#so much death... how can those sorts of numbers ever be explainable

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching reading. Today's choice: 死亡万花筒 / Kaleidoscope of Death.

Kaleidoscope of Death is a 2018 Chinese webnovel about two young men who fall in love while basically playing a whole bunch of horror-themed escape rooms that can for-real kill you.

This novel was gripping. I could not put it down. It started out fun and ended up ripping out my heart several times. It does a good job getting the ball rolling with a series of adventures in weird worlds, then turns into a meditation about grief and loss and what it means to have something to lose in the first place.

This is the first time I've ever done a book rec! I'm doing it in conjunction with a rec post for the Spirealm, and originally I was just going to do this as a bonus section for that post. However, I felt they both deserve whole different posts, because they both have very different things to recommend them. I also think Kaleidoscope of Death a 100% necessary read if you've seen the show, because it provides some context that the show simply cannot include -- but it's not a necessary read before you see the show.

Therefore, I'm going to give you five reasons I think you should sit down with this one, and not a single one of these reasons is going to assume you've watched the Spirealm! The book is great and deserves to be read on its own merits, and then if you then start watching the drama afterwards, so much the better.

1. All the Cross-Dressing

(Yeah, I'm going to punctuate this one with screencaps from the Spirealm, because otherwise it's just a wall of text.)

I'm not going to tell you why the male characters frequently dress and pass as women, since the book explains the practicality of it better than I could. You just need to know that they often do, and it's never not kinda hot when it happens.

When you first meet Ruan Nanzhu, it is as Ruan Baijie, a stunningly beautiful and noticeably tall woman. Lin Qiushi, our POV character who is extremely confused for a number of reasons, spends the first whole arc talking and thinking about Baijie like she's a girl. In fact, one of the cutest things about sweet, earnest Qiushi is that he clocks Baijie several times, and every time he's just like, oh, she's so flat-chested, how unusual for a girl, anyway...

And this isn't even just dressing up! Stepping into the door worlds changes you physically based on your clothing and cosmetics. Nobody inside looks the same as they do outside, and nobody looks the same inside as they did last time they were inside. The rules that govern these transformations aren't even clear to the characters themselves! So, you know, have fun with that.

I'm going to say it's not an out-and-out trans thing, in that we're not dealing with an AMAB egg who will crack someday. Ruan Nanzhu is a very male-identified, penis-having man! He's just also pretty entertainingly comfortable with performing whatever gender makes him the most fuckable person in any given room. Lin Qiushi is not so inherently genderfluid, however, which means that when his gremlin sort-of-boyfriend makes him pretend to be a girl, it's a completely different kink.

Therefore: If you like it in any way when boys dress up like girls, you owe it to yourself to pick up this one. And if you like a fandom that likes it when boys dress up like girls, baby, welcome to the world inside the doors.

2. Those boys GAY

This is a textual romance. Lin Qiushi and Ruan Nanzhu are in love. This is a danmei novel about how they fall in love. There is kissing and there are fade-to-black scenes that explicitly acknowledge that the two of them have sex with one another. We even know that Ruan Nanzhu (usually) tops. This s not just me pointing at them and saying gaaaaaaaaaay. This is actual gay.

And it is gay that takes its fucking time. They do not actually hook up until well over halfway through the book, but they are physically affectionate from almost the get-go. Ruan Nanzhu is such a trickster and a liar that Lin Quishi finds it hard to believe that anything he does is sincere, which leads to nearly lesbian levels of wondering if it means anything when a guy demands you kiss him on the mouth when he's pretending to be your girlfriend. Meanwhile, Ruan Nanzhu is over here being the Kate Beaton comic about sitting here consumed with lust all evening.

Even once they both acknowledge what they're feeling for one another, they don't get together right away. After all, they're playing a game of life and death where they lose friends left and right. Every time someone goes inside the door, there's a real chance they won't come out again. Is giving your heart to someone worth how much it will destroy your entire life when you lose them?

(Yes, says the book. Yes, it is worth it.)

The slow burn of their relationship is delicious, in part because the physical (though not sexual) aspects of it predate the romantic ones. It also has the fun hot-and-cold aspect where Ruan Nanzhu is incredibly affectionate inside the doors, then icy outside of them. Poor completely inexperienced, never-been-kissed Lin Qiushi does not know what to make of any of this. He can barely manage parenting a cat. He does not know how to handle a boyfriend who is also a girlfriend who is also (spiritually) a cat.

I also find it charming how much the gay part of it both is and isn't an issue. It's not that Lin Qiushi has a problem being in love with a man; however, the fact that Ruan Nanzhu is a man does mean the heteronormally indoctrinated and relationship-inexperienced Lin Qiushi takes much longer to realize what exactly those feelings he's having are. The book's world is one where heterosexuality is the assumed default, while queerness is unexpected but everybody's still pretty cool with it. Besides, no one's going to judge Lin Qiushi's gay yearnings, because who doesn't want to fuck Ruan Nanzhu?

3. HAKO ONNA HAKO ONNA HAKO ONNA

So as I was reading through @zintranslations' earlier chapters, I kept seeing translators' notes down at the bottom about being so excited to finally get to the Hako Onna arc. Okay, I thought, this is a lot of hype; I hope it doesn't disappoint.

Friends, it does not. This is the arc I was reading while screaming into a pillow. It's thirteen chapters long, tied for the longest arc in the book with the first door. It is a fucking nail-biter. It does the clever thing of taking all the things you've learned about what can happen inside the doors and combining them for a worst-case scenario.

The setup is pretty simple: There's a bunch of boxes. One has the exit. Most are empty. Some have things that help you. Some have things that hurt you. The more things you find that hurt you, the more things there are to hurt you. And you have to open the boxes.

All the door arcs are pretty well-written, so that you can more or less play along with their various adventures. Hako Onna, however, is exceptional. It's so complicated, but you can actually follow it. And you need to be able to follow it, because the multiple emotional gut-punches that happen in this arc all depend on understanding how the rules of the game have just been leveraged to fuck someone over.

Now I really want to play the board game -- which I was pleased to discover is a real board game! And speaking of board games...

sidebar: Betrayal at House on the Hill

I know this isn't technically related to the novel at all, but if you like board games, horror, and being incredibly dramatic, you owe it to yourself to try out Betrayal at House on the Hill.

It goes like this: You and several other horror-movie archetypes wander through a mansion, "building" it as you explore it, so the game layout is different every time. At some point (and it's based on so many random factors that you never know when it'll be) someone triggers a condition, and the haunting begins. All the players then get the rules of haunting explained to them -- except for one player, the one picked to do the titular betrayal, who gets a different set of instructions and becomes the antagonist. From that point on, the game is about either surviving or completing the haunting, depending on which side you're on.

I have played this game before with normal board game people, and they were like, eh, this is fine. I have also played this game before with theatre kids who RP and LARP, and we all had a fucking blast. So I'm going to warn you that you have to choose your crowd carefully. This is a game for people who do improv and voices.

4. The art of losing isn't hard to master

The book has a high body count -- higher than the show's, in fact, though that's related to how the book also has more characters than the show does. When you meet someone who can go into the doors, be careful how much money you'd lay on their survival.

Death after the doors comes so quickly, too. There's barely any time to say goodbye, if there's even any time at all. Often there's just a phone call telling our main characters that one of their friends or allies or enemies is gone.

Everyone who gets the chance to go through the door worlds is only able to do so because they're dying already. The more doors they pass, the more they get to kick that death further down the road -- but the more doors they enter, the more chances they take that they might die inside one. So really, none of the players can be that resentful of being forced to play a game that can kill them, since they're already playing it on borrowed time.

I will say, somewhat cryptically, that the book has a positive ending that leaves open the possibility for other positive things. The path to that positive ending, though, leads through some pretty wrenching takes on living through grief. It's not even all rah-rah and it-gets-better, either -- the text acknowledges many times over what it means to have someone that life isn't worth living without.

And that's maybe not what you expected from a BL horror adventure webnovel, but it's what you're gonna get! Ha ha!

5. What He Is

Which is the title of the first extra chapter, which is not extra at all, but is in fact a necessary explanatory piece that whacks you upside the head like a two-by-four and recontextualizes the entire story.

...Yeah, that's all you're going to get from me about that. You'll understand when you get there.

Have you put it on your reading list yet?

The way you have to read it is a little convoluted: @zintranslations has chapters 1-17 and 63-end + extras. Taida Translations has chapters 1-62. So no matter where you start reading, you're going to have to switch sites at least once.

There are also apparently Portuguese, Indonesian, Russian, and Spanish translations too? And the original Chinese webnovel, of course. And some audio dramas and subs linked to from this Carrd, which helpfully has other information, like content warnings for specific chapters, in case the horror aspect of the story gives you pause.

Anyway, once you're done reading it -- or even before you're done! -- you should absolutely go watch the Spirealm. I think it's clear from both rec posts that I definitely like the book better, but I appreciate having the drama to bring so many scenes to life, and I think the casting is great. Also, I don't think reading the book makes you like the drama less! Rather, I think reading the book gives you insight into the awkward and sometimes terrible choices the drama had to make to survive -- which in turn gives you the ability to see through those choices, on to what the show always wanted in its heart to be.

I do find it funny how "Kaleidoscope of Death" and "Death's Kaleidoscope" technically mean the same thing, but they sure read different, don't they?

[sophiethewitch1]

The Palestine donation scams are really like a special place in hell for these bastards. Like you are evil, you have to know it don't you?

[twopoppies]

The article is in Spanish, but it's a very trustworthy source from Argentina. That Roger was a fucking leech, hope he rots in jail

https://www. infobae. com/sociedad/policiales/2024/11/08/pesos-argentinos-para-comprar-droga-negocios-en-comun-y-dias-libres-el-oscuro-control-de-rogelio-nores-sobre-liam-payne/

This is so fucking disturbing. I know fans have had a bad feeling about Roger for a while. It sounds like they weren’t wrong.

Today, Nores is charged with abandoning Liam Payne and killing him , as well as supplying and facilitating him with drugs, in a relationship that sources in the case describe as “almost Maradona-esque, a friend of the champion , like those who surrounded Diego at his worst .” To charge him, Madrea and his team analyzed 800 hours of footage from the CasaSur hotel and opened Liam’s phone. In addition, they took a large number of testimonies, including that of Liam’s father, Geoff Payne.

Liam's father said the same thing that the courts were able to confirm through the analysis of communications and the comparison of other testimonies: that Nores, after meeting Payne in Miami at the beginning of this year, became the force that dominated his life. If the Payne family wanted to know how the singer was, then they should contact Rogelio. He was not just another friend of Liam's, under any circumstances. Geoff Payne himself said it: "Roger" was always the intermediary. "He is better than ever," he would have told the family when asked.

And this explains the charge of abandonment of a person. It is not about the fact that the businessman did not come to the singer's aid, but about the long road that led to the CasaSur hotel.

The businessman would have become a sort of de facto manager . Although they did not have a specific contract in this regard, sources in the case say that Nores operated as an "investment advisor" and that they had business in common in view of Payne's possible return to the world stage. For this, the singer's recovery from his addiction to drugs and alcohol was key. He just had to be detoxified.

Nores accompanied Payne in a deep detoxification treatment in the United States. There, a psychiatrist prescribed sertraline, the antidepressant that was found in the toxicology test on the singer's body. The specialist said it clearly: if you mix alcohol and cocaine with sertraline, the result can be lethal.

Then, another treatment in Spain was carried out, which also failed. So they ended up in Argentina. Payne was put up in a prestigious five-star hotel that was used to hosting big rock stars. They kicked him out of there. They even visited a local psychiatrist, who testified in the file. After the five-star hotel, they both went to the Patagones polo club with the singer's last girlfriend, Kate Cassidy, where the singer was photographed wearing a helmet and heels on a horse. They spent a few days there. However, Payne quickly became nervous and left the place.

Thus, they arrived at the CasaSur hotel in Palermo on the Sunday before the death. Liam did not even have a bag. There, according to the testimonies and analysis that are part of the case of the prosecutor Madrea, Nores' control would have been much more evident, with alleged orders to the hotel staff to report each expense. Nores, this time, managed Payne's expenses , while receiving calls for each whiskey, champagne or tequila that the former One Direction member ordered, with physical money delivered at the reception. The evidence also speaks of "free days" when Liam could consume cocaine.

The day he died, precisely, was a “day off.”

Thus, Nores frequently returned to the hotel to top up the bill. Payne, meanwhile, insisted on the phone, asking for Argentine pesos to pay the dealers who offered him cocaine, with photos of the bags they offered him and the corresponding prices. The prosecution suspects that Nores had obtained cocaine for him himself, which led to the second charge against him.

Meanwhile, hotel cameras filmed Liam as he wandered the halls , drunk and with a distant look.

For the time being, Nores is free, with his passport handed over to the courts and a ban on leaving the country, while he awaits being summoned for questioning by Judge Laura Bruniard. Article 106 of the Criminal Code, which defines the crime of abandonment followed by death, speaks of “anyone who endangers the life or health of another, either by placing him or her in a situation of helplessness, or by abandoning to their fate a person who is incapable of taking care of himself or who must be maintained or cared for, or who the author himself has incapacitated .” Here, the alleged supply of narcotics plays a key role.

If convicted, he could face up to 15 years in prison. Given the amount of the sentence, the crime is not bailable.

[yuri-is-online]

Jade desperately googling and reading threads about mer x human pregnancies before he even dates yuu.

It differs from species to species, usually fem mer x male human results in viable pregnancies, there are a two articles about eels and humans, but none about morays.

His hope is dwindling, and the general consensus about deep sea folk relationships with humans isn't very good.

I HC that male mer x female human pregnancies don't last very long. After the sperm makes contact with an egg, it'll need a few months of growth before it's expelled from the body and put into the sea. Those kinds of couples usually have one child at a time, it depends on the number of available eggs.

Modern day people in twst have aquariums that are made to hold the clutches in a safe environment away from predators. The aquariums can be used both underwater and on land. After 'hatching' the babies are translucent, they are kept in the aquariums until they gain colour. Once they have enough colour they are let out.

The smallest aquariums need to hold at least one human adult, so that a parent can interact and communicate with their clutch during the growing process.

I think I read a post/fic with a similar headcannon to this? Long long ago, perhaps even before I even downloaded Twisted Wonderland. I don't fully remember... but it is something I have been thinking about a decent bit ever since you sent this ask because it raises so many questions.

I think it makes the most sense in human x mer relationships for one or the other to take a transformation potion and move onto the land/into the sea. In these cases pregnancy/egg laying would go as it would "normally" but what you're suggesting made me think about what would happen if a couple got it on raw in their normal forms and not transformed. Would that result in a viable pregnancy? If it did would it produce the sorts of offspring you are suggesting or would it result in some sort of hybrid child, barely held together by their own magic?

The aquariums are a good idea, the story seems to suggest that Jade and Floyd had other siblings once but they didn't make it. Their mother's obsession with checking up on them and teaching self defense makes a lot of sense if you think of that... she lost most of her babies, she wants the two she has to remain safe (i bet she's going feral rn, let Mama Leech into the enclosure S.T.Y.X. she'll put Malleus in his place ٩(๑`^´๑)۶) My question is whether or not that would interfere with the development of the eggs, especially on land. The deep ocean is very cold, recreating that on land could be problematic. With how few merfolk seem to bother with land (Azul mentions not many people bother with the free program in Book 6) there likely wouldn't be much of anyone thinking up a solution to this problem so few people have.

But Jade has that problem. Or will, he's sure of it but that's a minor detail- point is this is a problem he's actively thinking about. It keeps him awake at night, Jade strikes me as someone who would do a lot of research about this. It's part of how he loves, pouring through a pile of scientific articles that was slim to begin with but feel irrelevant now. None of these help him understand his chances because he is from the deep sea, Jade might be hardened towards the death of his siblings but he thinks of his own children and a rage unlike any he's ever known begins to stir in the pit of his stomach. Later, much later when he is explaining this all to you he will brush it off as him considering your human sensibilities, but the truth is written plain on his face. This little aquarium he has made was a solution painstakingly crafted with help from his own obsessions. It's the most important terrarium he has ever made because it will contain the most precious of all life forms, ones he watches grow in awe as he coos softly. These children were wanted long before they were ever born, their parents loved them to the point of invention and every second up until they hatch and forever after.

[djwiththejd]

The Fall of The House of Usher (2023) Episode 2

I'm back, back in the New York Groove ~

Like I said before, I'm writing this because I need a hobby. I do feel like after sleeping on everything I typed up for with episode 1 that I can do with a reorganization of sorts. I simply cannot point out every one liner, clue, and reference to something obscure in this show without developing carpal tunnel.

So, with that, I'm going to change the layout of how I type up this episode and see if I like it better. At the moment of writing this, I have already finished Episode 2 and I'm chomping at the bit to write about it. SO without further ado, some analysis I was too tired to bring up in my first post.

