#luring him in like that

[delusionalbitchinthehouse]

Hurt/kinda comfort with Alpha and Pebble hehehehe ! Alpha gets seriously injured, Pebble is here for him.

FAIR WARNING there is lots of blood and fairly detailed injuries, so if this makes you uncomfortable please don't read.

Pebble isn't that prone to panic, but right now, he is very much on the brink of the biggest stress-induced crisis of his entire life.

When Ivy came to him, breathless, knees specked with dirt and flecks of blood, Pebble braced for the worst, and still, he wasn't ready for the sight waiting for him.

Ivy dragged him to the edge of the woods and there, awkwardly propped in a sitting position against a tree, surrounded by a pool of his own blood, was Alpha.

Now Pebble is kneeling next to the fire ghoul, and he can't even breath because the smell of Alpha's blood makes him want to retch - it's wrong, wrong, wrong.

Pebble himself wandering too far in the woods and having a bad encounter with whatever lurks in there wouldn't be so surprising ; it happened before. Alpha is always the one to grumpily tend to his wounds because the feeling of quintessence stitching the earth ghoul's flesh back together makes his skin crawl.

Alpha, with his warm, steady hands, who's a much better nurse than most would expect, despite his scowls and furious rant as he fixes Pebble.

Their roles being so suddenly, so violently inversed, is a disarming, horrific thing for Pebble. He has to do something. He has to call Omega-

With a gasp, Alpha scrambles blindly to grab Pebble's wrist. His eyes aren't even open, his blood-splattered chest heaving with great difficulties.

"Don't- not- Omega. Not Omega."

"They had a fight," Ivy explains, twisting his hands together in distress. Pebble takes a steadying breath in. Act. He has to act, because that stubborn bastard of a fire ghoul could very well, even in the state he's in, fight them if they bypassed his demand, and endanger himself even more.

"Ivy. Go get a first aid kit, anything that could help with the pain without killing him, bandages and things to clean him. I'll handle this."

Ivy is off in a second. Carefully, Pebble leans forward and tries to take stock of Alpha's injuries without jostling him, despite the copious amount of blood.

There seems to be six wounds on his chest, not that big but definitely deep, dangerously so if the rivulets of dark crimson spurting from them with each of Alpha's pained breaths are anything to go by.

The fire ghoul's shirt is in tatters, his jeans not much better, his skin scratched like he ran blindly through tornbushes and low branches - which he probably did. Alpha's hair is a mess, sticking to his skin, tangled, full of leaves, sticks, dust.

There's so much blood. The earth is drinking it in, darkening by the second under Alpha.

The sight is making Pebble so anxious he could throw up, so he takes his own shirt off, starts using it to clean up what he can, carefully avoiding the actual wounds as not to worsen the risk of infection.

After a few sweep of this makeshift rag, Alpha twitches and cracks an eye open, the dulled glint of his yellow irises dancing under thick lashes.

"Pebble ?"

It's more of an uncertain rasp than anything, but it's further proof of life, so the earth ghoul will be forgiven for latching onto it.

"You better not fucking die Al, you hear me ? I swear to Satan if you die I'm hunting you down in the pit and killing you again."

"Pebble," Alpha gasps again, but this time it's filled with a relief that takes Pebble completely aback, so much he doesn't realizes Alpha moved until he feels the fire ghoul's hand, sticky with blood, settling heavily, clumsily at the back of his neck.

It nearly sends him sprawling on top of the fire ghoul -not only the weight of this hand, or the fine tremor in it, but the obvious way Alpha is clinging to him- , which would have been very unfortunate, but luckily Pebble manages to steady himself before that can happen.

"Yes, yes, that's me you moron," the earth ghoul hisses, anger barely covering the way his stomach keeps sinking deeper and deeper, "I'm here, watching you bleed out with no idea what to do because your stubborn ass doesn't want to-"

"I thought it was you," Alpha interrupts in a choppy exhale, sweat beading at his hairline, "for a moment, it sounded like you."

Pebble's blood runs cold, something uneasy swirling in his chest.

