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angel-with-paper-wings · 10 months ago

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The Magician’s Prelude

This is a gift for @erik-carierre posted with permission! Many thanks for your feedback and support!!

Summary: Erik’s morning routine while working as a magician in Russia prior to his recruitment by Nadir. Based on Kay!Erik.

Cover art and title by @erik-carierre

Content warnings: PTSD-like trauma flashbacks, bloody/gory imagery, slightly graphic descriptions of violence, body negativity (Erik is an angsty teenager)

Now on AO3 here!

Blood. There is always blood.

It oozes around the shards of mirror buried in the skin of my hands…it drips in thick crimson blobs onto the bundle of golden fur…it spatters in hot torrents against my chest and sticks to the open buttons of my shirt…

And it is there again that night. In the rooftop garden, I stand paralyzed staring at the gap in the crumbled balustrade. My chest feels hollow—I cannot breathe, I cannot scream—all I can do is watch as the gap yawns before me, pulling me closer. Against my will, I peer over the edge to view the sight I know is there.

I wish I could blink. I long for even the tiniest respite from what lay before me, but all I can do is look. Her body is small amidst the shattered rubble, her thin delicate limbs laying at odd angles, her soft barley hair matted with flecks of blood and gore. And her eyes…her pale eyes snuffed of all fire that had once bubbled inside of her like smoldering lava. They stare blankly up at my unmasked face, looking but not seeing.

All she ever wanted was to look at me…and now all I can do is look. Look at what I have done.

I awakened with a jolt, my eyes flying open and clenching the thin woolen blanket to my chest. One skeletal hand flew up to my face, and only once I felt the smooth hardness of the mask did I relax. After a moment of composure, I opened my aching jaw and heaved out a sigh of annoyance. The nightmares were as persistent as they had always been.

I sat up in bed and fumbled to light the oil lamp on the nightstand. I had no difficulty getting prepared in complete darkness, but I simply preferred not to after a night of haunting visions. A small clock beside the lamp told me it was early in the morning—earlier than I typically rose, but I was already resigned to the fact that I wouldn’t be sleeping any more if I tried.

I flung the woolen blanket to the side and felt the floor creak beneath my bare feet. The inn’s modest wooden room was comfortable enough for my needs: a bed with sheets, a chamber pot, a pitcher and washbasin, and most valuable of all, privacy. There had been a mirror, but I removed it soon after arriving.

I yanked off my nightshirt, letting the room’s warm air graze the scars slashed across my back. Russia had intriguingly hot summers; the books I had read as a boy only bothered to describe the harshness of the winter months, so I confess to being slightly bemused upon my arrival three years ago to a city with a climate only moderately cooler than the one I had left behind in Italy.

Her twisted body flashed before me again, the broken masonry wet and crimson from the split in her skull… I closed my eyes and angrily shoved the image back into the shadows of my mind. No. No more thoughts of that place. I poured water from the pitcher into the washbasin and dunked in a bar of perfumed soap. Once it had worked up a lather, I soaked a clean cloth and derisively began to wash myself.

The dawn of my body’s maturity had proven to be a dismal affair. It took my bones the full extent of my nineteen years to finally cease their growing, leaving me wretchedly gaunt and pitifully covered in pasty yellow skin. I had the strength of a man twice my age and triple my weight, but my frame still refused to resemble anything but a corpse. In my frustration, I scrubbed harder at my own flesh, attempting to cleanse it of its rotten color. But it remained as it always had, pulled tight over my arms to display veins and tendons, with the only thickness found in the old silvery scars adorning my wrists and hands.

Once I had scoured myself raw, I slung the cloth over the rack of the washstand to dry and stared down into the bottom of the basin. Silence screamed in my ears and my stomach twisted with dread. I turned my head to glance at the door behind me; the lock was securely in place, but the familiar prickle of eyes stung my skin all the same.

With trembling fingers, I removed the mask. Warm air rolled across my bare skin like a caress, or what I imagined a caress to feel like. I set the white sculpted shard aside on the stand, and after a heavy sigh, I bent over the basin and scooped handfuls of water over my head, scrubbing the soap’s lather deep into my thick black waves of hair. Droplets ran down the edges of my face, as if even they were afraid to touch the horror that was there. But I forced them to touch it, rubbing the water into the cracks and distorted furrows of my skin, smearing it around the protruding bones and into my eyes’ sunken pits. I braced myself with a grimace before carefully wiping the dried mucus away from the edge of the hole that was my nose.

The torture ended when I finally buried my repulsiveness in a towel. I held the soft cloth against my face as my other hand reached for the mask, slipping it back into place with a relieved sigh. I squeezed my dark hair free of water, then picked up a comb and worked it through the curls until they attained sufficient softness. I laid the towel and comb to the side and stepped over to the tiny wardrobe, withdrawing one of many black satin shirts and slipping it on. After dressing myself, I left my room and slinked down the stairs as a soundless shadow.

The empty tavern on the first floor simmered with the savory scent of shchi. This early in the morning, the only other soul awake was the ancient innkeeper preparing the first meal of the day. I scattered a handful of kopecks onto the bar, letting the clattering sound echo into the kitchen. A minute later, the shawled woman doddered forward and set a steaming bowl of cabbage soup and a chunk of crusty bread before me. No words or glances were exchanged, no questions were asked, as was our routine.

I suspected she found me strange—indeed, I have yet to encounter a soul who didn’t—but she seemed to tolerate me well enough. After her defective coal stove found itself repaired the day following my arrival, I was able to convince her to let me use her inn’s far room as a flat for several months. Unlike my fellow tenants, I paid precisely on time, never returned drunk or belligerent, and there was no risk of women being snuck into my bed. After all, what woman would be desperate enough to lay with a corpse, regardless of the payment offered to her?

With this bitterness lingering in my head, I ate my meal quickly and slipped out into the morning’s haze. It was a rare day; the air was pleasantly cool and the clouds had chosen to don a color besides their usual dismal grey. I assured myself that no one was watching before I lifted my head to admire the way the branches of trees cast their dark silhouettes against the paling sky.

The western quarter of Nizhny Novgorod was largely deserted, making it easy to dart through the city’s shadows unseen in my black attire. Once the day hit its sweltering peak, the cobbled streets would resemble the Volga river with rushing currents of wealthy merchants and colorful travelers from Europe and India and Persia. By that time, I would be waiting for them in my magician’s tent, where they would be shown more wonders than their feeble minds could possibly comprehend.

I rounded a corner and walked along the silent boulevard, until the trees bordering the street gave way to a wrought-iron fence. Beyond the fence, majestically imposing against the northwest horizon, stood the blinding white structure of the Spassky Cathedral. Pink wisps of sunrise stretched across the sky and barely kissed the golden spire atop its great dark cupola.

As I so often did on clear mornings like this one, I felt compelled to stop and gaze up at the splendid piece of architecture. My eyes danced over its fine pillars and elegant façade, admiring the expert carving and delighting in the exquisite use of symmetry and proportion. I had snuck inside once in the dead of night to glimpse its interior—what beauty! It lacked the scale of greater cathedrals, but in golden grandeur it did not disappoint.

There was a time when I had imagined building such great works myself. Beneath the creaky bed back at the inn lay several journals filled with sketches of the spectacular monuments I saw when I closed my eyes. The pages overflowed with details of magnificent marble façades and great towering pavilions, gilded figures in copper and bronze, ornate mosaics with details that dazzled the imagination. My architectural creations would be shrines of worship, not to any one god but to all forces that stirred the spirit and awakened man’s deepest emotions—art, geometry, magic, and most of all music. Oh, how I missed music.

Often this fantasy crossed my mind, and with every day and every kopeck in my purse, it seemed less and less like a child’s dream. After all, I was still very much in my youth…perhaps that day was still to come.

Once I had admired all I could bear, I tucked my masked face back down between my narrow shoulders and trudged off through the neighborhood of shops and teahouses. A smattering of humans were beginning to converge on the street that I walked: small groups of traders bickering in foreign tongues and leading wooden carts filled with wares to sell. Like me, they trampled up the soggy road to the shadow of the large red and yellow stone building, beyond which lay a great courtyard overlooking the bank of the Oka. It was here in the summer months that the great Markaryev Fair was held, where tradesmen and entertainers alike earned their gold.

I proceeded underneath the building’s archway and entered the city’s courtyard. Vendors were already busy erecting tents and unloading their goods in designated sections around the square. Past cotton bales and crates of tea and spices, I spotted the oval shape of the familiar black yurt tucked in its corner, untouched as always. I never worried about the tent’s safety during my absence, for a rumor of a deadly curse had found its way amongst the traders that effectively warded off potential burglars.

As I walked, a warm breeze wafted through the market’s open air, carrying a strain of musical notes to my ears. My heart jumped and I whipped my head towards the sound. On the other side of the courtyard sauntered a muzhik fiddler, beard scraggly and legs stumbling as if drunk, the bow screeching as it was dragged across the rusty strings. A couple passing by threw a few coins into the hat that lay at his feet.

