#ramshackle odessa

[small-world-au]

WAIT WAIT QUESTION!! DID ODESSA JUST POP OUT TO SORA AND STONE LOKE THIS

Maggot literally looked at them and said:

“Aye, I know I said that I hope you didn’t reproduce, but here’s a baby!” :3

[cherrythepuppet]

Pine Point doodles. Drew my Mutuals OC, Nadia, who belongs to @sugarpuffzsstuff for the first time along with Dimitri

Also THEATERFISH THEATERFISH THEATERFISH

Charlie and Reese doodles

Mob Penny and for the first time, I drew Mob Wally

A tea party that just makes me think of Revenge party from mean girls

Odessa (Hope I spelled that right!) Belongs to @dmr-au and Olive (I drew them from memory! Sorry if it's wrong!!) Belongs to @averagetmntfan and @ask-olive-huchers

[small-world-au]

That be adorable as hell!!! Am add that to the lore!!!!

Did you know Zaria was the one who named Dessie???

OH SHIT FR???

That’s so fucking adorable ngl. I kinda want to name her mothers mom Odessa so that way Zaria knows of the name and since this grandmother is nice (and I’m gonna be fr, probably dead by then) she decided to name Dessie after her. Up to you, though

[austerulous]

◈ @spec08: ❛ There is a scurry before he makes the high hop onto the table, his feet stretching upwards to give him the maximum height that he is allowed. There are a series of squeaks to get her attention before he holds up what appears to be a precious gem. The light catches it in such a way that it sparkles obnoxiously and the creature seems very pleased with himself that he found it for her. After a moment the mechanical voice explains, 'He has found this while digging in your dirt gardens. He wants to know if you have been looking for it?' // For Dez ❜

Garish metal music shrieked into Odessa’s ruined ears as she tinkered, the table before her strewn with mechanical parts, with tools both scavenged and makeshift.  It took a moment for Hammond’s triumphant, high-pitched squeaks to bleed past the cushions of her headset, to pierce the whine of her tinnitus and pull her attention.  Realising she had company, the Junker Queen freed her ears, just in time to hear the mechanical voice speak.  Hammond’s intellect and creativity were unparalleled, his mastery of mechanics and engineering far surpassing her own.  He was a formidable force on the battlefield and beyond – and he was her friend, the closest thing she had to family.  His company was always welcome.

“Aw, Champ, I’d wondered where that got to!”

Gold always held its value.  Her father had told her that, long ago.  Currency weathered storms unseen, its worth in a constant state of flux.  But gold?  It was a finite resource, like the drab people of this ramshackle settlement, like the Omnics that assaulted it.  Next to gold, gemstones.  Traditional wealth might hold little weight in a post-apocalyptic society built on bartering and trade, yet Odessa still lined the coffers, a shining reservoir that someday might find use.

Proffered in Hammond’s pink grasp was a missing piece, a sapphire that had traded the cloister of the earth’s heart-roots for a royal pocket.  Delighted, Odessa took it from him.  It was a perfect size for turning over absentmindedly in hand, its smooth surface one of lustrous shine.  Like blue fire, like the violent, artificial hue of her hair.  There was a coast, far beyond the polluted horizon, where she imagined there were lagoons and deep waters of this same brilliant shade. 

“Finder keepers, ain’t that part of my decree?”

As though hoping to add to its already dazzling shine, she rubbed it on her dirty shirt.  Given that her clothes were dull with dirt, grease, sweat, the gemstone likely suffered from the polishing.  Grinning crookedly, her scars and war paint twisting, she held it back out to Hammond.

“It’s all yours, mate.”

[luxmaeastra]

Odessa stared up at the temple, the bones seemed to whisper and hiss the sins of the people. The convicts allowed one last chance to confess, to be deemed and measured by The Sin-Eater.

She was lead to the altar, the cup made of the bones and blood of Asteri and Valg. The blood of Melisandre The Holy swirled in the cup. She raised her chin as she knelt before it.

She repeated the words the priests asked of her.

She would fight for her empire.

She would avenge the Taken and Broken.

She would kill in the name of the Holy Truth.

She would not rest till she took back what the Others stole.

She will become worthy of laying her bones among the Sin Eater's most revered.

She will be another sword in the Sin Eater's arsenal. She would cut the lies down till only the Holy Truth remained.

The grail was tipped along her lips. The metal tang went down her throat as sweet as wine. She felt it warm her, slipping in the tiny places that her doubt lived.

She got to her feet, her Kindred had taken the oaths. He stepped with her to the altar cutting their hands to add their blood to the Grail.

Weapons slowly formed from the bones of the Holy. Their blades covered in runes of swiftness and sharpness.

They would not miss, they would not falter.

--------

The Martax's body was heavy but that wasn't why they'd stopped in this village. Ambrose needed healing, even with his heritage and conversion into one of them it wasn't enough. The magic would settle in time, the Sin Eater will welcome him soon. Once he'd sacrifed his own blood. Once he had proven himself and brought back the bones to add to it's temple.

Odessa sighed and pushed off the fountain turning from the pitiful market. She moved down the rows of the ramshackle houses and to the safe houses far past the village's -

She turned her arrow notched and locked onto the other. A young girl but she knew not to trust her own senses - not this close to their territory.

