#seriously it fits so well

[xxbottlecapx]

Flipped steddie au? Flipped steddie au??? FLIPPED STEDDIE AU????? FLIPPED STEDDIE AU FLIPPED STEDDIE AU????

[m1d-45]

bloodletting

summary: a budding god needs a place to test their new powers, and childe was always a little too eager to lose a fight... a match made in heaven!

word count: 1.7k

-> warnings : minor AQ spoilers ? just like, general gi plot.. fairly graphic depiction of blood + other injuries (might be classed as body horror???). generally obsessive tendencies (childe <--> you). i cannot stress this enough, reader is 110% a sadist.

-> gn reader (you/yours)

taglist: @samarill || @thenyxsky || @valeriele3 || @shizunxie || @boba-is-a-soup || @yuus3n || @esthelily || @turningfrogsgay || @cupandtea24 || @genshin-impacts-me || @chaoticfivesworld || @raaawwwr || @ryuryuryuyurboat || @undrxtxd || @rainswept || @wanderersqt || @rozz-eokkk

< masterlist >

power was not something that came easy. it was fought over, stolen, defended with teeth and claw, tides of blood shed just so one could have power over another. social, physical, financial; no matter the leverage it provided, power was hard won. to give someone power was to admit defeat, a certain death that tartaglia had learned and taught more than his fair share of times. nobody undeserving of power ever held onto it for long; it was an acknowledgement that you were better, that you deserved it, that you’d won. power was a fickle resource that childe would kill to keep, only ever laying down his blade for a precious few.

the tsaritsa, of course. his fellow harbingers, skilled both on and off-field, who themselves could rival the archons. his family, for whom he’d happily give the world.

and naturally, who would be more worthy to hold power than you?

you, not just a god but the, the highest authority across all of teyvat. you bore a hundred names and a thousand monikers, your worship the one thing the world could agree on. granted, nobody could quite agree on how, but that was fine. childe did not need external powers to tell him what to do. he knew, in his deepest heart, that he had gotten it right.

he knew—and, on occasion, flaunted—that he was your favorite. of all the vessels you had chosen, you returned to him time and time again, wishing on his stars until his vision gleamed. his bow shone with power, even his weakest weapon more than enough to push his strength to new heights. part of him wondered what he could do if you’d granted him swords, or a claymore… but that was speculation for another time. didn’t it say something that you had still chosen him at his weakest?

the thought always made him smile. thick in the heat of puppeteered battle, before the sun to after dark, your presence was a constant in his life. at every altar, with every offering, when his hands stung from the rash of leather and his blade was covered in rust, your name a prayer behind blood-soaked teeth. he could not remember a time when his pocket was not weighted with a charm.

his devotion was no secret. he wore your bow with pride, entirely phasing out his other weapons. it didn’t matter that he was technically more controlled with them, for you had chosen this path for him. your word was his guide, a polar star through bitter nights.

he did not doubt when your presence ebbed or flowed. who was he to dictate when or where you spent your attention? no, his faith did not waver. it had no reason to. he waited patiently, going about his regular duties, lingering in snezhnaya for no other reason that he just felt like he had to.

who was he to question to buzzing in the back of his head? who was he to decline when he felt an instinct to leave, to go for a trip far past the city gates? who was he to think himself better than the guiding light that had never led him astray?

for you, he was whatever you needed. and so he went, armed with a thick coat and snowboots, hands shoved deep in the pockets to hide the slight shake. down the main road, an arbitrary turn into an alley and down an abandoned path, into a part of the city he’d never traveled. but a golden thread had tied itself around his heart, pulling without hesitation. he easily hopped over the fence gate, not bothering with hauling it open through the snow. the path beyond was covered in a thick layer of powder, his foot crunching through a foot of it before hitting solid ground. still, he continued.

snezhnayan winters were not warm. they bit and dug into every gap in your clothes, stealing away the precious warmth within. and yet, with his half-done coat and incomplete guard, he was not cold. or, rather, he couldn’t feel it. his hands were pink with frost, stiff at the knuckles, but he couldn’t feel the resistance. his body was not important, not now.

the snow began to thin. it fell from his knees to his shins to his ankles to his toes, until he was face to face with a thick wall of bramble, impossibly overgrown. he was beginning to overheat in his jacket. twin blades made quick work of the wall, and the sight behind it easily dispelled any breath left in his lungs.

