#sea imagery why? bc fun to draw

[crafty705]

The thrill to kill

Have a Martyn going feral as a red name for maidtyn monday :D congrats on the win!

Limlife skin design by @/cherrifire

Blank bg, non-bloody versions, etc under cut:

[raayllum]

did you do a meta/analysis on callum’s fever dreams specifically?

Y'know, that's a good question! I've written a lot of Callum meta in my day, and I've talked about his dark magic dreams in a few of them, but I don't know if I've written a meta solely about them

I've written about some of the symbolism in terms of the imagery (keys, spotlight) at the very beginning of the dream here

I assumed the rune placement of the cube would be symbolic (aka the Ocean and Moon being highlighted specifically) which came back around since 1) Callum doing dark magic for his moon gf 2) in a season called ocean 3) that also led to him connecting to the ocean arcanum

Old meta about how Weird it is on one level for dark magic to be symbolized by said cube in 2x08 unless we're drawing heavily on te cube being representative of/synonymous with Aaravos

Fun mini meta post about how Neat it is that Callum's dreams here exclusively feature humans + points for him re-discovering something for humanity

How both of Callum's parents play a role (aka Harrow helping Callum define his future, Sarai helping him stay in the present)

Callum saying "Destiny is a book you write yourself" and then we see Aaravos reading a book in the same episode (they're sick for this, btw)

If you're interested in dark magic = drowning I'd check out this meta from pre-S5

Old 2019 meta about his conversation with his dream self here (aka why Callum did dark magic then, and veering into why I've always thought he'd do it again if the show, well, put him into a situation exactly like 5x08)

Maybe since while very symbolic of course, his dreams are also very - generally speaking - pretty straightforward?

Him spinning the wheel is about being able to, or not able to, navigate well

Him being the sail is a hint later to him being the wing

Smashing the primal stone is what took him away from magic the first time / storms are products of both sea and sky

Callum being chained down / shackled makes him start to drown

Sarai and reminders that he does have freedom and isn't inherently chained down to anything (something that's probs going to be doubly important in s6) help get him out of it

Callum, who has a tendency to get stuck in his own head, is literally stuck/imprisoned in his own head

Meanwhile Viren's are a little more shrouded in mystery bc we just don't know enough about Kpp'Ar / what he did to heal Soren at this time

[freevoidman]

Okay I’m reading through Porg’s update so some of y’all can save your braincells and here are some great highlights (under a readmore bc i couldn’t help but tear into a few things she suggested):

Flat out ignoring that Vergil had changed by the end of the game as a result of V and Urizen’s separate experiences.

In trying to make V and Urizen their own character, she throws out the idea of Vergil being manipulated by the Qliphoth/Urizen (??? somehow??? even though the tree is implied to be non-sentient i believe???), with V being a Devil hunter looking through the remains of Mallet Island (which was completely blown up, turned to rubble, and then swallowed by the sea, so... that can’t happen), finding the cane which makes him youthful and not sick but... having the cane makes it so he can only kill demons through the cane??? for some reason??? And he needs the Qliphoth fruit to heal himself and free him from the curse???

How did she make V’s backstory even more confusing and complicated how the fuck did she do that

Almost immediately after bringing up the cane, she instead changes it to be one of the rings he’s wearing because she wants her “precious V” to use weapons other than the cane, which makes all the prior paragraphs about the cane’s curse and only using it pointless. She’s the one writing this fic, why can’t she edit her own work so it’s more cohesive?

Despite saying that V should be a Devil Hunter, she doesn’t explain why someone who is supposed to be killing demons would form a pact with at least three to fight demons. Her rewrite dismisses Visions of V, and she even states later that the manga is a waste of time as it won’t ever be translated into English (which 1) is not a limiting factor to reading it as many people have translated it already and 2) doesn’t dismiss it’s value at building up V’s character, who she supposedly likes the best).

Also, for someone who complains about DMC5 being a rehash of DMC3, she’s sure doing her best to change it to a rehash of DMC1 (Vergil being controlled by an outside force, bringing back Mallet Island, bringing back Mundus [the cane is supposed to be tied to Mundus]).

V apparently can’t be human because she wants to give him a devil trigger, despite having 3 familiars and his own strength. Okay I guess?

