#okay so i think i might need sleep

[serpentface]

The pylidaigh, a type of vampiric snow ghost, as imagined in folklore in and around the Highlands.

This is a ghost believed to come into being when a person dies in the snow and their body is not found before their soul (still trapped without its funeral rites) 'freezes' inside of it. The body then reanimates into a pylidaigh's twisted form. It looks like someone who slowly died of starvation, just a thin layer of flesh over bones. Its skin is as white as the snow itself, so pale it can blend seamlessly into a blizzard. Most of its body appears subtly stretched and lanky, save for its exceptionally unsubtle long, skinny arms, which drag on the ground behind it when it walks. After a big meal of blood, its belly swells like the abdomen of a tick.

A pylidaigh can only tread across snow and ice, and so doorways and windows are best kept clear of snowfall during the winter in order to prevent it from reaching inside. It mostly comes out to hunt during blizzards when there is little that can prevent it from catching its victims.

In spite of its fragile appearance, a pylidaigh is supernaturally strong, and can run at great speeds when it wants to. No mortal weapons can pierce its body, nor can any bonds known to craftsmen hold it in place. It is usually said that chains forged like iron but made out of ice can bind a pylidaigh and render it immobile, but this smithing technique remains tragically elusive to the average joe.

This ghost is either cast as a wildly dangerous but tragic figure, or one that is more simply malicious. In either case, it is described as experiencing nothing but bitter cold. It shivers endlessly. It retains distant memories of what it was to be alive, and it is motivated by a futile desperation to experience the feeling of warmth again.

In more sympathetic framings, it is described as using its freaky gibbon arms to capture its victims and pull them into an embrace, rather innocently trying to warm itself against their body. This inevitably fails, and the embrace becomes a bone crushing squeeze. When that too fails to warm the ghost, it rips out the person's throat and drinks their blood until the victim is as cold and drained as the pylidaigh itself.

In other cases, this more pitiable narrative of a ghost seeking warmth with no comprehension of its actions is discarded in favor of making it purely monstrous. Here it is a type of vampire with an insatiable thirst, practically a physical manifestation of the worst of winter itself. Some tales acknowledge both variants, suggesting a pylidaigh's violent attempts to warm itself may be initially devoid of malice, but turns into an act of furious jealousy of the warmth of the living after years of suffering.

The only (more or less) surefire method to permanently kill a roaming pylidaigh involves trapping it with fire. They are attracted to any source of heat, and will attempt to warm themselves with the flames (if not tempted away by a juicy living human body). The fire itself cannot kill them (as the sheer cold of their body is more powerful even than flame) but they can be trapped if kept near the fire long enough for the snow it depends upon to melt. This does not kill the pylidaigh either. The monster will remain in stuck in place (and potentially become a threat again if it snows more) for the duration of the winter. Only when the spring comes and all the snow melts does it revert into a normal human carcass (though mysteriously invulnerable to decay), at which point it can be cremated.

Pylidaigh in the wilds also revert to a human corpse during the snowless seasons, but will roam again each following winter unless it is burnt in the interim. It is of critical importance that any human corpse found in high mountain pasture is cremated- not only out of respect for the poor soul trapped as an earthbound ghost, but to prevent the threat of the possible dormant pylidaigh emerging next winter.

[pinetreespants]

I looted some closets! Original idea goes to @jollierot!!

They put their lamb in different outfits and haddddd to jump on that! It was so fun (Y'all... Excuse me if I misspelled anything I'm dyslexic af)

outfits are as follows: @runningwithscizzorz , (I forgot the bell and actually turned my computer back on. You deserve better king.) @unwri-ten , @aychama , and @xmajordumps. Yall have some BEAUTIFUL OUTFITS !

uhhhh pics with out my unnecessary ass comments under the cut LMAOOO

(its 430am)

[crabsnpersimmons]

exam 5 for me... tomorrow!

honestly have been feeling really nervous for this exam since my classmates have either failed it or just barely passed. and i had less time to study this time around because i rushed to book the exam.

so i drew this little encouragement early cuz i need the reminder that no matter what happens tomorrow, i did what i could and i didn't compromise on my boundaries—and that is its own victory.

and i hope that you'll be reminded to celebrate your own big and small victories too!