the air that washed out of the bubble was thick and heavy, like a humid spring instead of snezhnayan woods. his breath came in short gasps, a shameful wheeze that he hoped was missed beneath the howling snow. he didn’t want you to see him as weak, as someone so easily tired by a short trip to a falling star; he didn’t want you to think of him as anything other than his best.

but you didn’t push him away. you helped him up—his head was buzzing with delusion, he could hardly see, when had he fallen to his knees?—and brushed the snow off his hair, not pushing him away when he leaned into your touch. he couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, could barely collect himself enough to recognize that he needed to get you inside, away from the wilds.

that was power. to so effortlessly take over every thought in his head, to hold his mind in your hands and pull it into your liking, that was the power he adored you for. gods were figureheads of power, a physical incarnation of their dominion. a god of the entire world would only naturally have power to manipulate that world to their liking. how blessed was he, that he could be the first you made yours.

he was with you when you first stepped into zapolyarny palace, looking around at the chandeliers and fine tile. he opened the door for you to her majesty’s throne room, sucking in a sharp breath as you brushed by. he was by your side when the tsaritsa swore you her fealty, delicately placing the gnoses in your hands.

and oh, how he’d fallen to the floor right then and there, dizzy from the wash of power that rolled off you in waves, an ocean that he willingly dove into. the floor was cool beneath his forehead, his hair sticking to his skin as sweat quickly began to bead. he didn’t bother pushing himself up on his hands, teeth sinking deep into his lip again to control his panting breath. copper bloomed over his tongue, filling his mouth and clogging what remained of his senses.

dimly, he was aware that he was being pathetic, that this would surely change your mind about him. he heard your voice, faint through the fog of his mind, your wisdom lost to his own inadequacy. and yet, despite his weakness, every part of him was tuned into you. he knew it was your hand whispering across his shoulders, he knew it was your influence that stole the breath from his lungs. he knew it was you, because it was always you. you were all he could think of, and now you were finally able to leverage your full power over his self.

he’d woken up in a hospital bed. saline dripped into his arm and the lights pierced his eyes, his head full of snow and iced over. and yet, the moment he was cleared for release, he found himself desperate to be back to your side, racing through the tiled halls of the palace and following the urgent burn in his chest. you would have been right to turn him away, to deem him too weak to stay by your side, but you didn’t. you smiled when he lost his breath and laughed when he wavered, brushing off his concern. you invited him with you—his lungs burned with the need for oxygen—as you twirled the gnoses between your fingers, as if they were toys or paperweights rather than objects of divine power.

divine to him. child’s play to you. a courtyard of snow was cleared in an instant, ripples of pyro melting permafrost while keeping the flora beneath intact, a lazy show of power that pulled little more than a slight hum from you in response.

he wasn’t so much a fool as to think he could teach you everything, or even something, about being divine. and yet he clung to your side like a sailor in a storm, watching as you grew familiar with the elements. he watched, stubborn and weak, as you stopped hesitating.

flowers bloomed as you walked by, crumbling to ash with the slightest look. electro jumped from your skin to his, a painful spark that drew his mind from his head, finally seeing your amused eyes instead of just mindlessly staring. you could—should—have just left him behind, but you didn’t. you instead asked for his help, taking his hand in yours and leading him to a quieter hallway of the palace. you didn’t comment on his thundering pulse despite the fact that you could certainly feel it, tracing a finger along the crease of his palm.

“i wonder…”

a claw of geo cut across his skin, a sharp sting that quickly welled with blood. he barely felt it, watching with detached awe as it filled up his hand, sliding over the edge and dripping to the floor. you didn’t show any emotion, just… watching. his heart beat in his hands, a pool collecting on the floor, and still, you just watched. your other hand moved over the surface, barely an inch away, the blood collecting in a bubble beneath it. with a hum, your fist tightened, pain lighting up his arm. a strained grunt slipped between his teeth, hand flinching closed, brushing against the ball of his blood you had pulled from his veins. his hand was stained red, shaking in your grasp, minutes stretched into hours.

all at once, it dropped, forced back into his body as forcefully as it was removed. with a snap, the skin stitched itself shut, and you were again dragging him along like a child did their favorite toy.