Also it’s really fucking sick how she describes V changing, because it’s apparently V fusing with Nightmare? Devil May Cry has never been one for body horror but she straight up says she was inspired by “The Thing (1982), The Fly (1986), Bloodborne, and Resident Evil 7″ for the transformation imagery and I wanted to nope the fuck out of there real quick.

Her segments of actual fiction writing and dialogue are really bad it’s almost like a parody Youtube skit.

She switches between prose and script writing randomly, it’s really odd. She does it primarily with Dante i’ve noticed? Here’s an example I wrote of what she does:

“Hey, don’t stress out about it will you?” Says John following a few steps behind VINCENT: Don’t get your panties in a twist

And that just happens... randomly? Like, there’s no indication why she’s doing that it just happens.

She straight up writes notes in her fic about the controls for character actions in-game what the hell--

She also shamelessly puts in a link to artwork that clearly isn’t her’s (and I highly doubt she got permission to post about) to try and show what V’s Devil Trigger would look like. I couldn’t find it because I don’t know how pixiv works, but that’s just a shitty move, especially with how she treats artists on tumblr when they draw art of Vergil.

EDIT: Porg has now straight up copy-pasted the art into her fic without the artist’s permission which is, we all know, fucking theft. While it is good artistry, is just a weird mashup of Vergil’s and Dante’s. It’s not all that unique and I don’t understand why she had to reference a bunch of body horror shit when all the Devil Triggers in game are essentially just a large flash of light and a seamless transition between forms??? It’s good art, I’m not trying to bash the artist, but... Porg, you could’ve been a little more original here rather than just ripping off another artist’s designs...

Everyone in her fic acts super casually to seeing Vergil alive in the Qliphoth and it’s like... honey, no.

Vergil acts WILDLY out of character holy fuck. Like, I know I should have expected that but this is NOT how Vergil would act in the slightest. She’s pretty much writing an OC.

Building off of this: EVERYONE acts OOC and... it’s not exactly cringey, but it is perfect proof that Porg doesn’t know what she’s doing and hasn’t properly analyzed the characters.

Dante acts weirdly... detached? There’s no sign of him acting like his normal goofball-y self, and he’s much more serious than normal. He actually acts more like cannon Vergil than himself, actually. (He also knows CPR apparently? Which... is a skill he would really never bother learning, so...)

Nero doesn’t act nearly as emotional, and acts calmly for some reason. You can’t feel any of his emotions behind his dialogue, only through the adverbs added to the tags)

V is too informative. He knows way too much about random shit that... no one should rightfully know. I’ll mention it more later, but... V doesn’t act like himself and I don’t really know how to explain it.

Vergil is essentially her OC. Seriously--he’s not as brooding or snarky, he’s far too open and apologetic, there’s practically no sense of rivalry between him and Dante. Weirdly, he acts more like canon V than fic!V does, despite the fact that Porg wants to establish V and Vergil and separate characters. His actions also make no sense when put alongside his canon personality. We aren’t reading anything about Vergil, we’re reading about Porg’s weirdly idealized version of him.

I’m going to make a break in the post here because I feel like this is the part that needs the most attention:

Porg goes OUT OF HER WAY to dedicate a GIANT portion of this chapter to her own OC: Nero’s mom. There are several long paragraphs of establishing the relationship between her OC and Vergil, talking about leaving Fortuna, how they were ‘happy’ and then saying that after a hurricane (inspired by hurricane hugo, you’ll see later) she got separated from Vergil, never reconnected with him, GAVE BIRTH, died from a demon attack with Nero staying near her corpse, and then Nero was found by humans and taken off the mainland to be taken to an orphanage on Fortuna. She wanted a massive amount of time to be taken out of the fun parts of playing Devil May Cry to establish a relationship that would never come back and essentially turn into a 15 minute soap opera inserted into a game about having fun killing demons.

Alright back to the noted highlights.

Porg confirms in her fic that the universe of Devil May Cry happens in the US, and that Fortuna is an island along the southeast coast and I want to fucking rip my eyeballs out at this point.

The ONLY REASON why she is doing this is because she lives in Florida. I know she does, and she just wants to imply that this is all happening near her home turf. How anyone who lives in Florida thinks an island like Fortuna can exist is beyond me though, because playing through 4, most of the buildings are inspired by Italian designs, and no one in the states would build an entire island with italian designs. I’ve been to Florida multiple times--there’s no buildings there even REMOTELY designed to match Fortuna.

