#i'd take a bullet for you

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

Anyway, Shawn does an impressive handstand. Capoeira baby. -Danielle 

That was gymnastics. I did gymnastics for the first like 10 years of my life. So I can I I can still walk around. -Rider 

You were also a gymnist huh? -Danielle

You and Danielle are both gymnasts. -Will

We wre both gymnasts. -Danielle

We wre both gymnasts. -Rider 

Before we changed careers. As Cory tells him, I always thought that Topanga was the one person I could never live without. She's gone. And you're here and I'm alive. So it must be you. Shawn tells Cory he'd take a bullet for him. Corey pulls him into a hug. Shawnee, I love you. Shawn tells him he loves him too. He's not ashamed. This is the real love story of Boy Meets World. Challenge me. -Danielle

[this-is-not-a-slow-burn]

Do you know how weird it is to hear Johnny say your name?

[ladykyriaa]

Actually yknow what sit down.

Im not done talking about how the animation team deliberately put THIS SCENE

Into the OP

Out of all the scenes (yes even the frog scenes) this is honestly my favourite because of how raw and vulnerable it looks

How they're always visualizing Maomao as Jinshi's source of light to his otherwise bleak life.

Look at this tiny little baby and tell me he doesn't deserve all the good things coming his way.

He YEARNS for her.

That's not the only thing though. Considering how he grew up, there's probably a part of him that's always scared that she's going to somehow be taken away from him

That's probably how jinshi actually feels with Maomao. Comfortable that he's able to show the not so perfect eunuch that everyone knows him as, but a child who's barely grown up and anxious that his favourite is going to be taken away again. So YES THIS SCENE MEANS A LOT TO ME

[sevastiel]

Behold ye, my Protoframe oc, Darius.

(Ft @doggojin and @thatfluffyboi's Chanho n Sol, they make an delightful trio tbh)

Some extra deets (lots of notes on him be warned) post cut! :)

Separated into physical and psychological/lore.

Physical notes :

Spanish-Mediterranean, mid-to-late twenties, looms at a ridiculous 6'6" (200 cm I believe? around there.) but is normally hovering an inch or two off the ground. Thankfully, he's gotten into the habit of tucking his legs in a bit so he doesn't hit every single doorframe that he passes through. He lost his left leg from the knee down due to an unfortunate incident with a landmine, and had a prosthetic for several years before the techrot.

Darius's body is made up of connected pieces held together by sentient energy, and all of his organs have either been replaced by the techrot-sentient hybrid growths, or are no longer necessary and have been removed. He currently lacks the entirety of a regular digestive tract as we would know it, and subsists mostly on energy. However, should he require physical mass for either rebuilding/modifying himself, or creating other sentients, he can 'eat' by putting materials in his mouth, pulling his bodily pieces together, and allowing the techrot systems to dissolve things into more workable particles, or pushing things between separated segments of his body (usually his chest) and letting the sentient bits pick things apart and feed them to the rot for storage. (This takes longer and is less effective at energy conservation) Extra notes on this later when we discuss his abilities.

The connective energy between segments is manifested in string-like bundles of force, which are manipulatable and can be 'touched', though unless he's focusing on keeping his energy properly contained you will likely get a light zap, and with prolonged touch you'll likely be able to feel them hum with power. They normally have about the same tactile strength as woven spiderwebbing of the same thickness, stretching easily but ultimately severable with either enough effort or something sharp. Should you sever all the connections, the piece will just fall off. Removed pieces aren't controllable by him any longer, but are re-attachable, and although he's got a body plan that his form defaults to, every single bit of him is entirely modular except for his cranium. Removing his jaw takes some effort, as there are technically still segments of flesh (his lips, basically) holding it on, but it is possible. If he really puts his mind to it, though, he can remove a segment, and maintain the links through mental focus, or by tethering them to something that he/they can feed off of. Through this, he can make replacement limbs for others, or additional armor, given they've got the bio-energy to keep the segments active.