"What ? What are you talking about ?"

Alpha turns his head a little bit, just enough to look at him.

"It sounded like you. Awful sounds. I thought you were- i went to find you but it- wasn't- wasn't you. The second it saw me it..."

The fire ghoul manages to vaguely gesture toward his chest.

"I should've...known. Couldn't have been you- couldn't have. Wasn't...swearing enough."

Pebble might just strangle him for that poor attempt at a joke. Instead, he monitors Alpha's breathing in silence, with one of the fire ghoul's hand on the nape of his neck and the other still loosely wrapped around Pebble's wrist.

That's how Ivy, joined in the meantime by Earth and Zephyr, finds them. The next hour or so is a blurr, as many hands work together to tend to Alpha's wound as best as they can, under Zephyr's welcome directions. The worst part, in Pebble's opinion, might be how small and pale Alpha looks in Earth's arms, getting carried toward the infirmary. He will need quintessence, the ghouls did what they can but there is no recovering from such violent injuries without a little infernal magic's help.

For days, Pebble will sit next to Alpha's bed, wordlessly sharing cups of coffee with an equally worried Omega. He will glance at the window, and the sight of the woods he once considered his home will make him shiver and turn away.

Later, with Alpha back on his feet, treating all this like any other misadventure while refusing to acknowledge what he said to Pebble, the earth ghouls will gather.

They have a forest to purge.

[lazylittledragon]

ok look i love astarion with my whole soul and this might be an unpopular opinion but post-brain, i don’t think he’s fashionable. i think he knows how to dress well and likes wearing nice clothes but i really feel like 90% of the time when he’s at home he would just want to be comfortable. i think this man wears dad slippers and owns an ungodly amount of sweaters and comfy loungewear. furthermore i would like to put forward that the person who DOES put together a fucking Look every single day of his life is wyll fucking ravengard. in this essay i will

[jaybirbie]

As much as I love Danny and the BatFam,

I need more Posion Ivy, and Harley Quinn accidentally became moms too this werid maybe-human?Kid,that they found rummaging in their bins one night or sm.

(Writing that last part put the image of Harley taking the trash out one night and Danny's just perched on the dumpster, his eyes glowing, looking like a startled opossum,he lightly hisses, grabs his half eaten grill cheese and disappears into the shadows)

Obviously, after that, Harley tries to lure him in like he's some street cat.

[mochasucculent]

I'm rewatching Arcane, and after my third time seeing season 1 I had a hot new reading on Viktor's scenes in episodes 6, 7, and 8.

Like a lot of other people, I felt it was weird and unsavory that Viktor - very close to death with a disease that affects his lungs - suddenly starts experimenting on his disabled leg. Those two things have nothing in common, save for the fact that the cause of both might have been the toxic fumes of the undercity, which could have resulted in Viktor being born disabled if his parents were also subject to those conditions.

So why does Viktor try to "fix" his leg when his main goal is to utilize the Hexcore to prolong and improve living conditions before he's gone?

Viktor in acts 2 and 3 is motivated to save himself long enough to make a difference in the world. Even though Hextech is revolutionary for Piltover, it hasn't reached who Viktor wanted to help this whole time, the disenfranchised in the undercity. In his mind, he hasn't done enough to change the world for the better, and he will be gone before he has the chance to do so.

After realizing the Hexcore responded to organic matter when it absorbed Viktor's blood, he experiments with plants, only to find that they wither and die soon after the Hexcore makes them grow.

This causes him to visit Singed once again for anything that could help him figure out how to use the Hexcore for magic that could save lives, one last shot at accomplishing his dreams.

Viktor parted ways with with him as a child upon seeing that Singed was willing to hurt Rio, his salamander test subject, in order to prolong her life. Viktor didn't understand that cost before, but he does now, being in the same position as Singed and Rio simultaneously, both the scientist trying to make a breakthrough and the subject he needs to save in order to do so.

Like Rio, Viktor is not his own end goal to his scientific pursuits. Singed is trying to save his daughter, Viktor is trying to help his people. He's his own means to an end, and is now willing to pay the cost of getting there.

