thirst. Humans can only go a few days without water. Maybe hunger will be what finally gets you. Its hard to tell how long you've been in here when any clocks you find in the hallways are all frozen to the same time and the sun hangs over the infinite highway like an immovable, swollen eye. But the hunger is ever present.

There's always exposure. Cold, hot, never anything between. How can you be freezing to death in an office hallway?

That isn't right. That isn't how it should be. Starving and freezing and dying of thirst is something that happens to people OUTSIDE civilization. It would make sense if you were lost in the woods but you can SEE sign after sign of civilization and other people for gods' sake!

How could this be happening? Why isn't anyone coming to help you?

And then we draw back, to you-who-is-consuming-this-fictional scenario. Because the point of horror is to get the person in the chair riled up, not just the character within the fictional premise.

Are you thinking about how often people starve and freeze and die of thirst in our own civilizations? Inches from the trappings of safety? With no help coming?

Are you thinking of how many desperate people navigate government mazes of plaster and brick and paper and online forms, driven forward by the hope of government aid or food stamps or HELP. How many people hunker down in a freezing subway or under a bridge on the highway or other public space knowing that no one SEES them because they're all transitioning from one space to another?

You probably aren't. Not directly. But we all know we're closer to freezing to death under a bridge or denied life-saving medical care in an office than we are to being a billionaire, right?

And there's something about that, deep in our gut, that resonates. That thread of reality in the safely fictional that keeps us coming back. Unable to articulate WHY but also thinking that liminal horror is somehow SCARIER than mere monsters. We all know that deadly predators are unlikely to get us. Adding a monster lets us move our too-real-fear to a safe target. And it's valid to want to do that! To decide spatial horror is too much, to want to thin it out like adding ranch dressing to a too-spicy chicken wing.

But that's why I think that the monsters are an artificial add on. And not a part of spatial horror.

#spatial horror #jr note #rambles #liminal spaces #if you add a monster to the backrooms i sleep #but you can if you want #its why i prefer the interpretation that the minotaur was not real in house of leaves #which is a valid interpretation the book itself brings up

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oneatlatime · 11 months ago

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The Tales of Ba Sing Se PART 1

Once upon a time in Ba Sing Se, the Gaang got Appa back. The end. Please?

This title sounds rather expositiony, but last episode was already a plot/exposition dump, and a rather dark one at that. So who knows? Not me.

Sokka hun I think you're supposed to shave with a blade slightly less substantial than that.

I am fascinated by the hair loopies. I always thought that they were braided in, but they clip in. Does she have a magnet in her braid that they clip in to? A lego type system?

CAT

Toph's morning routine is uncomfortably close to mine.

I know Toph likes being slobby to stick it to the man, but wouldn't it also help with her spatial awareness if she's always sporting a healthy coating of earth? Maybe she can sense where her limbs are better or something?

"Spa day!" "Do I have to?" UNCOMFORTABLY CLOSE GUYS.

That has got to be torture. How would you like a pumice stone to the eyeballs?

Now THAT'S a healthy coating of earth.

You're not usually into that stuff? You got dolled up last episode.

Are there voice acting awards? Because whoever voiced these guys needs one. I have never in my life heard such perfectly distilled middle school clique bitch impression.

That's cathartic.

Katara's smothering/mothering tendencies usually annoy me, but it's a good thing those means girls happened when Katara was around, because this calls for serious hugs. I almost want to say that it's out of character to see Toph not be 100% sure of herself, but I think it adds character instead.

Do you think anyone's ever told Toph before that she's really pretty? Ever?

That's a good hug.

Is this short stories? Like an anthology? TALES of Ba Sing Se. Like day in the life? Ok. I'm going to break this up for ease of reading/writing.

The Tale of Iroh

If Iroh hadn't distinguished himself by making the best tea in the city, he would have come to everyone's attention anyway by single handedly fixing everyone's personal problems.

Bending soccer. Why didn't I think of that?

His voice is funny in this scene. Also isn't honour a fire nation thing?

One of my absolute favourite things about Iroh is that his philosophical side is always balanced out by a practical side. He's always philosophising but he's also always grounded. Sometimes hightailing it is what needs doing. Sometimes your sister is crazy and needs to go down.

You know you're bad at crime when your poor stance actually offends the guy you're mugging.

I also like how Iroh really doesn't moralise. He'll teach this guy what conditions the moonflower likes; he'll teach this guy how to mug better. Knowledge is for sharing, no judgment attached!

Random mugger speedruns Zuko's arc.

So pretty. It's been a while since there's been good pretty.

oh shit

Now I have questions!

The Tale of Aang

Writers take note: You see this sad face? You see what you've done to my boy? You can reverse it with one simple trick! GIVE HIM APPA BACK.

I love this. Can't help Appa, so Aang helps every other animal in Ba Sing Se instead.

I want to know what this is. Monkey panther?

I didn't realise until now how tall platypus bears were.

CABBAGE GUY! HI!

Actual dragonflies. Punny.

I love these. My nomination for cutest atla animal.

I hope that wasn't required agricultural land. Should have put the zoo near the drill instead. That land already looked close to salted.

This was some Toph level bending. Love to see Aang's skills progress.

Turtle seal's got competition for cutest animal.

Just call this portion the petting zoo and it's a win.

The Tale of Sokka

Something I don't talk about enough is Sokka's supernatural skill with that boomerang. The realistic explanation is that he's spent every spare minute since receiving it honing his skills by chucking it at random piles of snow, but I like to think he's a boomerang bender. Actually wouldn't boomerang bending be a manifestation of latent airbending tendencies?

I make this face at lasagne.

I may have to make another Sokka's Stupid Faces post.

There is nothing oaflike about falling out of a window and into a Haiku. He was even polite about it!

Somebody introduce Sokka to flyting.

Forget about being a warrior, Aang needs to end this war yesterday so that Sokka can go be a poet. Warrior poet. He's way too creative to waste on cannon fodder.

Poetry bouncer. The longer I think about that the funnier it gets.

Betrayed by hubris.

A Poetry bouncer. Who comes up with this stuff? How do you come up with that? I keep thinking about a poetry bouncer and I keep giggling.

I'm breaking this post here as I'm reaching the image limit. Part 2 coming immediately!

#atla #avatar: the last airbender #avatar the last airbender #the tales of ba sing se #airbender Sokka fanfic when?

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marabarl-and-marlbara · 29 days ago

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Hi Mara,

I wanted to say that all of your writing feels extremely genuine, and I am inspired by the honesty and detachment in your retrospective posts, especially when talking about personal—external—influences. I rarely hear others say that their interest in X is simply gone, or admit that they like(d) Y because the ‘context’ seemingly urged them to. A pattern I often notice instead is personal attachment and the unwillingness to let go of ideas and things which no longer resonate or never really have in the first place.

I wish it was easy to distill all of one’s experiences and likes, remember why and how they came to be, be honest as to how one felt about them, separate the wheat from the chaff, and arrive at something that feels truly genuine and ‘you’.

It feels reductive and probably comes with projection on my part, but that’s the impression I get.

Hope the storm didn’t affect you and your family too much.