Firstly, once I saw that The Murder in The Rue Morgue had its own episode title, I got the gist that each episode would be focused around the death of each sibling. I sincerely hope by now that this isn't a spoiler however, as the entire family has to die in order for the fall of the House of Usher to actually come to fruition. Luckily everyone in the family except for possible Lenore and Juno are shit people. So anyhow, the 8 episode layout where Episode 1 begins with the introduction, six episodes in the middle each center around the death of a sibling, and then the last episode will probably be reserved for the death of the twins. What's great is that you can assume that structure is what is intended and still be surprised by plot twists and modernization elements to make the story new, fun, and exciting. It's the journey, blah, blah, blah.

ALSO, I've never seen any other piece of Mike Flanagan's works, so this is my first time delving into a horror anthology. I am sure I liked Hill House things when it first came out bc people were very funny about it on here, but I was too much of a chicken to watch it.

Anyhow, now we move onto the next bit, background and plot!

So first, I have not read The Masque of the Red Death. I am literally just copy/pasting the first paragraph of the plot summary from Wikipedia, hyperlinks and all:

The story takes place at the castellated abbey of the "happy and dauntless and sagacious" Prince Prospero. Prospero and 1,000 other nobles have taken refuge in this walled abbey to escape the Red Death, a terrible plague with gruesome symptoms that has swept over the land. Victims are overcome by "sharp pains", "sudden dizziness", and "profuse bleeding at the pores", and die within half an hour. Prospero and his court are indifferent to the sufferings of the population at large; they intend to await the end of the plague in luxury and safety behind the walls of their secure refuge, having welded the doors shut to ensure no one enters or leaves.

Unfortunately, the episode does not start with our young prince Prospero. It starts with a flashback of Dupin in 1979 taking a photo of an exhumed and empty grave. At this point Dupin's plaque titles his as "Junior Fraud Investigator," and apparently isn't a police officer. The most important bit here is how Dupin pushes back against his boss and the boss asks him: "Say you win. If you could catch them all, take all of it, all the greed, the foulness, the rot in the world and sit down across from it, what would you say?" and then it immediately cuts to Dupin in that dilapidated childhood home of Roderick and Madeline Usher, and Dupin gets to ask "Was it ever going to be enough?" There's more there, but the callous way Roderick responds indicates that the mask has come up again briefly. He's defensive about Ligodone, he's defensive about his wife, he refuses to explain why there is no number of dollars in the world that will make him and Madeline feel satisfied with their success.

It was also important that in the past, Dupin tells his boss that "This world needs changing." This is the same ideal that the twins have, but the intent and the implication behind those same words these people said at approximately the same time culminates in them leading very different lives. For now, that's all I have to say on the matter.

Now, moving on. Perrie's corpse appears behind Dupin this time. This time Dupin does turn around but sees nothing, so we can assume that the corpses are just visions. The ghosts of Roderick's past coming back to haunt him, quite literally.

So when we first see Perrie in this episode, he's introduced in bed surrounded by naked bodies, sex toys, etc. I'm sure it is meant at first sight to shock the senses, but personally I couldn't stop thinking about how we are visually seeing Perrie being "boxed in" this hedonistic cage of his own making. This is Perrie's own bed, the people he chose to spend his time with, but as we see in the episode when we look at how his family interacts with him and how Verna speaks to him, Perrie has basically put himself into a box of his own deadly sin, Lust. In this vein, I wonder if I can do an analysis of each child as one of the deadly sins, omitting Pride. Pride has historically been seen as the worst sin, or the highest sin that brings forth all the other sins, so if I did do this analysis, I would immediately take Pride out of the equation only because I would ascribe it to the twins as the head of the family and as the parents of all of the other sins. I haven't watched the other episodes yet so I'm not sure if this analysis will keep up going forward but for now I have a general idea which sin I would ascribe to which child.

So moving on with the plot, Perrie wakes up and comes out to two people in his apartment and I recognized one of them! Molly Quinn, famously known for being Richard Castle's daughter and also the daughter of the other RV owning family in We're the Millers. She's a fond part of my childhood, and I'm loving her haircut. However, we see a weird, almost violent display of power when Perrie thinks his expensive eggs were eaten by his "friends" and I put friends in parentheses because I'm not entirely sure yet if Perrie does see these people as his friends, lovers, or even equals.

They discuss disappointment at Roderick vetoing supporting the Prospero club venture he had pitched, and Perrie says it might have been an overall good thing. He gets a call from Frederick, lovingly saved in his phone as Dickwad. Apparently he's supposed to be shadowing Frederick, but as soon as he walks in, his immaturity and naïveté derails the entire meeting with the Feds over Fortunato's poor environmental business practices. This enrages Freddie, and he accuses Perrie of being the mole informant. The continuous bit that Freddie struggles to differentiate between the two is actually quite funny, especially because Perrie has just shown his ass to not be the brightest bulb in the bunch, but even he can keep those two different concepts straight in his head. Freddie really says some demoralizing shit to Perrie though, you can tell he sees himself above the other children, similarly to how Tamerlane's musings about the informant likely being "one of the bastards" from the first episode. Just because Roderick says you're family doesn't necessarily show that the children saw it the same way even when paternity is established.

Perrie lays out the details for the sex and drug-fueled club event to his two lackeys, and Verna briefly pops up on the roof of the building before Perrie looks back and sees that she's gone. We cut to the Rue Morgue, and Victorine and Alessandra lose another monkey. Victorine takes it hard and Alessandra tells her the last thing they should be talking about right now is human trials. However, we see that she's lying through her ass to her father, who is fast tracking this process because he's the person who needs that surgery.

Cut to Perrie asking Leo for drugs. So many drugs. Leo has funny quip in heres, but he's important because he tells Perrie that he's "better than a dealer, smarter than a DJ," and that "this is beneath you." Leo sees potential in Perrie that I saw a glimpse of when he was crunching numbers and setting entry fees for the guests. It is a shame that Perrie doesn't choose to listen to him in the end. And yes, another funny viagra quip.

We cut to Bill T. Wilson's...workout video? So that's what BILLT nation is. I will say the half-confused, half-concerned, half-disgusted, half-almost fascinated face Camille has is priceless here. We then cut to her watching a testimony from an alleged whistleblower at the Fortunato trial. Camille's willingness to find something about this whistleblower if there isn't anything to find speaks a lot about how she is as a PR manager. Ruthless, merciless, and focused on the ends to justify the means. The informant issue is eating at her because it was a factor she could not see or control. She zeroes in on Vic's clinical trial because she thinks it stinks, and we know it does, but she's got some ulterior motive that we don't know yet. The guy was admittedly fair in asking what Vic did to her, but it was one of those things you keep inside and never voice because Camille 100% has the ability to ruin you. Her glare was iconic. I was scared but also a little excited. I was hoping for some action but we cut to Perrie again instead.

A drop of water from the ceiling drips and lands on a phone. We talk about how to access the party, Molly Quinn uses her vocal fry to whisper sing an ad-libbed version of WAP, and we see the sprinkler again while Perrie asks about the water. We move to discussing the sprinklers to "make it rain" for the party and the guy for it says the sprinklers are shut off and Perrie calls bullshit because they dripped on his phone. He has this entire bit about hooking up the sprinklers to the filtered water tanks on the roof, etc, and starts talking about "The Golden Rule." I know this rule well, and while Perrie doesn't get to finish saying it before we cut to Roderick, I can confidently say as someone without money that money can solve many, many problems. So yes, whoever has the gold, does make the rules.

Roderick tells Dupin about the comic where he read about it. Before he can also finish saying "rule" Perrie's corpse appears to stand before him, and WOW he looks horrific. The SFX team deserves major props for this work, because he looks like a human anatomy model. 100% my money is that there's acid rain in the sprinklers/in the water tanks in the roof, and I'm probably right, but once again, the beauty of good media/literature/stories isn't about guessing the plot twist or the ending of the story before you get to it, it's about enjoying the process as you go along. I'm having a great time.

Roderick switches to something called CADASIL. Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy. (The subtitle person for this deserves a raise.) It is apparently a hereditary form of vascular cognitive impairment. "Before it kills you, it causes symptoms very much like dementia. Affects thinking, problem solving, spatial reasoning and memory. It can even cause hallucinations."

Ah. There it is.

Roderick has this. And there's no cure. And he's refusing all the medications. AND the only hope is preventative. THE EXPERIMENTAL SMART HEART MESH HE SPENT $200 MILLION ON THAT HIS DAUGHTER IS WORKING ON?! Ah, so he is spending the gold to make sure the rules can work for him. Even if it means cutting corners and costing lives. Amazing how much money can really take away your sense of humanity though.

He brings up Rufus Griswold and that unfortunate cemetery business. What I laughed at was the dry, subtle way Roderick just calls Gris "the original gangsta." I had to rewind to make sure my eyes and the subtitles weren't playing tricks on me. So apparently all of this, as we are finding out, starts there. In Gris' office. With the Gris himself, "the original cocksucker."

Oh, it is a flashback. Young Roderick goes in to talk to Gris, but what about? Gris pours himself a drink and acerbically mocks the FDA. The "Fuck Dicks Association." Roderick is clearly not used to this kind of vibe, but he plays along poorly, not that it seems to matter much to Gris. Then again, this is a man who succeeded the helm of Fortunato. When he talks, he expects others to play along, he doesn't care how badly they do it as long as he's the one speaking and in charge. Roderick tries to make a pitch but Griswold is unhappy to hear it. He's about to kick Roderick out but decides fuck it, he's already here. Might as well just pretend to listen and kick him out. Obviously he doesn't say that, but I did debate for most of high school. Some judges walk in biased and you know you've lost before you even open your mouth. This happens with WASPy soccer moms judging their kids' debate tournament, this happens with judges on a local and federal level even though we pretend it isn't true, and it is certainly happening right now with Roderick Usher about to try to pitch something to Rufus Griswold. It is a shame Roderick doesn't know it yet.

He pitches ligodone, the same drug that dupin is in modern times currently trying to nail Fortunato and the Ushers for for falsely advertising as everything Roderick is pitching to Gris now. It is a really good pitch, very idealistic. I think Roderick may believe ligodone is the cure for everything, but I'm hooked on his line "this world...needs changing." He's as idealist as young Dupin at this time. I am so committed to seeing what goes wrong.

The pitch continues, Griswold pushes back, and Roderick suggests that Fortunato will become a miracle and Griswold will become the new Messiah. This piques my interest. We've got the ultra-religious mom, the children being allegories for the deadly sins, and a reference to the head of Fortunato with ligodone as the next Messiah. It certainly invokes a sense of hubris with inevitable downfall. But then Roderick brings it back to his mom and how much pain she was in. It really throws me for a loop because I think the humanity of it all is really at the bottom of Griswold's mind.

We cut to a new location and a crying baby. we see Madeline first and then a woman with the crying baby. We quickly figure out this is Roderick's wife Annabel (hur hur Annabel Lee) who consoles him for not winning his pitch. Madeline looks out of place, uncomfortable being there and more focused on things outside of the domestic sphere like Roderick's failed pitch. When we cut to the silent time after the baby is quiet at night, we see Roderick in the middle of these two women, with Madeline at his right hand side. When Annabel expresses remorse about the familial ties Roderick has with Fortunato, with his mother and father, Madeline seems shocked that he would have told his wife about such a detail? Like ma'am, that is your brother's wife. I just get this codependent vibe from the two of them that really gives me the ick. Annabel really does her best to bring them back to humanity by saying money isn't everything, but Madeline is not buying it. Madeline is completely jaded, turned off by men, turned off by love, basically anything where human emotion can show off even a sense of vulnerability. and she's just kind of disrespectful towards Annabel. (There's a bit here about AI writing movies and TV shows, I see that insert, I acknowledge it, I will move on.)

Madeline starts salivating at the thought of using algorithms to mimic human consciousness and ho it speaks to immortality. This is the first time I've seen her care about anything since I've seen her in this house, so I'm writing this immortality bit down as a note for later.

"Fuck that tiny little man in his big office with his tiny little ideas. WE are going to change the goddamn world, and if Fortunato won't help us get there, we will trample them on our way."

Ah. Spoken like a true capitalist, Madeline. Annabel can't fight off this insatiable, almost rabid thirst of Madeline's to move forward, and clearly since she isn't in the present with us, clearly Madeline must have won Roderick over to her side either by force or by choice. Shame, since Annabel was the paragon of virtue and humanity in this argument, and just goes to show how almost inhuman Madeline has become in this pursuit to change the world.

In the present, Madeline is talking to Lenore about answering a bunch of questions. Apparently she's making an Ai-approximation of Lenore by havingher write a journal every day for four months, answer 10,000 questions, and have it worm its way through the internet and collect all of her virtual data. This is impressive, actually. I'm doing some research on AI right now for an old law school professor so I've learned a lot about AI in the past few months and I have some background on this AI approximation that Madeline is trying to create. I might write a separate post about it altogether.

Back to Madeline. She assumes everyone wants to live on after they die, like the ancients. She had her Ancient Egypt phase, I see. This is Madeline's Roman Empire. She unboxes the mummification tools the Ancient Egyptians used to scoop out the brain, but there's a bunch of other artifacts behind her as well, propped up like trophies. She calls it her "immortality collection," so it isn't about Ancient Egypt, her hyperfixation is the concept of immortality.

Pym comes in and tells her she was right about something. Perrie's bank statements show that he's spending less. It either means he's "coming down in his old age" or that he's spending more cash. If so, he's dealing, pimping, or taking a payout in cash from the Federal government. Juno doesn't have her own accounts, she's co-signed on Roderick's. MAdeline here treats Juno with derision, calling her "the child bride" but ma'am. Once again, the common denominator here is that your brother picked these women to marry! Those are his decisions, deal with it! Either way, she's also intent on finding the informant.

Lenore walks in on Juno and Roderick being handsy in his office, but they quickly settle themselves. Juno is hilarious here, but it does highlight that Juno and Lenore are closer in age and interests than anyone else in this household. Blegh. Ok, maybe Madeline's comment about the whole child bride thing was on point. Juno is such comedic relief here, I'm not gonna lie, this actress is stellar, and I love her Irish accent. I think after all that tension and analysis, it was good to have a break. These things are too long, I need to shorten them for Episode 3.

Oh, cut to Perrie trying to drop off documents for Froderick. Dickwad. Frederick. Freddie. Morrie answers the door and tells him she's sorry about how Freddie can be. She tells Perrie she gets it, and idk, am I getting "battered wife" vibes here or is this just an act to try to get him to warm up? Perrie instead decides to be a degenerate and invite his shitty's brother WIFE to his expensive orgy. She scoffs and rebukes him, but he pulls some psycho manipulation about sex that as a demi person I can't relate to, but I appreciate her being all "How dare you!" about it. I still think if the show is going to put moving music in the background on it that she's going to end up going though, so maybe an early RIP to Morella Usher? Perrie's a whole ass freak, but Morrie is considering it, so wow.

Cut to Tamerlane. She's watching Bill set the table and then the bell rings. Off screen she invites a woman in who asks if a wig works for her? Ok, so this girl looks a bit like Chloe Fineman from SNL, but she just walks in wearing a wig and says hi to Bill like she's done this a million times before. Is this some type of roleplay? Ok, they're paying her in cash and Tamerlane is explaining her roleplay? She wants a romantic, intimate dinner? But she wants this girl to pretend to be her? Wait, she's sitting down and watching? Ok, so Tamerlane is sitting down and watching a hired girl pretend to be her, watch Bill treat her like he treats her, and Tamerlane gets off by watching it all as a third party observer? Her sexual fantasies literally start at dinner. I mean I just said Perrie's a whole ass freak, but Tamerlane kind of is one on a whole other, more voyeuristic, self-insertion level. I am confusion.

Cut to Camille watching Bill's workout video and kind of following his workout in a fascinated way? I'm also confusion. Anyway, her interns walk in and she turns it off, but then asks for updates on Vic's clinical trials and is frustrated that Toby can't get any results. She then goes into background of the testing facility "Roderick. Usher. Experimental." R.U.E. So she sets up the bit about the Rue Morgue. My favorite Poe short story. Tina goes into the paralytic nerve agent but Camille is uninterested. She looks through photographs and then..gets up to join them in bed? I had to rewind again. I didn't even realize they were undressing while debriefing her. And Camille's wearing a rope bra. And they're her interns! Besides the ethical and workplace violations from the freaking PR person for Fortunato, this whole family is FULL of sexual deviants. Wtf. I am confusion. AGAIN.

Cut to ships in a bottle. Frederick is showing Lenore how to make a ship in a bottle for Grampus Roderick. Morrie is headed out and apparently she's going to the orgy party. Great...

Everything is stuffed into lockers and masks come on. Perrie is overlooking this domain like the young Prince Prospero from the story. He gets excited when he sees and realizes his dickwad brother's hot wife showed up to his orgy. Morrie plays dumb, but Perrie tells her to try some drugs and one of the twelve bedrooms before he says he will find her later.