Under the mask, my lips pulled back in a snarl. How dare these fools reward such a tuneless, insolent mockery of music! That drunken bastard did not deserve the right to place his filthy hands on an instrument and spoil its sacred beauty for the whole city to hear. My bony form seethed beneath its black clothing, but I successfully fought back my fervid rage and stomped off towards the yurt. I clenched my shaking hands at my sides, imagining the feeling of the man’s throat beneath my fingers; a sharp snap from his neck and those dreadful notes would finally fall silent.

A crunch against the stones. The heavy tumble of rubble against the ground dampens the sound of her skull cracking open…

I entered the dark tent and pulled the fabric flaps closed behind me, blessedly muffling the horrid noises. A deep breath steadied my hands, and with practiced precision I navigated the small space and lit candles tucked in little red lanterns, banishing the darkness and revealing the blood-red of the yurt’s interior. Swooping red curtains hung from the concave ceiling; samples of shyrdak hangings formed the walls, weaving in swirls of black and gold into the otherwise scarlet room. I kicked off my shoes and felt the luxurious softness of the thick Persian rugs buried beneath velvet cushions.

I ignited the small charcoal stove to boil water in the samovar for tea. While it brewed, I reclined back against the cushions and turned my attention to the long wooden box tucked near the back of the tent: the trick casket. My fingers deftly pranced over the mechanism to open the box, and I withdrew the materials for my magician’s performance: decks of cards, stacks of silver coins, hand-carved trick dice. I arranged them all in neat rows upon the central rug with a small grin.

I struck another match and lit a few sticks of incense to flood the space with their heady, sweet fragrance. I had learned over time that it was beneficial for the minds of my audience to be stripped of their defenses—that way, they found my tricks more dazzling and dropped more rubles into my bony hand. Sometimes this state of enchantment would make them too bold, and bring out their insatiable nature that they otherwise hid from their gods during prayer in the temples and cathedrals. They became ravenous, foolishly curious; they would grope for my mask and demand to see what lay beneath…

All she wanted was to see me.

My hands curled upon themselves, extinguishing the match’s flame between my fingertips. The wretched visions played through my mind again and numbed the burn on my skin.

A mirror shard clenched between the tips of tweezers…bloody hands furiously digging at the grassy dirt…the heavy clunk of a knife’s hilt as the belt dropped to the floor… It was difficult to understand why I remembered certain details so clearly, while others merely faded into murky shadows.

Over the course of three years, the girl’s living face had become fuzzy in my memory. Indeed, I had only dared to look at her a handful of times while living with the master stonemason. Every time I did, my chest would fill with an uncomfortable constricting sensation, and I would be forced to look away or else stop breathing altogether. Her eyes had a heat that scorched all the way to my soul. She was fire—bold, passionate, all-consuming—and I knew better than to risk being burned. Or perhaps I was afraid.

But it was the moment I finally gave her what she pleaded for, the moment I ripped off the mask—her expression of pure horror, anguish and primal fear, grief for love she had never truly felt. That image would always remain in my memory perfectly in focus.

I slowly opened my hand, and I stared down at the two spots of black soot left upon the pale skin of my thumb and forefinger. Temporary scars, easily washed away. That’s all these dreams were to me…but still the pain they carried hurt more than the deep wounds left on my body.

With a harsh huff, I flicked the remnants of the match away and reached over to the samovar to pour myself a cup of tea. The earthy liquid seared down my throat and revived my senses, kicking the brooding memories away in favor of my present enterprise. Outside my tent, I heard the growing clamour of the fair coming to life—my audience awaited me.

A familiar pang prodded at my heart. Was this all? Would this pitiful life, shrouded away in a performer’s tent, forever be my purpose? In my heart, I longed to use my skills to create the majesty that filled my mind: grand palaces, ingenious machines, symphonies without equal. If I had to be confined to mindless magic tricks for greedy imbeciles, then they would be the best magic tricks ever conceived. In a way, I thought to myself scornfully, I had not left that traveling fair…perhaps I never would. But at least things were different now. I was my own master, and no one would ever cage me again.

As the incense swirled its sickly-sweet aroma through the air, I slipped further back into my tent and drew a sheer red curtain across my masked form. I laid back in my trick coffin and heard several soft clicks as the mechanism closed the lid and cloaked me in darkness—the one place I have ever truly belonged.

Long ago, I had accepted my place as prince of darkness, and I would reign over my realm with proud finesse. So let them in now, the merchants and peasants from all corners of the world. Let them think they are the kings and I am their fool. Let them believe they know what it is like to be afraid.

Let them in, and let them look.

#poto #phantom of the opera #susan kay phantom #my writing #fanfiction #poto fanfiction #erik poto #erik phantom

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maxmagic · 2 years ago

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LONG post featuring my opinions on this design and her concept and also Vivs character design decisions in general

This design singlehandedly made my account rise from the fucking dead because of how much opinions I have on it

TO NOTE : I LIKE Helluva Boss as a show. Is it perfect? No. Do I think it has issues from both writing and design aspects? Yes. Do I like it regardless? Also yes. You can like a show and still have criticisms of it. Also Viv has answered some criticisms about Beelzebubs design and I will talk about them too

Final warning cuz this is LONG and rambled at points

By this point we are all aware that once a new character gets revealed in Helluva or Hazbin , there's always opinions on it.

But Beelzebub truly takes the cake on how divided people are on her design. People either adore it or hate it with a blinding passion (and some just don't like it cuz they have a Viv hate boner).

I have to say I actually really like it as a stand alone design. Remove her from the story and context it's genuinely an appealing design with fun and bright colors. I personally don't mind the early 2010's sparkle dog look. It has a nostalgic charm to it and if you followed Viv for long enough you know she really likes that aesthetic. She has good colors and color placement and my main real dislike is the weird hair.

And she's animated BEAUTIFULLY !!! Real props to the animators for being able to make this design look nice in motion because god lord is it complicated. This will be a criticism later, but again, its really amazing on how they made this design look good even though we all know this must have been a real bitch to animate.

The real issue that come to me with her design is when you put her in the show and have to think about who she is, what she is, what her lore is ect.

Firstly: Her not being 'lore accurate' kinda falls flat given that none of the designs thus far have been accurate to what they're based on. Like Asmodeus has elements that tie him to his demon name counterpart (with the rooster tail and 3 faces) but they're more allusions then design inspirations. Lucifer is literally just a top hat twink and Mammon (even tho we haven't seen his full design yet) is clown/jester themed. Viv has made it clear that this version of hell isn't supported to be an accurate depiction of biblical hell. So she can really do whatever she wants with her interpretation. Her not being an insect, although disappointing since we don't really have that in the show, is only just a matter of personal taste.

HOWEVER there's still a lot of discrepancies with her design.

So she's supposed to be a Bee-Fox hybrid... Where's the bee??? Like take away the hexagon background, where is the bee part of her design? She has antenna and wings but... They don't really do much. The antenna are fine and its smart they placed at the tip of her ears, but the wings are straight up not bee wings!!! They look more like pixie wings and they're so small half the time I forgot they were there. Couldn't you have added.. idk some stripes?? she has stripes on her ears but they don't look like bee stripers more so general Viv design details. It's weird given she uses stripes so heavily in other designs yet the BEE character doesnt. Maybe add some fuzz like how bumblebees have?? Maybe trade that stupid lava lamp tail/hair if its too complex. I really don't like how she has normal hair and also a weird liquid part and liquid tail. It adds too much visual noise and just doesn't gel well wit the rest of her design. Her lava lamp stomach too just feels like needless addition of animation work for something that just doesn't add anything. Her colors ( despite being nice) kinda clash against all the other hellhounds who have a muted black/grey/red color pallate. It makes her look like an 13 year olds OC thats been edited in

Literally the only things that changed are her colors, size and eyes. In my opinion this should have been her base design because the colors and bug eyes lean into more of the bee aspect. Plus with these colors she fits more with other hellhounds.

Like right now the normal design feels 97% fox with just the most subtle bee elements slapped on. If it wasn't for the background, look me in the eye and tell me this design is a fox bee hybrid.

She also doesn't feel like a prince? She's dressed very casually and doesn't have nearly have enough of an imposing vibe. I didn't know she was a prince until it was said in show. I thought she was just some high rank demon performer. Its kinda disappointing given how grand, larger then life look and energy Asmodeus had. They were introduced in the same way via big song number, but Asmodeus felt like a Prince of Lust, Beelzebub felt more like a performer of Gluttony rather then a ruler.

Also why if she a hellhound in the first place? i saw somewhere on twitter that its cuz her people are hellhounds but that doesnt make sense. Lucifer isn't a human and Asmodeus isn't a succubus, so why does Bee have to be a hellhound? We know that hellhounds are the lowest ranked amongst hell natives, so how do people outside of gluttony feel about her? She is treated like royalty but is also a hellhound, the lowest demon. It causes a needless paradox that makes you question the worldbuilding of the show.