Good morning, anonymous--thank you very much for such a kind message!

I wrote about this more vaguely in last months subscriber post, reflecting on "how nothing seemed to scare me" lately and how baffling it seemed that people thought Stephen King's Apt Pupil was a terrifying horror story, and incidentally had been thinking about this during the period of having power but having no internet after Hurricane Milton--I had all these videogames I tried to play but realized they all felt completely boring and uninteresting without something to listen (my favorite streamer, my favorite podcast) to while playing (and in turn, that I needed to be doing something somewhat stimulating while listening to something); I had all these anime shows I could be watching, too, but again little interest because they were all just dead boring--and all I could really manage for myself were to read Henry James and rediscover my old Longmont Potion Castle collection to listen to until internet came back;

but, I don't know how much the genuine 'you' matters; I think about something a sculpture professor told me about the hippies and an adage they had that went kill your parents, and the professor added that it was meant not (always) literally, but to disentangle yourself from 'the origin' or: maybe: the most sacred and profane feelings you see yourself as being a-part of;

realizing I basically have zero interest in being an artist might have been a big hurdle for me to disentangle from way-back in Wilderness when I had some ego-fear of losing my identity as Marabarl and what that entailed: divulging everything about myself, being self destructive, seeming crazy, and using it all as oil to art--severing that all seemed like it would drive me more lonely and leave me with nothing but some bare-dry stick of a person that'd few people would be interested in (but glimpsing at this idea also spoke to how 'being an artist' had little to do with my own desire and more to do with maintaining 'connection' with 'invisible others'). I don't know if killing my parent there had left me a more true version of myself, but it severed connections I mostly kept entwined by wholly out of fear of the loneliness or of letting go of a familiar rot and pain. I'm far more boring than the older Mara, because really now all I'd like to do is go to my weekly sandwich shop, cook, clean, read, listen to audiobooks, be monotonously religious, and try to write bad fiction that I never finish because I keep rewriting the same few parts for months at a time.

There's a quote from a book I finished a few days ago, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain, by Victoria Mackenzie, that I really loved:

"When the day begins, we say that it is breaking. So with my life. Part of me had to be taken into pieces before I could truly start to live. For in my shewings Jesus had said, 'I shall shatter you for your vain passions and your vicious pride; and after that I shall gather you together and make you humble and meek, pure and holy, be oneing you to me.'

My will was broken and I am glad of it. I am only a thing that moves this broom and sweeps the curled leaves and corpses of insects from one side of my cell to the other."

Each layer of myself, as it seems with age, starts to seem more-and-more to be a vanity that I hold to myself well-after it has separated and shed, out of fear and comfort for the more simple figure that is underneath--morosely, I start to really believe the purest part of my-self comes with death when all has been shed away wholly and the carcass is left as the most simple and un-connected atom of Me, and for others: when the Left are shred out to ash and the Right are ate up to heaven; tears and emotion for the dead, too, a type of vanity over wishing that lost other to not be gone from the identity yet though it is truly just another vain callous now shed and clung-to: Dieth and Daniela who I keep getting mad at in fear of letting go-of;

but even in more simple ways--remembering old loves towards things like Narutaru and not wanting to let go because of how fond and warm they felt just a few years ago, and keeping that old passion around like it were furniture that had gone decrepit past any real function except favor; although, during Hurricane Milton, again between time of Power but no Internet, I rewatched some of FLCL and .hack//sign and wished I could be rewatching Hey Arnold's scary episodes--cause really no-matter how much I think I'm capable of letting go of things that seem all vain, boring, and worthless to the simple self, I am a simple creature who wants comfort in the familiar and to things I've loved and felt loved by. And, luckily, I still love Boogiepop! (I think it's easier to keep a love for those things around because they don't really remind me of bad-times as Narutaru does, but I'd like to always keep an effort to keep Hiroko and cute little Ensof in my heart)

Take care.

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kisu-doodles · 2 months ago

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You draw Logan and Scott ‘s physiques so well! Do you use references for drawing muscular physiques or what did you study to get good and make it stylized?

I’ve never found great references to study from but I’m really curious how you practiced and got so good at it?

OMG im so flattered! fr im definitely still learning and im not super confident with my art yet but i'll do my best to answer and maybe it will be helpful!

To answer the first part i always ALWAYS use reference but maybe not in the typical way. Usually i'll try and do the sketch from my mind but im the type who frequently forgets how to draw so i'll usually end up using reference. Typically i have multiple reference categories because 1. it helps avoid just copying others stuff 2. you learn more deeply i find

Here are my typical reference categories

Poses: i tend not to look for poses that look like the character because i think you can get bogged down trying to copy it exactly so for example i'll use a pic with a woman when drawing a man. I also highly recommend using videos if possible you can find alot of great stuff on youtube so for example if im looking for acting reference i'll often watch an always sunny clip (because the i find that the actors have really great hand acting) or for let's say a fight scene ill look up something from an action movie i like, I do this alot because im working on alot of storyboards and animation rn so seeing things frame by frame is very important. In addition i've been studying alot of x men comics because they have some really great fight scenes specifically all new x men. Further note, I usually try to draw the pose by eyeballing it but if im struggling then ill trace over the pic breaking down the forms and then draw it again using the breakdown as a reference (also u dont have to do this but my goodness it helps, is to draw the pose again from memory without looking at the reference I do this alot especially when animating because i want to build a visual library)

STYLE: One of the things which i think is a big hurdle if you're trying to learn anatomy or more specifically how to draw it in a way you find both easy and appealing is just going from irl pics. This is where studying from other artists is essential for me at least because im naked and afraid 99% of the time when it comes to art. So what i'll do is usually breakdown an artist's work that i like down trying to get into their mindset usually; How are they simplfying the form; what shapes are they using and why. I think it's good to micro focus at first so let's say you're finding forearms tricky then just breakdown how the artist draws forearms then draw your version and COMPARE seeing what's different between your version and the artist. Then i might get some irl pics of the subject and im like ok im x artist and i try my best to draw the part in their style, you know kinda imagining how the artist you like distills the same info. I reference a great deal of artists because they all have a great deal of knowledge but also you dont just want to copy one.

ANATOMY: Im the type that usually wants to apply anatomy immediately to what im working on rather than just doing endless drills because it's one thing to draw an arm for example as u usually see in reference which is by the side and completely different when the arm is actually doing something. There are a ton of great resources out there for anatomy but for me at least i think it's important to find references that simplify because again i think building a visual library is best. So for me usually i'll whip out the anatomy reference when im stuck on something and cant remember how to draw it

THE CHARACTER: with some characters like scott i usually dont need a reference but with logan and his silly hair it is essential. since with these two there are so many comics there is a ton of great reference

Further thoughts:

One of the things which i think is super essential at least for me is to try and force yourself to draw from imagination because it's very easy to get stuck in a learning cycle if that makes sense. A nice way to ease yourself into it is to start modifying your pose from the reference so let's say you've drawn the character sitting on a chair now draw it so they're leaning forward or to the side whatever you want! you can also try drawing from a more exaggerated perspective or from a completely different angle! Finally i think it's a great way to loosen up to just doodle poses with no reference just whatever tickles your fancy for this it helps to have a shorthand that you feel you can draw at any angle so even stick figures can work nicely!

i found especially for drawing muscular characters it is best to try cartoony simplification because the anatomy can be quite overwhelming. When i first started to draw logan i used his character sheet from x men evolution and would doodle random poses and then using the model sheet as reference try to put him on model (basically the mindset was what would the animators on the show do) it was really fun and because i had these simple but clear logans adding more detailed anatomy was super easy!

