#the whole story exists as a fleshed out thing in my mind

[milf-harrington]

did you guys know im writing a book? cause it is...not even close to finished <3

[beggars-opera]

Ok, so I live in one of the more liberal areas of the country. Our governor is a lesbian and I literally did not even know until after she got elected, because it was that much of a nonissue.

Lately, I'm seeing more and more local institutions doing things for Pride. Institutions that don't necessarily have to, or do so awkwardly, but they're trying to be good allies. And, even here, I see people foaming at the mouth. This thing is ruined. Unprofessional. Political. Sexual. Boycotting, disgusted, bye.

And a part of me is like, "Why would a random store, a museum, a restaurant, do this?" Part of my mind has been so corrupted by the idea of rainbow capitalism that the thought of someone just...trying to be an imperfect ally is a cash grab.

It's not. Every bit counts, and especially as we see pushback, and see some of those corporations beginning to rethink their rainbow capitalism, the places that continue to speak up are so, so important.

I'm reminded of a rant by Illustrious Old White Man Historian Gordon Wood a few years back where he lamented how fragmented modern history is. Why do we need ANOTHER book about women, about enslaved people, about the poor? Why are we focusing on these people instead of George Mount Rushmore Washington?

And it was an interesting framing, because he insinuated that these micro histories were bad not because they existed, but because they didn't give the whole story, which in Gordon's mind was a story in which they were the side characters instead of the mains. To that end a biography of G Wash that features the bare shadow of Billy Lee in the far distance is a complete history, all that needs to be said, because one of those figures is a God Amongst Men and the other does not deserve to be fully fleshed out as a full, autonomous human being with a family and a profession and a beating heart. And a biography of William Lee, war aid, professional valet, and person closest to the first president of the United States, with the shadow of George in the background, would consequently be Bad History, because no one is saying that this man didn't exist, but his story isn't the whole story. It's backwards; he should be a footnote, and if he's not, that's bias.

But for me, as a historian, I know that the reason these microhistories exist, and are so important, is that they didn't exist before. Before someone can be truly, purposefully, tactfully inserted into the historical narrative, you need to know who they are. Not just as a name, not just as an archetype. You have to get to the point where there are so many books flooding the market about women and children and immigrants that it's no longer controversial to be talking about them, where learning about them instead of someone else is normal.

THEN you can feel good about rewriting the more general narrative. THEN you can actually have the information you need in order to put things into their proper context, to rethink the most important figure in each story, to assess what the full milieu of the time is.

And that's where we're at with Pride. We are still very much living in a time where queer people are shadow characters in the background. They are people that many will admit exist, but for god's sake, don't make them important, don't make them real, don't make them normal. And until we can shove rainbows down everyone's throats to the point where being queer is no longer seen as a thing that is Other, until we convince people that we're not going away, we will never be able to fully assimilate queerness into society.

We can't just be normal about Pride, because normal isn't loud enough to not get drowned out.

[eldrith]

ғʀᴏᴍ ᴇᴅᴇɴ ; ᴘᴀʀᴛ ᴏɴᴇ.

ʜᴏɴᴇʏ ʏᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ ғᴀᴍɪʟɪᴀʀ ; ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴍʏ ᴍɪʀʀᴏʀ ʏᴇᴀʀs ᴀɢᴏ

jacaerys velaryon x fem!reader words: 3.1k synopsis: jacaerys falls for a woman in aegon's garden. notes: happy haunting season! here's part one (more of an introduction or prologue) to my october mini-series! a little horror love-letter from me to youse <3 so many thanks to my beautiful sweet brains @useralba & @dipperscavern ... dippy fetched my header for me & they basically co-wrote this whole concept. chapter warnings: this is The Most Normal™️ part out of the whole series so not much. canon-typical mentions of death/grief, but jace is thugging it out. morally gray jacaerys (& reader) throughout the story, though hes p normal in this. series masterlist. main masterlist.

A SHARP ACHE PIERCES JACAERYS’S MIND. 

It has lingered, ebbing and flowing in the corner of his vision since the news came by raven this afternoon; whispers of fury, nostrils flared around the Painted Table as gasps of shuddered grief echoed in the dusting quiet. A gust of sharp wind blows his curls from his temple, his lips wettened and chilled by the cold of eve. 

Soil turns soft underfoot as Jacaerys stalks down a trail less frequented; the Outer Bailey of Dragonstone Castle is thick with land, and yet rather sparse in people - most of whom are within tubs. Or, more likely, tending to those within the tubs - though tonight, as much as it can be afforded, he wishes not to not remain within those suffocating walls.

Walls which still echo, in the slumbering quiet when candles are all snuffed and guards repose drearily against stone, with laughter and footsteps of his kin; walls which whisper of doves, wings clipped and soiled by blood of innocent, by hatred stale and harbored.

Walls which used to hold his family - which now cage the fragmented remainder of such a thing; of tense jaws and eyes that cannot help but glaze over each other in pursuit of some long predetermined destiny. 

He sniffs against the chill of the evening, rather disturbed by the beauty, raw and wild, of the island - steep cliffs clumped by wildgrass and staggering up into sharp black slates, which yawn high into the sky; the Mont, steeping with heat and nesting ancient beasts within its belly.

And the garden, just ahead - a primordial thing, once shining and primed by the glory of a beautiful empire. When he'd stormed from the council room, he'd been rather dead-set upon the garden - if only in a bout of frustration lingering in the denial of his mother, yet projected as a sharp mind ache that laid somewhere in the bowels of Aegon's Garden. Searching for a figure, one that likely exists in only his imagination - the one he's seen through bleary eyes of his chamber window, dancing through leaves and past faces of stone; their presence a low hum in the back of his mind that pierces and grates against his resolve.

The castle’s hearths burn low now after supper, and the eve falls dreary upon quiet ocean-misted moors. His footsteps drag untenanted, burdened by the weight of some distant crown as he clenches tight to his pommel. 

Those empty feet had indeed carried him all the way down from the tower; past guards and faces familiar, as though his mind was tethered to a memory, a shadow flickered in the distance of his chamber window.

The cliffs are black in the fall of night, the walls of the keep warm but crumbling in the lower Baileys. The Sept - a rather forgotten relic these days - has a soft glow from within; though through the thickening fog, Jacaerys wonders if the figures he sees within are truly there. 

Silent Sisters, his mind whispers, though there is no body reclaimed for them to prepare. She lies with the Red Queen still; a war without bodies, though he fights the thought from festering - no bones to wrap, no flesh to burn. Only names, which will die on the tongues of those who are too agonized, too vengeful to mourn.  

The trail is unkempt; it is not often the inhabitants of the island come to the Garden, less so now that looming war plagues the realms. Death grasps Dragonstone Castle in its implacable grip these days; and anger, that hungry beast that bites at the tail of revenge - it ravages his house. 

He has known since the very first moon they came to Dragonstone, all that time ago - in the earlier years; Luke, Joff, and himself - stumbling over hilts longer than their legs, watching the spiraling towers of Dragonstone become swallowed by thick clouds. And there had been Maester Gerardys, in the first of many lessons to come round the table, tone imbued with something rather distant, gaze fixed upon the window. 

Even now, years later, Jacaerys knows that the ground he walks is tainted - the Dragonmont looms, its acidic breaths falling in years over toppling years, watching Dragon Kings rise and leave for their birthright; and yet still it remains, sprinkling its volcanic acids to leech into the earth below.

The soil the castle was built upon is imbued with the very acid that grows beneath the island’s crust - and from it, the plants in Aegon’s Garden now grow unruly, unbidden; No longer tended to by hands familiarized with their needs. 

The soil is rich, Maester Gerardys had looked out the sharp window in the drum, eyes weathered as the skies. But even when the Conqueror landed, it was unfit for nurturing life. We eat not from the fruit which grows from this side of the island. The blooms stay within their home, and return with each cycle of life back into the ground. 

Evening fog swallows the burst of trees on the other side of the Thorned Dragon; it twists into the sky high enough that Jacaerys can see the horns through the iron gates to the garden. Fresh sprouts crawl out of the earth from under the wall, curled with the kiss of frost which visits each evening and thawed by the island's sun come each morning. Life into death.

The circle turns. 

The gates to the garden are marred with the same rust that crawls up the chains lining the Western Docks; Jacaerys grasps the cold metal and pushes through with surprising ease. 

A creak of groaning metal. Trees are gnarled; they twist and wind down the path that he walks, his mind lingering up in the thick clouds - a faint gust sends the scent of smoke through his nose. 

Dragonfire. 

