#living dead man

[crypticpawpoems]

I am a Living Dead Man

It is base and fact:

Humanity fears that which it does not understand

Chaos for the fly, as the saying goes

So why is it I cannot claim my recognition?

The birds twitter and caw in the rafters

But they never land to perch

When the Brink came to visit me

It made all the birdies and purity go away

And I delighted in the state of mind

Long gone, streaming blood, frightful

In which I was rightfully given

I am more than I was, make no mistake

I yearn to be understood

But everything is all normal with the spider

My venom hurts those who would

Penetrate me

Love me with a normal love

Their organs dissolve too quickly

For me to feed

Claws rake my brains when I think

The weight of the air

Is torture

It’s because I think of the moment where

Innocence dies

I play mine on a constant loop, over and over

Time to rewind

I see balloons, lights flashing marquee, a ferris wheel

I see guns, dying people bleeding, gas explosions

It’s all the same to me

None of them can fathom it

They think I am fake

They lull themselves into a false way of observing

And that weakness

And the weakness of altruism

Will be their undoing

I speak not for the commonfolk

I speak not for the wealthy

Instead, I speak for the new elite, the fresh aristocracy

We of unkind heads do trod these dead

And we know them best

Their boils are our eyes

Their gashes, our arms

Their pus, our blood

Their rot, our hearts

The dead are not those in the grave

We are the dead

We elite soldiers of madness do hold

Power over life

Those poor, sane fools fear us for what we have

No control over

Our birthright

Show me a living dead man, and I will

Show you millions

They can never take away that which is not

Rightfully theirs, my mafia

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[malacandrax]

I've been collecting pottery shards from the fields and woodland since I moved to the countryside a few years ago, I have so many now that I think I'll relocate them to containers, but it's nice to get a proper photo first.

[trauma-bot]

patron saint of never growing old

[wilkoakdraws]

Drawing the Mechanisms fanart in 2023? Surely not me 'nyways here's jonny d'ville, your humble capitain FIRST MATE

[goryhorroor]

“60s horror movies reflect an era of rapid change and uncertainty, and a yawning generation gap. the social stability of the post-war years crumbled as attitudes to everything from hemlines to homosexuality underwent a seismic shift. horror movies, especially those made for low budgets outside the mainstream studio system, offered ways to process and interpret the rapid pace of change. they often served as cautionary tales about the dangers of abandoning traditional values.”

[viktorpartner]

Haven't been able to think about anything other than the victorian/edwardian/WW1 twink and his 80's punk almost-boyfriend for a week, send help

[yuyonyu]

Gogol’s unrequited love

[nerd4music]

TWD: THE ONES WHO LIVE | S1E6: The Last Time THE WALKING DEAD | S7E12: Say Yes (requested)

[riickgrimes]

Rick + giving Michonne gifts What are you up to, Grimes? I'm just working with what I got.

bonus:

[clonerightsagenda]

"what if you had a mutual aid network that occasionally told interdimensional monsters to fuck off": Discworld witches as a concept

[azullumi]

aventurine my light my savior my spring the reason to my living the all to my nothing

[nopeleavemealoone]

Shoutout to chuuya for the time he decided to enable corruption, which literally destroys his organs, and proceed to bitch slap a dragon with a building just so he could go and punch his boyfriend. The queers have outdone themselves.

[starry-bi-sky]

mmmmmm read a disciple shen yuan/shizun luo binghe fanfic about two days ago where the first chapter was the Immortal Conference arc, and SQQ was the one who had to be pushed into the abyss (he was still the villain) except Luo Binghe was refusing and was like, lowkey losing his mind about SQQ being so close to the edge. SQQ ended up having to be the one to fall in himself because of the system's punishment system. The rest of the fic is leading up to that moment. But like, MMM i've been obsessively thinking about that first chapter for DAYS ever since.

now i've been in svsss for a grand total of *checks watch* a week. but god obsessed with that. I want to write/read a fic where disciple SQQ goes a little nuts down there. Like keep all of the things that make SQQ, SQQ, but just. Throw in a little bit more trauma in there. A little bit of a mental break. Let him go a little nuts as a treat. Just a tad unhinged. I wanna see him go, just a little, "god fuck it, i've tried so hard to change this shitty story's outcome and it feels like everything i've done has been for nothing. I'm going to die in this world no matter what I do, I've been doomed from the start, so might as well die the way I want to." and he just, breaks a little! Under all the stress.