you did that a lot. pull him aside and experiment with whatever new reaction you had discovered that month, week, day, hour, watching his reactions with unabashed delight. and he let you. every time, without fail, he eagerly followed, knowing full well he’d end up rigid with lightning or with ice crystals studding his throat. it was worth it, though. you always fixed him up, squeezing his hand with a whispered ‘good job’ that never failed to make him dizzy.

it didn’t matter what you did to him. it never did. even when his mind was hazy with pain and he couldn’t quite stand on his own, he never regretted it. unconsciousness licked at the edges of his vision, burning black stains that lingered even after you stopped, but he never once hesitated.

if you asked him to jump, he’d ask how high. if you felt like holding him underwater, he’d cherish every bruise. to be kept as a toy was still to be kept.

[onehellofapsycho]

one thing that's stuck in my head with act3 pv

when they're alone and finally got enough time for so needed confrontation, Vi calls Caitlyn right away directly. There's no beating around the bush There's no sugarcoating the situation but calling it for what it's, and what's Caitlyn's answer?

confirmation and acknowledgement in anger. Anger that's directed at herself who fell so low and let hatred-fueled vengeance blind her and allow Ambessa to have full control.

That's maturity after life throws at you its ugly reality of tragedies and a responsibility that's miles away beyond your then capabilities. This is an act that I wouldn't see from season one Caitlyn that's prideful and full of naive idealism.

Caitlyn went through so much changes in those few months than what life have offered her since she was a sheltered kid from the Kiramman. If we overlook the rushed pace, I'd def say Caitlyn's arc is one of the best of Arcane Because nothing is as beautiful as seeing a character that's flawed, a character that's telling you of how wretched yet so compelling it is to be a human and for these human emotions to devour you whole.

Which makes me a little wary of this scene following their fight

Life isn't merciful and you're never forgiven for your mistakes despite whatever circumstances forced you into acting on them. I'm concerned what Caitlyn has to payback for these mistakes but hopefully it isn't her very sight.

[crispycreambacon]

Seatbelts, Everyone!

— ☆ —

I can't believe no one else thought of this AU so SIGH I guess I gotta do it myself (not complaining though, this was so fun to draw)

Also yes the Bostonian horse is replacing Liz Ard in this AU and yes he is drawn in the MLP style because have you drawn a horse before. Those suckers are HARD

Bonus doodle inspired by this meme

[thranduel]

if dean (tommen's actor) could play a lannister character with very little screentime that got killed off, and then re-cast as tommen who would end up being the literal KING of the seven kingdoms, then maybe, just, MAYBE we could get davos and aeron's actors back in bigger roles...

[literallyjusttoa]

you said you wanted it on a pride flag so :)

Ok I’ve been on a plane for 2 hours and this is the first thing I saw once it landed. Idk what that’s a sign of but it def means something.

[sorikufeels]

ok like i get riku’s hand is bent back a bit more than sora’s so the perspective makes his hand look smaller HOWEVER i still think sora’s hands are slightly bigger than riku’s and i love that so much

[illmoraineakoi]

Friendly Reminder that the Vessel Eggs are Freaking Huge.

Also Obligatory Birthplace Egg is the only Egg Asset with Void Vines attached to it remark.

It was always strange to me how large Vessel eggs really are, especially because there really seems to be little need for it. Vessel hatchlings/nymphs are Tiny. Why are the eggs so big in comparison?

There seems to be waaaay too much unnecessary/excess space in each egg if there's only one Vessel per egg. Usually with eggs, by the end of the gestation period, the spawn is cramped in there with very little excess room. Extra unused space is wasteful, and biology hates being wasteful.

This is why I've personally always subscribed to the headcanon of Vessels eggs actually being more like Egg Sacs/Egg Cases than typical eggs. Both are when, for irl bugs, multiple larva/nymphs hatch from the same "egg"-like gestational container. Egg sacs are common for spiders (they make the actual sac itself with silk; here's a great video showing how one is made.) while cockroaches are know for egg cases (Here's a video of some hatching.)

Ghost's egg clearly isn't that much bigger than the other egg assets, it's just less destroyed, so it's size is a good reference for how big all of them would have been. And it's big enough for at least a handful of Vessel nymphs to have fit inside at once.