Singed gives Viktor a variant of Shimmer to experiment with, the idea being that it will stabilize an organism while the Hexcore's magic affects it, hopefully allowing it to survive through the aggressive and sudden healing process.

Viktor injects the Shimmer into his leg, as well as carving runes into both his brace and thigh to channel the magic towards there before he offers the Hexcore his blood. It does Something to his leg which we don't see till the following episode.

The new reading I have of this scene is that the reason Viktor chose his leg specifically is not because he was trying to "fix" it, but because:

-He's not willing to put others' lives at risk and knows he's not long for this world, so the only test subject he's willing to use is himself

-He knows the organic matter he tests the Hexcore on might die

-Viktor's leg is a part of his body he's willing to lose if things go wrong and it rejects the transmutation (he also knows that he could just fully die then and there too and is willing to take that risk)

Obviously, the scenes involving Viktor's experimentation center his physical disabilities (shots of his back brace, the focus on his leg) and equate them with the disease that is literally killing him. The narrative lens shows us that Viktor "curing" himself begins with his disability, which sucks.

So while the boat scene undoubtedly is written to be "triumphant" because Viktor's leg is no longer disabled (shown by him dropping his crutch, the swelling music, the parallel to the scene where a child Viktor can't keep up with his toy boat), a different reading is that it's another experiment to him.

Viktor is stress testing the organic matter he infused with magic, and the scene is triumphant because he's realized his leg isn't deteriorating or weakening - it holds up. The mutation of the magic in his leg survived. It's a sign that maybe he can use the Hexcore on the rest of his body, keep himself alive long enough to do what he's always wanted to do: leave a legacy that changes the world for the better.

To me that's a much more in-character perspective for Viktor in these scenes than what is being said narratively through directing, framing, music, etc. Previously, Viktor had never expressed distaste for his disability as an adult, only commenting on it as a part of why he was isolated socially from Piltover. To me, him testing the Hexcore on his leg is merely an indifference to its current state, rather than a preference to have it changed. I don't even necessarily think it'd be a bad thing if Viktor did outright say "I would like to not be disabled", because I'm sure many other disabled people feel that way from time to time, but season 1 really does a poor job of pushing that framing of "curing" disability onto a character that did not express those perspectives himself at this point.

It gives off a big ol' "aw, poor Viktor, not only is he dying because of the political landscape that leaves disenfranchised people to suffer preventable diseases, but he's got a disabled leg too!" One of those things is much more problematic than the other lol.

Season 2 definitely hurtles Viktor very quickly into the Machine Herald perspective in which he thinks humans must evolve past ANY limitations of their original bodies, but to me season 1 Viktor just doesn't feel that way about himself. His primary concern has always been rooted in how to improve the lives of his people permanently, and it's only when he's actively dying that his secondary goal is to live long enough to see that happen.

It's something he drops completely after his experimentation results in Sky's death. He's immediately spiteful of the Hexcore and tries to destroy it - and himself.

Viktor now accepts that he will die before he's able to change the world the way he wanted, and hides the fact that he fucked with his body from everyone as he awaits his demise. "Fixing" his leg is not something he celebrates in and of itself, it's now only a reminder that the pursuit of his dream resulted in someone else's death.

The narrative does well in season 2 to frame Viktor's Glorious Evolution as a Bad Thing at least, and Jayce's speech at the end about Viktor never being broken is extremely valuable and important, but it's just weird to see him say this:

Cause to me now, that ain't what Viktor was trying to do at all! The writers may have retconned that to be the case, which is fine, whatever, but season 1 in isolation does not support that idea to me after this rewatch.

Overall, I think Arcane can have confusing directing sometimes that focuses on evoking feelings and themes rather than the richness of its characters, their dynamics, and the world they inhabit - to the detriment of all the above. In season 2, this resulted in a lot of scenes that felt emotionally unearned or muddy to me, like pretty much everything with Jinx, Vi, and Vander together rip.