He still retains the traits that makes shen yuan, shen yuan, like his overwhelming kindness. But he's just! yk. A little less patient. Paranoid. Jumpy. Colder. A little more aloof and closed off. A little more Shen Jiu. He's no asshole child abuser, but he was a Number One Hater in his past life and he's leaning into that old habit a little more now.

(On a totally coincidental not-at-all related note, there's not enough SJ-and-SY-are-the-same-people fics out there that i've found. This is totally unrelated...)

The Endless Abyss turns the mind into an over-sharpened blade, and SQQ is both fascinated and perhaps a little excited to explore a place that doesn't have a lot of info on it in the mortal realm, but still terrified out of his mind. And he's no Luo Binghe, he doesn't have the sheer brute strength and power to just bulldoze his way through, so he has to be a lot more sneaky and cunning if he wants to survive.

The fic itself role-swapped LBH and SQQ so that SQQ was the half-demon (which lowkey fucks) and LBH the human, but I'm equally-if-not-more obsessed with the idea that LBH remains the half-heavenly demon and SQQ the human. If only because I keep thinking about SQQ befriending some demons (particularly and specifically a group of succubi) and they grow very attached to this Human Cultivator so through magic plot stuff they create some kind of seal/illusion/talisman that makes SQQ appear as a demon because a human cultivator in the endless abyss may as well be the equivalent of putting a giant neon target on your back.

And iirc Shen Jiu was taught demonic cultivation by that one guy(?? i've only been here a week so im not caught up in ALL of the lore yet) so that could totally happen here.

(On the other end of the realms, poor Shizun Luo Binghe is just. losing his fucking mind over losing his most precious and beloved disciple. About .5 seconds from burning down the peaks himself. somebody sedate him.)

The Endless Abyss sucks and SQQ is having a really terrible time and can feel himself going lowkey mad, but also holy shit look at all this WORLD-BUILDING. look at all this flora and fauna, and oh if he had the equipment for it he'd be writing all of this down. ALL OF IT. He was kinda-sorta-already planning on never leaving the Abyss as some sort of fucked up self-exile and self-preservation thing, but now he might? actually just?? never leave if he can help it, like he lowkey likes it down here.

anyways the next time anyone ever sees SQQ again he's got hair so long its almost touching the ground and he's either in rags and half-feral or he's been completely dolled up by his adoptive succubi sisters and still about three seconds from biting anyone who tries to touch him. (he's also lowkey trying to book it back down to the abyss even if he has desperately missed all of his friends and shizun)

[wordsinhaled]

it was really only a matter of time until edwardian payneland happened and what if i channeled maurice about it. just a little

-

Charles is the son of the groundskeeper at St. Hilarion's School for Boys while Edwin is a pupil there. And he can't help but notice Edwin—how he’s nearly always alone, or else being harangued by the cruel older boys who call themselves his peers.

Charles privately thinks they hardly seem equal to him in poise or grace or manner. They are boisterous, brash, crass, violent, all overlaid with a veneer of false propriety, but Charles can see the cracks in it. He knows that sort by how they are inside, and they cannot be like Edwin at all. No, Edwin Paine's got a sad, drawn sort of look about him that Charles can't help recognizing. This lonely boy who feels somehow kindred in a way he can't put a finger on, but is pulled to him all the same, though by rights he'd do better to keep his distance.

Edwin often sits by the lake by himself, to read, or to do his assignments in the shade of the trees. Picturesque as a painting, he is. One day Charles dares to approach him, though he knows the risk in it—prepared to be rebuffed, rebuked for his untoward attention to someone he is meant to ignore; but the boy does not turn him away.

And so they become friends. Tentative, and then less and less so.

Together they explore the school's sprawling grounds, all of whose surprising hiding-places Charles Rowland knows by heart, having wandered them himself for years and made them his own refuge. The woods become theirs; the shore by the lake theirs; the shade of the trees theirs. The attic, where no one comes to look for them in the dead of night, also theirs.

And then one day Charles notices a group of boys surrounding Edwin. The usual cadre, and they're posturing, their voices loud in the autumn air. They’ve ripped Edwin's penny magazine from his grip and are tearing pages out of it, scattering them to be plucked up by the wind. Charles can do nothing else but step in. He shouts at them to back off, puts himself between them and Edwin, and gets himself thrashed for his trouble—but they, at least, finally leave Edwin alone.

