#no nefarious undertones at all | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fatesundress · 1 year ago

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⭑ life of the party. tom riddle x reader

summary. when one game is ruined, another begins.

tags. explicitly fem afab reader, smut with as minimal plot as i can physically allow myself, minors SCRAMMM, loosely implied hogwarts university au as always, flirting via mutually assured jealousy, impeccable communication skills, established relationship, the guy the reader is talking to gets annoyed she doesn’t want him but he doesn’t do anything, religious undertones that might have accidentally become overtones, party setting (background drinking & general degeneracy), probably the meanest tom i’ll ever write and i still tried making him nice because lots of heavy jealousy tropes are misogynistic icks fo me, fingering, piv, a little degradation but that's life, fawwwk the weeknd but the song this is based on is so sexy, etc

note. Me writing this: nightguard: ON, religious themes: RIFE, shame: ABOUNDING. i am so embarrassed by this. have i mentioned smut doesn’t come naturally to me? i don’t even know how i got here. i’m on heelys at the proverbial skatepark and everyone else apprenticed under tony hawk. Do you understand? ok.

word count. 4.5k

request. yes!

He is what he is. Stoic, sacred, silent and then verbose. You knew he had his fixations before you knew him at all — no one made top of every class without a shadow of obsession to contrast the glint of their excellence — but you could not anticipate how that obsession might translate when applied to a person. You’re not sure he had either.

He is what he is. The muggle world taught him religion and in it he learned only the tenor of devotion. When his fingers take your jaw, trace slow at the stripes of your thighs, steady your hips from under you and hold tight, there’s reverence in it. His kisses don’t wane with the months gone by; they soften with purpose. They rouse with hunger. His eyes don’t waver. Should a good man gaze upon his altar? Should he smile like sin when he gets on his knees?

He does.

Tom Riddle is what he is and you solemnise in equal part.

You don’t come to these things often, taken aback by the sight of the Slytherin common room in ribbons and banners tattered within the first hour of the night. Bottles glow green in the lake-light on every available surface, scattered about the place and spilled in sticky puddles.

You’re a wallflower tonight, though not for lack of options. You observe from a comfortable distance the drunken antics of new adults, free to carry their liquor in hand rather than hidden away in pockets and pillowcases. There’s something vaguely entertaining about it, intoxicating where someone else might mind their business and actually get intoxicated, but you see no harm done. Whispers fall on your ears before the rumours make their rounds, couples slink away in the darkness where someone in the crowd might not notice, and the night’s first instance of someone hurrying up the stairs in tears comes barrelling right past you. You invent a story for why to keep yourself busy.

It’s all just buzz.

Now, if you don’t come often, he certainly doesn’t.

Tonight, he has, and for reasons explicable but few, you’ve found yourselves on opposite sides of the room.

It began on the green couch by the window with a chess set spilled across the velvet — a bet you made with him upon arrival; you find wizard’s chess trite, Tom finds it feckless, but it makes for a good challenge.

What else could convince a man so perpetually controlled to pour himself a drink? And you imagine, from his perspective: what else could convince a woman so determined to outwit him?

It’s for no nefarious reason — to slight him or see him stumble — but because you love the fractions of relief that colour him, soften him, temper him. It’s because he loves you in every shade, in every pliancy, in each and every fervour. But mostly it’s because you love kindly to best him, and he loves mirthfully to best you.

So you play. The game is slow and teasing, hard to see in the ripples of the lake, and toppled over in the final moves (which you’ll insist you were winning) by the same swaying body that spills its drink down the front of your dress. And so you’re up, brushing your index finger over the corner of Tom’s sudden scowl. You whisper like a joke not to kill anyone but he’s so quick to look like he might that you consider repeating yourself with more conviction.

You poke at the spot where his jaw is tense. “I’ll be right back.”

Drying liquor from lace is a matter of precision even with magic, and this is half-gelatinous like someone raided the kitchen’s supply of jelly and steeped it in something offensively alcoholic. You utilise the clearer light of the Slytherin girl’s lavatory, wetting your dress before evaporating the water from it. There’s the matter then of transforming the stained fabric back to its original colour, and you huff in the mirror at having a game you thought you didn’t care much for ruined so close to its end.

You care about Tom, though. The omphalos of your issue resides there.

(It is fair to say most of your issues reside there.)

With only minutes gone by, the common room crowd looks doubled when you return, and though you wade through you’re pushed back like debris caught in a tide, the bodies more stubborn rubble than you. So you retreat, stand flush at the wall with your arms crossed, and wait for Tom’s eyes to land on yours. To, perhaps, open your mind and let him in, tell him exhaustedly from afar that the game is at rest and you’re ready to leave.

But even he’s hard to find in the bodies unified in breath, flux like a big set of lungs — and nothing about Tom blurs into the background.

So you wait. You wallflower. You pour yourself a drink.

The moment stretches on longer than anticipated, and after many detached observations of the room, someone else finds you instead. He’s tall, blond to Tom's inkwell black, kissed by summer sun even as autumn soothes its blister. Your gaze wavers back to him a few times though his own is uncertain for all its focus. He seems to be waiting for you to stop, perhaps for the silhouette of someone else to slip by and prove you were looking at them instead. When no one else comes, he traverses the crowd with a straightened inch of pride, stepping through new colours until he’s close enough to you that the light settles emerald-black and you can see the great chasm of his beauty up close.

His freckles are carefully dusted, his structure strong, all squarish, rugged lines and shades of August.

The chasm is not a lack of allure, per se, it’s just a lack of him. One man’s August to your adherent’s December, the intention of his warmth, a thing that does not come to him like everything else but that he makes and makes and mends when it lapses because he does not want to see you cold. The singular reward of a rarity like that.

“Hi," you say, glancing over a broad shoulder.

“Evening," he responds. He takes you in with a look of (unappreciated) appreciation. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“No, we haven’t.”

He extends a hand. “Oliver Belby.”

“Pleasure.”

You don't offer much in the way of conversation. He’ll vie for your attention regardless of how much of it you offer. So you lean against the wall where the buzz of sound prickles your hair, let him talk, let his hand come up to rest beside your head, and you find Tom.

He’s right where you left him, a new clearing in the crowd making space for your eyes to meet.

His are ice even at a distance. As if you proselytise — as if you could — kneel for another man or let one kneel before you, all of your trysts together faithless.

They aren’t. He must know they aren’t.

But you put yourself here and standing at the target of his gaze has never been marred by the severity of it.

You decide then; when one game is ruined, another begins.

In truth, you can’t deny the element of theatrics in the way Tom denies everyone but you: his soft, penitent smile, the apologetic cant of his head, how his eyes can find you in any crowd and whoever is clinging onto his every word that night will follow his gaze and deflate when they discover you at the end of it. Sometimes it’s harsh. Final. He lacks the patience of pretence.

Sometimes, the week is dull. Sometimes, the whoever is undeterred. Sometimes you’ve pushed him here.

No — You’ve never done that before. This is new.

So it’s one of those weeks, and one of those whoevers, on an anomaly you may as well have directed the encounter yourself, and Tom is half-indulgent as he forces his eyes away and you force yours to stay.

You watch him from across the room as the woman drapes herself across the arm of his chair. There's a furious blush on her cheeks even in the dark, a pretty disarray to her shoulder-length hair, skirts pleated over knees she faces toward him. She smiles and offers him a glass of something, and you know for certain Tom understands this game because he accepts it, eyes flicking back to you as he swirls the glass in contest.

To that you take an inappreciable sip of your own.

“ — Which is why no one has even attempted to kill one in decades. And capturing one is another thing entirely. My mother works with the Greeks on occasion, and the nearest she came to a den was in the twenties. If she had gone any nearer I wouldn’t be here.”

“Hm?” You look back at the man in front of you. His lips glisten with having licked them between every phrase.

“The manticores,” he says, undeterred.

“Right. Five-X beasts, aren’t they?”

“That’s what I said. I heard from one of my mother’s colleagues that — ”

The woman is whispering something in Tom’s ear, her hair on his cheek. He’s looking at you as if you had said the words. You don't shy away when Oliver leans in to whisper too. It's a strange, fractured language. Too intimate while too detached. Whispers from across the room, desire from another in the place of desire for each other. But the strangeness should not surprise you anymore. This is Tom: beautiful and wicked and the one you chose.

“ — And Nundus are worse. Deadliest creature there is — ”

She’s laughing about something, the woman. Half-reserved, she’s angled toward the party despite her leaning on his shoulder and the dissipating inches of distance.

“ — They stalk in silence. Think of the size of one, right? They’re apex predators… so commanding and still they could be in front of you one instant and gone the next.”

You engage with detached interest. “Really?”

And now Oliver barricades your view, his other hand coming to rest on your other shoulder.

“Do we have any classes together?”

You blink up at him. “No.”

“No, right,” he says, eyes darting to your lips. “I’d remember you.”

His hand comes up to cup your cheek, and you wonder if for some men one-sided discussions of class five beasts qualify as foreplay.

You place a hand on his chest, eyebrows raised and half a startled smile curled.

“You’re not going to kiss me," you inform him.

His face falls, but with it, at least, does his hand.

“Did you hear me?"

“It’s loud,” he decides suddenly. “Can we go somewhere else?”

You’re not sure you believe that.

You duck under an arm and search the crowd again. The woman is on the arm of the chair looking thoroughly dismayed, and for good reason —

Tom is gone.

Your breath is caught.

“This isn’t… You’re not going to…?”

You flash Oliver with a glare. “So you did hear me.”

He makes a pathetically sad face, and you think: it’s a wonder he made it this far when his courtship evidently hinges on the subject of his affection not listening to a word out of his mouth.

“Goodnight, Oliver,” you say tersely.

“What was that for, then?” he asks, and it comes out practically whined.

“That was talking.”

“But you’re —”

“Belby.”

He is what he is. It shouldn’t surprise you when he appears beside you all fatal rage on a quiet lead, narrowly fixed to you.

Tom’s cold is his median temperature, yes, but in moments like this it’s as much for you as his handmade warmth. He’d pluck the fingers off a boy like Oliver. The digits would string eaves like icicles.

Oliver is looking between you and Tom like something terrible has dawned on him, hands urged to his pockets to soothe the flames your unveiled ties to a man seemingly singed him with.

“Riddle — Mate, I didn’t… I didn’t know she was…”

Tom’s voice is flat, edged with something that makes his monotony sound merciful. “Pity. If only you knew as much as you talked.”

Oliver’s mouth opens and closes and opens again, but wisely he settles on silence instead of excuses, and wastes no time fleeing slowly into the crowd.

The instant he's stolen by the wave Tom's eyes are on yours and they’re molten. You move to say something but his patience was for show — he’s dragging you by the arm out of the common room and into one of the dungeon's empty classrooms without giving you the chance.