Bodily segments are almost entirely made of toughened armor plating, with the majority of flexibility being located on the twin pieces that make up his chest/torso, as this is also where the majority of the techrot based organs lie. Although he does need to breathe, each segment intakes oxygen individually, through the softer and more porous dark insides. He has full sensation in any piece of him that he's linked to, as the energy connections serve as a nervous system, and can 'digest' pieces if he's in desperate need of energy/materials in a pinch.

Being modular, he can, in the same way he summons other sentients, simply craft himself differing body parts whenever he so pleases. The larger the piece, the more effort/thought it takes, since it requires a greater complexity of systems for nutrient, oxygen, and waste management. Due to his own lack of knowledge, he doesn't manifest any replacements larger than his own legs, and would rather just spit out a patch and slap it onto injured areas and let the techrot do its thing. This is why his 'armor' looks less dramatic compared to actual caliban, because why the hell would he want that much weight throwing him off balance? He'll accept the techrot/sentient's desires and keep his form adjacent to it, though.

Ability wise, he's functionally pretty similar to a vampire. While he technically could subsist entirely off of regular food, it would require a lot of time and careful dieting to gather the proper resources his body needs, and his energy levels would be rather constantly low. So, instead, he just eats as much techrot as he can and prays for the best, or drinks directly from power generators when he can get away with it, or anything similar. Pure energy as a baseline keeps all his sentient systems running, and metals/proteins allow his techrot systems to keep going. Thankfully for him, he's got two boyfriends who are both quite energetic, and really don't mind his needs as much as they should.

Manifesting sentient fighters usually happens in the same way as he manifests new pieces of himself, but with the added caveat that they don't need functional internal systems for long term usage, and he can charge them up with his own power to keep them running as long as he needs. This is obviously extremely resource intensive, but if it keeps those he cares about safe, (and since it appeases the eternal need to consume and create and consume and create and consume and create) he'll do whatever he must.

Due to all of the above, he prefers particularly tight or comfortable clothing,, as it helps mitigate the changes that happen depending on his energy levels. The less he's got, the looser his pieces, and things will just fall off if he's dead tired (lol). So... Avoiding that is nice. Additionally, although he needs his chest cavity within reach for making sentients at a quick notice, he does like looking in the mirror and not seeing his own body immediately as so blatantly inhuman and monstrous. The straps he uses for his military harness are half to hold things and half to straight up just keep himself together. The mask is for keeping his eyes clear of gore while he's in the middle of shit, because that was a severe issue beforehand. Take a bite, get blinded bc there was more fluid than you expected, have to panic and try and fix that mid combat, leaving you even worse off than you were previously? No thanks.

--

Psycological notes and lore:

Before Entrati got his hands on him, he was a well respected mediator that worked on communications for the ICR, and worked directly with the Hollvanian government and its military to allow for the ICR to remain in the city.

Coming from a well off and well expecting background, from a young age he was put through his paces and taught to be the finest edition of a modern renaissance man, giving him very little time to do anything but his studies, and very little affection from anything but perfection. Even then, kinda mid. As such, he is a well mannered and well spoken fellow with a deeply repressed childish nature that only ever comes out at the worst possible times amidst the best possible company.

Having been tailor-made for communications work, he was also ensured a healthy dose in very many other skills that might come up from time to time while traveling. (Including, but not limited to, sewing (which he hates), cooking (which he has extremely low patience for), midwifery (which thank god hasn't come up yet), medical triage (unfortunately has), general electrical and mechanical knowledge (much better for him now than it was before), a few languages, and so forth. Post becoming a protoframe, much of his knowledge has degraded due to the changes required for his brain to be able to control his bio-energy, leaving him constantly irritated when faced with a challenge that he knows DAMN well how to deal with, but cant remember specifics on.

He deals with irritation and anger very expressly, not one for subtlety or sarcasm when it comes to his displeasure. This man will Not be the one making snide jabs across the table, he would instead pull you aside privately and explain quite logically the behaviors he's disliking and see if either an agreement can be reached or if another specialist should be put forth. A trait learned from his parents, no doubt, but also one that helps considerably when it comes to governmental relations and respect.