"Following me?"

//for Feyre!!!!//

The distant branches of her father's family were a mystery, one she had always wanted to know more about. Of course, she knew her grandparents, yet she seemed to have been kept away from her great-grandparents, her great uncles and great aunts. It was always curious why, why her father didn't like to talk more about them.

Lorin did though, she had shared what she knew from her youth and made sure that Feyre knew her family. Maybe that was why she was interested in the female she saw, had she not seen her with her great uncle Ambrose?

Feyre stopped with a start when the arrow was drawn, her hands quickly rose as she frowned. She should have brought her own.

"I didn't mean to...it's just...I never got to know my uncle and I saw you with him."

[sakuramidnight15]

-TW OC Information-

[Gacha Club Ver. Below]

Character Bio

Name: Kiara Winston

(Japanese: キアラウィンストン)

Romaji: Kiarau~insuton

Qoute: "Please don't interfere with my personal space... Unless you're going to drown."

V/A: Inori Minase (Japanese)

Michelle Ruff (English)

Gender: Female

Age: 16

Birthday: August 20

Star Sign: Leo

Eye Color: Sky Blue (Normal Eye Color)

Light Yellow (Second Eye Color and Half-Myth power activation)

Dark Wine Purple (Yandere Eye Color and Spirit Reaper power activation)

Hair Color: Carolina Blue

Height: 159 cm

Race: Half Human, Half Myth/Hybrid

Species: Siren

Homeland: Crystalsle Village (The fifth country of the Island of Enchantment)

Family: Kaiser Winston (Father)

Odessa Martinez (Mother)

Annalise Winston (Aunt)

Remington Martinez (Uncle)

Marcus Martinez (Cousin)

Valencia Winston (Cousin)

??? (Unknown Relative)

___________________________

School Status and Fun Fact

Dorm: Ramshackle

School Year: First

Class: A-1

Student no. 17 (A transferred student)

Occupation: Student

Heiress to the Winston Family (Currently in training)

Supervisor/Prefect

Master Willa's Apprentice

Detective/Investigator of SIDC (Meaning: Supernaturals Investigation Department Center)

Club: N/A

Best Subjects: History and Math

Dominant Hand: Right

Favorite Color: Blue, White, Black and Purple

Favorite Food: White Chocolate, Desserts, Japanese Food, Spicy Pork, Curry, and Fried Rice

Least Favorite Food: Any food that is tasteless, Bittersweets, Soy Sauce, Wasabi, Squid Rings, Salty Food, Unflavored Chocolate, Grapefruit (she's allergic to it),

Likes: Her family, protecting her family's treasure, her friends, singing and dancing, playing any kind of instruments, reading novels or comics, writing songs, training, punishing anyone who messed with her bedside, pillow designs, getting revenge, tea time, White lilies, sleeping in her bedroom, her scythe, funny scenes, performing in the monstro lounge, swimming in the ocean at night time, star-gazing,

Dislikes: Being scolded by her mentor or her cousins, loud noises, the chaotic trio's madness, relying into her luck, her past, her ex-fiance, making her father angry (In monster mode, that is, she's actually scared), gets punished by her mentor, getting into another survival game, the mastermind (former and current), her workload increases, getting caged or chained up, being called as a 'Guy Magnet, being called as a spoiled brat, Grapefruit (she's allergic to it),

Hobbies: Swimming in the water (either the ocean or the pool water, mostly), fast writing, good memorizing, cooking or baking, sewing, knitting, reading novels, sign language, foiling her opponents plans (mostly),

Talents: Hearing small things or thoughts, Going to the person's location by telaporting, luring people with her voice, crystal making, one verses a hundred challenge, stealth master, summoning random objects or weapons, transforming into three of her forms, performing a bounded spell or special skill, yandere skills/abilities (if she's in yandere mode), Detective/Investigator abilities, Intelligence, Voice hypnotizing abilities, water abilities,

Nicknames: Kia, Kia-san and Kia-chan (From her friends and family and mostly her best friend Amelia and her archenemy Lynette)

Young Pearlet (From Master Willa)

Milady or My Mistress (From her two pet sea serpents, Rosa and Kin)

Victim 8 or Number 8 (From Esther and the Mastermind)

Big Sis Kia (From Lenny)

Winston-san (From Others)

Miss Winston (From Crowley and the Staff, and the SIDC Workers)

Henchmen or Slave (From Grim)

Siren (From Leona)

Ki-chan (From Floyd)

Kiara-chan (From Kalim, Epel and Othro)

Madame (From Vil)

Perle de l'océan ("Meaning: Ocean Pearl" From Rook)

Other Nicknames:

Lady Kiara or Milady (From the servants)

The Poison Water (By the rumors)

The Purple Poison-eyed/Reaper (By the rumors)

___________________________

Appearance and Personality

Appearance: Kiara has a slender female body build with pale white skin which they can turn into pastel glitter blue when turns into her siren form, she had Sky Blue eyes which they can turn into light yellow if she gets angry or dark wine purple if she snapped into yandere mode, she had long straight caroline blue hair that reaches to her back and it's less wavy and it is tied with a white hair ribbon. Her appearance looks like a vulnerable and quite 16-year-old but when no one is looking closely, she will easily lose her composure if anyone messed with her personally. Do something at her loved ones and she'll drown you down in the ocean till you're out of air in your lungs or she was crush you like a lake demon from oblivion.