EDIT: I have been informed that Porg actually lives in Pennsylvania, not Florida, which makes both more and less sense. Why Florida? Why not a hidden island up on the east coast? Why does this have to be taking place in the states at all Porg???

Yeah, let’s take Nero off the MAINLAND OF FLORIDA after a DEVASTATING HURRICANE and send him to an orphanage on an ISLAND which would’ve been hit the hardest by ANY hurricane. TOTAL SENSE. 

She tries to make her own timeline for the series using actual real world dates and events and it’s terrible (she references Hurricane Hugo in 1989, and confidently states that 3 took place in 1990, despite all evidence for the actual dates of events being fan theory established through circumstantial evidence).

There’s so much horror movie inspiration here--not cheap horror, but really twisted shit that... doesn’t fit with Devil May Cry’s tone at all? In the slightest? She references Jacob’s Ladder, plus all the other body horror media I wrote above.

Straight up just tears Vergil’s arm off which sure, I guess we gotta make THAT a parallel between Nero and Vergil. They can have a father son moment over being physically maimed.

In the scene immediately before this, Urizen picks up Vergil by the head and roots around Vergil’s memories (somehow???) to show him all the ‘bad moments’ in his life to traumatize him. She describes it as the audience getting flashes of him falling to hell, charging Mundus, being Nelo Angelo, etc. 

This causes Vergil to cry and beg for Urizen to stop. Then Urizen rips off his arm. So. Yeah. Another point for the OOC!Vergil/OC-taking-Vergil’s-place board.

Also this point ALONE made me realize that Porg does not know how much time, effort, and money needs to be put into making assets. Like, the entire fic she was stressing that everything be done in 5′s HD Graphics--including the ruins of Mallet Island, so I have to assume she’d want these little snippets in HD too, which would be a massive money hole creating these assets for one scene that lasts maybe ten seconds total.

I know I stated it in one of my earlier posts, but most of what she’s writing would fit better with a sequel for the reboot series, not DMC5. It would make her OOC writing of Vergil make sense, all the horror movie inspiration and body horror shit would fit better there, especially all the crappy dialogue too.

She somehow made Griffon even MORE annoying than in cannon.

BTW if I had to listen to poetry while fighting the final boss of a video game, I’d sooner turn my PS4 off. Not that poetry isn’t cool and all, but it cheapens the final fight and distracts you. It wouldn’t work.

EDIT: I realized this point made no sense without context, sorry. Porg made the Book of Urizen (the poetry book by William Blake referenced multiple times by V) either weirdly prophetic or made it out like Blake had inner knowledge of demon powers or... something along those lines, and V magically has the knowledge that reciting poetry from the book about Urizen will... harm him? Weaken him? Open a gate to hell (she mentions a portal appearing near him)? It’s very unclear, but she essentially rewrites Urizen as the final boss, and makes it three stages (V [Griffon recites some verses, which is what the first point was about], Vergil and Dante [this is where Vergil gets his arm ripped off btw], and then Nero) with all three of them reading poetry from the book to deal the “final blow” to Urizen. I’d much rather have Vergil be the final boss than have to go through a three-stage boss fight while every character I play as recites poetry to kill the boss.

She mentions Dante using Sin DT against Urizen but I’m pretty sure with her fuckery of the game’s events Dante can’t GET Sin DT? Because there’s no fight between Nero and Urizen where he’d intervene?

COMPLETELY IGNORES VERGIL’S DEVELOPMENT OF WANTING TO TRAVEL WITH HIS BROTHER THROUGH HELL TO ELIMINATE THE QLIPHOTH FUCK OFF.

Also she changed the lore of the Qliphoth so that it sprouts semi-naturally around every 500 or so years? So... shouldn’t leaving the Qliphoth roots be fine now? Since it’s natural?

Nico acts like growing back arms is totally normal

Wrote an INCREDIBLY shoe-horned in moment in the van with Dante filling Trish and Lady in about finding Vergil and everything that happened where, once again, Trish and Lady act almost completely nonplussed that Vergil is alive after 20+ years in hell, with about 9 of those ten years being trapped under Mundus’ control and corrupted by the Demon King

Seriously why is no one surprised in this fic that Vergil survived? Dante has a brief moment before finding him, but everyone finds out and accepts it like flipping a switch (once again--ESPECIALLY DANTE, which is NOT how the grieving process works)

Porg states that the ending is trash because the twins are fighting in hell, but completely ignores that most of Dante and Vergil’s lives have been built on conflict and they like fighting demons, especially Dante. Both of them were happy and doing what they love.