All of his emotions are generally delt with highly logically, which, when it comes to more positive or soft feelings, gets very awkward and confusing for him very fast. One might find have found him before sitting on a bench, staring up at the falling leaves. If you asked him what he was thinking about, he'd respond that he's trying to comprehend why exactly he should be feeling happy about witnessing something so mundane. He wouldn't leave, of course, he'd still watch, but there will always be a part of him that shies away from emotions as a whole. All the sweeter, imo, when he really starts feeling and letting himself feel. Love is a strange thing, isn't it?

During his time in Hollvania, he got infected through volunteer work, doing his best to actually be helpful past the eternal red-tape. He hid it for as long as he could, taking extra care to frequently wash, scrub down, and then properly bandage and ointment up the affected bits of his arms so he wouldn't risk spreading anything, but it didn't do much for him at all. He was needed to maintain good relations, often running intermediary briefing dialogues to keep both sides as up to date as possible on the ICR's doings, so duty really did pull him in half. (haha) As the rot progressed and claimed more of his body, leaving him weaker and more frequently ill, it was less and less ethically feasible for him to keep working, despite it more or less being the only thing he really knew how to do, and there being very few people who could replace him. If he wasn't doing something, if he wasn't being productive, solving problems, keeping people happy, then what was he?

And then he heard of a man with a miracle cure, our good old Doktor Friday, and the fact that it worked. Naturally, Darius paid him a visit, already having used his infected status as an excuse to let him do a bit more hands on assistance wherever he could. And Entrati indeed did give him a cure, listening and nodding along to all the reasons Darius gave as to why he would likely be a good test subject, especially if it meant that if it worked, Darius would be in an excellent position to grant Albrecht significant funding for expanding his cures to the greater populous, who needed them desperately.

Well, it sure didn't fucking do much, did it, leaving him visually better, but when word got out that the others who'd taken the cure had become super-spreaders, you bet your ass he started panicking immediately. He'd been in rooms for extended periods of time with everyone in command, just his presence might have been enough to entirely destabilize the local government, or absolutely gut the ICR. So, once more, he claimed a stomach illness to take some time off. This was a very big problem, so back he went, livid as all hell, to hunt down Entrati.

He got the whole spiel about unforeseen mutations within the techrot responding strangely, and although he didn't believe it, he already had nothing left to lose. He wasn't a soldier, sure, he had training in fencing, could handle a gun, but he couldn't help like the others could, and he could not go back to the one thing he'd been set up all his life to be. And Entrati had a bit of a twinkle in his eye when he said that there might be something that he could do, but it would take time, and multiple tests, to be able to make it all work. There was another strain Dr E was experimenting with that, as he was shown samples and heard the explanations, seemed to be able to nullify the techrot almost entirely. (It was actually just subsuming it, but visually, the two outcomes were nearly identical.)

So he said yes. Like a fucking idiot.

The initial dose laced him with the helminth strain, preparing his body, granting him strength, even though it hurt so very much, the pain leaving him borderline insensate, unable to do anything but lay there and cry as he felt his very flesh twisting and saw Entrati approach with the second dose after a few hours.

Number two was a low dose of the sentient strain, modified, following Caliban's biological approach, and the reaction between the two was violent, techrot subsumed with a rapid hunger and made to serve a new master. Darius's body quite literally began tearing at the seams, and Entrati took his time with the process, utilizing several more small injections, so he wouldn't die of pure blood loss.

When all was said and done, his twisted body was held together by a scant few threads of power, and he was very much unconscious, having fallen into a coma that would last multiple days, fed with an occasional battery set into the new cavity within his chest.

Wisely, Entrati was not there when he awoke, starving, terrified, and in great pain. All he could focus on was the hunger, that pulsating desire that screamed at him to consume, create, consume, create, consume, create, his human mind utterly overwhelmed by the twin techrot and sentient desires. It took him some time to figure out how to move again, much less walk, and the hunger only got worse by the second.

