#she exists to fail
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the amount her death haunts me is unreasonable
#ultrakill#v1 ultrakill#v2 ultrakill#v1#v2#tw blood#but like also its ultrakill i mean u cant NOT have blood in there#to be one step behind from being good enough#with the perfect you right behind you.. its haunting im so mad how much v2 gets to me#she exists to fail#if thats not a failgirl idk what is#anyway i put a lot into this drawing im going insane#its been a while since ive spent 2 weeks on 1 drawing#its always the doomed robots with me man
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so rhaenyra starts s3 with a god complex, believing herself to be the prince that was promised from aegon the conqueror's dream... but hugh and ulf will betray her, mysaria will misunderstand her, coryls will undermine her, bartimos will underestimate her, daemon will abandon her, her people will turn against her and burn her castle and kill her dragon. and when everyone who accepted rhaenyra as queen rejects her, the only person left to love rhaenyra will be alicent, who never loved rhaenyra as queen but rhaenyra as a person ("she was the vision that sustained him [...] it was his love for her that kept him resolute in his choice of heir."). alicent, who abandoned her gods and duty to go to rhaenyra on dragonstone and appeal to the person beneath the crown ("i cast myself on the mercy of a friend who once loved me."). alicent, who's made a god of rhaenyra, not as queen, but as the girl she read with beneath the godswood ("come with me.").
#and rhaenyra won't accept it at first#she'll refuse to believe that she was wrong and that the prophecy wasn't about her because she's lost so much#and i don't know how she will eventually come to the realization that she isn't the prince who was promised#but i think it will be when she's forced to sell her crown and make an attempt at escape (maybe with alicent)#and so ultimately#rhaenyra's love for alicent was her downfall#because a lot of the grievances her council has will be directly/indirectly related to rhaenyra protecting alicent#and rhaenyra's love for alicent keeping her grounded to her humanity while the world around her tries to turn her into an unfeeling queen#and so the love works against the system#because the love cannot exist within the system without everything falling apart#so by taking alicent prisoner rhaenyra is dooming herself to fail at being queen#because in that moment rhaenyra - like alicent in 2x08 - chooses love over duty#hotd#alicent hightower#rhaenicent#hotd spoilers#rhaenyra targaryen#house of the dragon
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I'm not sure if anyone else has made this connection, but I've never seen it mentioned before. I think, similar to Lolita, RS was also inspired by the art of Trevor Brown. His work has a lot of young girls and medical fetish themes (to put it lightly) in a style reminiscent of RS's earlier stuff.
sigh
CW: medical fetish art often depicting children / child-like characters and medical equipment such as needles, gas masks, etc. seriously don't hit the jump if medical equipment or young girls in nurse's outfits or with open wounds makes you squeamish, I will not blame you for turning around now LOL
OP I was about to just... dismiss this. Wave it away as a funny coincidence that is indeed funny, but doesn't have any real evidence to back it up. I had a post typed up in response already declaring this, after which posting I was gonna move on with my day, work on Rekindled, play some XIV.
Because sure, there are a lot of resemblances between Trevor Brown's work and Rachel's old art, but nothing that can't be dismissed in good faith as a simple coincidence of being within the same genre of fetish art (first three are Trevor's, last three are Rachel's).
But then that little voice in the back of my head whispered in my ear, "Puff. You should double check. Just to be sure. Do your due diligence." And I once again found myself on the precipice of the rabbithole that somehow becomes deeper every time I jump. This time though, I knew it couldn't be that bad, I mean, I had enough confidence in knowing that there's no fucking way she listed Trevor Brown as one of her favorite artists-
God fucking dammit. How in the world did I miss this? I mean, I suppose I missed it simply because I'm not familiar with the works of Trevor Brown, but you can bet your ass I became familiar with it in my digging. Yeah, this guy is a supreme creep.
Again, I am not going to accuse Rachel of being a pedophile because that's just not an accusation that should be thrown around without undeniable evidence. What I will say, which has largely remained the same - though even more confidently now than ever before - is that she's clearly someone who took a lot of inspiration and influence from very problematic artists when she was young (I'm talking in her late teens which has me wondering if she started making medical fetish art when she was still a minor-) and then, BEST guess, she started to drop the medical fetish stuff around the time she went to college (which was also the same time she dropped The Doctor Pepper Show, which later got reworked into The Doctor Foxglove Show which was a lot less reminiscent of her medical fetish style from the early 2000's, but still had some of her usual preferences at play) and that's led up to today where she's drawing comics that look like they're for kids but tackle heavy adult subject matter in the worst way possible that straight up perpetuates grooming.
