#oooh it is happening

[vaguely-concerned]

huh. you know something I just consciously put together for the first time about caterina and lucanis' relationship is that through the game we get to hear them talk about each other a lot, but we get very few chances to hear them speak with each other at any length at all. contrast it with other companions whose storylines have elements of 'believed lost/long time no see relative returns!' like bellara and davrin, where we get to see both of them have several pretty in-depth conversations with cyrian and eldrin. hell I think even rook talks with varric longer in the regret prison scene than we ever get to see lucanis and caterina interact directly.

(and when we do see them interact, it's mostly one-sided -- it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, caterina who is doing most of the talking and giving all the orders, as he ruefully observes is her wont after murder of crows. including jumpscaring him with 'you're first talon now btw' and the shocked pikachu face in five acts he goes through in response lmao. perhaps it's more accurate to say that she talks at him and he reacts, than that they talk to each other much.)

it has such an interesting effect too, because in deliberately denying us direct insight or experience and only having this mosaic of description from each of them to go on, as well as forcing us to pay attention to the negative space of what is carefully not said, it's evocative along the same principle that you never actually show the monster in a horror film. if you've read the wigmaker job you have a clearer image of the more uh. worrying elements at play here going in, but there is something fascinatingly insidious and naturalistic in the way it's 'hushed up' in the game itself. she has his complete loyalty both as a member of her house and, more importantly, that of an abused child to a parent figure. he readily admits several times that she's a difficult person to live with, an even more difficult person to be loved by ("even for me. and I was her favourite")... but never once does he actively blame her nor truly conceptualize that he has every right to do so (that he can be angry with her and still love her, because whether he should or not he unavoidably does), or that she might have acted differently than she did, that she made a choice every time to hurt him. even affectionately he speaks of her as a force of nature, an act of god -- something that can't be reasoned or pleaded with or resisted, something you can only hope to navigate with as little pain as possible and pray to survive. let yourself get carried away by the riptide, resisting it will only make it worse. you don't compromise with a hurricane, you just try to find the best shelter you can and cross your fingers while you wait for it to pass and be calm again.

love is that hurricane. you do whatever she asks. you earn her continued affection day by day by never letting her down. you only want the things she tells you it's okay to want and cut everything else away preemptively. ("A wyvern tooth dagger?? I loved wyverns as a boy --Caterina would never let me have one of these, though." and as we have all wept and gnashed our teeth over, it never even OCCURS to him that he's a like thirty-five year old adult man who can buy himself any dagger he wants at any time. she said he couldn't have one. so he'll never have one. that's just how it works. and maybe if Illario could just accept that and find his peace with it like I have, this whole thing wouldn't be so difficult. oh lucanis.)

such is the price -- and the cost -- of being loved by her, it's a loan on which the interest will never stop piling up. you have to keep paying it down in perfection every day if you want to keep it. who got the worse deal there: the grandson who has abandoned everything else in life to live up to that and mostly succeeded, until the day he's so burned out and broken it threatens to no longer be an option, or the grandson who can never seem to scrape together enough worth in her eyes no matter how he begs, borrows or steals it, how he hustles and plays dirty?

one of the worst things that can happen to anyone is to be loved by a selfish god. another one of the worst things that can ever happen to anyone is to not be loved by a selfish god. (hope that helps, boys!) even in betraying everything else, Illario can't bring himself to hurt his grandmother, because that would defeat the whole point. who would he defiantly be proving himself worthy to, without her. in love, devotion, submission, hatred, frustration, bitterness, everything is defined in relation to her, you can spot the gravitational force of it through how the dellamorte family move through time and space. she -- her love and regard and attention -- is still the sun both of their worlds orbit around, even as adults. the game might never tell you outright 'she used to beat and starve them growing up. for their own good you see, so they'd be strong (and broken down enough for her to build them up again however she wanted but I'm sure that's incidental)', but if you know even a little bit about how these dynamics can work the writing is on the wall everywhere you look and all the more unsettling for it.

follow lucanis' freeze-logic and fraught interpersonal catch 22 irreconcilable mixed emotions problems back far enough, looong before the ossuary entered the picture, and you start to see caterina's ghost around every fucking corner. she is so proud of him. (well, she would be. she made him. she forged exactly the knife she needed and it rests willingly, devotedly, in her hands, it would return to her every time because it doesn't know love as anything but to be a knife. his tama never taught him how to be anything else. his biggest fear with her is that she won't even want him back, the way he is now.) to the best ability of her soul, whatever parts of it survived a lifetime of crow politics and 'five children, eight grandchildren, only Illario and me left now', I think she really does loves him. he certainly loves her, with all the sincerity and artless desperation of a child, of the little boy he was once. and what she's done to him (and to illario, for all his shitty gremlin scar-ass antics lol) is awful. the harm is real, and the love is real, and trying to find a way for these two truths to exist in the same space is driving all three of them their own individualized forms of insane. you know. the way only family can and so often does lol.

through implications and short glimpses and having to put the pieces together yourself, you can have the feeling that there is very genuine mutual love and attachment in this relationship... and that beneath that there is something so profoundly wrong. and the sneaking '...oh shit it gets worse the longer I think about it' horror of that is more effective for me at least than the stark in-your-face presentation of the facts of the matter could have been. the love is here. the love is here. it only ever makes it worse.