When the Hex found him, they came across a crying, shattered man, tearing into mounds of freshly killed techrot with his bare hands, stuffing wires and flesh alike into his mouth with an inhuman voracity. He was guarded by bizarre automatons, whos' origin was quickly made apparent by him reaching into that glowing gash that bisected his entire body and pulling out another, his own form splitting and reshaping as he dragged it free.

It took quite some time for him to regain his humanity. Quite some time to mediate the new desires of his reformed body with his own. The urges have not left him, but at least he's got a choice, now.

Prince of both worlds indeed.

[jellykyunnie]

"How do you like your men?"

Cold and Mysterious but are actual softies and would sacrifice themselves over and over for you

Or absolute walking red flag bastards who aren't even trying to hide that they're taking advantage of you

[baked-mango]

another silly ahh goofy ahh comic, thought of it last night :3

Idk about y'all, this is how I see him. He can do no wrong. That's pookie.

If you hate him I don't hate you but you aren't safe anymore just letting you know.

Saku more Luca content right neow.

i'm BEGGING. \(＞Д＜)/

[nedlittle]

something so hauntological about watching mash season 3 knowing how it ends...none of the characters know henry's never going to make it home, the actors all found out in real time. but the narrative knows how this ends, and the narrative is waiting with an open mouth. so the narrative has henry prefigure his own death throughout the season. in o.r. when hawkeye reassures him one day you're gonna have to go back and die in your bed in bloomington, henry says that he's done that several times. he complains in private charles lamb that everything in this country disappears except me (untrue) followed by boy, would i like to wake up some morning, look down and find myself gone (true). when he gets trapped in the wreckage of the latrine in bombed he knocks twice for "dead" rather than three times for "alive." then there's the scene in the consultant where he soaks in the pool, calling it heaven but says the water could be just a titch warmer (burning burning burning), avoiding conversation with frank by submerging himself underwater. henry spends the whole season unknowingly rehearsing his impending death. he goes around camp trying on other people's deaths for size, haunting the narrative before he's even out of it.

in conclusion:

[pochapal]

tomorrow i will have been reading umineko for one whole year

[dootznbootz]

hiiiiiiii it feels like a while since i've raided your askbox,, what's uppppp "I sleep in our nest with you or outside on the dirt" is a sentence that consumes my waking thoughts thank you very much. Actually your fic consumes my waking thoughts. I'm so okay about it btw

Anyways here's another duck picture because why not :D

the gang that would not shut up and kept following me everywhere

Niko, they were singing your praises in quack! You're the little ducks' PARENT now. You gotta teach them how to pick pockets and be silly! You gotta step up!!!

Do you visit the ducky place often? Or are these older pics?

Thank you for the ducky pic and the sweet words!!!! 😭🩵 That means so much!!! You're such a sweetheart and you make me very happy as a whole!!!

The next thing will probably be a "Chapter 1.5" or a "Sidequel" as it's one of the moments where he's playing with Telemachus while Penelope's sick and GRANDMA ANTICLEA!!!!! >:D It was kind of written then scrapped as it was just a LOT and so it'll be its own thing on the side and self-indulgent af (as usual but you know :P ) Spoiler: Telemachus gets dunked in the water and is having the time of his lil baby life.

[scarletfasinera]

I don't understand a word people say about any new Star Wars movie. You say the words "Kylo Ren" to me and I black out and stop hearing you. those aren't words I understand I'm sorry

[joy-girl]

Compliments given by random old ladies >>> everything else

[ahogedetective]

SO u guys heard about that new Oleato drink at Starbucks? The one with the olive oil in it? I tried the gold foam cold brew one AND.... it actually wasn't that bad? Like not nearly as bad as I thought it would be: I kind of liked it!!