"You are nervous and that's okay! You did your best! You set boundaries! You took breaks! We're so proud of you, Starlight! Whatever happens, we'll always be here, cheering you on!"

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Riz has counted four casseroles this week alone. Five, if one goes by the method of cooking, but Yelen's scary when she's crossed, and calling her burek by its proper name is important to her, so Riz does her the courtesy and doesn't include it in his mental tally.

He holds the tupperware over his head to keep it out if the way as he takes careful steps over the piles of notes in his path. The dockman case just closed, relevant documentations handed over to relevant personnels, evidences dealt with as needed; all he has lying around now is just record of the process and traces of himself thinking through it. Unsurprisingly they still haven't invented a surface more convenient for people under five feet who like to pace to put pieces of paper on than the ground.

Actual records go into the case folder with the other documents. Anything else with at least one side still blank is going to the school kids in the block - they chew through an astounding amount of paper just learning arithmetic. The rest is for the recycling basket.

Later. It's his mandated lunch break right now.

Riz sits down in front of the corner file cabinet. In an office often overrun with papers and strings and sometimes even thumbtacks, he's never really managed to clutter up this exact square of surface like every other ones. Ever since the bottom drawer rattled for no discernible reason a day long past, his eyes have always just kinda decided to slide across the space without acknowledging it.

It's years out, now. Riz doesn't know why he thought it such a big deal anymore, back then. He wasn't scared, he doesn't think. Not anymore. Maybe just uncomfortable with the idea that certain things persist despite all efforts to change.

He opens the tupperware. Dame Carabelle's experiment greets him with enough spice in the aroma alone to knock out a small mammal. When he chopped the vegetables for this casserole he couldn't really imagine the eventual heft of it, evident even through just these few ladles' worth, maybe weighing heavier for being still warm. His folk eat more through the smell and the textures and the aftertastes than the taste itself. His folk's meal is really the cooking rather than the eating. The eating is the meal's end.

"Hey," he tells the file cabinet's bottom drawer. "Um."

It's the anniversary. Riz doesn't know the exact date of his dad's death; nobody currently alive does. He and Mom both use the date of the funeral, though as he moved out to Bastion and then got more directly involved with Interplanar he hasn't really been going to Dad's grave as much. Doesn't seem like very efficient use of his time, catching a train or borrowing a car or spending a whole spell slot on going somewhere he knows Dad isn't at. They're sorta coworkers now. They talk on and off every other week between missions. When he goes now, it's just to clean up the place, keeping the landmark tidy and respectable.

Without that work to mark the date he doesn't really know what it serves anymore. But he still remembers it. Still takes note, absently or not, when it comes around.

There's not really a good way to tell the drawer that. Riz looks for another way to start the... conversation, hopefully. The question at play, he'd guess, is why he's doing this. He's been pretty content ignoring all the rattlings and the knocks from inside and the times it sits slightly ajar without him ever opening it himself; hell, he still uses the three drawers on top of it. Space is fucking precious in Bastion.

Precious enough to finally fix this damn drawer so he gets his turn to use it? Riz asks himself. Is that what we're getting to? Then he dismisses the thought - he didn't manage to fix it the times he actually tried, let alone-- now. When he doesn't really care that much to.

That's probably a good place to start. "'s fine if you keep being in there, turns out," Riz says.

The lunch hours are quiet in the block, sleepy and bright with the brief window of sunlight that manages to break through roof overhangs and extended balconies and laundry lines and climbing vines. Riz's work isn't loud here (the loud parts happen away from his office, if everything goes right), but the fragment of early summer heat reflected in the steady warmth his meal still carries compels him to lower his voice even more. It makes the words feel intimate, in a way he's never been familiar with - if he says something he just says it. He doesn't whisper. If he gives his friends something, he gives it open-palm. He's found out, along the way, that people usually don't think of rituals and courtesies the way he does.