It's for this same reason that I think it took me so long to really come to this reading of Viktor's season 1 scenes, because the directing bias REALLY wants to make you feel sorrow and hope alongside Viktor, even though it means he'll seem to randomly start equating his disabled leg to his illness. It just felt like a weird disparity to me until I watched these episodes again and was like "wait" lol.

Anyway peace and love on planet Earth I cannot stop thinking about Viktor Arcane

[alistair-blackwood]

It's interesting how Laios struggles to remember Kabru's name right away, yet is able to recall the feeling of his grip well enough to immediately understand that something isn't right (Kabru being cuffed)

[mumblesplash]

🌴⌛️🐚🌊

[teyrnacousland]

So, Zara was just waiting for Illario to be made First Talon so she could betray him and get an Envy demon out of the deal, right?

We know Zara specifically wanted an Envy demon. And Envy demons are said to be attracted to powerful, successful people. Who's more powerful than the First Talon? And who could be a more perfect host to draw in/create an Envy demon than bitter, jealous, attention seeking Illario?

[ratavirus]

[stimpry]

mad scientist eridan au doodles + sprite edit i gotta write all my ideas down for this or something maybe make a fic abou tit who knows i just really really like this au i made check the tags for my ranting about it

[ganondoodle]

(wip)

some doodles that took me way too much effort; an updated design for Raal (aka demise when he was a mortal, he still uses that name when in disguise and modeled those forms after how he imagined he would look if he ever grew up as one) and a clunky doodle of both his blade spirits just after forging them

[impossiblekittydelusion]

Hes such a fucking stray dog of a man

[sergle]

the idea of dogs needing a Firm Hand to learn (aka mild to medium animal mistreatment) is so funny to me, because Hugo had his feelings MORTALLY WOUNDED while being taught to Play Dead because I gently pushed him into a laying-on-his-side position... heartbroken from being gently pushed

[bruciemilf]

Firmly convinced that Scott makes the kids call Logan when he leaves the team for the 28273th time and he comes running at full speed like that cat mama video

[fisheito]

Bad joke time: Rin&Yakumo pairing in fandom should be named "Ouroboros"

Also may we ask for Rin doodle (if you are comfortable ofc)? 🥺🙏

what u mean, ouroboros...?? lik. e. yakumo with his infinity essence and rin just slorping, and it never ending munching forever and eever because 🔁🔁🔁🔁🔁>>??

well...... since i've such a magnanimous and generous spirit.. i GUESS:

[vaguely-concerned]

just for fun this time during 'sea of blood' I counted out all the venatori corpses I think we can be pretty sure were lucanis' handiwork before we show up (not including the ones he kills in his initial cutscene, and with an assumption that he's been at work mainly up and down in the areas we move through until we find him, not behind the locked door -- I think that's mostly the work of rampaging undead and other venatori-hoisted-by-their-own-petard suchlikes). can thus happily inform you lucanis has killed at least 32 venatori before rook and company get there. at least one of them he's impaled on their own weird crystal spike things the venatori mages cast as an AOE attack and that they're trying to keep him contained with when we find him. so he's clearly been keeping busy lol. that's my boy dispensing poetic justice and claiming some enrichment in his enclosure while he's at it good for him!

[naffeclipse]

What if Eclipse from AP was a naga? And this took place in the deep jungle of the amazon, where photographer y/n is trying to take pictures of the wildlife?

I'm vibrating at the speed of sound over this ask while also nudging my naga au

Naga Eclipse from AP would have the tail of a Green Anaconda, with an olive green scaly color dotted with black, framed by burning-like flares of orange along the length of his slithery body. He's also decorated with orange-yellow striping on either side of his long, slipper form. His upper half is scaley with a lithe deadliness to his musculature and decorated by frills surrounding his head with brighter orange-yellow colors, almost hypnotic in their gradient hues. One eye is deep emerald green, and one is midnight blue.

Lucky you—you're out on a once-in-a-lifetime expedition to explore a jungle closed off to the public, funded by Fazco, and occupied by two researchers who will be your bunkmates for the next few weeks. You're itching to take photos of the large river, including swamps, marshes and streams, and whatever wildlife is out there.