Also why are hellhounds the lowest rank in hell ? and why are they associated with gluttony of all things? I am going to be honest when I say I completely forgot they were native to gluttony because gluttony has a beehive aesthetic and like wtf do dogs have anything to do with it . Like other demons shown have themes that tie them into their respective prince or sin, but we aren't shown why hellhounds in particular are gluttony. Like it feels like a minor thing but when you present information about worldbuilding and show stuff that contradicts it, people will question it.

And why is she dating a hellhound? Or more so why is she so open about it. Like its been shown in the show that Stolas and Admodeus dating imps is a taboo thing so her being so open about her relationship with someone whose even lower then an imp. Again its going back on lore and worldbuilding being contradicted. If you're going to make rules for a show, stick to them.

I'm putting these two side by side cuz I have the same complaint about them.

How are we suppose to know this?? First the gluttony ring severally lacks any circus motifs (it has more of a bee theme then a circus one), but Bee ESPECIALLY doesn't have ANY hints at being circus themed, let alone animal trainer.

I knew that all the princes had a circus theme but from I (and from what ive seen in other comments) though she was an acrobat or like dancer of the sort. Literary nothing in her design says she is an animal trainer. And also the hippie 60s spirit is also not anywhere in the design. Just because a design choice is clear to you doesn't mean its clear to everyone else. A good design makes its points across loud and clear so everyone can understand it. This really feels like she's making it all up as people ask. She probably isn't but it really comes across that way. You cant just say something about a design that just isn't in the design or its not shown properly. This is an issue a lot of Helluva and Hazbin Hotels characters have (look up any of their trivia and you'll see how bad some designs are communicated), but with Bee its emphasized tenfold because she's suppose to represent all these different things (fox, bee, prince, party girl, animal trainer, DA sparkle dog, 60s hippie free spirit) at it just isn't conveyed or is put in such a way where you cant clearly tell what it is. It honestly feels like Viv had in mind to have a Kesha pop party girl character and just made her a prince. Shes trying to justify all these things and saying them like they're obvious when they're clearly not!

This design suffers from having too many ideas slapped on it that just don't work and actively work against each other.It makes me less excited for the future prince designs

If youve come this far good for you for sticking around to this way too long of a ramble about a probably one off character in a popular indie cartoon :D

#hazbin hotel #helluva boss #helluva critical #helluva boss critique #design #rant #god this felt freeing to release #seriously it was boiling in my brain for days

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howtowhumpyourhiccup · 3 months ago

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Hallowtober 2024 Day 3

Sleep Paralysis Demon

Summary: Set in a Modern AU, Reincarnation AU, Ghost AU. At 8 years old, Hiccup has gotten the diagnosis of "sleep paralysis" slapped on him, but he knows the things he sees in his room are real.

Warnings: Mild Gore

Rating: Mature

Words: 641

Prompts: Ghost (Hallowtober), Ghosts (Post-July Break Bingo)

Fandom: How to Train Your Dragon

Characters: Hiccup, Astrid

Pairing: Minor Hiccstrid

Author's Notes: Yaaaaaay, I finally get to introduce this new AU of mine!

Enjoy!

-XOXOX-

“Sleep paralysis” that’s what the doctor called it. When Hiccup kept complaining about waking up at night seeing things and being so scared that he would find himself unable to move, that was the diagnosis they slapped on his problem.

Sure, on paper it looks right, but when looking up the symptoms online, he can’t help but feel like it doesn’t fit. He can’t move out of fear, that doesn’t mean he can’t move at all. Often enough, when he has these nights, he curls up in a tight ball underneath the covers with his stuffed dragon toy clutched to his chest and then hopes that whatever is in his room disappears. Fear clutching his heart and quietening even his sobs. He can’t call for his father, he never believes him about the monsters in his room.

It’s past 3 am. When Hiccup dares to take a peek over his covers to see if tonight’s thing has left him alone, he spots a woman standing at the foot end of his bed.

She’s entirely black, a palpable shadow and he wants to shriek and cry out for his dad to come save him. She’s dripping on the carpet with a liquid that could almost be blood, so dark with a deeply red tinge to it. It’s all coming from a wound on her abdomen, which almost appears to sever her lower half from her upper half. Despite this, it’s not like either part of her is uselessly flailing about or dragging behind her. Even at his age, he realizes how wrong she looks. From within dark tendrils that should pass for hair, piercing blue eyes stare at him.

Hiccup dives back under the covers with as subtle moves as he can make. Once more, he searches for the stuffed dragon toy to squeeze to his chest, it’s rather large for an 8 year old and looks like they do in the storybooks.

Except it’s missing. Somewhere in the night, before he woke up by the sheer presence of the thing in his room, it fell out of bed and now it’s gone. No way he can reach out and grab it, that means she can grab him!

Hiccup can’t help the tiny shriek when it feels like his covers are being pulled on. It’s because he lost his dragon. He was careless and it fell out of bed and now she’s going to get him. She’s probably going to eat him and his dad will be angry and upset.

He can feel the cold air on his face that all these nightly monsters have, he can feel her eyes burning on his skin. She’s looking right at him. He whimpers, lip trembling, he wants to cry.

When long minutes of nothing pass, Hiccup dares to open his eyes, hoping beyond hope that maybe she disappeared.

Only to find his toy dragon staring him in the face with its friendly little smile.

Hiccup is surprised. But he’s not floating in the air somehow, its in her hand. Dark fingers, nails caked with dried blood that leave no prints on the toy, dig into his back.

Frozen, mind and heart racing, Hiccup simply stares. More minutes pass, until the woman moves. Hiccup whimpers again when she does, but all that happens is that she places it down with him, the dragon’s head on his ear.

Briefly her cold dead skin touches his living warm one and there are images. The sky, an island, a bird-like creature, a man. They make no sense to him.

His hands take the toy and when he looks again, she’s gone. As if released, Hiccup rushes to his knees and turns on his nightlight, a color-changing lava lamp. The woman is nowhere to be found and there is no sign that she was ever there to begin with.

#hallowtober #hallowtober 2024 #httyd fics #httyd movies #httyd #how to train your dragon #au #alternate universe #modern au #ghost au #medium au #hiccup haddock #astrid hofferson #my fanfics #sleep paralysis demon

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completeoveranalysis · 2 years ago

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[8]

Oh oh oh we’re doing this bit again. The Free Will Check In that we’ve had a couple of times before - at the end of Acid Tokyo, and at the end of Infinity. It’s our small little decompression arc where the characters suffer in the wake of the tragedy that has happened, where they call Yuuko for information and each of them has a chance to decide for themselves what they want to do and if they want to continue.

Of course, being where they are in the plotline, and all of them being so far into their character arcs, this is fastest yet. In the same page that Yuuko asks them they’ve all already answered - they’re all going, and their expressions on Fai and Kurogane’s faces make me want to CRY.

It’s a deceptively quick moment for what it means for them all, but in a pattern of threes this is the third time they’ve confirmed they’re going all in on saving their family no matter what.

On the page before, Lava Lamp declares that he’s going to save BOTH Sakura’s, not just the one that matches him. He isn’t going to let Sakura die (hopefully implying once again that EVEN THOUGH WE SAW HER DIE, TWICE, Perhaps Sakura can still be saved)

Fai chooses to save her as well, because of course he does. He’s loved her on purpose this entire time and knew the truth every step of the way. He is DEVOTED to this Sakura, and he will do anything he needs to save her.

But more importantly this is his first choice made openly and willingly, with no doomed narrative holding him hostage, with no manipulative family or evil wizards pushing him towards either outcome. Every other time they were asked this he didn’t have this luxury - he NEEDED to continue, for his mission, for his brother, to fix everything he thought he started, to enact someone else’s plans. But HERE he’s free of it all. This is the Post-Seresu Fai, who has no ghosts haunting him, no death wish, and has finally chosen that he can LIVE and be HAPPY and love the people around him. So, this choice he makes finally and completely Just Because He Wants To - and he’s making the EXACT same choice he chose every step of the way. To save Sakura, because he loves Sakura.

AND LET’S NOT EVEN TOUCH ON KUROGANE - WHO IS FINALLY BACK IN NIHON AND INSTANTLY CHOSES TO LEAVE IT.

He’s HOME, here with Tomoyo, his ultimate goal - but back in Acid Tokyo he had said that he had two goals. It was true then and it was true now - as much as he loves Tomoyo, he loves his new family just as much, and so he’s going to save Sakura too.

And OH I hope we get a conversation between him and Tomoyo about this because I LOVE THIS FOR HIM and yet it’s so poetic it hurts.