Personality: Kiara is the only daughter in her family and is the heiress to her family's name and business, she is the count's and countess's daughter. She tends to be quiet yet doesn't express much of her emotions and often helps other in her village. She somewhat caused a rivalry with Lynette and befriended Amelia during her past training at an abandoned island, with that helped, she now expresses more of her emotions and was no longer a quiet person, thanks to her rivalry with Lynette and befriending Amelia. In every normal contest or competition, Kiara and Lynette would always get into a tie or draw despite being equal level strength and power and Amelia would try to stop them for causing a ruckus.

If any contest involves with her cousins or her friends, she too won't lose to them at all, Like her rival Lynette and her friend Amelia, Kiara isn't a easy girl to be defeated if you battle her. But she's more violent and aggressive if she's in yandere mode.

But in some days, they would often argue or give death glares in public places, then it would turned into a cold brutal and deadly fight. (You don't wanna know, cause it's like a cold blooded battle) And so it's either both of their parents or their mentors would stop them from doing it. Which caused the two to get scolded for doing it when it goes too far.

Despite she's in a merfolk noble family, instead of being treated like true royalty like anyone else, she rather just wanted to live her life out instead of being spoiled rotten. Like helping the maids in other ways of the cleaning the manor, telling the cook to add some flavor in the food, and just walk to the mall by using her feet instead of using a car and etc. This makes her different from other nobles as well too

She finds it better than being called as a spoiled brat, that what she probably hates the most by others. But she doesn't spend much of her father's money but used her own money instead. When she's with her cousins, Marcus and Valencia, she gets pretty along with her two cousins, well mostly for Marcus. Because her cousin Valencia is currently away at an all-girls school for the time-being but Kiara and her family still kept in touch with her.

Her family runs a huge company business and her father is the head CEO, by the time Kiara and her cousins get older, either one of the three will inherit the family business but they hasn't decided on who though, which it will be decided when the time has come.

Like her rival Lynette, please don't mess with her badside okay? Cause if anyone messed with her or hurt her loved ones, she will push you off a cliff and let you drown in an ocean immediately, she has strong powers and she used them for only good deeds (Or used then to send death threats or warnings) her powers are based on an Ocean Siren. If they look at her eyes, they will get a feeling of getting drowned or getting choked by the neck.

If her eye turned light yellow, it means that she activates her ocean siren powers or get angry. But if they turned into dark wine purple or her own spirit reaper eyes, oh my, get ready to run away, cause she's lure you to the ocean to drown you like a real siren would do within a second!

She has a ocean siren form, a half-spirit reaper form and also a corpse bride form, only needed in battle.

Though Kiara doesn't take a liking towards harsh words from other people, though it's rare to see her cry though because they never see her cry before. But if she's scolded by her mentor or her cousins though, she'll pout like a baby.

But if she's scolded by her father though, she's terrified, a bit compared to Lynette's mom Celestia's anger, it's worse than her own poison attempts. (And I mean it! So scary indeed. Poor Kiara will shiver intensely and scream).

But if she's shattered by someone from her past or getting talk behind her back from others in the school in various ways, she will try to kill herself by drinking poison. But in some of those attempts, her mentor or her friends will try to stop her from doing it.

Like Lynette, she had a close relationship with a 'certain someone' alongside with her father and aunt, but them too had got bloodshed but Kiara's eyes were covered so that she didn't want that memory of them dying to haunt them.

This rather haunt Kiara in her sleep, alongside with Lynette. At some nights, she'll cry in her sleep in her bedroom alone.

Kiara is an expert learner and would sometimes overwork herself unlike Lynette, after she got transfered to NRC, she would see Lynette staying up late at night finishing her projects or assignments. At some moments she would place a blanket on her or use her magic to transfer her to bed right afterward.

Kiara is quite attractive since she's born as a noble merfolk. Due to her sky-like appearance and people thinks she's like her father and mother equally. Her cousin Marcus isn't quite protective of her though, but he was concerned of her safety but not in a worry way though.

For her cousin Valencia however, she's like a worry mother to her own child. She would always tell Kiara to be more careful right after she left, and still does it on video calls and phone calls as well. Valencia and Marcus are serving her as her assistants by the time she gets older.

But in addition to that, Kiara tends to sugar-coat or flirt with her words when it comes to boys who wanted to be ok her good-side. It's either she plays it nicely or ends up ruining them.

To Kiara's attraction towards guys, she rather finds it irritating and annoying. Because they would interfering in her personal space.

After her staying in the island for quite a while after Lynette and her mentor Master Wiz left, she decided to transfer herself to NRC to join her rival Lynette alongside with her crazy adventures to remember.

___________________________

Trivia

-The name Kiara means "light" or "clear" as a variation of the traditional Italian spelling of the name Chiara. While her surname Winston as a boy's name is pronounced WIN-stun. It is of Old English origin, and the meaning of Winston is "joyful stone".

-Kiara Inspired by a couple of characters, Ring Ring (From Pucca Series), Kirari Momobami (From Kakegurui), Megami Saikou (From Yandere Simulator) and Yuri Eilziabeth (From Beware of the Villainess novel/manga).