Cut to security cameras. Perrie points out all the famous/famous adjacent people who showed up. He reveals his plan to use the security footage form this hedonistic orgy to blackmail everyone who arrived at the party. Suddenly, inviting his dickwad's brother's hot model/actress wife makes a lot more sense, and he says it out loud. He drops a tidbit about Freddie is afraid of using elevators. Mght be useful for later. He then proceeds to give his lackeys ecstasy through mouth to mouth and they all head out to continue partying before a woman in a skull mask walks through the door. We know it is Verna, but Perrie doesn't know who she is. Verna and Morrie briefly make eye contact before Verna slips away and Perrie follows her to ask her who she is.

Verna finally removes her mask and she and Perrie somehow end up in a private bedroom. I don't know if the red lights are indicative of the seventh room in the original story, but if it is just a stylistic option, it also looks fitting. Verna tells him he can take off his mask. He asks her if she knows him, and she says she knows everyone here because this is her kind of party. She talks about the music, the lights, the beautiful flesh. She really leans into "the smells of it." And no, it isn't what you would think. "All the sweat, the perfumes, the lotions, the musk. sex, yes. But with a dash of Rome."

Verna asks him to tell her, and not lie, if this party is everything he wanted it to be. He says, "Not yet. Almost." She responds that "nearly realized is the sweetest. It is better...in the moment just before than in the moment after." She tells him he did it, and there's still time. For what? He asks. Verna responds..."To stop it."

She tells Perrie "Things like this, all things in fact, have consequences." He tells her that's not what is happening here based off of his invite (even though he KNOWS he plans to blackmail everyone in this room later.) Verna responds there are always consequences and talks about him. About choices that lead to consequences, and how his existence is a consequence. I wrote down the whole speech because those sequence of choices will likely be illuminated once the entire series is over, so I want that to reflect upon during each episode.

It is a shame, because even though Verna tells Perrie that tonight he is consequential, he doesn't even realize how serious she is. She gives him a chance to take it all back, and then the two of them could have had fun, and that she's got a weakness for bad boys. She tells Perrie "you are a pretty, pretty little thing" before she disappears into the party again. Perrie chases after her but she's gone. He takes something, puts his mask back on and returns to the party. Verna is seen whispering into the ears of the security guards, the bartender, etc before she appears behind Morrie and tells her to "Go. Now." So Morrie is given due warning. Now the decision is up to her whether to leave or stay as midnight approaches. Morrie stays, and has to deal with the consequences of her choices.

The acid rain in the sprinklers rains down and proceeds to basically liquify the entire party. Everyone looks like anatomical models, but Perrie is still moving a bit. Verna approaches his melted body and whispers "You beautiful boy" and kisses him on the lips as he dies before placing her skull mask on his face. And that's the end of the episode.

There's a lot there. I feel like I have to immediately start Episode 3 in order to recover from the whiplash of all of that, but this is going up now. I think for Episode 3 I will take it "scene by scene" as I plan to watch the entire episode in full since Rue Morgue is my favorite short story and I wanna see how it plays out with Camille. If I'm lucky I'll get Episode 3 up today but I am very much at the whim of my moods and medication.

Overall this was a good episode, we saw everyone else's freaky sex interests and I do think Perrie gives me "lust" deadly sin vibes, especially because his penchant for lust is what got him killed. Verna calling him beautiful before and after the acid rain is intriguing. She could be saying his demon-esque look is appealing because she herself is a demon. I got a google notecard/ad type of thing for an article saying that Verna is the Raven because it is an anagram, but I'm interested in seeing other explanations as to what Verna could be. She could be the literal devil that the twins made a deal with to get where they are, I'm not entirely sure. I just want to get through this series with as little spoilers as possible to see how accurate my guesses are.

[brightbeautifulthings]

Katzenjammer by Francesca Zappia

"They're all so dark, Dad said one day, watching over my shoulder as I worked at the kitchen table. Why don't you paint things like a blue sky, or a field of flowers, or a bird flying on a breeze? Something happy that your mom can put on the fridge. She can put these on the fridge, I said. Maybe just one flower? he asked. There are no flowers where I live, I said."

Year Read: 2023

Rating: 4/5

About: Cat has been stuck in School for as long as she can remember. The hallways slowly expand and contract with School's breathing, the showers run red with blood, and the students have divided themselves into changed and unchanged. While the unchanged hide in the fortress of administration, Cat and her friends haunt the courtyard and hallways. Her best friend is turning into cardboard, and Cat's face has become a cat mask made of her own hardened flesh. There are no doors or windows in or out of School, and something is hunting them down one by one in the hallways. To escape, Cat will have to understand why they're trapped in the first place. Trigger warnings: Some triggers are listed at the end of the review because they include spoilers. Character death, guns, violence, blood/gore, dismemberment, body/eye horror, bullying, slut-shaming, vandalism.

Thoughts: Thanks to @ninja-muse for recommending this book, since I'm not sure I would have found it on my own. This is probably my favorite Francesca Zappia novel to date, and one of the best novels on this subject I've ever read (more on that after the spoilers). However, I believe it's best to go into it not knowing much more than the description provides. This book works extremely well as a slow reveal. What starts out as a mindfuck becomes slow understanding as we realize more or less alongside Cat what is happening in School, and you'd be doing yourself a disservice to read the spoilers if you plan to read this. However, it covers a number of very heavy and potentially triggering topics (and it's difficult to gush about how I think it works without giving things away), so I'll include those thoughts at the end. I can't stress it enough though. If you're not easily triggered, stop here and go read this book!

This is also one of the best examples of uncanny horror that I've read in a long time. Zappia expertly manages to capture the quality of a nightmare without sacrificing the continuity. School is creepy and semi-sentient, and the changes it brings about in half the students are a study in body horror. Perhaps even more terrifying are the parallels it draws to some very real life horrors such as bullying and, indeed, I found the flashback chapters of Cat's surfacing memories of her former life of being targeted, bullied, and slut-shamed at school more difficult to get through than the surreal scenes of hacked up bodies or bloody showers in School. Real life horror always affects me a lot more than the supernatural, and Katzenjammer does an excellent job of balancing both. The ending is cathartic and effective, and there's less of a plot twist than a sort of inevitable, dawning horror-- which is honestly the best kind.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS. TURN BACK BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.

Remember how I said that real life horror is always worse than the supernatural or the uncanny? I stand by that statement. Zappia draws such excellent parallels to real life in her uncanny School that it's almost impossible not to realize before Cat does that the traumatic event that put them there was a school shooting. I've read a couple YA novels that handled the subject fine, but I don't think any of them capture it as well as this one. We need something like the supernatural School and the horror of bodies changing in ways we can't explain to fully grasp the senseless horror of gun violence. Killing children makes no more sense than hallways that breathe or girls who turn into their cat masks. It takes Cat the entire novel to understand the horror and absurdity of what's been done to her and to accept it-- that there are reasons but not excuses, and that we will never know all of them. I cried a little at the end, but I think the real life horror of it is too big for tears. Instead, it's a feeling that will sit with me long after I've turned the last page.

[direw00f]

The promised (sort of) rant about Ayreon (the character)

Alright so if anyone asks me about my favourite character ever it has to be Ayreon and I want to share why I like him so much! First up a small introduction to Ayreon (the project) for my mutuals or anyone that stumbles upon this. Ayreon is a prog rock/metal project by Arjen Anthony Lucassen every album has a story and most albums tell the same story. In all albums he gets guest singers to bring his story to life and in most album the different singers play different characters. Two exceptions to this rule is The Colonist from The Universal Migrator albums but his situation has a logical explination and we are going to dip a little into the story of this album as Ayreon makes a little appearance. Now the second exception is the character I will talk about now! As I will talk about the project's first ever protagonist from the first ever album The Final Experiment released in 1995 (this year is important as I will discuss later!). Now how this will go is I will analyse every song of the album and analyse the lyrics and how it relates to the love I have for Ayreon. Now as Ayreon gets described and introduced in the first song of the album, let's get right into this!

Track number 1: Prologue

So this is our introduction to the album as a future incarnation of Merlin talks to us from 2084 about Ayreon. 2084 is an important year in the Ayreon universe as it is the death of earth, so Merlin explains that scientists have developed "time telepathy" to send visions of humanity's demise into the past with the hopes of changing the future. These visions have been recieved by a BLIND MINSTREL living in 6th century Brittain, this is Ayreon and it is his task to warn humanity about it's disastrous future. Now do I have to say anything about the fact that the only thing this poor man now can see is destruction and death? So we have our basic introduction to our story and got a basic overview of our poor protagonist, his story will not have a happy ending sadly. The melody in this is sometimes the same as in the song Merlin's Will, I guess this is our audio cue for our wizard here.

Track number 2: The Awareness (technically Dreamtime)

Soooo first up what is up with the song name well this album is divided into 4 acts, somehow The Awareness and another act got split but while this song is called The Awareness the portion of the act we're talking about is called Dreamtime (Words Become A Song). So to be clear: The Awareness is the current act of the story we're in, the segment we're talking about is Dreamtime. This clear? Ok! Let us get on with the analysis. Let us start with the banging opening lines: "A cry in the silence, a shine in the dark Like a rising star, the dream is coming Images of violence, a flight through time and space It's such a lonely place; the dream is coming The smoke is rising, the vision's getting clearer And words become a song in the dreamtime" So this is our first look into Ayreon's head and just look at those fancy words, you can clearly see that he is a poet of some sort. So these visions appeared to him in dreams and his mind immediately started writing lyrics to a song. It is also the start of his issues with the visions (yay!) he is clearly distressed by the visions and nothing shows this more than the next song of our little saga:

Track number 3: Eyes Of Time

He is awake! Yay and oh boy here comes the crisis and a beautiful description of what he feels at this moment, again I will post the first verse because it is so beautiful and Eyes Of Time is my favourite song of this album with it's catchy chorus and beautiful lyrics. "I cannot see with these eyes! My world is black, like a cold eternal night I could not tell you no lies! My words are lost, in a shroud of mystery" So yeah..... the description of his world being as black as night is a frequent one we see associated with Ayreon as we will talk about later. So this is Ayreon trying to make sense of these visions he wakes up with as he puts it later "I see the world through the eyes of time". He also describes himself as drifting through time and he has no idea what to do, he is already composing the songs about these visions but he is still very confused and does not understand what's going on with him. He is really going through it lmao, anyways these tries at writing the songs and his staring of into space which leads him into:

Track number 4: The Banishment

Oh yeah this is exactly what it sounds like, the townsfolk grow fearful of him and his songs and banish him from the village. Poor Ayreon cries out "what have I done?" as the people accuse him of being evil, this leads Ayreon to roam the forest lost and even more confused. Eventually this leads him to find a place at Camelot after gaining some strange determination. What can I say about this song other then "poor Ayreon" and hope for the best for him.

Track number 5: Ye Courtyard Minstrel Boy

A straightforward track leading into the next arc for Ayreon here, it explains that he tries to win the trust of the people there before he tries to complete his mission again. The next track also does not give further insight into Ayreon's character but it does have a link to a different album I did not see anyone talk abot before soooo:

Track number 6: Sail Away To Avalon

Just a cool track about the quest for the holy grail right? This does give us an insight in the type of songs Ayreon would write, you know except for the metal part lol. In story this is to establish Ayreon as the court musician it has no further relevance to the story right? Wellllll this is a line from Sail Away To Avalon: "You'll find the grail within you, Slay the dragon in your dreams" And this is a line from the Knight on the song Another Time, Another Space from the Into The Electric Castle album: "I have found the grail, here within" So what does this mean? Well I do not know, this could be coincidence but Arjen mostly write links like this if they're important. The whole story of that album is that humans from different time periods have been placed together as an experiment about emotions by the Forever. (A whole different rant is needed to explain them) but the time telepathy experiment was an idea by the Forever so that is possibly the link. Anyways after this little detour let us go back on track and go to the next part of our little story with:

Track Number 7: Nature's Dance

First up: emotional damage. So this song is Ayreon sitting in the gardens wishing to see the beautiful nature around him instead of those future visions. He also uses the word television which I always have interpreted as Ayreon knowing things he shouldn't because of his visions of DOOM. Anyways this is the point of no return Ayreon gathers the courage to finally fulfill his mission although he is already aware that this will most likely kill him. So the next 3 songs will be three ways he foresees humanity's demise and all three are very likely to happen, sadly.

Track Number 8: Computer Reigns (Game Over)

Yeah the classic technology will be our downfall spiel, let us go on to:

Track number 9: Waracle

Ayreon foresees a lot of wars and infighting that will never be resolved until the death of the humans on earth, fun.

Track number 10: Listen To The Waves

This one is the most interesting of these three songs as he foresees pollution and climate change being one of the reasons of earth's destruction. One line in particular stands out though: "We befoul the air and burn a hole in the sky." Eh yeah, this was written in 1995 and now we do actually have a hole in the sky and then adds: "Deadly waves from outer space, will cause our race to die." Which would also be true I cannot put to words how eerily correct Arjen was with this prediction. Now we had this it is time for more pain with:

Track number 11: Magic Ride

This is Ayreon at his lowest point, he feels his death is near and so he cries out to the people that gave him these visions to allow him to see anything other than those horrid visions before he dies. This leads to his final arc which I like to call his death arc or "Merlin is a jealous asshole, the arc." He is scared for his life and just wants anything nice to happen in his sadly short life, sadly this is not to be.

Track number 12: Merlin's Will

Merlin is jealous of Ayreon's apparent visions and wish to be the only seer and so he condems Ayreon to die while calling Ayreon's visions fake. This leads to the saddest song of the album and I will cry because I love this character a lot.

Track number 13: Charm Of The Seer

Ayreon accepts his fate after his frankly difficult life and because I do love the lyrics bound to Ayreon here is the opening of the song: "I've been lost in the valley of nightmares I've been found in the garden of dreams Speak thy charm, I know you are out there Cast thy spell and silence their screams

As I poise on the edge of life where time disappears I bow in fear, To the charm of the seer" All he wants is peace and for those visions to stop and if his death will silence them, then he will accept it with fear.

Track number 14: Swan Song

While this song doesn't have any lyrics we do know what happens in this, Ayreon finally understands where his visions came from and as he sees his future reincarnations he makes one last effort to reason with Merlin to let him live.

Track number 15: Ayreon's Fate (and the last song of the album)

Ayreon's cries fall on deaf ears and he is killed by Merlin but just as he does Merlin recieves visions of the future revealing the truth of Ayreon's words. With an anguished cry of Ayreon's name he promises that his words will be heard and that his story will be told in the late 20th century. Did you remember the year of the album's release? That is right! 1995 which means Arjen writing about Ayreon is canon in the Ayreon universe and we actually meat this fictional version of Arjen in a later album, he is actually really important to the story.

Well this is the end then right? Ayreon died but his words were still shared, humanity can change and prevent the end! Well no Earth still dies in 2084 but what do I talk about then? Well.... Ayreon does appear one more time and not as just a mention. The Universal Migrator is about the last human alive, some humans migrated to Mars but oxygen slowly ran out killing everyone except for our protagonist: The Colonist. He decides to enter the Dream Sequencer (a machine allowing you to experience yout past lives) as oxygen runs out so he dies seeing the earth he longed to visit and so he does what Ayreon wanted but never got. Interesting right? Well both the Colonist and Ayreon share a face that of our mastermind Arjen and so we have.

Caried By The Wind

So our friendly minstrel has died and he actually sounds happier in this song, wow! He floats about as a spirit free and more optimistic than ever! He describes roaming free carrying his message around and in the Universal Migrator comic we can actually see him inspire Arjen to write The Final Experiment. He is distraught as he finds out he failed but optimistically seeks out other worlds to live in. I love this version of Ayreon it is still our minstrel with the fancy words but without the pain the visions has caused he is free to just be.

That is all then right? Ah right the fictional version of Arjen, Mr L present on the song The Truth Is In Here from the 01011001 album which details some strange dreams he got including those of our minstrel friend. Again describing his vision as "black as night" just less poetic, anyways his efforts to sing about Ayreon's visions landed him in a mental hospital. Typical. However it seems the Forever have something to do with Mr L's dreams though we know he is another reincarnation of Ayreon.

In short I love the character of Ayreon for how tragic he is and his boundless optimism after his death. His story is intriguing even if it is a little sad and I love how poetic and over the top his dialog is.

This was my rant about my favourite character ever, I do hope people enjoy it.

[hrodvitnon]

Kiryu!Dagon & How He Can Still Work Without Invalidating The Revived!Dagon Idea

Have a bunch of other headcanons I want to post later, but for right now I have this neat tidbit that could help clear things up with Kiryu!Dagon: So, one of the novels (I think it's the GVK one) states outright that Godzilla - and presumably all Godzillasurus - have an ingrained genetic memory that not only stretches back very far into the past and can be used to recall events beyond what the individual has experienced, but literally goes so far back that it can recall when the Earth was still a molten ball only just cooling to give rise to land. Whilst Godzilla does state that it doesn't let him recall exact locations, shapes, or details, it's potent enough that it basically informs him of events from well before he was ever born.

