#she IS a predator after all

[art-by-secret]

Update: this little bitch just KILLED MY FAVOURITE CHICKEN

The dog the people I’m staying with rescued has two moods.

Also she fell into a toilet yesterday

[dykedvonte]

I just realized some people are confused about events in the alluded to past in Mouthwashing, particularly about how long the crew has been working together.

The only person who is truly new is Daisuke and it’s why his dynamic with the crew and role in the story is very unique and somewhat distant. Curly didn’t just get Jimmy this job on the Tulpar, he got him the job with the Pony Express. He’s been his copilot for probably a couple of years but still not as long as they’ve been friends. None of them are new with the freight industry, Anya and Swansea especially have been doing this for years, together.

Jimmy is the newest on the regular crew, maybe just a few assignments, but it’s not his first time working with them. I think it’s just something important because this isn’t just one bad mistake that snowballed with giving Jimmy the job. None of them thought Jimmy would do anything, no matter how off-put by him they could’ve been, since he hadn’t done a thing since being there. Generally unpleasantness isn’t a crime and he’d be aware of that.

It was a festering thing and a sort of forced trust they had to give him that he knowingly took advantage of. He was the black sheep and still a wolf under the wool. He expected when he lashed out, that he had been there long enough for it to be looked over completely. Got too comfortable in the space he inserted into and did a lot of damage with his claws when he felt he was going to get shaken out.

[puppyeared]

you are umasou

[vanhelsingapologist]

I tell you how you kill me in my dreams.

—

Dima was visited by the local vampire. She will bite him back, next time. Alt version under the cut.

[neonhellscape]

new rt everyone shes a freak whos pretty sure shes been been given the role of rogue trader as an act of divine intervention to eventually replace the godemperor and bring new glory to the imperium which she thinks is dull and stagnant. dont worry about why she keeps marazhai caged in her trophy room like he's bait its not important and completely irrelevant to the fact ive joke nicknamed her simon thresh. has anyone noticed a lot of slaaneshi demons during warp jumps lately

[dragonsandwolvesohmy]

I had a dream and I had to share it with you all because it was... something else. (Aka the dream where Obi-Wan keeps the 212th)

So Obi-Wan (who was gender fluid or something because one minute it'd be cannon Obi and next it'd be Fem!Obi and sometimes neither, it was just a whole thing) basically laid claim on the 212th.

Order 66 never happened, Obi slaughtered Palps, blah blah blah. Here's the point: The senate refused to give the clones rights and recognized them as more than property. There was arguments about who could claim them as their property, namely the Long Necks saying since they made them, they own them, and other senators claiming that since they should have ownership of x number of troops for y reason or other bullshit.

Then Obi-Wan shows up and the convo basically goes like this: (I'll spare you all the legal jargon that comes from having studied parts of law)

'Since you refuse to give them rights, the 212th belongs to me.'

Whannnaaa whannaa- a bunch of legalese and subtle threats and insults, basically amounting to 'And how do you figure that?'

'Well, since the GAR was created for, and paid for by, the Jedi, and I found them, They belong to me. Finders Keepers, Loosers Weepers. Also, possession is 9/ 10ths of the law, they're mine, cry about it. Also, they've been - (meaning scars, tattoos, etc. changed since shipping out)

Cue legalese and bullshit that ends with Obi-Wan having legal possession of not just the 212th, but the whole Vode, including those just decanted on Kamino.

Cue the 212th wondering how the hell they're all going to fit into the temple, especially around Obi-Wan's rooms. Then Obi-Wan, in true dream logic, has a door in his room that opens to a whole ass hall that has tons of benches for them to use when putting on/taking off their armor, bunk beds, and a bunch of storage drawer-type things with little stickers and markers and whatnot for them to decorate/personalize to store their things, plus a welcome package including a special blanket, a stuffy, the decoration things, etc.

Mind you this is a temporary situation.

Meanwhile, Obi-Wan is technically 'kicked out' of the Jedi Order because he technically has a bunch of people as possessions/attachments to his 212th. In reality, they've taken Obi off active missions, as settling the Vode and figuring out what to do with their literal thousands of people is a long-term mission.