So to elaborate id find lets say a reference of someone eating a salad and then id draw logan in the style of x men evolution eating a salad.

Sorry if this was super rambly i hope it helps!!! i could elaborate if ye require it

#kisu asks

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cognitosclowns · 2 years ago

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I wanna fall asleep with these freaks 💓🥺

I am the eepiest sleepiest little guy of all time and this activated a Worm in my Brain so this is gonna get SO LONG AMSDNAMSND

sfw!! just snuggles and soft things

Reagan

Not extremely cuddly? She likes her personal space!

That doesn't mean she never wants cuddles, she's just gotta be in a particular Mood for it!

Most nights, she wants to be kinda,, gently curled into your arm?? just a loose grip around it w/ her own, cheek resting on your bicep.

She talks in her sleep, but it's very quiet. Usually it's just her going through her schedule for tmrw (does she?? dream of work in her sleep???), but occasionally, you'll hear her mumbling about how much she loves you <333

Yes, it's just as cute as it sounds. She has no memory of it in the morning, but if you bring it up, she'll get this flustered little Half-Smile alllll morning <3

She falls asleep so fast. if you wanna be cute w/ her while cozied in bed I'm so sorry, the second she feels Safe and Warm and Cozy in your vicinity she's passing out for 4-12 hours ✨✌🏻

It's alright, you know she needs her rest <3 besides, that just opens up options for you two to be soft and shmoopy in the morning

Brett

Unsurprisingly, the cuddliest guy of all time. He would be inside your ribcage if the opportunity was provided KJASDKASJD

He really likes?? laying on your chest and stomach?? he likes to be significantly further down. occasionally you'll just,, barely see his hair and the top of his forehead peaking out from the covers from how low he gets

it's just so comfy! he likes The Noises and Warmth and Vague Suffocation that comes w/ sleeping w/ his head under the covers, resting against your torso <3

He smiles so much in his sleep. you didn't think ppl did that outside of movies, but he totally does <3 usually only when he's having a particularly good dream.

OH ALSO HIS BED IS SO FUCKING COZY

I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THIS MAN DOESN'T QUILT. HE HAS SO MANY BEAUTIFUL HAND-MADE QUILTS AND BLANKETS AND KNITTED SHIT IN HIS BED. I hope you like being cozy bc you're gonna be The Coziest Of All Time.

He also sleeps with stuffed animals! He always did as a child bc his treehouse was always cold as hell, and the habit just stayed with him!

they're so well-kept and soft all these years later <3 usually he just keeps them at the foot of the bed, bc it makes him feel safe to, but occasionally he'll bring a couple up for you two to snuggle <3 You Are Never Too Old To Snuggle A Stuffed Bear Don't Like To Yourself.

Andre

A Nightmare (affectionate)

not only is his sleep schedule Entirely Batshit, but he has so much trouble falling asleep. expect lots of tossing and turning

he does settle a lot thought when you hold him!! Don't hold too close, he still needs to squirm a lot to actually fall asleep

You're also the only person that he gets a full nights sleep with <3 he usually ends up waking up in the night, his mind starts working on smth, and he doesn't go back to sleep <3 but with you, it's almost instantaneous.

A little Jump, a bit of squirming to get into a comfortable position, and then off to seeb again <3 it's nice to see just how safe he feels around you <3

Expect plenty of early morning/late night convos <3 hell even middle of the night convos, where he hasn't realised that he fell asleep and instantly hops back into Whatever He Was

He also has such a habit of. Continuing Conversations From His Dream. like he'll just grab your arm and start talking about Yes I'm Sure If We Distilled It Enough We Could Make Whiskey Out Of Lighter Fluid Myc before passing out cold MASNFASMFJ

TLDR. squirmy silly man, but also enjoyable to seeb with.

Gigi

OUGHEEEEEEEEAWBABWBAGOURGHR <- experiencing wife fevers

SO COZY HOLY SHIT

I refuse to believe she doesn't have a Big Comfy Bed. Silk covers, big thick duvet, more pillows that she knows what to do with. The bed is 3 times the size of her so when you catch her snuggled up in bed she truly just looks like those photos of Very Small Puppies in Very Large Beds MNASDMASND

So cuddly <3 you wouldn't expect it, since she makes a point of being seen as very Untouchable and Independent, but she loves to be held.

Her ideal state is nuzzled under your chin, feeling your pulse through your neck <333 a leg hooked around yours to make sure you're nice and close.

She takes a while to fall asleep, so she likes to go to bed early! Feel free to join her at any time, she'll just be dozing <3

If you do join her when she goes to bed, expect some,, very soft, lovey-dovey moments. she looks utterly adorable, all bundled up in her cozy little slightly-too-poofy nightgown and eye mask.

She Deserves 1000000 Cheek Smooches Or Else You Shall Die Of Love Disease <- her favourite part of the night. she will start giggling the moment she feels your lips on her cheeks and neck.

kisses her 1000. she's the most

Myc

HE OWNS A WATERBED I KNOW THIS FUCKING MAN OWNS A WATERBED

A FREEFLOW WATERBED TOO. NO SUPPORT IT FEELS LIKE YOU'RE FLOATING.

It's actually pretty comfortable after you get used to it. you see the appeal, it's kinda got that Sensory Deprivation Tank feeling of weightless floating <3

Expect to be utterly Mummified in tentacles AKSDJASKJ

He insists that it's so that you don't go tossing and turning in your sleep and knock his ass off the bed but. You See Through His Lies You Understand. You See The Jackassery At Play Here.

OUGHEEE he has such a habit of like. swirling his tentacles gently around your skin. Not necessarily stroking back and forth, moreso massaging? if you have any knots in your back, thighs, or arms, they're gonna be gone by morning.

Fairly quiet? That doesn't mean silent though, he absolutely talks while you two drift off to sleep, but it's all in very quiet tones. A Little Shit, But Lovingly. (you may. gently have to bop him on the head and tell him to Shut The Hell Up Its 3 Am Goddamn Not Everyone's Job Is Just Sitting Around Getting Jacked Off MANSDMASNDMANSDMN)

Glenn

He snores like a foghorn I'm so sorry. the old man of all time

If you can look past that though, he's so fucking delightful to sleep with <33 most especially bc he loves when you lay on him

he says smth about how it Helps Unfuck His Back, but you're at least 45% sure that that isn't the main reason

(and you're right, it isn't <3 he just loves feeling your weight on him)

He loves just,, leaving a hand against your back, running up and down as you settle in to sleep <33 before leaving it to rest on the small of your back <33 love is so real and true.

his tail wags in his sleep

HIS TAIL WAGS IN HIS SLEEP

You'll see this most when he's sleeping on his stomach, bc when he's on his back his tail can't move, and on his side Everything Hurts At All Times KAJDKASJ

You'll see it squirm around the most when you're touching him <3 if you run your hands through his hair, or trace patterns on his back that things gonna be WHIPPING like a wheatstalk in a hurricane.