Now we know Dagon died a really long time ago - specifically 11th century, B.C. and his body was used by Jinshin-Mushi as a bed for her eggs and eventually died as a result, leaving only his remains behind. Now whilst that's long enough for him to become a skeleton and for the soul to leave to be reincarnated, it almost certainly wasn't long enough for general memories to COMPLETELY fade, and definitely wouldn't have been enough to mess up the genetic memory if it can stretch far enough back that Godzilla can recall the Hadean Epoch with any amount of clarity, so I think it can sort of be justified that when the bones are recovered and used to make Kiryu, and when Dagon eventually regains sapience, they sort of just tap in to the genetic memory to 'fill in the blanks' as it were, paired with flashes of memory from his actual life.

Now this isn't an immediate process - it's very slow starting out and exact details won't come to him outside of vague out-of-context snippets, at least not at first. But due to the relative recency of his death, plus being around his son and his family, as well as other things that might trigger some level of remembrance whether personal or genetic (like say, Manda since a number of his species probably were alive when Dagon was), it's much easier for memories and experiences to be found and picked up by the genetic memory - and Kiryu!Dagon slowly and painstakingly begins to put together the context of these events until he more or less recalls a rough timeline of his life up until Jishin-Mushi killed him, with some help from Goji or Mothra as well.

But at his core, Kiryu!Dagon still isn't the original Dagon - even if he regains enough to basically reinvent himself and recall all the major events of his lifetime, the OG Dagon's soul still moved on and was reincarnated. Presumably the Gods like Mothra or Megalon (possibly Battra as well) can tell, but given how much he acts like Dagon did originally, they don't really care enough to make a total distinction (or Megalon doesn't, Mothra probably does tell him as such at some point) - he's functionally Dagon for all intents and purposes.

This essentially allows us to explain away the discrepancies between Kiryu!Dagon functionally acting like and being treated as Dagon in the Abraxasverse despite him dying and not being eternal in the manner that the deities are, whilst also keeping it so that his original soul left and was reincarnated by the Mother Dark like everyone else. And it could create a fun interaction in the event that Kiryu!Dagon ever met Anomaly!Dagon or a variant of himself who never died to begin with.

It also allows us to keep the funny and silly family plus Dagon and Barb shenanigans but that's something else entirely

---

Welp, this is one of those times where I think "oh shit time to reread the novelizations" because Godzilla's species having a genetic memory of that scale is crazy... (Plus this adds something new to the Ozymandias Space Crystal Cordyceps situation, because if Godzilla can't recall specific details then from his perspective, his brother would've been there and literally gone the next.)

Aw, I do love the Barbagon shenanigans, those are nice.

[margridarnauds]

How did you name Kitrye?

Signed,

Someone who is considering playing as an elf but doesn't know how to name an elf.

You have no idea what you did by asking this because it's one of those examples of me vibrating for months to explain why I made a choice I made.

A lot of the DND books that are focused on a given race will give you example names to work with, but, personally, that isn't an option I've ever taken. A little known Thing with me is that, when I'm naming characters, I am pretty much always very, very specific. Even if it's information that won't come up, naming a character is a big part of characterization for me.

So, I went here -- Not as canon as I'd have liked, but, given it's DND, it's as canon as I could get. And I looked at various options, but "Kitrye" was what I went for in the end, because it meant "Half." And it worked on multiple levels, first was that it highlights the sort of person Kitrye's mother is, that she would just give her the name "Half", second of all that it's something that other Drow can note and comment on if they want (even if Kitrye can ALMOST pass as a relatively pale full Drow, her name + eyes give her away), and third of all that it highlights the theme of duality that was always meant to be embedded in Kitrye's story arc. I went through a couple of designs for her in the early game, including one where she would have half white/half black hair, which was meant to be a very, very imperceptibly slight nod of inspiration to the goddess Hel from Norse Mythology, which ultimately ended up in her current design, which lost that idea of black/white duality but still has a lot of black highlights in it despite looking very silvery on the surface. I wanted to add a lot of death motifs to her at the beginning as a way of underscoring her eventual role, though most of those ended up getting cut, but the idea of duality still stayed, especially since most of her outfits feature strong contrasts between dark and light elements. (The third bonus was that it was something that was pronounceable AND something that could hold its own in a world of Quinthels, Liriels, and Malices -- just foreign enough to seem distinctively Drow, just short enough to be pronounceable and recognizable as a name, with possibilities for nicknames as well.) I knew, from the beginning, that I wanted her to be a strong contrast to Raphael, so it made sense that her duality, her mixed nature, would be front and center when naming her (in a way that it ISN'T with him -- one of them kind of intentionally hides it and sees it as a weakness, the other doesn't.) I go back and forth on whether I'll ever give an explanation of the name in a fic, because a part of me thinks it's really, really important to her, another part of me thinks it's great to leave it as something that you have to dig for.

And, from that point on, it was a matter of shopping for which house she ought to belong to, since that's central to Drow society. I toyed with a number of options -- never the most prominent house, House Baenre, since Minthara already belongs to that one in-canon, but somebody who would, ideally, be in a place of nobility and privilege while also being out of the spotlight, someone who there was just enough canon on that I had something to work with and just little enough canon that I could be very flexible with, say, matron mother names, timelines, etc. And House Symryvvin, 18th on the house ranking, but once holding some lore that said that they might be the REAL rulers of Menzoberranzan via their hyper-devotion to Lolth...it was perfect. Like, it meant that (1) Kitrye wouldn't be a celebrity, even if she had some amount of power, she is not coming from a place of HYPER privilege, even if it's still a place of privilege and (2) There was a justification for how she was allowed to be born in the first place, because she's a Symryvvin and people might have still been too scared to challenge her mother's decision.

For Mallathalra, I followed a similar pattern (minus the surname issues since I'd already selected that) -- since she actually was chosen by the family and adopted, I wanted something that was slightly more ornate for her, so I chose "malla", meaning "honored" or "honored one" and "thalra", meaning "encounter", for something that is VERY ROUGHLY intended to convey the idea of "honored encounter" -- her name is more outwardly complimentary than Kitrye's, it actually had effort put into it, but there's a double-edged sword in the sense that she very literally does not have an identity outside of the family. They found her, they adopted her, and now she couldn't even remember her birth name if she wanted to.

In a lot of ways, it would be easier to go to a Drow name generator or to take one of the suggested names from the guides, but I'm honestly really happy I didn't, since it gave me a much clearer idea of the characters by going the dictionary route.

For an elf, you have this dictionary, if you want to take the approach I did. The 5E player's handbook has these suggestions:

[wgc-productions]

The Magnus Archives Liveblog- MAG 9 A Father's Love

It's been a little bit since I livebloged the last episode, but (by golly!) I'm gonna keep going (at least until the end of season 1).

02:13- Stop whispering at me Johnathan!

02:47- Oh, you know what would be a fun premise for a show (maybe a miniseries) a true crime podcast investigates the murders of a number of people in their town. As they reveal more and more the podcaster realizes the murderer is closer to home then they like. I feel like that could be a real fun thriller.

04:56- 40 PEOPLE! GIRL WAS HE EVER HOME!!! 40 people in 5 years is 8 people a year. That is a lot of people for something like murder.

09:08- Time to call a plumber, I guess.

10:07- Oh, he was a cop! That explains how he was able to kill so many people (I'm not even talking about in the political way, I'm literally talking about the fact that his knowledge of how crimes are investigated would very much serve him on his quest for death. Not to mention he has access to things that your average murder just wouldn't.)

14:11- You know if Julia ever decides to take vengeance upon her father, she'd be a perfect candidate for the Batfamily. Who among the BatFam hasn't had a murdering father (essentially everyone but Steph and Cass (and for a period of time Jason maybe).

21:17- Uh oh, Poppa's trying to summon ~the horrors~

22:28- I just know this woman doesn't get the access to therapy she needs. I mean, as a therapist, where do you even begin with a story like this.

25:07- Oh....no.

27:40- Once again I must ask, how can Julia ever cope after this image is grafted into her brain!

28:06- Alright the silver had closed around an eye is clearly important. I will save that little image in my mind so I can pull it out when future episodes come around.

29:55- Man this guy should have gotten into butchery or Tarot lore or something other than straight up murder for occult purposes.

30:44- Oh snap! Teeth dude! Alright, it's starting to braid together.

31:15- Sound personal.

Okay, so,as I've mentioned in my other liveblogs, I'm really waiting her so I can see how all of the stories blend together and also because as a person who makes fiction podcasts I feel like i should at least listen to one of the most popular shows in the medium.

I like how it's blending together already. So we have the connection with this episode and the episode with the teeth. We also had that mention of the strange woman in a few episodes. I'm excited to see where this goes.

I will say, while I'm listening to the episodes I feel not necessarily disengaged but it feels sort of quotidian. However, after the episode ends and I really think about the implications of the episode I become more intrigued. I think that might be the single narrator kicking in. Those aren't my favorite type of shows as they are hard for me to stay engaged in, especially since Jon speaks so monotonously through the episode, but the stories he's telling are interesting and thinking about it afterwards gives more more of that imaginative thrill.

[girl-with-bones]

I love the fact that even the people the system is supposedly for - the academics, the ultra-studious, the researchers - also suffer in the end.

I was at one point the highest attaining student in my entire high school. I took 12 GCSEs (you only technically need about 4 most people take 8 or 9), and by the end, learned almost every subject basically cover-to-cover, so much so that I had many a lesson where I just did my own thing because they had nothing left to teach me.

I learned a lot from that. Yes the content of the courses, but moreso life-lessons.

1 - The system is 'designed' for nobody. Those who lag behind, fall behind, are left behind. Those who push ahead, are literally stopped from doing so.

Don't believe me? Here's an example:

I've always been interested in maths. I love complicated mathematical concepts. I love the beauty that emerges from such simple rules. So it follows that I spent basically my entire school career waiting for the curriculum to catch up with what I found exciting. I remember being thrilled at the end of primary school that we were "finally" doing a bit of algebra.

But yet again, by year 11, at the tail end of the GCSE course, I was done. I mean this with full honesty when I say I could get full marks on GCSE maths papers in my fucking sleep. I did it. I finished the course. There was genuinely nothing more to do.

So my teacher let me study higher level stuff. At that time I was planning to do A-level maths so I started working my way through that. Differentials, integrals, complex trigonometry, interesting stuff to my little school brain.

One day the head of maths, accompanied by some sort of important school governor person, walks in and sees me doing differentiation. Flash forward a week, banned. I was banned from STUDYING. MATHS. IN A MATHS CLASS. I was required to do GCSE level work, even though there wasn't any left.

Thankfully, my teacher was like 'wtf no' and sneakily gave me more interesting stuff to do, but that taught me something. The system is genuinely not built to handle exceptional students. It's not built to push people, to challenge them where they are LITERALLY ASKING TO BE CHALLENGED. Nope, it's all standardised. Your passions? Standardised. Your hopes? Not according to data in a spreadsheet. Your life? Don't even think about it.

And that's not me being hyperbolic or edgy. I was not living.

2 - making school your life is fucking. Dreadful.

But it's all I'd ever known. I was always a goodie-two-shoes-teachers-pet-whatever (and kind of still am ngl). But that attitude did such serious damage to me in the long run. It drove me away from others my age, away from socialising, away from dumb fun. I was a serious person who took everything seriously 100% of the time. And so, those were my friends too. The people who's entire life was based on huge ambitions, and numbers on a page at the end of an exam season.

You wanna know how many times I hung out with my high-school friends, outside of school? You wanna take a guess?

0. Zero times. I basically only had a social life at all after one of my not-school friends forced me to download snapchat lmao

Sometimes I feel like I barely had a teenage-hood. I was so strict, so laser-focused that I maybe lost sight of what the fuck I was doing it all for in the first place?

3 - You will work yourself to death for numbers on a page. It will not feel good at the end.

I don't even think I need to explain this one.

Our exam season was split into two halves, with a week's break in the middle. It's supposed to be a break. It's also supposed to be a chance to study, revise, and get ready for the last, grueling weeks of exams.

Given the fact that 'break' and 'study' are kiiind of contradictory, you can probably guess that I actually did neither of those. I just crashed. Fell into a slump and crashed.

And yeah, sure, I picked myself up by my bootstraps and got right back to work at the end of that week. But I don't really consider the stress of failure beating the stress of exhaustion as a huge win if I'm honest.

So, where does that leave us?

Right now, tired. Tired as fuck. I look back on a decade-long life of schooling and education and I don't know who I really am or wanna be.

I bought into the system so hard. I threw myself in and literally came out on top. And I don't even know if it was worth it lmao.

To be fair, there are other things at play. Probably an anxiety disorder, depressive tendencies, and being a young trans girl in an "all-boys" high school is not exactly a recipe for a healthy young person lol

But I can't help but think if it had just been a little less strict, a little less enabling of all those fears and anxieties, a little less focused on achievement over experience, I might have a little bit of better relationshio with myself.

But, oh well. What's a girl to do but build a life for herself. I'll get there. One day at a time. And when I look back on myself as I am today, hopefully, I'll be proud as fuck of the girl who worked her ass off for herself.

A Twitter Thread from David Bowles:

[Text transcript at the end of the screenshots]

I'll let you in on a secret. I have a doctorate in education, but the field’s basically just a 100 years old. We don’t really know what we’re doing. Our scholarly understanding of how learning happens is like astronomy 2000 years ago.

Most classroom practice is astrology.

Before the late 19th century, no human society had ever attempted to formally educate the entire populace. It was either aristocracy, meritocracy, or a blend. And always male.

We’re still smack-dab in the middle of the largest experiment on children ever done.

Most teachers perpetuate the “banking” model (Freire) used on them by their teachers, who likewise inherited it from theirs, etc.

Thus the elite “Lyceum” style of instruction continues even though it’s ineffectual with most kids.

What’s worse, the key strategies we’ve discovered, driven by cognitive science & child psychology, are quite regularly dismissed by pencil-pushing, test-driven administrators. Much like Trump ignores science, the majority of principals & superintendents I’ve known flout research.

Some definitions:

Banking model --> kids are like piggy banks: empty till you fill them with knowledge that you're the expert in.

Lyceum --> originally Aristotle's school, where the sons of land-owning citizens learned through lectures and research.

Things we (scholars) DO know:

-Homework doesn't really help, especially younger kids.

-Students don't learn a thing from testing. Most teachers don't either (it's supposed to help them tweak instruction, but that rarely happens).

-Spending too much time on weak subjects HURTS.

Do you want kids to learn? Here's something we've discovered: kids learn things that matter to them, either because the knowledge and skills are "cool," or because .... they give the kids tools to liberate themselves and their communities.

Maintaining the status quo? Nope.

Kids are acutely aware of injustice and by nature rebellious against the systems of authority that keep autonomy away from them.

If you're perpetuating those systems, teachers, you've already freaking lost.

They won't be learning much from you. Except what not to become. Sure, you can wear them down. That's what happened to most of you, isn't it? You saw the hideous flaw in the world and wanted to heal it. But year after numbing year, they made you learn their dogma by rote.

And now many of you are breaking the souls of children, too.

For what?

It's all smoke and mirrors. All the carefully crafted objectives, units and exams.

WE. DON'T. KNOW. HOW. PEOPLE. LEARN.

We barely understand the physical mechanisms behind MEMORY. But we DO know kids aren't empty piggy banks. They are BRIMMING with thought.

The last and most disgusting reality? The thing I hear in classroom after freaking classroom?

Education is all about capitalism.

"You need to learn these skills to get a good job." To be a good laborer. To help the wealthy generate more wealth, while you get scraps.

THAT is why modern education is a failure.

Its basic premise is monstrous.

"Why should I learn to read, Dr. Bowles?"

Because reading is magical. It makes life worth living. And being able to read, you can decode the strategies of your oppressors & stop them w/ their own words.

[absurdthirst]

Kinktober 2022: October 21st

Day 21: Rimming/Analingus // Masturbation // Breeding

Marcus Moreno x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 2.2k

Warnings: Angst, teasing, public sex, vaginal sex, cream pie

|| Kinktober List || MasterList ||

Click Keep Reading only if you have read the Rating and Warnings and understand the warnings may not be complete to avoid listing spoilers. As AO3 says 'creator chooses not to use warnings'. You also agree that you're the right age to be consuming anything here.

It had slipped out during sex and he hadn’t even realized it. Not until you were gone and he was alone in his bed again, humming quietly in the dark while he wonders when he can tell Missy about this thing that has grown between you and him. Waffling between fear that she will see you as some sort of replacement for her mother and guilt that he has moved on so quickly, even though it’s been years since her untimely death. 

He’s almost asleep, replaying that sweaty, satisfying moment when he was just about to cum - your pussy already clamped around his cock like a vice when he had said those words. “Gonna breed you, baby.” 

His eyes spring open in horror, sitting straight up in the bed. “No, no, no.” He hisses, fumbling for his phone, for the light, for his glasses and swiping two out of the three to the floor in his haste. “Fuck!” 

You hadn’t said anything but that doesn’t mean much. You normally had to sneak out of the house pretty quickly after sex to go back to your own house. The last time you had lingered, you had fallen asleep and that would have been a nightmare if you hadn’t woken up to pee at four in the morning. He didn’t want Missy to catch him in bed with another woman before they could talk. 