Small voice for a diminished monster. "You know why I think so?" Riz asks. "Because almost two decades ago you kidnapped me and almost killed me, and now you rattle a drawer in my office."

It doesn't sound as much like a taunt as Riz wanted it to; the drawer has made a lot of noises again this morning when he checked the calendar, and he was definitely annoyed at it. Now, though, facing it like this after cooking the whole morning with more grandparents and peers from the block than he can count on both hands to cater for a tenant union meeting, he thinks the annoyance has morphed. Changed shape.

It has the shades of something like pity. Riz is not prone to pity, and especially not at these kinda matters. It's slightly maddening that he coheres perfectly outside of this one spot. That he commands his spaces, except for a drawer.

He puts the tupperware onto the floor between himself and the cabinet. "I know we're aware it's the anniversary," he says at the drawer. "You do this every year. You make a ruckus every time I decide to go do my job instead of mooching off my friends' aircon, and every time I get an invitation to some stupid social thing I want to turn down, and every time one of the old people tries to introduce me to a child or a nibling, because being a bachelor over thirty is weird," he pinches the bridge of his nose. "I have three fucking jobs. I love doing my fucking jobs. I'm forcing funds into infrastructures. You're never leaving, are you."

The drawer vibrates lightly. It's a very, very mild acknowledgement, considering the history of reactions Riz has gotten from this thing. Riz thinks it's emanating joyous agreement, or satisfaction.

It only sharpens the pity. Riz doesn't like that, but it's how it is. That's, ultimately, the lesson he's been taught over and over and over again, just by existing as himself, turned every which way by space after space that don't see him eye-to-eye: it's not like he'd quit living over any of it. It's not like any of it can sand off these fundamental pieces of him.

He's outgrown a lot of things, he's found out. Again, and again, and again. A childhood home, a yearly trip, a monster.

"'s probably scary for you, huh?" He asks. "Because I left."

He thinks he hears joints creak that sound like you did. Probably the way a scorned lover would say it, in a movie or a yellowback. He has no more connection to the idea than he did as a kid. Less, because it doesn't even scare him.

"That's what it is, right? That it's the anniversary, and I'll never be like Dad." He raises a knee from the floor, pulls it back closer to him. Slings an arm over it. "You love to remind me. The thing is, Dad also left. He loved Mom and he loved me, and none of us wanted it to happen, but it still did. Because love does fuckall to make anyone stay on its own."

He's long past being bitter about it. It's just the facts. Once upon a time he looked into the future and the specter of his friends' happily-ever-after casted lightless, fathomless shadow over him. Love, marriage, that kind of devotion, to a fifteen-year-old with more solved cases than friends seemed so eternal. Final.

But you can only watch your friends build up apps' worth of jilted lovers for so long before getting over it.

"You know what I learned?" Riz tells the drawer. "Love doesn't make anyone stay. Project management does."

He stands up, and picks up the tupperware of Dame Carabelle's casserole, that he helped make, that he helped share with a block's worth of neighbors and members of a community he's at home with, and goes sit at his desk to eat. "Last chance to get any," he drops an offer over his shoulder as he walks away.

He doesn't eat all of his share in one go. What he's spared he leaves on the desk when going outside for a smoke break. Baron looks the exact same as when he saw them last, when he catches a glimpse; they haven't grown at all. They aren't there when he comes back inside, but the leftover has gone days-old cold, like someone's sucked the future out of it.

[a-s-levynn]

"Wash me clean again before I pull myself beneath the waves" A Series of Small Offerings - III/11 - day31

[wereh0gz]

Been thinking abt corrupted au again. I'm unwell

Anyways. I think corrupted!Sonic would struggle with dissociation. He has a lot of moments where he feels unreal, untethered from his body. Watching but not feeling

Some of Sonic's idle dialogue in Frontiers implies he may have been dissociating a bit while he was working to save his friends. "I know I'm moving... I can't feel it" and "I'm so cold now... numb" specifically come to mind, though you could also attribute these to physical exhaustion. I like to think it's a bit of both