^ this also applies to. early morning and late night cuddles. in the morning its more of a,, slow waggle? like you'll just see it gently twitching under the bed, while you place kisses on his cheek BAWBBABWBABW <- if I talk about his tail any more we'll never be done

just the guy of all time <3 go sleep with that old man go do it go do it now go go go go g

Let Him Sleep On The Booba

Truly he sleeps best with his face buried in your chest. what can he say, it's cozy as hell.

his ideal state is being Unconscious. A Coma. Laying horizontally being fed nutrients through a tube. He will nap on you at any possible moment

It's one of the time's he feels Truly Safe? Like he's constantly having to run around doing what the Shadow Board wants, doing what Rand wants, etc. Sometimes You Just Need A Little Nap With Your Partner To Be Okay Again

He IS freezing cold I refuse to believe otherwise. he runs Ice Cold and it takes him 15 minutes to warm up. feels a bit like cuddling a corpse until your body heat brings him back to Human Levels Of Warmth.

The things we do for love smh MNSFGKFAJSFGKSDJ

stupid rich expensive bed. imported silk sheets. mathematically optimised mattress designed in a lab to give him The Best Sleep Possible. he's rich enough to buy several countries, he might as well put it to use.

Alpha-Beta

OUGHEEEEEEEEAWBABWBAGOURGHR <- experiencing wife fevers part 2

He's such a heavy sleeper MY GOD. If you couldn't hear his internal systems whirring and clicking you'd think he was dead KJDSAKFJASDKFJDSA

It isn't really his fault - his 'sleep cycle' likes to be done in one solid stretch, to avoid file corruption, which means. His body just,, won't wake him up unless it senses Active Danger to himself or you.

It's fine! He'll wake up if the house is on fire. Probably.

'aww you're such an old man <3' <- he's going to push you into a woodchipper AKSGJSAKDJFKSDFGJ

He's so warm and cozy <3

Upside, personal heater during the winter. Downside, summer is hell for both of you (Upside, he sleeps mostly naked in summer to avoid Dying of Death Disease)

Hold him <3 hold him he won't ask but he loves being held, even more than he loves holding you (which is. Saying Something). The second he feels your arms wrap around him, maybe one of your hands gently fussing with his hair? Out like a light <3 its sweet, all those unspoken ways that shows how much he loves you <3

ABWBABWBAB I swear I did an ask like this before but. I don't care this was so cute. If you have any additions, go nuts!

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garmgeyr · 2 months ago

Text

Brief Analysis of Gallagher's Fighting Technique

Because this is what my caffeinated brain has decided to fixate on today ha

Technique

So this animation is actually where all these thoughts started. I've been perplexed by the way he lunges ever since I noticed that he pulls his left foot back before standing up again. Last night, I finally decided to slow it down and look at each part of the movement.

First, I realized that he overextends like crazy:

His left foot is so far ahead of his center of gravity that there's really no comfortable way he can bring his right leg up to meet it without pulling the left leg back first. You throw your balance off more if you do that. So then I started to wonder why on earth would he overextend. Not only does it throw off balance, but it leaves you wide open for a counterattack. So I decided to dig deeper into what exactly is going on with this motion.

Reminds me of parivrtta anjaneya, which takes a lot of lower body strength, but more importantly: torso flexibility. Gallagher might have impressive looking biceps and a well-developed chest, but both of those things are almost extraneous when it comes to the way he fights. Deceptively, it's his waist and legs doing most of the work, which is consistent across all of his attack animations, but for his technique, the twist he makes with his hips is actually what gives this strike so much power.

While laymen might think that the strength of a punch comes from the arms, in reality, the force is gathered from the ground up and the rest of the body has to be flexible and strong enough to move that force up to the fist in a very short amount of time.

Gallagher is delivering this strike from his right foot. His shoulders and hips turn nearly 180 degrees between the wind up and the impact, and he extends the full length of his body. Most trained fighters aren't throwing all their weight into a single strike like this, but it follows all of the principles that make a punch hit hard. It's fast, but he's also a large man with a good deal of body mass and an impressive reach. In other words, Gallagher is generating a lot of momentum with this attack, a lot more than the average punch. With the way it opens him up to be knocked off balance by a counterattack, I realized: this strike is meant to kill. Or, at the very least, immobilize his opponent. He's allowing himself to be vulnerable here because he's not expecting a counterattack.

This technique inflicts the Besotted state on his target, which in game increases the amount of break damage received. Narratively though, given the debuff's name, it likely intoxicates the target, slowing their reaction time and impacting their perception enough that Gallagher can get out of the way.

(As a side note, the new ascension item A Glass of the Besotted Era has me chewing on some new theories.

"At this moment, a cup of nectar blends with a goblet of poison, intoxicating this era together and poisoning the future with the past." A group of believers treads across countless stars, seeking memories of numerous fine wines, brewing their offerings in dreams. Another group of believers turns themselves into yeast, fermenting ancient faiths sealed by the dust of time, distilling their ideals within dreams.

But those thoughts need some more time to cook)

It makes a wet slicing sound when it hits too, not unlike Dormancy's blade, so I'm pretty sure it also hurts like a bitch.

Anyway, moving on (the rest is shorter I promise).

Basic Attack & Enhanced Basic

Starting with his regular basic attack, I really think this is his most elegant technique. It's just a spinning kick, but he doesn't waste any motion. He runs up to the enemy, which gives the first kick its momentum, and then he uses the momentum from that kick to pivot into a spinning back kick. Work smarter not harder.

But this is also another impressive display of Gallagher's core strength and balance, especially because he does this all with his left hand in his pocket.

He makes it look all rather effortless though, which makes me think of his trace unlock and ascension lines:

"Need I say more? Muscle memory never lies.""Intuition, instinct... training can sharpen them both."

It's this attack that I feel conveys how much experience he has. He knows just how much effort to expend, and does it almost without thinking.

His enhanced basic is similar, except he uses the momentum of the first kick to set up his stance for the claw strike.

His feet are placed almost exactly like they are in his Technique, and he makes the same hip-shoulder twist to deliver the strike with maximum impact. Except this time he's ripping the claws back out and then leaping away instead of going back to a standing position. Still, he's throwing his whole body weight into the punch, and if those claws were steel, they'd pretty much disembowel a guy.

And finally...

Ultimate

Even though he's just using his claws again, he's starting with his right leg in front this time and his footing doesn't actually change through the attack.

All of the momentum is coming from his waist and shoulders. He starts off with his arm pulled back as far as it will go, and then using his legs like a fulcrum, twists around to slash instead of stab. He's aiming for breadth, and is extended as far as he's physically capable of swinging. I don't have much more to say about this move other than that this is clearly a man who knows how to make the most out of his body. It shows that he's both well-practiced and experienced, since the only way he would have gotten so concise and confident with this unconventional weapon is by fighting. A lot.