Marcus curses again, feet hitting the floor, followed by his knees as he gropes for the phone so he can send a panicked text. 

Call me when you get this. 

Seconds feel like hours and instead of being drowsy like he always is after sex with you, he’s wide awake and terrified of what you might say. He stares at the delivered icon, praying that he sees the bubbles pop up where you are texting him, or even better - to see your number pop up with an incoming call. However, there is nothing. 

Baby, I can explain, just call me.

More hours tick by and he’s sweating, picking himself up off the floor and sitting on the edge of his bed, his stomach curled with fear and guilt. Guilt that he hadn’t told you about that particular kink yet and fear that you would find it disgusting. Again, nothing. 

Listen, it just slipped out. It’s not like I want that to happen right now. Or ever if you aren’t….PLEASE call me?

This is hard to explain over text. 

???

He knows you would have gotten home by now. Still the texts are delivered and not read. You are ignoring him. The only sliver of hope that he has is that the texts haven’t turned green so you haven’t blocked him. Yet.

****

He’s always had a breeding kink. It was something that appealed very early on, even when he was honestly terrified of getting a girl pregnant. He blames it on some old porno he had watched when he was twelve or thirteen. Making a lasting impression on his formative years, but beggars can’t be choosers and the ‘Pregnant Nymphos’ video had been extremely hot to him. 

He had been lucky that his late wife had been accepting of it. She hadn’t thought him weird, although he had kept it hidden until they had been trying for Missy. Then that kind of talk had been acceptable and even sexy while he was actively trying to get her pregnant with his baby. He had been allowed to explore that. Murmuring filth into her ear and moaning about how he was going to fill her up until it took. It had probably been the best sexual experiences he had. 

Now, he had been trying to keep it reined in. He wasn’t sure how you would feel about that kind of thing, even though you were pretty open sexually. Hell, you had let him fuck your ass, and slap your pussy. Although neither one of you had really cared about the pussy slapping. 

This though. This was much larger than swatting your clit or working his cock into your ass after half an hour of prep. This was something that could be a total turn off for you. He’s definitely had dates where they thought it was gross, disgusting, demeaning and even one woman had called it misogynistic, so it wasn’t like it was the top five topics he discussed. 

Marcus doesn’t sleep at all, waiting for you to text him back. Tell him to fuck off or that you weren’t going to see him again. Checking his phone almost obsessively until the late night turns into early morning and it’s time to drag himself into a shower before Missy wakes up and he has to get her off to school and himself off to work. Where you might just make his humiliation public in front of everyone at the Heroics Headquarters. 

****

Fuck. You are wearing that skirt. The one that he had first noticed you in when you started. The one that had him thinking about fucking you while he shook your hand and introduced himself although you already knew who he was. Everyone in the world knows Marcus Moreno, although he prefers to believe that they don’t. 

Your brows are lifted in greeting but you don’t say anything, making him start to sweat until his leather jacket and he swallows, looking around to make sure that no one is close by before he speaks. “We need to talk.” 

“Oh?” You play innocent, although he can see the small twist of your lips and he wonders what kind of game you are playing. “About what?”

Taking your arm, he guides you to his office. If he’s going to make an ass of himself - again - he’d rather do it in private. He wants to throw up, rubbing his hands on his pants and taking off his glasses and then putting them back on and pushing them up the bridge of his nose is a nervous tic that it more about buying time than anything. “Listen….” He cringes at the way he’s started but there’s no going back now. “About what I said-” 

“That you wanted to breed me?” You ask, deciding that now was the perfect opportunity to hop up on his fucking desk like he had imagined you six thousand times and smirk at him. “Is that what we are talking about or the hundred text messages you sent me last night.” 

Marcus huffs, embarrassed. “You didn’t answer.” He points out, as if that is any reason for melting down and sending text after text. 

“My phone was on Do Not Disturb.” You take the wind out of his sails, making his shoulder round slightly. “I didn’t see them until I was about to leave for work.” 

“Oh.” So he had a shitty, sleepless night for nothing, imagining all the ways you were ignoring him or making some mocking threat on Reddit about how your superhero boyfriend has a breeding kink. He may or may not have checked the threads about the Heroics a time or twenty. “So yeah-” 

“Do you want to breed me?” His eyes widen and for a split second nothing registers in his brain. His cock hears it loud and clear and you are very aware of that from the way your smile grows wider and you hum as you shift on his desk. 

He shakes himself out of his stupor and flusters. “I mean- not- not- not like- it’s more that- it’s a-” He stutters and stumbles over the words that are rushing around in his mind and all trying to come out at once. Until he finally just gives up and looks at you hopelessly, giving a vague shrug of his shoulders and wishing that there was some national - no, world emergency right now. Aliens would be good. 

You purse your lips, giving him a disappointed look and shaking your head. “So you don’t want me to take off my panties and beg you to fill me up?” You ask, spreading your legs as wide as your skirt would allow you to, shimmying on his desk and working it up your thighs. “You don’t want me to beg you to breed me? Fill me with your baby and fuck me full until it takes?” 

If he were a lesser man, he would be on his knees right now, begging to make that a reality. As it is, he’s already hard, mouth dropped open in surprise as his cock tents his pants and nothing but a low moan can be heard from him. Giving away that blatant desire for that exact thing. 

“Because I thought about that all night last night.” You continue on. “Even had to touch myself again. Imagining you saying that again. Demanding that I beg you for your cum.” Marcus whines, stepping closer to you as you hike your skirt up to your hips, showing off the panties you had worn today. They are sexy, like everything you wear, but the crotch is soaked. 

His chest seems to collapse and expand at the same time, unable to breathe or even think about anything but the wet spot on your panties and the warmth and wetness beneath it. The fact that you want to talk to him about breeding you while he’s buried inside that sweet little pussy. “Fuck.” 

“If you pull your pants down.” Your joke is lighthearted, meant to make him laugh but all he can do is try to follow that order as quickly as fucking possible. Harder than Miracle Man’s punches and throbbing at the mere suggestion that he gets to live out his breeding kink right now. He knows you are on birth control. That conversation has been well established, but the thought is what gets him going. 

As quick as he is pulling his cock out, your panties are pushed to the side and he is sinking into you with a groan. Kissing your lips when he’s buried to the hilt and already about to explode. “Tell me again.” He grunts out, jolting inside you when you squeeze him tight. 

Your lips against his ear makes him shiver, words cooed directly into his ear. “I want you to fuck me full, Marcus.” He smothers a groan, biting his lips so hard he will have left a mark. “I want to feel your seed inside me all day and imagine that you bred me.” 

Marcus isn’t one to growl, at least he doesn’t think that he is, but the feral rumble that echoes out of his chest can only be described as just that. A growl. His arms tightening around you and his hips pulling back so he can set a frantic pace. 

Its unhinged, fucking into you like it will be the last thing that he does. Maybe it will be because he can’t seem to draw a breath as he pushes into you again and again. Groaning and saying every filthy thing that he’s thought over the past months while he's been inside you. Hell, everything he’s thought since he’s met you. 

“Made for my cock.” He hisses, pulling your ass to the edge of the desk and pounding into you with sharp, harsh swings of his hips. “Perfect place for me to plant my seed.” 

Your pussy clenches around him, making him grin at the way you whimper his name and your legs wrap around his waist and pull him closer. Wanting him to get deeper. “Fill me up.” You beg, leaning back slightly and rolling your hips down to meet his hectic thrusts. “M-Marcus please. Want it.” 

He grunts, leaning in and nipping your ear, making you yelp and clench around him again. “Going to baby. Gonna fill you up, paint your pretty little pussy full of my cum.” He hisses, rocking forward and his thighs slap against the table. 

You whimper, nodding and holding onto his shoulders while he pushes both of you higher. Every thrust rocking deep and hitting that wonderful little spot inside you that makes your toes curl. 

“You want that?” He demands, his jaw tight and the corded muscles on his neck straining. “Tell me.” 

“I want that.” You cry out softly, conscious of the fact that you are in his office and others could possibly hear you. “Marcus bred me.” Your plea is more like a wail, dragged out of you where only he can hear. 

His fingers turn to granite, digging into your hips and ass while your world explodes. Stars burst and colors flash behind your eyes while electricity seems to flow through you, consuming you. 

Marcus moans, barely lasting another thrust before he is pushing deep, grinding into you until he cums. Pouring into you like molten heat, filling you and fulfilling that desire to spill his seed inside you. “Fuck, take it.” He hisses. “Take every drop.” 

You whimper while he rocks into you, holding him to you. “Fuck Marcus, so good.” You whisper. “You fill me up so well.” 

His eyes close and smiles as he tucks his head against your neck. He had been afraid that he was going to lose you because of his breeding kink, but it turns out you might have a bit of one yourself. 

[burgundybmw]

Munson's Mixtape

MASTERLIST

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Cunningham!Reader

Word Count: 5,455

Warnings: References to sex (What are those stains Eddie?? Explain yourself!!), Mentions of Death, Angst, Mrs. Cunningham being the Momster she is, Trauma, Vecna being Vecna.

Summary: Chrissy has been acting weird, and like a good big sister Y/N drives to Hawkins from Notre Dame to check in on her. Only to find out she has plans to meet up with Eddie Munson. Things take a turn for the worse and now Y/N gets wrapped in to the horrors of Hawkins. Hey, at least she has the company of the guitarist she was sweet on back in high school for comfort.

Author’s Note: I'm apologizing ahead of time for a number of things. Don't worry, it'll happen soon.

Track Sixteen

Y/N can't remember the last time she rode on the back of someone's bicycle, if she ever did at all. When she was a kid, Chrissy was usually the one to tag along on her bike rides. She would stand behind her as Y/N peddled, small hands gripping her shoulders for balance. She used to yell at her to go faster, and Y/N would pump her legs as fast as she could and speed by the streets of Hawkins. Now Y/N was the one holding on to Lucas' shoulders, the group of kids peddling with everything they had to get to Forrest Hills. There was a gate in Eddie's trailer, and it was their only shot at getting the rest of the party back home. Y/N wasn't ready to see the trailer again, wasn't ready to stand in the same spot her sister died nearly a week ago, but it had to be done.

The gang was closing in on the trailer park, the driveway entrance just up ahead. Y/N's grip on Lucas' shoulders tightened as they got closer to Eddie's place. She feared that once they opened the gate, something else would come out it. As much as she wanted Eddie, Nancy, Robin and Steve home safe and sound, the thought that other monsters following through with them scared her half to death. Y/N held on to the idea of seeing Eddie again, it helped quench the unruly terror inside of her.

Lucas was beginning to slow down, and she knew it was time to face whatever was in that trailer. Once he finally came to a stop, she hopped off the back and ran over to the front door, Dustin and the rest of the kids followed right behind her. As Y/N swung open the door the first thing she saw was a massive red gaping hole in the ceiling.

"Holy shit." Dustin gasped. All of the kids surrounded her as they looked at the ceiling above.

"How are we gonna get them out? There's like, some sort of membrane blocking it." Lucas asked. In the corner of Y/N's eye, she saw the chair she used to try and get Chrissy down from the ceiling. She grabbed the chair and put it directly underneath the gate to the Upside Down.

"Can one of you hand me that broom over there?" Y/N asked as she stood up towards the gate. Max walked over to the kitchen and handed it to her, the old wood smooth and worn beneath her palms. Y/N took a deep breath, and shoved the broom into the membrane as hard as she could. She struggled against it for a moment, the gate stretching against the top of the broom, until it finally burst through.

Y/N could hear a scream from the other side, she couldn't see who it was but it sounded human. She pushed the broom stick further into the membrane, waving it around until the hole became wide enough for someone to get through. The gate to the Upside Down was dark, she could barely see who, or what, was there.

"Hello?" Y/N asked into the darkness.

"Y/N!" Eddie shouted as ran to stand underneath the gate. Instant relief rushed through her like a tidal wave. Steve, Robin and Nancy all huddled around Eddie to see Y/N standing above them.

"Holy shit, this is trippy." Robin whispered. Eddie couldn't think about how bizarre everything looked, all he could focus on was Y/N above him. She looked like an angel, surrounded by light, a dazzling smile on her face. Everything had been so dark, nothing but rotten decay and monstrous creatures around him for hours. She was a beacon for him, the lighthouse signal across a never ending sea, the shining north star in a bitch black sky, a candle in the window on a cold dark winter's night.

"You guys need some help?" Dustin asked with a chuckle.

"Yea Henderson, some help about now would be nice." Steve complained.

"You guys hang tight!" Y/N shouted as she got off the chair. Dustin, Lucas, and Max were already walking towards Eddie's bedroom, and Y/N quickly followed.

"Okay, Y/N and Max you guys take the blanket, pillow cases, and top sheet, off the bed. I'll tie them together to make a rope. Lucas, when they're done, grab the mattress and put it under the gate. They're gonna need something soft to land on." Dustin ordered. All three of them nodded and got to work.

As Y/N was working on deconstructing Eddie's bed, she couldn't help but remember the last time she was here. It hurt to think about, how oblivious she was to the horrors just outside the door. How Chrissy was fine one moment, and gone the next. The guilt was eating her alive. If only she didn't waste time talking to Eddie, if only she walked into that room just a second sooner, she could have sang Somewhere Over The Rainbow to Chrissy, saved her l sister's life. If only she knew then what she knew now. But it wasn't time to dwell on such things, she had a job to do.

Once Max and Y/N were finished, both girls walked back to the ceiling gate to wait for the boys to complete their tasks. Dustin was working with lightening speed on the rope, and Lucas attempted to move the mattress without wrecking Eddie's bedroom. When Lucas finally managed to drag the mattress into the living room, they all looked at the state of Eddie's bed. There were dark stains at the head of the bed, with two dark stains on either side of the foot of it. Y/N tried to figure out what those stains could be. She didn't notice them when she first came over, the top sheet was covering it. They could be sweat stains, but those usually follow the shape of someone body. They couldn't be piss stains, as disgusting as the thought was, there would be one massive stain at the center. She couldn't wrap her head around it.

"Those stains are, uh... I dunno what those stains are." Eddie stammered. He sounded embarrassed, and Y/N began putting the pieces together. The placement, how dark they were... those stains were sex stains. She felt the heat rush to her face, and her mind gravitated to the other items in she found in Eddie's bedroom while she waited for Max to finish with the pillow cases. Handcuffs, condoms, lotion, a Heavy Metal magazine with very explicit imagery on the cover. What else was he into? What other hidden treasures could she find in there?

"First thing I'm doing after this is all over is buying you a new mattress and linens Eddie." Y/N said in a peeved tone. She could hear Eddie chuckling through the gate as she said it.

"Gonna be my sugar mama now Y/N?" Eddie smirked. Y/N rolled her eyes as Dustin walked over with the rope.

"A sugar mama requires sugar Munson. I'm not gonna get that now, aren't I?" Y/N replied. She sounded bratty, testy, her feathers clearly ruffled by Eddie's comment.

"Well Princess, I could-" Eddie started before Dustin interrupted him.

"Ugh, enough already!" He complained. "Do you guys want out of there or no?" They all nodded, Eddie with a sheepish grin on his lips.

"Alright then, welp. I'm not quite sure how these physics are gonna work. But, uh... here goes nothing." Dustin said as he tossed the sheet rope into the ceiling. They all looked as the rope landed on the floor of the Upside Down trailer, the other end dangling mid air on their side in Dustin's hands.

"There we go. And if my theory is correct..." Dustin let go of the rope, and it remained steady.

"Huh, Abracadabra." Dustin joked.

"Holy shit." Max gasped. Holy shit was right. Y/N had taken physics, both in high school and in college, and she was flabbergasted that the kid's plan actually worked. Her professors at Notre Dame would have a field day if they could witness what was before her eyes.

"All right, pull on it! See if it holds!" Dustin shouted at the ceiling. Y/N watched as Robin looked over to Steve, who nodded at her silent request. She pulled on the rope as hard as she could, and it didn't budge. They all couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.

"This is the craziest shit I've ever seen in my life. And I've seen some crazy shit." Erica said in disbelief. It might not have been the craziest Y/N's ever seen, but it sure as hell was close. Dustin held up a high five, and Erica slapped it in return, clearly proud of himself.

"Guess I'm the guinea pig." Robin whispered loudly. She grunted as she pulled herself up on the rope, slowly making her way towards the opening.

"Let's clear the landing pad." Dustin said as he slowly backed off the mattress. Y/N and the rest of the kids followed suit. Robin slowly climbed closer to the gate's entrance, struggling a bit as she went. Once her head peaked through the opening gravity finally decided to kick in, and they all watched as she fell onto the mattress.

"Oh my god!" Robin shouted as she landed. "Oh, thank God. That was fun." Dustin reached his hand out to help lift her up, something she quickly grabbed onto. Eddie, Nancy, and Steve all looked at each other to see who would go next.

