#like the only thing monster has going for it is their aesthetic

[404shcats]

Genuinely so glad I stopped drinking monster -Party

[empty-blog-for-lurking]

My vld time travel au is really just- Beautiful morally grey women, who have close but concerning platonic relationship with Lance, and want Lotor dead/trying to violently murder him, not out of malice or vengeance or anything personal but simply because of pragmatic "it's for the greater good" reasons and they are sorta?? Right about it

[manikas-whims]

LADS men + Halloween Costumes

Now with Sylus solo banner upcoming, the possibility of getting a Halloween quad banner is nil. And i’m happy for it cuz this has saved me from making a really bad financial decision 😆

anyways here's some mulling over the LIs costume choices..

SYLUS

Option 1: Vampire

If we consider Sylus’s overall aesthetic, then Vampire is the most obvious choice for him. He can't go out in the daylight for some inexplicable reason; definitely a creature of the night. He has red eyes that glow in the dark. And even during Destiny Café interactions, he playfully sinks his teeth into your palm. No doubt he'd enjoy sinking them more into your neck 🤭

Also like imagine a 5 star Sylus Halloween card where MC begins suspecting Sylus to be a vampire. And the whole card revolves around her trying to collect evidence. Even Luke and Keiran begin to suspect Sylus thanks to MC and the 3 join forces. The card ends with Sylus playfully scolding all of them 😆 and laughing in disbelief, in that deep cadence that he has 😊

Option 2: Demon

Another obvious choice. If not a vampire, then the red eyes and dark aesthetic are also quite befitting for a Demon attire. A very charming demon who lures you into sinning by offering his black card 🤭 and ofcourse you willingly sell your soul to him.

Option 3: Bounty Hunter

You know those charming sorts of outlaws that everyone loves and roots for? Yeah, that would fit so well with Sylus. Especially the steampunk aesthetic. So yeah..a steampunk style, bounty hunter Sylus with an array of weapons strapped all over. He only works solo but will definitely make an exception for you 😌

Option 4: Crow

Unlike the other two, this option involves a big, poofy bird suit. A crow outfit to be specific. And he looks simply adorable in it 🥺 Imagine yourself trying not to laugh as you sneakily take millions of photos of him in this outfit 🤭 while he sneers at you but there's no actual anger behind his gaze.

XAVIER

Option 1: Werewolf

It may sound unusual upon first thought but this will play so well into his overall persona of the “wolf in sheep's clothing” or “wolf in bunny clothing”. He did nibble on your finger and sniffed your scent in the No Restraint card. And I'm damn sure he has a thing for biting and marking. So just imagine him putting on the wolf ears, claws and fangs, and he starts acting more sly than ever, saying he's only playing the part 😉

Option 2: Royalty

Another obvious choice. Xavier is pretty used to this cause he is royalty afterall. So assuming a position of power comes easy to him (remember Floral Blessing?). Maybe some sort of chivalrous and gallant prince because he can easily add his swordplay skills to it. Seeing him regard you as his queen will be a treat sweeter than all the candies 😌

Option 3: Lumiere

You think it's the most hilarious inside joke— Lumiere hiding in plain sight amidst the crowd of Linkon on one night where a large majority would be dressed as their legend. Their hero. Xavier absolutely hates it! And he hates the amount of people he spots in Lumiere costumes. But he'll put it on upon your insistence. Just be ready for the consequences later on cause this man is jealous of his own superhero alter-ego 😭

Option 4: Angel

Xavier with large white wings protruding from his back would be another fitting sight with his overall white/silver aesthetic. Imagine him as your guardian angel, always watching over you, protecting you and trying his best to guide you on the right path, despite his own desires for you.

Option 5: Bunny/Alien

If not the above choices, then some cute/sexy bunny costume (though we've already got our bunny butler). Or a really silly alien costume that somewhat resembles his sticker set. We know he'll look squisher than ever in those 🥺

ZAYNE

Option 1: Mad Scientist

Something similar to Dr. Faustus or Dr. Frankenstein (yeah Frankenstein was NOT the monster but the name of the guy who created the monster..in case some people still don't know 😭). Zayne’s personal goal– his obsession and drive– to keep MC alive is somewhat similar to Dr. Frankenstein’s obsession with unraveling the secrets of life and well..ultimately beating death by bringing someone to life. And Zayne's hunger for knowledge is also similar to that of Dr. Faustus’s who readily sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge.

So yeah..Zayne as a mad scientist, obsessed with knowledge and the drive to keep you alive would be intense 💯/💯

Option 2: Tutor

He'll sigh, take off his glasses and pinch the bridge of his nose in annoyance, like he always does. But you'll somehow convince him to do it because he's incapable of saying no to you.

It starts as a silly costume idea but the moment you see his legs clad in those unusually tight-fitting slacks and the pointer stick in his hand, you realize you might have a tutor kink and that you wouldn't mind misbehaving cause you'd actually enjoy getting punished by him 🫣

Option 3: Snowman/Penguin

The cute option! Definitely Dr. Carter, Yvonne and his other co-workers coaxed him to put it on for the little kids visiting Akso hospital throughout the week. When you stop by for a scheduled check-up and stumble upon him, you can't help but take loads of pictures of him with the kids 😊

RAFAYEL

Option 1: Merman/Siren

Just like Xavier as Lumiere, Rafayel as a merman on halloween would be such a spectacular inside joke.

At first he'd be offended because the fake tail you bought for him would feel like an insult to the real thing. He would pout and narrow his brows but after your constant cajoling and sweet-talking he'll agree to indulge you. And it's all fun and games until you realize why all those sailors in fiction are so terrified yet turned on at the mere sight of a merman/siren. He'll entice you so easily with his velvety voice 😵‍💫

Option 2: Assassin

Don't fall for his pretty face. Rafayel can be cunning, deceptive and deadly when he wants to be. (in the main story and also as Abysswalker). As such, putting on the attire of an assassin would come easy to him. His charm is as lethal as the numerous daggers he conceals within his clothes. He’ll strike you right in the heart. Can totally imagine him doing finger guns at you 😉

Option 3: Chick

Pouty babie in an adorable chick costume with a beret and paintbrush, like his sticker pack. Imagine him struggling with the bulky costume, trying to waddle towards you in annoyance, demanding you to immediately help him take off the costume. Despite it all, he'd let you hug him and take selfies. He'll hate every minute of it but still pose properly when you take pics 😆

these are just some silly thoughts..what are your costume ideas for each LI 🤔

» MASTERLIST «

[thatsthat24]

Sanderstober 2024

SANDERSTOBER IS HERE! Once again, my friends and I are creating art prompts for you all to try your hand at for every day of this month, if you'd like! Try one, try some, try all! If you miss a day but still want to do a prompt from a day you missed, please go ahead! This is all just for fun. If you'd like to share your creations, you can use #Sanderstober2024. I'd love to see! Hope you enjoy them! 🍁

October 1: Always gotta start out this day with the traditional prompt! take a character from media or OC and draw how they look on September 30th vs. how they look on October 1st!

October 2: Create a sheet ghost, but featuring the pattern of a sheet/blanket you own or maybe used to own when you were younger. - This idea came from my friend, Andrea!

October 3: A quick Google search of “keyblade designs” (the weapon from Kingdom Hearts) would show you how the weapon changes based off the property the character goes to! Design a keyblade based around any piece of media, as if the main character from Kingdom Hearts traveled there… - This idea came from my friend, Rene!

October 4: There’s a lot of fast food and cereal mascots out there… I think you know where I’m going with this. Take any of those mascots and turn them into a MONSTER or KILLER.

October 5: This one’s a play off a prompt from last year AND it’s a writing prompt! Take any famous character from a horror film, and create a nursery rhyme about them. You can make it completely innocent, or, like many nursery rhymes, remain dark but disguised in pretty language.

October 6: Take your favorite animal… and dress it as your dream profession. - This idea came from my friend, Talyn!

October 7: Take one of your favorite movies and reimagine if it had been marketed as a different genre (e.g. Hellraiser as a family comedy, Goodfellas as a romance, etc.) - This idea came from my friend, Joan!

October 8: Turning things into Pokemon tends to be a favorite prompt of mine, and this year, the category is… fast food! Take any fast food of your choice, create a Pokemon, and name it!