Closing Remarks

Gallagher is way more flexible than I was expecting him to be, but that flexibility is at the center of every single one of his attacks. He might look laidback, undisciplined, and too old to be moving like that, but the fact that he can on command means that he keeps himself in fighting condition despite his proclivity for laziness and self-indulgence. This reflects his personality too: he's always been sharp despite the image he projects of a washed up drunk. I can't imagine him being the kind of person who trains for the sake of training though, because at the end of the day, he would rather just laze around somewhere with a good drink or five. So his training is probably practical, like spending his time fighting nightmares and other aggressive memes around the fringes of the dreamscape in order to keep Penacony safe, with or without the Bloodhound affiliation.

#out of character #headcanons #// 'ree you have a million other things to do' I know I know #// demons wouldn't let me rest until I wrote this up #// I might not be participating in spabyss this month but I'm participating in spirit with this fighting analysis #// the claws/flames will need their own separate analysis one day

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ghostinthelibrarywrites · 1 year ago

Note

23 for the prompts please? Yennskier or geraskefer

🌻🌸🌺🌷

Here's some fluffy modern AU Geraskefer:

23. “What’s cookin’, good lookin’?”

There’s a cozy scene waiting for Jaskier when he steps into his apartment. Geralt stands at the stove, stirring a pot of something that smells divine, while Roach waits patiently at his feet for a morsel to be dropped and Yennefer sits at the kitchen table, chopping herbs with swift efficiency. Jaskier takes a moment to stare soppily at his lovers while they're not looking—he knows better than to be overly sentimental while Yennefer is holding a sharp knife—before he shrugs off his coat and shoes and heads over to see what's for dinner.

“Sorry I’m late. Class ran over.” He comes up behind Geralt, giving Roach a pat before looping his arms around his witcher's waist and taking a deep breath of whatever's in the pot. “What's cookin’, good lookin’?”

Geralt leans back against him. “Endrega venom sacs.”

“Sounds deli—I'm sorry, what?"

"Endrega venom sacs,” Geralt says again.

“Yes, I heard you the first time. I still have questions.” Jaskier peers over his lover’s shoulder and finds that whatever's in the pot is disturbingly clumpy. “Why the fuck are you stewing endrega venom sacs?”

“Works better than baking them.”

"Eugh. And why does it smell so good?" Jaskier whines.

All that earns him is a shrug.

A horrible thought occurs to Jaskier. “We're not having endrega venom sacs for dinner, are we?” Early in their acquaintance, Geralt and he did have a small misunderstanding where Geralt thought it ridiculous that Jaskier wouldn’t consume roadkill raw off the side of the highway. But that was over a decade ago; surely Geralt remembers Jaskier’s delicate human constitution by now.

Yennefer snorts as Geralt turns to stare at Jaskier like he's being the ridiculous one. “Of course not. I distill the venom and sell it. They use it in facials now.”

Jaskier is never getting a facial again. “Wait, are you using our brand new pot?"

“Hm.”

“You are!” Jaskier turns to Yennefer for backup, but she's just smirking at him, because she enjoys the sight of his exasperation, the horrible witch. “Geralt, I got that pot specifically so we could have separate cookware for food and potions.”

“In his defense, he’s not making a potion,” Yennefer says.

Jaskier really doesn’t know why he loves her. “Do you want a repeat of the Black Blood poisoning incident from last year?”

“You didn’t have Black Blood poisoning,” Geralt says. “If you had had Black Blood poisoning, you’d be dead.”

“So it’s a coincidence that you made soup in the same pot where you'd just brewed a batch of Black Blood and then I spent the night sick as a dog?”

“Could have been the two-week-old takeout you ate because you convinced yourself the soup tasted weird.”

“Geralt, I could have died.”

“Hm.”

“Witchers.” Jaskier doesn’t know why he bothers. He crosses the kitchen to drape himself over the back of Yennefer’s chair, reaching for the pile on her cutting board. “And what do we have here?”

“Don’t eat it.” She brushes his hand away.

He pouts. “What, will this kill me too?”

“No, but it will make you wish it had.”

Jaskier backs away hurriedly. “Are you two trying to poison me tonight?”

Yennefer doesn’t turn towards him, but he can hear her eye roll. “We can’t be blamed for the fact that you’ll put anything in your mouth.”

Jaskier leers at the back of her head. “You don’t normally complain about what I do with my mouth.”

“I do when you're eating two-week-old Nilfgaardian food and complaining about it.”

Well, that’s just rude. Jaskier crosses his arms over his chest and huffs. “I’m a starving artist, my love. I need to make do with what I can afford.”

Geralt snorts. “Jask, you’re a viscount.”

“Only technically.”

“Your family has two castles.”

“Three castles if you count the villa in Toussaint,” Yennefer adds.

Jaskier hates it when they gang up on him. He really hates it when they gang up on him and they’re right. A change of subject is in order. “Well, we’re not eating venom sacs for dinner and we’re not eating scary witch herbs, so what’s for dinner?”

Geralt and Yennefer both turn to look at him with identical exasperated expressions. “It’s Wednesday,” Geralt says. “It’s your turn to handle dinner.”

Jaskier opens his mouth to protest, mentally reviews his calendar, and closes his mouth. “Ah. Right.”

Yennefer smiles at him oh-so-sweetly, like she only does when she knows she has him cornered. “So, what’s for dinner, Jaskier?”

Jaskier throws his arms around her neck, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “My darlings, my loves, I’ve spent all day agonizing over what meal I could possibly put in front of you that’s worthy of the two most magnificent people the Continent has ever seen.”

“Takeout again?” Geralt’s lips curl into a fond little smile.

“Takeout again,” Jaskier agrees. “But the most wonderful takeout you’ve ever feasted upon—”

“Better than your cooking,” Yennefer grumbles. “I’d rather have the endrega venom.”

“You only say that because I don’t know how to prepare the tears of the innocent.”

“Of course not. That would require boiling water, something you’ve yet to master.”

“You—”

In the end, Geralt ends up ordering the takeout while Yennefer and Jaskier debate the finer points of Jaskier’s cooking prowess. But it's okay. Jaskier will just have to handle dinner next week. Most likely.

***

Angst/fluff prompts

Tag list: @kueble @mollymawkwrites @feral-jaskier @geraltrogerericduhautebellegarde @dawnofbards @thisislisa @tsukiwolf42 @mosaicscale @rockysstupidity @fontegagrilledcheese @kuripon @help-i-need-a-cool-username @julek @flowercrown-bard @eveljerome @ladykardasi

#the witcher #geraskefer #geralt x jaskier x yennefer #ghost's writing #prompt fills

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neopuff · 9 months ago

Text

ALWAYS ON MY MIND

chapter two: at the back of my mind ships: sasha/milla characters: sasha, milla, otto, truman words: 4452 ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53435410/chapters/135363142

[chap 1]

It'd been almost a month since Grand Head Zanotto forced Sasha to socialize with someone new for several hours. He'd not done it again since, but that was probably because they hadn't had any new hires since then.