No matter how much experience I have with this already, no matter how much I think I've already seen, I always find more, and this time was no different. In fact - though unrelated to the original topic - thanks to this one fucking ask, I even found the full Mads Mikkelson comic with the completed caption. You know, that one.
And apparently Mads Mikkelson did very much replace her crush on Jeremy Irons.
Who's Jeremy Irons?
Oh yeah.
I just... y'all I can't. This is un-fucking-real. I'm gonna go take a shower, I need to scrub myself off of this 😭
#ask me anything#ama#anon ama#anon ask me anything#lore olympus critical#anti lore olympus#lo critical#the timeline of rachel's art career and how it came to be in the form that it exists now is starting to become a lot more clear#my eyes are burning#i've mentioned before that i don't like scrutinizing rachel over her past stuff because being a cringy teen on the internet isn't a crime#but there really is something to be said about how much of her past influences have bled into LO#as well as her outlook on the heavier topics that she's tried to “tackle” through LO and failed miserably at
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☆ de fontaine
{☆} characters furina {☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader {☆} warnings angst, suicidal thoughts, hurt / no comfort {☆} word count 1.4k
This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair!
She thought, for one moment, she could put the mask down and breathe – for one moment of daydreaming, she thought she could just be Furina. She thought she would finally get to live the live she should've had in the first place, the life she threw away to play God to an audience who saw her as nothing but a circus animal, dancing to their whims. Furina just wanted to be selfish for one brief and fleeting moment..and it was gone before she could even grasp it in her hand. A comet soaring past far out of her reach.
She can barely keep her hands from violently shaking as she looks down at them – broken and bloody and more a corpse then a person – and she feels so numb she can't even feel the rain pelting against her back. None of this is fair, she wants to scream, why is it always me? But her voice is silent beneath the torrent of rain. She wonders if the ocean would take her if she sank into it's depths – just for a moment, she wonders how it would feel to finally be able to sleep at ease.
Furina is tired.
But Furina is nothing if not useful, isn't she?
So she forces her feet to move, dragging against the stone beneath her heels, and drags their bloodied body into the nearest empty building, letting the rain do the work of washing away the smeared blood following her path. The smell makes her feel sick, the feeling of it sticking to her hands and gloves makes her lightheaded, but she persists. Because Furina is useful, because Furina won't let them die out in the rain, because Furina won't stand by and just let them rot on the streets like some..pest.
Furina wants to go home. She wants to sleep and she isn't she if she wants to wake up, this time. But she keeps going anyway.
Because it's all she's ever done, and the habit sticks.
An Archon she may not be, not anymore, but the expectations of five hundred years still linger like eyes on the inside of her skull. They watch her, pry and prod at her thoughts, mocking laughter and judging eyes following her as she forces herself to dance to the song they weave with glee. Furina never stepped off that stage – she's still there, she thinks, watching the crowd stare at her in disdain as the curtain call looms above her like a guillotine. She still hears Neuvillette deliver her damnation and salvation with a trembling voice, still feels her hair stand on end when electro crackled like the crack of the whip, Clorinde's blade aimed at her like a loaded gun.
She's trapped on that stage and she never left, not really.
She hates it. She thinks she hates them, but it's not their fault. They didn't ask for this, didn't ask for everyone to turn against them, didn't ask for her to save them. Neither did she..yet here they are, she thinks.
She tries to tell herself she's in control this time, though. She can stop performing her part in this horrible, bloody play any time she wants. It makes her feel better, just for a little while, if she convinces herself she's still Furina, painfully human.
And Furina has always been good at lying.
It's the believing that's the hard part.
There isn't time for her to wallow in her own self pity, though. They're still bleeding out onto the dusty, creaky floorboards of some random, broken down house and she's just standing there as the blood stains the wood. She can fix it – she's good at fixing things. She's done nothing but fix things – try to, anyway – for five hundred years. She can fix a little wound, how hard could it be? Her hands are clenched so tight they ache as she kneels down, wincing at the creak of the floorboards beneath her heels– she hesitates just long enough to wonder if she's making a mistake before she peels away just enough of the outer layer of their clothes to see the deep, bloody gash across their chest. She tries not to think about it – it's deep, too deep, and she feels dizzy just looking at it, but she's handled worse, right?
Furina can fix it. That's what she's good at.
She doesn't feel so confident when she tries to wrack her brain for..something. Five hundred years, and a little wound stumps her? No, she had to have learned something, right? She's decidedly not trying to buy time because she's panicking, parsing through hundreds of years of memories like flipping through a book. Furina isn't made for this, not really – she's running on nothing but adrenaline and she's really not sure what she's doing, but she's trying. And just like before, it won't be enough, will it?
She'll fall short again – she'll be too late to fix it before she's alone again.