#He doesnt even THINK about it or LOOK in Tomoyo's direction #He just COMMITS because OF COURSE HE DOES #He's been ALL about this #But OH how much growth there is for each of them to say it instantly #How quickly they’re ready to go without even discussing it #10/10 no notes #Liveblogging the reservoir chronicle #Tsubasa #Vol 180 #Kurogane #Fai #Lava Lamp Guy #Sakura #Mokona #Yuuko Ichihara #No wait I lied 1 note #Mokona is occupied being a telephone so she doesn't get to answer #and we know what her answer would be already #But oh I would love for her to scream it as well #And Looook at Fai and Kurogane mirroring their opposite colours here #Mirrored poses and contrasting colours in all the same places #And Lava Lamp between them a mix of their visual elements #Fai's outfit colours but Kurogane's moon placement #but torn and grey where both Fai and Kurogane are crisp and bold

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sinnohelitefourlore · 1 year ago

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Sinnoh Elite Four Headcanons Pt 2 since you guys liked my Pt 1 post so much:

Aaron:

- is the youngest of the elites, only eighteen, and because he is a Teenage Boy he’ll literally go from “shut the fuck up you have no idea what’ve been through” to “sometimes i still sleep with a night light on.”

- didn’t get diagnosed with ADHD until he was 20. he actually realized this because of flint whom we’ll get to in a minute.

- went to jublife city’s trainer’s school and was mentored by one of the best bug-type specialist’s in sinnoh.

- cries. a lot. he’s actually extremely sensitive (rumors spread that he was whitney’s long lost brother). but he also has moments of impulsiveness because again - Teenage Boy.

- rambles about bug types a lot, and is a typical bug geeky nerd. one day when he was seven his father yelled at him to be quiet, and for the longest time, aaron didn’t speak much until he was accepted into the elite four where they let him talk as much as he wants about bugs.

Bertha:

- has a connection with all of the future elites in some way before they became elites. she’s known lucian when he was a teenager because he challenged the elite four multiple times and constantly lost to bertha. she goes way back with flint’s parents, being apart of an organization with them before she joined the e4 in their 20s. in fact, bertha had held flint three days after he was born around her 30s. after she became an elite, she hardly saw him as much. when visiting the trainer’s school in jublife city, though she didn’t interact with him directly, she took note of the little boy with green hair in a corner playing with his bug pokemon. (in later years, she affectionately refers to all three of them as her boys)

- bertha has never been so happy when cynthia became the first female champion, because when bertha started as a league member she was the only woman. no gym leaders… no elites… none. she was the first female league member in that region. sinnoh has come a long way from her early years. she’s also thankful for cynthia because though she loves her boys sometimes they’re a bit much when they bicker.

- has planted a garden that makes all the other leagues jealous.

- single handedly took down one of the sickest, nastiest criminals in sinnoh in her younger years, which resulted in her being considered for an elite position which she got.

- like yes she is definitely a Mom but DO NOT FUCK WITH HER she can be just as menacing as agatha (no relation) however it's presented entirely different. the kanto elite is known for having an explosive uncontrollable temper with screams that will rival a teapot kettle, but if bertha's voice is low, cool, and even that's a sign for you to run - unlike agatha, bertha's anger is completely collected and controlled, and she doesn't have to raise her voice once.

flint:

- had been diagnosed with ADHD at seven. his family is wonderful about it, because his mother, twin sister, and little brother also have it as it runs in the family. he takes medication for it. later he sees similarities between himself and aaron, and he helps aaron out with coping techniques he uses (which usually involves aaron stealing one of his fidgeting toys, but flint doesn’t mind)

- is superstitious about his hair. if he’s having a bad hair day, he’ll assume that challengers will pass by him easier. he is mostly right.

- flint has made many stupid decisions in his life, but adding lava lamps in his chamber room has got one of the stupidest. when he told his fellow colleagues he wanted this, lucian walked out of the room.

- when he was a teenager, he wasn’t a bad kid, per se (definitely not one of those sunyshore hoodlums) but trying to get a fake ID to purchase alcohol was not one of his fine and dandy moments. especially considering it was the worst fake ID that sunyshore has ever seen. (“chester nutballs? really?”) volkner laughs at him about it to this day.

- is a regular customer of morty’s hemp business that is sold overseas. as long as flint wasn’t high on the clock, cynthia would look the other way.

Lucian:

- has undiagnosed autism. his parents didn’t believe in autism, so they assumed that any issues he had only had to do with him being a psychic. nevermind that he didn’t speak until he was three, was hyperlexic, and often spent time in solitude and genuinely didn’t understand social cues.

- he could finish a six hundred page novel in a single setting. on days off from the league, sometimes he would lock himself on his wing of the castle and would read for hours.

- has the natural gift of stringing up the most eloquent, versatile, majestic sounding insults you’ll ever hear in your life. the fact that he could do this without yelling or using a single swear was borderline criminal.

- he doesn’t mean to be cruel - most of the time. sometimes he genuinely doesn’t know when he’s being insulting until bertha/cynthia flashes him a look. some days he cares, some days he doesn’t - because really, he gets overstimulated easily.

- butts heads with flint frequently and thinks he’s annoying, but if anyone outside of the league insulted him lucian would be one of the first people to jump to his defense. he has a soft spot for aaron, because aaron sometimes does things that reminds him of his younger brother will (yes, that one) and he’s off in johto so he doesn’t see him as much. bertha was more of a mother to him than his own mother was, and cynthia… well 😉

cynthia:

- is autistic and i’ll fucking die on this hill. infodumps about mythology any chance she gets. her first birthday at the league, bertha gave her a weighted blanket.

- she actually came into the league a little bit after lucian did. entering his chamber room, she spotted a book he was reading and marveled it was one of her favorites. they talked for seven fucking minutes until the champion at the time yelled at them to start battling already. as you know, she won.

- really gets into the christmas spirit. loves christmas. will not shut up about christmas. will spend hours decorating the league from head-to-toe in christmas ornaments.

- maybe she can’t read as fast as lucian, but no one in sinnoh can match her in terms of contextualize a book like she could, especially if it’s mythology.

- her grandmother is the only person cynthia can’t say no to.

#sinnoh #elite four lucian #champion cynthia #pokemon #elite four flint #elite four aaron #elite four bertha #cynthia #pokemon brilliant diamond #pkmn bdsp #bdsp #pokemon shining pearl #pokemon diamond and pearl #pkmn

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mourningmogaicrew · 1 year ago

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-fluiere

A suffix that indicates that an identity is fluid, fluctuating, changing in essence, and vast.

This suffix is different from -fluid and describes more complex shifting labels. Instead of fluidity, the quality of -fluiere orientations is fluienity. (Pronounced flee-N-it-ee or flew-N-it-ee)

It was originally designed for orientations but someone could also be genderfluiere, label/pronounfluiere, etc.

These identities may seem to ebb and flow like bodies of water, and feel like they're almost constantly changing (quickly or slowly). The base identity remains the same while everything about it shifts and moves. These orientations work like lava lamps in that they are moving and changing colors (feelings) while still having the same container (label). They are impossibly large but also small.

These identities may feel difficult to describe using traditional concepts and may rely on metaphors or hyper-specific scenarios instead: they are like a planet in the vastness of space, constantly moving and spinning while staying in the same orbit. They are a moth's wings fluttering, the colors and patterns of a kaleidoscope shifting, plasma moving, a flower growing and blooming, everything and nothing at once, the cycle of the tides and the phases of the moon, a 3d shape rotating, etc.

(Sorry for getting so metaphorical. But I guess it kind of shows what I mean about this being hard to describe)

Some people may feel that they’ve given up on describing themself because every time they find a label their identity seems to slightly change again. I’m not forcing anyone to identify as -fluiere but I think this term may be helpful for people with similar struggles!

Flag IDs in alt text. I also made flags for bi, pan, poly, nonbinary, trans, agender, catgender, genderfluid, spiritine/kenochoric, androgyne, demigender, aro, ace, aroace, polyam, and pronoun- fluiere and hopefully I'll get around to posting them!

#mourn's labels #fluiere #genderfluiere #pronounfluiere #bifluiere #gender suffix #orientation suffix #mogai term #mogai coining #liom #mogai #liom coining #liomogai

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zatyrlucy · 2 years ago

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Hell, I think I can say this with security now.

The previous episodes of helluva boss were...good, normal, eh. I just watched them once... maybe a second time to do some posts and that was it. But this episode? WONDERFUL I love it! Im watching it again and again and not getting tired.

Also Queen Bee?? man, first time I see a portrayal of Beelzebuh that doesn't make me feel itchy (I hate flies). I love her, she is like a fusion of a pokemon and a lava lamp hahah x3

I think this episode made me remember why I became a Viv´s fan back in 2018 uff And if the first season of Hazbin Hotel is going to be like this, then I can not wait.