Obi-Wan ends up winning a planet in Sebbac by the skin of teeth (purposefully making it seem like he just barely won) knowing full well the person he's playing often bets the planet. Because the planet is a hellscape. No one wants to inhabit it, there are no native peoples, just flora/fauna because it's 60% water and the 40% land of it has massive storm seasons that threaten to kill anyone who settles there and has ruined attempts to settle before. But Obi knows if there's anyone who can thrive on the planet, it's the stubborn Vode and their banthashit-crazy Jedis. (Because Koon ain't leaving his Wolf Pack, no sir. Those are his kiddos.)

Also, the whole Vode is absolutely in love with Obi-Wan, who's making calf eyes at Cody half the time. Cody has gotten a Very Large Stick to beat off his vode from his general after they saved them from mass decommissioning waiting for them with the long necks. 'recycling bio mass' their shebs.

(Waxer and Boil adopt an Add. Fox gets a tooka. or five. and Rex finally gets a fucking vacation. (he likes fishing. (the 'fishies' are twice his size, will swallow a vode whole, and need to be physically fought into submission)))

(Also, also, Obi-Wan installs a council of Alpha batch, and they all simp for Obi-Wan so hard. Cody has beaten them with his Stick. Multiple Times. And tried to feed 17 to the 'fishies'.)

[autisticrosewilson]

First of all, you have given me so much to work with, thank you so much. Second of all, I’m really glad you could see where I was going with Grant’s real test not actually being about killing Slade. Third of all, I absolutely love what you’ve suggested with the powers and I am currently designing met gala esque outfits for the trio and Tara’s specifically is really fun to play around with. I’ve been thinking to show they’re becoming more divine I’ll change their hair and eye colours but not their faces for the most part. I was drawing robin Jason with Natalia and decided he should have brown eyes and a crooked nose from breaking it as a kid but once he returns his eyes get weird (eg go blue and occasionally other colours), a patch of his hair went white and he lost all of his scars. Also, I think the closer they get to divinity I’m gonna draw cracks on their body that glow with their specific colours just to hammer home how they’re shedding their mortal forms.

With Tara being able to see the strings of fate, I though it’d be fun to give her a harp and then with Jason having the see no evil trait I thought it’d be fun to give him weighing scales since lady justice wears a blindfold. Idk what to give Grant though. I mean probably a weapon of some sort or maybe a Shepard’s crook that he can turn into a scythe to play into the sheep, wolf, Hunter thing.

With Jason and Tara’s splintering, I love the idea of them making fun of Grant for being the baby god. He hasn’t even had a cult yet, gosh he’s so young. Also them being besties just holds a special place in my heart.

And I just came up with this, of course they have parallels to the trinity but in universe rumours of their existence have been around much longer than Bruce, Clark and Diana. They’re the big three of the justice league but these guys are justice gods. So they start calling themselves the justice trinity but then people get confused about which trinity is which because the justice leagues’ trinity sounds awfully close to the justice gods’ trinity. The new all caste is certainly more distinctive branding but the point isn’t to be distinctive, it’s to be petty.

I'm so glad my unmedicated rambling helped!!! And I'm so excited for the outfits!!! I love when characters start becoming less and less human, when they're stuck in that uncanny valley spot of not quite human but not entirely Other, when they lose control and the cracks start to show...um I should probably give a warning for slight body horror elements. Not in the gore sense, in the "this body is not made of flesh and there is something divine clawing it's way out". Uh also there are teeth. Just. Teeth. I dipped into a little bit of cosmic horror at the end there because I wanted to cover my bases with mixed mythologies

Jason, with his defined splinters, is usually depicted with three faces in ancient texts. The Child, gaunt and dark colored, is said to appear before the downtrodden and impoverished. The few stories remaining tell of kindly people who give him an offering, and in exchange he reveals his true form, with his crown of golden ivy and beautiful strong wings to gift them bounties of food and water and riches. Other stories tell of not so kind encounters, where The Child witnesses an injustice - typically against women or children - and again reveals his true form, one with clawed hands and a mouth dripping with blood. Scholars argue what the wings looked like, but whichever All-Caste member annotated it before has compared their likeness to either a Robin or a Shrike.