Furina was an Archon..used to be. What use would she have for that sort of knowledge? Which makes her predicament all the more harrowing and bleak. What was she supposed to do?
Furina had heard it first hand, that vitriol in Neuvillette's voice. She isn't sure she's ever heard him that..angry before. She's not sure he would listen to her if she tried, either. And that scares her more then anything. All of Fontaine was up in arms about this..imposter, yet here she was, staring down at them bleeding out in front of her, and she was trying to save them.
Why? Why is she throwing away her only chance at normalcy for a fraud? Why didn't she just turn them in?
They were dying – that should've been a good thing, shouldn't it? So why didn't it feel like it?
"Why you?" Her voice breaks as she speaks in harsh tones, grabbing the front of their shirt in trembling, bloodied hands. "Why now?" She wants to scream, to demand answers they can't give, to claw back the reprieve she was promised after five hundred years of agony..and all she can do is sob into their chest, pleading for an answer that will not come. "Why me?"
Silence is their answer, and it hangs heavy on her trembling shoulders as she cries.
Of course they don't, she thinks bitterly, no one has ever answered her pleas spoken in hushed sobs. Not her other self and certainly not them.
Furina has always been alone. Furina will always be alone.
Because Furina never left that stage, never left that moment when she looked at herself in the mirror and took up a mantle too heavy for her to bear. She always finds her way back eventually. There's no one on the other side anymore – she stands alone on a stage, waiting for an inevitable end she isn't sure will come.
"Please," She pleads through tears and choked sobs, clinging to them like they are all that keeps her from sinking. "Please don't leave me, too." The words burn on her tongue – how pathetic is she that she craves companionship from the bloodied body of the imposter? Perhaps she's truly lost her mind after all these years..perhaps she's finally gone mad. She must have.
But their presence is like the first feeling of gentle warmth upon her skin as the sun crests the horizon, like the gentle lap of tides along her heels, the sway of branches and leaves as the wind blows through them like an instrument all it's own. They are the soothing sound of rain against the window as she watches the dreary skies in fond longing, the first bloom of spring as color blooms upon the landscape like paint had been spilled across the hills and valleys.
They are like the faint spark she carefully nurtures and stokes, so fragile even the smallest wind could blow it out like a candle. She cradles it within her palms, pleads with whoever will listen – prays that someone finally listens, because if not for her, then for them.
She's failed to protect too much already, let too many people with so much trust in her fall between the cracks of her fingers like grains of sand. She won't let them go – she can't.
If nothing else, if she couldn't be saved when she begged for salvation from that five hundred year long agony, even if she never got that chance..
Furina will make sure they do.
#sagau#genshin sagau#self aware genshin#genshin impact sagau#self aware genshin impact#genshin cult au#genshin impact cult au#fic tag#furina#so um. looks around. okay look. i know im like THE ts@r1ts@ dealer (censored so it doesnt show in tags. hopefully)#but the moment i saw furi in fontaine the day it released she became my fav even more then the tsaritsa SORRY SHES SO..#this is my love letter 2 furi (making her suffer unimaginable horrors)#open ended kinda in case i decide on making a sequel maybe#furi makes me feel cuteness aggression so bad i start acting like a rabid animal#furina the woman that you are. thats my girlprince meow meow id kill someone for her#playing her part as archon so well but being so horribly irrefutably human in every way..#five hundred years not even knowing what the real plan was. when it would end. knowing if she slipped up it was over.#and in the end almost no one knew what really happened. a select few people know the real weight of her sacrifice.#furina's story was always a tragedy. it was never going to be anything but a tragedy.#and thats one of the most tragic parts of it isnt it? she didnt know how itd end. she didnt know her story was always going to be a tragedy#furina never knew a thing. and still she did it for the people of fontaine and succeeded.#how do you define “yourself” when you havent existed for 500 years?#to be so selflessly human you give up “yourself” to save people who will never know of your sacrifice.#sometimes i think about the confrontation on the stage and have a week long mental breakdown#sacrificing EVERYTHING for fontaine and still. still! the people closest to you turn on you.#heavy on clorinde. she was as close 2 furi as neuvi fight me on this. i bite.#her bodyguard and friend and she ends up staring down her blade wondering if this is it. she failed. she failed them all#because even when faced with the trial. with losing everything. she still thought only about fontaine. oh furina.#do you think she has nightmares. wonders if she was never meant to win this game of g-ds. that her story was always meant to be a tragedy?#do you think she still wonders if she was ever meant to have a chance at a happy ending? a doomed tragedy from beginning to end
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Thinking back on it, it was a pretty dark time in my life. But Iris... Happy, smiling Iris, she was my light.