"Lady's first." Eddie said as he gestured towards the rope. Nancy nodded, and made her climb up. Y/N watched as she made her way through, a bit more graceful than Robin did before her. Steve followed closely behind, leaving Eddie last in the Upside Down.

"Come on Eds, you're next!" Y/N shouted. She saw him slowly climb the rope, and every second made her nervous. What if the gate suddenly closed, leaving him behind? What if the sheets ripped? She couldn't stop the anxiety filled thoughts rushing through her brain, she wouldn't feel better till he was safe inside the trailer.

Soon enough, Eddie landed on the mattress below her feet. Y/N reached her hand out to help him up, but what she felt wasn't the smooth touch of metal against her fingers.

It happened in a second, a blink and you miss it moment. One second she was reaching out for Eddie, and the next she dangling from the ceiling, holding on to Chrissy's slowly rotting shoulders.

"Y/N... Why didn't you save me Y/N... You're my big sister... You're supposed to protect me..." Chrissy's voice was garbled, barely understandable, her dislocated jaw swinging aimlessly in the air. Blood slowly trickled down Chrissy's eyes, red tears that felt like little rain drops on Y/N's face. She screamed, and immediately let go of her sister, falling onto the hard ground of the trailer. Just like she did the night Chrissy died, but Chrissy didn't fall with her. She was still up there, pinned to the ceiling, gray skin gradually decaying before Y/N's eyes.

"No... No, no, no, this can't be happening." Y/N could feel that all too familiar feeling of panic settle in her bones. She needed to run, she couldn't go through this again, not alone.

Y/N gathered her wits and raced to the trailer door, but when she slammed it open she found herself back home. She tried to turn around and run back to the trailer, but all she saw was the entryway to the dining room. That's when she realized, this must be what Chrissy saw before she died, this was Vecna's curse.

"Y/N?! Y/N Wake up!!! Y/N!!!" Eddie was screaming at her, but she was completely unresponsive. Just like he had feared every second since Chrissy died, Y/N's eyes were milky white, nearly rolled to the back of her skull. Eddie's hands were cupping her face, so hard he was afraid he was going to hurt her.

"Where's that mixtape she asked us for?!" Steve yelled, he was rummaging through Eddie's bedroom looking for his old walkman.

"I didn't see it on her!! She must have left it somewhere!!" Max screamed as she helped Steve search.

"What's on the tape?" Nancy asked, she was trying to stay calm but she could feel her hands shaking as she moved about the trailer.

"How should we know?!" Robin yelled in a panic. That's when Eddie snapped out of it, he knew what was on the tape, he had all the songs in his bedroom. It pained him to let go of Y/N, but her life was on the line, he needed to save her, she couldn't end up like Chrissy, she couldn't.

"Her favorite song is For Whom The Bell Tolls by Metallica. It-It's the Ride The Lightning album, the cover is blue. That's what's on the mixtape. I, shit, I have no clue where it is but it's here somewhere." Eddie stumbled over his words as he ransacked his cassette collection, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath tapes flying out of his hands as he searched.

"How do you know for sure?" Robin asked as she caught all of the tapes Eddie threw at her.

"Because I made the damn thing 2 years ago! I know what's on it! Shit, where the hell is it!" Eddie was shouting, cold unforgiving panic nearly swallowing him whole. His eyes were growing hot, fat tears clouding his vision. He was running out of time. Every second that passed was a second closer to Y/N's demise. Any moment now Y/N's body would start levitating, just like Chrissy's was, and it would be her broken and bloody on the ceiling. He needed to find that damn tape.

"Got it! I got it!" Eddie whipped his head around to find Dustin scrambling to put the cassette in his old walkman Steve found moments earlier. He raced over to grab it out of his hands, finagling with the old hinges before it finally snapped into place. Eddie raced back into the living room to find Y/N standing as motionless as he left her. He put the headphones on her head, turned on the player, and skipped to track three. The faint sounds of bells bled through as the song began to play.

Y/N slowly walked into the dining room, her mother's long mahogany table coming into view. It was just like Chrissy's dreams, the table was filled with food, all in different stages of rot. Spiders were slowly crawling over a Thanksgiving turkey, thick black mold decorated the icing of a birthday cake, and each plate was filled with dust and ash. She looked at the decomposed bounty with disgust, until she realized she wasn't alone.

Her mother was sitting at the head of the table, her normally perfect porcelain face was warped. Her skin was deteriorated and dry, and her bright blonde hair was dull and lifeless. On her right was her father, head hanging low and defeated. And finally, on her left, was Chrissy. Just as broken and dead as she remembered.

"It should have been you Y/N." Her mother's shrill voice broke the eerie silence of the room. "Chrissy was our darling girl, our 1 in 100 shot of a real baby, one that truly belonged to us. Not some charity case we picked up at an orphanage."

This wasn't real. None of this was real. Vecna was in her head. She had to get out. She had to get out now.

"There's no escape Y/N... Not for you. Not yet." Her mother continued, slowly standing from her chair. "You always made me out to be the bad guy, oh poor little Y/N, her mama doesn't love her. Have you ever considered for once, in your selfish repugnant life, that you didn't earn it? That you didn't deserve my love?" She slowly walked over to Y/N, face twisted in a gnarled grin.

"You... You don't earn love. I-It's freely given..." Y/N mumbled, paralyzed to the spot. Her mother started laughing at her, a mocking hateful laugh that shook the walls around her. It was loud, everything was so loud.

"Oh! That's priceless! Now, who told you that nonsense, hmm? That washed up low life you're so fond of? Eddie Munson, was it?" Mrs. Cunningham mocked.

"Don't talk about him!" Y/N screamed, she closed her eyes, begging, praying, for everything to stop.

"Oh Y/N..." Her heart stopped. That was Eddie's voice. She opened her eyes to find herself inside Rick's boathouse. Eddie was standing directly in front of her, his big gorgeous brown eyes a murky gray as he looked down on her.

"No one's going to believe your sob story, sweetheart. I'm going to be punished for something I didn't do, all because of you." Eddie said as he softly gripped the side of her face. "You say love is freely given, but you're wrong. Your love gives nothing, it takes. It takes and destroys, and ruins everything you touch."

Y/N was violently shaking, tremors wrecked her body as she choked down tears. Eddie slowly walked behind her, his hand never leaving her head. He wrapped an arm tightly around her waist, the hand that was once gentle on her face wrapped tightly around her throat, the cold touch of metal stinging her skin.

"I'm going to die Y/N. I'm going to die in here, fighting a battle I should have never been a part of. My corpse will rot in the Upside Down, and it will be all. your. fault." Y/N felt blood trickle down her neck. She forced herself out of his grip and turned to face him, the sight made her wish she never did.

Eddie had a gash on the side his neck, as if the flesh had been ripped right out. Thick pools of blood gushed down his collarbone, staining the white Hellfire Club shirt red. Y/N looked on in horror as she watched the man she loved slowly get torn apart. An invisible force lacerated the skin on his stomach, flaps of skin clinging to the edge of the wound. His knees were scraped and bloody, purple and green bruises colored the exposed skin. He was dying. Eddie was dying.

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" Y/N screamed.

"You asked for this Y/N..." A deep, gravelly voice rang out. "My, what a bigger fish you are indeed." It sounded like it was all around her, inside of her, a part of her. It was Vecna, he was here, coming to collect on Y/N's threats.

"It's not working, why isn't it working?!" Eddie couldn't understand it. Y/N should be out of it by now. Max said it took less than a minute for her to escape once the music started playing. The song was nearly finished and she was still under.

"I don't know... She shouldn't still be under... It doesn't make sense." Dustin mumbled.

"It's not an exact science Eddie, give her time. She'll get out of it, I'm sure she will." Nancy tried to reassure him, but it didn't work. Eddie was fed up, sick of waiting, sick of wasting time. If Metallica didn't save her, he'd have to do it himself.

"Fuck this." Eddie grumbled as he made his way back to the rope, he started to make the climb before someone pulled him back down.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Steve shouted as he yanked on the back of his leather jacket.

"I'm going back, man. This isn't working and Y/N is losing time. I'm gonna kill that piece of shit Vecna myself." Eddie tried to climb back on the rope, but Steve's grip didn't budge.

"What's your plan huh? Waltz into Vecna's lair with nothing but your fists and a pipe dream?! You're gonna get yourself killed!" Steve shouted, as Eddie let go of the rope and broke free of his grip.

"I don't care! I don't care if I get myself killed! Better me than her!" Eddie screamed. Couldn't they see that their plan wasn't working? Couldn't they see that Y/N could die in any moment? Why were they stopping him!

"How are you supposed to help Y/N if you're dead?! Why would you even think about doing something so stupid!" Dustin yelled as he reached for Eddie's hand, but Eddie swiped it off. It was brewing inside of him, the fear, anger, frustration, pain, all of it. It was growing, and growing, and growing until finally, he exploded.

"Because I love her!" Eddie shouted, and the room went deathly quiet.

"I've been in love with Y/N Cunningham for half of my goddamn life! Shit, I've loved her for as long as I've known what love is!" It was pouring out of him now, and Eddie couldn't stop it if he tried.

"I love her so fucking much, full knowing she'll never love me back, and I don't even care, man. I made that stupid, goddamn, mixtape to show her how much I love her, and right now when she needs it most, it's nowhere to be found! I don't care if it's stupid, I don't care if it kills me, I'm not running away from shit anymore. I'll do whatever it takes to make sure Y/N makes it out in the end. She has to make it out... She has to..." Eddie could feel his heart pounding as he ripped it from his sleeve. It was all out in the open now. Everyone in his shitty trailer knew how he felt about Y/N. He couldn't look at them, couldn't stand the pitied looks he knew they were giving him. He held his head down in defeat, shoulders shaking with hidden sobs, then he felt someone grab his arm.

"Dustin, I don't wanna hear it. Just let me go, let me do this, let me save her." Eddie pleaded. Nobody said a word, the only sound he could hear was the voice of James Hetfield bleeding through the headphones. The hand that touched his arm slowly traveled upward, up his arm to the side of his neck. It slowly brushed away some of the hair that fell in front of his face, delicately tracing the the edge of Eddie's ear. It was soft, gentle, loving, the same touch he saw Y/N gave Chrissy when she held her in her arms.

"Eddie?"

Y/N was running. Running as fast as her feet could carry her. Everything was red, the sky, the lightening, the air, red. All red. There were pieces of what looked like a house floating around her as she ran towards the dilapidated staircase. She needed to get out of here, she could hear the melody of For Whom The Bell Tolls wafting through the air. She would make it back, she just had to find the exit.

Suddenly, the music cut out. The sounds of an old grandfather clock chimed loudly all around her. Y/N didn't see the missing step on the staircase, she barely had enough time to protect her face as she fell down the steps. Pain shot through her like the red lightening that surrounded Vecna's psychic prison. All of the air in her lungs rushed out of her, choked gasps escaped her lips as she tried to catch her breath.

"You taunted me Y/N... You shouted into the heavens practically begging for me to take you. Now here we are, I've granted you your wish." Vecna's voice rang out. With all of her strength she got back up, and stumbled into the clearing. There were these tall tree-like structures covered in vines, as Y/N got a closer look she saw the body of a young boy tangled within the vines, it was Fred Benson. His face warped and broken like her sister. From the corner of her eye she could see three more bodies inside of the rotten trees. She closed her eyes, afraid if she opened them Chrissy's body would show up again.

"Please... Stop... What do you want from me..." Y/N cried. She wanted to go home. She wanted to sit in the shitty boat house with Eddie. She wanted this nightmare to finally end.

"I need you to deliver a message for me. Your friends got so close, so close to the truth. But now it is my turn, to tell you everything I have done."

Y/N opened her eyes to find herself in a house, a family a four dressed from a different time walking through the front door. Vecna was showing her his past, how he was once human like she was. The boy looked so young, too young to have eyes as lifeless as his. That was Vecna, his name used to be Henry Creel. He had powers, abilities no normal human had. Just like the girl Dustin was friends with, but Henry didn't use his powers to help people. No, he used his powers to hurt.

He showed her how he tested his skill on animals at first, before slowly concocting his plan to kill his family. Y/N understood what it was like, to hate your parents, but she'd never do anything like this. She would never hurt them, torture them with their worst moments. As much as her mother tortured her, she would never stoop to her level, Vecna's level. And she would never hurt her sister.

He showed her his time inside Hawkins Lab, how he was tattooed like a farm animal to be experimented on. He told her this is what they did there, experiment on innocent kids. Vecna wasn't innocent, not by any means, but Y/N's heart ached knowing others were put through the same treatment. That Eleven went through it.

Y/N didn't want to see anymore, she couldn't take it. She started running out into the hallway of Hawkins Lab. As she ran, she saw blood smeared on the walls, dead bodies of kids and adults alike littering the floor, each of them one of Vecna's victims. It was ghastly, horrifying, she had to get out.

She found a boarded up door at the end of the hallway, she ran to it with everything she had in her. Y/N pulled on each of the planks, and slowly, one by one, they were coming loose.

"Y/N."

She knew she shouldn't, she should keep working on the boards, but something in her told her to turn around. Y/N slowly turned her head, and on the other side of the long dark hallway, was Vecna himself.

"What are you doing." Vecna growled, his burnt veiny body taking a step closer to her. Max was right, he did look a bit like Freddie Krueger. "It's not time for you to leave." He was getting closer now, she was running out of time.

Y/N struggle against the planks, she just had a few more left before she could push through. She could hear each of Vecna's wet, squelching steps as he stalked towards her.

"Now that you've seen where I've been..." She was almost free, the last plank barely hanging on by the nails. "I would very much like to show you where I am going."

Y/N finally broke the last plank, and rushed through the door.

Only to find herself back in the room she was previously in. One of Vecna's vines grabbed her, and pulled her into the chair the young Creel boy previously sat. She could feel their strong slimy grip wrap around her arms, legs, and neck. She was stuck, tied down to this chair, with that monster standing before her. His gritty breath bounced around the small tile room, with each step he took closer to her it got louder, and louder, and louder, till he was bending down in front of her.

Y/N looked into his cold blue eyes. Eyes that were undeniably human, underneath all of that ruined skin. A human did this. A human killed Chrissy, killed Fred, Patrick, all of those kids in the lab. A human being. It was easier to believe a monster did it, something from an another dimension hell bent on causing pain and misery for humanity. That was an easier pill to swallow than the truth. That a man committed those atrocities. A man who was once a boy, conceived, born, and raised by his mother and father. A boy who grew up and became this.

She couldn't understand why. Why Little Henry Creel had so much hate in his heart that it turned him into this monster. Was he born that way? Are all of the men who become monsters born bad, born wrong? He was just a child when he first took a life. A child who should have played baseball, or piano, or field games with his little sister, not planning a slaughter in a cold dark attic amongst spiderwebs.

He was getting closer to her now. She tried to back away from him, put some space in between her and those cold dead eyes, but the chair wouldn't let her.

"I... want you to tell Eleven. I want you to tell her everything you see." His long clawed hand was inches from her face, before it suddenly flicked up, and she saw something much, much, worse.

Y/N opened her eyes with a gasp, the sounds of heavy guitar blasting through her ears. She was back in Eddie's trailer, she was safe, everybody was safe. They were all gathered around Eddie, his back facing her. His arms were waving around, he was shouting something, but she couldn't hear it over the music. Y/N slowly lowered the headphones, the voice of James Hetfield replaced with Eddie.

"I don't care if it's stupid, I don't care if it kills me, I'm not running away from shit anymore. I'll do whatever it takes to make sure Y/N makes it out in the end. She has to make it out... She has to..." She saw him lower his head, his whole body shaking with fear. Y/N slowly walked over to him and placed her hand on his arm.

"Dustin, I don't wanna hear it. Just let me go, let me do this, let me save her." Eddie pleaded. He sounded so lost, so defeated, Y/N's heart nearly broke in half. Eddie didn't need to save her, he just needed to be there.

Y/N slowly rubbed her hand up Eddie's arm, gently tucking some loose hair behind his neck. Chrissy liked it when she did it, she's sure he would too.

"Eddie?" Y/N whispered gently. He slowly turned his head to face her, and the look on his face nearly took Y/N's breath away. He looked at her like she was an oasis in the desert, a present you've been begging for opening up in front of you on Christmas day. Eddie looked at her like she was the last thing he wanted to see before he died.

"Y/N..." Eddie gasped, before he launched himself at her. He wrapped his arms so tightly around her it nearly knocked the wind out of her. This wasn't the unescaping treacherous grip the vines had on her earlier, this was relief, this was care, this felt like it was love.

"Christ Y/N, I... I thought I lost you." He sounded gutted, tormented, as if he was tortured for hours. Y/N slowly ran her fingers through his hair, soothing the man in her arms.

"I'm okay Eddie, it's alright. I'm safe now." Y/N whispered. Eddie didn't loosen his grip, if it was possible he would have held her tighter.

"You don't understand. Shit, nothing was working, you weren't waking up. I didn't think you were gonna wake up. I was going to go back, I was so close to climbing through that gate and charging into battle alone. I-" Eddie stammered, breaths slowly returning to normal from their panicked state.