^ Case in point.

(You could probably squeeze a few more in there if you treat it more like a the sphere it's supposed to be and also depending on the horns. The main limiter are the heads/shells, since those are the hard parts* of a Vessel; Vessel nymph bodies seem to be quite squishy and flexible.)

(*= This is assuming that Vessel shells were hard during their gestation period. There is a chance they might not have been, since newly hatched nymph insects tend to have flimsy bodies for a while. The Birthplace memory shows that Vessels had hard shells at that point, and that seems really close to the point of hatching, so it seems likely that they hatched with hard shells rather than needing to wait a bit for them to harden up. Also, Vessel biology is weirdly wonky, so irl stuff doesn't really matter.)

Also, curiously, it seems Vessel eggs have two layers:

There's the outer shell, but there's very clearly a second, inner thing that has been broken out of. The different in the breaking look from the outer shell suggests this inner layer is made of a different material. The Pale King's egg lacks this, to it's at the very least unlikely to be a Wyrm thing, or at least not a Wyrm thing on it's own. It might be something unique to the union of Wyrm and Root and thus unique to the Vessels.

It could be a Root Thing, but we know jack shit about the White Lady and exactly how much she contributed to the Vessels.

I mean, we know literally nothing about how the Vessels were made besides Pale Babies Get Thrown Into The Liquid Shadow Pit To Get Stuffed With Black Goop, but that's besides the point.

There's also two alternative theories for why the eggs are so big that I'd like to touch upon: Void Swelling, and Stunted Development.

Let's go with Void Swelling first.

In snake eggs, the eggs tend to get a bit bigger by the time they hatch. Normally, it's not too much. Sometimes, however, the eggs really seem to swell up. Most people I've heard/seen talking about this think that the eggs are absorbing and retaining water from the humid incubation environment. Sometimes it's indicative of a problem; sometimes those swollen eggs start to rot, making it clear that that gestation has failed. Other times, the snake just hatches with a lot of egg goop.

It's possible that the Vessel eggs are so large because they've just been swollen up from the Void infusing into them.

Two problems with this theory: Vessels eggs are clearly hard-shelled, and hard-shelled eggs don't swell. At least, I've never heard of them doing that, but I'll admit I'm not a bird person. Perhaps some eggs got stuffed with way too much void and popped open before it was ready to hatch.

The second issue is that the Abyss is not what I would call a humid place (or, at least, it doesn't LOOK humid), and we don't see any liquid Void anywhere near where the eggs are in the Abyss. All the liquid Void we see is to the left of Vessel Corpses, and we see no egg assets anywhere on the way to and around the Lighthouse.. This makes it rather ambiguous how the Void even infused into the eggs at all, let alone if liquid Void was involved. Given how deep the Birthplace goes, it's impossible to tell what was at the bottom of that shaft before all of the corpses stuffed it up.

Unless ambient smoky environmental Void could have stuffed into the eggs enough to engorge them, which is also a possibility. Void is weird and we know little about how it works/behaves. Still unlikely due to the hard shells, but it's a theory.

The second theory is less about too much Void in the eggs and more about not enough Vessel.

It's possible that, at the time of Void infusion (and thus, death for the gestating Pale Children nymphs) the influence/corruption of the Void caused the Vessels to just stop developing. Dead things don't grow or develop after all.

Perhaps the eggs are so large because the original offspring that was supposed to hatch from those eggs were really supposed to be that large. They were supposed to be the spawn of a Wyrm and a Root combined. Even if the White Lady hadn't of been so big at the time of the Vessel Plan, she's shown she was always capable of eventually growing large. And if the offspring took aspects from PK's original Wyrm form over his dinky bugsona, which I would assume to be possible bc DNA and Genetics, then a larger size would also potentially be expected.

Or maybe some Pale Children would have gotten the Wyrm gene while others got the Bugsona gene, which is what Hornet got, and is absolutely hilarious to think about. Imagine getting riffed on by a twelve foot high sibling bc you got dad's Short Gene.

There's one issue with this theory, and that is of course, Broken Fucking Vessel. Broken Vessel always throws wrenches into Vessel theories, it's like their favorite past time.