#the scars on Herlock's arms are from failed experiments or dangerous situations he put himself into#I just feel like he would have a bunch of scars all over his body given how... curious he is#anyways Iris :(#I firmly believe she saved him#just by existing just by loving her papa she saved him#I'm gonna cry#dgs#tgaa#ace attorney#the great ace attorney#herlock sholmes#iris wilson
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"NO! You cannot roast a hotdog over the Commander's personal portal to hell!"
"For the hundredth time it's NOT a portal to hell, Taimi!"
#spawned from a discord convo where mootie wanted to ??? roast hotdogs over Mael ??? bless you you absolute freak#Also Taimi insists it's a portal to hell and keeps trying to get him to let her study it but all the cameras and devices she passes through#just disintegrate. As is the issue with pocket dimensions to avoid breaking lore Too Much by allowing the party to#no-clip items out of existence via Mael I've just made it so mundane items get destroyed and magical items get repelled#the only things that go both ways are his shadow weapons#But yes. that fire is VERY cold. one way to deep freeze your 'dog#gw2#guild wars 2#shitpost#sylvari#gw2 sylvari#gw2 oc#gw2 commander#gw2 necromancer#quen's ocs#Maelmordha#too much effort for a no-ref shitpost lmao#also another perspective fail in my portfolio 😎
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I love it love it love it when the characters in Dracula start reading the same stuff we've been reading it's like Yayy Book Club :) Tell me more about how much you love Mina
#dracula daily#re dracula#it's so strangely validating. like in todays entry (September 25) Van Helsing is like an audience surrogate#but he actually gets to tell Mina directly what she means to him (and by extension me <3)#its risky business having the story exist diegetically within itself#because when a character starts talking about how good a piece of writing its like hmm. let me be the judge of that.#but i think dracula really succeeds there where others have failed
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dying cause i struggled on thinking of a pose for him but it lowkey worked out cause i get to show his more mischievous side 👍
#i mean in his furina voiceline he told her to watch out for the spider#unintentionally made her scare cause she thought itd be arlecchino instead but#mission failed successfully#hes still stealing cause nawr#he doesnt know rich ppl wym rich ppl rich ppl doesnt exist#genshin oc#genshin impact#genshin#oc: niko#art#digital art#oc#original character
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Holly-Anne Hull as Christine Daaé in The Phantom of the Opera. West End revival, 2023. Holly's last show. 🎥: @callmelasagna.
#*mine#holly-anne hull#holly anne hull#the phantom of the opera#phantom of the opera#potoedit#west end#poto west end#poto london#james gant#christine daae#christine daaé#this is so long overdue#i commissioned this video almost a year ago!!!!#you guys are welcome i paid for the ticket this video exists because of me asdfghj#i still can't believe she left the role. girl help me say goodbye!!!!#i miss her so so deeply!!!#here's a very long gifset of her being an absolute cutiepie <3#i tried to do just her for every gif but... i failed bc there is always A Man in this musical#one gif per costume!
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Family ♥ (Patreon)
#Doodles#ISaT#Siffrin#Isabeau#Mirabelle#Odile#I have not been able to stop drawing Sif's black ensemble under their cloak ever since I learned about it#The cutest#His favourite colour is black and he wears all black and he dyed his hair black so now it's two-tone!#Stopppp that's too cute#Got curious and yes - fully black-haired Sif is Very cute <3 Contrast lad#Pls gentle touches to Sif they deserve soft holds <3#I'm really happy with their hand expressions there ah Isa's big hands and Sif's small and cute#They love each other!! However whichever way <3#The posing for Sif and Mira is awkward because I was trying to draw the one with them hugging and failed lol#So they're just existing in proximity and happy about it <3 Just being together is fun!#I do love Sif getting practice in on positive touch but also just being nearby and being happy <3#Good company for certain#Can you tell I'm less practiced at drawing Odile so far lol#She is pretty <3 I didn't fully understand the lesbian catnip comments at first but I think I get it now lol#Her flyaways are probably my favourite hehe <3 Gotta draw her with crows feet sometime! Lovely ♪#I love her watching out for the younger members of the party in her cool and dry way hehe - Sif is sleepy! But he needs a push to go nap#There's the hug yaaay <3#I like everyone's outfits very much but I will admit to not using references when I drew Mira :'D More the vibes of her clothes lol#I'll draw them proper sometime!#Odile's outfit is very pretty <3 I love all the allusions to gems ah it's so cool#Such a lovely bunch!
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One day – as far-off as a century, as near as tomorrow – it will all be a grand old story.