“Tom —" You start to protest, mouth twisted in a scowl. “Tom, you're being —"

He shuts the door behind you and locks it with such delicacy your breath catches at the question of how badly he's holding himself back right now.

“I'm being what?"

“You're…" It's hard to formulate an answer when he's like this. “It was a game. Don’t pretend you weren’t playing too."

Tom inches in, chest rising with angry breaths. “A game, was it? Did he know that?"

“Did she?” you hiss.

“It certainly became apparent when she was discarded so that I might retrieve you.”

“It was as apparent to Belby, judging by the way he was left gawking.”

“And with great restraint I let him. A mercy I didn’t take his eyes so he was left without the ability.”

You roll your eyes. “Oh, now I understand; the problem wasn’t the game, it’s that I played it better than you.”

He looks at you for a long time before casting a silencing charm on the room.

Oh.

Oh — your heart barrels off somewhere. You’re without it for a moment, breathless in the wake of the implication of a spell like that.

“Tom," you say politically, “It was hardly a matter of rescuing.”

He nods imperceptibly. “No, it wasn’t.”

“So we’re in agreement.”

He hums a non-answer.

Each step he takes forward, you take back. It's a peculiar way to have a conversation, but part of the game, you suppose.

Interesting he’s still playing.

You still gasp when you inevitably hit the wall, hands going to the carved edge of a windowsill.

“You’re terrible when you win,” he whispers. His lips brush your ear.

You shudder, mouth dry as you press against his shoulder. “You’re worse when you lose.”

His mouth drags down your jaw but he refuses to kiss you, still withholding something, still holding back in some terrible, electrifying way. Instead one of his hands starts to dip down your side. You shiver as he grazes the skin of your breast, exposed by the cut of your dress, and continues down your waist. His mouth traces your bare shoulder as his tongue makes a slow pass, skin beneath leaping at his careful ministrations.

With long, slender fingers he's pulling your dress off button by button, torturously slow, and you feel mocked to have cleaned it earlier. You feel foolish to have left knowing the night would have ended like this regardless.

“Tom,” you say. His name is followed by staggered breaths. Your fingers are clutching the windowsill.

The air is thick as he watches you, flesh exposed by each undone catch. And still he will not kiss you, even as his lips trail along your collarbone and you start to tug instinctively at his belt. He makes the barest sound of disapproval and spins you to face the window, your hands urged on instinct to press against the glass.

“Tom...”

He hikes your dress up your thighs. It clings to your hips, a meagre two buttons left attached to keep it from falling.

Your wand clatters as his fingers work the clasp of your bra and his teeth skim your shoulder, leaving little bites he laves at softly with his tongue. You shudder, arching into him, searching for friction. His touch traverses the shape of you and stops feather-light between your legs.

“Tom —”

“Quiet," he admonishes, a little tut.

Your skin jumps at the caress of his fingers tracing deceptively timid up your thighs, like he hasn’t done this before, like it’s care and not punishment. His favourite oxymoron: the gentlest torture, the cruelest succour.

His index draws upon the lace of your underwear and tugs it aside with a tenderness that makes you gasp. Is there a way to press harder to the glass without breaking it? Is there ever enough to grab onto when he gets like this — so singularly focused on ruining you?

One of your hands latches onto the arm half-disappeared in your skirts instead, clinging steadfast to the white of its sleeve, your body swaying as if at sea. He keeps you steady, but this is his crown achievement: that he is all there is that can do it when you’re so singularly focused on being ruined by him.

The sinews of his forearm work imperceptibly under your fingers as he appreciates the newly unfettered flesh, two digits sliding between your legs, and he makes a satisfied sound against your shoulder at the wetness he finds there.

You’re swallowing air with a moan stuck in your throat; too dry, you realise, and feel like you’re choking when he starts to move, gripping his arm somehow tighter.

As a rule, you know how much he loves this, but it’s tenfold under his jealousy and you think deliriously, probably wrongly, that for how much he enjoys pushing you you enjoy pushing him to get here. You’re his and he’s yours, there’s no doubt in it — but what he can reduce you to — this desperate creature, writhing and panting, trying in vain to satiate herself with a simple finger — this is the translation; the fruition of his fixations put to a person rather than a subject. This is what it is to be his.

Tom’s mouth opens in a smile at your throat, and there it feels more like bared teeth, a smile that is as animal as it is pretty.

And still he whispers with all the affection of a lover, your name peppered between kisses.

His fingers inch inside you and curl. You’re wedged in the perfect balance of his discrepancy; your disciple and your devil. He worships you in white. He ruins you in it too.

Now his name comes out in a babble, wet, half-drooled. A nip pinches the little space beneath your ear and you clutch impossibly harder to his wrist, your free hand squeaking down the window pane as you grind on his palm. He crooks his fingers against a spot that has you seeing stars, thumb pressed to your clit in a subtle motion, and you feel yourself tip off into an unknown he aquaints you with often. In a blurry, flickering moment, the light gleams somewhere beyond the stained hues of the window. And that should be it. The edge is at your heels and you should be falling. But the sinful press of him at your back commands you to lurch against him, and when you moan for more he pulls his fingers free.

You stumble weakly into his chest, startled.

“What… What?”

“Ask me for it,” he says, his voice hoarse, markedly wanton in spite of himself. But there is hunger and there is greed. There’s a sacrificial lamb and there’s a hunted one— there’s religion and there’s Tom. He invents something that demands greater devotion.

And the sound of leather rasping serge and metal clinking metal reels your conscience in. There are no stars. There’s just him. His belt is coming undone.

“Tom.” You swallow. “I told you —”

“And I want you to ask.” He cups your jaw in his hand, thumb tracing your lower lip. “Nicely.”

Your mouth opens for him and you shiver, pressing further back for contact he doesn’t allow. Instead another small tut is whispered at your neck, relinquished to a kiss.

His finger brushes your teeth when you speak. “I want you.”

You feel him shake his head and you all but whine.

“I want you inside, Tom — need you — please.”

“Please?” he echoes mockingly.

“Please,” you say in an uneven voice, and when your tongue grazes his thumb he eases it further into your mouth with an appeased hum.

And so his zipper comes down and you hold your breath with the weight of your dress at your hips.

He pushes inside you with minimal pause, slow still, to relish the way your little pants hitch, stop, and shudder out in a broken moan; the way your breath is guided by his rhythm, how you’re shaped by him, fitted around him. You careen forward and your palms flatten on the window, trembling at the first thrust. Your fingers quiver down the glass.

Tom pulls you into him on the second, patience abandoned. His lips chase your pulse. His grip on your jaw tightens as his thumb pops free with a string of spit. He nudges deeper at a new angle, your body forced as far as it can lean back, gasping heavenward when your head falls helplessly onto his shoulder.

It’s profane. Your ears almost dull to the sound of his hips snapping against yours, the obscenity of your skin on what he offers of his, but you waver between earth and something else, brought back to him by the torturous sight of the edge he stole you from. Always brought back to him.

He’s gripping your jaw in one hand as he pushes deeper, and your fingers are lost for purchase on his forearms, trembling to hold onto something.

When he pulls out of you at your brink again, you practically cry out. But you understand when he spins you around again, hiking you up against the windowsill, your shoulders hitting the cool glass with a gasp you barely register in the fog of your desperation. His eyes are dilated to midnight rings. The weight of his desire is frightening. The insistence to claim you better yet.

He wastes no time before slamming into you again, pausing at the hilt to watch your eyebrows wrench together before resuming his pace. When your mouth falls open, he swallows the noise that tries to come out of it.

It doesn’t feel like a kiss. It feels like the prolusion to a bite.

His fervour is all the reminder of how you got here in the first place; the teeth, the force, the grip on your waist. There’s a rough sound he makes in your mouth that you taste more than you hear. The vibration of him is everywhere. You’re too hot and it only occurs to you because your fingers are clawing at fabric instead of skin that he’s fully dressed and your last button has finally snapped, lace pooled on the classroom floor as he fucks you. The thought is consigned to oblivion as quickly as it came. It doesn't matter.

You're clutching at his shoulders, the nape of his neck — trying to kiss him back, but you feel torn in two by the intensity of his ministrations, a low, immolating pressure building in your abdomen. He’s proving something with you, and his is a relentless, unending appetite. You don't really stand a chance. You think you've known that from the start.

Tom is all-consuming. Tom is a force of nature, a whirlwind that sweeps over you. He leaves you breathless and somehow needing more as he wraps his hand around the small of your back and seizes you in place.

Still you find yourself wanting to be held tighter.

“T-Tom —" you sob through the kiss but he doesn't give you enough air to do it. He pushes harder, a rasp at the back of his throat, some carnal thing. He’s not withholding your release now; he’s spurring you towards it.

When he withdraws his lips from yours, his brows are furrowed in concentration. There’s a fine lustre of sweat on his forehead, stray curls pulled across dark, wicked eyes. The sight of him alone is condemnable, but it isn’t for you.

He likes to watch you like this. When your moans dissolve to the torn syllable of his name, again and again. The veneration. Your choked litanies.

You give them to him.

Sleeves drawn up by your body’s baser instinct for skin, you’ve carved a canvas of praise into his arms, marked up to his elbows where your fingers had jerked upward to rake at his back. This time, when you find the cliffside, nothing stops you from teetering off its edge. Flames dance across your skin in an explosion, your collar damp and bitten, your waist in Tom’s vice-like grip. One hard thrust and you’re falling.

The stars are blinding. You decide then they were made by him.

Your head lulls back as shocks of pleasure course through your body, the coil snapped, the hard shape of him inside you demanding impossibly for more. You stumble through the light, vision blurred, praying and praying and praying. His grip comes to find your jaw again.

You keen, addled through the ecstasy, barely conscious of the way his panted breaths hitch at the sight of you in his hands, soft-eyed and puddy.

He always comes apart soon after you, but it happens rarely that your body is so taut on the wire of rapture that his twitching inside you takes you with him.

This time it does.

You sink against him, thighs numb and wet, one hand slipping dumbly from his figure and swiping across condensation-foggy glass. The second orgasm is an aftershock of the first. It’s slow. It feels like being caught from the last fall. You land in Tom’s arms and they’re holding you through whitened knuckles. His eyelashes flutter, ink-dipped twines of quills, and he steals the shaky sigh from your mouth by pressing it to his.

You kiss lazily and softly. The room feels sheeted in static. The electricity lingers on both of you.

It’s hard not to fall against the window when he slides out of you. You slump on quivering legs into his chest instead, heaving, spend trickling down your legs.