His two hours with Agent Vodello had been surprisingly pleasant. She was charming and friendly, but not uncomfortably so, and Sasha liked that she listened to what he said. At least she seemed to be listening - he hadn't attempted to read her mind out of respect for her privacy, but occasionally caught the telepathic sound of music playing.

After their tour, she hadn't sought him out for anything. Which was just fine - Sasha was always working on research projects or helping Agent Mentallis with one of his new inventions. He didn't need anything else on his plate.

Still, Agent Vodello waved at him anytime they were both in the lobby. He felt himself awkwardly wave back each time, but she was always, always with someone else, so their interactions never really expanded beyond that.

Which, again, was perfectly fine with him.

On one uneventful Monday morning, Sasha was making his way across the Quarry to Agent Mentallis’ lab when he saw her by herself for the first time in a long time.

She was exiting Agent Mentallis’ lab and had a neutral, almost sad expression on her face. Sasha thought it looked unnatural on her, when she was usually so…smiley.

Just as he thought that, she noticed him, and gave him the bright smile he was used to seeing. “Ah, hello, Agent Nein!”

They both stopped on the same floating pad, just two away from the parking lot in front of the lab. “Good morning, Agent Vodello. Nice to see you.”

“You, too!” She looked positively giddy, clapping her hands together in front of her. “It’s been far too long since we’ve talked - we should get coffee sometime and chat!”

Sasha adjusted his sunglasses, taking that in. He knew that her words were the universal expression of we’ll probably never spend time together again, but said in the nicest way possible. Which was a bit disappointing, but at least he wouldn’t get his hopes up. “Yes…of course. Some time when we’re both free.”

Agent Vodello smiled and waved at him as she levitated away - he watched her for a half-second before turning to focus entirely on the lab. Where his focus was supposed to be.

He stepped through the annoying security room and found himself standing across from Otto Mentallis’ familiar face - the older psychic was alone at his desk, tinkering with something small.

“Agent Mentallis.”

“Ah, Sasha!” Otto smiled and waved him over. “This is a real change of pace - my last visitor was a very lively young woman.”

Sasha chose not to take that as an insult. “I assume you’re referring to Agent Vodello.”

“Yes, that’s her!” The older man stood up and stretched, cracking his back. “Talkative, charming. Pretty, too, don’t you think?”

At that question, Sasha pulled out a cigarette and quickly lit it, enjoying the calm it brought his nerves. “...it would be pointless to pretend otherwise.”

Otto laughed loudly and sharply, surprising the younger agent who stared at him like he’d grown a second head. “I always appreciate how predictable you are, honestly. It makes me feel like I’ve got a good handle on this place. Now what’d you come down here for?”

“I…was interested in how your latest project is going,” Sasha answered, ignoring the other comments. He could genuinely never tell if Agent Mentallis was purposefully trying to get under his skin, or if the man simply didn’t pay attention to some of the things that came out of his mouth. “Have you made much progress?”

“Ahhh…my Distilled Emotions series. No, not particularly.” Otto put a hand to his chin and glanced to the side, where he had scribbles and scratch marks all over the pages of an open notebook. “I’m still interested in the idea, but…it’s slow-going. Nothing has seemed to work so far. But I’m not giving up just yet!”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Sasha stuffed his hands into his pockets, lit cigarette floating near his head. “If there’s any way I could assist…”

“Not with this one, I don’t think. Not yet, at least! I’ll let you know when I make a breakthrough worth talking about.” The older man paused for a moment, glaring at his wall of gadgets both finished and unfinished, then he grabbed one item to show it off. “Did I show you my new Otto-shot Camera?”

“You did not.” Sasha eyed the camera suspiciously - he didn’t have much need for taking photographs, but he was curious to know how it differed from a normal camera. “What does it do?”

“What doesn’t it do would be a better question!” Otto held it up proudly. “You can use it to…well - take photos! But it also has fun filters and can detect hard-to-find figments inside someone’s mind…it’s very helpful.”

Sasha didn’t think any of that sounded particularly useful to him, though he supposed there was no downside to help in collecting figments. “This seems like it would be better suited for someone like Agent Vodello,” he commented dryly, not really thinking about any unintended meaning to his words.

Otto, however, seemed to find that comment very interesting, considering the suspicious smirk that came over his face as soon as Sasha mentioned the lively, pretty young woman again.

Sasha frowned at the older man’s expression.

“You know what, Sasha, you’re absolutely right. She seems very photogenic - perhaps you could bring this to her and she can test it for me!” Otto said, wolfish smile never leaving his face.

Confused, Sasha reached out and took the camera out of his hands. He wasn’t an idiot - he could see Agent Mentallis was trying to imply something untoward and he didn’t understand how acknowledging her existence would justify that. “What are you doing?” he asked uncomfortably.

“Me? I’m just trying to be efficient with my time!” Otto answered innocently, holding his hands up in the air. “I’m an old man, Sasha. You can't expect me to go back and forth to the Motherlobe all willy-nilly.”

Sasha held the camera tighter in his hands. Though Agent Mentallis’ explanation made sense, they'd spent enough time together that Sasha knew he was lying. He didn't understand why Agent Mentallis felt it necessary to make those types of jokes, but it certainly wasn't the first time nor would it be the last.

“...alright. I'll bring it to her,” Sasha said hesitantly. “But I don’t see her often, so don’t expect results anytime soon.”

“Sure, sure. Whenever. I'm in no rush!”

Sasha made his way out of the workshop, feeling a bit like he'd wasted his time. He liked Agent Mentallis and really enjoyed working with the man on machines and gadgets, but Agent Mentallis also had the unfortunate habit of implying that Sasha needed to socialize with people his own age. On more than one occasion, he'd even told Sasha to go get a life!

But Sasha did have a life. He felt extremely comfortable as he was currently living, even if he didn't have many friends. He'd spent the last seven years building himself a career and a reputation amongst the Psychonauts that he wouldn't trade for anything. And those years of focus and discipline had given him the strength and understanding to work through difficulties from his youth. There was no amount of socializing with a beautiful woman that would have any such impact.

Or a not-beautiful woman.

Or anyone, really.

He took a step closer to the Motherlobe and took another drag of his cigarette. It felt like he was breaking some sort of unspoken rule by acknowledging Agent Vodello’s charm. He could only blame Otto for implanting the thought in his mind. But it wasn’t inappropriate to recognize that she was pretty. She clearly took pride in her appearance - she wore makeup, styled her hair, looked at herself in mirrors anytime she noticed one. But Sasha felt still like he was doing something wrong.

As he entered the Motherlobe, Sasha’s eyes were immediately drawn to the woman of the hour - she had started to wear more colorful clothes after getting settled in the new job, and her style tended to include bright colors, which made her especially noticeable.

More than that, though, she was levitating alongside Grand Head Zanotto, and they were headed towards the Nerve Center.

Obviously they were going to talk about something important. Sasha had no reason to interrupt, especially when all he had to give her was Agent Mentallis’ strange new camera. So he made his way back to his office. Sasha had recently completed a short recon mission and still needed to write up his report - there was plenty of work to do that didn't involve anyone else.

He got about fifteen minutes into his report - which meant it was almost done, since the mission had been fairly simple - when he felt a telepathic prodding in the back of his mind.