The stories will speak of a handful of champions, rushing headlong against time and logic to save the world; the last Blades, the last Septim, and his hanger-on Hero, carving a bloody path to the Temple doors. The stories will tell of skies like burned blood, of fire and ash and uncountable legions of monsters – hundreds, thousands, millions, the quantity rising with each telling – the city streets cracked and quaking, every civilian locked up in their homes and businesses and praying for deliverance. The stories will tell of the appearance of Dagon, red-hot and roiling, a gory perversion of the sun; they’ll tell that when all seemed lost, Martin Septim sacrificed himself in a blaze of glory, calling down the avatar of Akatosh and casting Dagon and his ilk back whence he came. They’ll tell that the golden dragon threw back its head and roared, and the sky cleared and brightened at its word; they’ll tell how it petrified in place, a magnificent pillar of stone, a sacrosanct statue. A site of pilgrimage. A shrine, to the grace and glory of the gods, and the bravery and benevolence of the last Emperor, the best of men.
It will be a good story. All splendour and triumph, a bittersweet victory right out of the epics; the pages closed, the crisis done, the world saved in as golden a resolution as could be asked for. It doesn’t get better than this, a perfect saviour, a hallowed end.
What the stories won’t tell is how, under clear skies and sunlight, the Hero of Kvatch falls at the statue’s marbled feet and howls like the world is still ending.
“You fucking coward,” Pax is screaming, as best as she can. Her mouth tastes like smoke. Her voice is hoarse. “Stupid worm, fucking – selfish bastard – what’s wrong with you?”
His head is swimming, a bit; he shouldn’t have tried to stand, but he – but – he’s dragged himself up to the dais, just about, and managed to sprawl himself over the edge, a snail’s trail of blood smeared along the floor behind him. The copper tang of it is strong in his nostrils. The statue stands, proud and silent, one marble claw dug into the cracked stone of the rostrum. His whole body is beginning to ache – just because of a stupid stab wound in his side, he’d swear he’s had worse, it’s not that bad, it’s not that bad. His throat burns. He isn’t crying. He isn’t.
The sky is so fucking blue.
“What’s wrong with you?” he demands, again, and brings the heel of his hand thudding against the clawed foot hard enough that he feels the impact down his arm, through his blurry head. “Why would you – piece of shit – sorry spit-gill – I thought –”
None of their thoughts will go through to the end. “I thought,” Pax says again, and she’s not crying, and it hurts so much it’s looped back around to not hurting, and it’s all getting fuzzy at the edges, all the world narrowed down to this and this and this and all fucking hell she’d rather be anywhere, anything else. The statue is cold. Her throat is scraped raw. “Come back,” she’s begging without quite meaning to, “come back,” and she drives her palm into the stone again, and the pain sets her reeling.
And all hell, the sky is so blue; the statue enormous; and here they are, at its feet, vision blurring, staring up at its cold marble face. It’s so fucking tall, so proud, face tipped up towards the new-appeared sun, away from them.
“How could you?” Pax says, and then they can’t even see it anymore, blood unspooling from them like skeins of madder-dyed thread. Red has never been their favourite colour. The shape of the dragon, glowing like the sun, is fixed forever on the backs of their eyelids; gold, they think, is worse. The world is detached and floating about them. They taste smoke and then bile. Stone digs fierce into their spine.
It burned like the sun, the dragon; like all the divine light of Aetherius come to earth just to sear the moisture from her eyes. Where it clawed Mehrunes Dagon, his blood boiled; when it screamed, the world moulded itself to its call. Pax hadn’t known what was happening, while it happened; sure as shit doesn’t know now. What they do know is that he’s gone. What they do know is that the dragon didn’t look at them once. They don’t taste ash on their breath, now; just fear, stagnant, sour, blood jangling bitter in their veins and seeping out to soak their gambeson.
It doesn’t hurt, anymore, there’s just this spreading, vague numbness. It doesn’t feel like their body. It’s just a thing they’re putting on. Their ears are still ringing from the crashing-in of the Temple, but there’s a faint buzzing of noise outside. They might be dying. They can’t be assed to get up.
Skeeving asshole. They’re getting blood on the dragon’s immaculate feet. The hollow sounds of voices feels distant. Could well be worse.
Then, “… a healer, here!” they hear, much closer than anything else had been before, paired with the faraway thudding of the door, and “Pax. Pax! It’s – where’s –” and there’s hands on him, a cautious manipulation of his neck, a shifting of his legs. Pressure on his sternum, and then his stomach, and a pained grunt slips out of his mouth, bound up with a slurred curse.
“Stay calm,” says an unfamiliar voice, soft and steady. “I’m just accessing the wound.”
“Go away,” Pax says, or tries to say, but his voice is whispering-hoarse and the dragon looms in the dark even still. He could open his eyes, but what would be the point?