[solidaritygaming-fanblog]

Do not let these two near each other. Oh my god the angst that would occur

[strange-aeons]

See him face :)

[witchkittymeow]

The best little man in the whole army

[riolone-moon]

Newbie Kunikida dealing with Ranpo for the first time

After read this part of "Kunikida and Katai's Brilliant Days" story many ideas popped up in my mind, especially Newbie Kunikida and his relationship w/ Ranpo, Yosano and Fukuzawa

Poor Kuni,  when he was a new agent member, definitely suffered a lot dealing with the Early Agency (AKA Ranpo and Yosano)

However, for sure that he had funny and good moments :)

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

I fear there's simply no booktok-sensation enemies-to-lovers novel that will even come close to whatever the fuck napoleon and illya were doing in the man from uncle

[yikesharringrove]

He doesn't talk anymore.

It was a jarring switch, and everyone still isn't used to Steve's persistent silence.

Because before, he was nearly as chatty as Dustin. Always trying to make the kids laugh, yelling at them and calling them shitheads (albeit lovingly).

He doesn't even laugh anymore.

His windpipe had been badly crushed by the demobat's tail wrapped snugly around his neck.

He had needed surgery.

Surgery that had only added to the lacerations and the keloid scars around on his neck.

And really, it's not that he can't talk.

He couldn't for awhile, and it still hurts sometimes.

But he doesn't fucking want to.

He has nothing left to say.

Because he had made peace with death.

Several times, actually. Throwing the burning bottles, being choked in a dried-out lake by a creature straight from his nightmares.

In fact, he had been mostly ready to venture into the sweet beyond since last summer.

His leg shook under the table, and he was staring at the silver ring on his thumb, spinning it around, and around.

He didn't really like when Robin left him alone at their donation table, she was much better at talking to the people that stopped by, bringing more clothes they didn't need, or coming to pick up something to replace what's been lost.

But Robin was doing her best to move on. Chatting up Vickie in some corner, somewhere.

A small cough got Steve's attention.

It was Susan. Hargrove. Mayfield? Did she go back to her previous name after her abusive husband left her with the corpse of his son?

"I found another box. I guess Maxine had been-" her eyes welled up, and Steve's hands stopped spinning the ring around his thumb. "Well, I think she kept some things of his."

Steve's hands shook as he stood up.

He knew Billy and Max had been much closer than they let on.

He knew Max missed Billy more than she could really express.

He opened the box.

Right on top.

It was that fucking jacket.

The brown leather one. The one that was older and softer, more worn than anything else Billy owned.

Because he loved it. Because he took care of it. Because it was his favorite.

And something in Steve broke a little, and he raised the jacket to his face, and he breathed in deeply. He didn't care who saw. He didn't care that Susan's face had gone pale and her tears had started falling for real.

"Oh."

He barely heard her voice over the blood rushing in his ears, the smell and the memories and don't fucking cry, Steven!

Susan closed the box up carefully. Steve finally lowered the jacket.

"I can put this in your car. So you can keep them. You deserve to-" she glanced down at his hands, and the silver ring, tarnished and glinting on his thumb. "keep them."

Steve brought his hand up to his wobbling chin, touching his fingertips gently under his lip, bringing his hand back down, palm up.

Thank you.

He hoped she got it. Understood the way she understood his tears.

She took his hand briefly.

"I wish we had met differently. I wish-well. I'm sure you wish the same thing."

Steve nodded. His leg had started shaking again, making his whole body tremble. He felt unsteady on his feet.

He fished his keys out of his pocket, handing them to Susan so she could take the box and tuck it in his trunk.

"You take care, then. You, you remember him well."

Steve nodded again, hot tears dripping off his chin.

Yes, ma'am. He wanted to say. I'll never forget him.

But,

he doesn't talk anymore.