The few locals you did meet before you left to hike the rest of the way to what would be your new, isolated home warned you of a dangerous snake—a large, mythical beast. You take note of the local folklore. You understand the truth is hidden in there somewhere, and you are well aware of the dangers and diseases you could be met with in such a harsh environment, but you're determined.

It doesn't take long for you to feel eyes watching you when you first venture out by yourself. You take beautiful pictures of freshwater fish, big and beautiful, unlike any you have ever seen. Of course, you have hundreds of snapshots of the local flora, the trees, the floating meadows, the thick vines that drape each branch and hang thickly about the ground. You almost forget that you eerily don't feel alone.

But you swear something moves in the water—the ripples stop as soon as you look. The stillness is suddenly stiff, lifeless. Even the birds have stopped chirping.

You lower your camera and carefully put it away. A trickle of fear slips into your heart. You turn away from the river's edge only to be met by a low hiss and a creature, unlike anything you witnessed in your travels, spooling itself neatly out of the water, blocking your path to the base. An incredible creature with long arms and a great, serpentine tail that seems to stretch for yards and yards. You can hardly breathe in his presence—he's otherworldly with his frills and scales and fangs.

His eyes contain a mesmerizing shine as if staring into a fire as it burns or watching the ocean as it laps up against the beach, drawing your attention, demanding you don't look away. You couldn't anyway. Half-frozen, you struggle to keep from collapsing. He beckons with a sharp talon. He hisses softly for you to come closer, mouse. He wants to see you. You try to beg no without revealing how terribly you tremble. He doesn't let you go. He insists. His eyes flash with an allure. You almost step close when he murmurs that you need to be good.

But then your sense of survival kicks adrenaline into your heart, and you turn to run—

He strikes faster than your eyes can follow. Two loops of his green and orange tail surrounded you in an instant. You're dragged to the ground, your arms pinned under his mass, and the back of your head cradled by his large palm as powerful muscles squeeze you in the slightest—a gentle rebuke for thinking you could get away. You're hyper-aware of the terrifying bulk of muscles as you lie trapped in his coils. One strong twist and your eyes could pop out of your skull, and every bone protecting your heart and lungs would crumble to shards. You gasp. An urge to kick your legs and struggle erupts in your panic; a sinking feeling tells you it would only make things worse.

He coos over you, hissing and humming in an ancient song of the jungle you have no name for. When you whimper, he shushes you and strokes your cheek. He tells you how lovely you'll be. When you talk back to him, somehow finding your tongue amid your horror, you find out his name. Eclipse. He moves you more upright, resting you on his tail so you're not petrified by how vulnerable you feel lying down, but he never loosens his scaly bindings. He hovers over you. You gaze into his stunning frills of yellow-orange and wonder how a being like him came to exist. He studies you as you study him. He grins at how you shiver when he traces your collarbone with a sharp fingertip.

You remind yourself that you can still breathe. He hasn't crushed you—yet—but you don't like how wide his smile is. Sometimes, his jaw stretches a little too long as if dislocating from his skull, ready to devour you. His eyes gleam with a ravenousness as scales twist around you, holding you close enough to smell the slick green water he had been in and deep musk.

He tells you that he'll see you again very soon—away from other humans, lest you bring him a fine gift for a meal. You can only flex your fingers, silently pleading in your heart that he won't unhook his jaw and eat you alive.

Then, he unravels himself from your limbs. But before he lets you go entirely, he leans in close, his serpentine tongue flickering close to your neck and by your hair, tasting the air around you as you muster all your strength to not scream. He inhales deeply, pleased, before he murmurs, "Sweet mouse. You are mine. Say it."

You don't understand, but you echo his command, and when he taps your chin once in what might have been a loving gesture, you force your jelly legs to solidify before you run and run, all the way back to base. You slam the door to your room behind you. You touch your ribs, your arms, still caught in the heavy sensation of his loops as if he were upon you right now.

The stories are true—there is a giant snake in this jungle, and he wants you. You're afraid to discover if Eclipse's intrigue with you is only an exotic way to satisfy his hunger.