Tom holds you close, adjusting his trousers before sinking down to settle you on his lap. He wipes the sweat from your face and presses his lips to the feverish skin it plastered. Forehead, cheeks, nose, chin, whispers of your name down your jaw like a prayer answered. Your eyelids flutter shut and he kisses you there, too. His lashes tickle.

You love him more than you worship him. You think he likes that more.

He grabs your forsaken dress from the floor and slips it over your bare shoulders, summoning the snapped button back in place before he begins to meticulously clasp the rest together again. His mouth leaves a path at the skin under each one before it closes, and you hum in dizzy gratitude.

“That was,” you say in a very worn voice, “a terrible way to reinforce not making you jealous.”

He glares at you from one of the lowermost buttons and you giggle sleepily, curling a hand into his hair. “Don’t look at me like that. You liked it too.”

He leans back up at that, tipping your chin with his fingers, gaze darting over the wrecked state of you with a pleased gleam in his eyes. “You liked it? What a modest interpretation.”

Now it’s your turn to glare.

He is what he is — pursuit of buttons forgotten as you’re laid down on the moonlit floor to be reminded just how much you liked it.

taglist. @lyis @indimoss @poddzi @esolean @d1anna @maripositanoctruna @mentally-in-northern-italy @ronniemaximoff1234 @moobell55 @jaerang @ramayantika @saltwaterbythesea @acube07 @togenabi @adazito @kitcat334 @blaurghhh @shutupfinn @jaymeeshayden @lilu842 @leaosee @garfunkelworld @definitely-not-captain-america @multiplefandomstan @mangoesareorange [ note: inexplicably, a bunch of my tags aren't working. i tried to fix it but if you didn’t get a notif i’m sorry! ]

#tom riddle #tom riddle x reader #tom riddle x you #tom riddle x y/n #tom riddle smut #tom marvolo riddle #voldemort #voldemort x reader #tom riddle imagine #tom riddle oneshot #tom riddle fic #tom riddle fanfiction #harry potter fanfiction #wizarding world

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fairuzfan · 10 months ago

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Your post about how many people are unknowingly falling for & spreading propaganda... yeah. I typed up a whole spiel of a comment on one of your posts the other day that I ended up deciding not to not actually post because it felt like detailing, but seriously. The amount of well meaning, genuinely anti-zionist people ignorantly sharing zionists' posts because they just don't pick up on the leading undertones is honestly more terrifying than than the amount of actual zionists in some ways.

I'm someone who was born into a doomsday cult, and seeing all these people falling for the exact same blatant (or so i thought lol) recruitment/manipulation tactics I've seen used by them my entire life has absolutely fucking terrifying. These are people who are actively trying to combat zionism, but I guess the general public is so uneducated about propaganda/cult tactics that what immediately reads as blatantly manipulative, misleading bullshit to me just doesn't even register as strange to most people. Not to be repetitive, but seriously: fucking terrifying.

There's so much focus on the way people/groups who want to manipulate you will use language of fear, but in this case especially, people need to realize they will almost always appeal to your compassion before they appeal to your fear.

It's all peace and love and happiness because that's what gets people in the door. You preach (or post) the mushy, happy, fun stuff that makes people feel good to draw them in, and you slowly start peppering in the ideas you actually want to lead them to believe later on once you've got them wanting to believe you.

This also has this added effect of helping the group or person's image. Even the people who you don't manage to draw in will have the impression of you as someone who runs their mouth 24/7 about how you're full of love and want the best for everyone, which is especially useful for when you inevitably want to frame yourself as the victim to demonize the people who will inevitably oppose you. If your first and only exposure to a person is seeing them calling for world peace and universal love, you are much more likely to be inclined to believe they (and by extension their cause) are the sympathetic, loving, peaceful good guys being unjustly targeted.

Sorry for rambling, but like... really. It won't always be something nefarious, of course--the vast majority of the the time, it won't be--but I think we would all be in a much better situation if people took it as a general rule of thumb that you should always be a little suspicious of overly vague talk about peace and love.

You're EXACTLY right. I really appreciate this message, because you put to words a lot of my inherent analysis of arguments and ideas. I like grew up with this rhetoric so it's easy to spot for me, but the way that people speak about "peace" as the overall goal when they're zionist is so blatant to me because there is no material change in the scenario they propose but rather a calmness where Palestinians are ignored.

And picking up on subtext of a lot of messages is something you have to have a muscle for kinda because of how subtle it is. The frightening part is, you're right, that the indoctrination part of zionism is the most harmful part because you appeal to their pathos — their fear, their sense of safety, etc — and you go on down the rabbit hole and slowly start being radicalized and pro-zionism or you might not even be pro-zionism 100% but enjoy... soft zionism as a mutual of mine put it once (if you read this and want to be tagged, lmk). Which soft zionism is the MAIN opinion in many liberal circles btw, its not an uncommon opinion.

I even remember once sharing a post by a zionist because i saw them talk about esims but when i went on their blog a few days later because something rubbed me the wrong way, I noticed their pinned and I was like "oh dam I gotta delete that other post" like that's how often this happens.

Idk, I try to combat this by putting sources or approaching from a standpoint of logical arguments rather than identity-based politics (although, sometimes i think there are some things that people who are a certain identity can be the only true experts on) so that I try to encourage actual engagement with ideas and walking them through thought processes rather than "I'm palestinian so just trust me."

Like even with my one fact checking list, idk if I succeeded but I wanted to emphasize that there are multiple factors you should consider when confronting ANY sort of information and should not blindly trust things. News sources have regularly burned or ignored Palestinians so I know a lot of us are really sensitive to these things, but I don't know! I hope people can engage with ideas more than just surface level thinking in general because it helps everyone when you actually interact with the point of view the other person is providing rather than just blindly trusting/distrusting people.

#thanks for this ask btw i really appreciate it

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kirain · 8 months ago

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Hi! I love your metas and I had a question if you don't mind. I love Barcus but I'm a bit confused by the Ironhand gnomes and why they were so mad at the Gondians? Did I maybe miss something?

Omg, I'm so glad someone asked me this! Thank you, anon. I broached this exact subject with my friend a few days ago, and I'd already considered writing a post about it, so this was the kick I needed! Barcus is hands down my favourite NPC (perhaps of all time) and the gnome plight is easily my favourite side quest in the entire game, so I'm excited to share what I've learned!

To preface, I'd like to mention that most gnomes, according to D&D lore, live in clans and keep to themselves. This is especially true for deep gnomes, as the Underdark is an exceedingly dangerous homeland. Their people are often enslaved by drow or duergar, or eaten by other nefarious creatures that lurk in the shadows. As such, they have become a profoundly somber and cynical race, relying only on each other for survival. They're also extremely wary of strangers, as Barcus perfectly demonstrates when we first meet him.

Now, a history lesson. The Ironhand Gnomes, who at some point left the Underdark, worked in Baldur's Gate for generations, providing the city with the best mechanomagical inventions the populace had ever seen. Though they still kept to themselves and worked in isolation, they were well respected by the citizens, and flourished enough to inspire other gnomes to seek a new life in the city as well. This may not have been their goal, but whether they meant to or not, they brought gnomish innovation to the forefront of one of the most multicultural cities in all of Faerûn.

More importantly, the Ironhand Gnomes worshipped a lesser deity called Gaerdal Ironhand, who Wulbren's ancestor, Wolverforce Bongle, allegedly conversed with. Massive however, in all of my research, I haven't been able to find any evidence that he was truly capable of such a feat, nor is he ever referred to as a "Chosen" by either himself or anyone from his clan. Therefore, it's possible this is nothing more than an unsubstantiated claim made by zealots. A book called Ironhand Gnomes: Our Grievances can be found in the gnome hideout in Act 3, verifying some of this information, but it's glaringly biased against the Gondians, with radically religious and violent undertones.

But where did this hatred come from? Well, according to the book, the Ironhand Gnomes shared some of their expertise with other clans, and some of those clans took what they learned and opened their own workshops. The Gondians, who worship Gond, did particularly well, constructing their own factories and becoming quick competition. They even built a Gondian Church in the city, and attributed their success to Gond; god of craft, smithing, and inventiveness. For whatever reason, the Ironhands didn't appreciate this and accused the Gondians of stealing their methods and designs, as well as pointing out flaws in their "shoddy" craftsmanship.

However, Gondian work was relatively flawless, as well as artifice-based, meaning it relied on science and raw materials. The Ironhands specialised in mechanomagical inventions, meaning they imbued their engines with arcane influence. This put the Gondians and Ironhands at odds with each other, as Gond espoused artifice supremacy, whereas Gaerdal Ironhand, according to Wolverforce, accused Gond of being a thief. So yes, we've reached the crux of the issue—religious turmoil. Both gods, I should mention, are good-aligned and easily misinterpreted, so of course that adds another layer of complications.

In response to the Ironhand's accusations, the Gondians started slandering the Ironhand clan, losing them favour in the city. In other words, the feud quite literally became a he said/she said situation, with both clans acting like petty children. Whether or not the Ironhand Gnomes taught the Gondians a few tricks, they weren't owed credit for their inventions. That would be like my friend showing me how to use Adobe Animate, then demanding credit for all of my artwork thereafter ... and all while criticising it. And the Gondians, though attempting to protect their reputation, had no right to spread lies about the Ironhand clan, not all of whom participated in the drama. They could've let their work speak for itself.

But this war of finger-pointing dragged on, with both sides losing and gaining support from confused Baldurians. Eventually, the Ironhands became desperate to get the upperhand, rousing Wolverforce to experiment with the thought-to-be mythical runepowder. This led to what became known as the "Unfortunate Runepowder Incident", wherein the overweening Wolverforce caused a massive explosion, killing himself and countless others in the blast. Wulbren blames this tragedy on the Gondians alone, and many Ironhands seem to feel it was the root of their exile, but there's more to it.

In reality, the Ironhand Gnomes were banished from Baldur's Gate because they aligned themselves with Sarevok Anchev, the Bhaalspawn who tried to destroy the city in the first game. For some reason, Wulbren completely glosses over this detail, likely because he can't bring himself to admit the Ironhands are responsible for their own downfall. In fact, he brushes it off, as if it's some insignificant happenstance that deserves forgiveness without merit. After all, it happened over a century ago. Then, in Act 3, he says a painfully backwards line about how he thinks the Gondians would've joined Sarevok, if given the chance. But they did have a chance, and they didn't join him. The Ironhands did. As far as I'm concerned, this highlights Wulbren's extensive denial.