October 9: Take any foreign animation cartoon and draw them in the style of a western animation! - This idea from my friend, Dominic!

October 10: Definitely a sucker for fall fashion and aesthetic, so take any character or group of characters from one of your favorite pieces of content and give them a fall aesthetic makeover.

October 11: Crows collect shiny things… what things might the nest of a crow contain from one of your favorite fictional universes? - This idea came from my friend, Lev!

October 12: Take any color and ONLY use that color in order to depict a Halloween, horror movie, or fall scene.

October 13: A very expressionistic vibe for this prompt: draw the aura which you hope to be walking in during fall or Halloween. - This idea came from my friend, Valerie!

October 14: There’s LOTS of new words and sayings out there (skibidi, rizz, Ohio, ick, etc.). Google some, you’ll learn a couple new ones. I want you to create a Halloween monster/creature/cryptid based off one of these new words, as if they were the names of the creatures themself (Oh my gosh… it’s the legendary Los Angeles Ick…)

October 15: Sure, people are scared of Halloween monsters… but are there things that would be scary to those monsters? Get creative and depict some things/scenarios that would be terrifying to a typical Halloween creature! - This idea came from my friend, Jackie!

October 16: Those new horror-fied versions of fast food/cereal monsters from October 4 need weapons… take a meal or the cereal from the brand you got your mascot from, and create a weapon inspired by it!

October 17: There has been lots of theorizing in the fields of science on how the human body may evolve in order to either perform modern tasks better or survive… SO, imagine up a human evolution that has adapted to survive some environment (fire, spider bites, rejection), or one that has adapted to perform a certain task (tennis, gaming, folding clothes). - This idea comes from my friend, Joan!

October 18: So, Toy Story 5 has been announced… draw the next toy that’s gonna be introduced as a character in it.

October 19: Returning to an annual favorite of mine… take any character(s) from a piece of media and depict them in the style of a Tim Burton character.

October 20: As a play off of Dominic’s suggestion from an earlier day, take any western animation’s characters and depict them in the style of a foreign animation!

October 21: Taking inspiration from the movie, Hocus Pocus, take any character from a piece of media and depict them riding what *they* would probably bewitch into a broomstick if they had to in a pinch!

October 22: They’re giving your favorite background character a spin-off series. What does the poster for it look like? - This idea is from my friend, Dominic!

October 23: Ok… that monster/killer mascot you made on October 4th? The movie has to have a setting. Maybe an appropriate building? Maybe an entire town… Depict that setting…

October24: Take a character from your favorite movie/tv show and depict them as if they were a character in a fighting game like Smash Bros. or Street Fighter! What does their special/ultimate move look like? - This idea came from my friend, David!

October 25: Take any fun/special memory from your life and create a children’s book cover inspired by it. - This idea came from my friend, Stephanie!

October 26: Take your favorite classic Halloween monster and use them as inspiration for a new species of insect… - This idea came from my friend, Dahlia!

October 27: This feels like a classic for any time of year: take any favorite piece of media and cast the Sanders Sides in it.

October 28: [Any of your favorite pieces of media] … and Zombies

October 29: Think of a very important key object from one of your favorite movies or tv shows that the protagonist(s) finds. Now imagine they never stumbled upon it. What would it look like 100 years later? What else may have happened to it if the protagonist never found it? - This idea came from my friend, Chantz!

October 30: Now… we combine the ideas together to make the ultimate new Halloween villain! Take your creations from October 4th, 8th, 16th, and 23rd, and place them all together to create a scene of them terrorizing the main protagonists!

October 31: And, as a classic end-of-the-month tradition, today’s prompt is about celebrating the reason for the season, Halloween! Imagine if Halloween was like New Year’s Eve for Halloween creatures/characters. What would they look like, dressed all fancy for the occasion and celebrating?

Got the list fully completed! Looking forward to whatever you all create! 

[justasecretflower]

There's a she-wolf in the closet! / Homicipher men ft. A Kitsune! reader!

Now Playing: she wolf

0:01 ❍─────── 4:28 ↻ ⊲ Ⅱ ⊳ ↺ Volume: ▁▂▃▄▅▆▇ 100%

Synopsis- you are a kitsune that ended up in the homcipher world, how do the homcipher men react to you? (pre relationship + est relationship)

Incl- Mr. Crawling, Mr. Scarletta, Mr. Silver, Mr. Chopped, Mr. Hood, Mr. Gap.

🖤Mr. Crawling

🖤oh how fast he fell in love with you was absolutely insane.

🖤whenever he follows you around he mumbles “pretty, pretty”

🖤he’s attached at your hip, whenever you stop for just a second he immediately sits still and looks up at you with a huge grin while he tries to grab onto you gently. He likes holding you, is all.

🖤do kitsunes purr? Because if you did. The only thing he likes to do all day is just sit with you, pet you and relish in all your purrs. He loves them sm

🖤has Mrs. Bride make you pretty outfits that meet your general aesthetic.

🖤when I tell you he falls more in love with you every time he see you get aggressive oh my goodness…

🖤he likes giving you pats! “Mr. Crawling what are you doing” “pat pat pat”

🖤he likes to feel how soft your tail and ears are all the time.

🖤show him your magic! And your fox form! He is interested in all the stuff that you can do

🖤if you ever leave him alone for a long period of time, like in the ending when you go back home without mr. Crawling, he’ll sit down and cradle himself. Pretending like he’s holding you

🖤he likes you hair, especially if it’s an unusual color. He’s not used to seeing many colors where he lives, so the contrast makes him go wild and want to play with it all the time. If it’s not, he still likes how soft it is like your tail and ears.

❤️Mr. Scarletta

❤️you being so beautiful, so mystical and majestic makes him impossibly more overprotective

❤️he wants to keep you all to himself. It’s only him that can look at you, feel your soft tail and ears, brush your hair out gently, admire your pretty form and magic.

❤️he knows that you are restless though and don’t let him keep you away from everything like that, so he obeys, naturally.

❤️whenever you’re out though, he has eyes on you, if not he’s following you with his umbrella up over the two of you.

❤️he admires your fox form, likes to see you all cuddled up to him like in that form.

❤️he hates when the other monsters eyes linger for a long time on you, especially mr. Crawling or mr. Silver.

❤️he knows mr. Silver would love to tie you up and research all of your unusual quirks, meanwhile Mr. Crawling is just obsessed with how pretty you look and has an infectious smile on his face whenever you see him.

❤️he pouts like a baby in the corner whenever you let anyone else touch your kimono, your hair, ears, or tail.

❤️when he gets you all to himself, he likes seeing all your powers and what you can do, he also likes to hear you purr if you can, like mr. Crawling.

🩶Mr. Silver

🩶he’s so fascinated with you.

🩶he likes to conduct experiments on you, but has you set up a safe word for when it hurts you or when he goes to far.

🩶he likes to test your limits on your powers, and see how fast, or how powerful your fox form is.

🩶he also wants to see how you being a Kitsune might affect your offspring.

🩶of course, the question if he can even reproduce is something that plagued him since he read about human pregnancies, but after meeting you it seemed to make him think more what you guys would make if you had a child

🩶a kitsune ghost mix? Would they still be a kitsune or a half kitsune?

🩶he likes to see how petting your ears or tail makes you react.

🩶if he goes possibly to far on a strength durability test for your powers and accidentally tires you out he’ll stop experimenting for a couple of days, secretly, because he’s guilty, but he tells you it’s so he can get accurate data when you’re in your strongest state.

🩶makes you use your powers on him to see how strong you are

🩶he likes how strong you are.

🩶he doesn’t even like physical affection, but he loves touching your fur while in fox form, or cuddling with you and touching your ears.

🩶if you tell him to stop the experiments and just be your partner, he will, and he’ll feel a little guilty you thought he only saw you as a test subject.

🩶after that day, he’ll praise you a lot. “So pretty” “so strong.” “My fox.”

🧡Mr. Chopped

🧡oh wow he just loves you.

🧡first time he ever saw you he squealed and yelled “pretty! Pretty!”

🧡he begs all the time for you to put his face next to your tail or ears for him to nuzzle against it. He’s never felt anything so soft!