She also completely ignores through this entire thing that Dante was really fucking depressed in the novels leading up to 5 but hey I don’t even know if she can read.

I can vaguely agree that Trish and Lady were sidelined and they should’ve had a bigger role. However, I can’t fault the directors for not doing this, because they were already developing three playable characters with their own unique fighting styles. She writes all this shit about the story, writes notes about controls and mission layouts, but forgets that it takes a lot more than pressing a single button to code a game.

She just doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Seriously, none of these things are cohesive or edited properly, and despite her saying she wanted better for Vergil, or Nero, or Dante, or V, she writes all of them incredibly out of character and doing illogical actions. I just... I don’t get it.

The best part is--I can’t even tell her about these things, or give constructive criticism. She moderates the comments on her fic and isn’t afraid to delete anything she doesn’t agree with or can’t make a ‘passionate rant’ about.

[atiny-piratequeen]

Thank you for tagging me @cosmicmingi ! I'll tag @san--shine, @wonderlandsobsession and @fantastic-bby and whoever of my writing followers/mutuals wants to fill this out 👀👀 tag me if you do!

1)Okay so Against The Tide was such a hassle for me because I couldn't settle on one name and I resulted in a twt poll and asking my server of kpop friends for their opinions. Alternative titles were Quantum Immortality (from a theory and a Crywolf song), Through the Sea of Time (a pokemon mystery dungeon song, one of my faves), and Through the Eighth Sea (suggested to me by Alma. Bc the "Eighth Sea" is the sea of time. Get it? 8 ateez members, 1 sea to represent them all? Yeaaaaa-)

2) Okay so its so funny because it came before Wonderland even came out, but All Eyes On Me came as soon as I thought of the concept of an ot8 fic centered around Yeosang bc of him being shy and such. That's why there's a lot of cameras and depictions of Yeosang being especially excited at being watched, so I felt it fit perfectly 

3) so I made that AtT playlist (didn't realize the mofo was 6 hours long, jfc that might be why nobody's commented on the songs yet), and I'll just say I listen to a lot of Babymetal and Crywolf when I write. Not just AtT, but in general. Babymetal obviously for the "fie's on her anime fight scene bullshit" and Crywolf for my emotionally challenging (aka fucking HEARTBREAKING) scenes or scenes in general that have a more muted, down to earth feel to them.

4) As far as Ateez goes, I always have an abundance of fun writing Seonghwa and Yunho, tbh. Night Shift has me spoiled and now I'm in love with writing Seonghwa as a sarcastic, slightly passive aggressive being who's honestly just a big softie for those he loves and Yunho...Yunho has a heart of gold and I adore him uwu

5) Jongho is probably the hardest to write for me because I don't want to typecast him as this nonchalant, emotionless smartass, yknow? I wanna give him depth other than "big strong maknae boi" but I feel I might have to do a bit better to write him truer to his actual personality 

6) In All Eyes On Me, San and Yeosang's little cat and mouse game wasn't supposed to take over but I-and a lot of other people-enjoyed the dynamic of Yeosang building his confidence, all while San was getting exceedingly more hungry/sneaky. So definitely San so far.

Though Yunho is creeping up in AtT and yall will see more of that in the near future 👀

7) Reoccurring themes...at risk of sounding like a nut, the stories I put the most time and love into are ones like Against the Tide or for those who have read some of my BTS works, Still Standing. Fics that have intricate stories and characters feel real emotional, mental, and physical trials, but eventually they overcome. I do write these with supernatural, fantasy, and/or sci-fi twists bc i love those genres so much, but I just enjoy writing fics that make me and my readers go through the emotional motions.

8) I've honestly stayed away from hybrid fics for so long bc of how a lot of them sre linked to ABO fics that are written in very...high key problematic and exploitative manners, but thanks to Skunk San, I'm definitely gonna get back into writing hybrid fics. Or at least a oneshot. Idk man I'm giving him a tail. Bitches love tails. It's me, I'm bitches. 

9) I want to get better at making people laugh with scenes without making it seem forced. I've gotten lucky enough to have some people tell me they've laughed from my works and some scenes, so I'm hoping to throw some more giggles in for everyone without forcing it and ruining a scene. Plus we need something to counter all this damn angst.