The hands stay on him even when he bucks, holding him steady; they whisper over the stab in her gut, pulling at the drying blood, mumbling words that she can’t be fucking bothered to listen to, one voice known to her already, one voice not; pressure again on the injury, and they try, half-heartedly, to breathe out a swear – and then light, copper-bright, behind their eyelids, and burning heat, and pain pain pain eclipsing all else as something inside them wrenches back into working order, and then their eyes are open and the sky is blue and they are very fucking aware, thank you.
Pax sits up, fast enough to send the world dizzily whirling, and shoves the mage-medic away from them.
“Piss off,” he says – and it’s still hoarse, smoke-throated and scraped raw, but there’s more bite to it this time, more sound. The strange hands fall away from his side, and he looks down. His gambeson is hanging open, cords untied, the emblem of the wolf split clean down the middle. His undershirt is rucked up around his chest, too, so much of his skin is bared to the clear, bright air; all to get to the wound tucked just under their ribs. It’s an underwhelming thing – smaller than they would’ve thought, a thin short slash like a very red mouth has opened itself up in their gut. It’s stopped dribbling quite so much blood, gone scabby with rough healing, though the stuff is still smeared all over their skin, damn near enough to bathe in. It’s barely anything, really. They’re barely even hurt.
“I’m not done,” says the mage-medic, all stern. The wound itches, the taste of hasty magic gone sour in the back of their throat with all the rest of it. “I might have to find my suturing needle. It isn’t too bad, but it can’t be healed all at once.”
“Piss off,” Pax repeats – and all fucking hell it hurts, and he’s sitting up against the statue, legs lolling. He’s dizzy. He ignores it.
Ocato – his fine clothes sooty, face tight as a wound-up spring – says, “Calm down, please – he’s a skilled healer, he knows what he’s doing.” His eyes keep skipping around the room like he’s searching for another enemy lurking hidden in the shadows. “What happened? Where’s the Emperor?”
Ah – not an enemy, then.
Pax tastes bile.
“Not very quick on the uptake, are you?” she says, elbow braced against the statue’s massive marble claws (she hates touching it, she hates it, she hates it, she wants to set it crumbling apart, she doesn’t want to let anyone else touch it ever again). She can’t stop leaning because then she might topple back down again. Fuck, she needs to keep her head on straight – or lose it altogether, whichever happens faster. Her fingers feel cold. “How’re you going to run an Empire when you’re this fucking clueless?”
Ocato looks them in the face; his brow, high and slanted in that way elves have, furrows. “You’re hurt,” he says, in a tone like he expects Pax to argue with him. “Martin Septim–”
“Can’t you see him?” Pax demands, tone torn in half and uglier than they’ve ever heard it before, and they slam the back of their hand against the stone for echoing emphasis. (They want to shatter all the bones in their knuckles, break every piece in their hand one by one, like wishbones. They want it bloody and bruising. They want to scratch its polished-smooth surface until their fingernails tear. They want – they want – they want –)
Ocato, the Empire’s de facto leader, says, “Ah.”
In his plummy robes, all fruit-rich and stained with ash, he looks very stark against the Temple’s cracked marble floors.
“The Avatar,” he says. “If – the Amulet – joined blood of kings and gods –”
“Ocato,” says Pax, leaning heavy against the statue’s hateful foot, “shut up.” Their voice is bowstring-taut; he looks at them, his eyes too golden to meet. His mouth twists. They tip their head back against the stone, glaring up at the chips of blue sky shown in the crater where the roof once was, and try hard to ignore the tugging ache hooked behind their ribs.
It really fucking hurts. Worse than it did before, maybe, like some gauzy veil has been ripped from it. A veil has been ripped from the world. All the colours are too-bright, hideous. Pax breathes, because there’s no alternative, and waits for the pain to ebb.
(It doesn’t, really.)
“The Gates are sealed,” Ocato says, slowly, and he’s looking at her again, she can see out of the edge of her eye. “We will speak later. I’ll have you put up in the Palace until you’re healed. Ah – Quintus, does –”
“As long as she doesn’t go back into shock,” says the mage-medic, busily flipping through some kind of supply bag at his belt, “her odds are good. Lost blood, but I don’t think anything important was too damaged – get a proper examination, all I did was give her a second wind. Stitches, rest, fluids should do it, with luck.”
“Can she stand?”
“Can or should are –”
“Shut the fuck up,” Pax snaps, “I’m right here.” Her back pressed against the cold marble of the statue, her plait half-loose and knotted, filled with ash. The sky is so fucking blue. It hurts like hell – if the healer took her out of shock, then shit, she wishes he’d put her back in. She can see in too much detail. She can feel the skin, damp and ragged and angry. She presses the heel of her hand to the injury; her palm is crusted with dust, tacky with the same half-dried blood streaked over the floors.