#my opinion and mine alone #no problem if you dont agree heh #helluva boss #also im in a good mood and today I have nothing else to do so...guess i will watch Bee fanart all day lol

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helluvapurf · 2 years ago

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*oop almost forgot to post* -BUUUT, looks like HB's second-half of S1's finale is finally here! 👀Lets talk about it~

Spoiler thoughts below for those who haven't seen it-

The Positives:

-The background & Gluttony ring setting were pretty gorgeous to look at, wonderfully sickly sweet & inviting with all the honeycomb/beehive aesthetics~

-Kudos to Kesha making a stellar guest appearance as "Queen Bee(-lzebub)"; a charismatic and charming party girl who turned out to have more of a heart when it all came down to it (making sure everyone was well-fed, nudging Loona to go look after Blitz, her tender side to Tex, etc.), what a vibe~ 😊

-Loona gets to shine again in a speaking role, and this time wasn't too overly-moody/aggressive, but more anxious and unsure of how to make friends with all these wild party guests (which I'm sure anyone could relate to, in some degree 🥺). Even getting to see her acknowledging more of Blitz as her dad was a nice touch (for the time being at least) ^^

-Nice to see Blitz arrive as he could to help out Loonie, even after he already had a stressful night from "Ozzie's" (+drank himself silly at Bee's party), his daughter's presence being there for him in the darkest parts of his life is what matters most, aww~ ☺️

-Tex gets to return as the best wolf bro that he is, and his lil moments with his girlfriend Bee (while arguably a bit overdone with the “royalty x commoner” theme, given some other HB pairs we got atm-) were still pretty wholesome on their own too~ 💛

The Negatives:

-As sweet as it was to see more of Loona's softer/vulnerable side (especially when tending to her dad at the end)... idk, it just makes me all the more crushed at how "Seeing Stars" just threw away that potential development out the window, so her & Blitz actually get along for once here isn't meant to "mean" anything in the long run… 😔*sighs*

-Pacing felt a teeeensy bit rushed/unfinished in some parts... like on one hand you have Bee's song running for a good chunk of time (like a standard iTunes single), but stuff like Loona's anxiety/rivalry with those snobby dogs at the party wasn't really addressed afterwards once Blitz entered the picture (opting instead for filler of him drinking/fooling around while Loona's just... kinda "there", up until they go home)? Idk, I kinda get in-hindsight why Viv had to make this a shorter ep, but in this sense I feel like just a few more mins added could've really enhanced the story a lil better.

-While the tonal shifts weren't... too clunkily-handled compared to some of S2's lineup, I'll admit there's some parts that could've used a bit of tweaking in the emotional bits imo (Like Blitz just abruptly throwing up after moping about his love life... while funny initially, it still makes one wonder if it really "needed" to be there, yknow?)

-Enjoyably catchy as a classic lil callback to the early 2000s!era of pop/clubbing music… after a few listens. "Cotton Candy" does feel a lil too long/repetitive in a couple parts, I'll admit .w.; Which… probably was the intention now that I think about it ('cause yknow, Gluttony-) buuuut, ye lol

-As much as I enjoyed seeing Tex & his friendship with Loona again... ehhhh, with her lowkey still seeming to have a crush on him (+her implied jealousy at Bee), I'm a bit afraid this might lead to some unnecessary love triangle bs if not handled carefully .x.; Since we already got enough of that with Blitz' love life atm, we really don't need more melodrama tbh >>

-Finally... yeaaaaah I know this is already getting kinda "debated" enough already in the fandom, but as far as my thoughts on Bee's design goes? ...Kiiiiiinda don't really know what to think still tbh- ^^;;

Like, okay there's parts I do genuinely love about it, like the bee-theming, the honey hair & lava lamp aesthetic (+the lowkey-callback to the "Die Young" wolf girl was a cute touch)... buuuuut then you get to the random canine-bod/blue tuft of hair that the design just loses me from there, I'm afraid glkjgk .w.;;

Again, I don't hate the canon Bee design overall, and I'm curious to see if she'll make any other reappearances down the line (even if they might need to recast her for budget issues like w/ Striker)... buuut idk, if I had to personally reimagine her myself I'd personally lean more to her being a cute bee demon imho .3.

-----------

-Aaaaand yeah, that about covers it for my thoughts regarding this ep! :> I'd say overall I'd give it.... hmm, a B-rank perhaps? (hehe bee pun-) .3. A lil heavy on the filler in some parts (and in the long run could arguably be one of the more "skippable" eps), but for what its worth it had some good vibing moments for me as a palate-cleanser to some of the "lesser" S2 eps, previously ^^ 👍

#helluva boss #helluva boss spoilers #helluva boss queen bee #helluva boss review

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thatstonedwriter · 1 year ago

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Thoughts on the newest episode? 👀👀 lmk what y'all think!! I'll leave my opinions under the cut if you're interested 💛

I've only watched once, so these will be rough bullet points

Positives:

Animation and music was fucking awesome. Fave songs were "Fuck You" and the Clown one (can't remember the name)

The kiddo Fizz spoke sign language to???? I'm fucking deceased. That was really cute

Love seeing more of Ozzie and Fizz and seeing some of the issues within the relationship. Love the complexity shown in a healthy relationship!

Insight into the exploitative nature of the entertainment industry (I'm sure the team used some personal experience as reference)

Comedy was great- the physical gags and insults were well-executed and fucking hilarious

Little Fizz and Blitzø were adorable. Already seeing posts psychoanalyzing them, and I'm eating that shit up

Neutral/Negative

Wish the sisters had a bit more character. I understand they're competition, but they didn't bring much to the table imo

Asmodeus and Fizz's relationship with Blitzø feels a bit rushed. I get Asmodeus says that Blitzø protected Fizz, and that Fizz did t want to hold a grudge for 15 years. More time could be spent on the relationship, but maybe that's something the team is saving for later

I've only watched once so far, but the other two songs weren't as memorable. They're not bad, they just didn't stick with me like the others did

I think Mammon's design could've been a bit better. His and Bee's designs feel somewhat under-utilized. I like Mammon's multiple arms (grabbing at everything) and Bee's ears and the lava-lamp torso, but again, they're under-utilized and a bit lacking for the Deadly Sins.

#helluva boss #stoner says bullshit #all I can think of at the moment #helluva boss spoilers #helluva boss review

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skell3 · 1 year ago

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RP Muse: Michael Shelley

Up next is a character I see a -lot- of variation on. Michael is my 'baby' muse... in that he's particularly soft, easy to bully, and a bit clumsy.

Michael's about a year or two before The Great Twisting, roughly. It's a bit difficult to determine timelines (and admittedly, how I've written him has been in that weird time crossover bit I mentioned in Jon's post, so it's all wibbly-wobbly at best.)

Once again, info below the cut and I'll do my best to write him out.

Michael Shelley stands at about 6'1" and has a fairly thin frame, almost slightly underfed though he's quite healthy. He has a couple of freckles and a slight gap in his front teeth he's very self-conscious about. His long blond hair is more wavy than curly, but still holds a couple of ringlets on its own just after a shower and drying it all out. He usually keeps it down if only to hide behind some of it, though when he's very busy working, he will pull it back with a colourful scrunchie.

Michael's eyes are heterochromatic, meaning he has two colours in them. They look fairly blue at first until you look toward the pupils, which blend into almost an aqua-green. He gets a little self-conscious about those, too, and doesn't like to make eye-contact often.

The clothes he really enjoys wearing tend to be vibrant in colour, like a bright yellow jumper or something multicoloured and fun. Michael also really likes floral patterns, so his favourite jumper is an oversize soft lavender with stitched in flowers and a bee making a path around the lower hem of it. It's so long he likes to wear a belt over it and just some fitted jeans, though occasionally oversize also means his hands disappear and he has to be careful with that at work. He was gifted a multicoloured scarf, striped with blue, yellow, and purple bands.

Home life is a little uneasy- Michael has a roommate who isn't particularly nice to him, but they pay the rent on time and usually leave him alone when he is actually home (so long as they don't have guests over). He usually sticks to his room anyway, which has a cool lava lamp, a tv/vcr combo so he can watch movies, a couple of brightly-coloured bean bag chairs, and a lot of blankets and pillows for his bed. There's a lot of posters and pictures and things on his walls, which help make it look a little more home-y for him despite the abrasive environment it's in.

Growing up, Michael was the unfortunate middle child that got a little bit of love early on and then was mostly left to fend for himself when his younger siblings were born. Always having been a quieter child anyway, he picked up on doing things by himself, and doing his best to stay out of trouble (because punishments were particularly harsh). This has made Michael relatively mousey as a person, especially working under Gertrude, but he's a people-pleaser and doesn't think too highly of himself so he does his best to do his job and not cause problems. Because Gertrude also has looked out for him more than once, this makes him particularly loyal and it isn't often that he questions her.

At work, Michael is really good at organizing, cleaning up the office and maintaining files as to Gertrude's specifications. If there isn't anyone in the office, he tugs on headphones and ends up listening to ABBA, Queen, The Beatles, etc.. Very occasionally, someone will walk in on him grooving and the moment he notices, he stops and flusters hard, settling back in to things with the music a lot lower and no dancing. (Honestly, he's so very Lonely-coded, working alone is sometimes the best times for him, though he also doesn't exactly enjoy being alone)

In the timeline I've been writing him in, Michael's BFF at work is the young Elias Bouchard, who works in artefact storage but comes by to bother Michael or avoid work. Otherwise, a lot of the folks who work upstairs tend to pick on Michael about stuff, and he primarily sticks to interacting with only the Archives group. This timeline we also have overlapping with Eric Delano being there, and Michael has a crush (but knows it's never going to happen), and it makes for a lot of flustered moments.

So yeah, this poor baby, so awkward. Hits his head on things a lot (like when he's hiding in a closet to escape Feelings). Eventually he'll get a little bit more spine, but by then it'll be probably 'just the right time' for Gertrude to take him on his last little business trip. He's great for soft scenes, but also awkward tension and maybe a bit of dramatics and anxiety.

#Michael Shelley #TMA #TMA fan content #tma fanwork #musings #writings #TMA Multiverse #creative writing

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darry-rules · 3 months ago

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A Clairvoyants Guide to the Otherworld

The first time I visited the Otherworld was when I was eleven. One moment I’d been having some peaceful dream I hardly remember, and the next, I was shooting up in bed with a gasp. I pulled my blanket tighter around myself as I looked around uneasily.

Something was wrong. The sensation of wrongness was the first thing I remember feeling. The reasons why I felt so became clearer as I took time to look around. My room was far too dark and gloomy. My lava lamp was gone. The posters on my walls were missing. My pair of crammed bookshelves were filled with unfamiliar and disarranged books. Half the stuff on my bedside table was gone; brushes, toys, the pieces of artwork I’d been in the middle of working on. The only things left were my small mirror and cassette player.

My heart clenched tighter as I leaned forward to peer through the bedroom window.

The details outside were all wrong too, I thought, although as I searched with my eyes it was difficult to pinpoint exactly how. It was just so empty and still, I concluded. I felt as if I were staring into a photograph rather than through a window. There was no wind, no movement, and everything was completely, perfectly silent.

Typically, you would hear the occasional car driving by, and the chirps of crickets and the creaks and cracks of the house. Soft, subtle sounds you were hardly conscious of. Not now.

I waited a minute, and then two. I heard literally nothing except for the faint moan of what might have been a faraway wind.

The rest of my house seemed equally foreign to me. The door to my aunt and uncle’s rooms were hanging half open. Their beds were both empty, their rooms appearing unfamiliar and alien as mine was. I felt like I was an intruder in someone else’s house.

I could hardly stop shivering as I ran down the stairs, calling out their names. The only answer was that extremely faint, almost inaudible, oscillating howl of wind. It possessed an unsettlingly humanlike quality.

I’d started crying as I ran outside, though I hardly realized it. A thin sheet of fog covered the streets, drifting languidly around me, never extending through the doorway of my house.

Lamp posts spilled blurry, dull yellow light onto the street. The sky was a yawning, abyssal darkness entirely absent of stars. The street seemed too large and too small at the same time. All the cars I would usually see parked around the neighbourhood were gone.

It was colder outside. Too cold. I didn’t remember it ever being this cold, not ever, even during the winter months of the year.

I shuffled forward across the pave walk. I wasn’t sure where I was planning to go. I had some vague thought of finding someone who would help me escape this horrible place.

Nothing around me felt real. I made my way across the length of the street and then back again, stopping once or twice to look around in disbelief as I tried to make sense of my surroundings and process the uncanny, subtle differences between the real world and whatever this was.

Houses which appeared familiar and benign in the daylight now looked foreboding, as if the dark windows concealed something sinister and twisted within. With increasing frequency I found myself imagining humanoid beings as disturbed and malformed as my surroundings lurking inside as they silently observed me.

Soon, the panic took over. I called out. I screamed and yelled until my throat itched. There was never an answer.

Once my throat was hoarse and my voice weak and ragged, I sprinted back to my house and returned to my room. I remember telling myself over and over again it had to be a dream. So I tried to wake myself up all the ways you usually do when you think you’re stuck in a bad dream.

Pinching and slapping myself, sprinting around in circles and then splashing water on my face repeatedly. I would have tried jumping down the stairs but I couldn’t gather the courage to do that. This world felt far too realistic for such a daring and reckless feat.

Once all else had failed, I curled up under my blankets; the only solace I could find, and lay there for what felt like forever. Each minute melded together seamlessly into what had become an extended waking nightmare.

I don’t know how long it lasted. Hours most likely, and they were some of the worst hours of my life. But the experience didn’t last forever as I began to suspect it would. An unknown amount of time later, I woke up. Seven years have passed since my first visit. They were years of me living a normal life in the daytime and spending time every other night alone in a lonely, eerie world I would later come to learn was named the Otherworld by the scattered inhabitants who shared my abilities to psychically project themselves there.

During this time, I learned how to survive the Otherworld. Eventually, I even came to call it a second home. Most of the time, the Otherworld appears as one giant, endless liminal space. A dark and creepy reflection of the real world, though an oddly peaceful one too. Sometimes, it can even be strangely beautiful.

It seems, most of the time, completely devoid of any kind of life. It isn’t, though, and it is important not to forget that.

Six years after the first manifestation of my powers I had no more control over my visits to the Otherworld during my sleep, but by that time it was no longer the frightening and unknown nightmarescape I’d first made it out to be. I found ways to work through the fear and loneliness, reassured with the knowledge my visits would never last more than a couple hours.

I said that the Otherworld is an empty, liminal reflection of the surface world, but that isn’t the whole truth. Here and there are hidden places you can’t find in the real world. That’s what I came here to talk about. Not just the Otherworld, but the many dark secrets concealed within it. Over the subsequent weeks and months, I would become less scared of the Otherworld and more bored with it. It was never less than a few hours I would need to spend there before I could wake up and return to my normal life. It was one of the unspoken rules of this place.

To deal with the boredom, I read each one of the new books in my room (at least, the ones which were legible), and restlessly paced the walls of my home. After a while, I began to cautiously venture deeper into the mysterious, alien world outside. With every exploration, my curiosity grew stronger.

I’ve come to learn that the Otherworld can be both beautiful and horrible. The first story I want to share with you will introduce you to both sides of it; the good and the bad.

I came across something intriguing during one of my routine explorations of the Otherworld three years ago. I’d been walking the streets for over an hour – I could actually measure time because I’d learned that watches (unlike phones) work in the Otherworld, though sometimes they’re stuck within a different time zone.

In the midst of my wandering, I stumbled across a part of the dark and silent city which was coated in what (first) looked to me like very thin and tattered white cloth.

I began following innumerable strands of feather soft silk seemingly stretching on forever throughout the streets of the city. They cascaded across the walls and tops of buildings, and hung in velvety strings over the roads.

The patterns of the gossamer seemed to become more complex the closer I examined them, making me feel disoriented and a little dizzy if I looked at them for too long. The whole thing was like a piece of abstract artwork. It looked kind of like an optical illusion art piece, but as if you were looking at it while tripping out. I imagined some troubled and obsessed artist spent their entire lifetime working to perfect and expand it.

The net of silk grew thicker around me, blanketing parts of houses and gardens and forming circular spires and archways which rose several meters high into the air above me.

The further I went, the more intricate and detailed the patterns of the web became. At the same time, the surface was becoming increasingly sticky to the point where it stretched outward a foot or two when I tried to pull my hand away. I felt as if my hand were glued to the material.

What was weirder was that only some of the silk was sticky this way. Other parts hardly stuck to my skin at all. The non-sticky parts were almost imperceptibly different in colour and texture from the stickier ones.

A couple minutes into my journey through the sea of frozen, suspended white, I caught glimpses of sporadic movement from part of the web. I traced them to a hammock shaped net hanging a little distance to the right of me. I understood what it was when I came closer.

The Otherworld isn’t completely empty, like I said earlier. I shared the world with various things both human and otherwise. You’ll inevitably encounter some of them if you spend long enough over here.

Caught up in the pale patchwork of silk was one such creature I’d become familiar with over the past couple of years.

It was kind of what I considered to be part of the native (ecosystem?) of the Otherworld. This insectoid creature would move about with unnatural speed, almost always staying in the periphery of my vision, so I was never sure if they were really there. They looked like giant, translucent bugs. They’d always creeped me out, but I got the feeling they were more afraid of me than I was of them. We never bothered each other much, and I was okay with them if they stayed out of my way.

I definitely didn’t like seeing one trapped so helplessly, though it did help me understand the reality of the situation I’d gotten myself into.

I was walking through one massive spider web. A spiderweb which must have spanned miles of the city, yet one which I’d somehow never seen before in all my years of exploring the Otherworld.

Then something more important occurred to me. What type of spider lives in a web so large? I shivered and pulled my woollen coat tighter against myself.

I came toward the creature hesitantly, and as I did, it jerked violently as it attempted to lift its legs from the surface of the web. The movements it made as I closed the distance doubled in intensity, and they sent a small ripple across the web – a silent, surging wave like a gust of wind. The creature looked terrified but weak, its struggles dying down as quickly and abruptly as they’d escalated.

Then, out of the periphery of my vision, I saw something else move. The white shape almost completely blended into the surface of the web. It was yet more difficult to pick out through the gloom combined with the distance between it and where I was standing. The shape was multi jointed, large and lithe, nearly impossible to make sense of.