-She seems has a distrust towards men, but kept her distance at anyone who tried to get on her good side.

-She somewhat gain four men's love interests but got annoyed with them and was planning to reject them alongside with her cousin Valencia.

-She's one of victims in the 'Nine Deaths' rumors, she was killed by her ex-fiance because he had poisoned her drink causing her to collapse and was send to a hospital and received a six-week comatose alongside with Lynette. Sooner after, he was executed.

-As an Ocean Siren, she has a very long tail indeed but not a mermaid like, but a rather longer than an oarfish and a serpent though. Her form is quite beautiful indeed.

-It looks like she eats octopus legs, which Azul fears her already because if that.

-Like every merfolk, she doesn't want to come in contact with the water, if she did, then she would have transform into her siren form.

-She's allergic to grapefruit, if she drank a flavored juice from it or ate it. Then spots would have appeared on her face. Kiara has pills to cure it.

-Kiara has a mature and lady-like voice when speaking and still has it when snapped but in a louder tone. So that's why I chose Inori Minase to be her voice actor. Japanese female voice actor from a character named El-Melloi Archisorte Reines from an anime series called Lord El-Melloi II Sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note.

-In her half-myth, she tends to be canaviore when eating meat.

[small-world-au]

STORA’S ADOPTIVE/BIO KIDS: (oldest to youngest!)

Chris (adoptive)

Olive (adoptive)

Zaria (adoptive)

Scribble (adoptive)

Adi (adoptive)

Kipp (Bio???)

Odessa (Bio)

Ocs belong to @averagetmntfan @rebootgrimm @cherrythepuppet

Kipp and Odessa are mine only!

[cherrythepuppet]

Father daughter bonding. Odessa belongs to @dmr-au

Gram holding a sleepy Odessa. He's very confused on how to take care of kids but he's trying to stay completely still!

[rebootgrimm]

Zaria’s Opinions on Everyone

Everything can be changed and this will probably be updated frequently

Sora - Good! First person to become her father figure. She feels kind of at fault for what happened to him and has nightmares that sometimes have him dying in them

Bailey - Eh. Zaria doesn’t like him that much due to them defending Olive’s crimes.

Olive - Angry chihuahua. Zaria doesn’t like them due to stuff they did that’ll end up giving this post a (very necessary) trigger warning. The stories are on Olive’s profile.

Christopher - He’s okay??? She doesn’t know much about him, but he seems alright.

Maple - Zaria is severely in love with her lmao. She can still function around Maple but she’s very fucking gay lmao.

Adi - This poor innocent child. Zaria just wants to protect her from everything, she’s already traumatized enough.

Odessa - Zaria’s really only met her once, but she’s an alright kid! Zaria hopes she’ll be alright with her aunt’s recent death and that she can help Adi.

Jay - Used to be Zaria’s father figure, but now she fucking hates him.

Noelia - Fuck that bitch.

Gabriella - Zaria doesn’t know much about her since she died before she could know her, but she seems nice from the way people talk about her!

Shino - All she knows is that he put Sora in a wheelchair and that’s all she needs to know for her to hate him.

Natalia - Zaria doesn’t know enough to judge her, so she’s pretty neutral.

Rowena - Why did she have to betray her and everyone else like that? Why? Zaria still cares about them, but it’s hard.

Anya - Pretty neutral overall, but she seems nice! Anya helped Zaria that one time she went to the church after Jay’s death.

Quinn - Zaria knows her from Quinn working as a maid for Avrille and Stone’s parents. They get along really well!

Shayne - Zaria’s father. One of the worst people she’s ever known.

Sonya - Zaria’s mother. Another one of the worst people she’s ever known.

Velvette - She’s alright! Zaria finds it weird that she has a better father daughter relationship with Jay than she does, so it’s probably going to be awkward between the two for a while.

Luna - Neutral for now, Zaria doesn’t know all that much about her.

Daniel - He’s pretty chill. Neutral for now.

Avrille - Zaria hates her guts. Avrille seemed to always like Zaria as a friend but Zaria never liked her lmao.

Stone - Guess Zaria has a step-father figure now (or, it’s working to that anyways)

Skipp - She’s only met him once, but Skipp seems really nice.

Ditch - He’s okay. She doesn’t speak with him that often, but he’s always been pretty nice to her.

[velvialifestylesummit]

The deadlocking warfare of Ukraine seems to ubiquitously enrage the mutinous people amid the city upheavals in Moscow where Kremlin is to convince the local civilians through the platform of WWIII. In other words, the prolonging combats without foreseeable victory to capture the full territory of Ukraine shall trigger war referendum to impeach the military operations of Kremlin despite the upcoming military enlargement of NATO in Eastern Europe. It is the dilemma of credibility associated with the fruitless bombardments in advancing the military occupation in Odessa and the ramshackle occupation in Crimea. The failing mobilisation of advanced weaponry to tackle the first warzone of Russia and NATO resulted the unnecessary sacrifice of military troops including the massively demolished tanks and fighting helicopters and warships could trigger the loss of public confidence over the suicidal operations of Russia in deploying the expendable warships in Black Sea under the sinking attacks of NEPTUNE. Nevertheless the city of Moscow is full of chaos leading to the political implosion of Russia in 2022.It seems the war has subverted the actuality of Russia in facing the premeditated siege of NATO irrespective of the strained intrusion of Kremlin to attampt recapture the defunct hegemony of USSR in Ukraine.