🧡”soft so soft so pretty!”

🧡he gets jealous if the other monsters look for too long. He’s super insecure he doesn’t have a body to hold you in front of them

🧡”look away. Not yours.”

🧡he has to get serious with mr. Silver when telling him not to experiment on you, he makes it clear he doesn’t want you to be a little test subject.

🧡he loves your company sm. He just likes sitting and admiring you with the softest eyes with stars in them.

🧡you can tell he’s in love just by the way his eyes light up

🧡he finds your powers a little scary, but attractive.

🧡while in your fox form your about his size. So you can look him in the eyes without picking him up, and he enjoys that.

🧡he likes if you have powers that just are cool little colourful lights, or you can make a harmless explosion of light. He yells “again! Again!”

🤎Mr. Hood

🤎when he first met you he immediately got intrigued but knew that the other monsters would also be, and tried shielding you from them.

🤎when he saw you use your powers against mr. Scarletta he literally flushed so hard. You being so powerful made him immediately crush on you.

🤎he could just sit and watch you forever. You can’t tell how soft he’s looking at you, but you can when he tilts his head a little and and uses a dark, void black smoky hand to direct your eyes to where his would be.

🤎he also has Mrs. Bride get you pretty kimonos and dresses, he enjoys seeing you do little fashion shows.

🤎he learns how to say “beautiful” in English and sometimes you catch him looking at you for a long time, just to hear a echoey voice say “beautiful..”

🤎he enjoys tying your kimonos

🤎sometimes he’ll pick up little gems or hair accessories that fell down from the mortal world to put in your hair.

🤎he doesn’t get jealous when other monsters look at you, he gets scared. He knows how truly powerful some of these monsters are and knows how fascinated mr. Silver is with you, and how obsessed mr. Scarletta is.

🤎he isn’t confrontational by any means, so he just reminds you he’s there for you while you handle it.

🤎because he knows with your strength you 100% can handle that on your own.

🤎if he heard you purr ever, he did it on accident. Like touching your ears while you were asleep in his arms to get a strand of hair off of your ear, and a tiny purr comes out.

🤎he was shocked for a bit, then hesitantly pulls his hand back and strokes your ears and hair.

🤍Mr. Gap (I dunno much about him but somebody told me I should add Mr. Gap)

🤍he’s obsessed with you, he asks to eat you all the time (lovingly)

🤍he calls you “little fox” you have no other name to him.

🤍he gets extremely jealous and tells the other monsters to get their eyes and hands away from his little fox.

🤍likes seeing you beat up monsters with your powers. Will laugh in the gaps while you beat up a monster.

🤍finds it extremely attractive.

🤍despite what other people might think, I believe he’s very intelligent and is aware of your fox form, your powers, and the folklore behind your type.

🤍in folklore, it states kitsunes are afraid of dogs, so sometimes he makes low growling noises in gaps to scare you 🙏💀

🤍when you kiss, he bites your lip so hard you bleed and then licks it, since he loves the taste of your powerful kitsune blood.

Homicipher reqs are open🤍

Tags

[acompleteunknown2024]

“Traditionally in the horror genre, I think that the monster, the dread, the danger, the horror is something external, right? It’s like we’re running from the monster. The monster has been unleashed, and it’s coming for us, and we need to get away,” Schoenbrun said. “Whereas in my films, if there is a horror element to it, it’s very internal and it’s very subliminal, and in ‘World’s Fair,’ it’s this force inside Casey that might not even be real. In ‘I Saw the TV Glow,’ it’s this thing that Owen is hiding from that’s essentially killing him slowly from the inside. And I think this feels like an accurate way to talk about my own experience of dysphoria, which is very ambient and very subliminal until you break and scream at the top of your lungs at a child’s birthday party in an arcade.” Which is exactly what happens in “I Saw the TV Glow,” and it was through making “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” that Schoenbrun began to understand their own trans identity more clearly. In that sense, the new film is their most autobiographical, as the dread-filled experience of gender dysphoria becomes the movie’s horror aesthetic.   “I think that we’re so used to expressions of transness in film that are fully externalized, right? It’s all about the external image. It’s all about looking in a mirror, and the mirror is cracked maybe, and you don’t feel like yourself, and you’ve always just wanted to be a beautiful woman, but you’re in a man’s body. This is just so far from my own pre-transition experience. I avoided mirrors, in fact, because I was hiding from myself, and the way that I hid from myself manifested in all of these unconscious ways and in all of these coping mechanisms that had so much more to do with this subtle, almost tonal sense that something was unreal or wrong or passing me by, this ghostly quality of life,” Schoenbrun said. The filmmaker continued, “So when I am making a movie about that, or in the future when I make a movie about healing from that, it only makes sense for it to be sort of imbued in the language of the film as a whole, tone, rhythm, the way time works in the movies, the aesthetics of liminality and of this sort of fuzziness of whatever it might be, static, analog, low-quality internet video. All of these feel to me like more truthful expressions of that feeling of unreality that we call dysphoria than a more direct and externalized expression of it.”

Jane Schoenbrun on How the Dread and Deterioration of ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’ Influenced ‘I Saw the TV Glow’

[hekateinhell]

Welcome, Armand lovers! I’m so excited it's finally time to share my little project with you! 🖤

From November 1 - December 5, I'll be hosting Good to Embrace, Good to Love, a fandom event celebrating Armand's relationships with his four greatest loves—Marius, Lestat, Louis, and Daniel—from the book series The Vampire Chronicles.

Each week will be dedicated to one of these ships, with a bonus week of prompts that can be used for some of the many others Armand has loved in his long immortal life i.e., Bianca, Nicolas, etc.

There will be two prompts per day: a quote from the books that represents an aesthetic of the ship + a word/sentence prompt. Do one, do both, combine them—it doesn't matter as long as you have fun!

AUs and genderswaps are more than welcome!

𝕲𝖚𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖘

Submissions can include fic, art, meta, headcanons, graphics, playlists, crafts, whatever!

Submissions must focus on a romantic and/or sensual element of the ship. It is ship fest, after all!

Ship combinations (threesomes or more) are also welcome—you decide which week you want to post! For example: an Armand/Lestat/Louis fic can be posted either during Week 2 (Lestat) or Week 3 (Louis).

Bonus week prompts can be used for whatever Armand ship your heart desires! And if you want to use them for Marius, Lestat, Louis, or Daniel, go for it!

Tag your submissions #ArmandShipFest and I’ll do my best to reblog! 🖤

AO3 collection here!

𝕻𝖗𝖔𝖒𝖕𝖙𝖘 𝖇𝖊𝖑𝖔𝖜 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖚𝖙!

Day 1: “A blending of sadness and simple grace” / Love Affair with Damnation

Day 2: “You took my blood and it made you my slave” / Greedy Creature

Day 3: “I would have given all the world to see him white again, my marble god, my graven Father in our private bed.” / Paternal

Day 4: “My frankly carnal embraces” / Fateful Moment

Day 5: “I want to be a fool for you.” / Bruise

Day 6: “Be my challenger, be my questioner, be my bold and ungrateful pupil.” / Rebirth

Day 7: FREE DAY

Day 1: “Cinderella revealed at the ball” / Succubus

Day 2: “You break my heart, you little fool. You always did.” / Heartbreaker

Day 3: “Stinging insults and worshipful analyses” / Yearning

Day 4: “You look good to me, you damnable little devil” / Fatal Attraction

Day 5: “I wanted to polish him with kisses, clean him up, make him even more radiant than he was.” / Dress Up

Day 6: “I hate you as much as I have ever loved you.” / Enemies to Lovers or Lovers to Enemies

Day 7: FREE DAY

Day 1: “The only promise of good in evil of which I could conceive.” / Enchanted

Day 2: “You would yield to me now” / The Alluring Embodiment of Misery

Day 3: “I want you more than anything in the world.” / Evanescent Flush

Day 4: “A stranger to himself and to me.” / Withering Rose

Day 5: “To seek for grace once more” / Pillars of the Household

Day 6: “Elegant phantoms in our lace and velvet” / Flame

Day 7: FREE DAY

Day 1: “I like kissing. And snuggling with dead things” / Cold To The Touch

Day 2: “Let me be a lover in the Savage Garden with you” / Exquisite Monsters

Day 3: “The freedom, the power, and the luxury” / Million Dollar Man

Day 4: Dark-Eyed Cupid / Erotic Anguish

Day 5: “Say the word my love, I'll do it. We'll be in hell together after all.” / Unholy Consequences

Day 6: “There was never any innocence for us, there was never any springtime.” / Hunting In The Rain

Day 7: FREE DAY

Day 1: “These violent delights have violent ends”* / Cage

Day 2: “You look like an angel and hold forth like a tavern knave” / The Devil's Road

Day 3: “Not made by human hands” / Lotus

Day 4: “Yet he seems the naughty boy who mocks all things” / Careless Words

Day 5: “In the very depths of Hell, do demons not love one another?” / Home

Day 6: “Vile precocious child” / Drunk

Day 7: FREE DAY

*This is the only quote not directly lifted from the books, it’s taken from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.