Which brings me around to Barcus and why he's such an endearing character. He doesn't care about ancient feuds or gnome supremacy. He made a name for himself, despite his clan's reputation. The Gondians never saw him as an enemy, and he in turn saw the value in their work. He prefers diplomacy and open dialogue, and he abhors violence to the highest degree. With a little hard work, he proved that the Ironhand Gnomes could've redeemed themselves without resorting to such extreme and radical measures; which is why I will always argue for him to take leadership. He's the best. He's everything. He is the shining future of unity and creation.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #barcus wroot #bg3 barcus #barcus my beloved #wulbren bongle #bg3 wulbren #ironhand gnomes #gondians #dnd #d&d #dungeons and dragons #gnome post

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patchwork-crow-writes · 1 year ago

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Thoughts on Kris x Ralsei, continued

(this is a continuation of my first post on this subject, creatively titled Thoughts on Kris x Ralsei. The parts all build upon each other, so it's best to read from the beginning. Here's a little TOC so you can get up to speed:

Part 1: And They Lived Happily Ever After Part 1.5: I Believe Your Choices DO Matter Part 2: A Pair of Star-Cross'd Lovers <- (You Are Here!) Part 2.5: In Another World, We Could Have Been (Just) Friends (Future parts to be added as they are written))

(Please be aware that this series will go over topics including coercion, non-consentual romance, and an observation pertaining to potential incestual undertones. If any of this makes you uncomfortable in any way, please proceed with caution. Thank you)

Part 2: A Pair of Star-Cross'd Lovers

Kris Dreemurr is doomed the instant the player assumes control of them.

If Undertale is a game about how your choices can affect the world, then Deltarune is about how sometimes, your choices mean absolutely nothing. Fate grinds on, irrespective of your wishes. Onward you march, towards your ultimate destiny.

This concept features heavilly in a lot of RPGs - the idea that the protagonist is the "chosen one" who will save the world, which due to the constrains of narrative and gaming, is what ends up happening 95% of the time. Much like the Knight and Princess dynamic I discussed in the previous part, this trope is so heavily ingrained in the gaming psyche that we do tend to accept it when it happens,as part and parcel of the RPG experience.

This very familiar setup is where Kris and Susie find themselves upon meeting Ralsei, who waxes lyrical about the very Non-Specific-and-Light-on-Any-Identifying-Details Legend. They are told that the balance of light and dark is being disrupted and a "terrible calamity (will) occur", are shown some apocalyptic imagery, three heroes who are identified by their race/species (and not their name - a detail which may become important later on), who will stop something nefariously dubbed the "Angel's Heaven". It is Prophecy 101, the most barebones framing for a quest you can imagine... but hey, the game needs a hook, doesn't it? Some grand stakes to get the ball rolling.

And so, the roles are doled out: Kris is the human, the unwavering leader; Susie is the no-nonsense contrarian who doesn't really care much for concepts of fate and determinism, and Ralsei is the exposition fairy, doing his best to keep his comrades on the path he has set out for them.

Ok, cool. But where does Kralsei fit into this? Well, in Part 1 and 1.5 of this series of posts, I brought up how Deltarune goes to great lengths to bring the idea of this pairing to prominence... but I didn't really talk about why the game is doing this. And the answer is, because it ties in with Deltarune's central theme of destiny and determinism. Or to put it another way:

Your Choices Don't Matter.

And here, you might protest. Because surely when the game says that, it's only refering to Kris's choices, right? We, as players, can choose from different dialogue options, we can choose to FIGHT or SPARE our adversaries. More fundamentally, we are the ones in control of Kris's movements and actions, while they are almost entirely powerless to fight our influence (note how I say almost - this will be important later).

But think for a moment about the choices we are given as players, and ask yourself - what meaningfully changes as a result of our actions? In Chapter 1, it doesn't matter whether we fight or spare anyone, they'll all return regardless in Chapter 2, with a single line of dialogue added as a handwave to explain why. And while Chapter 2 gives us a little more say in this - we can lose potential recruits to Castle Town by fighting rather than sparing, and they won't turn up in Ralsei's dark world at the end - the main points of the story do not meaningfully change to reflect this.

(there are, of course, things that we CAN do to change things in a pretty big way *coughSnowgravecough* but given that the means to achieve this are rather well-hidden, and it involves doing some very, VERY messed up things in pursuit of it, we can consider it an exception that proves the rule - technically your choices CAN have consequences, but those consequences are so horrific that you're probably better off not choosing in the first place.)

Okay, sure, you say. But this doesn't apply to the interpersonal relationships in Deltarune, now does it? If we don't want Kralsei to happen, then we simply don't choose any of the options that hint at it. That much must be in our power, surely?

To which I have one riposte: the Acid Tunnel of Love.

Brief overview of this sequence: Kris and Ralsei are tasked with "distracting" Queen while Susie and Berdly go to rescue Noelle. Literally on the next screen, the only way to proceed is across a giant river of acid, atop a swan pedallo, while soft carnival-style music plays in the background. Partway through, Ralsei has a heart-to-heart with Kris/the player, Rouxls Kaard does what he does best, and a photo may or may not be taken at the end.

You don't get to choose not to do this (unless you do that other thing which we're not discussing here). This just happens. And it's difficult to get away from the fact that this entire scenario is dripping with romantic undertones, especially when it's contrasted directly afterwards with Susie and Noelle's equally-romantically-charged Rescue and Ferris Wheel ride.

But then, perhaps it's a parody. A funny contrivance that sends up the absurdity of Kralsei by comparing it to a romantic pairing with actual weight, Suselle. But there are two problems with this; the first is that if we write off this scene as parody, then we must also do the same with the ferris wheel, because they both operate under the same logic - they're both based on a massive contrivance.

The second problem is that Ralsei doesn't seem to have got that memo. And no matter how you respond to his questions, the scene will end with his admiration for Kris strengthened. There is NO dialogue option you can select which will dissuade him from his feelings.

Exhibit A: calling Ralsei a lackey will have him cheerfully exclaim "Ooh, I've never been somebody's lackey before!" (because he's a darkner, that's literally what he was designed to be). Exhibit B: saying "It's strange" has Ralsei write off his question as, erm, "sarcasm". Which would perhaps be read as a rebuttal, except that his understanding of social situations is so minimal that he might genuinely believe he's committed a serious faux pas here, rather than interpret the response as a rejection. It also doesn't change his follow-up response, either. Exhibit C: Saying nothing when he says "it's good that you're you" has him laugh at how "Kris-like" not saying anything is, before saying that he "[likes] you-like things".

Cue Ralsei haters throwing their hands up in exasperation.

Contrast again with Susie and Noelle's scene. Here, too, we're presented with options to influence how things will happen. But the crucial difference is, we have absolutely zero sway over Susie, and she will always choose to say and do her own things. Here, too, we are powerless to intervene, but in a more direct way, whereas with Kralsei, even though we CAN choose an option, none of them make a difference to the scene or its outcome. This serves to show just how much agency Susie actually possesses, and is a stark contrast to Kris's severe lack of agency... as well as our own.

What does that mean, exactly? Well, consider this: Susie is free to make her own decisions, up to and including choosing NOT to pursue Noelle romantically. Kris, on the other hand, has no such freedom, and thus cannot choose to opt out of entering into a relationship with Ralsei. And, as I have alluded to a few times, neither can we, despite what our own feelings on the situation might be.

And thus we come to the title of this part - Kris and Ralsei are Star-Crossed. No reference to this line is made in Deltarune as of present, but it has numerous connotations which I believe are relevant to these two characters. Firstly, the idea that their connection is destined to occur - it's written in the stars, woven into the game's literal architecture. As such, there is nothing that anyone can do to stop it from happening - not Ralsei, who probably would be quite thrilled with it, not the player, who try as they might cannot influence it either way, and certainly not Kris, who is almost entirely unable to voice their own desires. We are each as powerless as each other in this instance.

Secondly, the idea that this destined relationship, no matter what form it might take, is doomed to end in tragedy. From the reaction to the various teas, we can infer that Kris is lukewarm on Ralsei at best (this may change as future chapters are released, but it's not exactly a ringing endorsement). And as time goes on, it becomes increasingly apparent that Ralsei is likely labouring under a false notion of who Kris actually is, and has fallen for the idea of Kris that he has conjured up in his own head, rather than the genuine article.

But the problem is more fundamental still, for if we understand the prophecy correctly, light and dark must be in balance - they cannot mix. That means no new dark fountains, which means that Ralsei can never manifest anywhere as a darkner once the events of the game are concluded. This would of course preclude any sort of interpersonal connection, romantic or otherwise. The best that could be hoped for in such a scenario is that Ralsei returns to whichever object he represents in the light world and Kris keeps him around as a memento.

This all assumes a great deal, of course - Kris's stance on Ralsei may well change, and for all we know Ralsei is more than likely very aware that we exist separately from Kris, as evidenced by his clandestine conversations with Kris while we see what Susie's up to. Additionally, it is entirely possible that Ralsei has instead fallen for US through Kris, which presents... additional complications. More on that later.

All of this leads us back to the central conceit of Deltarune: Our choices do not matter. Nothing we say, nothing we do, can change what is going to happen. We don't know exactly where this is going to go, whether they will fall into a full-on romance, or if they become something more akin to queerplatonic partners, or good friends, or something like siblings, or perhaps even mortal enemies. But one thing is for sure - Deltarune is going to continue cramming Kralsei down our throats, whether we like it or not.

...okay, think I best stop there for now. And look, I know I haven't really gone too much into the why of all this just yet. But patience - much of the past few essays have been establishing the groundwork - the what and the how, if you like. I'n Part 3, I'll attempt to go over what I believe the Narrative (i.e. the game) is trying to accomplish with Kralsei - what it's trying to say about games, stories, romance, and how we can be manipulated into endorsing a potentially problematic relationship, irrespective of the wishes of the vessel we control.

Thanks for reading!

#writing #essay #Deltarune #fan theory #Kris dreemurr #Ralsei #Kralsei #Krisei #kris x ralsei #destiny #Narrative #acid tunnel of love #your choices don't matter #Suselle mention #cw potential noncon #thoughts

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generic-whumperz · 4 months ago

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Benny (Character Sheet)

(Picrew)

Playlist | Moodboards | Masterlist | Character Info | Lexicon

Overview: In a post-apocalyptic world where an outbreak of debated origin has transformed people into flesh-eating monsters, Benny, a fisherman from Cajun-country Southern Louisiana, is just an ordinary man trying to support his family during difficult times. But his fate is forever changed after he catches the attention of Arcadian Baron Xavier LeBlanc after winning a brutal fight against a horde of afflicted in the fighting pits. His victory leads to an offered position as one of Xavier's concubines, but he soon discovers that this position involves more than just hedonistic sex parties. Benny discovers Xavier's corruption and nefarious activities, including the Baron's connection to the mysterious disappearances of several local women. Outraged, Benny decides to take matters into his own hands. After risking it all and exposing Xavier's wrongdoings to the town, the ensuing revolt claims the lives of Arcadian envoys and vassals alike. Xavier, fed up with Benny’s insolence, retaliates by sentencing Benny to a life of slavery and selling him to a buyer on the West Coast.