[kireiryuusei]

Normally don’t think of the OC first but I had a urge when doing the first book of T.wisted W.onderland. And since I don’t have like...a set place to put this nor do I have anything else for it, I’ll place it here.

Odessa ‘Des’ Enkaiein wasn’t sure why she came to this world but has accepted that this is her life now. So might as well make the most of it. Which is what led to the whole taking on the Ramshackle Dorm, though she tends to call it Netherspell Haven. While it was a lot to take in, she rolled up her sleeves and got to work. (Even put the ghosts to work on fixing it up too)

While Crowley’s tasks gave her the start up, Des started taking up her own odds and ends business. Thaumarks are good and all but Des mainly has a different sort of request. Which is usually pictures for her. However it isn’t for an altruistic reason. See, when Crowley entrusted the camera to her and told her about the memories, she found another use. As he said, it is a part of the soul...and in the soul holds power. She cannot use magic but nothing about that said she can’t use magic from others, right? 

As such she tends to toss these into her alchemy to make viable potions that she keeps...somewhere. What about making the memories? Well, the pic is usually useless after the power is drained so win-win? But she doesn’t mention much about it and some think she just takes an enjoyment in the kind of pics she asks for, which she does. 

Des tends to work through her dilemma with sense, smart mouth and well, fists. For all the magic, she finds at least for normal days, just the strength and a little bit of brain will take her far. 

She alongside Ace and Deuce have the gained quite a reputation as the No-Spotters or the Decadents (both are jokes as Des’ name can sound like ‘deux’ so between her, Ace and Deuce their names are all low cards. Decadents is just because they’re rather irreverent and do as they will no matter what). While initially they didn’t like it (and will still take anyone that calls them that), it is something of an endearment with them over time. 

Miscellaneous:

Like Cater said, he took her phone shopping so she is on some of the apps

Has upped a stockpile of treats to bribe get the guys’ help. 

Her ‘icon’ is a question mark (from a combination of y’know MC shenanigans, some ‘desu ka’ joke I had, and the amnesiac stuff from the beginning).

She and Malleus have met in dreams but have not really talked about that as of yet. She once made a joke on if she should call him horny or ivory (in reference to if he’s real or not). Sticks to calling him ‘Baku-san’ (also a terrible joke from her) and later ‘Mal.’ 

Des does have a room set up Ace and Deuce for if they need to crash at her place. She says it’s so they don’t make a fool of themselves in her lounge but we all know why.

Leona isn’t fond of her because she like...challenges him and not in a fun way to him. Des knows she would lose to him if he took up the gauntlet but it’s the principle of the matter.

Shame that she is magicless because she understands the theory just fine and does well in imagining applications for spells.

There is a thought for if some way somehow there could be an overblot plot on her. It’d be either based on Chernabog or harken of classic black and white cartoons (not quite rubberhose though). 

[small-world-au]

“Eh, habits die hard.”

He said shrugging as Sora giggled, nodding along.

“AY ESTA LISTO LA COMIDA MIS AMORES!”, Natalia said as she emerge from the kitchen with a plate of flautas with black beans and rice.

Once dinner was ready, everyone sat down to eat.

“En nombre del padre, hijo, y espíritu, Amen! Ahora coman, si no es enfría la comida!”

After the quick prayer, they all started eating.

Howard then put on a record for them to listen while they ate.

Natalia stopped eating as she heard that familiar tune.

“Ooohhhh! I remember dat song!”, She said in broken English.

Howard smiled lovingly at Natalia.

“Indeed it is, my dearest friend. It’s the song that was played on your grand debut in broadway.”

He took her hand and kissed it.

“The day we both met.”

Natalia giggled and blushed, “hahaha! Ay Howard! Cuando me hablas así me haces sentir como si fuéramos jóvenes otra vez.”

He then gently pulled her from her seat and two began to dance.

The little girls said “ew!!!”, Rowan rolled their eyes, and Sora and Quinn sat there in awe of the scene unfold.

Rowan was walking back with medication for Sora until she bumped into Quinn

“UGH! Wtf does this happened all the time now?!!!”

He then faced Quinn and froze before saying anything rude.

“Quinn??? It that you??? You look…taller?”

Rowan? She typically would have doubted herself with this assumption, but run ins like this had become quite common. If she was right, Quinn was just as shocked as they were. She would have never expected to see her. What are you doing here?

(Wait how tall is Rowan? Cause Quinn is 6’1”, is she towering over him? Ngl I think that’d be pretty funny)

[austerulous]

◈   @chronal-anomaly said:   ❛ "You know, I understand why you guys have that opinion of Omnics. They tore apart my home too. Plenty of people back home would jump at anything to beat them down. But they're not all bad. And I think the world is due for some healing, yeah?" (For des!) ❜

Fortified, Junkertown rose ruinous and ramshackle from the debris, its creaking structure casting long, jagged shadows over the sand.  Queen Odessa was built with the same hard angles and razor edges, tendons tight beneath thick-clad muscle, standing through scarred skin.  Wax-slick hands hesitated, hovering at the crest of brilliant blue hair, midway through the task of styling it.