**a huge thank you to the lovely @apoptoses for the graphics, and to the Morzoi Girlies (gn) for assisting me with the prompts and always hyping me up! Love you lots. 🖤

[cinnamonest]

Something recently has me thinking about medium-fantasy settings (you know the type, blatantly dark-ages-euro-esque aesthetics, vague touches of fantasy and such), with of course the obligatory “village raided by foreign invaders” scenes practically inherent to the genre… how they always take trophies and spoils away, one way or another, and thinking about being one of said poor little war trophies…

You're just some little peasant wife in your tiny little village, that you've never even left in all your life. You were born there and you'll die there just like everyone else, you think, and any world beyond it might as well not exist.

You're only vaguely aware that there are other people in the world — every now and then, traders and travelers come through, sometimes people who look very different from you and wear very different clothes, even speak with a sort of different inflection to their voices. Sometimes you talk to them, listen to them talk about far-off places and people. Their tales and their goods and their very existence as outsiders is the only evidence of a world beyond the village you have.

One day, those traders and travelers start talking about some other group of far-away people. Merely invoking the name puts an unpleasant expression on their faces.

There are bad things that happen in the world. There are whole groups of people, populations beyond your ability to conceive, and sometimes the people of one population fight ones from another, over land or religion or greed or any number of things. This is called a war, and one of those, to your understanding, is taking place in the present, far away — or perhaps not so far after all, as anything beyond your range of sight might as well be another world — between people who are no more real to you than the figures in folk tales.

The other people, the not-your-people people, the bad guys in this particular war — they have to be bad, you think, they're not your people, and everyone else seems to think that that makes them bad, so they must be — are particularly strong. There's just too many of them, those travelers say, and they have better weapons and training and everything else, apparently. Moreover, they talk about them like they're some sort of monstrosities — some say they're so big and strong because they descended from gods or angels, others say their people are the product of humans breeding with monsters, and other such absurdities that you don't know any better than to believe must be true.

The more time goes on, the voices of townspeople and travelers alike begin to talk about the other people with an increasing tone of fear, more tense. The places you hear them talk of as having been attacked and destroyed are towns you’ve heard the names of spoken more frequently over the years, towns closer to your little home than the ones destroyed the month before.

They're going to take over the whole nation, people say — while you weren't aware your village even belonged to a “nation” to speak of — and a place like yours, well, they wouldn't bother subjugating the people for taxing or labor like they do big towns.

If they come here, they'll just take what they want and raze the rest to the ground…

The thought is scary, sure, but it doesn't really faze you. It feels like a fantasy, some story that you know will never actually happen. That's something that happens in other places, not here, not home, the roads and houses you know as if ingrained into your mind and heart. The idea of such a thing just has this inherent feeling of impossibility, the state of the place you know of as peaceful and quiet, immutably so.

But that day ends up coming sooner than later.

You're not actually there when it starts — having gone off to tend to something in the field, as has been your responsibility in your community each and every morning for as long as you can remember — only when you come stumbling back and see smoke in the near distance, do you drop your things and start running.

It's happened before, you think. A few years ago, someone's home caught fire and burned down. You helped put it out then, you can help now, too.

It's not until you come running right up to the little cluster of homes, bare feet pattering on the ground as you just start to think the fire is exceptionally big, that you turn your head and see bodies on the ground. See people running. Hear yelling.

Frozen stiff in panic, you can only stand still as you turn a corner and the picture comes together — there's people you don't recognize, standing over bodies and pools of blood. They look very different from you and any of your people, even down to the structure and shape of their faces. Identical clothes with crests you've never seen imprinted on them.

Everything is big. These people are bigger than yours, standing at least a few heads above the tallest people you've ever known. The horses are bigger than any you've ever seen. They hold big, shiny weapons splattered in blood, a far cry from the sharpened rocks you have for tools.

Most are too preoccupied with the mirth of the slaughter to even notice you. It's not until you see one — you feel as if your stomach inverts on itself as you see a man dragged across the ground and skewered, the weapon running straight through his body — that everything fully registers. You reach up and cover your mouth with your hands, trembling legs staggering backwards. Your eyes follow the trail, up the long weapon and the arm holding it until you can make out just the side of the face of the murderer, shadowed by the sheer brightness of such a massive fire, just in time to see him pull the sword out and plunge it back in a second time, hear the poor victim — you think you recognize his mutilated body, even in the shadow of the fire, such-and-such that lived a few houses away — gag and sputter and flail, again as the sword is pulled out and plunged in a third time, and he finally goes still.

The killer reaches up to wipe the blood off the side of his face with the back of his hand, but in doing so, turns his head just enough that you're in his peripheral vision — and then, his eyes widen and his whole head turns, eyes directly connected to yours. Only a few moments of stillness and pause pass, each of you staring at the other, before the instincts kick in. Yours — inherently aware of how much weaker you are — are, of course, not to stand your ground, but to run.

And you — poor dumb little thing, who has never known anything but the same routine and small little world every single day of your insignificant life, has never had to put any thought into much of anything, has never known what true fear and panic is before this very moment — have no better idea than to run right back to your home amidst the fires and chaos — thankfully the flames haven’t yet reached it — dive underneath your bed and cower. It occurs to you that you don’t know where your own husband is… but even if he were here, you don’t think he could offer you any protection from these monsters. The worst of possibilities is among the first to hit you, and you retch at the very thought, trying to perish the thought from your mind.

You have no other ideas — no other options, at this point — than to squeeze your eyes shut when footsteps hit the floor, boards creaking as they draw closer and closer, making a direct line for where you're very obviously curled up, heart beating out of your chest. You can only squeal and whimper when a hand grabs at your clothes and drags you out from under the bed, the other hand then grasping at your hair, roughly pulling you up to your feet.

You squeal and flail and kick. You keep your eyes closed, not able to bear even the thought of laying eyes on the long piece of metal that you're certain will run you through any second now.

But that doesn't happen. For a moment, he just holds you in place as you thrash and squirm. He says something — a voice so deep and rumbling that it makes your blood run cold — but it's not words, at least not to you, strings of sounds that have no meaning to you beyond the vague memory of once being told that other people in the world don't talk the same as you and your people.

You grunt and squeal when you're instead thrown up and over his shoulder, which harshly rams into your stomach, making you gag. Your eyes open, bewildered and afraid. You kick your feet and squirm with all your might, but a few harsh-sounding words and a smack to your thigh make you go stiff and still with fear.

It's like your weight is nothing, with how easily you're slung around and carried back out. As you hang over his back, coughing from the smoke, you're forced to see the little village street lined with unmoving bodies, some so familiar it hurts, a deep pain in your chest. Your eyes increasingly burn from the smoke, and even though you try to look for your own spouse and in-laws and neighbors, your vision blurs too much to tell.

You feel like you're going to fall, thus forced to cling onto your captor. You whimper as your fingers dig into his clothes, you hear other voices drawing closer as you make your way to the edge of the village — rapidly becoming nothing more than charred, smoldering wood and bodies and blood as the fire reaches its peak — where the others seem to be reconvening. The violence, you realize, has died down, as there is nothing left to kill, and all the things worth taking have been rounded up, and now they're going to leave. Leave the place that is, to you, the only place that truly exists, and go into the void of that which is unknown and unreal.