“Sasha, can you come up to my office? I need your assistance.”

He pouted and adjusted his sunglasses, curious what Grand Head Zanotto needed from him. Especially after he just met with Agent Vodello - Sasha anxiously wondered if she'd complained about him for some reason. Maybe she felt he'd been staring at her and was uncomfortable. Or perhaps Agent Mentallis said something out-of-turn.

“Be right there,” Sasha responded, telepathically reaching back.

Paperwork forgotten, Sasha tried not to feed his paranoia as he made his way to the Grand Head’s office. It was unlikely that Agent Vodello had filed a complaint about him. And it was even more unlikely that Agent Mentallis being inappropriate would lead to Sasha being called in for a talk.

He didn't really have a guess as to the purpose of this meeting, so he supposed he had no choice but to wait and find out.

Upon reaching the Grand Head’s office, Sasha turned to levitate over the water fixture when he heard two familiar voices talking. He was immediately confused and very curious why he’d been brought in when the previous meeting hadn’t ended yet.

“Ah, there he is!”

Sasha landed a few feet in front of the Grand Head’s desk when the older man smiled at him, and Camilla turned around with a matching smile on her face.

“Two times in one day! What a treat!” she said with a little wink.

Sasha took another drag from his cigarette and nodded at her, then looked up at the Grand Head. “You needed me for something…?”

“Not me, exactly. Agent Vodello here has been struggling with some of her psychic powers and I thought you could give her some one-on-one training since you’re not on any assignments right now,” Grand Head Zanotto answered quickly, repeatedly glancing down at the clock on his desk.

“Oh.”

Camilla looked embarrassed and ran her fingers through her hair. “I haven’t had much opportunity to practice certain things and he mentioned you right away,” she said with a chuckle. “I hope it’s not a bother.”

“No, not at all,” Sasha answered, adjusting his sunglasses slightly. “I always have time to help a fellow Psychonaut.”

She smiled again - a particularly bright and charming smile that made Sasha grab his cigarette once more - and then stood up. Sasha had forgotten how tall she was. Though he was still taller than her, it was only by an inch or two. He was used to towering over the average person; it was a nice change of pace.

“That’s great to hear, Sasha!” Grand Head Zanotto was looking through some papers on his desk while he spoke. “The new classroom is finished if you two want to check it out while you train! Or go wherever. Doesn’t matter. Just let me or Agent Forsythe know if you need anything!”

They exited his office and started walking through the Nerve Center, ignoring the dozen Psychonauts levitating all over the room and chatting about anything under the sun.

Sasha noticed Agent Forsythe staring curiously at the two of them walking together and he couldn’t stop himself from smoking again.

“You smoke quite a bit,” Camilla commented.

“It’s been more than usual lately,” he responded as they exited the Nerve Center and made their way into the lobby. “Good for calming my nerves.”

There was a bit of hesitation before Agent Vodello spoke again. “I hope I’m not causing you more stress, I’m sure Truman could ask someone else if you’re busy!”

Sasha turned towards her, one eyebrow raised. “It has nothing to do with you,” he lied, having realized in the past hour that his urge to smoke increased every time Camilla’s looks or charm were mentioned around him. Or anytime she said something especially friendly. There was just something about her - Agent Mentallis wasn’t wrong when he called her pretty, but she was more than just pretty. She was show-stoppingly gorgeous. And she made Sasha feel nervous in ways he wasn’t quite used to. He’d been around plenty of beautiful people, but Camilla had a glow around her like no other. She lit up every room she was in like she harnessed the light of the sun itself. “I can’t pinpoint exactly what it’s related to, but I’m sure it’ll pass.”

“I hope so,” Camilla responded, glancing around the newly updated wing of the Motherlobe. “I haven’t been over here yet,” she said unprompted, spinning around as she levitated.

“I haven’t either.” Sasha watched her for a moment, then turned to take in the new hallway layout. “I suppose Agent Forsythe’s new office will go back here, then.”

She’d poked her head into the new classroom as he spoke - the room was finished being built a week or two ago and was still being filled with the appropriate furniture. So it looked a little empty. Not that it mattered, since the training would all be in Sasha’s head.

“We’ll be training here?” she asked curiously.

Sasha levitated past her and into the room, stopping in front of a set of chairs that had been left in the center of the floor. He pulled a small, colorful door out of his jacket pocket and let it hover above his hand. “I think we’ll cause less damage if we go into my mind.”

“Oh!” Camilla quickly joined him by the chairs. “I didn’t even consider that.”

“Have you…been inside someone else’s mind before?” he asked a little hesitantly, not sure where she was at in her training.

“Truman let me visit his mind not long after he visited mine.” She answered carefully, not making eye contact while she spoke. “It wasn’t for very long, though. I was still…working on some things.”

Sasha nodded, not knowing the specifics but understanding the gist. “I suppose you don’t have your own door, then.”

“I was actually just talking to Agent Mentallis about that!” Camilla answered. “He promised to make mine nice and sparkly.” She chuckled, then reached out to touch the edge of Sasha’s door. “Yours is beautiful. I wouldn’t have expected so many colors!”

He grabbed his cigarette and took one last drag, happy to get his money’s worth by smoking the stick as far as it could go. “Yes. Well. My mind is certainly not as colorful.”

She giggled at that response and took a seat in one of the chairs, brushing invisible dust off her dress and sitting up as straight as possible. “I’m ready when you are, Agent Nein.”

Sasha followed suit and took the seat across from her. He placed the small door on his forehead, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and waited for the welcome intruder to find her way inside. He remembered his first time entering someone’s mind through a door - that person was Otto Mentallis, and that man’s mind was a disorganized mess. It’d given Sasha hives just walking through it, and encouraged him to keep his own mind as clean and organized as possible.

For himself, sure. But also for future guests.

A minute later and he was greeted by the sight of Camilla Vodello levitating around one side of his specifically crafted block of a mindscape.

“Now this is more what I expected,” she said thoughtfully.

He wondered if she meant that literally - that she’d been thinking about him and wondering what his mind looked like - but quickly shook that off. He was usually a master of controlling his thoughts and focusing…Agent Vodello just so happened to throw him off-balance. He needed to get a handle on that.

He adjusted his sunglasses, wondering when his censors would start to arrive. “Which powers would you like to work on?”

“I’m not the best at PSI-Blasting,” she admitted sheepishly. “Or connecting thoughts.”

“My mind is an excellent space for working on your Marksmanship skills,” Sasha responded. “I can set up some thoughts for you to connect, though we’ll have to put them back when we’re done.”

“Of course!” Camilla smiled at him, hands clasped behind her back. “I wouldn’t want to change your opinions like that.” She started to levitate, as she often did, and then went exploring around to another side of Sasha’s mind cube. She didn’t react much to anything - considering how clean Sasha kept it, he wasn’t surprised.

But then she let out a low “oh, hello!” and Sasha mentally focused on her to see what she was doing.

She was watching one of his memory vaults jumping around, making little noises at it as if she was speaking to a dog. It was strange, to say the least. Sasha levitated the vision of himself in his mind towards her to observe it closer.