"I know Eddie, I heard you." Y/N whispered. He froze, right there in her hold.

"How, uh, much did you hear?" Eddie asked into her shoulder, too scared to look at her face.

"You said you weren't running away anymore, that you didn't care if it killed you, that you were going to save me. That's all I heard, and quite honestly, if all you were talking about before was this half baked suicide mission I'm glad I didn't hear it." Y/N chuckled, trying to lighten the dampen mood in the room.

Eddie didn't know if he should have been more relieved or disappointed that she didn't hear the rest of his confession. In the end, he decided he was thankful she didn't know. He had a plan, how he was going to tell her that he loved her, and it didn't involve her catatonic in his destroyed trailer. No, Eddie was going to do it right. He was going to pull out all of the stops for her, like she deserves. He knew he had to tell her soon, tonight was a close call. Eddie would do it. He was going to tell Y/N Cunningham, the woman he'd walk the ends of the Earth and beyond for, that he loved her.

Soon.

Taglist:

@imchangkyunned , @creativedogs , @nightless , @kik51199 , @thecraziestcrayon , @dabzzallday420 , @science--hoes , @efvyqrs , @justanotherkpopstanlol , @kikis-writing-world , @secretsicanthideanymore , @heartandhead2018 , @piperd06 , @kellysimagines , @writing-fanics , @munchabunch , @ultradangerouspie , @mrs-billyrussooo , @mselianora ,

[ya-boi-haru]

When it comes to this topic these are my 2 go to stories: (without getting into too much into the more personal details):

(TW: quick mention for Emetophobia)

I had just finished a walk (about 15 mins) and while laying down to relax on my bed about 10 minutes later i got this insane stitch on my left side (just at the bottom of my ribcage) I thought it'd go away after a minute or two - like all stitches do - but this was *intense*.

I had to get mum to rush me to the ER, I couldn't even walk out of the house without some sort of support and ended up being sick on the front lawn.

When we finally got there I still couldn't stand, I was crying from pain, couldn't stay still, writhing in pain. They told us to sit and wait which I ended up outside on the ground cause laying stretched out hurt less then sitting.

I was finally called In and they immediately ask if im pregnant, to which I *guarantee* them I'm not, but they still do tests for pregnancy cause "you never know". They gave me a Panadol and Nurofen and sent me off in the waiting area, still in pain.

2 HOURS had passed and the doctor had the results but weren't seeing us yet. By this point it's like 8pm and me and mum were hungry and my pain had gone, so I signed a release form and saw a doctor the next day.

I made the mistake of seeing a male doctor cause once I explained everything he told me the results (which were normal) and that it was just a bad cramp and if it happens again to just take panadol again since that seemed to worked...

I'm no doctor but I think I know where my body gets cramps and that was not it!

He sent me off, and I went to get a ultra-sound a week later (as recommended) and there was no issue.

I was convinced an organ had shut down and was scared i was going to pass out in the waiting room (or even outside), couldn't walk and the answer was to take panadol!?

Get fucked.

The second story is:

My optic nerve is *slightly* swollen so my optometrist wanted a second opinion to be on the safe side (fair enough)

After the test he said it was really nothing to worry about, it was next to nothing. Then proceeded to ask me questions about my weight and gave me "the speech"

Basically I had to lose 10% of my current weight as I'm considered overweight for my height and age (note I've always been like this) - I was looking into getting better with food and working out anyway, so I wasnt too annoyed at this point.

When I came back a couple months later, did the same tests and again, nothing wrong.

He asked if I managed to lose the 10% I told him that, "I don't know. I don't check the scales since looking at the numbers can lead to an unhealthy mindset with them, plus muscle can weigh more than fat, so it'd be tricky to get an accurate reading"

I told him I was seeing a nutritionist about food and starting to get more better at even simply going for more walks.

He then proceeded to (let's be honest) man-splain how "all it takes it 15/20 walk a day" (I told him I do) he just "had to recommend this salad" (I told him I don't like salads, one of the reasons I was seeing my nutritionist to find other options) but he gave me his thoughts anyway (I didn't like anything he suggested)

I sat there for maybe 10 minutes "listening" to the EYE Doctor telling me to *lose weight* to fix the problem in my EYE. He mentioned actual eye results once then proceeded to lecture me about my weight.

Honestlt, after that, I'm vowing to myself to not go to the doctors unless I'm on my death bed.

For extra context, for those that haven't seen me irl/in pictures

I'm definitely not the thinnest person, but I am plus size/curvy. I've always been this size/shape for as long as I can remember. I don't believe I am "suffering consequences" to my weight nor have I ever (yet at least). I understand that weight can factor in for things, but it is not the solution to every medical thing.

Logically I'm not sure if I'll ever lose the weight, as that is a thing that can happen, but I am on an up and down journey to getting better with exercise and food and getting to the healthier place I want to be in.

I will not be lectured by a doctor to eat a salad, count my calories and all that stuff I know will lead into an unhealthy mind set.

I'm aware I'm not the fittest person, but I will google tips and recipes for that, not pay you hundreds to tell me your salad recommendations.

Sorry this kinda turned into a bit of a vent and I'm not usually one to share this kind of stuff online but at the same time I feel like this shit has to be addressed, doctors need to do their fucking jobs rather than just instantly blame weight or assume it's due to a "woman's thing" (pregnancy, periods etc)

Again, sorry this went on for as long as it did - I didn't think it would - but thanks for reading

no clue what causes pcos. no clue what causes endometriosis. 2 year waiting lists to see a gynecologist. you'd think female bodies only started existing 50 years ago

[mishafletcher]

Are you a Gold Star lesbian? (Just in case you don't know what it means, a Gold Star lesbian is a lesbian that has never had the sex with a guy and would never have any intentions of ever doing so)

So I got this ask a while ago, and I've been lowkey thinking about it ever since.

First: No. I am a queer, cranky dyke who is too old for this sort of bullshit gatekeeping. 

Second: What an unbelievable question to ask someone you don't even know! What an incomprehensibly rude thing to ask, as if you're somehow owed information about my sexual history. You're not! No one—and I can't reiterate this enough, but no one—owes you the details of their sex lives, of their trauma, or of anything about themselves that they don't feel like sharing with you.

The clickbait mills of the internet and the purity police of social media would like nothing more than to convince everyone that you owe these things to everyone. They would like you to believe that you have to prove that you're traumatized enough to identify with this character, that you can't sell this article about campus rape without relating it to your own sexual assault, that you can't talk about queer issues without offering up a comprehensive history of your own experiences, and none of those things are true. You owe people, and especially random strangers on the internet, nothing, least of all citations to somehow prove to them that you have the right to talk about your own life.

This makes some people uncomfortable, and to be clear, I think that that's good: people who feel entitled to demand this information should be uncomfortable. Refusing to justify yourself takes power away from people who would very much like to have it, people who would like to gatekeep and dictate who is permitted to speak about what topics or like what things. You don't have to justify yourself. You don't have to explain that you like this ship because this one character reminds you a bit of yourself because you were traumatized in a vaguely similar way and now— You don't have to justify your queerness by telling people about the best friend you had when you were twelve, and how you kissed, and she laughed and said it was good practice for when she would kiss boys and your stomach twisted and your mouth tasted like bile and she was the first and last girl you kissed, but— 

You don't owe anyone these pieces of yourself. They're yours, and you can share them or not, but if someone demands that you share, they're probably not someone you should trust.

Third: The idea of gold star lesbians is a profoundly bi- and trans- phobic idea, often reducing gender to genitals and the long, shared history of queer women of all identities to a stark, artificial divide where some identities are seen as purer or more valuable than others. This is bullshit on all counts.

There's a weird and largely artificial division between bisexuals and lesbians that seems to be intensifying on tumblr, and I have to say: I hate it. Bisexual women aren't failed lesbians. They're not somehow less good or less valid because they're attracted to [checks notes] people. Do you think that having sex with a man somehow changes them? What are you so worried about it for? I've checked, and having sex with a man does not, in fact, make your vagina grow teeth or tentacles. Does that make you feel better? Why is what other people are doing so threatening to you?

Discussions of gold star lesbians are often filled with tittering about hehe penises, which is unfortunate, since I know a fair few lesbians who have penises, and even more lesbians who've had sex with people, men and women alike, who have penises. I'm sorry to report that "I'm disgusted by a standard-issue human body part" is neither a personality nor anything to be proud of. I'm a dyke and I don't especially like men, but dicks are just dicks. You don't have to be interested in them, but a lot of people have them, and it doesn't make you less of a lesbian to have sex with someone who has a dick.

There's so much garbage happening in the world—maybe you haven't noticed, but things are kind of Not Great in a lot of places, and there's a whole pandemic thing that's been sort of a major buzzkill? How is this something that you're worried about? Make a tea, remind yourself that other people's genitalia and sexual history are none of your business, maybe go watch a video about a cute animal or something. 

Fourth: The idea of gold star lesbians is a shitty premise that argues that sexuality is better if it's always been clear-cut and straightforward—but it rarely is. We live in a very, very heterosexist culture. I didn’t have a word for lesbian until many years after I knew that I was one. How can you say that you are something when your mouth can’t even make the shape of it? The person you are at 24 is different to the person you are at 14, and 34, and 74. You change. You get braver. The world gets wider. You learn to see possibilities in the shadows you used to overlook. Of course people learn more about themselves as they age.

Also, many of us, especially those of us who grew up in smaller towns, or who are over the age of, say, 25, grew up in times and places where our sexuality was literally criminal.

Shortly after I graduated high school, a gay man in my state was sentenced to six months in jail. Why? Well, he’d hit on someone, and it was a misdemeanor to "solicit homosexual or lesbian activity", which included expressing romantic or sexual interest in someone who didn’t reciprocate. You might think, then, that I am in fact quite old, but you would be mistaken. The conviction was in 1999; it was overturned in 2002.

I grew up knowing this: the wrong thing said to the wrong person would be sufficient reason to charge me with a crime.

In the United States, the Defense of Marriage Act was passed in 1996, clarifying that according to the federal government, marriage could only ever be between one man and one woman. It also promised that even if a state were to legalize same-sex unions, other states wouldn't have to recognize them if they didn't want to. And wow, they super did not want to, because between 1998 and 2012, a whopping thirty states had approved some sort of amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Every queer person who's older than about 25 watched this, knowing that this was aimed at people like them. Knowing that these votes were cast by their friends and their families and their teachers and their employers. 

Some states were worse than others. Ohio passed their bill in 2004 with 62% approval. Mississippi passed theirs the same year with 86% approval. Imagine sitting in a classroom, or at work, or in a church, or at a family dinner, and knowing that statistically, at least two out of every three people in that room felt you shouldn't be allowed to marry someone you loved.

Matthew Shepard was tortured to death in October of 1998. For being gay, for (maybe) hitting on one of the men who had planned to merely rob him. Instead, he was tortured and left to die, tied to a barbed wire fence. His murderers were both sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison. This was controversial, because a nonzero number of people felt that Shepard had brought it upon himself.

Many of us sat at dinner tables and listened to this discussion, one that told us, over and over, that we were fundamentally wrong, fundamentally undeserving of love or sympathy or of life itself.

This is a tiny, tiny sliver of history—a staggeringly incomplete overview of what happened in the US over about ten years. Even if this tiny sliver is all that there were, looking at this, how could you blame someone for wanting to try being not Like This? How can you fault someone who had sex, maybe even had a bunch of sex, hoping desperately that maybe they could be normal enough to be loved if they just tried harder? How can you say that someone who found themself an uninteresting but inoffensive boyfriend and went on dates and had sex and said that it was fine is somehow less valuable or less queer or less of a lesbian for doing so? For many people, even now, passing as straight, as problematic as that term is, is a survival skill. How dare you imply that the things that someone did to protect themself make them worth less? They survived, and that's worth literally everything.

Fifth, finally: What is a gold star, anyhow? You've capitalized it, like it's Weighty and Important, but it's not. Gold stars were what your most generous grade school teacher put on spelling tests that you did really well on. But ultimately, gold stars are just shiny scraps of paper. They don't have any inherent value: I can buy a thousand of them for five bucks and have them at my door tomorrow. They have only the meaning that we give them, only the importance that we give them. We’re not children desperately scrabbling for a teacher’s approval anymore, though. We understand that good and bad are more of a spectrum than a binary, and that a gold star is a simplification. We understand that no number of gold stars will make us feel like we’re special enough or good enough or important enough, or fix the broken places we can still feel inside ourselves. Only we can do that.

The stars are only shiny scraps of paper. They offer us nothing; we don’t need them. I hope that someday, you see that, too. 

[thedreamlessnights]

Not an end, but the start of all things

{chapter one} - {chapter two} - {chapter three} - {chapter four} - {chapter five} - {chapter six} - {chapter seven} - {chapter eight} - {chapter nine} - {chapter ten}

Vampire!Viktor x F!Reader AU (Eventual NSFW)

Synopsis: Sickness brings its challenges as you work on completing your gift for Viktor. Your friendship deepens. Viktor does something... unexpected.

Warnings: Mentions of the death of loved ones, symptoms of disease. Tension.

Word Count: 4.4k

A/N: As many of you may have discerned, Chapter 7 is both going to be very long and very angsty. It'll be posted in the next couple of days. For now, enjoy this softer one, and thank you so much for all the encouragement.

After circling the perimeter of Viktor’s house, the library window ends up being your savior - the only unlocked window you can find. Your fingers are freezing and uncooperative by this point, but after several attempts, a good deal of blowing on your hands to warm them, and with the strength of sheer will, you finally manage to pry it open.

After peeking your head in to make sure Viktor isn’t around, you let the fur drop to the floor behind a nearby shelf. Then you close the window and head to the front door.

As soon as you enter, Viktor lifts his head, raising a bemused eyebrow.

“There was an interesting commotion in the library just now,” he says, eyes glittering with mirth. “Care to explain?”

Your shoulders slump. Of course he’d heard you messing about.

“It’s a surprise,” you say firmly. “Just… trust me on that.”

Curiosity flickers behind Viktor’s eyes, but he doesn’t further question you as you head to the library to collect the fur and bring it to your room. When you emerge, he remains in the same seat, reading the same book.

He appears tense. 

There’s a number of things that could make him anxious, but you know the true source. 

He’s hungry. 

He hasn’t drinken the blood he’d gotten from the market yet - perhaps in an attempt to conserve it over the next week. All the key signs of his hunger are present not only in the bags under his eyes, but also in the way he sits, back gnarled into what must be fierce knots. That tension only grows as you get a little closer.

If you could touch him now, the way you ache to touch him, you’d be smoothing the loose strands of his hair away from his eyes, placing your hands on his back, and working all those knots out one by one.

But you can’t. Not while you don’t know if he feels the same, or if he ever wants you to touch him. Especially not while you’re adding to his craving. 

Instead, you choose to give him some space, grabbing some of the leftovers of breakfast and sitting down.

“This… surprise,” Viktor starts. “I’m going to learn what it is, yes?”

“Yes,” you confirm, giving a nod of your head. “Just… not yet.”

He gazes at you with that quiet curiosity for a moment longer.

“Alright.”

It takes you a couple weeks to finish the blanket.

You start by taking some chalk from Viktor’s lab. A minor thing, but you can’t just grab it without asking, you’d drown in guilt if you were to take something without his permission. So you end up asking him to borrow it. 

He says yes, of course, but his gaze doesn’t leave you once as you exit the room. Curiosity, you recognize. He’s dying to know what you’re doing with it.

You use the chalk to map out the measurements of the blanket, and there’s plenty of the fur to go around. You might even have enough to make a smaller one for yourself.

Then, with an excruciating amount of care, considering the way your hands shake, you begin to cut it.

It takes a ridiculous amount of time to remove the full shape of it with your current state, to the point where one night, you throw the fabric down and start to cry in frustration. A year ago, this sort of thing would have been able to be done in your sleep. Now you can barely hold a pair of scissors. 

It’s a fact that kills you. 

Who are you, if you can’t make a simple blanket? Who are you now, but a scrap of your former self? How much more will you deteriorate? Until you’re only skin and bones? Until you waste away into nothingness, an unrecognizable shell of who you used to be?

After an hour of thoughts like this, you finally manage to knock yourself out of your stupor and go back to the fabric. You can’t stand the thought of not delivering on Viktor’s surprise, you’d hate to waste Jayce’s money you used to buy the fabric — and you know you can finish it.

You have to finish it.

So, after many different attempts, you finally get through cutting it. By some miracle, the lines have come out straight, and you sigh in relief looking at the finished product. If only it was over.

Next comes the sewing. 

If holding a pair of scissors had seemed dangerous with shaky hands, holding a needle is even more so. The disease has rendered your joints stiff and aching, and you have to continually stretch your hands to keep them from locking up. 

When you first start, you stab yourself more times than you’d like to admit, and every time you wind up with your bleeding thumb in your mouth, you think of Viktor. 

Would he enjoy the metallic taste of you? Would he be able to taste you at all?

Then you shake the thoughts out of your mind, sternly chide yourself for ever thinking things like that, and get back to work.