Full name: Benôit Onésiphore Boudreaux (Benny)

Role: Second lead protagonist (Whumpee)

Date of Birth & sign: February 10, 2005 (27), Aquarius (story takes place in the year 2032)

Gender: cis-male

Sexuality: bi (and DTF)

Height: 6'

Weight/body type/build: working man's build—very fit and muscular. Unfairly ripped, is good googly moogly ridiculous. (How does it feel to be creator's favorite?)

Hometown: Atchafalaya, Toussaint Parish, Louisiana (re-used name, fictional place in the southern boot of LA area)

Fav genre of music & anthem: blues rock; Born On The Bayou by: CCR

Family Members: Oldest child and only son. Both parents deceased. Younger sisters in order from oldest to youngest: Genevieve, Sabine, Estelle, Cordelia. Adopted children whose families died after the outbreak. Father & big brother figure 2-in-1. (All surviving Boudreaux family members + adopted kids are in the infographic below.) Family over everything mentality. Provider.

Left/right handed: left

Occupation: fisherman, helps run family-owned bait & tackle shop

Ethnicity (+ American): Indigenous (predominantly Choctaw), Cajun/Creole (mixed colonial French, Native American, and Haitian ancestry). Appearance-wise, looks unmistakably Native.

Hair color & length: long, straight, thick black hair, hits mid-back. Usually tied in a low pony, braided, or thrown up in a messy bun. Facial hair: none to be had. Has little to no body hair and looks like a smooth baby dolphin. Has never used a razor in his life, plucks random hairs as they surface.

Hygiene: smells like swamp water and fishing boat gunk 90% of the time. Bathes daily and spends a lot of time taming his mane and doing hair masks. Decently hygienic (having four sisters), but isn't afraid to get dirty and wrestle in some mud.

Eye color: russet brown. Deep-set, thin, almond-shaped eyes. Has "sly eyes."

Skin tone: light brown, golden tan with warm undertones.

Facial features: oblong head with high cheekbones. Wide, full lips with heavy upper lip. Hooked nose. Flat, thick eyebrows. Round, slightly pointed ears (no, not like an elf) with free lobes.

Mannerisms: very animated and talks with his hands, uses a lot of body language. Hums, whistles, and sings songs at random.

Nervous ticks: shifts and wiggles around more. Rocks in a chair if sitting. Paces. Runs fingers through hair, plays with hair. Flexes hands and toes. Shrugs, rolls shoulders. Cracks neck and fingers, rolls head in a circle or a back/forth motion. Blinks a lot and shakes head. Bounces knee. Talks more and rambles, may repeat a question reworked in different ways, *disbelief*. Uses inappropriate humor to cope. Grimaces. Stretches, may start dancing/tapping feet. Drums fingers.

Posture: relaxed and casual. Slumps back in seat or leans forward, elbows on knees. Has an unfortunate tendency to manspread.

Style: "It fits? I gets." Nearly everything is stained and a hand-me-down. Usually in smelly fishing gear. When not, in a white tank or T-shirt with sleeves cut off, old ripped jeans, tattered old boots, or no shoes at all. All shorts are old jeans he cut (jorts go hard). Tribal print and lumberjack flannels, buttoned jackets, Carhart vests, old sweatshirts, wrinkled and faded T-shirts, beaded jewelry, and custom jackets made by his fashionista sister, Estelle.

Health: initially very healthy with no conditions or allergies

Piercings/tattoos: piercings—2 holes (lobe and upper lobe), tragus on both ears and a Prince Albert (🍆). Tattoos (so many, all B&W): strand of 5 traditional-style flowers on upper chest, just below collar bones. Barbed wire in the shape of a heart on the left peck over the heart with a small cherub pulling back bow as if about to shoot an arrow at it on the right shoulder. Traditional Choctaw tribal pattern strip encircling right bicep. Beaded armband with two feathers tied in the middle—starts on upper-mid left arm and stops about 4" short from elbow. Mermaid with shell crown on top left forearm. Optical illusion crocodile swimming half-in, half-out of water on top of right arm. Optical illusion fishing hook stuck in skin on outer left wrist. Tomahawk with peace pipe end on left side over ribs. Scorpion around belly button, crawling down towards below waistline. Sun and moon kissing surrounded by clouds on mid left thigh. Shrimp above outer left ankle. (Tat sheet & references below.)

Birthmarks/scars: scar across left cheek. "X" slave branding scar on right hand.

Language(s): English, some Cajun French

Personality: extroverted, adaptable, friendly and charismatic, good-natured, energetic, sincere, outspoken, optimistic, excitable, loyal, motivated, facetious, compassionate, quick-witted, patient, confident, genuine (never pretends to be someone he isn't), but can be a schmoozer

Vices: weed, moonshine/hooch, casual sex, drunk fishing.

Voice: loud. Rich Cajun twang, smooth and silky despite the volume at which he speaks.

Smells like: when dirty—swamp, mildew, and fish. When clean—earthy scent with aquatic undertones: Spanish moss, evergreen and Cyprus, soliflore gardenia, and blue gum eucalyptus.

Face claim(s): (young) Eddie Spears (top row), Michael Hudson (bottom row, big shoutout to @3-2-whump for finding Michael!)

Character inspiration: nothing in particular; I just thought I was missing something, and thus, Benny was born and slowly revealed himself to me in parts. I knew I needed a wild swamp man.

Other: has wrestled alligators and isn't afraid of shit besides catfish (his mortal enemy). Harmonica champion. Consumes ungodly amounts of shrimp.

Character sheet filled out from his POV

Tattoo Placement Sheet (+ Scars):

Tattoo reference pics from Pinterest:

(sorry, yeah he has Pinterest tats, I’m not a professional)

Surviving family tree:

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hayeshellcat · 2 months ago

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On Becoming a Lady Person, Pt. 2

It has been so hard for me to write. I am caught up on all kinds of barriers, including the most nefarious of all: the idea that what I write needs to be of monumental importance.

I am electing to discard this belief. I am choosing to share myself.

My name is Hayes and I am in rehab for the third time this year. I am a proud transgender woman, I think I love myself, and I am often unaware of my emotions. I have done some mental health work this year, and I believe that I have so many qualities that are lovely. I have experienced moments of gender euphoria. But as a general rule, my default setting is freeze. Without a healthy connection to how I feel about things, I often “shoot from the hip” trying to guess how I should feel about my situation, though in reality I am only aware of feeling numb and alone.

So many people tell me that I am brave because I am transitioning. I really hate that. I tell them that I hate that I have to be brave, and that I most often do not feel brave at all. I am just… choosing to experience myself, foreign and incomplete as my authentic self-concept is, just four and a half months into my transition. When I am frozen in my default dysphoric mind-state, I cannot see how that is possibly brave or commendable. I am an organism fighting to stay alive. It is mere biology and selfish instinct. My nascent ego has no emotional investment in this process.

On the other hand, my intellect understands that any being in bloom is absolute, awe-inspiring beauty to behold. Context determines bravery, and the experience of a transgender human being in the United States in the year 2024 is objectively difficult and dangerous. Subjectively, it is so terrifying that I am constantly fighting my limbic system for baseline functionality.

One major problem I am running into is that the analytical mind at work here still feels to me so male. So often, I feel dead and cold and… masculine.

I have done the work of grieving my dead self, to an extent, but I cannot shake the dysphoric undertones of my working, rational mind. It makes sense. I spent a long time unable to confront my trauma history, operating as a cisgender male with a dark, shameful secret. I was drawn to male thinkers, in part because of the misogyny of the modern era and the dearth of compelling female voices in Western art, literature, and psychology. Moreover, I think that I had a vested interest in really giving this “being a man” thing a shot, and followed well-worn paths of White male minds.

To illustrate my point, here is an off-the-cuff list of my recent intellectual role models: David Foster Wallace, Carl Jung, Carl Rogers, Alan Watts, Ram Dass.

Yeah. Fuck.

As I move forward with my transition, it is vitally important that I explore my essential beliefs and thought structures. I need to understand and heal from my trauma, or I will continue to use substances to cope with this very scary path I am on. If I use monumentally obstructive chemicals like methamphetamine, I will put my medical transition at risk (not to mention my actual human life).

So, please - I invite you to come along with me on this next part of my journey. I do not care if this is monumentally important. I hope that it reads well enough, but I plan to post very rough drafts of my journaling and commentary on it. I do not know why, but it seems important to do this publicly. Even if only one or two of you out there read this, that will be enough.

I am fighting, after all, to be seen. The organism must be observed. The ego will follow.

#trans femme #trans experience #trans woman #transitioning #transgender #transfem #transblr #prose #writing #journaling #journal

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richincolor · 1 year ago

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Mini-Review: The Forest Demands Its Due

Title: The Forest Demands Its Due

Author: Kosovo Jackson

Genres: Contemporary/Horror

Pages: 432

Publisher: Quill Tree Books

Review Copy: ARC by publisher

Availability: Available now

Summary: Regent Academy has a long and storied history in Winslow, Vermont, as does the forest that surrounds it. The school is known for molding teens into leaders, but its history is far more nefarious.

Seventeen-year-old Douglas Jones wants nothing to do with Regent's king-making; he’s just trying to survive. But then a student is murdered and, for some reason, by the next day no one remembers him having ever existed, except for Douglas and the groundskeeper's son, Everett Everley. In his determination to uncover the truth, Douglas awakens a horror hidden within the forest, unearthing secrets that have been buried for centuries. A vengeful creature wants blood as payment for a debt more than 300 years in the making—or it will swallow all of Winslow in darkness.

And for the first time in his life, Douglas might have a chance to grasp the one thing he’s always felt was power. But if he’s not careful, he will find out that power has a tendency to corrupt absolutely everything.

Review: There has been a fun trend of Black YA horror being published and I am here for it. Kosoko Jackson’s newest novel, “The Forest Demands Its Due” is another book to add to the list of fantastic horror being written by Black authors for Black teens. This twisty story is not so much scary (at least to me) but feels more like a funky thriller with ghosts, a creepy forest, a curse that needs to be broken, and a mystery that needs to be solved. There is so much going on in this novel but not once does it feel overwhelming. Jackson did such a wonderful job with the world building that all the different elements work together to create a seamless narrative. I was definitely into Douglas’s journey as he discovers his power.