There's also The Ghost, He appears young at first glance, but his hair is wirey and gray, his eyes milky and unseeing, in bloodied armor he greets the souls of the damned as they're delivered to him, and with scarred hands he wipes the tears of children taken too soon. Accounts of this face are few and far between, but all of them are entrenched in sorrow.

Finally there is The Soldier, scarred and still smoking from the ruins of battle he emerges, giving voice to the weak and resources to the needy. He champions revolutionaries and philosophers first, a strategist who delights in the liberation of the people from corrupt systems. Accounts of him usually come from times of famine and war, and he was particularly popular with poor villages, who would mark the graves of their dead with the symbol of his sword as offerings. For some reason or other, he got particularly popular with the youth, girls and boys both seemed to pray for him and leave him offerings.

The way these manifest on Jason is subtle at first. I could go the body horror route, but I won't. Yet. Instead I think his splinters show up as reflections, shadows, imprints. The faint echo of bell-like laughter when Jason does a move he learned as Robin, the image of a younger him with longer hair and unblinking eyes staring at him in the mirror. It gets worse when he gets the blades, the white streaks his hair, the swirling mark covers more of his skin every time he uses them, he trails the scent of smoke and blood behind him like a signature. His scars...they should disappear. They have for everyone else who used the pit, but instead his skin starts cracking. Any place he's ever been scarred glowing cracks break up his skin. He can't feel them, but he's always aware of them, the meaning behind them, the divinity literally leaking through his body. His eyes aren't brown anymore. They aren't even green. He looks in the mirror and they are copper, molten and burning. He tries his best to keep his mask on.

What do you think of when you imagine the word divinity? Probably something like Tara. Something with skin carved from stone, with moss and fungus crawling up her legs and snow laden shoulders. They say her hair is made of swirling clouds and the sun and moon are her eyes.

Some say she's a nymph although no one knows what kind. You're just as likely to see her name among the naiads as the dryads. Whether flowers bloom where she dances or waves crash when she sings, she's known to be more vicious towards suitors than her sisters.

Others have said she's a faerie, who takes the faces of lost daughters and lovers, slipping into their places seamlessly, forcing unruly men to pay their dues. Others say she's a shifter of a different sort, with a shawl of feathers and a crown of twine and gems. Stories range from men trying to steal her coat (and paying dearly) to lost children returned safely home on the back of a swan.

Tara doesn't think about it at first, the way gravity tends to cede to her, she doesn't notice how sunflowers turn their faces towards her instead of the sun. She doesn't notice the way her face...shifts. it's imperceptible really, and it's not like she looks in the mirror all that often. But everyone around her notices it, on some level, the way her expressions are off. A little too exaggerated. The way her limbs bend just a little too oddly. The way she never looks quite the same as she did the day before, the way she picks up features from the people around her the way she picks up rocks from ground to add to her collection. Clay molded subtly into the image of those she loves, a museum of everyone she's ever met. She does notice when her hair starts going white at the ends, the strange way her hair starts to curl unnaturally, almost floating. She's not so upset about her eyes, the deep blue of her father that has glared down at her day after day, she has changed her hair, her face, her language but she could not change her eyes. It seems she didn't have to, when she wakes up with one a little too silver to be gray and one a little too gold to be brown. And then her skin starts splitting, a cavern made from a broken rib and ravines made by the slashing of knives. She doesn't even bleed anymore, they never scab over. They crystallize, amber like ambrosia, like ichor. Her body a geode waiting to be cracked open to let the thing within finally break free.