10) Imagery. Again, back on my anime bullshit, but I've had a lot of people, both close friends and readers, tell me through the years that they can visibly see some of the scenes so visually. From the fighting, to the love making, a lot of people have complimented me on my visuals and descriptive imagery so I'm kinda confident in it c:

11) I know its early, but I'd love to see Against the Tide illustrated. My dream has always been to have something I've written, whether a scene or just my characters, drawn out. Its a little easier since the boys (almost) all have their halloween stages for their demon forms and such. I wish I were a better artist tbh. I'd love to draw some scenes from future chapters I have in my head.

12) I'm gonna pull from my BTS side for this and say Still Standing. Its already based off of a show (sense8) and it would be so neat to see sense8 but with a superpower twist to it~

13) I'd probably cameo in any given fic as that one person in the bg that disses some antagonist to the main charas in passing just bc they're assholes and they aint shit.

14) Hmm...i had an old wrestling fic eons ago that was a hybrid fic. I'd love to revamp it and clean up the wild storyline and make it a kpop fic tbh. It had potential and it incorporated a lot of mythology and I used it as a way to show people about some mythos they may not have been familiar with but I got too ambitious and it went all over the place. I'd like to make it over now that I'm more focused and mature in following my plot.

15) I honestly don't have one off the top :o I never thought about remixing someone else's fic or anything like that.

16) I don't often write about things I'm not comfortable writing with, but I'll probably say my casually unnamed wrestling fic comes close since I was in a very bad headspace at the time and poured a lot of my trauma into the story. It's… graphic. And I probably won't feel comfortable writing that type of content so vividly anymore. So hooray growth? 

17) I've never written an incubus fic to to completion, but @fantastic-bby makes me wanna try 👀

18) Honestly I adore the concept of sensates so much (from the show Sense8, and my BTS fic, Still Standing) and I'd love to revisit it but I'm not quite sure how to do it without making it too similar 😔

19) Both of them are BTS fics, but I've reread @haylokitteh We Need You and @readbeneaththelines Professor's Pet 🥵🥵

20) Hm..that's a hard one because I like to branch out to a lot of genres so it depends on what I'm trying to describe. But since I have to choose, I'll say Against the Tide, since I'm pouring a lot of love and care into this and I intend on showing you all full spectrum of what I can do with it.

[vide0-nasties]

hi there! you're a darling, eustacia is a babe. how about 2, 3, 11, 17, 21 questions for the ask thingy? (ps. your answer to 20 question was something. i didn't know i need this imagery, god bless you *furiously fans self*)

i'm blushing irl because you called eustacia a babe, i've seriously never lived before today!!! ALSO, real talk? i'm probably going to make that into a longer standalone bc holy shit it was fun to write

asra angst at the top bc i love dying.

3. How would your apprentice handle being so close tosomething that they desperately want, only to have it ripped away? What was it?

It comes back—all ofher, she comes back. Asra’s done it—he’s done the impossible, he’s given her back to her. Only moments ago, hewas a complete, but friendly stranger, and now—now—

“Asra,” she sobs,reaching for him. He looks so relieved, tears spilling from his eyes, and hebreaks down himself, hacking up his own sob, “Eustacia, oh, shit, fuck, thank god! Thank all of them—”

He tries to bury his face in her chest, her stomach, but shedoesn’t let him. No, she drags him up and kisses him so hard they will bothsurely wear bruises.

Everything. She remembers everything. Every little detail.His hand lies flat on her chest, over the heartbeat he so excruciatingly loves,and they cry against each other’s mouths. It’s been so long, too long. Neveragain. They’ll never be apart again. She won’t let it happen.

She’ll tear apart the fucking heavens with her bare hands before he’s made to hurt again.

“The Count?” she asks, between kisses. “He’s dead?”

“Lucio’s dead,” he promises her. “He’s dead, and he’s never coming back.”

Another sob rips from her, and she’s made even stupider andmore boneless by relief. “Nadia lives?”

“Nadi lives. She’s alive, I think she’s safe.”

Eustacia draws him back against her mouth, mistaking the wetfrom her nose and the sting in her eyes as tears. But when her body begins tojerk, disobeying her will, and something trickles from her ears, and her mouthfills with the unmistakable tang of blood…

NO, she wants toscream, but she is frozen in place. Her body stands rigid as her expressiondrops and goes hollow, blank, even wrapped around Asra.