Douglas’s story starts out as a classic fish out of water where he is a relatively new student at an ultra exclusive private high school. After experiencing a tragedy, he is “recruited”, in a way, to the school and his mother given a job as the school nurse. As a Black Queer he doesn’t fit in and experiences bullying, but is trying to make the best of it because he knows “this is a great opportunity and he’s special.” (Yes, the racist undertones are there and are explicitly implied throughout the story.) Douglas does have a sweet heart and when he witnesses a student death that no one seems to remember the next day, he becomes determined to find out why. Douglas ends up at the Headmaster’s office who tells Douglas how special he really is and that Douglas is the key to ending the town’s curse. Douglas is clearly skeptical but goes along anyways and thus is brought into this world where nothing is as it seems. Douglas talks to ghosts, monster things, a god, and is able to wield earthen magic. Through it all though, and this is what I really liked about the novel, is Douglas’s good nature as he is exposed to all the weirdness. He has such a good heart and is always thinking of helping and protecting others. It was never to his detriment, but allowed him to fully tap into his power. I like that he was true to himself throughout the entire story and that is what made him so strong.

Another aspect of this novel that I greatly enjoyed was its social commentary. The racist micro-aggressions that Douglas experiences is not shied away from, nor is the implied racism. Douglas makes note of it as well as the bigotry that he experiences. Even the reason for the curse is a statement on society and also propels Douglas as he tries to end the curse. I would say more but that would be giving away spoilers and this review has been hard to write without giving away spoilers as there are a number of twist and turns that makes “The Forest Demands Its Due” so interesting.

#book review #weneeddiversebooks #ya lit #black horror

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turtle--soup · 4 months ago

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Next Mutation ramblings under the cut:

Monkey Man is back

Episode 11 stream of consciousness liveblogging first...

"Poof. No mowah dowah baws." Honestly I would kill to play one of these henchmen, they must have had the best time.

Oh, I see where this is going...

Mikey found a peanut. Cute that he's excited enough to sing a song about that

Is that Fruit Loops with Red Bull? Bro.

If I ever win the lottery I am also going to yell MEGA SHELLAAAAAGE. I do not play the lottery.

"It's really gross in heeyuh"

"I can buy a jet plane! I can buy TEN jet planes!" Bro gonna set up his own airline

"You're scaring our roaches" Finally a Raph who likes bugs!

Of course Raph would buy more motorbikes. But would they be as sexy and cool as the one he already has? I think every Raph should have a motorbike. I never ship Raph with anyone but I kinda ship NM Raph with his bike

FunKEE MunKEE

"Stop monkeyin' around" - of course, of course. The puns 👌

Yeah, stop calling him greenie. You can do better than that surely?

They have satin boxers? Yeesh. 🤢

"Muhayy name's not greenaaayyyy" Calm down Leo

I love the sad music in the background being overlaid with the cartoon 'boink!' 'splat!' sound effects

"I got beat by four guys with no pants!" Dude now you know why Shredder was so pissed off all the time

This Splinter is so crabby

I can't believe nobody is arguing that they should get the ticket back because

a) Silver might spend it on doing nefarious bad guy stuff, and/or

b) it belongs to an innocent person??

Bionic smoothophonic?????? Were the scriptwriters paid by how many words they could make up?

Groovalicious! Excellente!

GROOVY WOOVY BABY???!?! wtf Raph bro are you OK?

Ah, the bike. And the jeep. But mostly the cool bike. It's so cool. Look at it. It's so cool. LOOK. HE HAS A BIKE!

Yeah no seriously I get it but I am so confused that they're all 'yeah money though 🤑' like... completely. It seems so wrong for there to be such little push back. Venus kind of tried but... yeah, I expect there to be more moral undertone in my turtles - especially if it's going to be this cartoony.

His staff is a net launcher? Nice.

Love that the walls in Silver's hallway are climbing walls lol. Fair play to whoever thought of that

"I've never fought so many well dressed men" Venus buddy please use your eyes

She's so polite though

The scene transitions in this show really are something aren't they? Wow

"I know exactly what you're gonna say but we think you're wrong" Bro I don't think anyone's ever won an argument with their dad by starting off like that

Oh at least Splinter's actually suggested they should give the money to the guy it belongs to and chewed them out for being greedy finally

Lol they busted his legs

"I AM scary 😠😠😠"

That was the worst smoke bomb effect ever wow

...

I didn't make notes on episodes 9 & 10 of Next Mutation but the general overview is:

There's so much about Bonesteel that I love but I'm concerned that he's going to be completely pointless.

His design is top tier, I was convinced that either Kevin Eastman designed him or whoever did design him was very much taking notes from Kevin Eastman and lo and behold...

ALSO! I was wondering where I knew Bonesteel's actor from and he's frickin' Scott McNeil! How many other Transformers Beast Wars voice actors did they poach? Lol.

Anyway yeah love him.

Also Quease is really interesting. I want to believe that his relationship with Donnie will be developed on but I'm not going to hold my breath. Hopefully they do something interesting with them though.

#tmnt next mutation #hex.txt #hex talks turtles #i could be posting about 2003 which i am also currently watching #but no #i'm posting about this instead #i might post a little about 2003 soon though #i just started watching fast forward #and apparently i can't help myself from waffling about uh... 'controversial' tmnt stuff

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nerves-nebula · 1 year ago

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"the actors don't like the ship it makes them uncomfortable!" yeah that does not and never has mattered. they're actors. they act as characters. they are not the characters themselves, they do not have a say in how you think of or portray the characters they act as. this is not real person fanfiction. Alex is just a homophobic creep.

anyway after talking to my friend i've decided to just tell you guys. the series i hate is The Mandela Catalogue. it's so shit. absolute garbage. Plays into every ableist trope in the book.

If you try to analyze the way characters are coded to be scary or creepy or "inhuman" it's 99% of the time just them being disabled or neurodivergent or some other marginalized identity.

the fascist undertones of the series are incredibly evident, from the stranger-danger propaganda being given at face value with no commentary on how fucked up it is to just say it's reasonable for you to shoot someone you think is an alternate/looks weird (are white people not aware of all the poc and disabled people who get shot and attacked cuz their existence is seen as threatening?)

the public announcement shit is literally fear mongering except it's in universe proven to be correct because the universe alex has created is an inherently fascist one where innocent white Christians and their innocent white children are under attack from Real Demons (where have i heard that one before)

the THINK principles are akin to a cults guideline. how is the scary thing here that there are weird looking people out there that will Say Scary Shit to you (the idea of an Unknowable Truth as it's alluded to in tmc is bullshit and one of the dumbest Monster powers I've ever heard of) instead of the fact that society is gonna collapse because this shit will make people paranoid as hell, and start shooting their neighbors. But no, that would make it a GOOD series with something INTERESTING to say.

OH and the fact that the enemies in the series are somehow supposed to Look Just Like You (they could be anyone!!) but also look biologically impossible (so many of the alternates + The intruder just look like disabled or disfigured people put through a scary filter)

and hey, while we're here, can we think of any other examples of tropes in media in which all of these apply to The Enemy?

looks very similar to REAL humans, so much so that they could fool you into thinking they ARE one! and yet are also somehow inherently biologically different in a way you are capable of figuring out just by looking at them.

has dark beady eyes and a hooked/big/prominent nose (thinking of the intruder specifically here)

Kidnaps your children for their own nefarious means (blood libel)

Kidnaps/corrupts your children by controlling the media/technology/TV screens.

Desire world domination/is part of some big conspiracy stretching far into the past

Guilty for the death (or in this instance possibly the replacement of) Jesus Christ

depicted as literal demons

Hint! it's antisemitism! it's always fucking antisemitism!!! Coming from a man who's main source of inspiration is his Christianity & mental health issues (though he doesn't seem to mind demonizing the symptoms of mental illnesses he hasn't had personal experience with) i'm not surprised! Though I am disappointed, because he supposedly wants to be a writer, and he doesn't seem very aware of any of the tropes he's propagating. like c'mon man, i thought you liked literature.

I could make another list exactly like that one but for ableism, but if i committed that hard then we'd be here all day.

Alex has even started using words like Degenerate/Degeneration in promotional material too (which if you know anything about fascist rhetoric is a bad sign) not to mention his weird behavior around queer headcanons/shipping and his tendency to mock people who read queer subtext into his work.

The only good things that come from the mandela catalogue are from the fandom but even the fandom can't stop talking about how SUBVERSIVE and UNIQUE it is when it's literally just regurgitated reactionary talking points. The fandom also loves reinforcing Alex's weird ass "no gay shipping" mandate.

like, he clearly doesn't mind the inclusion of romances. Adam had a girlfriend. what he says he minds is "sexualization" which just so happens to include every instance of two male characters looking at each other or holding hands (because being gay is inherently sexual to him, which is homophobic btw. not a "boundary")

i could write essays about how every little single aspect of this series is, thematically speaking, dogshit garbage which appeals to the majority and barely admits the rest of us exist (which i wouldnt even care about so much if people didn't act like this series was at all unique or subversive)

I've talked for fucking hours about how every time i think it can't get any worse it somehow does. i've barely touched on the ableism here, haven't even mentioned the racism OR how all the female characters are defined by their relations to the male characters.

ALL THIS. ALL THIS!!! And all you see about it is praise praise PRAISE. but guys. it's just BAD.

side note: if this post makes you feel the need to tell me why it's actually good: don't! i really dont care if you like it, good for you i guess. as far as i'm concerned the fans of it are the best part of the whole damn series (to be clear the fandom has its own problem but even then. it's generally fine) but it is NOT good source material.

#nnstuff #hateful webseries

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cbus-by-night · 4 months ago

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Name: Mallacus "Bruce" Dradock Generation: 11th Clan: Tremere Apparent Age: late 30s Actual Age: 220

Most vampires typically resent the fact that they are one, but Bruce… well he does too, but he has grown to accept it, and it has helped him accept parts of himself too. Once a 19th century family man with a wife and child, now a happy widower who seduces young gay men whom he uses to satiate his sadistic side. And if a playful bite becomes red iron in his mouth here and there, that's fine with him. For some reason he is very possessive when it comes to partners, sometimes calling them “his”...

He makes good money, but not in the most savory way. His boss, Wolfred Hannah, is a fellow Tremere who discovered Bruce’s unsavory secret. But instead of turning him in, Mr. Hannah graciously offered Bruce a job, with no nefarious undertones. How thoughtful! And all Bruce has to do, is fuck whoever Mr. Hannah points at. And if there is irony in the possessive becoming the possessed, well, Bruce doesn’t care.

#vtm #vampire the masquerade #vampire: the masquerade #vtm tremere #tremere #vampire #ttrpg

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clavissionary-position · 2 years ago

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79 more hearts to go... I hope there's a timeline where

Gilbert Copes With One Week Without You

You know, like that one story event

Unlike when you weren't in a relationship, even when Gilbert schedules his week with inspections and covert meetings and shady dealings and nefarious schemings, he discovers it's very much not business as usual. For one, facial muscles relearning their original smile sit at a loss at the sudden loss of stimulus. Dawn and dusk come and go and Gilbert genuinely feels the weight of his non-smiles when you're not here.