Ocato, in the edges of her vision, shifts, all a blur of rich clothes and sympathetic eyes and solemn voice turned soft like he’s talking to an easily spooked horse. “I know.”
The mage-medic clucks his tongue. “Let me take another look first,” he says, and takes a step forward –
Pax kicks out at him before he even gets close. “Don’t fucking touch me!”
“Pax,” says Ocato – and why, why the fuck is the Empire’s de facto leader here, now, babying them like a whimpering little puppy instead of anywhere fucking else, why is he bothering to talk to them all patronising soft, why does he care? They’ve barely fucking met – talked twice, if you can call either of those times talking. Is it because they’re the Hero of Kvatch? Is this what they’ve earned – a bit of leeway as they throw a tantrum, bleeding out at the marble feet of that stupid bloody statue? Ocato looks so fucking tired; Pax wants to hit him in the nose. “You need care.”
“I need –” and Pax chokes it off in a puff of air. The statue looms behind them. There’s blood on the floors. (Traitor liar coward come back come back I hate you come down I’ll knock your fucking teeth in stupid selfish fraud come BACK. LOOK AT ME.)
Pax closes his eyes.
“My gratitude,” Ocato says, “ – our gratitude for what you’ve done cannot be overstated. The Crisis if over. The gates are sealed. Mehrunes Dagon and his ilk can never threaten Tamriel again.”
The knobs of Pax’s braid are pressing uncomfortably against their scalp. They can hear footsteps, coming closer. They don’t respond.
“It’s a great shame we had to pay such a price,” Ocato says, and Pax would fucking love to know who’s we here, “but it’s done. Dagon is defeated. We’ve won.” He’s much too close, now; his voice pitches softer. “Martin – is dead. But he died an Emperor – and a hero to rival Tiber Septim.”
Pax shoves him.
It’s a good fucking shove – knocks him right to the ground, his elbow hitting the marble with a painfully audible crack, Pax standing over him, shirt rucked up, their handprint on his shoulder marked in blood. “You useless, prattling jackass!” they spit, hoarse, and deal a swift, savage kick to his side. “How dare you act like this is a victory! It should have been me!”
Then their head swims, and they’re sitting again on the edge of the dais, palm pressed to their side, the sweaty cloth of their gambeson pushed half off their shoulder and its cord biting into their hand. The mage-medic is kneeling over Ocato, who still lies, stunned; Pax can’t see his eyes, now, but they remember them, brassy with shocked fear. Their bow is off by the wall where they left it. Pax’s palms are sticky with blood. The sky is so fucking blue. No matter how hard she rages the dragon won’t look down at them.
By the time the mage-medic has helped Ocato up, they’re gone. The Kvatch guard gambeson remains, smoke-smelling and crusted with blood, left like an offering at the statue’s feet. The Hero of Kvatch is never seen again.
#posting these two one after another is. fun :)#I lovee characters that just slightly misunderstand each other. causing pain and suffering for ever and ever#martin goes this will be sad for them... but at least I can apologise before I go. and at least there will be people to care for them#and I will at last atone for my many horrid sins (mostly existing and bearing witness to the terrors)#meanwhile to pax. the only person that cares about them + figurehead for their entire sense of purpose and confidence has abandoned them.#the Big Dragon Statue is apt because when martin died he made himself a monster#both the only good thing in the world and the thing that took it away#pax hates him. hates herself for hating him. loves him. hates herself for loving him. cannot fathom anything she knows to be true#about their relationship#If He Cared About Me He Couldn't Have Done This. so he never cared#so the dragon with its head arched to the sky is insult to extremely literal injury#so I will NOT be comforted or looked after thanks. I will die at your feet cursing your name and failing that I will lash out as hard#as I can and then disappear from historical record#(to go break into a physician's office and stitch himself up. pax says to himself that he's had worse but Worse was also major abdominal#trauma that caused hypovolemic shock. the perspective is skewed)#and everything is so so sad forever THE END thanks for reading :D#oc tag#pax#martin septim#the elder scrolls#tesblr#tes#oblivion#fay writes#my writing#hero of kvatch
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Dating sim where Noah’s the playable main character and the goal is to get with one of a wide variety of campers on the island (to his protest)
#I started thinking about how life and dating sims tickle my fancy#and as you do I tried forcing total drama into the mold#this is the solution I came to. most shippable man who ever lived#I don’t know why I’m entertaining this stupid little idea but. there should be an even ratio of boys and girls#for the boys Cody Owen and Alejandro are obvious choices#for the girls I propose Izzy Heather and Gwen#if eight is a better number throw Duncan and Courtney into the mix#there’d be a good route where the romance works a bad route where he tries and fails and a neutral route where he either makes a good-#friend or finds happiness with solitude#that’s it. aaaand post#total drama#Starry speaks#no emma cause this is on the island she doesn’t exist yet
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So, FHJY theory/au idea:
In that one promotional video, Emily had been unsure about continuing on as Fig right? Well, looking at the devil's nectar, and how powerful Fig's illusions are becoming, and all the stuff with Cuspin Clark, imagine if Figueroth Faeth turns into Wanda Childa, and Wanda Childa finds that she cannot turn back?