NO! NO-NO-NO! WE HAVESUFFERED ENOUGH. HE HAS SUFFEREDENOUGH. NOT AGAIN, NOT THIS, NOT ASRA. NOTASRA. NOTASRANOTASRANOTASRANOTASRA—

“Eustacia? Eustacia?!Wh-what happened, you’re—why are you bleeding? Eustacia? You…can you hear me?! No, no-no-no, PLEASE,” hepanics, and his panic turns to anger, despair, heartbreak. All of it, writtenplainly on his face, and she can do nothing but watch and scream silentscreams. Agony so intense, it might’ve shattered her beyond repair, if Asradidn’t take it back.

#’s 2 (nsfw), 11, 17, and 21 under the cut!

2. Does your apprentice get flustered over anything? Whatmake them flustered? Do they turn red? Stumble over words?

To give herself some credit—not the overblown, clownishly arrogant kind of credit a person thatthinks poorly of themselves uses to make cover for their self-loathing—Eustaciais usually the one to throw someone off-balance.

But, then Doctor Julian ‘I’m Actually Taller Than You And,Also, Look At My Lovely Red Hair, Dashing Eyepatch, And Big Pretty Hands’Devorak breaks into her shop, and ever since that moment she’s hasn’t knownpeace.

What a fucking suckershe is.

The Rowdy Raven is in rare form tonight, packed to therafters and so loud you’d be lucky to hear a thought in the confines of yourown head. The fugitive and the witch are hardly worthy of note, tucked into a far-backbooth as they are. But they’re having their own party. The masquerade is soon,and everything is up in the air, down to the wire, and all to sea.

It’s a shame Eustacia’s never had a knack for divination,otherwise she would’ve foreseen Julian’s very pleasant, and handsy mood.

The absolute filthhe whispers in her ear. It would make a seasoned brothel girl blush. But, toher credit, it takes Julian slipping his hand down the front of her pants toreally begin to undo her. She remains tucked into his side—nose-to-nose, hisarm around her shoulders—wheezing jagged, nervous laughter. Even with his gloveon, his fingers feel amazing circlingher clit.

She has to be an obscene red from her navel to her chin, andshe knows she keeps trying to bunch up like a dead spider—crossing her legs, duckingher head, hugging her middle, or tryingto. Julian’s making such good arguments.

Her laughter rises to a wild pitch, one of her hands flyingup to cover her mouth when he removes his hand and sucks her slick off hisfingers. She knots a hand in his shirt and thinks her howling laughter willrattle her apart when he kisses her and purrs, “You are the best thing I have evertasted. I really think I might die if I don’t get to hear how you laugh whenyou cum.”

11. Talk about how your apprentice deals with emotions. Boththe ones they like to feel, and what they don’t like to feel.

Unfortunately, especially for Asra, Eustacia knows she isthe sort of person that either feels everythingat the height of their extremes, or she plays numb to cover what she does notwish to display.

Her elevated moods, the good and the manic, make her brassy,brazen. Difficult to stomach for long periods unless you’ve trained yourself towithstand them. In these states she’s loud. Overwhelming. Her energy isfrantic, and she’s too lost to it to remember things like volume control, ormonitoring her mouth, or keeping her hands from being destructive when shetalks with them.

Everything is exciting, and everything needs done right now, right this instant.

Sadness, fear, anxiety—they all become anger. Her teeth andher muscles clench like her fists. Her voice bottoms out and her eyes weighheavy and unforgiving on any and all that cross her path. She stops walking,and ends up stalking, prowling. She watches empty air and waits for a fight tocome to her. When it doesn’t, she wants to look for one.

She doesn’t remember her old life, what kind of historycould happen to produce a person like she is, but she wonders how often shegave into the urge. She wonders if she ever tried to smother the impulse, killthis ugly beast with her hands breaking its neck, like she tries to do now.

When she is overtaken by anger, or clued into the vulgarityof her good moods, she pulls away from herself, putting her mental reins underan iron hand. Her incorporeal self takes a step away from her physical body,needing time and space to right herself, and her expression slips into a coolmask. Her body quiets, starting with her hands.

Only once she has made herself as placid as unbroken glassdoes she return.

17. Can they bear pain? How much pain can they bear? Do theyhate it or do they like it ala our good Doctor?

There’s something mean inside her, something ugly, and itfeels good to feed it.

This is a bar she’s never been to, and never will again. Shepours a beer in the lap of a man she’s never met, and never will again.