A normal spider has eight legs. This one had many, many more. Some of them were short, while others stretched on further into the web surrounding it. Some appendages waved slowly in the air like pincers, drifting lazily from side to side.

I froze as I stared up at it. The spider was stone still, so still I almost thought the shape of it – the only thing I could clearly make out – had been conjured up by my imagination from the complexity of the web.

I waited for another sign of movement for a minute. I didn’t catch anything.

I was gathering the courage to turn my back on the sight as I inched my way toward the bug-thing to get a closer look at it.

That was when I heard the first meow. It was coming from somewhere further away, where the web was at its thickest. The sound was panicked and high pitched.

I took another glance at the bug thing, which had fallen limp again, a grey blur against the more pale shades of the web. I felt guilty for leaving it like that. But the sound of another meow drew my attention away quickly. I would come back later, I told myself, after I went to investigate the source of the meowing.

I was moving before I’d registered what I was doing, walking alongside the large, soft spheres of white light cast by the streetlights. The houses gave way on one side to a flat, grassy park, where I could see several more mounds completely wrapped in silk which were hanging the greater part of the web. They swayed slightly underneath along with the innumerable rope like strands supporting them. Looking closer, I saw the silk ascending into the trees, draping over their many limbs like Christmas lights.

I moved within touching distance of one or two of these cocoons as I continued searching for the origins of the noise. The pair were both loosely tucked inside a faded, red tube which formed a part of some play equipment at the centre of a glassy field. They were stuffed and bulging like overfilled rubbish bags. One was moving slightly, the surface shifting as something wriggled within. The other two were completely still.

As I peered closer, I glimpsed what was inside the moving one, and I immediately regretted looking.

It looked like some kind of young deer. That is the closest thing I could compare it to. Its skin was albino white and hairless. It was paralyzed, starving and emaciated. Its eyes stared out at me pitifully, full of pain and suffering.

I turned away quickly and kept moving.

It wasn’t long after that before I closed in on the source of the sound I’d heard. What I guessed to be a year old, short haired cat was tangled up in the spiderweb. I’m not so good with breeds, though I can say it was white, with large paws and still larger, mismatched eyes and a very fluffy tail.

The cat looked like it had jumped up onto the web in an attempt to climb or possibly leap over it. Now it was stuck suspended at an awkward sideways angle as it wriggled helplessly. It turned its head to mew at me as I came closer.

The task of helping it was a daunting one. Of course, I had to try.

Fortunately, the creature wasn’t too far off the ground, and I thought I could probably reach it if I climbed up to a branch of one of the nearby trees hanging directly over it. It wasn’t easy freeing the cat. It took me several attempts just to tear apart the thinnest of the rope like threads binding it.

I started with one of its front paws, and the cat immediately began to panic, causing multiple small but definitive tremors through the surface of the web.

‘I’m trying to help you’, I whispered quickly. I rubbed the back of its head with one finger. ‘Please, just be still, alright?’

I stared into the cat’s eyes, and I’m pretty sure I must have come to some understanding with it, because the cat calmed down a bit and let me work its second front paw out of the tangles of stringy web.

I took note that the cat really did have large paws, eyes, and tail. Like they were cartoonishly large. It was something more than your everyday housecat, I guessed.

I couldn’t have known then how right I would turn out to be.

Every time I glanced up at where I was fairly sure the spider was, I thought I saw it in a slightly different position on the web, but I was never positive if it was really moving around or if I was getting paranoid.

As I took turns alternately focusing on the cat and the rest of the web, I had to slow my movements down so I didn’t get my feline companion more tangled up and undo all the progress I’d made.

With every passing minute I became more convinced the spider was about to come after me. It didn’t help having to accept I had no idea where it really was anymore.

My hands shook increasingly, and my gaze flickered restlessly over the length of the web, searching for any sign of movement. I found myself becoming more focused on envisioning the arachnid catching me and not nearly enough on freeing the cat.

In the end, I allowed myself to become too careless, and I did exactly what I’d been trying not to do. In a moment of frustrated impatience targeting a particularly stubborn knot sticking to the cat my movements caused a large ripple to disperse off into the fog in multiple directions.

Moments later, I glimpsed something moving through the fog; silently, lazily shifting and swaying as it did. I heard a squeaking meow coming from beside me.

The spider was approaching slowly and deliberately. As it turned its large body to move toward me, I caught a glimpse of what was in its mouth, suggesting what the spider had been in the middle of doing when I caught its attention. Its mouth was dripping with black blood and viscera, grinding back and forth rhythmically as it moved. I thought I could hear the crunching and crackling sounds it was making as it worked down its latest meal.

The spider was in the middle of consuming something wrapped in a large lump of silk, using countless limbs to tear at the silk and whatever was inside it, and lift various pieces toward the dark mass of its mouth, the silk still wrapped about them.

I leapt down lightly from the tree and plucked up a stick lying beside it. I tossed it as hard as I could into the murky depths of the mist in front of me.

The spider reacted the way I hoped it would, changing its course abruptly and skittering soundlessly in the opposite direction, vanishing into the fog. I quickly ascended back up the tree to return to work on helping the cat.

I had come very close to getting the cat free when the spider came back, a scuttling mass of white returning to the centre of the web. It had a huge, silken wrapped bundle hanging from its jaws.

Within another minute I had finished freeing the cat. But as I tried to climb down the tree I got a little bit too impatient, unsettled and distracted by the sight of the spider’s return. I lost my balance momentarily, barely stopping myself from falling forwards straight into a section of web caked ground. I shrieked in surprise, the noise uncomfortably loud in the otherwise silent night. One of my legs had gotten completely stuck in an isolated section of the web, I realized as I glanced down.

I pulled my leg free with a painful, adrenalin filled yank, leaving my shoe half hanging in the web. I nearly fell out of the tree, landing in a tangled, sprawling heap on top of its roots. I could hear my new companion yowling as I scrambled to get up. Luckily it appeared the cat was alright; I could see it looking back at me from a small distance away up ahead on the road.

I turned toward the spider. It took me no time at all to understand how much trouble I was in. The creature was in the middle of crawling sideways along the roofs of houses and the sides of shop fronts. It was large enough it could use its long legs to close the gaps between one building and the next. Despite still being some distance away, the thing was closing in on me frightening quickly.

I broke out into a hard sprint through the street back the way I had come. The cat stopped every now and again to look behind with wide, gleaming eyes as if urging me to catch up. Running wasn’t going to be enough to save me. The one time I glanced back suggested how long I would be able to stay ahead of my pursuer.

The cat jumped up and nipped at my fingers, drawing my attention. Then it bounded up to the front of a nearby house with a small, sloping backyard. When I figured out what it wanted from me, I felt like an idiot for not thinking of it myself earlier.

I caught up with the feline, sprinting over to the door in a couple of steps, nearly tripping over myself in the process.

Luckily for me, most houses aren’t locked in the Otherworld. Theoretically, I could wander into any house I wanted. I preferred not to, because that felt like a pretty big invasion of privacy – but I had tried it a couple times out of curiosity.

I ran inside and slammed the door, panting wildly. I was standing in a dim hallway decorated with patterned, slightly old fashioned wallpaper. A pair of nearby doors stood opposite one another, each hanging open to reveal colourful, curtained rooms adorned with toys, drawers and beds covered by spaceship and planet adorned blankets.

I paused to lock the front door, then ran over to the nearest window to peer out into the darkness. When I didn’t see the spider, I checked another window, and then another.

Was it searching for a way inside the house? I wondered. With its size, I couldn’t imagine it could fit itself in, even if it managed to somehow break the door down.

I couldn’t see the spider. However, the horrors weren’t over yet.

The ability to astrally project isn’t the only power I possess while I’m inside Otherworld. I developed some even more disturbing abilities during my time here.

For instance, I know how to move into the minds of creatures and sometimes even more human inhabitants of the Otherworld. It’s as if I can psychically invade their thoughts, though sometimes they are the ones invading mine. Like astral projection, the power was (is) far from easy to control.

I began to feel like the spider was right beside me, a squirming, insectile mass probing at the edges of my mind. Here and there a half comprehensible thought or feeling briefly manifested at the fringes of my consciousness.

This quickly turned maddening. My awareness was split between two people. One was me, and the other was an unspeakable being, consumed by a deep, primordial hunger and a sense of predatory desire. With the invasive consciousness came recollections of eating and chewing ferociously on tough flesh and brittle bone, tasting things so foul they left me retching uncontrollably, alongside memories of hours being spent stalking and collecting prey.

I discovered a spot to curl up in the corner of one of the bedrooms, near a window that looked out on the web coated neighbourhood. Periodically, I heard the shifts and groans on the roof or skittering and pattering across the walls that told me the spider was still trying to seek me out. In my mind, the sense of hunger became aggravated by a growing feeling of impatience and frustration.

At least I was managing to keep my own presence hidden from it. It knew I was in its head, though not where, and its mind was perhaps the largest mind I’d ever sensed. Though that fact could change in seconds with a single short lapse in my focus.