You say a few prayers in your mind to the guardian gods that were supposed to protect your people — even if they failed, it’s all you can think to do as you’re dragged onto some animal, pulled up and held pressed against his chest, and start moving, the tear-blurred sight of the mass of flames fully consuming the only world you've ever known, growing more and more distant with every second.

[flippinpancakes64]

Hi hiii !! I luv your work sm !! I was wondering if i could request something like the cullens with a very sweet/gentle look about them, (pastels, like coquette) but they love heavy metal, horror, they collect odd things like bones and such ! I love the way you write and all your work so far !! <3

The Cullens with a Reader who has an opposite aesthetic

Thank you so much for the kind words!

I was having so much trouble trying to come up with a title for this btw

And I definitely understand this one. My car is completely decorated with pink cutesy stuff and then I blast mcr so

Anyway thank you for requesting and I hope you enjoy!

Edward:

He got whiplash the very first time he saw you

He could hear the music playing through your headphones, but he did not think it was coming from you

He thought he must have been going crazy or something

But he loves it

Blah blah insert something very deep and philosophical about you two being very similar

He thinks of himself as two very different things

The one that people see, the beautiful man

And then the monster he is on the inside

So he feels like you two are one in the same

Alice:

She absolutely loves it

She loves anything to do with fashion in the first place

And she thinks it’s so fun that you’re such a polar opposite on the inside

It always amuses her whenever she asks you what you’re listening to and you give her an earbud

Only for it to be like death metal

She enables this btw

Anytime she sees something cutesy she buys it for you

And if she sees any bones she gives them to you too

“Hold on Jasper there’s a deer skull over there, I need to get it for my partner”

“…what”

Jasper:

He would love you the same if you wore a trash bag

He doesn’t particularly care

He’s not really too “hip” with subcultures to know that bright pink and screamo music don’t really go together

So he doesn’t really see anything odd with it

As for collecting weird stuff like bones and various horror paraphernalia, he’s a little confused

Like what do you mean you want his scraps after he’s done hunting?

But he’ll do it anyway

He always makes sure to clean off a piece of whatever he ate that day to bring it back to you

He just loves seeing you happy

Rosalie:

In a way, she’s the same as you

She presents herself as a stereotypically beautiful woman

But on the inside she loves rebuilding and fixing up cars

So that aspect she can understand at least

What she’s a little confused about I is your love for horror movies

I feel like she doesn’t get them

She just thinks they’re all funny

She’s tried to sit down and watch them with you before, but she just can’t get into them

“The color of the blood in this movies is so wrong”

“That’s not what zombies actually look like”

“These people are so stupid! Just leave the house and go to the police!”

And she’s a little grossed out by the bones thing

She might bring you back a bear tooth if you ask nicely, but don’t make it a habit

Emmett:

He’s so down

He loves it

Some guy tried to make fun of you once, asking if you were listening to like cocomelon or something at school and you just unplugged your headphones and cannibal corpse started blasting

He didn’t talk to you again after that

He thinks it’s hilarious

And I feel like he would like his partners to be a little freaky

Like hell yeah babe I’ll bring back a mountain lion femur

He secretly thinks you’re a witch or a sorcerer or smthn

He won’t ask though

That’s between you and your spell book

Esme:

She was so confused at first

She got to know you at first, hanging out with you a couple of times, and then randomly on like the fifth date you asked to aux

She was shocked to say the least

And don’t even get me started on when she first saw your bones and other weird stuff

She definitely rethought the relationship

But she loves you and who cares if you’re a little weird

She’s not gonna bring home anything for you tho sorry

If you want weird shit you’re gonna have to go get it yourself

I have a feeling she doesn’t really like horror movies either

She jumps too easily

So you guys are gonna have to agree to disagree

Carlisle:

He doesn’t really care too much

Not in the way that he doesn’t care, but in the way that you could literally wear anything and he would still love you

He is a little shocked by your music and movie tastes at first, but ultimately he doesn’t care

He’ll sit down and watch your movies with you as well

They’re not his favorite, but he can stomach them

He won’t talk bad about them at all

He’s very respectful

And if you ask him to, he’ll bring back all of the bones you could ask for

He’ll clean them up for you and everything

He’s just a spoiler at heart

Vampire! Bella:

She loves it

She thinks it’s so fun that you look so different from what you actually like

She was pretty shocked at first

Definitely did not expect it from you

But she’s pleasantly surprised

She enjoys horror movies and heavy music too, so you guys get along

She’s always down to let you aux or pick out the movie you guys watch

And she’s always ready to bring you home whatever you want

You want specifically a moose skull?

Well, she was going to go hunting for a bear, but she’ll run up to Canada for you

[constantcrying]

Adjust

cw: manipulation, impersonation, obsession, possessive behaviors, typical yandere fare

I love this post format so let’s give it a shot with Sasha the shape-shifter—

Yandere shape-shifter relaxes and drops the human act when it’s just the two of you in the room. He’ll bare teeth too sharp, too large to talk through, and he’ll speak anyway, using a voice that a human couldn’t possible have. He lets his limbs stretch and bend to whatever shape they feel like. He won’t bother with blinking. It’s all fine, in front of you. You care about him, no matter what he is or what he appears to be.

Yandere shape-shifter is always, always hungry. It burns way more calories than you can imagine, changing your size and your shape so regularly. But when he has a choice between a real dinner—a proper hunt—and a quiet evening with you, he always chooses you before he can even think. He’s never been so hungry, but when he’s with you, he doesn’t mind. Although, he is often daydreaming about what you taste like.

Yandere shape-shifter still does have to play human, sometimes. But his default human form seems subtly different since you mentioned what type of person you find attractive. He changed his hair? Well, he got bored of the same old style. Is his voice a different texture now, smoother or deeper or more gravelly like your favorite singer? You’re imagining things. Did he...get a little taller? Certainly not, he just stopped slouching. He’s simply a beautiful creature that you’re developing an appreciation for. But he’ll take your compliments, naturally. Hurry up and show some love for the aesthetic experience.

Yandere shape-shifter has a keen sense of smell and makes a point to cover you in his scent. Whether it’s snuggling you for hours or lending you his jackets, he just needs his claim to be there, even if he’s the only being that can notice it. If you’ve been out all day, you better hop in the shower and come cuddle right away so you can stop smelling wrong. Do you understand how troubling it is when one of your favorite things is just ever so slightly off?

Yandere shape-shifter is stronger than any person you know regardless of what he looks like. He makes himself useful to you, hauling in big grocery loads and moving heavy stuff for you. But his favorite use of his strength is a play fight. It’s hard for you to understand why. It takes him all of twenty seconds to get you pinned under him, squirming and gasping for breath, and you don’t get what’s so fun about a match he knows he’s going to win every time.

Yandere shape-shifter protects you. He navigates human interaction better than you ever have. He’s so good at swerving unwanted advances, and deflecting snide comments, you’ve never felt more at ease in awkward social situations than when he was there. And he’d never let anyone lay an unkind hand on you, either, though no one has gotten the chance to try. You just know that he wants the best for you, the same as you want for him.

Yandere shape-shifter thinks you’re bad at picking people. If you make a new friend, he’ll gladly point out to you how fake and suspicious they are. You can choose to put your faith in them, sure, but that hardly does anything. Suddenly your new friend starts avoiding you, telling you that you’re a huge asshole for all those awful things you said. Things you can’t remember, things so vile that they won’t repeat. They start telling other people that you’re a a horrible person even though you’ve only ever been kind to them. Don’t worry, though. Your shape-shifter is going to be there for you regardless. He knows the real you, the loving and sincere person that accepts people for who they really are. He’ll never abandon you over these trifling rumors. But you should stop worrying about these other people, these monsters in disguise.

Yandere shape-shifter comforts you when your only other friend, the one who stuck by your side no matter what people said about you, goes missing. He'll do everything that you need to feel safe and loved in this time: listening to you vent, visiting their parents with you, going with you to the police who are investigating this unusual case. He’ll make sure you keep eating, he knows how hard it is to look after yourself when you lose someone. No, he doesn’t need anything, thanks. He’s quite full already.

Yandere shape-shifter can perfectly imitate you.

Fuck.