But corrupted!Sonic continues to have these episodes even after everything that happened in the Starfall Islands has passed, mostly due to what remains of the cyber corruption in him

He's completely silent in that state (not like he talks much to begin with after getting amnesia, but he's noticeably quieter) and mostly unresponsive. Sometimes he'll stay right where he is, spaced out. Other times he'll run off, his body basically going on autopilot and wandering to places that were once familiar. It might even happen while he's doing something else, and he won't remember having done it when he comes to

Aside from the more severe dissociative episodes though, he also feels generally disconnected from his body. It feels unfamiliar now, and he often finds himself trying to make himself smaller because that's how he remembers being. But having grown and changed so much makes that hard. Not even curling up into a ball feels the same now. He has to get used to being a teenager all over again

[hana-bobo-finch]

a strange trend in my favorite characters I realize is that I tend to heavily gravitate toward somewhat obscure, antagonistic forces

[faaun]

idk how to live so im going to talk to myself out loud until i do

[mita-vittua-olivia]

i was just thinking of how he picked out that picture from his gallery and typed in the emojis before changing the angle and placing them where he wants to have them and i found this so cute that i got emotional about it

[realmikedirnt]

going to experiment with putting these under a cut ? and if it doesnt spark joy it'll go back to uncut, they're all tagged so /shrug

w's for yesterday: i got mary ellen's water pump and serpentine belt back on myself, and they seem to be holding up wonderfully

managed to make it to class on time despite it all

helped a classmate understand how to balance chemical equations

felt like i contributed well to class & lab

killed the ender dragon with rng

hung out with raid friends and we actually got a pretty rare drop for one person who had been fishing for it - we were all so worn out that we barely celebrated at all, but it was still a nice time !

w's for today: first week of classes done !

all of my english work for the weekend is done

figured out what the code mary ellen has been throwing is - still the evap leak, which IS a problem, but it's not a "engine blowing up" problem, so i'll do some diag on it the next time i get a chance. the light just kinda goes on and off whenever she thinks it's too big of a problem, and i suspect it's the cap, so

spent some nice time with the rng crew

[dailyautophagy]

I can’t imagine being so young I need an audience to feel real

[phagodyke]

okay is it actually my new meds making me feel shit or is it me choosing to listen to sufjan stevens before 7am on a work day. 😶‍🌫️

[jovieinramshackle]

Everyone making OB designs for their ocs only makes me think "Jovie would over blot on purpose ngl" and it started as a joke but now I'm actually thinking about it and it scares me

[musical-chick-13]

When the characters are so stubborn and Extra™ that it takes you seven-hundred words to write them walking into a fucking room.

[gothsuguru]

getting an iced pumpkin chai in the morning and then my personal goal is to spend the whole day writing and i hope i can come back to this post tomorrow and rb w how much progress i’ve made!!!

[nobodybetterlookatme]

Here's your reminder to post an update!

Okay I'm finally alive enough and have the time to get into it lmao under the cut just bc it's not particularly exciting and I'm briefly summarizing

So I went to my ranch hand job yesterday bc there was literally nobody else working, was kinda overwhelmed bc there were way more visitors than I was expecting and I was trying to stay the hell away from other people, but I was getting through it. But then I saw the creep ass coworker pull up so I locked myself in the barn before he could see me and sent out a desperate sos to literally all of my other coworkers bc I panicked lmao. So two of the guys from my fire station and my medic partner ended up coming to rescue me, and another one of them called me while I was there alone, so we love to see that. So they all stuck around and helped out until that creepy mfer left, then we all got food and hung out outside, I got made fun of for like ninety minutes straight for being diseased 😔

One of them left once we decided to change locations, we went to some park nearby to loiter, hung out there for a couple hours on the swings bc we're children, another one of the guys left so then it was just me and my partner. I got talked into hanging out in the car with him for a bit bc it was cold as hell outside and I ended up falling asleep?? Like girl help 😭 but when I woke up we went to get drinks and snacks so that was cool. Got my car and went home a while after that tho bc I was tired and dying lmao. Not really anything interesting but it felt like so much and I was being a gross wreck the whole time lmao