He recognized which vault it was immediately. “You can open it if you’d like,” he said as he continued to watch her try to pet it. “Especially if you haven’t looked into a memory vault before. It’s a very unique experience.”

“Truman asked me not to look at his,” Camilla answered, reaching down to lightly scratch the memory vault. “Are you sure? If it’s too much, I can-”

“It’s fine.” He meant it, too.

She held eye contact for another moment, just in case he showed any sign of hesitation at all, then reached down and gently pet the memory vault on its head. It made a happy noise and then laid down and opened up for her, which Sasha thought was interesting. Usually he’d smack them or use telekinesis to hold them steady - he’d never watched someone coax one so gently before.

Agent Vodello spent a minute staring at the inside of the vault, and Sasha felt a voyeuristic discomfort from watching her do so. He didn’t have much of a choice, though, whether he stared at her directly or just felt her presence in his mind.

Eventually she stood up, a solemn look on her face. It wasn’t like he was the only person in the world who lost their mother at a young age, but he supposed he could’ve warned her.

She levitated over to him without saying a word, and before Sasha could open his mouth - her arms were suddenly wrapped around his neck and she was pressed up against him.

He didn’t know what to do. So he just stood there, completely stiff and still, until she backed away.

“I’m so sorry, Sasha,” she said softly, her hands held together in front of her chest. “She seemed like a wonderful person.”

Still a bit shaken by the hug, Sasha was frozen for a moment before finally shaking his head and reaching up to adjust his sunglasses. He needed a cigarette again. “I…yes, she was. Thank you for saying so.”

Camilla smiled at him and reached forward, placing one of her hands against his arm. “If you ever want to talk, I’d be happy to listen.”

The amount of affection he was receiving was a little overwhelming for Sasha, and he stared down at her hand for a few seconds before awkwardly clearing his throat and lightly shaking his head. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m fine. It was quite a long time ago.” He felt like he could breathe easier as she pulled her hand away. “Let’s focus on why we’re here - my censors should be showing up any moment now.”

They spent over an hour training in Sasha’s mind - blasting censors with blastokinesis, tossing censors at one another using telekinesis, slowing down time and watching the confusion cross the censors’ faces…it was fun, if he was being honest with himself. Sasha hadn’t had an opportunity to just blow off some steam inside his mind in several months.

One moment that he filed away for later was when he asked Camilla about pyrokinesis. She shook her head and claimed that fire just wasn’t her thing, so they moved on without it. But he was unfortunately quite curious about that. Was she in an accident that involved fire?

Or perhaps she just wasn’t confident at controlling it.

Either way, the subject seemed sensitive and he didn’t know her well enough to ask.

She blasted another small censor and took a deep breath before stretching out her arms and falling back, landing with a thud and closing her eyes.

Sasha levitated over and stood next to her, staring down at the serene look on her face. “Are you alright?”

“Just tired, darling, very tired,” she mumbled in response.

He felt his cheeks heat up slightly, not sure why she’d just called him that. Was she thinking about someone else? Was she so tired that she’d lost her verbal self control? “I…um,” he started, wanting to say something about it. But she looked very peaceful and unconcerned with her own words, it almost felt rude to say something. “...we can leave, if you’d like.”

She sighed again, opening her eyes to stare back at him. Then she smiled. “That sounds nice. I’m supposed to meet with Kim for lunch soon.”

Sasha hoped he didn’t look as embarrassed as he felt. The combination of that nickname and the smile she just gave him made him feel like there were angry butterflies trying to break out of his stomach. “If that can wait a little longer, I actually have something for you in my office.”

Camilla levitated back to a standing position and tilted her head - staring at him like he’d said something crazy. “...you do?”

He glanced away from her, feeling suddenly self-conscious. “Yes, um. Well, it’s from Agent Mentallis. A device he thought you might like to test for him.”

Her eyes widened and brightened at that, and Camilla grabbed her smelling salts and quickly made her way out of Sasha’s mind. When he opened his eyes again in the classroom, she was already standing and ready to go.

“This is the first time Agent Mentallis has thought of me for something like this!” she said excitedly, clapping her hands together in front of her. “What is it?”

Sasha stood up with her and started making his way out of the room. “You shouldn’t get too excited. It’s a camera. A…psychic camera.”

Camilla followed him, floating the whole way. “A psychic camera?”

“He, um…thought you could test it out for him. Take photos of…” Sasha paused, not sure if it would be weird to suggest she take photographs of herself. But that was the implication, wasn’t it? “...anything. It can apparently help you find figments in people’s minds.”

She smiled, though there was a look on her face that seemed more confused than excited. “I did enjoy collecting figments in Truman’s mind. Still, it seems a bit random.”

“Agent Mentallis mentioned something about you being, um…” Sasha reached into his pocket and grabbed a new cigarette, needing it desperately. “Photogenic.”

Camilla laughed and levitated ahead of him. She’d only been to his office once before, but it wasn’t difficult to remember the way there. “It’s not the first time an older man has said something like that about me, I suppose.”

Sasha suddenly felt mortified on her behalf. He stood still, the aquarium lighting up the left side of his face while his newly-lit cigarette lit up the right. “I’ll talk to him. He shouldn’t make comments like that. It’s not appropriate.”

She turned around and had an amused smile on her face. “I like photogenic, actually.” She paused in front of Sasha’s office door, waiting for him to catch up. “It’s kind of nice.”

Sasha decided that he would still say something to Agent Mentallis, whether she wanted him to or not. If he didn’t, the older man was guaranteed to continue making little comments or suggestions or implications and Sasha Nein was not a man who enjoyed being teased or watching his coworker be teased. Especially when there was nothing to be teased about! So he stepped past Camilla, let his office door open, and quickly used telekinesis to grab the camera and bring it over.

“Ohh, it’s cute!” she said with a smile. “Perhaps Kim will let me take photos of her, too.”

He grabbed one side of his sunglasses with his thumb and middle finger, adjusting them slightly. Again. “Don’t feel any obligation to do this right away. Agent Mentallis tends to jump from one project to another very quickly.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Agent Vodello levitated the camera into her surprisingly spacious purse and then glanced at her watch. “I should go meet with Kim now. But I’d love to train more tomorrow if you’re free?”

Sasha raised a single eyebrow. “Um…yes, I’m free. Should we meet in the classroom again at 11?”

“Yes, that’s perfect!” She hopped up, back to levitating as she liked to do. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow, darling!”

She quickly exited his office and left Sasha with the same question he’d had earlier about her use of the term darling. After that second instance, he couldn’t use the excuse that she was tired or delusional. But…it was strange, wasn’t it? The last person in his life who’d called him anything close to darling was his mother, though it admittedly felt quite different coming from Agent Vodello. He wondered if there was a possibility she just talked like that and he hadn’t paid enough attention to notice before. There were a few Psychonauts at the Motherlobe who frequently used slang that Sasha didn’t understand, so…that would certainly make more sense than anything else.

He took a deep breath and decided to move on. There was no use lingering on such a simple little thing.

#sashamilla #psychonauts #sasha nein #milla vodello #truman zanotto #otto mentallis #science party #lunchtime yoga #carro fics #carrofics

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