[mcytblrconfessions]

my favourite experience of this blog has got to be reading that one ask about how jack manifold is trans, with the comments debating whether that’s wrong to speculate about, just to tune into twitch.tv the next day and watch finnster forcefem him without remorse. finn isn’t truthing he’s fucking real-ing. realisation of dreams. now etho fans should take notes and pay etho to become a jehovas witness to make their theories come tru

[legendweaver]

The home is cold, Your fire will drown. Three hearts are left undone, And one heart bleeds alone.

For @traumas-tmntober-2024 Day 30 Pictures on the Walls

3/5

1 - 2 - 3 - next

[wasabi-gumdrop]

working on some character designs for neon glory 🤭

[hatchers-hoard]

good lord. fanfic did not adequatley prepare me for just how buck wild the svsss extras are

[obsessedwhyyes]

Last Line Game

We're back again with another last line! Thank you so much to @khywren and @pinkberrytea for tagging me! You are both amazing, and your snippets are fantastic!

True to form, the last lines I wrote are exceedingly mysterious out of context. But I'm playing by the rules, so this is what you're getting! A Tale of Fools and Tricksters, chapter 3, is on the way soon!

Push, pull. Back, forth. Trapped between the devil and damnation. It's enough to make one tear themselves in two.

No Pressure Tags (especially as some of you have done this recently!): @xxnashiraxx @nerdallwritey @caffeinatedmunchkin @verbenaa @zozoparsnips @lanafofana @nyx-knox

[hanzajesthanza]

the training montage in crossroads re-ignited a headcanon i had of geralt waking up and doing gymnastics, performing kickflips and mid-air spins around on a fencepost outside an hour before sunrise to ‘limber up,’ and bleary-eyed dandelion wrapping himself up in a blanket to be like "heyyy... what the hell are you doing 💖"

[corgiteatime]

Me hyped during the latest episode of Demon Slayer because the transition to the next story arc was cool as hell:

Me, having read the manga, knowing what's to come:

[bibuckagenda]

Buddie fic where in an ambiguous earlier season (before bucktaylor?) Eddie is hanging out in his kitchen while he watches Buck cook. They’re having a good time, laughing together, when something sparks an unease in Eddie. A phone call? a visitor? A comment he just remembered? That makes him feel like he’s taking advantage of Buck by always letting him cook for them. That maybe it might be nice if Eddie actually learned to cook a dish or two to better balance their dynamic.

And he obviously thinks about going to Bobby or his abuela, but he can feel his chest tighten in embarrassment and Eddie doesn’t like the feeling nor does he want to examine why he felt too seen when he thought of going to the people he cares about, so he signs himself up for some beginner cooking lessons.

He tells no one and he feels incredibly uncomfortable when the entire class is filled with older women (think 50-60s). He’s incredulous at first because all of these women seem to know more than the basics and they spend a lot of the class gossiping about people he doesn’t know. He doesn’t mean to get sucked into the drama, he’s here to learn to cook!, but then Debra mentions her daughter getting into a fight in a Denny’s parking lot and Eddie feels like he’s listening to a bad telenovela and he can’t stop himself from opening his mouth and piping up with his thoughts.

At first he’s terrified as the entire group looks at him, but then Colleen, Midwest accent and one of the more sarcastic women, nods at him and goes on about how he’s right.

Soon Eddie gets dragged into this group and while he does learn some things about cooking, he realizes that he made friends. With people he doesn’t work with!

Eventually why he was there gets brought up and he gets clocked as being in love with Buck so fast that his head spins. He wants to freak out about it, but Georgia pats his hand and smirks at him before asking if his Buck is handsome. The others all cackle when he blushes, but after they see a picture of Buck after a work out and one with him cuddling Chris, all they can do is gush at Eddie.

He loves it. He won’t ever admit it, but he loves it.

So he spends two nights every week learning what a ragù is and teaming up with Paula in an attempt to convince Pam that she’d spent two decades too many on her deadbeat husband.

(And if Buck is surprised when Eddie cooks them pasta on a rare night Chris is with his abuela, and he blushes a pretty pink color that leaves Eddie lightheaded, well that just means he has something to tell The Girls tomorrow evening in between making pie dough and trying to get Lottie to admit she thinks Mr. Harris, her upstairs neighbor, is handsome.)

[centaur-dreaming]

Ok ok ramble theory time

Okay so what if Fyodor comes back and Dazai is like fuck I can’t do this I can’t beat him again because Dazai is actually so human and Fyodor literally isn’t

So he has to break himself to beat him. Disregard his morals. Become corrupt. No longer human.

BUT bc of the skk fighting dynamic in that Dazai is there for Chuuya when Chuuya is “corrupt”, THIS TIME Chuuya is there for Dazai who has to become corrupt in order to defeat Fyodor once and for all.

idkidkidk it just came to me lmfaooooo anyway (and creds to @starlightshadowsworld for sparking this theory)