The mirror was mottled with age spots, cracked, coated in the same corrosive dust that clung to every surface.  Silver glass offered some distance as Odessa sought the agent out on its reflective surface, crimson burning into hazel.  Lena stood back-lit by neon glare, at odds with this bleak landscape.  She with her spring-heeled gait and birdsong burbling in her voice, she with her message of compassion, of healing  

Odessa thought of her fingertips jammed into her father’s throat, trying to plug the puncture in his artery as he drowned before her eyes.  His blood had still been caked beneath her nails the day they buried him in the irradiated dunes, their huddled silhouettes sickening with the heat, suffocating with the grief.  Odessa thought of her shrouded little sister, her baby brother, and how weightless they were in death.  Sand shifted with sun and wind, and she was no longer sure she knew the way back to those make-do grave markers, to where her long-buried kin turned to leather and bone.

Theirs was a stalled, sterile generation of humankind, and they would stand against that single cohort of so-called sentient Omnics. They had come too far and lost too much to the machines.  Healing was inconceivable.  Her own death, when it came, would be one of a thousand cuts.

“It’s too late for any of that feel-good shit.  This is a war of attrition, little bird, and I intend to win.”

[cutsliceddiced]

New top story from Time: A New Wave of Horror Films About Women’s Deepest Anxieties Is Perfect Viewing for Our Summer of Discontent

Even if most horror movies, until fairly recently, have been made by men, women are still central to their impact and meaning. What would King Kong have been without his tiny captive inamorata Fay Wray, or Frankenstein without Elsa Lanchester, his bewigged, wild-eyed bride? Sometimes women represent fragility and innocence in horror movies, symbols of purity worth saving; other times they’re sympathetic companions or spokespeople for misunderstood monsters.

But their allure goes further and deeper than that—especially when it’s women who are doing the looking. Today, the term “the male gaze” is thrown around more loosely than its originator, filmmaker and film theorist Laura Mulvey, intended. Even when there’s a man behind the camera, the lens doesn’t always simply cater to man’s desires. Women love watching other women; we identify, we admire, and sometimes we feel a frisson (or more) of desire. Other times we recoil, though that may only intensify our fascination. So what happens when women filmmakers take control of the horror genre themselves?

Women filmmakers have been making horror movies since, well, the beginning of movies—Alice Guy-Blaché and Lois Weber contributed to the genre early on. But what’s notable now is the growing number of women filmmakers who are exploring expectations and anxieties specific to womanhood, as well as the mysteries of female erotic power. In the past two months alone we’ve seen a raft of horror movies made by women—Natalie Erika James’ Relic, Romola Garai’s Amulet, Josephine Decker’s Shirley and Amy Seimetz’s She Dies Tomorrow—that are keyed in to women’s experiences in canny, unnerving ways. To define all of these films as horror, in the classic sense of the word, is admittedly a slight stretch: some are more strictly psychological than supernatural, less studies of things that go bump in the night than maps of the turmoil in our heads. But even that is a reflection of what horror, seen through women’s eyes, can mean: the things that scare women the most are already inside them. For years, male filmmakers have been concocting outlandish scenarios for us, while we’ve been storing up material for centuries.

Rob Baker AshtonImelda Staunton and carla Juri in ‘Amulet’

Horror movies made by women and specifically addressing women’s anxieties or hyperreal strengths aren’t new—Karyn Kusuma’s Jennifer’s Body (2009), Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) and Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (also 2014) are just three noteworthy examples from the past decade or so—though it’s still surprising there haven’t been more of them. No one could have foreseen that the summer of 2020, a mini-epoch during which many of us have been confined largely to our homes, unable to socialize in the usual ways and freer than usual to nurture our own personal neuroses, would provide the perfect soil and weather conditions for a new wave of horror movies made by women to flower so fully. Some of the current crop are more effective than others, but all share one trait: They’re about vulnerability but not necessarily victimization. Most of the women in these movies aren’t heroic in the superhero sense, but they’re also not the girl who needs to be saved.

Amulet, the directorial debut from actor Romola Garai (who also wrote the script), may be the most technically ambitious of these films, and through the first two-thirds, at least, it’s jaggedly compelling. An ex-soldier from Eastern Europe, Tomas (Alec Secareanu), has taken refuge in London, working odd jobs and sleeping in a flophouse. A nun with a seemingly generous spirit (Imelda Staunton) finds a place for him to live, in a decrepit house inhabited by a young woman, Magda (Carla Juri). Magda’s ailing mother is kept locked in an upstairs room—it’s dutiful Magda’s job to tend to her day and night, and the responsibility is wearing her down.

Garai layers the plot with so many feverish ideas and images that you wonder how, in the end, it’s going to come together. There’s a woman who can’t escape horrific memories of wartime rape. And Tomas, who seems to have fallen under the spell of a strange little goddess statue he’s dug out of the earth, needs to come to terms with his inflated view of himself as a protector of women, when his own interests are clearly all that matter. For him, the house itself appears to be a moist, sticky trap: It’s at first a place he doesn’t want to be, though it soon becomes one he can’t leave. Magda, meanwhile, appears to be the trapped innocent, the woman who needs saving; she’s also a fabulous cook—but what, exactly, is she serving up? Garai has some grim fun with notions of what men expect women to be vs. who they really are. The movie is marred by a confusing coda that only muddies its already too-vague ending, but it does feature one enduring image: a squirmy, newborn bat-looking thing that emerges from a womb with all its teeth. If that’s not a childbirth-anxiety metaphor, I’m not sure what is.