They know the least about Grant, whatever he used to be. Half written scrolls, torn or burnt or simply stopped abruptly, illegible journal entries with symbols never recorded in any known language, half finished sketches where the details are never quite clear. A few things are usually consistent though, signs that he's been there, usually from hunters down on their luck or the particularly old and sickly. First, the howling. Like a wolf or a storm, although later accounts would add that it occasionally sounds like a mechanical whirring. Then the rabbits, dead and gutted, but not a trace of blood. Piles of them left in heaps on doorsteps or windowsills. Some have reported knocking at strange hours or finding teeth in their homes, a mix of human and animal. There is one photo on record, the most recent thing in the archive most likely, of claw marks on the side of a barn, too big and oddly serrated, certainly not from anything native to the area. Elderly that report these phenomena typically pass from heart problems within the week, according to some of the old medical files.

Grant came back wrong. Physically, at least. He knows that he's still himself for the most part, dying didn't make him a selfish asshole he did that all on his own, but...but something is wrong with him. It's the way lightbulbs flicker when he's mad and how cameras, no matter the quality, never quite get a clear shot of him. The way Joey can't ever grasp his features, not fully, the details slipping from his mind like water. The way eyes on his face slide right past, unable to look directly at him. It's in the gray spreading from his roots and his eyes too wide and dark to belong to something human. It's the way death clings to him like a second skin, sickly and pallid turning the tips of his fingers gray. His teeth are starting to feel too sharp for his mouth, and he hears things no one else does, whispers of voices that Are Not and Can't Be. The worst part is the orange, liquid candlelight under his skin, lighting up all of his veins and scars, webbing together like the world's worst game of connect the dots. No, there is no mistaking him for something human, so there is no reason to try. If this is his fate then he will take it, because he is not a sheep and he will not be a wolf, he is a hunter, and he is hungry.

[scarlettfevor]

Finally got ahold of the audiobook of Penance by Eliza Clark and I have mixed emotions about it. On one hand I love the premise and I feel like it's written well enough to where I feel like the author isn't going to clumsily stumble through her own story and fall on her face at the end like the majority of popular thrillers. But also this story suffers from having someone who hasn't been in school for a long time attempting to write teenagers. The funny thing is that whenever I see a horrible portrayal of teenagers, specifically of zoomers its never like, inaccurate portrayals of slang and trends that most teenagers cringe at, it's extremely unnatural dialogue that I don't understand how even a 30 or 40 year old can't see how awkward and cringe and flat out bad of a portrayal they're doing. You can claim that it's regional differences, even if we were all teenagers once I still don't know what it's like to be a popular mean British girl, but I'm fairly certain that actual popular mean British girls don't go around describing themselves as popular mean girls. The funny thing is that they've mentioned several times that these girls (ok it was actually like one girl but she introduced too many characters and I got confused so I can't even remember the name of the girl who said it) are trying to imitate the mean girls in popular American shows/movies. But I think that it's SO funny how instead of going for the obvious Regina George or maybe the more posh Blair Waldorf, they chose Sharpay Evans....I'm very familiar with the popular mean girl trope because I always love the girls who fall into this category and I can say with 100% certainty that none of these girls act like this either. I don't know what the author is going for but it's very painful to listen to.

[safehaven3d]

you know what, this might be a controversial take, but what if i DON'T believe mayā hénry ?

[dootznbootz]

opinions on helen of sparta being compared to prey animals? blink blink

*blink blinks back* Then immediately sits like this because of the question.

It's a good question that I'm happy to answer! It just makes me mad.... I sincerely hate the wording of "prey" being used to describe her.

SHE IS A VICTIM! THAT DOES NOT MEAN SHE IS "PREY"!

I can...see how people in ancient times may have used that word and still meant it in how she is a victim... but modern-day English-speaking people calling her that??? (considering how in different languages the word "prey" could have different meanings.) I'll just say that as someone who has been "prey" herself at one point, I REALLY hate that word as a descriptor. Just say victim or survivor. 👍

Honestly to call ANY victim "prey" is so fucked up. "Prey" to me, feels like "it's meant to happen." "Prey" are part of the food chain and so that's what happens. And to compare that to abduction and SA? Almost as if "that's our place"? It also kind of implies something being "eaten" or killed... Helen SURVIVES. She's traumatized and definitely needs healing and support but it's not like she can't find joy or peace ever again. Prey just feels so fucking gross.