[unproduciblesmackdown]

bloodsong, pairing lo cocodrilo & banana, sofia the lady hitman & the giraffe, putting them in situations (comedic)....bsol's like two Genres Invoked being spaghetti western, sitcom. would have to imagine it as cocodrilo just having banana as hostage instead (for leverage, would not remove the narrative joys of a repression arc. in a guy who needs to figuratively bleed? & die? literally if you want, speaking of, none of anything alternate universey is real Fix It to me or anything. wheeee haha yayyy re: canon) & can readily contrive that to be the case with our other villain / side character pair there. or maybe sofia is just spending time alongside giraffe (or the boots haver....symposium on that plot point or no in some au) like uh oh we're in situations & we're coworkers, or we're at least both just here, what's up? well, being outlaws & side characters & villains & how's normativity been treating you. let everyone get up to Foilful Dynamics & they're to my tastes. several cunnilingus & abortions later e.g. & look at us

[maybankiara]

texting my younger sister like i'm texting my crush. hi how are you please respond. wait we're talking i need to say stuff to prolong the conversation. oh we're talking about smth i couldn't care less about but i care about you so i'll care then. i love you and i can't tell you that but i'm here and i'm cherishing every moment i spend talking to you. even if you don't think twice of this.

[mortifying-macaroni]

im really starting to like your ship! can I just say that I love the old man x brat trope a little too much that's going on there Andrei and Gretchen are so different from each other yet they are kinda the same in a way? Though at the same time they do balance each other out nicely like we can see that Andrei starts to loosen up around her at least a little while Gretchen starts taking things more seriously when she joins the Sabbat. Always love it when they're straight up taking the piss out of each other those are usually my favourite parts! it's giving married couple vibes haha I just love the chemistry they both have in the fanfic as well as in your artwork. You truly are talented at everything you do and i hope to see more of them. Cheers!

Anon you better get the fuck over here so I can cuddle with you and your humongous galaxy brain right on the meat couch cause I'm just- SQUEEEEE!!!! THANK YOU FOR THE WONDERFUL AMAZING WORDS AND THANK YOU TO THE MOON AND BEYOND FOR READING MY BABY!!! 🖤💝💖🩷 DUDE, you absolutely get it! I'm telling you! I'll forever preach about the excellency of that trope!

You see, they do need each other. Andrei is someone who's not used to facing defiance from his subordinates and he most def doesn't let that go unpunished when he does face it in those rare instances, HOWEVER he lets Gretchen remain unscathed, not because she was "The Camarilla's newly lost, most prized possession with so much intel" but for the reason that her lack of fear fascinated him. Her fire is unlike anything he has ever seen or experienced in another, her young spirit and moxie entertain him. There's never really a dull moment with her. He gets a certain thrill when they argue, but on the other hand, sitting down and talking cordially about their love for the grotesque also serves as relaxation. It's their common ground. She doesn't try to "fix him" in the slightest; that's one of the many things he appreciates about her. He loves her not only for the way that she makes his beast roar, but the way she tames it when her own one comes into play. After centuries upon centuries of solitude, Andrei finally found the perfect half who can handle his worst while also recognizing his best, all while showing him that it's alright to put his guard down every now and then- that cracking a warm smile doesn't diminish his sinister nature.

As for Gretchen, she's found the perfect mentor in Andrei, despite all their squabbles, she does look up to him and tries her best to accept that the path to gaining respect is treacherous with little to no shortcuts in her situation. Her turning over to the Sabbat toughened her, hardened her heart while simultaneously teaching her how to work harmoniously with her pack. The whole trial was a catalyst to her being reshaped into a weapon of destruction that was on a quest for power, validation and freedom. With great patience Andrei helped forge Gretchen into the weapon that she wanted to be. Though she did shed pretty much most layers of her "human side", her rather lighthearted nature couldn't be purged (not that Andrei would actually want to get rid of it anyway). She achieved tremendous growth and maturity as a vampire thanks to him and his centuries worth of experience. And exactly through him, she found the liberty she was looking for and so much more: love, respect, self-improvement, partnership and she couldn't ask for anything else.

Anyway! Thank you again for reading my ficcie & admiring my art 🫶🖤 So glad you're enjoying those two grumpy bastards. I have a whole lot planned for them, don't you worry, my sweet. Hope you'll stick around to find out 😘 Bless you, love you and I hope you're having a fantastic day/evening! 🩷💘💝💖💗💓💞💕