Of course he can. He’s spent so much time obsessing over your smallest habits, the nuances of your body language and your smell. Do you even know the precise length of your lashes, or the exact degree your head turns when you look over your shoulder at someone else? No, but he does. And he knows the way you talk better than you do. Without even trying, he can conjure up your voice to say vile things to other people that you would never say. He’ll use your hands to do things that you wouldn’t dream of doing.

He didn’t mean for you to find out like this, or really, he didn’t mean for you to find out at all. It was so much nicer when you were clueless, and you clung to him with affection, unafraid of his powers. He’d never had to put any real effort into preventing your escape. He still won’t, given that you have no friends who would believe you, and you couldn’t outrun him with a two hour head-start, but damn. He’ll miss the softness, the innocence of the beginning. It’ll be best to take you somewhere that he doesn't even have to worry about anyone else anymore.

You will have to wonder. Is it your face that he wore when he got rid of your last real friend?

Well, do you really want to know the answer to that?

Yandere shape-shifter is happy with you. He doesn’t feel the need to hide it behind different faces or slippery words. He’s happy—and you should work on being happy too.

[lala-blahblah]

Character flaws that would have been more compelling for Will to have to overcome in TSATS instead of "uh oh my boyfriend is a little bit edgy and that came as an unexpected shock to me even though he wears black and has emo bangs":

Struggling with setting boundaries and being honest when things bother him. As a healer he always has to put other people first, it would be interesting to see him approaching a relationship the same way where he feels the instinct to put Nico's feelings and wellbeing above his own, following him into Tartarus even though it is extra hard for him as a child of Apollo to be down there. It feels so much more authentic for Will to keep quiet about his negative thoughts rather than to blurt out all these criticisms about the underworld. And then Nico could feel hurt that he's hiding something from him for the drama, and Will could grow by allowing himself to communicate better even if he has negative things he wants to talk about

Fear of abandonment but ground it more with his real experiences instead of him just randomly panicking about Nico leaving him behind. Michael and Lee both died and left him alone after he got close with them. His dad was generally distant his whole life, he finally got to spend time with him but only under dangerous circumstances and all too soon hes gone again. Will's mom was the only constant in his life but after monsters started attacking he had to live at camp away from her for most of the year. This results in generalized superstition and anxiety that every time he has a good thing the universe takes it away from him, maybe it makes it harder for him to allow himself to get attached in a deeper way. It would be interesting to see him being the one that was more upfront with his emotions and about liking Nico at the beginning, but as their relationship goes on he struggles with more serious things like saying I love you or imagining a future together because he feels like once he does it will be taken away.

Flip the TSATS struggle on it's head and have Will secretly be very into all the dark underworld stuff but feel like he has to repress that because it's weird and people judge him. Being a healer is already a little dark and intense, I feel like Will wouldn't be scared of the undead but somewhat fascinated. Like you're telling me he wouldn't love to examine a walking skeleton and see how the bones move and connect? Growing up as a son of Apollo everyone expected him to be sunshiney and positive and so he tried to hide his weirder interests but oh my GOD he has so many questions for Nico about underworld magic and it's so hard to play it off. You could still emphasize the yin and yang of Nico having lightness and Will having darkness but make it feel less judgemental to Nico this time

Basically I just take it as a personal offense that Will would ever be critical of Nico's sarcasm and grunge aesthetics. HE'S INTO IT!!! HE HAS A THING FOR EDGY MEN OK!!! THIS IS THE GUY WHO SAID HE WOULD GO ON A DATE WITH DARTH VADER just you TRY and tell me that prequels Anakin was not his bi awakening and the blueprint for all his future crushes.

[morallysuperiorlips]

How to Write Villains: 10 Traits to Give Your Villains That Are Guaranteed to Make Them More Interesting

They're a parent...but a GOOD parent: Gone are the days where the villain is a parent but they absolutely should not have procreated (or adopted) because wow, they clearly didn't read any parenting books. Give us a horrible, deplorable character but in another life, they were mother/father of the year.

They have a phobia that might be trivial in the face of their schemes: Your villain might be able to storm a highly secure facility and face off against their world's most armed forces and heroes without breaking a sweat, or tame the deadliest monsters known to all, but so help them if they see a roach in their lair or have to go get their blood drawn. Bonus points if the phobia totally incapacitates them.

Their middle name is "Overkill": It doesn't matter what they're doing, they always have to bump everything up a thousand notches. Their scheme involved burning down a building? Well, they decided to burn down the whole neighborhood instead just to ensure the job got done. Bonus points if they're nonchalant about it. Extra bonus points if it keeps happening without their intent.

They have an aesthetic, they're aware of that aesthetic, and they adhere to it religiously: Is your villain grunge? Or perhaps airing more on the side of cottagecore? Maybe they're giving E-girl? Whatever it is, they know exactly what their vibe is, they know how to achieve it, and fuck your hero in particular if they try to mess it up or say it looks tacky.

They'd be okay with being defeated as long as it's by one person/group in particular: Your villain might be the undefeated Big Bad McScarypants on top, but you know what? They would be content if somebody rolled up and actually had the skill and know-how to beat their ass fair and square.

They like learning about things that have nothing to do with/interrupt their schemes: Your villain could be some eons-old eldritch being that has come to Earth to cause the Armageddon, but they keep delaying their plans because they discovered Tumblr and have been doomscrolling for weeks on end and trying to learn what "blogging" is.

They didn't start out as the main villain, but eventually become worse than the main villain: This is majorly for my friends who have different acting antagonists in their stories. This villain wasn't initially the main threat, but after some solid scheming and sinning, they out-deprave the original villain and give "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't" a whole new meaning.

They scheme for gratification: Having a master plan go off and hoping for mass reactions from bystanders is to them as posting art on Instagram and hoping for a couple likes is to artists.

They constantly wonder if it's too late to go back: Their scheming is 50% building a master evil plan for world domination and 50% wondering if it's too late to just stop and live a normal life as a working class citizen.

They act a villain to protect their loved ones: Big Bad McScarypants is only Big Bad McScarypants because they're pushing away their most beloved companions. Bonus points if it's to protect them from another Big Bad.

[cy-cyborg]

It will never not be frustrating to me that amputees appear in fiction ALL. THE. TIME. and yet they're almost never acknowledged as such. The Cyberpunk genre is especially guilty of this: amputees and prosthetics becoming a normalised part of life are a defining part of the genre/aesthetic and yet no one even consults with any amputees about how we get represented there. Most writers in those genres don't even consider that giving your characters cybernetic arms and legs means they're an amputee.

CW: Ableism, dehumanisation

This makes it REALLY uncomfortable to engage with stories in the genre because another common aspect of cyberpunk is the idea of losing yourself and becoming something distinctly not-human anymore because you have too many cybernetic augmentations/implants. Shadowrun even has mechanics for this, which state if you get too many prosthetics, which is what cybernetics are 9 times out of 10, your character becomes a monster. These mechanics and discussions surrounding "how many robot bits make you not human anymore" are really, really uncomfortable when you remember this isn't something that's unique to a far-off future setting. Those people you're discussing the humanity of already exist. They're called amputees. If you reframe the question as "how many amputations can you have before you stop being a person" I hope you can see why an amputee like myself is not going to feel safe around you or in your fandoms.

And it's a shame, because I REALLY want to like Cyberpunk. I really, honestly do. I love the aesthetics, I love the idea of big corporations being the villains and the anti-capitalism at the heart of the genre, and I love the idea of prosthetics being not only destigmatised, but desirable. When written from a disability-inclusive lense, it honestly has the potential to be an incredibly uplifting and empowering genre. but as the genre stands right now, it's actively hostile to the very folks who are usually the stars of its stories: amputees, all because people just refuse to acknowledge us.

Cyberpunk isn't the only genre guilty of this, it's common all throughout sci-fi as a whole, but Cyberpunk is the only one where it starts becoming a serious issue due to its rampant dehumanisation of a real group of people. In other sci-fi settings, it's just kind of annoying and while it can be a form of erasure, it's not usually harmful, just...frustrating. Fantasy does it on occasion too, think pirates with a hook and a peg leg, but nowhere near as much.