Broken Vessel has aged. And, Hollow, more obviously, but BV is the main confusing one. Broken Vessel proves that Vessel can age on their own, without the potential influence/assistance of the King. BV proves that Vessel development isn't permanently stunted.

The most logical solution to this issue I've seen is exposure to the Void. Vessels, on a fundamental level, are made up of Void. It is intrinsically entwined with their very physiology. They're not just walking corpses stuffed full of Void and a Shade, their very flesh IS Void and that Shade.

Case in point:

BV, out of any other Vessel outside of Hollow, is the one who could have potentially come into contact with Void after leaving the Abyss. They're found in the Ancient Basin, which at the time of the game is heavily Void tainted (likely due to the Lighthouse being off and PK fucking off to Buzzsaw Land. That light had likely been the only thing keeping the Void suppressed underneath the Basin.)

PK could have used Void to supplement Hollow's growth into adulthood because Vessels probably literally cannot grow or age without it. Hence why Ghost and all the other escapee Vessels are stuck as nymphs while BV grew a tiny bit.

Of course, the solution to the BV issue also ruins the stunted embryonic development theory too. It's a rather poor and weak theory that I've included only because I though it was a bit interesting. Thinking about what the original Pale Spawn would have been like is always interesting to me.

With that, I have just one more thing to point out.

Ma'am, how the FU--

[mipexch]

there's something so beautiful about rain world's art style that i can't properly put into words

[puppetmaster13u]

I have been thinkin' of an AU

With Mandalorian Batman- I mean even the colors of his canon armour and outfit fit so well for it without even including anything else about him. But anyway, Mandalorian Batman, bit of a bounty hunter, never takes kill-bounties and is much more terrifying for it because it makes Rumours Spread. And his several Foundling children. Who he absolutely adores. Would fight armies for, and loves to death. But you know what I am thinking about? Canonically, who of the family is magic? Even has magic soul-powered swords? Jason Todd, that's who.

So really, it is Not Bruce's fault if he ends up perhaps panic-kidnapping a Jetti for assistance because one of his (small! precious!) kids is having a panic attack and struggling to deal with this space magic shit-

*Mandalorian armour colors have different meanings depending on the paints chosen. The canonical colors we know are: Gray: Mourning a lost loved one, Red: Honoring a parent, Black: Justice, Gold: Vengeance, Green: Duty, Blue: Reliability, & Orange: A lust for life

[littlemoriflower]

⋆˚✿˖° mori girl summer ࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟ

[ratatatastic]

your favourite finn's favourite (honourary) finn

winnipeg jets @ florida panthers | 11.16.24 (x)(x)(x)

[kisasan]

„Youngblood thinks there's always tomorrow…”

„I miss your touch on nights

when I'm hollow…”

„I know you crossed a bridge that I can't follow…”

„Since the love that you left is all that I get…I want you to know…”

„That if I can't be close to you

I'll settle for the ghost of you…”

„I miss you more than life…”

„I'd leave it all behind if I could follow…”

„I miss you more than life

I miss you more than life…”

[pandelacreme]

at first glance i thought the fixation on till’s neck was a sly joke about a/b/o, a genre heavily based in bl works, in the same cheeky way ivan’s name is a play on korean lgbt slang.

but the recurring motif of strangulation, how till's relationships (excluding his infatuation with mizi) are largely characterized with him being the object while the other is the subject; how him being on a leash, not just a collar, is quite literally one of his defining visual traits...

it reminds me of shakespeare's othello, where the titular character strangles his wife to death in a fit of jealousy over her alleged infidelity... the results of round 6 almost feel like a subversion of that play, where the leading artwork, esp the red one, seemed to suggest that ivan would strangle till in an act of possession, but it ended up as just the opposite.

but i wonder if there's more symbolism we can extrapolate if we hypothesize that some of the imagery are allegories to othello...

[amaranthdahlia]

also, fun fact the reason why my interest in jayvik/arcane sparked in the first place bc the moment i saw jayce from the season 2 intro (and i have 0 knowledge of arcane before this) and i immediately thought: this is literally how i picture/hc kudou would look like. what the fuck

[zenkaiankokuart]

So,,, Alderbaran is really fun. Drew this with @froppu! I can't stop thinking about this every time he complains about the other Asters now.

Aster, Aster, and Aster belong to @logicpng

Meme it was based on: