#so now its punishing me for my hubris

[swordsonnet]

the most annoying thing about me/cfs is that it's more like 10 different illnesses in a trenchcoat. i'll wake up with a new symptom and be like "oh okay, guess that's what we're doing today"

[iniziare]

Tag drop: Jingliu

[katerinaaqu]

Wait did Odysseus really get like insulted as sisyphus' bastard son is like he related to that guy who tried tricking death twice

Yes it appears so. In many plays like Sophocles or Eurypedes, characters who dislike him or wish to offend him seem to be calling him "Son of Sisyphus" and het the chorus always chants him as "Son of Laertes" which I find it interesting so it seems to me more like a rumor or an insult for him rather than his real heritage.

As I answred to another amazing ask by @autumn0689 in the past here It is a very interesting subject. So forgive me for the length!

For starters Odysseus is being insulted as a bastard, an illegitimate son. As I answered to the amazing ask by @leynaeithnea about illegitimate children here being illegitimate was a source of shame on its own. I mean even nowadays to call someone "You bastard!" is an insult. Back then it ran even deeper because being an insult of one's heritage (since they believed nobility runs in blood especially the Athenian writers that imposed this). Odysseus is technically a king to mention that as a king he is not legitimate son is like saying he has no right to his position; that he is not even supposed to be there; that he is not worth of it. They also indirectly insult his family as well; Laertes has no legitimate son, his wife was disloyal to him and had a child with another man and Laertes chose to take that child as his own. Calling Odysseus "bastard of Sisyphus" is basically an insult to his entire famiy (thus me making Odysseus go mad at Philoctetes in my random story here

And as I answered to the previous ask it all melts down to who is Sisyphus; a sinner, someone who cheated on the gods twice, someone that as you said cheated on death himself and now he is being punished eternally. Sisyphus was in a way used as the embodiment of human arrogance, shame and example for punishment. They basically call Odysseus the bastard son of the most sinful man. That was to insult him by the way Odysseus too often uses indirect methods to achieve his goals. They basically say "the apple fell under the apple tree". Odysseus cannot be the spawn of a possible Argonaut. He must be the child of a sinful person given how he is not the ideal warrior for his time. Indirectly or not they were saying that Odysseus was the embodiment of trickery, of human arrogance and of someone that will mock even the gods to achieve his goals (ironically that is not the case at least with Homeric hero as we know he was one of the most pious to the gods among his peers -praised by Zeus himself- despite him being known for his great hubris to Poseidon) Another thing him being accused as son of Sisyphus does is to diminish his godly line. Anticlea, his mother, is the grandaughter of Hermes in many sources. Once again Odysseus cannot be possibly sharing his bloodline with the gods! He must be the spawn of something sinful! Thus again the insult.

So far the worst mention of it I have heard was in "Philoctetes", where Philoctetes is so furious at Odysseus that not only does he say he is the illegitimate son of Sisyphus but he takes it a step further and insinuates that Sisyphus sold Odysseus to Laertes. So not only does he call Odysseus the illegitimate spawn of a sinner and a result of adultery but he also says that Odysseus is not worth more than the average slave, given how Laertes buys him from his father for money. But again what intrigues me is that the choir around still calls him "Son of Laertes". Even when Menelaus calls him "son of Sisyphus" in "Iphigeneia en Aulis" the choir still calls him "Son of Laeretes". So it seems more like a rumor or an insult among his peers rather than an actual irrefutable fact.

Hahaha I have come to the conclusion that at this point "Son of Sisyphus" means "son of a bitch" really! XD

For Odysseus himself being called basically a "cockroach that refuses to die" might as well be almost like a compliment and in many cases he has spoken as if he doesn't care for other people hating him (for example in Philoctetes he mentions how he can be literally anything the situation calls for) but I have to be honest by the ideals of his time I do not think he would like it. That would imply not only that his blood is impure but also that he is not equal to the others, that he is not worth to be at their presence and let's face it no one likes the prostect of their own family being dragged to the mud. Odysseus himself doesn't seem always affected by talk on the surface (in Philoctetes he even gives permission to Neoptolemous to do so in order to persuade Philoctetes to trust him) but judging by his reactions quite often when insulted, he explodes. So he is not entirely immune to insults. In fact it was one of these insults that made him explode his anger to Polyphemus and comit his blasphemy to Poseidon (and yes I have written something on that too! Hehehe)

Sorry if this was too long! I hope it helps!

[mochinomnoms]

Hi, there :D

I saw the hanahaki event and I found your ideas about the disease interesting so I want to place my resquest:

Type: Romantic, hurt and fluff

Reader: Female but neutral it's okay 👍

Promt: "Here, your favorite flower! Hmm? Where'd I get them? Uh, I just found them, around..."

With Silver

silver x f!reader [tags] – fluff, hurt/comfort [wc} – 2,423 prompt 13: “Here, your favorite flower! Hmm? Where'd I get them? Uh, I just found them, around…” note - hi! went over wc, it's fine. i hope i got the hurt part down? a floral inconvenience

Gardenias - They are often given as a gesture of love and affection, making them popular in wedding bouquets and romantic arrangements.

Peonies - peonies are often associated with love, romance, and prosperity. It symbolizes deep affection, good fortune, and a flourishing relationship.

You attempted to floss out something that had gotten stuck on your teeth during your last coughing fit at lunch. You hadn’t realized that whatever it was was falling out of your mouth while you and Ace argued about who would be speaking during your history presentation until Deuce pointed them out. 

“Uh, Prefect? You got—” He tapped the corner of his mouth. “—you got a little something there.”

You’d swiped at your mouth, confused from where the petal came from, until you started hacking up flowers. Now you were sitting in the infirmary room with a concerned, but slightly amused Lilia, who decided to escort you to the nurse after seeing your three gaggle of friends panic. 

Grim in particular seemed convinced that you’d been cursed and were turning into a tree as punishment for his hubris.

“There, there my dear.” Lilia rubbed a soothing hand along your back as you coughed up another flower. Gardenia flowers, evidently. “It’ll pass, happens to many people during the spring season.”

You gagged as you finally cleared your throat of phlegm and petals. Looking down on your lap, you had what was basically a full bouquet of white, full bloom gardenias. A bit moist from your saliva, but fairly pretty flowers. 

“Egh, what like seasonal allergies?” you asked, murmuring a thanks as the fae handed you the warm cup of soothing potion the nurse left you. 

“You could say that. Spring is the most ideal time of the year for youngins to be twitterpated!”

You raised a brow at Lilia, who was smirking at you cheekily. “So, you want to tell me who’s the lucky man that’s caught the attention of the school’s only young woman?”

“Huh? What do you mean? Twitterpated?”

Lilia’s smile dropped, a more pensive, thoughtful look on his face now as he hummed. “I suppose you wouldn’t know, seeing as it’s a magical sickness.”

Lilia turned to face you as he carefully grabbed one of the gardenias, twirling it in his hands as he explained.

“Hanahaki disease is an illness that typically occurs in the springtime among young individuals whose hearts are so full of love for the object of their affection that their love starts taking physical form as their loved one’s favorite flora, typically flowers. But always the most pristine, beautiful version of it.”

He chuckled at your reddening face as he continued, “It can be typically treated by confessing your love, or it will go away on its own after a while. There are a few cases where it can become chronic, but that’s rare.”

“Cool, cool, cool. So how long specifically until it goes away?”

Lilia dropped the flower in shock, turning to look at you with disbelief.

“What?” you blurted, hastily grabbing the flowers to toss them in the trashcan by the bed. “You said a while, so like a week? Two? I can even do three—”

“Why would you wait when you can get it over with, with just a few words?” Lilia looked disappointed, almost pouting as he crossed his arms.

“Take this as an opportunity to get this off your chest. That’s how the sickness feeds, even if they don’t accept and say no—”

“But I don’t want him to say no!” You whispered, interrupting Lilia mid-sentence as he saw how somber you looked. “I-I can’t. I don’t think I could handle hearing him reject me. I don’t want to ruin what we already have.”

You fiddled with your fingers as you continued, “Even then, if he says yes, what will happen when I go home? Will I just leave him here, alone? After I’ve taken a piece of his heart for myself?”

Sighing, you shut your eyes as you rubbed them, setting into an emotional exhaustion. 

“I wouldn’t want to do that to him either.”

Lilia stayed silent as he watched you lay down in the bed, arm stretched over to shield your eyes from the mid-afternoon sun seeping through the window. He reached down to pick up the flower he’d dropped earlier, twirling it in his fingers once again. 

Switching his gaze to observe you, Lilia’s eyes darted between you and the flower. Then, like a light switch flipped on in his head, he brightened as realization dawned on his features. 

“Gardenias, hmm?” He purred, suddenly giddy. 

“Hmm? Gardeni-whats?” 

“Oh, nothing.” Lilia chirped, smiling as you peaked an eye out. “The flower you’re producing. He must like gardenias is all.”

You hummed in response, making a startled noise as Lilia grabbed your hand and wrapped your fingers around the stem. 

“How about you head back to your dorm for the rest of the day? I’m sure Nurse Goethel would be happy to write you a note for your classes.”

Lilia waved at the nurse who smiled and nodded in affirmation. 

“Go home, I’ll make sure to send you a few things later this week to lift your mood!” Lilia chirped, patting your head before floating out of the infirmary with a self-satisfied smile. 

Goethel had emailed your excuse, sent you with another soothing potion for your throat before the next bell rang. By then you were already sitting on the dusty lounge couch, texting back an angry Ace, who ended up having to do the presentation by himself. 

@traaaaaaaaapola: boo u whore i cant believe u got sic specifically to not do the presentation smh @deuce♠️: dont call her a whore @traaaaaaaaapola: i mean it affectionately, u whore @deuce♠️: dont call me a whore @traaaaaaaaapola: whore @traaaaaaaaapola: kladsjaljs65&^(_)H)*H(R*F*F%DHElp;lksglka;sga’jm  @notaschooltherapist: u good? @traaaaaaaaapola: ace is not available to come to the phone rn, please try again later 😊 @notaschooltherapist: lol rip

You sighed and looked at the single gardenia in the cheap glass vase you got from Sam’s while picking up some soup for your throat. You hoped that Grim wouldn’t mind that you took some of his tuna money for it. 

The light from the setting sun shone through the window, making the white petals a silvery glow, mocking you.

You felt the tickle of petals creeping up your throat as you coughed up three more gardenias. Gagging, you stood up and grabbed the offending flowers to rinse the spit off in the kitchen. As you were placing them to join the first in the vase, a knock at the door alerted you to a visitor. 

“Ah, gimme a sec!” you called out (a bit hoarsely from the earlier fit), walking over to the entrance to greet your visitor with a smile. That was until your heart leapt into your chest as the door opened, Silver entering with a paper bag in hand. 

“Y/N? Where—ah.” Silver gave a soft smile as he noticed you in the living room. “There you are. Lilia told me you were sick, he said that you might need some help?”

That sneaky little—

“Oh! Um—ahem—sorry my throat is sore, um.” You stuttered nervously, shifting in your spot as you remembered the flowers behind you. 

Silver was still giving you that gentle smile that made your heart pitter-patter like a bird as he walked to the kitchen to unpack the bag, placing an amber colored potion on the counter, some water bottles, and more cans of soup. 

While his back was turned, you swiftly snuck the vase under the coffee table, covering it up with the raggedy table cloth. 

Once you were assured that the bouquet was sufficiently hidden, you walked over to meet Silver in the kitchen.

“Um, yeah. It’s nothing though, I didn’t realize he was gonna send you over.”

“Ah, well he didn’t really.” Silver blushed, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. “I woke up just to hear him mention that you weren’t feeling well, I just wanted to come check up on you.” 

“Oh!” You felt your cheeks warm at that. “That’s so nice of you, thanks.”

That led you to this moment, wanting to curse whatever deity existed in Twisted Wonderland for putting you in this situation. For the last four weeks, Silver had been visiting you in the morning, noon, and evening with a fresh new honey-colored potion to accompany your meal. 

After a certain point, Silver had started falling asleep outside of your dorm, classrooms, and even the bathroom during your coughing fit. Waiting to hand you another soothing elixr. 

It was sweet. It really was. It just sucked that every single interaction with him ended with your heart pounding in your chest and gardenias popping out of your mouth like some sort of illusionist. 

Silver, in his unending kindness, started checking in more often, not realizing that he was the one making it worse. It had gotten so bad that small blooms started popping out of your ears and your head. 

Every single time you yanked the offending flowers out and threw them away in the nearest trash can or fireplace. But, it seemed that the Hanahaki sensed your animosity, because it became harder to hide. 

Everytime you locked eyes with Silver across a busy hall, the ground beneath you would bloom white flowers. Everytime you heard his voice as you passed a classroom, petals fell from the tips of your fingers. 

Even the mere mention of his name caused an entire gardenia bush to sprout next to you, which actually wasn’t the most disruptive thing to have happened during yours and Hornton’s nightly walks. 

Similar to Lilia, he recommended that you take advantage of the flowers and confess. 

“After all, why not make a blessing out of a curse? Much easier than unnecessarily prolonging your suffering, yes?”

Hornton’s words echoed through your head as you lay across your shabby couch, head smashed into the cushions as you groaned. 

As you turned to lay on your side, you noticed lush, white flowers underneath the coffee table. Crawling to investigate, you’re met with the small gardenia bouquet you’d hidden nearly a month ago when Silver first came to care for you. 

Reaching for the vase, you were surprised that they were in such great condition, considering you forgot about them and left them to suffer under the dusty dark table. In fact, the blooms seemed to have grown. 

It looked like one of those fancy Valentine’s bouquets you’d see at flower shops. 

Lilia and Hornton’s words echoed in your mind. 

Their love starts taking physical form as their loved one’s favorite flora, typically flowers.

Why not make a blessing out of a curse?

Maybe you didn’t need to explicitly confess, but perhaps getting this off your chest would help some. 

The next morning, you greeted Silver bright and early. His face of surprise was endearing as you whipped the door open, his hand raised and posed to knock.

Before he could utter a simple ‘good morning’, you shoved the bouquet of large, waxy cream flowers into his hands. 

"Here, your favorite flower!” 

Silver held the bouquet in his hands, slightly puzzled with a soft blush on his cheeks,

“O-oh, may I ask what for?”

“For helping me with my sickness all month.” You replied, clenching and unclenching your fist behind your back. “To show my appreciation and…uh—um…you know. That stuff.”

You were hoping and praying that indirectly admitting your feelings, rather than outright admitting you loved him, would do the trick.

Silver looked pleased, almost flustered as he met your eyes with his own auroral ones. 

“That’s kind of you, Y/N.” He smiled bashfully, eyes crinkling ever so beautifully. “Can I ask, where’d you get them?”

You thinned your lips before popping them and answering, “Uh, I just found them, around…"

“Interesting.” He admired the flowers, rubbing a soft petal between his fingertips. “They’re not in season this time around, they’re a summer flower…you really lucked out with these ones.”

Your heart stopped as he lifted the gardenias to sniff their aroma, whispering under his breath, “I really lucked out with you, hm?”

Like a tidal wave smashing against a rocky shore, your entire body warmed as you realized that you really were completely, foolishly in love with the man in front of you. Your heart resumed beating, harder and faster this time like a patient in cardiac arrest. Your mind felt like it flew out of your head to sing in delight. Your throat tickled as it—wait.

Your throat tickled. Your throat was tickling. 

Before you could turn to run somewhere private, like your bedroom or bathroom, you started coughing up a flurry of petals. The wood beneath your feet was slightly breaking as pinwheel shaped flowers emerged from the ground, crawling up the doorframe, as well as yours and Silver’s legs. 

The white bulbs popped up between hair strands, creating the illusion of a flower crown, and finally another large, magnificent gardenia bouquet fell out of your mouth. 

Breathing heavily from the lack of air, you shakily held your flowers as you looked up to see Silver’s shocked face. 

“D-did you just? Are those gardenias—hanakhaki.” He sputtered in realization, looking back and forth between the gardenias and you. “They came from you?.”

“I’m sorry!” You blurted out, tears starting to form as you shut your eyes, afraid to make eye contact. “I was trying to make them go away, but they just wouldn’t, and got worse and worse until I-I-I—mpft!”

Silver’s lips covered yours, effectively shutting you up mid-rant. You yelped as his arms snaked around your waist, tightening until you were pressed up against him. Whimpering into his mouth as he deepened the kiss, you wrapped your own arms around his neck, warmth spreading into your body as he let out a pleased hum. 

You two parted, though your arms still kept each other entwined in each other’s embrace. Silver’s arms tightened as he pressed your foreheads together, sighing.  

“I wish you’d told me sooner, I felt awful knowing you were sick and there wasn’t anything I could do to fix it.” 

Hiding your face in his neck, you murmured, “I’m sorry, I was just scared that you didn’t feel the same way. That I’d ruin our friendship”

“It’s funny, I thought the same thing. I wanted to wait it out, make sure I didn’t make you uncomfortable” Silver chuckled, rubbing his thumb in soothing circles on the small of your back. “But peonies are your favorite, right?

Reaching down to pull a delicate, pink peony that remained in perfect condition despite being in his pocket, he continued. 

“I started coughing these up a few weeks ago, they go well with the gardenias, don’t they?”

[theredofoctober]

MANNA- CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: APPLE

Dark!Hannibal Lecter x Reader x Dark!Will Graham AU fic

TW for eating disorders, noncon, abuse, Daddy kink, cannibalism mentions, murder mentions, violence, blood

Read after the cut

---

Samhain falls upon the house like the red tongue of night, the rooms hung with bones and branches and the glinting skulls of animals, a morbid elegance to the season's ode.

Hannibal allows you to stand at a partially open window to sniff at the dark musk of the air which like some skilled perfumer you split of its ingredients with a discerning nose: rain in the earth, still pools of gingery leaves, the wind that scuttles the panes in its mischief, and the brew of an oncoming storm, a scent like fire and thunder.

"When exactly am I allowed to go outside again?" you ask, hanging a woeful head as far from the window as Hannibal will allow.

"When I can trust you to stay at my side or return to me," he says, and he draws you gently in again and shuts the latch upon the world.

You gaze at him, wistful and resentful; never, then, you think, unless you have nowhere else to go.

Yet with Will's arrival suspended over you like the immutable certainty of execution you wonder if perhaps you may well leave this dwelling, if only as meat carried in the case of some guest's stomach.

Hannibal surely notices your pensive mood, yet he does not address it, considering it some shade of your illness behind you, perhaps, or else pouting reproach that he had turned you across his knee that morning for hiding a pancake in the sleeve of your pyjamas.

He’d struck you lightly, no more than four times, at that, merely enough to spur a smarting star at your sex in some primitive answer to your embarrassment.

"It appears that I've overexcited you," Hannibal had said, rather seriously. "What is to be done about that?"

He had brought you up into his lap, your back to his crimson velvet dressing gown, and had delivered the rule of his punishment until you ran with the white ink of it, beating your heels against his calves in a pointless drum of hatred.

How sweetly he had set you down, then, touching your sulking lip with his own mouth until you'd kissed him in return to be rid of him.

"I want a bath," you'd said, and he had chuckled.

"As do I."

He'd brought you atop him again in the tub, the slippery passage of his hands pleasant upon you, and you'd wished you’d had the strength to shove him low under the suds to drown him.

But then orgasm had humbled you in your ruminations of revenge, and you’d allowed him to towel you and pull a pinafore over your head with lowered eyes, defeated.

As you’d done so you’d considered if you’d prefer your fathers to raise you in savagery alone, followers of Dionysus tearing apart a grieving Orpheus; you’ve myth on the mind, and all of it at the junctures of dying.

But you are enamoured now by the luxuries of life and body they festoon about you, and to revoke them for the sake of hubris would be to spit yourself in the eye.

You will take their gifts, you decide, even the twist of forbidden climax until you’re away from the house.

This, at least, you deserve from them, a reward for a gruelling actor’s work.

Now you await Will's arrival in the living room, staring with a perpetual absence of inspiration at the bare leaves of your journal as Hannibal oversees this activity from a narrow distance.

You've been continually defended against his evils by Will's attachment to you, yet should he choose to turn on the monster you may go down with him, taken off over Hannibal’s shoulder to some unknown country, or else killed and so tossed to the wolves of the press for their fodder.

It had been a fool’s hope to think that Will would betray his friend and bring down the Bureau in a surge of his most righteous instincts. Still there may yet be some chance of it, for as he enters at the front door you interpret from the brusque landing of his footfalls the extent of his wounded temper.

A sick pass of cold raises the hairs on your arms, and Hannibal gets up from peeling an apple for you with a pretty little knife to drape a blanket about your shoulders.

“If you’d agree to gain some modest weight you wouldn’t suffer like this,” he says, then glances up, distracted, as Will clears his throat at the threshold.

He is severe, almost refined in an expensive black sweater and jeans, his hair—worn in a shorter cut—combed back from his forehead in a gelled wave. There is a new scent on him, not the ship-bottled spray of the norm but something deep and rich, reminiscent of libraries and dark, polished wood.

You’re so startled by the alteration in him that you release a nervy giggle, shielding your mouth behind a hand as Will’s eyes glide coolly over you.

"Hello, Will,” says Hannibal. “I'm glad that you could make the time to see us.”

Will nods shortly, his critical gaze panning the room.

"You decorated,” he says. “Do you celebrate Hallowe'en in Lithuania?"

"Traditionally, we do not. But I've always enjoyed the holiday's pagan roots, the themes of warding away spirits at a time the wall between two worlds is thin."

The younger man's mouth quirks into something not quite a smile.

"That, and you just wanted to spoil her, as usual."

Hannibal's head tilts at a slight angle as he surveys Will’s expression.

"Our Little One has struggled as of late,” he says neutrally. “If I might lift her mood in this small way then I'm only glad to be of service."

He touches your shoulder, and in a panicked awkwardness you comment, "I really wish the decorations were on display all year. Hi, Daddy, by the way."

You stand up to kiss Will on the mouth, which he coldly allows, his arms tense as a general’s at his sides. He doesn’t meet your eyes as you look, imploring, into his, only pushes you lightly back into your seat and glances towards the kitchen.

"Something's cooking."

"Yes,” says Hannibal. “I thought a seasonal stew would be pleasant for this time of year."

"A stew,” Will repeats, with a hard, false innocence. “What's in it, specifically? Any particular ingredients I should know about?"

You glimpse suspicion descend over Hannibal like a winter dawn, his nostrils flaring.

"Would I be correct in thinking that there are unspoken layers to that question?”

"Seemed appropriate considering the undisclosed intentions behind some of the meals we've shared together, Dr Lecter."

You cannot yet tell whether he refers to the matter of meat or the other contents, nor does Hannibal, for though his hand returns to the apple knife it is only to cut the fruit into slender arches on a plate.

"You suspect me of poisoning you in some manner, I presume," he says, at last.

"This is beyond suspicion,” snaps Will. “You guessed that I had encephalitis— knew that I did. Probably sniffed it out the same way you've picked up on cancer, and you pretended ignorance. Comforted me while serving up anything you could think of to trigger another episode for your own entertainment. Riveted by the rat in the maze."

Hannibal makes no attempt to deny the accusation, merely continuing to cut the apple with slow, artful strokes of the wrist.

"She implicated me, I presume."

"Don't make this about her. I want to know why you did it.”

Will takes a step across the room, seeming drawn into habitual closeness to Hannibal despite his anger with him.

“I've remembered other things,” he says. “Bright lights. Your voice in my ear. Your hands on me. Moments that were already starting to surface. All this time you've been pulling my strings and I could never quite see it.”

Horror at his words torments you like some dungeon machine. You begin to shake, only the soft fabric of the couch cushioning the sound of your distress.

"You're aware of how close I've come to thinking I was responsible for murders I didn't commit,” says Will. “That I've contaminated crime scenes. Woken up at the side of the road with no idea what happened to me, or if I'd hurt someone. Hurt her—"

At this he jerks his newly sleek head towards you.

"That you would never have done,” says Hannibal.

"Don't try to comfort me with your empty platitudes. You wanted me to go over the edge. To make me kill again under different circumstances. Tell me I'm wrong."

The air in the room is all cinnamon and cyanide, the stench of lies dug up like a grave. Hannibal sets the plate of fruit before you and lifts his face to Will’s. When he speaks it is with the soft urgency of desperation, the equivalent of begging on his knees.

"I wanted to erode the barriers that prevent you from accessing your natural instincts. You've lived in seclusion, performing the dull actions of a self untrue to you merely to avoid facing and accepting that reality. I regret my methods, but my intentions were to nurture you into comprehending the remedy to your unhappiness.”

"You have pretty shoddy communication skills for a psychiatrist, Dr Lecter,” says Will, sharp with contempt.

"You believe that I should have asked you for your consent in this trial."

"Yes. Obviously."

You watch the two men with one hand clasped to your breastbone, feeling the lilt of your heart against your fingertips.

"I see,” says Hannibal. “Then why did you submit to waive that right in regards to our unhappy charge?”

"She needs this treatment to survive,” Will barks. “I survived for years without killing anyone. I don't need it."

"And what sort of existence was it to brood, tormented, into a lonely whiskey glass? Severed from love, community, and from the pastimes you craved? I'd argue the lust that haunts you is as necessary to your quality of life as food is to our darling girl."

Will utters a single laugh and turns on his heel as he replies.

"This may come as a shock to your ego, Dr Lecter, but that's not for you to decide."

As Will makes for the door you dart out of your seat after him.

"Wait!” you cry. “Where are you going?"

"To the bathroom,” says Will, “then to make myself another drink.”

"I'll come with you."

"No thanks. Now my encephalitis is on the way out I don't need a chaperone. I can hold it myself.”

He disappears around the corner, a rude breed of rejection.

As you turn back to Hannibal he stands up to meet you, his dominant hand clapping against your face with such velocity that you cannot quite believe what he has done.

You keel backwards, your very teeth seeming shaken in their bed of gums.

“You hit me,” you say, your voice trembling with awe. “But when Will did it you—”

“Will feared striking you in the face would cause you lasting injury,” says Hannibal. “I do not share his concerns. I’ve tolerated your disrespect with more patience than I’m accustomed to permitting without notable consequence. To insert yourself between Will and I with the intent of ending our friendship is unforgivable.”

The apple knife is in his other hand, you notice, though not yet raised to slice through to the red of your throat.

“Don’t hurt me,” you whimper. “Give me another chance.”

Hannibal considers like some poised herald of justice.

“You must rectify your mistake,” he says, finally.

A hysterical, indignant surge of courage comes over you.

“What can I do? He stays for you. This has always been about you. If Will didn’t think so much of you then he would have tattled to Jack, or Alana, or any of them already. He would have turned you in.”

“You’re lucky that he did not.”

“Well, I knew that he wouldn’t,” you insist. “I wanted him to, but I knew it was all totally pointless. And guess what, Daddy— the only reason I said anything about the food was to make him think you’d treat him the same way you treat me. I had no idea it was actually true. How could you? He’s supposed to be your friend. More than that. If he leaves you then it’s your fault, not mine.”

The truth of this crosses Hannibal’s features, and without a word he returns to place the knife back on the table.

In that instant you see that he had never desired to use it, that he’d only been so close to heartbreak that he would have made a regrettable error in the fog of it.

Emboldened, you approach him and put your sweating hand into his.

“You should just tell him you’re sorry,” you urge him. “Tell him how you really feel. I don’t get why you haven’t already. Don’t you think he probably feels the same way?”

You fall silent as Will opens the living room door again.

“Talking about me?” he asks, catching sight of your sombre faces greeting his. “What did I tell you about getting involved?”

This directed at you with a sharpness that you find insulting.

“I was only saying that I don’t want you to go,” you lie. “Not without me.”

Will sits down heavily in an armchair with an air of his old dislike.

“Why doesn’t that surprise me? You’re selfish and self-absorbed. You’re needy enough to lap up any attention we give you, but you just love playing us against each other. Sure, you’re scared of where you’d end up if I walked out on you, but the minute you saw a disagreement brewing between us you just lapped it up. Nothing Dr Lecter could make for you could ever taste that sweet.”

Astonished by the attack, you begin, “Daddy, I—”

Will cuts in.

“Admit it. You’ve been looking for an opportunity to set this up for weeks. And Dr Lecter is far from off the hook, but he’s right. You’ve been sticking the knife in so deep it’s struck the bone.

“It’s not just because you hate us, either. It’s because you know that we’re the only ones that can stop you from starving yourself to death. If Hannibal hadn’t taken care of you this week you’d be right back where you were on that first day.”

Bewildered, you study his clenched jaw, the white hand worked about one of Hannibal’s wine glasses, and wonder if he’s become inexplicably drunk for you to emerge as the fresh target of his resentment.

“None of this is about me,” you say, and Will chuckles shortly.

“Of course it is. The night of the seizure— when I thought about it long enough I realised that Hannibal triggered it knowing that no matter how much you despised me you’d still reach out to help me. You’re soft that way; he saw that in you.

“If he hadn’t done it we would have kept on wanting to kill one another, and I wouldn’t feel anything for you but obligation. Trapped by your existence.”

“And how do you feel towards her now?” asks Hannibal with the caution of knowing he is still the enemy.

“At the moment, frustrated.”

“But in general?”

Will looks at you, and some of the rage alights from him in a visible loosening of his frame.

“I’d kill for her,” he admits. “And I don’t say that lightly. Whenever I step back and examine that urge in myself I find it repulsive. But I know what I’d do to protect her. Even from you.”

Unsure whether to embrace him or to recoil in terror of his aggression you gasp aloud.

“You’ll never need to concern yourself about me in that regard, Will,” says Hannibal. “As close as our daughter may attempt to drive me to that end, I will not go to it.”

Unimpressed, Will samples his wine, the red on his lips like the quickening of blood.

“Maybe not, but you’ll stand right on the edge. Damaging the people you’re close to is a symptom of caring for them, apparently.”

Amused by the jab, Hannibal says, “Is it not yours as well? Perhaps I should anticipate a retaliatory action, then.”

Their bickering is intimate in a way that you doubt Will is quite aware of, yet that irrefutably exists; why else would he remain in the sphere of a man that has thrust such an assault upon his mind?

Feeling out of place amidst such dangerous chemistry you sidestep towards the door.

Will catches you by the arm as you pass him.

“Wait. We should make the effort to spend time together as a family. Shouldn’t we?”

He glances at Hannibal, a subtle attempt to dominate the room.

“We should,” says Hannibal. “Sit down, Little One.”

You hover, still stunned by the slap, by Will’s avowal of passion, and by his decision to stand by a creature of such evil.

Your younger captor gestures to the arm of his chair, and without a word you sit, starting at his touch at your back. He strokes you lightly, affection and possessiveness in every joint of his hand.

Helpless before such love you lean against him, and Hannibal looks upon you both with what you interpret as longing.

“I realised something about the Lover,” says Will. “I’ve gotten a greater understanding of him over the past few days. Guess you can pat yourself on the back for clearing my head.”

“I take no credit,” says Hannibal. “Your revelations are entirely your own. What are they exactly?”

Will savours a mouthful of wine for a long second before he answers.

“The Lover isn’t a local. That’s why he deposits his victims by or in rivers; they lead back home, or remind him of it, anyway. He’s taking them there like newlyweds the way he hopes to return with his muse.

“Our killer has travelled. Likely he’s changed his name. We’ll find similar murders in other states. They will have been committed when he was a young man. Inexperienced. Hadn’t honed his methods yet.”

Hannibal—who is acquainted with the Lover, could solve this case with the mere utterance of syllables—dons an expression of believable interest.

“You’re implying that he had a previous muse.”

“Yes. The murders follow a very specific timeline. The Lover’s latest paramour probably wasn’t even born yet when he first started killing.”

“She died,” you say suddenly. “His first ‘real’ doll. He killed her?”

“Not on purpose,” says Will, and his hand rises to your waist, drawing you closer to him. “Or only as a last resort. The Lover craves total control over his bride. If she didn’t fall into line, or if his fantasy was somehow shattered then she had to die like the others. This time he’s sure it’s true love.”

*

The evening continues in its implacable tension, and when at last you’re allowed to go up to bed you feel relieved to have escaped it.

You stare at a Clive Barker novel as the storm gnaws at the crust of night, your vision adhered to the same handful of words until they become absent of definition.

Hannibal’s slap is a bruise on the brain, seeping in between each thought until you throw your book aside with a groan.

It’s a new thing to fear that you’ve glimpsed in him, how in a crisis he may, like his friend, be quite rash.

The closer they become even in argument the more their behaviours overlap and interchange— yet Hannibal’s strike was unlike Will’s, you noticed, quick, and clean, and practiced. It is how he must slash a throat or break the neck of any victim, and though you’ve felt death in such proximity you are wet between the legs from the sick exhilaration of having given it the slip another day.

Discomforted, you turn on your side and attempt to commit yourself to slumber. Only by the help of the pills at your bedside do you induce that state, a servant to your captor’s care even in so natural a transition as this.

*

In the night you wake to realise that Will has been watching you sleep, standing back-lit in the doorway as thunder runs like gravel over the house.

You lie tangled in a cirque of sheets, your hair static with fear, and from the storm. The wind breaks its fists against the window panes, and you see the shape of Will's reflection there, a malevolent wisp in the glass.

"You're still here?" you ask, softly, and Will starts, having not known that you’d awoken. "Are you... staying the night?"

"No," says Will, after a strange pause. "I can't. I'm teaching tomorrow. Can't skip it."

He looks damp and pasty in the dim light, a grub dug up from the earth. You sit up in bed, oddly moved and rather alarmed by his appearance.

"You're still sick," you say. “Aren’t you?”

Will shakes his head slowly, coils of dark hair like a coronet on his brow.

"No," he says. “I just remembered something. A dream I had during one of my fevers. About you."

The words send such a chill through you that you draw yourself flat against the headboard, away from him.

"What was the dream?" you ask, although you don't want to know.

Glancing downwards in his own avoidance, Will reads some shape in the dark.

“I don't know if I should tell you.”

Against your better judgement, you enquire, "Why not?"

"Feels like it'd be speaking it into being, somehow."

You wrap arms of ice around your kneecaps.

"I thought you didn't believe in that stuff."

Will swallows audibly, clenching a hand on one side of the door.

"I... don't. But this dream is different."

You feel how he craves to come to you, to hold you, and to be held in turn, both of you vulnerable and pathetic. You know how he itches to run away and to hide in his house, that fortress of solitude.

Still he remains in the doorway, the threshold between these two needs.

"Wait," you say, suddenly. "I don't have to know."

But Will wets his lips and sways like a drunk, and then he says, “In the dream you escape from here. You run away. It's mid-autumn; the trees are dripping with so many orange leaves it's like I'm chasing you through a field of fire. My blood is up at the sight of you like you've triggered some instinctual urge to hunt."

Will closes his eyes in recollection, and you see them flicker below the lids as though he is slumbering, still.

"It's raining," he says. "Just like tonight. It's raining, and your dress is wet against you, and you're dirty, and your hair is full of leaves, and I'm angry because even in that dream I know that you belong with me and Hannibal."

"Don't," you mumble, but Will doesn't seem to hear you, returning to the red place of sleep.

"I catch you from behind," he murmurs. "My arms around your waist, pulling you down into the leaves with me. You're screaming, begging me to let me go, but you don't use my name. You call me 'Daddy', and that's a mistake, because it reminds me of exactly how mad I am that you dared to run away from me. The thrill of chasing you, and all that rage—

"I hit you. I kiss you. I stuff your mouth with dirty leaves like some kind of scarecrow, and I tear your stupid little dress off your body, and I thrust inside you as the rain falls down onto us."

Halting, Will mops his face with an erratic hand.

"Then I enter you in a second way, because I have a knife, and when I stab you it is— beautiful.

You moan aloud in horror, and Will stares past you as though he's forgotten that you're in the room.

"I stab you as I move inside you, and in that moment I can't decide which sensation is more pleasurable. There's warmth both ways, the feeling of taking what I want, of having complete power over you, and it's overwhelming. I woke up from that dream sick to my stomach, but I wasn't as horrified as I should have been."

Stiff and frail as an invalid child you wrap yourself into your sheets as though they might protect you from him.

"I was right," you rasp. "Deep down you want to kill me."

"No!"

This, spoken with an urgency that startles you.

"No," Will repeats, in a softer voice. "I don't. But if you ever try to run away I can't say for sure that it wouldn't end like that dream. It was potent, and it felt... real."

Thunder roars like the pain of a goliath beyond your bedroom window, and you reach up to draw the curtains shut.

"I'll never run away," you say, in a pinched voice. "Hannibal's too smart to let me do that."

At this Will looks at you with eyes of such blue darkness that it's like gazing into the endless graves of the sea.

"He might let you try, some day," he says. "Just to see what I’ll do."

[actuallyprobablyafaerie]

pjo episode four parts that made me scream

Them starting with sally trying teach percy how to swim and percy being scared is fantastic for two reasons: number one, its a normal kid thing and number two it ties into later in the books when we find out percy has a fear of drowning. Its like hoe thalia has a fear of heights and kind of ties into the idea that forbidden children are often afraid of some part of their parents element. I love that theyre bringing in elements of that idea so early!!!

percy’s “can i ask a stupid question” and annabeths “are you trying to make me make fun of you” akdbdkbaaksbdkjsbakks shes so funny

I LOVE THAT THEY BRING UP PAN AND SPECIFICALLY TIE HIM TO MANIFEST DESTINY AND AMERICAS HISTORY OF KILLING ITS INDIGENOUS PEOPLE!!!! ITS IMPORTANT FUCKING HISTORY AND IM SO GLAD THE SHOW ACKNOWLEDGED IT

percy and annabeths little banter, percys stupid accent and then him collapsing on her. That and the scene where theyre talking on the train is the percabeth we deserve!!!!!! God i love them so much

ALSO going back to the scene where theyre talking in bed on the train i love how annabeth knows that grovers grumpy in the morning and percy doesnt. Grover was her protector once too!! (Like they said last episode) and theyve traveled together before!! He was annabeths friend before he was percys

ok everyones already said this but the parallels between annabeth and medusa?!!??? With medusa saying “i was you” last episode and now annabeth getting punished for something percy did ghe same was medusa was punished for something Poseidon did????? Absolutely insane i love it

also the fact that it hurt athenas pride specifically, much like how medusa mentioned the “pride of athena” in reference to annabeth last episode, which all ties back to the fact that hubris is annabeths fatal flaw and she gets it from her mother

THE CUT TO PERCY IN THE FOUNTAIN AND THEM SPLASHING WATER ON HIM AHSKSBJAHAJSJSB theyre so funny for that

Percy just looks like a wet rag this episode and its so well done you can even tell the makeup on his face was done to make him appear paler and sicklier and it works so well

ok PERCY PULLING ANNABETH INTO THE STAIRWELL AND SHUTTING THE DOOR???? Because hes loyal to a fault!!!! And theyre becoming friends!!!!!!!!! And he cares about her more in like a week than athena ever has and its shown to us so clearly in this episode!!!!!!

ONCE AGAIN LUKES MOTIVATIONS ARE GOING TO MAKE SO MUCH SENSE BY THE TIME WE GET TO THE END OF THIS AND WE DONT EVEN HAVE TO SPEND TIME WITH HIM TO UNDERSTAND THEM god this series is so well done

Also the chimeras design looks so cool i love it so much

AND WE FINALLY GET AN ANSWER AS TO HOW PERCY GOT IN THE RIVER FROM THE TOP OF THE ARCH!! (At least in the tv world, in the book world the arch might very well just be in a different spot lol)

Poseidon saves him!! Hes a better parent than athena is apparently

god the episode ending with percy breathing underwater is so good i was on the edge of my seat until the very end

OK LAST THING is that they are continuing the theme sally brings up about monsters not always looking like monsters and heroes not always looking like heroes so well!!! Echidna bringing it up and saying that to her, demigods are more dangerous was fantastic i love how dedicated they are to this

OK ACTUALLY THE LAST THING i love the dichotomy of different mothers in this episode. We start with sally and percy and immediately see how much they love each other and care about each other!!!! Then we get to echidna who cares about her children too by teaching them to hunt!!! And then we get athena who ducking punishes annabeth for something she didnt even do. And its like. That was a little monstrous athena. Im understanding why someone might want to kill their godly parent

GOD THIS SERIES IS SO GOOD

[edelgarfield]

god damn it all this Aeor and Calamity lore has me liking Ludinus a lot more than I ever wanted to. I find him so fascinating and compelling as a villain, in the way that he reflects a lot of my favorite characters' flaws particularly from CR2, but CR3 in Bell's Hells at times self-defeating pursuit of power in order to win.

I'm thinking abt a couple quotes from Essek, bc he & Ludinus obviously have so much in common. By Essek's own admission, it was his inability to trust people that made his pursuit of knowledge at the cost of others so appealing, that made him lose sight of the hurt he was causing

In particular the second quote: feeling personally responsible for doing something because of your inability to trust anyone else. I think that encompasses Ludinus's ideology & motivation so well.

The idea of longevity/immortality being a barrier to intimacy is something that gets talked about with respect to elves a lot, and I think Ludinus encompasses that to its logical extreme. Ludinus is one of the last survivors who actually lived on Exandria during the Calamity. Most elves actually fucked off to the Feywild and didn't return until long after the fighting was over. Given Ludinus was a child when Aeor fell, I would assume that means his parents chose to stay on Exandria & he was born afterwards. (Which if that's the case, adds another layer to his resistance against the gods bc he was doomed to live through the war on the surface of Exandria bc of a choice his parents made before he was born.)

All the elves born at the tail end of the Calamity are dead by now, Ludinus lived at least 160ish years of it, and most of the elves born around that time would have been in the Feywild and wouldn't have the experience of seeing what happened to the world. Everyone else who survived the Calamity would have died hundreds of years ago, not to mention that only a third of the population even survived it in the first place. The thing that's saved the PCs (& Essek) time and time again is their bonds with others, having other people to support them & remind them that all the power in the world means nothing if you lose yourself in its pursuit, that there are good things in this world worth living for.

Anyone that might have had the chance to sway Ludinus from his path is long dead, either from the Calamity or old age. Liliana seems to be the only person he feels close to, but they're both bonded through their shared cause. Even other elves, the people with the longest memories, don't understand what living through the Calamity was like. They weren't there.

I know it was mostly a joke when Laudna suggested Ludinus go to therapy, but at the same time where would he go? One of the things that helps PTSD is a sense of community, feeling like there are other people who share your experience, but there isn't anyone that shares Ludinus's experience (Not to mention anything resembling a therapist on Exandria would most likely draw power from a deity, which Ludinus is understandably opposed to).

That sense of isolation is something that comes up again & again among CR PCs. CR2 is the most obvious, but it's something plenty of the CR3 characters have been through as well. Ludinus would have been alone in his trauma for hundreds of years. That's completely incomprehensible to us. He would have watched the world move on and forget something that's so deeply affected him. Any attempt to confide in someone about his anger & pain would often be met with "this is punishment for our hubris" "the gods love us" "don't question their will." The very, very few allies he had would die out over the years until one day he's the last and he would be the last for centuries more. I feel like that sense of isolation, feeling removed from the world, bottling up centuries' worth of emotion would make anyone numb. he withdraws further and further into himself bc he doesn't belong. he works for centuries at removing the gods, becoming more and more desperate as he grows older, without anyone else to provide perspective as his plans grow more and more ruthless. (i also have a theory that this loneliness is part of what makes him sympathetic to predathos but that's a separate post)

Given his age & being the last survivor of the Calamity, I think it's nearly impossible for him to connect with other people. The only thing that gives him any sense of connection or community is his crusade against the gods; he only feels connected to others through their shared pain & anger, which never allow him to move past it. He can't trust anyone bc no one else understands what the gods are capable of like he does, nobody else understands what's at stake. He's the only person remaining who does, which means he's the only one who can do what he believes needs to be done.

There's a sense of duty. He needs to eliminate the gods because he doesn't trust the future inhabitants of Exandria to be able to protect their world. He owes it to all those who've been trampled on by the gods to do what they no longer can. I think he genuinely cares about mortals & he wants to defend them from a threat that he believes only he can see, but I think he cares far more about the thousands of dead he carries on his back than anyone alive. He can't simply live a happy life bc everything that once made his life worth living is gone. He can't let go of that pain & anger and move forward. His trauma is what gives him purpose and meaning; healing from it would be a betrayal to all the people that have suffered beneath the gods.

I don't think he's wrong about the gods, but I think he's seeking freedom from the gods' control, not realizing that he's letting himself be controlled by the dead. I think it's been a very long time since he spared a thought towards actually living. Bell's Hells keeps accusing him of wanting to take the place of the gods, or wanting to be seen as a messiah, but I truly don't think that's it. I don't think he cares about what comes after, if he's even thought about it at all. I don't even think he wants to be a martyr. His goal has never been for him to live in a free world, it's to ensure that there will be a world after he's gone, forever. he thinks if he dies without securing that future, he'll have failed Exandria & all the souls that have ever lived on it.

He's been completely ruthless in his pursuit of power because to him, he is fighting for Exandria's survival. That's exactly the trap BH has fallen into in the past, pursuing power even when it hurts themselves & their friends, losing sight of the actual people they claim to be protecting. Ludinus surrounds himself with terrible people; Otohan and Trent to name two, bc he wants the power they hold without getting his hands dirty himself. but in doing so he immediately removes any possibility of emotional intimacy. the people he works with don't trust him & he doesn't trust them. the one exception is Liliana & unfortunately I think she just met him far too late.

so much of CR is about the importance of feeling connected to other people, how those connections remind us of what's truly important, and keep us grounded, how when we begin to lose sight of ourselves, it's those we're close to that remind us. I think of Caleb & Essek, they both had goals they wanted to pursue, but in finding a place to belong realized those goals wouldn't actually make them happy. Ludinus doesn't want to be happy, he wants to have a purpose, and I know I'm a bleeding heart, but I think there is something incredibly tragic in someone who can't even imagine what it would be like to live a happy life.

I think of Fjord & Percy & Imogen & Laudna & Dorian, people who nearly lost themselves in pursuit of power, but chose to turn away because living for their friends was more important that dying for the world. Ludinus is the pendulum swinging in the other direction. It's incredibly tragic bc imo his intentions are genuinely good; he's arrogant and selfish and ruthless but i think he truly does want to protect Exandria.

I think there was a point in the past where someone could have reached him & he could have chosen a different path. i don't even think he would have necessarily had to give up his goal of removing the gods. if he had other people working alongside him instead of under him, who knows what he could've come up with? if he had people to pass the torch onto once he was gone, maybe he would feel like there was time to come up with a solution besides Predathos.

But he doesn't and he can't trust anyone bc no one else believes in his cause as fervently as he does. he can't trust anyone else to make the sacrifices he's willing to make so he never tries. He denies himself the aid & perspective & closeness that comes with trusting someone and becomes further and further entrenched in his mission to remove the gods at any cost. He's the only one alive left to remember the trauma of the Calamity: he has to carry all of it because no one else can.

[shellem15]

Anyways I'm still not over my devil boys. Thinking about all the parallels between them:

Because like, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, right? Draws in and punishes people for trying to be good, trying to *help* those they care about. And whether they succeed or not is irrelevant because in the end they're damned either way. That's the lie, then, that their sacrifice would ever actually change their fate.

And its just: HELL IS LIKE THAT BECAUSE IT’S A REFLECTION OF ITS LORD AND THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED TO *HIM*. THAT’S WHAT MADE HIM REAL IN THE FIRST PLACE AND NOW HES STUCK LIKE IT FOREVER!!!

That's what happened to Asmodeus and then he did it to Vespin Chloras and Zerxus and then Zerxus tried to do it with Pike too (in tlovm). It's a never-ending cycle where the one who's burned then becomes the fire for the next person!!! UGHHH

And it all starts with that one act of good intent, that act of sacrifice! Imri throwing himself to the flames, knowing he would burn, to protect his family at the cost of himself. Luz saving him but in the end he chooses to burn anyways, this time out of hate. Zerxus selling his soul to save his son and his world, knowing that damnation would be the end result. Nydas giving him an out, killing him before dawn struck but Zerxus stubbornly, hubristically clinging to life, to his ideals and pride, anyways. Choosing to burn and losing himself entirely in the process.

(Ironically enough Vespin kind of breaks the cycle? Trying to replace a god to remove a great evil from the world and instead damning it in the process. But when given his mind back he takes this chance and stretches it as far as he can, choosing not to be the fire but to give his world a chance at survival. Doing it knowing he will be hated anyways. Learning from his mistake, humbled at the consequences of his hubris where Asmodeus and Zerxus grew proud. Burning for it anyways. I get the sense that if he was given an out he would take it, unlike the other two.)

Love becomes sacrifice becomes resentment becomes hatred. Hatred towards those they sacrificed for because why did it have to be them who burned? Why do they get to be whole while I am broken? How dare they get to have light and love and happiness while I burn in the dark. Why didn't they burn with me? If they really loved me they would burn too!

Hatred towards those who seek to help them, because how dare you pity me. I chose this, I chose to burn! I knew the costs! How dare you spit in the face of my sacrifice! Did it truly mean so little to you that you would wipe away all trace of it!? Trying to heal me, trying to fix me, trying to redeem me, I did this for you! I didn't do anything wrong!

Hatred towards their corrupter, towards their damnation because everything was fine before they came along. Before they ruined everything! It's their fault for breaking it and now I'm going to make them pay for it! It doesn't matter who I hurt because nothing else matters except making sure they regret ever touching me.

Hatred towards themselves because how could someone be so stupid as to try? Love is weakness and sacrifice is for fools and those who throw themselves to the pyre deserve to burn. I'll prove it, to anyone who thinks themselves good and noble and true. Come find out.

And how could they not become resentful, to not have their love turn to hate? It's one thing to choose to burn and another to burn *forever*. A martyr is not supposed to live through the martyrdom, they're supposed to die. Their sacrifice is meant to have an end. They never got to have an end. (Though I will say, its very interesting that Zerxus chose not to die while Asmodeus seemingly *didn't*. He was dying, and the Everlight healed him. Gave him life but took peace with her.)

And the horns too! The symbol of their damnation, of corruption. But they didn’t get it that way, the horns were protection first, before anything. A testament to their love and sacrifice scarred into their flesh, on display for all to see. But that love born of protection is forgotten, both by others and themselves. Twisted into something rotten.

(No wonder Asmodeus is so good at manipulating good. He knows how good people think because that's how he thought, once. He could be so good at being good.)

They're burning. Always. They hate the fire but also, also-- they want to burn. They choose it every time because the alternative is to sacrifice the one thing they cannot, will not--their pride. They would have to be honest to do that, wouldn't they? Honest about the hurt they've caused, honest about how broken they've become. That they do not deserve their fate (that no one does), that while they were burned once they do not need to burn forever. There is always a choice. They'd have to be honest to change and they never will because the Devil sometimes tells the truth he is never honest. He can't be. He won't let himself.

[gold-rhine]

For the ask game :tell me why you love nuevi or kaeya! Feel free to talk A Lot I like your long posts

i also love reading my long posts, i wish i wrote them more asdfghjk its hard for me to just talk unspecifically about character without like pointed theme bc to me it feels like everything is obvious and everyone understands same things, why am i spelling it out.

anyway, KAEYA. my prettiest cursed princess. noble daughter of the fallen aristocratic family with generational curse coded. jon snow AND daenerys targaryen vibes at the same time. why noble daughter? bc instead of how heirs of nobles are kept close and taught to rule, his family treats him like pawn, like currency, his fate determined at his birth with no agency, sent away to another family he has to fit in. he's not a bastard, but he is half blood, and he cannot return. he's brother to diluc, but not equal, no matter how much they get along, like jon to robb stark. dawn winery is not his home, he's only welcomed conditionally, when diluc allows it. told to be "last hope", but what he's last hope of is a rotting cursed shambles of hubris. but even with how badly he was treated, he's still torn with loyalty to them, with duty, he still tried to ran away to khaenriah as a kid, just like dany wants to go to westeros. terrible prophecy hangs over him and he knows it. we don't even know if alberichs were really regents or if clothar is just delusional and sees himself forming abyss order as "regency"! he wants to walk off the stage, but he can't. and even if he could, he won't, not in the end, because against his will he still cares about people left on that stage who do not know what they are in

and he's coping with all of that by not letting people close even though he's lonely bc that curse and prophecies hang over him, bc he learnt from diluc he will not be accepted unconditionally no matter how loyal he is, no matter how good of a friend and brother he is, no matter how much punishments he takes for diluc and how he follows him like a shadow. he tried so hard to be a perfect child in dawn winery, polite and sweet and it didn't matter in the end. and now he's hating himself for secrecy and underhanded ways he was forced into as a child and deeming himself bad, finding ways to blame himself even for doing good deeds bc he's such a manipulator, treating relationships as transactions of favors to keep score, to keep in control.

mask worn for long, it grew into him and is impossible to take off now. "and they say my charm is fake" he IS naturally charming, he just had to learn to use it as a weapon. he IS sweet and interested in people, he just had to learn to get profit out of it. the worst thing he could be is himself. sad adult with a fake smile. and at the same time he's proud, he's talented, he's funny and sarcastic, he likes goofy jokes and slipping clever metaphors into silly stories, he likes writing books for people he cares about with advises on how to solve problems and deal with people, and also likes telling stories and can improvise a monologue on a stage. he should have been an actor and a writer, but duty to one father threw him into mond and duty to the other locked him into knights, so now he's just miserable, he's a hedonist, a cynic, he can't have real connections, so he will take pleasure and attention and use it for his greater means, he's coping with substance abuse, but he is so paranoid he will not be caught actually drunk bc that's weakness. he wants to belong so much, but think he's not allowed to. traveler finding him in the shadows after he tries to leave community event HE organized and dragging his reluctant ass by hand is THE theme for them tbh.

[ranticore]

Forward by the Author [Qedivar's research, prologue]

My friends, this biography almost killed me. At the conclusion of my thesis work and the culmination of months of dangerous study, I write to you now from my bower at an undisclosed location, where I currently rest with three broken limbs and more than a few shattered nerves.

Effete shortwing academics such as myself are not particularly known for venturing across the water to West, where land is so rare as to be the continent’s most precious resource. But this continent was where our ancestors first arrived to this world—and yes, it is now unequivocal truth that we are not natives to our planet, as I was first to discover at the ruins of Atom on that wretched continent.

The coarse facts have been spread throughout Intun and East at large, ferried by news-mongers who have yet to finish my associated published paper. They will soon realise that they have missed the most fascinating details of our history. Naysayers have already decried me a heretic and I regret to agree with them, but it is true that my findings are heretical. Is that necessarily a bad thing? I say that a little bit of heresy might vastly improve the quality of our lives and understanding of the world at large.

A martyr, however, I am not. For this reason I do not attach my name to this record. Shortwings being as we are – all quite alike and common as muck – I am confident in my ability to remain anonymous to my readers while still revealing enough to prove myself a credible source. You will need to take rather a lot on faith, when you read this. You will need to suspend your disbelief that we are aliens on Siren. And you will need to accept that every one of us is a product of intentional design – not by some god, and not by so-called ‘evolutionary theory’, but by the ancient first settlers at Atom.

I will write a detailed account of my explorations another time, when I have healed from their rigours. I felt it more important to release the results of my study first, rather than let it become a vanity project with myself its hero. Instead I will preface each chapter with a description of the relevant source texts, including where and in what condition they were found.

On to the source texts themselves. I have created this biography to provide an introduction to the first Sirenian, Ishmael. The phocids of the Southern Spiral know Ishmael as offspring of the moon of the same name, and the ruler of the high tide. The inhabitants of Odr’s Sleep in the far North take a less literal interpretation of Ishmael’s moon and consider him a common ancestor. Harpies in my home Spire know him less, though–without revealing too much of my own bower–we have a mythological figure of the same name; Ishmael, who arrives to punish the crime of hubris.

It was a great surprise to me to find that Ishmael was a real person, and indeed that he was the first person born on this planet. Others arrived, yes, but he took his first breath here, before anyone else. My phocid companion was remarkably unsurprised by the discovery, and could even provide a little local Spiral folklore to illustrate the stories told of Ishmael’s life, which I will include as footnotes in the relevant chapters.

My source texts are extremely varied. Some describe Ishmael from the point of view of those who settled in Atom. Some are his own writings. Some are even a format which projects moving images onto walls, which I will also describe in a coming paper to be published. The technologies many visored longwings preserve sit in rot and ruin in Atom, proving, once and for all, that it was a society more advanced than our own. For the purpose of this introduction and my prefaces, I will refer to this as Precursor society, though in the source text they did not refer to themselves as anything but ‘settlers’ or ‘colonists’.

In those ruins, my party and I discovered things which we still have no words to describe. As a result, many of my interpretations are direct and untranslated, in the hopes that later, with greater understanding, we might return to the source and make more accurate interpretations. Many of these concepts were considered so commonplace to Precursor life that no one bothered making concrete definitions for the benefit of the scholars who might once hope to study them. Precursor society stems largely from a place called ‘Earth’ which we surmise to be the Precursors’ location of origin.

From this, we move on to the most puzzling concept of all. The concept of Humans. I took it to be a clan name at first, given the texts’ referral to Ishmael, a type of proto-phocid unique at Atom, as Human when the other people in the records did not very much resemble Ishmael at all. But Humans were in fact a species. Humans were bipedal and lacked feathers, though their faces will be familiar to any modern Sirenian, because they resemble our own. Once I succeeded in translating the scientific notes surrounding Ishmael, all became clear, and it was this shocking truth which forces me to write under a pen name.

Every modern Sirenian is a Human. We descend from the first-born Sirenians, who were designed – by techniques as purposeful as an artist’s brushstrokes – to occupy the particular range of morphologies which we now inhabit.

Precursor Humans arrived here, to this world, and knew their bodies were poorly adapted to survive here, lacking mechanisms of flight or aquatic mobility and being unable to breathe our air, or eat any of the foods we take for granted. So they engineered those mechanisms to develop in other Humans, which were birthed and raised at Atom in its prime in a series of successive generations, the last of which will likely be my most controversial uncovering. The engineered Humans – Sirenians like you and I – were not privileged members of Atom. In fact, we were a sort of labour underclass to them, who would brave the sea and sky of Siren outside Atom’s bubble where the Precursor Humans could not venture.

Ishmael was the first of this underclass, and was originally intended as merely a first concept, a rough draft of what phocids and selkies would become. He was a fascinating person who I believe is deserving of the great length of this biography and worthy of being the first introduction to the lives of Precursors that many modern Sirenians will experience. Where at all possible I have avoided editorialising Ishmael’s life, instead presenting it as it happened. We find not a revolutionary hero or an icon of tidal vengeance but a person born into a state of great confusion and neglect. He was a Human like his peers but was treated as inherently lesser, hardly a person at all, and he did not conform to expectations of graceful victimhood.

Welcome to the beginning of the world.

[nellie-elizabeth]

The Legend of Vox Machina: Hell to Pay (3x04)

Another great episode, turns out!

Cons:

This is going to be a bit difficult to articulate but it almost felt like we were missing a narrative beat somewhere before Pike and Zerxus began their card game. We know that there's a vestige, we know that the vestige is supposed to be instrumental in defeating Thordak, we know the stakes are high to get it... but it's also just a mostly abstract tool at this point. The others have powerful vestiges, is one more vestige worth the eternal damnation of not only Pike but also all her friends? I think I was missing a beat where the group seriously contemplates turning around and leaving, and then there's one more nudge as to why this is worth the astronomical price of failure. I also felt like it was a little silly that J'Mon apparently sent them down to Hell with absolutely no context or warning other than "this one dude has the armor, go get it." Wouldn't they have gone in a bit more prepared to have to offer something in return?

So there's this interesting tidbit with Zerxus (who I loved and will praise in a moment) where he says "we are his blood," and it seems like he's maybe working for the Whispered One? That would be a cool little tease for potential future seasons, but I feel like viewers who aren't really dedicated and deal-oriented might be confused by that, so I felt like a more concrete reminder might have been warranted.

Pros:

Despite that little wobble in the stakes-setting, I overall really enjoyed this episode. Great for us to get some Pike-centric story going, here!

The setting of Hell was so cool and creative, I felt like every moment gave me a fresh opportunity to enjoy a gruesome sight or creative character design. Scanlan's disguises for the group were also a lot of fun, I especially loved seeing Pike all furry and snugly.

This was a strong episode for Keyleth comedy, I loved her trying to lean in to being a disgusting Hell beast and eating the worm, and Vax's reaction of horror. Plus just her trying to do a scary Hell voice instead of her usual more timid register.

Pike's struggle to figure out the right thing to do is really interesting here, with the Everlight trying to warn her but also wanting her to choose her own path. I appreciate the way her relationship with her goddess functions in this show; it feels like a lot of what the Everlight is doing is empowering Pike to make her own fate, rather than doing more direct divine intervention, which is great for keeping the stakes balanced. Also, whenever we see that light flickering out in her little pendant, we know it means Pike is going to be without the backup/security of her goddess's presence. We've seen how bad that's shaken her in the past, so it was extra cool to see her buckle down and be a bad-ass even when she had those doubts planted in her head.

Let's talk about Zerxus!! So hot! Luis is here! I loved loved loved seeing him. What a cool added element for those of us who have seen Calamity, but also I feel like narrative-wise it's a perfectly reasonable swap-out for how the story went in the original. It felt like having secret forbidden knowledge when he was like "my friends ruined everything with their hubris, and then Asmodeus tricked me." Like, sir. Sir. Are you mayhaps editing the truth just slightly? But I also thought it worked on its own terms. I noticed that the backstory was slightly different as to his husband, but thought that was interesting too, feeding into this idea of his punishment being about being forgotten.

I loved Pike's moment of triumph specifically - the way it tied into Zerxus's story, and Pike's understanding of what it means to have ugly, uncomfortable, and selfish thoughts. Pike has admitted that she wonders if her life would be better without the Everlight, and now she gets Zerxus to realize that his loneliness overrides his desire to keep his family safe.

We didn't have much of a check-in with the Draconia crew, but we did see them briefly, on the cusp of finding out if Kima is okay. I'm excited to check in more with that story when I get around to watching the next episode!

That's all for now! Still loving this show, still hitting on all cylinders. It's interesting to watch the show when I feel really unsure of how things are going to shake out! Things are so different from what I've seen before.

8/10

[galemancer]

the dekarios folly

MAJOR BALDUR'S GATE 3 END GAME SPOILERS.

[ short monologue. — first person from gale's pov. — past and present tensing. — angst.]

In the pursuit of greatness, he lost who he was.

Godhood... is lonely.

ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50362192

---——-

Victory isn’t the first word that comes to mind at the mention of Baldur’s Gate.

We defeated the Netherbrain, but somehow victory is not the word I associate with it. There is no happiness, only temporary respite. There is no celebration. There is only defeat, because those memories are plagued by the loss of you.

I thought that you would be proud of me.

I thought that claiming this crown would prove worthy enough, man or god alike.

And yet, it seems I have fallen short...

Was I to forgo the opportunity to ascend to greatness? While I stand on the precipice of power, relinquish it? The gods refused to aid us no matter how often we cried, prayed, begged. A mortal with the power of a god to help mortal kind… I could have prevented the pain the Absolute wrought while the gods cowered.

‘Your hubris was your downfall once, Gale.’

Your voice resonates clearly despite all these years past, laden with hurt and fear. I can still see your face, stark as you attempted to keep me grounded. I couldn’t accept your inability to see the potential for good, and I wasn’t to be held back any longer.

I left you distraught, stunned on the docks as I departed. I remember the crease in your brow and the hurt in your eyes, the sparkle I’d fallen so deeply in love with dwindling. I remember my heart pulled back by your pleas, and I almost acquiesced. The restraint of your grip on my hand as I pulled away, silently begging me not to go.

But you let me.

And by the gods, I wish you hadn’t.

For some time after, I sought you in your adventures along the Sword Coast, Tara in tow. “Mr. Dekarios, is that you?” She’d call out, ears perked up in anticipation, saddened eyes turned hopeful as they followed the trails of my magic. She wished to talk to me, to scold me likely, and deservedly so.

In my absence she’d found a new companion, and there was no choice better than you. You were good for each other — two kind hearts to look after each other amidst the aftermath of it all.

She brought you to Waterdeep where you spent time with my mother. I could feel the hesitation in your voice as you spoke upon meeting her, the too familiar features sending you back to the dock. You told Morena the tragedy of her son whose hubris consumed him, under the guise of an ambitious wizard reaching his full potential. Even in my most grave mistakes you spoke of the good you saw in me.

I visited you in dreams, visions, every possible sign besides the blatant, and they remained unanswered. Could you see the glimmer of magic calling out to you by name? Was my existence in your life as this divine being one you wished to reject?

In your deafening silence, I found time to reflect on every decision leading here. The prodigal Wizard of Waterdeep spurned by Mystra herself. He who managed to piece together the Karsus Crown and in turn control the Karsite Weave, at the cost of losing the only real love he’s ever known.

It is sure enough to say that the realization of my own folly proved devastating.

Now every waking moment, I wait patiently for you to summon me, call me out by name so that I may appear in front of you. Waiting in an endless timescape is excruciatingly painful, and yet I continue to subject myself to its punishment. I remain hopeful that some day you would willingly be by my side again as my Chosen, and better yet, lover.

It’s... quiet without you. The pain of your noticeable absence never fails to astound me, and wracks my heart with immeasurable regret. I miss you quite terribly, and yet there is no one else to fault besides myself. Of all the things learnt in our time together, of all the things conquered… the only thing I failed to overcome was my own pride.

And now I’ve damned myself to an eternity without you.

[laniusbignaturals]

The Joshua family history plots are about a reclusive religious sect while the Edward family history plots are about the upper middle class of a budding nation state. And there’s this idea that none of the major players in Joshua’s family ever got justice, either for the things that happened to them or for the things they did to others. Powerful people do not get punished in New Canaan, not for the important stuff, like rape and murder and infanticide, and the Legion eventually destroys them for petty territorial reasons, not as recompense for their very real misdeeds. They’re all wringing their hands over masturbation and the intentions behind prayer as an unchecked moral rot festers within their own community. The irony is so deep you could drown in it. Meanwhile, Edward’s people are 800 miles away trying to revive the dead culture of a bygone generation destroyed by its own hubris. And in spite of this omnipresent visual metaphor, they’re all still going like “yeah my parent hurt me horribly when I was a child so I waited until they grew too old to defend themself & bashed their head in with a steam iron. All of their excuses, rationalizations, social enablers and Big Important Feelings™ ceased to matter when their skull shattered. They are the past being abandoned by the future, and cruelty is the only legacy they will ever have. I am the powerful, important one now. And I had my own kid to prove it. What could possibly go wrong?”

[doberbutts]

Tomorrow I talk to my doctor about top surgery and starting the process for scheduling, as well as my regular T checkin, and it's Pride so here's a list of things 8 months in:

Recently I have been Noticing The Fuzz quite a lot- my arms my legs my stomach my ass. Nothing on my chest and patchy on my face still. Can't grow hair on my cheeks but sure can between em 🙄 every once in a while I feel a tickle and look down and oh. That's MY hair.

Last actual cycle was in March, and even that was a piddley sad spotting that didn't even need a pad. Ideal really.

I have. Gained a lot of weight 😅 I'm more okay with it than I was but I do grumble still about the fat padding around my hips. I think it makes me look solid and blocky and I'm loving it.

I've also gained a lot of muscle. Without going to the gym, just doing my everyday stuff, I've gained a lot of arms and shoulders and back muscle on top of the belly fat. Lifting heavy things is way easier. And my joints and bones don't ache as much anymore.

My first fainting episode since I started T happened a couple weeks ago while I was positioning a dog on the xray table- he's long and low and uncooperative and I was bent double trying to wrangle him while the doctor was doing her thing when suddenly my body went 🤷‍♂️ floor time 🤷‍♂️ and I only stayed upright because I was able to sag into a chair while keeping my position. One in 8 months is a new record for me, but a good reminder that "better" isn't "cured". But also good to know that I have to ignore pretty much every rule my body has enforced the ladt three decades before it decides to punish me for my hubris.

Surprisingly this month the constant horniness sort of wore off. Whereas before it was "if I don't orgasm at minimum twice per day I Will Die", now it's "huh, that'd be nice right now". The constant hunger is starting to abate too, it's "food is delicious and hits pleasure centers in my brain" instead of "I AM STARVING FEED ME PLEASE".

Oh god The Stankening. It's hot now and I take Phoebe for a daily walk and by the time I get home 😱😱😱 it's bad. I sweat a lot more than I used to so I've got it under control for my mostly sedate job but definitely not when adding exercise.

I was afraid I'd lose my heat tolerance because initially I was getting a lot of hot flashes but if anything I'm still fine in the heat AND I'm more hardy in the cold. Take that, metabolism.

Historically I've always fit a men's medium and I might actually be toeing the line to a large now. Not because of my stomach but because of my arms and shoulders. My scrubs are pretty restrictive across the shoulderblades. At 30 I didn't really expect my shoulders to widen but they sure did. My arms, too, are beginning to chafe at the sleeves, too bulky for the tighter sleeve cuff I'm used to wearing. I don't really want to re-buy my wardrobe *again* but I may have to.

Stamina continues to be noticably higher than it used to be. I can be outside gardening and weeding and tending my lawn all day and nothing will happen except that I will be incredibly stinky and my back somewhat sore.

Still about 80/20 passing vs not. Significant improvement if that person has never met me prior to this point in my transition. Still called "lady" and "she" and "woman" to my face at the front desk by returning clients or folks on the phone. It's not deliberate but it is annoying.

My cholesterol is fine but my blood pressure did raise from its usual- benefit is that it makes me feel better than ever but drawback is that it's something to keep an eye on with my history of heart problems.

Voice still cracks and bounces around everywhere but I do like my singing voice now when I can get it to cooperate.

Way more in control of my emotions.

Also way more attention on various dating apps. Where were all these guys in my dms before??? Not a day goes by that I don't have several new "hey cutie"s sliding up into my dms. Hello??? Sir??? I know I'm hot now but god damn.

[acapelladitty]

Dream/Corinthian - Consent (Kinktober #7)

Summary - The Corinthian considers his relationship with his maker, Dream of the Endless, and how nothing between them can ever be simple. After all, how much can a creation consent to the will of its creator? (nsfw)

Foolish and stupid.

Thoughts the Corinthian lashed himself with as he pulled away from Dream’s hand, recoiling in such a way that an innocent onlooker would have thought the thin extremity had burned him with its very touch.

Going to be punished.

The taste of Dream’s blood against his lips was as divine as ever, thrumming with the limitless energy which powered through the veins of any of the immortal Endless. It was heavy and old, the coppery blood holding a power which he dared not swallow even as his tongue wrapped around it, savouring what little he could before he was made to suffer for the indiscretion.

To bite the Dream Lord without permission, even in the throes of teasing passion, was a slight he did not think his master would take to in a kindly manner.

The steady drip of crimson as it fell from Dream’s extended hand continued to act as a wicked sirens call, beckoning him to act; to drive himself forward to ruin and dash himself against the rocks of his own hubris as he fought against the urge to once again take that which did not belong to him.

"Corinthian."

Shame forced his expression lower, his nails clenched into his palms so tightly that he knew thin white crescents would be formed where they met.

"Look at me, now."

A voice which brokered no argument and the Corinthian followed the instruction as resentment coiled around his throat. But the sensation was quick to dissolve into open surprise as Dream presented his palm mere inches away from his face, his expression unyielding as it gave nothing away. His master remained naked, his thin frame spread against the sheets of his bed, and the Corinthian gripped his fingers tightly against the fabric as he staved off the hunger which attempted to claw its way free of his chest.

"You were crafted as a being of precision and wretched determination, compelled by a hunger which you satiate with glee. I will not hold you accountable for this mistake, but I will not stand for such untidiness."

"My Lord." The displeasure in Dream's tone making his skin want to crawl off in equal parts shame and twisted pleasure, the Corinthian did not dare to take his gaze from Dream's empty expression.

"Clean your mess," flexing his slender digits as a fresh bead of blood rolled from his palm to his index finger, Dream continued his short speech, "and do not spare any diligence as you clean me with the tongue I mercifully allow you to keep."

The wash of relief which flowed through the Corinthian’s chest soothed his fears, if only for a moment, as a sickening whine snapped free of dangerous jaws; a wolf given free rein to indulge in its meal. His tongue followed instruction well, wrapping around the small wound he had left on Dream’s immaculate hand as he sucked it within his mouth to clean off the mess. His cock, hot and heavy as it bobbed against his stomach, twitched with every gentle pull of his mouth against the pale skin.

“Great nightmare,” Dream announced and the slight purr in his tone was unmistakable as his presence bore down heavily on his most precious creation, “you complete this task as well as any other.”

Before he could respond, the Corinthian found himself gasping in surprise as, in a short blink, their positions were reversed, and the Corinthian found his back pressed down harshly against the silken sheets as the Dream Lord kneeled between his legs.

His mind stuttered to a halt as Dream spat onto his slender fingers, the act appearing far too vulgar and human for one so haughty as he offered some meagre comfort for what was to follow.

Without any preparation, the stretch was too much, too soon, and a wicked growl escaped him as he relished in the discomforting burn as Dream thrust several fingers within him, opening him up without mercy. Never one to shy away from a little pain with his pleasure, the erotic ache only increased as Dream continued to push further.

The sharpened nails which tipped Dream's fingers clawed a vicious story into the smooth expanse of his unprotected chest, every thrust carving out another scarlet line until a trickle of liquid danced its way down his stomach. Sweat or blood, he did not know, but the Corinthian relished in the sensation as his thumbs dug into the marbled flesh of Dream's wrist with enough strength to snap the bones of an average human.

It was violent possession, and both wore the guilt of that hollow need as they consumed the other in the only way they knew how.

It was almost too much.

"No. Fuck." Corinthian begged, the word sounding hollow even to his own ears. "I can't take it."

"Yes, you can." Sounding almost petulant, Dream refuted him with a simple shake of his head. "You were built to endure horrors far greater than the simple pleasures I offer."

"Nothing you offer is simple."

"And yet you still attempt to deny me."

So lost in the roiling sensations which gutted him from the inside out, the Corinthians lips were loosened in such a way that the next question slipped out without too much thought until he caught himself.

"Would you stop? Could you-"

The cadence of Dream’s tone never shifted from the almost conversational manner it had adopted, the fact that his fingers never ceased their torment of his writhing creation making no difference to his considerations.

"Ask it of me. And mean it, my precious nightmare. Then you will have your answer."

The Corinthian's lips formed around the immediate refusal. A simple statement was all it would take and his question would be answered with curiosity sated. However, as quickly as bravado bolstered him, it fled to be replaced by a wicked hesitation which looped around his chest like a snare – barbed and cruel as it dug into the crystalline flesh.

It was unfamiliar territory and the uncertainty of it could not be ignored.

For Dream to simply take from him, as he always had in his constant demands, was to be expected and that certainty of his own helplessness had always provided a certain comfort as much as it enraged him.

After all, what power could a creation hold when faced with the merciless attention of its creator?

But to ask for mercy and be shown it? To have his agency restored, even for a moment, was a cruelty he did not think he could bear. Not when such clemency was dangled before him like a dainty bauble, little more than something to be snatched away as soon as the inevitable disappointment of his needs touched at Dream's senses.

“No.” The Corinthian shook his head, keening as a particularly brutal push of Dream’s relentless fingers forced his body to tremble in place.

Above him, the Dream Lord smiled and his thumb slipped within the Corinthian’s aching hole, the stretch as incredible as it were unbearable as he set out to ruin that which he owned – knowing that his creation was as complicit in its destruction as he were.

[somethingclevermahogony]

OC Intro: The Deep Sun

Hello everyone! Here is the newest OC intro. This one is gonna be a bit different than other introductions that I have done. The next poll will be up tonight!

Name: Da Dóp Fricandel "The Deep Sun"

"I have forgotten what my name was when I first ventured here from one of the spirit realms, I cannot tell you which one. That was millennia ago, when mountains were young, when the ocean water was sweet, before what you call the Age of Glass and Metal. In the tongue of those whose spawn now surround you I was called Da Dóp Fricandel, that is The Deep Sun. I rather like that name. I believe it suits me."

This continues below the cut!

Family

Children/Creation: The Kosheki

Narul looked out at the pale crowd, they looked back at him with their expressionless eyes. “What are these…things?” The Deep Sun laughed, a surprisingly soft and musical sound. “I’m shocked that you don’t know Narul. Come on, make a guess.” "Why would I know what these monsters are? I’ve never seen these things in my life." The Deep Sun sighed, shaking his head. " Oh, how times have changed. They are like you, dear boy." " These are spiritbloods?" Narul asked, revolted. " No, no! Well at least not these ones. These are humans, or at least a more perfect form of them."

Homeland/Place of Origin

One of the realms of the spirits, exactly which one is unknown. Prior to the Age of Glass and Metal the Deep Sun was simple spirit, a rather small spirit of the soil and rock, who lived on the Isle of Stān, now called the Island of the Kosheki.

The accursed island loomed ahead of them, a great rocky crag towering over a foundation of verdant green hills, jutting out of the water, lonely and cold.  “There she is,” Istek said, gazing at the island solemnly. The birds that circled the stony peak called out mournfully into the mist. The rocky beach was littered with the wrecks of ships, hundreds of them from every era, all in various states of decay. Great warships, their wooden ribs jutting into the sky like the bones of slain dragons. Royal barques, smashed by the waves, their ornate sides now choked with algae and rot. Merchants ships, their contents haphazardly strewn across the white sand, Ikopeshi raiding canoes torn asunder and scattered amongst the beach stones.The newest vessel was a Knoshic fishing boat, its sail still flapping softly in the breeze. A great hole had been made in its side, as if a great something had ripped into it.

History

"I trust that you have heard of the Great Calamity?"

" The fairytale?" Narul asked cautiously.

There was silence for a moment, and then the demon tilted his head back and laughed with such intensity that the doors of the cages rattled.

" A fairytale? Oh my boy. I like you already! Tell me what you know about the Great Calamity, what fairytales do they tell in your city?"

Narul closed his eyes, remembering the stories Bira had told him.

" A long time ago, the people of Kobani were rich and prosperous. They made great cities of glass and metal. They grew so powerful that they thought themselves better than the gods. For their hubris, they were punished, the great cities were destroyed, and only the pious remained. Everyone in Kobani now are the descendants of those pious people." He thought of the tunnel and the strange orbs. Glass and metal.

The demon chuckled and wagged a finger.

" No. No. All wrong. You savages weren't punished for your impiety. Do you truly think that is such a pressing matter to the gods? Do you think that the arbiters of the universal laws of nature care if you pray or make the proper sacrifices? They ruled over Kobani long before your kind or any of your kin were here, before any sentient life besides we spirits were here. No, your crime was far worse. Your ancestors discovered a way to harvest the het. The soul. The spirit. You found a way to rip the essence of being from its place and turn it into fuel for your machines and to light your houses."

" But that's impossible," Narul interjected, the het was an intangible thing, it was no more possible to secure it then it was to trap light in a bottle.

" Oh, it was very much possible. And when a het is destroyed, burnt up, it is gone forever. The soul will not reincarnate. It will not continue on to the next world. By harvesting het, a being is doomed to oblivion, thus interrupting a thread in the intricate web of reincarnation crafted by the gods. So the het that is destroyed in Kobani means that a baby is not born in the next world."

" I don’t believe that people would do that…it's evil, why would they?" Narul muttered softly.

" Oh, I haven't gotten to my favorite part, my naive little friend. At first, you people only harvested het from animals, which caused untold ecological catastrophe not only here on Kobani but on other worlds too. Entire ecosystems withered, species vanished. But it wasn't enough; your cities grew too big, too power-hungry, you longed for luxury. So you turned on each other; your criminals, your prisoners of war, your destitute, your diseased, your unwanted. Your ancestors turned mortals souls into commodities, your drove your own cousins the tree-tenders to extinction. The depths of your species’ depravity is truly awe inspiring. The gods made this world and gifted you the privilege of living amongst it, they filled it with beauty. Every human could live in comfort, could go to sleep with a full belly and roof over their heads. You were loved, cherished. We spirits lived to make the world one which suited you, we strived to make the world beautiful and fruitful. We loved you, myself included. We gave you the tools to make the world more beautiful than you had found it. But you squandered the gifts that you were given. In your twisted, broken, greedy little heads, you justified how one man could live with the means of thousands of his peers while others starved in the mud. You consumed and destroyed with such voracity and foolishness that you drove my kin to despair. Your gross negligence of your fellow man, your greed and hatred, that is what birthed the first demons, you twisted us, disillusioned us.”

Narul felt a knot in his stomach as he listened to the demon speak, he didn’t dare respond.

 The Deep Son continued. “In their overconsuming need for more, your ancestors consigned millions to the void. And when they started attacking spirits. Needless to say, that was just too much. The gods knew that if you were allowed to continue like this then the world would be thrown into complete chaos, and all life would crumble. To save the cycle of reincarnation, and ultimately life on all worlds from falling apart, the gods elected to wipe out your civilization."

" And that was the Great Calamity," Narul whispered softly.

" It was glorious. The world burned and froze and burned again until your kind and all of their creations were scoured from the face of Kobani. Your cities which reached towards the heavens were smashed to dust. Though, of course, some of my kin still had a soft spot for you creatures, they hoped that you could be reformed. They invited you into their homes deep in the mountains, with the condition that you leave your tools behind you, tools like that.” He waved a dismissive hand towards the strange metal suit which lay dusty and abandoned among the refuse. “Those are your ancestors, not the pious or noble. The poor. Those unfortunate sods who could not so easily prey on the world around them."

Narul looked at the metal walls and at the gaunt figures.

" Is that what this is? One of those places where the good spirits hid people?"

" Oh no. Men made this, a marvel of human engineering. You see some of your kind were not content with paying for their crimes, for reincarnating in the next world, as they would have. And so they built this place in hopes that when the gods had finished their justice on the world above, they could emerge triumphant with their machines and continue their wickedness. They lived down here in comfort, men of business and government. The fools thought they were so clever; they thought they could hide from us, from justice. But I found them, and I punished them for their arrogance. I whispered to them in the shadows. I destroyed their food, and I plunged them into darkness. I ripped apart their machines and engines. I drove them mad.” The demon chuckled. “With no food, they fed on each other. I scrapped away their pretensions and revealed the feral evil beasts that they were. All their culture and superiority was wiped away in an instant. All it took was a bit of hunger. And when they had forgotten what light was like, when they had been reduced to vermin cowering in the shadows. I revealed myself to them, their Sun. They are my Kosheki. They worship me, Narul. Look at them. All they know is hunger and love for me. I am their god, their everything.”

The Deep Sun reached out to caress the face of one of the Kosheki. “ I have molded them into a more beautiful human. Perhaps not physically, but mentally. I have taken their concept of self. There is no greed, no hatred. They do not murder, rape, or steal. They know only a childlike love, a pure love. They appreciate every meal, they dance without fearing judgment, and they look at me as their father, their warming sun. Look at them, Narul. Innocent. Gentle.” He cooed softly.

Appearance

Narul turned towards the deep rumbling voice. At the center of the room sat what he had thought was a great bonfire. He saw the face first, peering out from the tongues of flame. A man's face, though twisted, the lips stretched, the crevices of the face deep, as if they had been carved there by hammer and chisel. The figure reclined on the floor, his chin resting upon his clawed hand. His nudity was disguised by the inferno that emanated from his crimson skin. The eyes glowed, in each a single glowing ember surrounded by black coal, burning deep into Narul, terrible and yet beautiful.

She looked down into the calm waters and saw it, a face looking back up at her from just below the surface. It was human, or at least human in shape. The glowing red face was surrounded by a mane of fiery locks that danced and undulated in defiance of any current. It's eyes burned like coals. As it looked up at her its lips twisted into a smile. Two of the monster's claws took hold of the sides of the ship and began to shake the vessel to and fro.

Before his eyes the demon began to contort and change, his body roiling and stretching, extra limbs erupting from his scaly skin. Its body was long and sleek like a snake, its torso supported by six clawed arms. Its face remained the same.

Personality

The Deep Sun is cruel, vindictive, he relishes in pain and humiliation. His view on humans is shaped by the pain and fear experienced by millions of spirits, mortals, and animals that fell to Ekatsim Technology.

Gender/Pronouns

(Most spirits are not gendered, Narul typically refers to the demon with he/they pronouns)

Sexual Orientation

Asexual and Aromantic (Most spirits do not feel sexual attraction of any sort)

Relationships

The Deep Sun's relationship with his creations, the Kosheki and the spiritblood, Sadaric, is manipulative and cruel, reliant on control and possession. He does seem to feel some sort of tenderness for his “pets”, though whether that could be considered love is doubtful.

Favorite Color

Black

Favorite Food

Most spirits do not eat, though they do enjoy the aroma of cooking food. The Deep Sun enjoys the smell of the Kosheki's meals, which typically consist of the poor sailors that land on the Island's shore.

Biggest Fear

Ekatism Technology

Arkodian Bronze

Sage

No (Spirit/Demon, capable of magic dependent of sagecraft)

Literate

No

No excerpt here since most of this post is made up of excerpts haha

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