Edwin, for his part, cannot believe Charles would be so reckless for his sake. Charles has not yet mentioned to him that he is used to this sort of treatment, and sees worse at home. They sit together in the boathouse by the lake, cross-legged, close enough for Edwin to dab carefully at Charles’ split lip and bleeding knuckles.

“You should not have done that for me,” he chides, though it carries no heat. “What will happen now?” He thinks word is sure to get back to the school, and there will be a scandal. Those boys, who so vocally despise Edwin, will hardly be quiet in their outrage, their humiliation. Charles’ father might be relieved of his post, and then Charles’ family will have to leave St. Hilarion’s. That is how these things go.

And what was it all for? For Edwin? How could it have been worth it?

“Doesn’t matter, does it?" Charles is saying, when Edwin surfaces from his troubled thoughts. "Couldn’t let them treat you like that. They had you five to one. And that, just ‘cause you’re different. I know how it is.” Charles’ eyelashes are very long, and the light turns his eyes a warm, deep amber as he talks fiercely, insistently, in defense of Edwin.

It’s terribly forward, Edwin thinks. And, despite every misgiving, he welcomes it. No one has ever fought for Edwin before. No one has ever spoken about him with such conviction.

Then Charles seems to lapse into pensiveness. “You didn’t have to…” he says softly. "All this." He gestures, with the free hand Edwin isn’t busy wrapping up, at the little bottle of antiseptic, the scissors, the roll of bandages and the cloths, all spread out on the floorboards between them.

“Of course I did,” Edwin says.

Really, he had not given it much consideration. He had had only the presence of mind to memorize the sight of Charles kneeling in the dew-damp grass, angry gaze still spitting fire at the backs of Edwin’s retreating bullies. He’d had blood in his bared teeth, and the briefest flash of desire had seared through Edwin—to kiss him. Merely in thanks, perhaps, but still, to kiss him.

He would know the warmth of Charles’ mouth. Fleeting, forbidden, it would sear itself into his mind for ever.

Of course, he had done no such thing; for he could not. Instead, he’d done the only thing he could do—bent low towards Charles, and squeezed his shoulder once, as if to say, Wait here for me. I will come back to you.

And as he'd turned on his heel and gone off in the direction of the infirmary, leaving Charles there with dusk encroaching, Edwin had hoped Charles understood his gesture for the indelible promise it was.

[youledmehere]

rick to michonne in season 7: “you can lose me, i can lose you.”

rick to michonne after almost dying several times and being separated for years from her: “but then i started dreaming of you. and there you were. you and i fell in love in different ways, and it kept me going. and then you were gone too. i couldn’t see your face anymore, just like i couldn’t see carl’s. i can’t live without you. without you, i die. and i figured out how to do that. i know how to be dead and live now. you can’t just come back here and make me come alive again if-i don’t know if i won’t lose you again. what if i lose you and i can’t figure out how to die all over again? i can’t. i need to get ahead of it, michonne. i can’t. i can’t. when i- when i saw you i got so scared and i…i needed to get ahead of it. i had to, at least if i think you will live on longer than me without knowing if you do, i can just believe that it’s true. knowing. seeing that loss? i can’t. i won’t survive that, michonne. i just won’t.”

[s0fter-sin]

something happening on a mission, something personal that has soap spiralling; panic and rage making him reckless, thoughtless, and ghost has to draw the line

“you’re compromised johnny; you know what that means?”

“you’re not pulling me out,” soap immediately snarls. he turns on him and ghost barely recognises him; venomous fear turning his eyes to unyielding ice. "you're not sidelining me; i need to be in this-!"

but ghost has never been afraid of venom; spat or dripped straight from bared fangs.

he snakes out a hand grip the back of his neck, jerking him in a rough shake. "if you can't think, you can't be a soldier," he growls and he flinches like he's been struck.

his lips quiver as they twist in a sneer and he wrenches, trying to free himself of his hold.

ghost doesn't let him.

"it means you give your body to me because your head ain't fucking attached to it anymore."

soap stills, body trembling beneath his hand as he sucks in shaking breaths.

he tightens his grip, pulling him closer and digs his forehead hard into his. “it means you give yourself to me so i can have the weapon that you are and use you the way you're meant to be used."

the ice in soap's eyes fractures.

ghost’s voice drops to a whisper, spoken only to johnny, not this facade of vengeance and pain, and wills it to reach him through the glaciers.

“so i can keep you safe ‘til it’s done and i can bring you back.”