Sometimes the scariest things we give birth to aren’t, at least literally, living things. In Shirley, directed by Josephine Decker and based on a novel by Susan Scarff Merrell, Elisabeth Moss plays a fictionalized version of Shirley Jackson, the author of one of the most elegantly chilling ghost novels of the 20th century, The Haunting of Hillhouse, as well as the “The Lottery,” a whoppingly effective short story that was for years a nightmare-inducing staple of junior-high literature classes. In Shirley, Moss’ Jackson is the wife of a seemingly jovial Bennington academic (Michael Stuhlbarg) who actually exerts brutish control over her. He invites two young newlyweds, Rose and Fred (Odessa Young and Logan Lerman) to move into their comfortably ramshackle Vermont home, but really, he’s just looking for cheap labor: Shirley, neurotic almost to the point of being incapacitated, is incapable not just of keeping house but of performing basic tasks, like getting dressed for the day.

Thatcher Keats—© 2018 Thatcher KeatsMichael Stuhlbarg and Elisabeth Moss in ‘Shirley’

Shirley is controlling and manipulative in her own way, but she’s also deeply charismatic. She has a knowledge of witchcraft and folklore, and an affinity for the Tarot. But most of all, she’s blazingly intelligent, and Rose, who has had to put her own studies on hold with the birth of her first child, is drawn to her. Shirley’s lack of suitability for the real world—she’s treated as an oddity and a pariah by her husband’s university friends—means she lives in a world of her own, one in which she drinks too much and stays in bed too long, unable to move and, worse, unable to write. When she confronts a blank page, she’s really staring down a demon. She’s so difficult, in her husband’s eyes, that he’s taken up with the ostensibly more attractive wife of a fellow academic—so her sexual power has been diminished too. Shirley isn’t a horror movie in the conventional sense, but it’s a picture that stirs up the murk of so many women’s fears: If I can’t create something of worth, does that mean I too am worthless? If I have a child, what part of myself do I lose—and how do I ever get it back? This movie has a strange, heady earthiness, like an alluring perfume sourced from an enchanted, and somewhat treacherous, forest.

If the season’s most memorable horror movies have been made by women, that’s not to say men aren’t capable or interested in shaping horror scenarios from a woman’s point of view. In Leigh Wannell’s The Invisible Man, released in February, Moss played a woman stalked by the controlling boyfriend—cloaked by an invisibility suit—she’d thought dead. And Janelle Monáe stars in Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz’s upcoming Antebellum, playing a successful modern-day writer who suddenly finds herself living a very different life, in what looks like the pre-Civil War south. Never underestimate the power of the sympathetic imagination, and remember that women are free to explore the dimensions of men’s inner lives, too.

But even though men must feel just as much stress as women do when it comes to doing right by an elderly parent, I’m not sure a man could have made Relic. Emily Mortimer and Bella Heathcote play Kay and Sam, a mother and daughter who drive out to Kay’s mother’s house, way out in the country, when they learn that she hasn’t been seen for days. They let themselves in and poke around her things, tidying up and taking stock of all the placemarkers we use to track exactly where our parents are at as they age. There’s some shriveled fruit stacked in a bowl; little Post-It reminders (“Turn off the stove,” “Switch off the light”) abound, most of them exactly the sort of thing that a person whose memory is failing might write to herself. But among them is one that reads, “Don’t follow it”—a suggestion that she’s being stalked by something, as opposed to someone.

The next morning, Kay’s mother—and Sam’s grandmother—appears in the kitchen, as if she had never gone missing. But something is clearly wrong. Edna, played by Australian actor Robyn Nevin, is herself—yet not herself. One minute her eyes are dancing with warmth; the next they’ve gone cold, as if her own family members have suddenly become hostile strangers. She gives Sam, who’s always adored her, a ring, only to later angrily accuse her of stealing it. Kay, who’s filled with mostly unspecified guilt—does a daughter’s guilt ever have to be specified?—recognizes that she hasn’t been in touch with her mother as often as she should have been. She also thinks it’s time she found a safer place for Edna to live. She visits a nursing home, where the manager says with businesslike cheerfulness, “Think of it as independent living with the edges taken off.” It’s the most chilling line in the movie.

Courtesy of IFC MidnightEmily Mortimer in ‘Relic’

Director Natalie Erika James—who co-wrote the script with Christian White—uses horror-palette colors to explore tensions endemic to mothers and daughters, both between Edna and Kay and between Kay and Sam. Tempers flare over the smallest things; at one point or another, each of the three bristles when she senses another is telling her what to do. There’s nothing supernatural about any of that. But something is happening to Edna—she’s changing in ways that alarm Kay and Sam. Anyone who has watched a parent age—who has seen the number of selves one person can inhabit in a lifetime, moving from one stage to another in a gentle gradient spanning decades—will recognize Kay’s anguish. Relic’s ending is an embrace of terror and tenderness. So many horror filmmakers start out with great ideas and don’t know how to wrap them up. James caps off her debut feature with a quietly intense operatic flourish that feels earned.