You end up accomplishing the project by wearing a thimble, going very slowly, and taking lots of breaks, mostly working on it when Viktor is busy or you’re not in the lab. It’s finished two days before the winter holiday - just enough time to place the final details on and fix anything that seems off.

Thank God you’d had the foresight to give yourself a good amount of time or you’d never have made it.

It’s a gorgeous thing, so soft you’re almost tempted to keep it for yourself. Instead, you take the extra fabric pieces and start on making yourself a smaller version of your own, not quite as nice as the original, but still soft and warm. The color glistens in the light; perfect for the chilly nights.

Once you’re ready to wrap your gift for Viktor, you sneak around the house, salvaging a box that you find in the library and wrapping the present up, using a strip of loose fabric from a large shirt as a decorative ribbon.

On the morning of the holiday, your hands shake as you carry the box out into the main room.

Viktor, who has been lounging on the couch reading, immediately focuses his gaze on your hands - or, more importantly, what’s inside them - and he sits up, the same curiosity he’s born lately showcasing itself in his eyes.

“I know you don’t really celebrate the winter holiday,” you start, “but I wanted to give you a gift.” You inhale deeply, then hold the box out toward him.

Viktor’s grip is gentle when he takes the gift from you, examining the outside of it with a sparked interest.

“It’s not much,” you add, “but I just… wanted to thank you. For taking me in.”

You cannot read the expression on Viktor’s face as he looks at you, then back at your present. Your heart is thundering in your chest, nails digging into your palm as you try to abate your nervousness. If only you could read his mind.

“I… didn’t get you a gift,” he says softly. “I’m not the most familiar with holidays. I’m sorry.”

“Please, don’t be,” you say quickly. “You’ve given me so much already - a home, a warm bed, safety. Not to mention food, medicine, and company. Consider this my ‘thank you’ for all of that.”

When he still looks hesitant, you sit on the couch, across from him. You ache to touch him - to place a hand on his back, rubbing soothing motions into it. If he wasn’t so withdrawn, you’d have sat next to him, but you’re worried about overstepping boundaries, given how little he’s touched you in the past. Instead, you give him a smile from where you’re sitting; one that you hope is reassuring. 

“You don’t have to open it now if you don’t want to, Vik.”

He frowns. 

“I want to,” he murmurs, sounding torn.

But he stays still as stone, eyes fixed on the present. 

“What’s stopping you?”

After a moment, he gives a sigh, and sets it down. 

“What kind of things are traditional for this holiday?” he asks. “Besides the gifts?”

“Well,” you start. “Usually, you get together with the people you care about. A big dinner is served, and afterward you give one another presents. Decorate a tree with ornaments. And… talk. About things you don’t know about each other.”

Viktor eyes the gift in front of him, then looks back to you.

“Would you mind if I opened this later tonight?” he asks.

“Not at all,” you say. 

He stands, grabbing a paper and scribbling something down. Then he hands it to you, along with a small pouch.

“I need these things for the lab,” he says, absently twiddling with his cane. “Would you mind going out to the forest and garden to get them for me? There’s a wooden box outside, near the door, which you can place the items in.”

You’re immediately suspicious, but you take the list from him anyway. The list is an extensive array of winter plants, mostly vegetables, and you realize it’ll take hours to forage for these items, if not more. From what you can tell, you’re not the only one who’s come up with a holiday surprise for today. Not when the market is open, and Viktor had sent you off so abruptly - as if he’d had something he intended to do, but didn’t want you to know about it.

When you finally return home, the first thing that hits you is the mouthwatering smell of some kind of roast over the fire. The heady scent of the room is intoxicating, making you tense with anticipation. Your stomach immediately growls. 

The second thing you notice is all of the candles illuminating the room with a warm, soft glow. There are more of them lit than usual, and as you scan the room, you notice they have all been carefully placed in areas where they won’t be knocked over.

Viktor has brought one of the larger pot plants out - a tiny sort of bush with lush green leaves rather than a spiny pine tree usually reserved for the holiday season. He’s placed and centered in the middle of the room. A box full of ornaments sits beside it, items that you recognize from your trip to the market. 

Your theory had been right after all.

When Viktor sees the bounty in your arms, he steps forward to take them from your hands. “Ah,” he says. “Thank you.”

He sets the box on the counter, gingerly takes out what you had foraged, and begins preparing them. For a moment, you don’t process what he’s doing, and then it clicks. He’s making dinner.

You watch him for a moment as he ambles about the kitchen, cane clicking on the floor. That familiar sound has become a comfort to you, these past few months.

“Viktor, you didn’t have to,” you say, feeling immensely guilty as you watch him inspect the mushrooms you’d collected. “You’ve already done enough for me. You don’t have to do any more.”

“I wanted to,” Viktor says simply. 

“Can I help with dinner, then?”

He eyes you warily, as if he thinks you’re up to something, then nods. “Alright.”

You spend the evening scrubbing the efforts of your labor clean and prepping them to be cooked - cutting the onions, carrots, mushrooms, and parsnips into chunks, peeling and quartering the potatoes before setting them to boil, and once they’re drained, tossing them all together with a smattering of herbs and oil, and cooking them over the fire. 

Then you two work on decorating the ‘tree.’ The branches of the bush are delicate, so you have to be gentle, but it looks very nice at the end. You stop to admire it for a moment, then continue with your work - pulling the vegetables off the fire, setting the table, pulling out a bottle of wine at Viktor’s instruction.

Then the roast also comes off the fire, and it smells amazing. Viktor has taken great care in seasoning the meat, you notice. 

When everything is done, the two of you set it on the table, taking seats opposite each other.

“Can I ask you something?” You’re incredibly hungry, but also curious.

“Anything.”

“Why season the food, if you can’t taste it?”

“Ah.” Viktor spoons some food onto his plate, then hands the spoon over to you. “I cannot taste it, but I can smell it. The stronger it smells, the more it’s like I can almost taste it. I’m surprised it’s not over-seasoned for you.”

“I’m just happy to have food,” you reply. 

Maybe his food is over-seasoned, but you’d lived off things so bland and flavorless for so long, that when you’d started living with Viktor, anything would have seemed overpowering. And it had been, but in a good way. Never too much salt to eat, or any of the like. Then again, salt isn’t exactly a potent smell.

Plus, you like a lot of garlic, which Viktor seems to frequent.

“Is it my turn now, to ask you things I don’t know about you?” Viktor questions.

“Yes. Go ahead.”

You’re wondering what he’ll ask as you dig into the food, trying to combat your gnawing hunger. After all, you’d had so many questions about him when you’d arrived. Did he have the same amount of questions about you?

It seems so.

“How do you know Jayce?” he asks first.

“We were… together… when we were younger,” you answer. “Almost ten years ago, now. My parents didn’t like that.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Viktor says dryly, and you laugh.

“Yes, well, they didn’t like any monsters, and they made sure to tell him that. He hadn’t known they were hunters, and I should have told him, but I’d never known how. We moved away after that, and I ran away from them six months later. After I got sick, I was desperate and alone and starving and… I didn’t want to die like that. He wasn’t very far from where I’d ended up, so I went to him.”

“And your parents are…?”

“Dead,” you confirm.

He inhales deeply, his fork poised over his plate. Slowly, as though deciding how he should respond, he slices his parsnips into smaller pieces. He’s barely eaten anything from his plate. His attention has been focused solely on you.

“We have that in common,” he finally says.

“I’m sorry.” You pause for a moment, then crack a smile. “They didn’t happen to be human hunters, did they?”

“No,” Viktor says. He’s smiling too, though. “Quite the opposite. They avoided humans at all costs.”

“I see.” 

“The… animal blood lost its effectiveness for them,” he continues. His voice has tightened, and his jaw is clenched. His grip is stiff on his fork, knuckles flushing white from his grip. “It’s a very common thing, with vampires,” he murmurs. “It only works for fifty or so years. Then it suddenly just stops.” 

He takes a moment to breathe in, his grip relaxing on his fork as he sets the fork down. 

“With no other replacement, they starved. Human food does nothing, when you’re like that, and… they were… unwilling to be reliant on human blood for the rest of their life.”

“I’m so sorry,” you say.

He just shakes his head.

“After they’d gone, I was alone. Until I met Jayce.” 

Gently, he pushes his plate away from him, as if he’s lost his appetite. You doubt he had one in the first place.

“When Jayce and I fought, and he left, I had forgotten what that felt like. I thought loneliness would drive me mad.’

He pauses, then smiles at you, a flash of the gap between his teeth catching your eye. You’ve always loved that part of him. You can’t help but mirror his expression.

“I’m glad to be here,” you reply.

But as his words sink in, you’re suddenly met with the terrible image of what will happen when you’re gone. 

Viktor, alone again, tucked away in his lab as the days pass one after the other. Would Jayce visit him sometimes, or would he remain in his solitary isolation? Completely and utterly alone until he died, still young, grey only just beginning to streak his hair?

It makes you upset enough to push your plate away, too. But what can you do?

“May I ask you another question?” Viktor asks, tilting his head as he gazes at you. He’s probably picked up that you’re upset, given the way his brows pinch together in concern as he watches you.

“Yes,” you say quickly, pasting on a smile and welcoming the distraction. Anything to move your thoughts away from where they were.

“What did you used to do? Before you got sick?” Viktor asks.

You have to take a moment to reflect on it before you answer.

Since your time living here, with him, a life so different from how yours used to be, you’d almost forgotten the way you used to live. It’s strange to you now, that there’d once been a time when you hadn’t been sick. Life had seemed to stretch out in front of you, a hallway with a thousand open doors full of opportunity. 

Now that’s closed off. All those doors are locked and shut to you forever.

Nevertheless, you cherish the time you had then, and all the simple joys you’d lived with. You miss the person you’d used to be, tucked into your bed at night, safe and warm. You’d give almost anything to experience that sense of calm and safety again.

So you tell him.

You tell him how you sewed, cleaned, and gardened, which he laughs at, considering your ironic lack of knowledge of plants. However, once you begin to talk about your work, his amusement is replaced by a keen sense of interest - he seems to cling on to your every word. 

You speak of how to plant complementary crops, how to rotate vegetable plots each year to maintain the health and productivity of the soil, how to cultivate and maintain perfect lawns and tranquil paths for those with more wealth than you’d ever possessed.

He seems entranced by your words, leaning toward you as you speak, eyes shining with interest. It gives you the courage to continue on.

You tell him about your parents: how you’d hated them, how they’d raised and buried you in fear before you even started life, and how utterly sweet your relief had been after they’d passed. 

You tell him about your old house that you’d worked so hard for, with the creaky floorboard you’d fixed, the drafty windows, the sparrows who’d chirp their hello in the mornings as they ate from the feeds you left for them. 

You tell him about the old lady with the cake, who’d made you cry with her present. 

You tell him about how your body had slowly withered and crumbled against your will - how you had woken, breathless and choking for air in the nights, filled with grief beyond words. 

How, even then, you hadn’t realized everything you’d worked so hard for would be lost. Not until you’d ended up on the streets, cold and alone, soaking in the devastation of your reality.

You tell him about the isolating cold of sleeping under trees, buried beneath pine needles for warmth, hunger stabbing deep in your belly but too weak to forage anything beyond dandelion weeds, pine bark and any discarded scraps you could find in trash bins behind the shops in town. His expression changes when you share this. It sort of tightens - a somber sobriety.

Then you tell him how you’d found Jayce and what a change it was to find somewhere safe. The full-body relief of having somewhere where basic needs weren’t a luxury.

You tell him you’re not the person you used to be, but that you’re also not afraid to die. Just wistful, sometimes.

He seems to understand that more than anything.

Then Viktor begins to speak - with initial hesitancy, about himself. About how he was raised to dislike humans, in the same way you were raised to fear vampires, but he’d grown to live in avoidance, not in pursuit. 

How isolating that had made life for him, so secluded from everyone and the world, and how his dedication to ending the dependency on blood had become his drive. 

How he’d met Jayce, who was eager and passionate and unlike so many others; who wanted to help the people around him. Then he’d met his future wife and eventually got married and, well… changed. 

Viktor goes quiet for a moment after that. 

“But, I continued my work,” he says. 

He goes on to add that he believes he’s very, very close to making a breakthrough for the blood - a full replacement, not a half-competent one like animal blood. And how, once it’s done, he intends to give it to every vampire he knows. To give it to anyone it could help. He wants to help as many people as he possibly can.

Once he’s done speaking, you let the words sink in for a moment.

“You’re really inspiring, you know that?” you ask.

Viktor’s cheeks dust with pink. You wish you could paint the sight permanently into your mind, and stare at it forever.

“Thank you,” he says. He pauses for a moment, then adds, “You are, as well.”

Heat warms your cheeks. “Me?”

“You persevere,” he says simply. “You’re dying, but you’re still… determined. You went out of your way to make a gift for me. The world has treated you terribly, but you still choose to be kind.”

You blink in disbelief before forming your reply. “One could say the same thing about you.”

“Perhaps,” Viktor replies. He seems to dwell on that for a moment before he breaks from his trance, shaking his head and sitting up straighter.

With all your talking, you’d almost forgotten about the gift. Viktor clearly hasn’t. He picks it up again, eyes lighting with anticipation. “May I?”

“Of course.” Your voice is tinged with nervousness, but Viktor doesn’t seem to pick up on it. As he begins to take off the ribbon, your anxiety spikes. 

“It’s… not much,” you say, echoing your words from earlier. 

Viktor only frowns at you. “You keep saying that. I wasn’t expecting anything at all. I will enjoy anything.”

“I know, but… I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” Viktor replies. “Not to mention, you’re one of the two people to ever give me a gift; the other being Jayce. I guarantee I’ll appreciate it.”

Your curiosity piques up. “What’d he give you?”

“Equipment.” He’s gotten the ribbon off now, and he gently sets it down next to him. “For the lab.”

“Oh,” you say, your heart sinking. There’s no chance your blanket would compare to that in any way. You don’t really know how to redeem it any further, so you watch in silence as Viktor opens the box.

He reads the card, first - a brief thank you for all the things he’d done, then pulls out the actual present.

“It’s. It’s a blanket,” you explain. “I know it gets really cold at night, out here, so…”

Viktor is examining it, running his hand over the soft fur.

“You… made this?” he asks. “For me?

“Of course, for you,” you laugh. 

“I… Thank you.” He looks overwhelmed. “How long did it take you?”

“Maybe two and a half weeks?” you recall, thinking on the long nights you spent pulling needle and thread whenever you could, running your fingers down to the bone. “I worked on it in my free time, but I’m slower than I used to be. That’s what I snuck into the library - the fabric. Then I sewed it up. That’s what I used your chalk for. Marking out the measurements on the fabric before I cut it.”

He looks absolutely stunned, like he doesn’t know what to say. He stands, almost robotically, fiddling with his cane as he looks at you.

“This is amazing,” he breathes, awe written into his voice. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

It feels wrong for you to remain sitting, so you stand too, coming over next to him to fluff out the blanket. Then he steps closer. Hesitant. Apprehensive. Close enough for you to feel the heat of his body next to you. His eyes don’t leave your face, not even for a moment, and you ache for his touch enough that you almost step away before you do something foolish.

But something in you is telling you to stay. It’s telling you to freeze under his gaze and wait, and you’re inclined to obey, choosing to meet Viktor’s stare. 

With his arms slightly trembling, he finally reaches out to you, and… hugs you. 

You’re so shocked that you don’t know what to do with yourself. 

It takes you a moment to hug him back, enveloped in the most contact you’ve ever had with him, leaning into his touch like it’s a lifeline.

It’s a quick, tight hug, but when he lets go, he doesn’t move away. Instead, his eyes trail over your face and down to your lips, focusing on them for… much longer than he should.

Your breath hitches in your throat. Agonizing seconds pass.

Is he going to kiss you?

For a long second, you think he might. You can almost swear that you see a deep, persistent yearning written into his eyes. 

Then he suddenly pulls away, and you’re left to suck in a nervous breath, knees shaking like a leaf.

“Thank you again,” he says, exhaling sharply. His cheeks and the top of his ears are flushed rouge, and he’s not meeting your eyes. “For the gift.”

“You’re welcome,” you say breathlessly.

He just nods. 

Tucking a strand of your hair behind your ears, you clear your throat and head back to the table to start cleaning up the dishes. 

After a moment, Viktor helps you, and everything else gets put away in complete silence. Then you bid each other good night, and turn into bed, heart still hammering from what had happened. Sleep finds you quickly that night, submerging you in murky dreams of Viktor’s lips on yours. When you wake, you have to press your fingers to your lips to remind yourself that it hadn’t really happened. Just a dream, you think, turning over and going back to sleep. Just a dream.

Every day for the rest of the season, Viktor keeps the blanket fixed on his lap as he reads.

tags: @modernamilf @mischievous-piltovian @yeehawbvby @dianounais @avid-main @stararctic @doctorho @mello-jello29 @silco-my-love @am-3-thyst @thefiasco-onyourblock @glowstick-cafe