Her head snaps to the side when his fist connects. Laughterpipes up her throat, and a crimson bubble of blood on her lips breaks apartwhen it exits. The world blurs when the brawl starts. Eustacia splits herknuckles open on whatever they catch, throws her elbows, crushes feet with herheels, launches her knees.

Starbursts of pain make fireworks explode behind her eyes.Her nose gets broken, her brow split, her jaw rocked. Her cackle is howlingwhen she feels a rib grind together—broken. She rears her head up, catchingsight of Asra’s white hair weaving through the violence. He wades inthoughtlessly, as if he’s done this more times than he can count, a dance thathe knows by heart.

His expression is almost as murder as hers is, but itblanches to rabbit-hearted terror when she wipes her mouth on her sleeve,pushed by the crush of bodies out the door, bar brawl turning street riot likelightning.

It feels like the ocean is sliding off her body, and shestands straighter, taller, broader, as dark as an ocean trench’s bed.

She spits her blood in the face of a man that floors her,his hand eclipsing her head to slam it into the coarse pavers. The side of herhead shreds, pebbling with blood. Asra finds her again, hands glowing dangerously.He grabs the man by the nape, and Eustacia is bombarded by the stench of burnthair, laughing when her attacker screeches and wheels away.

“Get up,” Asra wheezes, taking her wrists. “You have to getup. The guards are coming—get up!”

He’s able to haul her away, her arm flung over his shouldersand her steps sometimes catching. Her head’s fogged, and she’s a littleconfused.

“I was gone for fiveminutes,” he barks. “Five minutes, and you start a riot. What were you evendoing?! What if you got stabbed?! Youcould’ve died, Eustacia—you could’ve died—!Do you know what that would do tome?!”

“Felt good,” she croaks, trying to wipe at her mouth, endingup hitting her nose and sending sparks into her vision. “Felt so good, getting—gettingthe pressure off. Don’t feel so badnow. Always feel so bad, like I’msick. It never stops.”

21. What’s their relationship history look like? What weretheir previous datemates like? Do they have a type?

At thirteen, she had her first kiss, and ever since thatmoment she was ruined. Completely andforever, in fact! When the girl that kissed her immediately stood up and left,scrubbing her mouth on her shirt and retching melodramatically, Eustacia was tooheartbroken to understand this was the beginning of a trend.

Through the rest of her teens, she would find herself drowning in romances—incredibly powerful,painfully short romances. The actualperson mattered very little, she went for all types if they spared a kind wordor a sweet touch on her.

There was a green-eyed woodcutter’s son that wooed herrelentlessly for weeks, and left her minutes after they finished fucking in hismother’s woodshed. A fellow witch in the Sisters that only met her in the dark,who went around calling Eustacia pathetic and creepy behind her back. A poetwith long, silky hair that introduced her husband to Eustacia the way wardensreleased hounds on escaped prisoners.

Her last ‘real’ romance, if you could’ve called a single onereal, was an opera singer. Renaldo Sarintoni, a man twice her age with a tenoras sweet as church bells. She’d gone to two of his shows, and after one of themhand-delivered a bouquet of roses to his door.

She’d scraped and scraped to afford those roses, and she thoughtshe might burst into tears when he ran his fingers over the petals and calledthem beautiful. What a sonorous voice you have, he marveled, do you sing?

Not much—she knew three arias and countless pub tunes—but,for Renaldo, she cleared her throat and sang a piece of a love song for him—libiamo, libiamo ne’lieti calici che labelleza infiora. The sparkle in his eyes was incredible.

That was probably her most intense love. He’d swept her offher feet, dressed her in fine things, wasted money on her to the point of embarrassment,took her to beautiful restaurants. They talked endlessly, for hours, abouteverything. She never wanted children, but might’ve had his.

Three months of otherworldly loving, until they woke up onemorning and he said, “I’m sorry. But…”

As badly as she wanted her heart to scar over and feelnothing, it didn’t happen. Left and right, she continued to fall in love, butno longer did she allow herself to wander into a place where her misshapen littleheart could get broken again. There was little to it left, and she wanted it toherself.

For a time, she fought herself, her nature, her ways. Shesnapped at suitors, laughed off ladies, and heaped scorn upon romantics that sniffedher out like bloodhounds.

And then, Asra found her.

She will end up wishing she hadn’t fought that love so hard.