If our imaginations are capable of conjuring great horrors as well as wonder, here’s a question: Can we pass our most acute fears, virus-style, on to others? In her shivery, evocative and sometimes surprisingly funny existential thriller She Dies Tomorrow, writer-director Amy Seimetz burrows deep into some of our dumbest 3 a.m. fears and wonders aloud, What if they’re not so dumb? Kate Lyn Sheil plays Amy, a young woman who, as she’s moving into the house she’s just bought, becomes seized with a fear she can’t explain: She’s certain she’s going to die the next day. In a panic, she calls her closest friend, Jane (Jane Adams), begging her to come over. When Jane finally shows up, she tries to talk sense into her friend—only to return home, get into her PJs, and suddenly feel paralyzed by the same fear. When Jane confesses her anxiety to others—to her brother (Chris Messina), to the doctor to whom she goes for treatment (Josh Lucas)—they too downplay her distress, only to find themselves captive to the same debilitating panic minutes later. The whole movie is like a game of telephone in which an urgent message is passed along from one player to another, fuzzy at first before emerging into disquieting clarity.

Courtesy of NeonKate Lyn Sheil in Amy Seimetz’s ‘She Dies Tomorrow’

She Dies Tomorrow takes place in a world much like the one we’re living in right now, one that feels untrustworthy, not fully readable. It’s also a place where we might feel regret about some things we are capable of controlling: at one point, Amy tells a guy who appears to be a fairly new lover (Kentucker Audley) that she once ended a pregnancy. His face clouds over as she elaborates; the information seems to trouble him more than it does her, even though she’s the one who will carry the knowledge of the act forever. She notes that her life would be so different if she’d kept the child; she probably wouldn’t have been able to buy this house. Her practicality is the opposite of coldness—she knows the cost of her choice, because it lives inside her every day.

And what if it’s not the greater world but ourselves we can’t trust? Our certainty that we’ll have a tomorrow amounts not to everyday optimism but to a kind of arrogance—though we probably need that self-reassurance to survive. This is less a movie about death than one concerned with how we go through life without giving too much thought about its stopping, though that’s a certainty for all of us. Even when we think we’re thinking about death, we don’t really know what to think: No one trustworthy has yet returned from the other side to tell us what it’s all about. She Dies Tomorrow is all about the unreclaimable yesterday, the day before we knew. It’s a thoughtful movie with no jump scares; its jitters are baked all the way through.

Fear of death isn’t specific to women, obviously—the male characters in Seimetz’s movie are susceptible to it too. But maybe, given women’s often complex relationship with aging—which includes the fear of losing sexual allure—our fear of death has a slightly different tenor from the way men experience it. In Shirley, the aging, matronly protagonist is not only unable to write, which is her chief measure of her own self-worth; her husband has also taken up with a supposedly superior woman—and isn’t the moment we lose faith in our own magnetism itself a small death? Watching our parents age, as Kay does in Relic, is the ultimate reminder that we’re next; it’s also a test of our mettle when we see the traits that have calcified in our forebears begin to manifest themselves, in smaller ways, in us. In Amulet, the exhausted Magda has a different problem: she’s simply waiting for her mother to die, so she can be free. All of these movies were conceived and made before we had any sense of how a worldwide pandemic would shape and circumscribe our lives. But all, in some way, speak of constricted freedom, of carrying on with life until it decides it’s through with us. They’re about all the things we can’t protect ourselves from, what we used to call, in more innocent times, fear of the unknown. Now we know what to fear, only to realize that knowing isn’t necessarily better.

via https://cutslicedanddiced.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/how-to-prevent-food-from-going-to-waste

[small-world-au]

NEXT GEN TRIO!!!!!

Lila - @killer-bugboi

Scribble - @cherrythepuppet

Odessa - me! ^^

I feel like they’d reflect the main trio, too?

Scribble - Stone

Lila - Vinnie

Dessie - Skipp

[baileythebean]

(Please let me do something right for once.)

*He thought, as he strategized in his head a way to get the mob off Sora’s ass.* Dess. I’m gonna pick you up, okay? Close your eyes and cover your ears. It’ll be just like when you’re trying to imagine something when you’re playing pretend. *Bailey picks the girl up, and as soon as she’s oblivious, he makes a dash out of the alley, sprinting up on the edges of the mob and drawing his weapon. He loaded the gun, running backwards and pointing it towards the crowd to slow them or at least stun them for a bit. He picked up his pace, grabbing Sora’s waist and slinging him over his shoulder with one arm while still carrying Odessa in the other.* (Also very shocking bc in canon, the only other time they’ve seen Bailey do anything like this is when he kept Sora from running away to go look for his sister earlier) @ask-sora-aguilar

NEW STARTING POINT FOR THE RP BC ITS GETTING LONG

@ask-sora-aguilar @that-alcoholic-stone @skipping-on-by “Stone. What the fuck. SORA. RIGHT HERE. Don’t act like you don’t know him.” *He was PISSED. He had spent so much time and energy trying to get these two reunited.*