Also, if someone calls victims "prey", I hope they know that Moose, Elk, Boars, Bovine, ZEBRAS, etc. are technically "prey". And these are VERY aggressive animals while still being "prey" for some other animals. And also that doesn't mean that "Oh, they're powerful! Clearly they should've been able to stop it." That's victim blaming :P

She is a clever, determined, caring woman who was ripped from her home for YEARS because Paris was a dipshit who decided he needed the prettiest woman in the world despite already having a wife. He didn't care about the fact that Helen didn't want to be there and was already married. He is so selfish that he will not let her go back even when THOUSANDS have died in the war! EVEN HIS BROTHER HECTOR AND PRIAM DO NOT BLAME HER! Granted, we do not know if Aphrodite would have let him undo their deal of "I want the prettiest woman" if he DID end up feeling bad for Helen and he wished to let her go home (I doubt it based on his personality though).

"Oh, if she is so independent/strong, then why didn't she just kill Paris and leave?"

AGAIN! Victim blaming!!! First thing, people who ask that have media literacy that is piss on the poor. You also have no idea about the political implications that would have happened if she DID kill Paris. She literally cries about staying there and argues with Aphrodite about seeing Paris, only to get strongarmed by Aphrodite as, guess what? A GODDESS WILL ALWAYS OVERPOWER A DEMIGOD. (This isn't Percy Jackson where he "killed" Ares as a 12 year old (Percy, you were my childhood, but that's bullshit.))

Even confined in Troy, she ARGUED with APHRODITE about going to see Paris! She is not some meek woman who just does as she's told with no pushback! She argued with a GODDESSS! Very few survive doing that!!!

She's not "Prey to fate", she's a "VICTIM of Fate".

[volfoss]

Every book I get closer to becoming the joker

[marscats37]

Girl I work with is like “haha I probably have a cold 🤪” like. STAY AWAY.

[miqojak]

6. are they proud of their scar?

Scar Themed Head-Canon still open for asks!

She is! She's had a lot of hang-ups around scars, and her body for a long while, because part of what the Garleans did to her was brutally torture her... then use her/others of her tribe, and other prisoners of war to test an experimental healing serum on - and by the end of it all, she got away... and had no scars to show for it all. (And very screwed up aether because of all the testing.) So she now only has a few scars she's accrued since then - one is a large, nasty one down her back from a miscalculation during an RP scenario where she wasn't fast enough, and a Garlean came down on her back with a flaming blade (she was on bed rest for a long while after that one, and she's... not quite as proud of that one, she's mad that she got hit). And the others are levin scarring on her shoulders and biceps... from her now-lover. Early on, they were something like rival predators, testing one another - and he set up an ambush scenario to test her, to apply pressure and see what she would do.

Just because.

This ended up with him utilizing levin to pin her to a wall by her shoulders and biceps, and at the time, she was absolutely terrified and livid... but ultimately pushed herself to some extreme limits with her new DRK soul crystal and stood her ground, took out the extra NPCs on hand, and showed him the kind of creature she is, when her back is to a wall. (Levin is, notably, something that terrifies her more than about anything else - the Garleans were liberal with their shock collar use, and the like. She's not a fan.) So she's proud of withstanding this 'test', and these days she'd burn the world for the guy who gave her those scars, so they mean something a little different to her; he's with her, even when he's not (which is often - they live rather independent lives). Plus, lightning scarring is kind of beautiful, so she doesn't mind! She survived, and overcame!

When it comes to other people's scars, she's of the mind they should be proud, too - a scar shows that you survived! You endured, and overcame, as well. What shame is there in that? You live, and you learn from your mistakes.

[bylertruther]

the rod imagery is fucking awful and makes me want to drive one through my own head but like. but like........... good lord i tell you what brother it absolutely does fuck SEVERELY every time 😔🫡

[von-eldritch]

@hannah-the-small​

Warm and safe.

[oblako]

the latest i love yoo episodes... i'm shaking oh my god