If you, as an author or creator, use any of these words to describe a character or their tech in a sci-fi setting:

cybernetics/cybernetic enhancements

bionics

robot limbs

cyborgs

augmentations

You are probably writing an amputee. Please, at the very least, acknowledge it, and be mindful that those are real people who actually exist, not just a fantasy group you can speculate about.

edit:

I originally posted this article on my old Tumblr account and lot of people commented/reblogged to tell me that originally in cyberpunk, the "less human the more robot bits you have" only applied to people who opted for their limbs to be replaced by cybernetics, because it was seen as "renting out your body to corporations for money" but people who had to get cybernetics out of necessity weren't impacted. The thing is though, I really don't think that makes it better, for a few reasons. For one, where do you draw the line at "opting" to get a cybernetic prosthetic? This isn't a black and white thing, even in real life. Most amputations are done out of necessity, but there are situations where it's not the only option, just the best one. Talking from personal experience, I lost both my legs below the knee as a baby, that was a pretty clear cut case, I had a blood infection and gangrene and they had to act fast. But the infection caused lasting side effects and impacted my physical body's development and growth. By the time I got to my early 20's it was causing a lot of pain in my right leg, in my knee specifically, and when I got a bone infection in the end of that stump, I chose to have the whole thing amputated up to the knee. They only needed to take a few inches off the end of my stump, but I asked them to go higher, because of the ongoing issues in that knee, issues that would have been made worse by the shortening of the leg. I choose to remove the whole thing, knowing the joint was degrading and I probably would have lost it later in life anyway. Even if it was salvageable, it would mean much more surgery, and I've had enough of those. A boy I played wheelchair basketball with was born with a partially formed leg, it was half the size of his other leg and he wasn't able to use it al all, it was just dead weight, so he opted to get it amputated too for convenience and so he could use a prosthetic on that side. I worked with a girl who's hand didn't form properly in the womb, resulting in a normal palm, but tiny "finger nubs" (her words) with no bones inside. They weren't actively harming her usually, but she opted to get them and the top of her palm amputated after an incident at work where we were tying balloons and one of her nubs got stuck in the knot. She decided to get them amputated because it meant accidents like that would be less likely, and she could use a prosthetic more comfortably. All 3 of these are considered "optional" amputations, so would people like us be penalised in your setting? does it make sense that the technology in your setting can tell the difference, or that corporations would care about the how and why? Even stepping away from medical grey areas, if your character opts for a cybernetic arm because the corporations will financially reward her, and she's struggling to put food on the table without that help, is that really optional?

Don't get me wrong, I do think that idea could work but it would take a lot of work to do well, and most works I've seen don't do the work. Even if they did though, it doesn't change the fact that most modern uses of this trope don't mention that bit or actively ignore it. It doesn't matter in most cyberpunk works I've seen if the amputation was optional or out of necessity, they still are more prone to being seen as "less human" and in most of the sci-fi writing communities I've been part of, the authors are genuinely shocked when I ask them to remember "people with cybernetics are real people already, they're not some far-off-distant future fantasy group, they're just called amputees". Like it didn't even cross their minds. These are the people creating the works in this genre. Even if it wasn't the original intention of the genre, it's still an issue in the modern version of it. Edit 2: Elaborated a little more on why I don't think the "only people who choose it" argument works in the edit. Also, please stop telling me that old cyberpunk doesn't have this issue, I literally address that in the post lol.

[after-witch]

Horrorfest: It Knows Not How it Sounds [Yandere Vampire Chrollo x Reader]

Title: It Knows Not How it Sounds [Yandere Vampire Chrollo x Reader]

Synopsis: He's going to kill you--and this is how you react? Curious, curious, curious.

For Horrorfest request:

Vampire! Chrollo could be interesting? He fits the image of a vampire well, with his inclusion of religious imagery, goth aesthetic and his personal search for his self (his “soul“). Perhaps he becomes interested in one of his would-be meals, being attracted to their humanity and their perspective on his vampirism (maybe them seeing it as a curse, not a boon)

Word count: 1565

notes: yandere, vampire, some descriptions of blood, mild wounds, dying; Chrollo is a pretentious asshole even as a vampire

Humans are so very interesting. And so very predictable.

Chrollo Lucilfer knew the first truth at an early age. He has learned the second truth over the years, the decades, and then the centuries. 

For instance, humans always seek comfort. That is certain, whether they are rich or poor, old or young, beautiful or ugly. They want to be held and warm and fed; they want someone to comfort them when they cry; they want to be told that, in the end, things will be alright.

This is true even for the humans that he kills, for so often in their last moments, they cling to him, desperate, wanting him to be their savior even as he is the one draining their blood. 

Therefore, it does not surprise him too terribly when your shaking arm reaches up for his face; when your increasingly exhausted expression takes in the sight of him, eyes wide, looking for kinship or absolution or someone to tell you it will be just fine.

It takes his victims some time to really comprehend what is happening, after all.

It is usually at this point that (if they haven’t already--not everyone is so slow on the uptake) they realize what he is--vampire--and he goes back to lapping at his victim’s blood, enjoying the way their muddled dying thoughts are spiked with a renewed bright acidic terror. 

The taste is not his only reward. There is the entertainment, as well. The thoughts of the dying. 

The thoughts come to him like moving pictures, flashes; not only visuals but sometimes words. Monster. Him, covered in blood. I don’t want to die. Lovers, children, things left unsaid. Mother. This word, so common, most often paired with the foggy memory of a chubby hand held in a larger one.

Your eyes widen after a moment and ah, there it is. Like a clock. “Vampire,” you mouth, lips that were perhaps once rose-red now growing paler, the more he blood he takes from you. 

“Yes,” he breathes, and you make the softest of sounds when he nudges your head back with his hands, giving him access to the open, bruised weeping puncture wounds he’d created earlier. Your blood still flows freely enough, and he laps at the edges before he begins to suck from the wounds. 

He wonders how he must look from your eyes, though he may see it soon enough. His pale skin and dark hair. The fangs jutting from his mouth. The blood on his lips. Even his clothing, silken black with delicate lace. A storybook vampire, he supposes; all that’s missing is the smell of dirt and decay, though that is perhaps a stench better left to his more unhinged colleagues than his own delicate scent of roses and musk; purloined perfume bottles were easy to come by when you could simply kill the ones who set them on varnished bureaus. 

But what pulses through his mind is not pure abject horror at the sight of him or fleeting, terrified thoughts of a life that will be incomplete.

Instead, it’s something that startles him so fiercely that he yanks himself away from your neck:

Pity.

Pity, pity, pity. For him--for him! 

A warm almost sour sensation lingers behind on his teeth, and he licks it away. He has never, in his centuries of killing, been… pitied. 

Your head rolls a little to the side, eyelids drooping, but you gain enough awareness to realize that he’s no longer feeding on you. Your voice is a soft croak when you do speak, words spoken as if you don’t understand why you’re even permitted to say them at all. You should, after all, be dead. 

“Why did you stop?”

He considers you for a moment. He keeps a grip on your shoulders--you might just fall, if he lets go--and makes you face him. Finally, he mirrors your question. But only to satisfy his curiosity, or so he tells himself. 

“Why do you pity me?”

Your eyes widen again, but this time not in the realization of the monster before you. You likely don’t know how he felt your pity. He doesn’t care to explain it to you, either, and after a few moments you furrow your eyebrows.

If he weren’t feeding on you, it might be a cute expression. Perhaps it still is; even lambs to the slaughter can have their charms.

“You’re…” You swallow. “You’re a vampire,” you say. But that usual horror is replaced with something else, something Chrollo wants to stick his finger into and pull out so he can see it more fully. Pity, yes yes, but something more. What is it? And why do you feel it so strongly that he couldn’t stand the shock of it?

When he doesn’t respond, you continue. 

“You have to kill people to survive.”

He snorts. 

“That’s never given me pause before.”

And oh, the way you look at him is absolutely beautiful. Your eyes glisten with tears--not from the pain, surely, but for him?--and your lips, nearly colorless though they are, curl into a pretty pout. 

“But it should, and I’m so sorry it doesn’t.” 

You wince, the shock perhaps ebbing away, letting you feel the pain of your ripped flesh more fully than most of his victims have time to do. But you don’t even press your hands to the wound, and he likes you better for it.

But still. You pity him because he’s a killer? What a waste of the emotion. 