The one thing which got me through the mental anguish of those minutes was the cat. A soft and warm bundle of fur climbed up onto my knees and pawed at my face for attention until I opened my eyes and began stroking him and alternately scratching him behind the ears.

We would survive the night together, one way or another. I just prayed we could both get out of there in one piece.

Extracting myself out of the spider’s mind was like getting the cat out of the web. Slow and painstakingly difficult yet manageable. The spider’s mind was immense but lacking in the speed and grace of its body, and the cat helped keep me calm enough to focus.

I created an imaginary room for myself the way my mom taught me and locked myself inside of it, away from the spider’s probing mind. The longer we spent separated, the further off its presence felt, and soon enough, it was difficult for me to sense its mind at all.

I didn’t hear or feel any sign of the spider after that. But every now and again I saw the cat’s ears pick up and he gave a low hiss, which was enough to let me know it wasn’t safe to go outside. I may have managed to protect my mind from its invasive psychic presence, but that didn’t mean it had physically gone anywhere.

There was only one way I was going to escape the situation alive. Dying in the Otherworld wouldn’t kill me in real life. Rather, I’d learned by then it could lead to something worse than death.

Once I felt like I’d relaxed enough I crawled under the queen sized bed inside of the room I’d snuck into, shuffled as far toward the back as I could, and closed my eyes. I didn’t feel like sleeping, but I knew I had to try. It was the only way out there. Sleeping (or sinking into a meditative trance) is how you enter the otherworld, and it’s also how you leave it.

I figured I would eventually fall asleep if I lay there for long enough. At least, I had to hope so. Every little noise jolted my eyes wide open and broke my heart out into a panicked, fluttering rhythm. I felt too vulnerable and exposed to relax. I was too restless, and found myself on my feet again after a couple more minutes of hiding.

I discovered the basement by accident whilst pacing the house to try to walk off my excess energy. It seemed like a better place to stay since it put a little more distance between me and the spider, so I migrated there, curling up against a dresser with my feet pulled up to my knees, cushioned by an old, scratchy blanket I discovered nearby.

The cat came over to me and cuddled up beside me. I felt his fur against my face, brushing my cheek and nose, and I heard his purring against my ear.

I pulled him close to myself, so that I could feel the vibrations of his breathing against my chest.

I can’t say how long it took me to get to sleep, but I did. From there I drifted back into normal dreams which quickly faded from my memory, and finally, I woke up (for real, this time). Back in the safety of my house and my normal bedroom, my session of astral projecting was over. The next time three nights later when I woke up again in the Otherworld, I looked around half hoping to see the cat curled up beside me where he’d been when I went to sleep inside the basement. When I realized I was alone, I wanted to cry. I very nearly did.

My short lived feline friend had been great, but it also served to remind me exactly how alone I was in this cold, dead world.

I sat on my bed for a while, despondent. Eventually, I wandered downstairs to face the quiet, gentle glow of a non-existent sun. It was daytime in the otherworld – though daytime looked like a perpetual sunset, so it was still gloomy. The cat practically scared me to death when he pounced on me ten minutes later as I was meandering listlessly along the footpath outside my house. I gave a shriek as something leapt into my arms, nearly knocking me off my feet. I struggled to get a hold of it but it was too fast and nimble, and it kept slipping free from my grip. Then I started laughing as it smothered my face in warm, rough licks. I felt soft fur against my hands and a fluffy tail tickling my hair and shoulders.

I carefully pulled the cat away from my face and stared into its mismatched eyes.

‘You found me,’ I said, wonderingly.

The cat blinked and licked its lips, then gave a long and lingering mew.

From that day on, the cat was my loyal friend; a friend who followed me – or had me follow him, during my night time trips through the Otherworld. Not all the trips admittedly; sometimes he would disappear on other adventures without me, but enough of them.

For the first time ever, in this lonely liminal world, I had a friend. He was a reminder that things weren’t all so awful around here.

Having someone there beside you, even if it is a mysterious spirit cat, is a lot better than wandering the alien landscapes alone. Even when you’ve gotten used to being alone for so long like I had, the quiet companionship of the cat made the Otherworld seem almost like a different place entirely.

‘What should I call you?’ I asked as I looked down at the cat contemplatively. In the days following my last visit to the Otherworld, a little googling had allowed me to identify the breed of the cat as a Khao Manee. It was a pretty good match except for the unusually large paws, ears, and eyes – and as I would later come to find, my cat’s tendency to float in the air sometimes. The creature stared up at me unblinkingly, offering absolutely no suggestions.

I tried out a couple of names. Charlie. Ash. Nugget. Sage. Larry. Caspian. Windsor. Solomon. None of them seemed right for him.

More names popped up in my mind. I dismissed each one of them as quickly as the first. One of my friends once had a cat named Snowflake, and that had me thinking up more random and unusual ideas.

‘Bubbles?’ I asked. I remembered always wanting to have a fish named Bubbles when I was younger, but my aunt and uncle were never fond of pets.

The cat winked.

‘Bubbles?’ I repeated the word a couple of times. It wasn’t any sensible name for any cat really, but I liked it anyway. Though I honestly couldn’t tell if the cat did.

‘Well, why not?’ I asked. I felt like it kinda suited him.

Bubbles responded by bounding a couple steps ahead of me and glancing behind him with wide eyes. The implication was clear.

That night, we set off on the first of countless journeys out into the depths of the Otherworld.

The next few hours I spent following my newly named cat through different parts of the Otherworld to whatever places Bubbles deemed worthy of my attention. Whenever I got tired, he meowed and pawed at me to keep following him.

That was one of Bubble’s favourite things to do with me; to show me things or places and observe my reaction to them. One time some weeks after our first meeting, he had me following him for more than an hour so he could retrieve a small bowl of yarn. Once we’d reached it, he awkwardly picked it up in his mouth and walked it over to me. Then he stared up at me until I took it from him with a sigh.

Bubbles wanted me to play with him. He’d actually made me walk for over an hour through nowhere just for this freaking ball of yarn.

I never knew if he was going to take me to see something insignificant and stupid or something strange and beautiful. A different time he took me to a garden filled with just about every kind of rose and flower I could imagine arranged chaotically alongside a long pathway reaching up to a cluttered, overgrown hoarder’s house.

He proceeded to run through the flowers, tearing up pieces of the garden and getting himself totally covered in dirt, flower petals and grass.

Another time the cat took me on a journey with him to a mossy, old looking house with hundreds of wind chimes and various charms hanging off of strings from every possible surface. They were playing a soft, slightly sad melody alongside the gentle breeze brushing against my face.

Standing on the porch and all over the garden were about as many miniature faerie statues and garden gnomes. An overgrown looking water fountain sat in the middle of it all, covered in moss and lilies.

I could swear I saw the gnomes moving out of the periphery of my vision. It was one of those uncanny places I was sure didn’t exist in the real world, rather randomly turning up in the Otherworld the same way the spiderweb had.

I’d tried to open the large, oaken door and was disappointed to find it was locked. It was unusual, because like I said earlier, doors to houses in the Otherworld tended to be unlocked most of the time.

Instead I tried using the large, decorated knocker to bang on the door a couple of times and apprehensively awaited a response. I thought I heard some feminine whispers and possibly a giggle coming from the other side, but no one ever answered the door and the quiet quickly returned.

Occasionally, I shared with Bubbles things I’d found, too, though they were usually not noteworthy, and to be honest, Bubbles rarely seemed interested unless I’d found him something to play with or chase around.

After a long night of exploring, we would sit together for a while staring out at the desolate city. We both had our favourite positions up on a large oak tree in my backyard. Bubbles perched himself delicately on a thin, horizontal branch and I sat with my knees drawn up to my chest on one of the tree’s larger limbs, leaning against the trunk, right above the swing I’d once built off of it when I was younger.

In many ways Bubbles acted like any regular cat would. He brought me ‘presents’ in the form of the carcasses of some small creatures, including fish, mice, and insects. Some species were familiar to me, others I’d never seen before. At least a couple of them looked quite terrifying.

He would also play small pranks on me. Not infrequently he would sneak up on me and pounce on top of me, biting me or turbo-slapping me with his paws before jumping off of me. He’d scared me half to death more than once this way.

There were also some un cat-like behaviours I noticed from Bubbles. He yowled and caterwauled at the moon for hours, mimicking the noises of what sounded like wolves in the distance. Sometimes they would join in alongside him instead. It left me to wonder if there were more creatures like Bubbles out there.

There were times where Bubbles acted far more intelligently than any cat should. For instance, he possessed an uncanny ability to find me whenever I was feeling miserable or sad, and I could swear he understood a lot of what I said to him during our one sided conversations. Bubbles was a very special cat, there was no denying it.

Whoever he was, I loved him. He was the perfect companion for my lonely night-time journeys.

Things in the dreamscape were very different with the cat around – though I had no way of knowing how much Bubbles would go on to change my life over the course of the following years.

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