#fhjy#d20 fhjy#fantasy high junior year#fantasy high junior year theory#fhjy spoilers#fig faeth#wanda childa#Imagine you are a person with an entirely fictitious past#there are four separate people who were parents to someone you just... aren't#that they'll never get back#you never existed and now you are in your junior year of high school#maybe fig even triggers this intentionally in a misguided attempt to destroy the curse#Ayda gets back and Fig isn't real anymore#and there's this new person who stands where she stood#and it's not her fault#The bad kids now have a complete stranger as a part of their party#Would they have to move to pass fail?#technically noone died#that makes it even worse methinks#my post
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put marcille donato in the 21st century and she could bust out unsubstantiated slash fanfiction like nobody's business
#dungeon meshi#mine#the way she just whipped out a character study of chilchuck's wife who she has never met. didn't even know existed until like two hours ago#my girl can extrapolate from crumbs like no other#she's already a trashy romance fan she can do it#i just finished binging it over 2 days j need to make it somebody else's problem before it makes me fail my midterm
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Closely connected to the act of name signing was the act of writing poems on walls. As scholars have already pointed out, with beginnings traceable to the Six Dynasties, wall poems (tibishi) were already very widespread during the Tang. By Christopher Nugent's count, well over one thousand entries in the Complete Tang Poems had titles indicating that they began as inscriptions on some surface other than paper or scrolls. These surfaces included walls at places of gathering and transit, such as post stations, scenic sites, inns, and increasingly in the latter part of the Tang, Buddhist temples, which also served public roles for lay gatherings and performances. (100)
In one anecdote, a latecomer casts aspersions on a first writer's literary skills, comparing him to the general Xiang Yu (232-202 BCE), who was infamous for having learned just enough writing to manage his name: "Li Tang signed his name on a pavilion in Zhaoying County. When Wei Zhan [jinshi degree 865] saw it, he took a brush and dashed off a taunt: 'The rivers of Wei and Qin brighten the eyes, / but why is Xiren short on poetic spirit? / Perhaps he mastered only what Beauty Yu's husband could / learning to write just enough to put down his name.' " ... It would not be a stretch to imagine the sniggering of those who read this inscription in a frequented pavilion. (102)
For a degree seeker in Chang'an, these circuits of information and judgment received more discussion than the actual examination itself. Tang literati wrote copiously about activities such as name signing, public exposure, and triumph. It would not be an exaggeration to say that in ninth-century temples and popular recreation areas, the vertical spaces were teeming with verses that clamored for attention. (104)
selections on poetic graffiti from linda rui feng's city of marvel and transformation: chang'an and narratives of experience in tang dynasty china (university of hawaii press, 2015)
#china#tang dynasty#tagamemnon#<- couldn't stop thinking about graffiti from pompeii while reading this chapter so i suspect it may be of interest to rome-heads in genera#this was very promising book that felt like it failed to fully deliver - can't tell if the author was trying not to get into aspects which-#-have a paucity of surviving sources or if perhaps she was trying to avoid stepping on the toes of existing scholarship#e.g. nugent's mentioned book on poetry production/circulation or juduth zeitlin's article on wall poems and anxieties of loss#but even though i felt like it needed another 50-100 pages of fleshing out there are some generally remarkable moments in here#bits that can be put in remarkable parallel with imperial rome certainly; more fascinatingly with 19th- and early 20th-century fiction-#-that deals closely with 'new' modern urban life. where the forms & patterns of the city itself collude with residents against the newcomer#some interesting notes on bai juyi in here too. though i don't know if they're news to any real bai juyi stans out there
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Genuinely asking as an aroace person: why might ghostbusters want to have other romantic long-term relationships if they already have a committed group of people with whom they share a household, love to spend time, can be vulnerable and overall feel comfortable? Isn’t this why people get relationships in the first place?
#the real ghostbusters#rgb#ghostbusters#this is about any version of gb really#cuz like#you already have it all#and they are the most important people in each other’s lives#their other friends are so vague and not in the picture they might as well not exist#idk I asked my mom and she failed to explain it to me#so#I do not accept ‘for physical intimacy’ as an answer it cannot be THAT important#also they kiss anyways so
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