“I have lived for centuries,” he tells you, speaking as if to a child, learning lessons at a father’s knee. “I have seen things your mortal mind could not comprehend. I have seen kingdoms rise and fall, seen civilizations turn to dust.”

He can practically see the cogs in the clock of your mind turning. Perhaps you will be one of those who foolishly asks him for the gift. He has rarely given it, and he wouldn’t give it to you; but he wouldn’t tear you apart for the audacity as he has some others. Your death would be merciful, calm--you’ve earned that. 

But when you speak again, you don’t ask him to make you into a vampire.

“But you must be so lonely.” Your words are sudden, fast. Perhaps you don’t realize you’ve said them until it’s too late to wonder if you’re being too presumptuous, because you stumble over your next words. Or perhaps you’re just that emotional over the thought of him, and wouldn’t that be a delightful novelty?

“Everyone around you dies… your-your family. Friends.” You shake your head, blinking as a few tears finally do drop from your eyes. “You can’t live a normal life… you can’t go out in the sun.” You look up, as if you’re imagining the warm feel of it on your skin.

It’s a sensation he has long since forgotten, but to you it must be as normal as breathing. “I-I can’t imagine how sad that must be. To never be truly warm. To not see the flowers reaching up to the sky or see the grass in the morning, all green and dewy.”

Your arms, no longer trembling, wrap around your chest. 

“I just…” You don’t look at him when you say these last words, but you don’t really need to, do you? Not with the way your voice is choked with emotion, the way tears fall so prettily from your eyes. “I’m so sorry that this happened to you.” 

You are a wonder, truly. Bleeding from the neck, no doubt light headed from blood loss, in the face of a nocturnal creature who moments ago was draining the life from your body… and you apologize to him?

When you live for centuries, you often lose the ability to be surprised. But here is that sensation, now queer, once again. And all because you happened to take an unfortunate shortcut through the park on this night, making yourself easy prey for him to pull into a darkened alley and feast. 

Now, though, he finds his hunger satiated. Or at least satiated until he finds another victim. Someone less worthy to stay alive than yourself, of course. 

After some consideration, he leans backward, and releases his grip on you. His hands ache for the warmth of your skin underneath him, and not for the usual voracious reasons. 

Yet another curiosity to add to his growing list. 

You look at him like he’s lost his mind. Maybe he has. 

“Aren’t you going to kill me?”

Perhaps, if he weren’t who he was, he might feel it too--this feeling of pity. Because you have no idea what he intends to do, and what it will mean for him to keep you alive now. 

You have no sense of the impulsive need that has rooted itself in his brain, a need he hasn’t felt since he was a young fledgling of a vampire. He wants to know you; know what you think and why you think it.

What life has created you so earnestly that you can feel genuine sympathy for a creature like him? Have you known hardship, and it was an impulse to sympathize? Or has your life been so unmarred by difficulty that the pty came easily to you, pure, sweet thing? 

The most important question of all, he thinks, as he pulls you closer to him and shushes the soft sounds you make--

Will you continue to pity him once he has taken you for his own? 

[socpens]

Please never play Garten of Banban again

i dont know if i will. i love looking at popular things, especially if they're related to horror, because i'm really curious about what it is that makes things accessible on a wider scale. after playing 4 garten of banbans i can say its not any deeper than bright and simplistic monsters appearing in youtube content kids & teens watch. if you look at feenaf, or baldi, there's more there than just their aesthetic, both in terms of gameplay/design and the reasons they exist in the first place.

i try hard to give games i stream the benefit of the doubt and not bad mouth them too much. i dont care about bad mouthing things, i think a lot of things suck and will voice that whenever i want, but doing it for hours in front of 1000+ people can easily snowball into a really putrid energy. so its partially because of that. but also because i know making anything is hard. so on stream i probably appear very charitable when playing these kinds of games but ill always give my honest opinion at the end.

and with garten of banban it was that with each iteration it becomes more and more clear that each game exists only to lead into the existence of another. in a way that, with each iteration, becomes more and more disengaging because of how obvious it is. im not gonna shit on people getting that bag, ride the wave if it comes you gotta pay the bills (also who tf is buying these games?? it aint kids, my laptop could barely run the game and they're just gonna watch markiplier play it), but after the 4th game ending exactly where i thought it would and greeting me with a screen telling me to buy not the 5th but the 6th garten of banban was just whatever straw i needed to just not even be curious anymore.

like in a way the games broke my curiosity, and ive always prided myself on going from being very cynical and negative towards anything popular in my early 20s to having some kind of curious optimism as i've gotten older. so for it to break that is honestly super sad but also a wild feat. the progression of the garten of banban games has made me more cynical about art as consumer product than any amount of call of duty games i think because of the audience, the scale & the rapidity of it all

anyway we'll see when 5 rolls around if apillabode meets choo choo charles maybe ill play it.

[karniss-bg3]

The Tragedy of Faith

So between tumblr and twitter I've read various takes on Kar'niss and what draws people to him. For some it's the monster fucking appeal, for others it's the desire to fix a clearly broken individual. There are in-betweens and of course this is subjective and depends on the person. Act 2 spoilers ahead. Where my personal interest comes from is how good Larian communicated the tragedy of faith and what a cult can do to a person. Kar'niss is a creature that has been broken by not one God, but two. Lolth broke him physically, the Absolute broke him mentally. His entire identity has been lost to a deity to the point he raises her in his speech. Referring to her as "Majesty" and "Queen", two terms you don't really hear anyone else address her as, he has elevated her to his final savior and leader. He also often refers to himself as "we" and "us", cementing him as part of the hive mind rather than holding any individuality of his own. When he does refer to himself as "I", it's mostly to show further loyalty to the Absolute, to maintain a position of importance in his fractured mind. Cults are notorious for targeting the most vulnerable in society as they are the easiest to mold and manipulate to their doctrine. The fact that goblins are one of the main races that fall to the Absolute's influence is telling in that regard, as they are often dismissed by the other races. Kar'niss was ripe for the picking, an easy target to lure into her arms. No doubt he was found shortly after Lolth twisted him into a drider and banished him, he didn't stand a chance.

Not even taking those elements into account, Kar'niss came from a society that is infamous for cruelty and violence, especially toward males of their species. Drow greatest hits include, but are not limited to: -Killing their young if they are not aesthetically pleasing enough. In other words, ugly. -Sacrificing every third born son to Lolth.

-If a male finds the favor of two competing females, it often doesn't end well for the male. The rival woman will kill the male and chuck his dead body into his opponents bedchambers, just for the sake of being petty.

-Love and emotions of any sort are in short supply, if not outright unseen as a general rule. The nature of drow to backstab and seek to rise in the ranks makes it near impossible to be anything other than fierce and domineering.

With these things in mind, it's easy to assume that Kar'niss had a turbulent upbringing and likely suffered untold abuse from many around him. It's not to say that good or reasonable drow don't exist, it's just not commonplace in a Lolthite society. Unfortunately, the game doesn't give us a great deal to go on as far as his past. What little he reveals only happens after he's dead, and even then its really a cliffs notes version. What we do know is that his devotion is intense and unwavering. He's willing to die for the Absolute because in his mind the Absolute are the only ones who care about him. We even see fellow followers talk down to him, dismiss him, and verbally eye-roll the guy. To them, his fanaticism is over the top and they follow the same God he does.

All told, this leads me to the conclusion that Kar'niss has never, or rarely, known true compassion in his entire life. He's been used as a puppet for one deity or another, and likely mocked or cast aside even when he did everything right. It doesn't surprise me that there are folks who desire a romance option, or barring that a side venture to break him free of the Absolute's hold. We don't know if Kar'niss did terrible things in his past, or where his moral compass sits as his entire personality revolves around God. But I'd love to know, and I crave more background on him in one form or another.

I've spent too much time thinking about different paths that could happen in-game. I also understand it's incredibly unlikely he'll ever become a companion. The sheer amount of time and resources needed to give a character a satisfying arc is likely more than Larian can do with other constraints, but maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised. So Kar'niss lovers, platonic, romantic, or everything in-between...I gotchu fam. We stan the spooder bby. Someone get that man a blanket and a nice mug of hot cocoa. And a cult de-programming kit, one of those would be good.