Logically, he knows that wondering what you're doing at the very moment he ousts a gathering of corrupt nobles is probably a hazard to his occupation. If he wasn't a veritable genius capable of multiple simultaneous streams of thought. But it's the lovesick-ness that concerns him. He's been down the road of thinking with his heart before, and that road, for all its rainbows and sunshine, inevitably marched him right into Hell. Or did he march himself? Causation is vexing.

Maybe if you hated books he wouldn't jump into daydreams the second he opened up one of his during downtime. Or maybe he would instead busy himself with what he could do to share hobbies with you. Because he's so disgustingly capable of gross thoughts like that. But it's a little upsetting when he raises his nose from his book to tease your reaction only to find an empty sofa.

Every room you're not in is now a room of strict, spartan utility. His eye for aesthetics has become an eye for you, and that's both limited him as much as it's set him free.

That's a lie. He's a changed man with sight that truly sees for the first time. As cliche as it is, he'd never known what beauty could be before you came along. He could almost call it hedonism, if such a thing could be applied to the pure, mere being of someone's heart.

He haunts his aides and entourage for any correspondence from you. He doesn't hound them, he haunts them. They'll attest that he seems completely normal except he sculpts all conversation around the topic of you. And yet he does it so impressively and organically that most of the time no one cares. Everyone in the Obsidian Court secretly wishes they could parlay like Gilbert parlays, with or without the manipulative undertones. Though it seems to them that Gilbert has been doing a little less of that, and engaging in more honest conversation.

There's no one to greet him when he comes home, to warm his hands and give him a hug. One day of this is curious, two days is bothersome, a week is a mirror's glance into who he really is inside. Just once, for a second, he wraps his arms around himself and pretends you're there. Fortunately one week is not enough time to forget human warmth.

Honestly, Michael better not try anything while he's guarding you

◆◆◆◆ this one takes some inspiration from violettduchess's gilfic reunion (nsfw)

#ikemen prince #gilbert von obsidian #ikemen prince headcanons

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opinated-user · 1 year ago

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Question for you or your followers. I've seen a couple people saying Lily accused SFDebris of being a pedophile and of lying about being asexual. I'm a big SFDebris fan and I never heard about LO trying to falsely accuse him (nor am I aware of him being asexual, actually). I was wondering if you or your followers know more about this incident or have any sources or context for it? Just out of curiosity since I was surprised to see his name come up in all this. Thanks and keep fighting the good fight.

to be fair, an anon brought on this as something that LO did during a stream, but i haven't seen a clip or was on that stream so i couldn't say for sure that even happened. i imagine it could be true because it seems a extremely out of nowhere accusation to make, but who knows.

i do believe that LO fundamentally doesn't understand asexuality or aromaticism and that causes her to say ignorant things about both of those groups, sometimes with very exclusivist rethoric undertones, but if she went as far as to accuse an asexual man of pretending so for nefarious reasons i can't say.

#lily orchard

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wolfninja-989 · 3 months ago

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i felt like throwing my hat into the ring that is fan playlists, so here's my addition to the dbd fan playlists starting with one of my favorite killers

I tried to make this as lore accurate as possible while still trying to adhere to the general styles/interests that they all have so if you want to see specific reasonings for certain songs feel free to look through these besides that just enjoy~

Darkness Among Us by Michel F. April

Partners in Crime by Set It Off and Ash Costello (besides the name making sense for them the romantic undertones the song has feels like something Frank would mention to Julie)

Sarcasm by Get Scared

SPINE by WesGhost

Serial Killer by Moncrieff and JUDGE (I mostly just think that Frank would show this Julie and she'd enjoy the semi-romantic vibes it has)

Riot by Hollywood Undead

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead by Set It Off (the never sleep pills are the main inspiration but also I think that Joey probably has really bad insomnia problems)

Raging on a Sunday by Bohnes

Killer In The Mirror by Set It Off

A Rash Decision by Ice Nine Kills

V.A.N by Bad Omens and Poppy

Cut the Cord by Shinedown (Frank definitely has some issues with substance abuse and is working hard on kicking that habit)

Cradle to the Grave by Five Finger Death Punch

The Nobodies by Marilyn Manson (a song Frank enjoyed from his loner days)

Fist Fight by DEVORA

Make Me King by The Haunt (Frank definitely has a massive ego and God complex)

Resist and Disorder by Rezodrone and The Cartesian Duelists (Susie probably enjoyed playing Cyberpunk 2077)

MANTRA by Bring Me The Horizon

Stabbing In The Dark by Ice Nine Kills (I know its technically inspired by Michael Myers but idc)

Clique by YONAKA and FEVER 333

Nefarious by $atori Zoom and WHOKILLEDXIX

Free Your Hate by KMFDM

Animal by Magnolia Park, Ethan Ross and PLVTINUM

Bury Me Face Down by grandson

Sob Story by Arrested Youth

Stigmata by grandson

nothing (in my head) by Pinkshift

AmEN! by Bring Me The Horizon, Lil Uzi Vert and Daryl Palumbo

THE DEATH OF PEACE OF MIND by Bad Omens (Frank and Julie definitely have a bit of a toxic relationship but it's fine)

The End by Lil Uzi Vert and BABYMETAL (Susie definitely enjoys babymetal's music and Joey probably showed her this song)

The Devil in I by Slipknot

Don't preach to me by The Skallywags

Duality by Slipknot

Custer by Slipknot

Death Of An Executioner by Pierce The Veil

Pass The Nirvana by Pierce The Veil

Sieze the Power by YONAKA

Insanely Illegal Cage Fight by Dal Av and Jackson Rose

Ipecac by Cassyette

Bow Down by I Prevail (another song that feeds into Frank's Ego)

Emperor's New Groove by Panic! At The Disco

Bittersweet by Fuel

Bloodline by Nurzery [Rhymes] (I think Julie would love this band)

Ya'll Want A Single by Korn

Psycho Killer by Talking Heads (Frank really enjoys this song and the irony of it is not lost on him)

Seventeen by Ladytron (Susie probably really enjoys this and resonates with the theme a little)

Bad Reputation by Joan Jett & The Blackhearts

Decode by Paramore

Bang Bang Bang Bang by Sohodolls

Outside by breakk.away (another romantic-ish song for Julie and Frank)

Hell Above by Pierce The Veil

Low Budget Horror by RedHook (this is probably one of Susie's favorite songs)

She Swallowed Burning Coals by El Tigr3 (I imagine that Susie is a big fan of games like hotline miami)

Slinky by Navie D

NEON BLADE by MoonDeity (Susie definitely showed this song to Joey and now he loves it)

Rain by Sleep Token

Alkaline by Sleep Token

20 Ways to Kill Someone (Susie loves this song and Frank secretly loves it too)

Dot Your Eyes by Five Finger Death Punch

In My System by Trevor Something

Light by KMFDM

Winter Rain by Sick Century

HORROR SHOW by Hot Milk

7 Words by Deftones

The Satanic Rites of Blacula by Rob Zombie

Breaking The Habit by Linkin Park (this was probably the first song that convinced Frank to quit some of his bad habits)

Christian Woman by Type O Negative

My Girlfriend's Girlfriend by Type O Negative (Susie tried to look into more songs by this band to impress Julie and happened to enjoy this one the most before Frank showed up)

Wolf Moon by Type O Negative

Spit by Wargasm (UK)

Little Bastarda by Palaye Royale

Tonight Is The Night I Die by Palaye Royale (Frank found this band when he was at his lowest and in his loner orphan era the most)

Lonely by Palaye Royale

Terror Couple Kill Colonel by Bauhaus (Julie probably tried to show this to Frank at some point saying "us"

A Lesson In Dramatics by Save Face and Jhariah (I just think that they're a little over dramatic, especially Susie)

Everlong by Foo Fighters

Dead Is The New Alive by Emilie Autumn

Echolalia by Faetooth

Rose In A Glass by Provoker

Zero Strike by CYBERTHING! and D-Noise

Play My Favorite Song by Tigercub

Creepy Crawler by Zombie Girl and Sebastian Komor

The Hand That Feeds by Nine Inch Nails

Once In A While by Rosegarden Funeral Party

Break Stuff by Limp Bizkit

Bela Lugosi's Dead by Bauhaus

General Release by Mike Klubnika (Susie probably tried to get into the game but never could so she copes by listening to the soundtrack)

Forever Suffer by Dark

Satanic Rites of Dracula by Elecric Wizard

Hip To Be Square by Huey Lewis & The News (Frank convinced everyone to watch American Psycho and he somehow managed to get the entirely wrong idea about it but at least he has a skincare routine)

Dana-Dan by Bloodywood

I Still Adore You by The Oozes (Susie tried to give Julie a not so subtle hint after she got with Frank but Julie does genuinely like the song)

Heart-Shaped Box by Nirvana

Out Of Control by She Wants Revenge

One Beer by MF DOOM (Joey personally loves his music and was devastated to hear about his passing)

11:44 by COUNTERFEIT.

Jealousy by Siiickbrain

I Was Nvr Yr Grlfrnd by Begin Again (Julie probably tried to give Susie a small hint shortly after she had been dating Frank for a while hoping she wouldn't ruin their friendship)

Choke by I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND US

WRATH // OTHERWISE by Cevilian

Honey Oil by Aurora View

Push It by Static-X

Edgecrusher by Fear Factory

Deranged by Coheed and Cambria

Disorder by Mallorva

Stray Bullet KMFDM (this is probably the first song by them that Julie tried to show Frank and he loves it cuz it perfectly encapsulates his little ego)

ARE WE HAVING FUN YET? by Negative 25

autographs in hell by MAREN

Sucker Punch by Die Mannequin

Misfit Love by Bexley

Heart & Feather by Twin Tribes

The Eagle Flies Alone by Arch Enemy

Vampire by Melody Zenith

Farben - Alarm Mix by Orange Sector (Julie definitely noticed that this version of a song she liked was more up Susie's alley and showed it to her as a result)

Passenger by Deftones

Drown by Strange Boutique

Ready To Die by Andrew W.K.

muse by Piper Connolly

Rape Me by Nirvana

I Won't Hold My Breath by Thesaurus Rex

Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want by Deftones

Favorite Poison by Fuller

ELEKTRONISCHES MÄDCHEN by Punk Christ

The Widow Maker feat. Gunship by Carpenter Brut

Horror Show by DJ Shadow and Danny Brown

Skeletons Of Society by Slayer

Creeping Death by Mettalica

System by Chester Bennington

This Is It by Nekrogoblokin

Stigmata Martyr by Bauhaus

Deceptacon by Le Tigre

Heads Will Roll by Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Animal Attraction by She Wants Revenge

RATATATA by BABYMETAL and Electric Callboy

Escape My Woes by Last Grasp

Amphetamine Logic by Sisters of Mercy

help by WHOKILLEDXIX

BOSOZOKU by WHOKILLEDXIX

BUSHIDO by Lil Darkie

Fear of Dying by Jack Off Jill

It Can't Rain All The Time by Jane Silberry (Julie convinced everyone to watch The Crow at some point because it's her favorite movie)

#dead by daylight #playlist #dbd #the legion #dbd joey #dbd frank #dbd susie #dbd julie #julie kostenko #frank morrison #susie lavoie #this took me so long to make and if nobody likes it then i /will/ cry #Spotify

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deathcleriic · 1 year ago

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* while they wait by gates of pearl, we’ll be building palaces in purgatory ! hello, and welcome to another sideblog for an oc belonging to @infernalbarbarian !! this is my interpretation of the dark urge from baldur’s gate 3, a half drow elf cleric of bhaal selûne, war domain. this blog will contain mentions of graphic violence, gore, sexual content, etc. please be at least 18, and preferably 21, before interacting. for more info about my oc, please click below.

* DOSSIER. name. zarra olinath. race. half - drow elf, bhaalspawn. class & specialization. cleric of bhaal, turned cleric of selûne, war domain. age. 94-96. life expectancy. up to two-hundred years. gender & pronouns. cis female, she / her. orientation. pansexual, necrophiliac ( she’s doing her best resisting that mess, ok ? ) height. 5’7”. hair. her hair falls down to the middle of her back in silvery ashen waves, which she normally keeps pulled back into a long, single, high braid. eyes. bright silver, they shimmer in the sunlight. the sun really hurts her eyes when it’s bright outside, they were definitely made for darker environments. complexion. her skin is also an ashy, grayish color, with a bluish undertone. distinguishing features. she has a large burn scar across her face, mostly on the left side of her cheek, going across her nose and up to the right side of her forehead. received by a couple of wizards being cruel and racist, using her as target practice for their fire bolts when she was younger. she promptly killed them. she also has a large and intricate tattoo of a beholder on her throat. alignment. neutral evil as a bhaalspawn, which slowly shifts into chaotic good.

* BACKGROUND. zarra doesn’t remember much of her childhood, but she knows that the people who raised her weren’t her birthparents. they were completely different than her, a lovely gnome couple, who claimed to rescue her as a baby where they found her all alone in the underdark. she had a relatively normal upbringing, the earlier half spent living in the underdark, and the other half on the surface around the age of ten. they had to flee the underdark, because zarra, at the age of only seven, stabbed another drow in the back with a shortsword that was almost too heavy for her to even weild. granted, this drow had broken into the family’s home in the middle of the night with who knows what kind of nefarious plans. though, something else called to zarra that night, something other than heroism. she was overcome with an overwhelming urge to spill his blood, she craved the sight of it, the smell of it. and after he was dead, zarra felt euphoric, as if her very soul was being blessed by the gods for her deed. she liked it, though her fostered family insisted she was only traumatized by the event, that they could get her help.

zarra’s family no longer felt safe there, and they traveled to the surface and sought for someone who might be able to council zarra. they ended up in baldur’s gate, where zarra lived for the next handful of years until she turned seventeen. she never liked being there, people hurled smears and affronts her way quite often, especially as she got older, just for being a half drow elf. racism and hatred is how she acquired the burn scar across her face, a couple of uppity wizards outside of the city thought it would be fun to use zarra as target practice for their fire bolts. they knocked her out with a sleeping spell and tied her to a tree, so she couldn’t get away. even after they burned her, all she could do was laugh through the pain, maniacally almost. she somehow summoned the strength to break the ropes that bound her and took great pleasure in ending the lives of the two wizards.

it’s at this point, around the age of seventeen, that she hears the sinister voices in her head more often, the darkness beckons her, savages her. she eventually gives into these voices when they tell her to slaughter her family and cannibalize their bodies, learning she has an innate appetite for mortal flesh.

after killing her parents, zarra leaves baldur’s gate, only to be tracked down by bhaalists where she learns more of the god of murder. in her late twenties, she became the leader of the cult of bhaal, and pledged to end all life in existence for her father. she felt complete here, like she actually belonged somewhere. people didn’t look upon her with disgust for her complusions, they revered her for them. they encouraged her. she became an unholy assassin and a cleric of bhaal, or bhaalist. she became bhaal’s favorite child, committing countless acts of violence across baldur’s gate for many years to come.

at the age of 93 ( around middle aged for a half drow, who can live upwards of two hundred years ), orin the red, zarra’s bloodkin, joined and served under her. zarra never cared for orin, she was far too hysterical for the half drow’s taste. too elborate. she wasted time creating ellaborate methods of death for a single person, whereas zarra liked to think of ways to spill as much blood as possible in a shorter amount of time. this is bhaal’s desire, not art. only death.

in order to exact her pledge to her lord, zarra came up with a plan, involving lord enver gortash and ketheric thorm, although fully intent on betraying them in the future. they were to steal the crown of karsus and create an army of mind flayers, and the army would assist in exterminating all life in existence across all realms, including her own. the three chosen initiated a raid on the mind flayer colony at moonrise towers, and successfully used the crown on the colony’s elder brain, enslaving it to their dark will. for a time, zarra was worshipped as a god at moonrise towers, but orin was growing increasingly jealous of the half drow. jealous of bhaal’s favoritism for her. for the other cultists seeming to worship zarra instead of bhaal, it was seen as the worship of a false idol in orin’s eyes. so orin betrays zarra, and in a fit of rage, stabs the drow in the back of the skull, splitting it open and forcing a mind flayer tadpole inside of her head and dumps her body into the illithid colony controlled by the cultists of myrkul. it’s here zarra was discovered by kressa bonedaughter, a necromancer that resurrected zarra and began experimenting on her.

kressa was curious as to why zarra was so resistant to the elder brain’s influence, so she would cut her up and put her back together again, over and over. the elder brain came to refer to zarra’s condition as a ‘true soul’ which inspired gortash to make more, creating a false religion ‘the absolute’. zarra had no memories left upon falling into the clutches of the necromancer, and no strength to fight. she couldn’t remember anything, only that her name is zarra, and she’s a cleric. a cleric of who? what god gave her strength? no one, by the looks of it, as she was too weak and tired to stay conscious for most of her time in the colony. and the parts she remembers of it are only torment and pain.

kressa’s husband noticed her obssession and hoped to snap his wife out of it by arranging for zarra to be sent off on the nautiloid ship, where she soon wakes up again, no memory of her past or how she got here or what is happening, she just knows she’s in danger, and there are these horrible voices all telling her to do the most horrible things, triggered upon seeing dead thralls littered across the alien ship. she feels desire pull at her, and she’s horrified by the experience, the way she yearns to rub the bloodied corpses against her flesh. she wretches, heaving the containments of her stomach onto the body of a dead selunite. the moon maiden, though she’s unaware if this is the deity for which she serves, but in a moment of desperation she calls out to the goddess for help. selune hears her call, and provides with zarra a bit of her power. she doesn’t know it yet, but the tadpole inside of her brain is making it possible for her to resist the dark urges that consume her. but will she? or will bhaal’s essence be stronger than her own repulsion for herself?

more tba.

( personality section based on act I )

* PERSONALITY. before the betrayal, the blunt force trauma to the skull, and the mind flayer tadpole, zarra was a merciless force. she saw no right and no wrong, only death. death was everywhere, it was everything. the only thing she loved more than killing was her father, bhaal, the god who gave her a home when the rest of the world shunned her — who gave her life purpose. she’s always been interested in gods, even before finding out she was a bhaalspawn, not just the god was murder. when she was younger, she remembered reading all about talos, selûne, shar : but bhaal always peaked the curiosity of her young mind the most, as if the god of murder already lived within her heart from the beginning. she tried resisting her urges for a little while in the beginning, especially after seeing how difficult her foster parents were handling the situation. but then she realized, if they weren’t around to struggle with it, then zarra wouldn’t have to feel about about giving into those urges, the urges that filled her with more euphoric pleasure than she’s ever experienced in her entire life. after becoming an official bhaalist and a cleric of bhaal, she became more devout to her father. she adored the approval and the recognition for her atrocities, and she liked the dark power that came with it. she never was very charismatic, charming others was never her forté. but she’s strong, and she’s wise in her years. extremely perceptive and it’s really difficult to surprise her. she reads body language, subtle hints of how others might react in any given situation. she’s never fallen in love, such a concept is lost on the bhaalspawn. the only love she has is for bhaal and the corpses she litters the world with, for him.

after the mind flayer tadpole, everything changed. she wasn’t aware of it at the time, she wasn’t aware of much of anything at the time, but the tadpole was making it possible for her to resist bhaal’s essence coursing through her veins. for the first time in nearly a century of life, her mind was free — well, somewhat. it felt as though she was a completely different person, reacting to the dark thoughts consuming her mind in a manner most opposite than her usual. the things she desires make her physically ill, the blood and forbidden lust with the dead that she craves all make her want to end her own life, for how can someone with such sadistic conceptions be allowed to live? she is darkness, her mind, her magic, possibly even her god. she doesn’t remember who she claims power from, but she remembers that she’s a cleric. after stumbling upon a dead selenite with prayer books and effigies, in zarra’s desperation, she calls upon the moon maiden for her help and her guidance. our lady of silver heard her pleas and offered zarra her power. she can’t remember much, but the drow remembers a lot of what she read about selûne, and how she’s at war with her sister shar. one thing that doesn’t change about zarra, she still wishes to please her gods. however, any time that zarra uses the moon maiden’s magic, bhaal calls out to her, beckoning her, stimulating her to commit viscous acts of barbarity, a voice that is oh so difficult to ignore.

she feels the need to go out of her way to help people, as though it might atone for the monstrosities she’s carried out. she can never remember killing anyone, but she knows it must be her. the thoughts she has. perhaps someone put a curse on her? maybe she’s possessed by some sort of demon? she doesn’t know, she just knows the blood is always on her hands. she’s afraid, and she doesn’t want to be alone, but she’s also afraid of what might happen to people if they get too close to her, let their guard down around her. she’s very open about a lot of the thoughts that plague her, subconsciously hoping to perhaps push anyone away that might get too close, but alas — her tadpole infested party doesn’t seem all too concerned with her urges. not yet anyway.

more tba.

#self promo.#bg3 rp #bg3rp #baldur’s gate 3 rp #dark urge rp #fantasy rp #dnd rp #oc rp #indie rp

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