A clench within his chest; the falling of the Queen Who Never Was echoes in his mind, the fluttering of raven’s wings, the whisper in a chamber much too empty for all the people who occupied it - and a suppression of the stab of loss which threatens to crawl out his throat. 

The garden is bright, despite the falling daylight. It bursts with untamed indigenous flora, thick with the air of blossoms - roses, red and thorned; bark, dampened upon twisted trees older than his mother’s mother, rough under his palms. Stoned statues loom with twisted grins in the half-light, some relic of his ancestors which turn now to mock him in his solitary march.  

Jacaerys’s breath comes out in a puff of fogged chill - the evening brings a cool seabreeze, although his heart has always beat rather warm.

 A gentle caress seems to bring forth a curling smile from a bushel of red anemone blossoms as he passes - a twitch of a grin upon his own lips though the lingering feeling of walking deeper into a shadow looms within his mind. 

Any semblance of peace is disrupted at the slither of fabric around a lingering statue of a melancholy ancestor, a rustled noise - his heart stops. 

Though his mind is muddled with tumult, there is some life breathed back into him when he catches a glimpse of shining tresses around a tall thorny hedge, and the snaking curl of dress skirts around the bottom; and so he begins to stalk after the scent of earth, of some deep turn of late summerfruit. 

Another flicker of movement, a rustle in the vines; and still he follows, heart slamming as the clouds roll over the sunlight. 

In the deeper part of the garden lies the Thorned Dragon - a once-wonderful iron statue which now crawls with thick vines and time-bitten rusted holes; though below sits stoned benches for respite.

And there Jacaerys halts his footsteps, deadening at the sight before him. 

Concealed, only the whisper of skirts near hidden feet, strands of glowing hair, the peek of one timid eye thickened by long wisps - of a brow that arches, peeking only just so from beside the iron Dragon. 

A young woman. 

“Hello.” His voice is schooled with confidence - this is his island, after all. 

The sun glints in a sharp fight against the rolling clouds; the foggy cloud around his feet swirl as he carries himself with curiosity - it is unusual for Housestaff to venture into such a place. At his voice, there is a flicker, a twitch - slither of skirts until his gaze meets the pair of wide eyes. 

You stand on legs doelike and unsure, bent slightly at the hips as if prepared to skitter away at the slightest of movement; and he, with a skip in his heart at the glow of your skin, the flutter of lashes upon sweet cheeks. 

“Hello,” you echo his very essence, voice a mirror of his own tone though syrupy and curling with the warmth of summerfall. 

He is struck at once by your beauty. 

A breeze picks up; the scent of rich earth beneath his boots, the thick blooms even in so chill a climate. Skirts blown back gently, your hair rustles against the wind and he finds the soft beauty upon your visage arresting. 

Your feet are bare. His brows drawn, he moves just slightly, cloak fluttering in the wind; and you, watching with owlish eyes as he nods cordially, struck with the natural compulsion to greet you with proper manners. 

“I am Jacaerys,” he is rather unsure why he omits Prince from his introduction - though with a pang of storm clouds looming in his mind, he dwells not. 

Indeed it matters little, for you offer some sudden beaming smile - a bright thing, a leap from his heart at such a blessing from the Gods as you have been given; and you nod gently, lips glistened and pale. 

A sharp smile, something that would seem coy, unpropitious if not for the small flash of kindness that lingers in your stare. 

“-Jacaerys Velaryon,” you finish, dropping into a curtsey that brings about a slight glide of interest over your form; he chastises himself sharply in his head, bowing back. 

A Houseworker, then, though he’s never seen you in the halls; nor has he seen a maid or cook wear such material of their gowns. He reclines upon a stone bench; you follow after he invites you kindly, your eyes skittering over the fine folds of his tailored clothing, lingering on the line of his jaw, then hooking rather intently on the dragon upon his chest. Your own dress seems to shift with the light - it is white, then gray, then a near muted purple; it fits with the glow of your chest, with the glint in your eyes.  

You tell him your name then and it lodges itself warm and wanting into the cavity of his chest. It drips with the glazed sweetness of blooms left in the care of the sun and preserved in the chill of shade.  

Pines linger tall around you; a sea of green, though the true thing lies far in the distance, its tidal breath a slow roll in the evening air. Your fingers are lithe as they trace over a spiny vine hanging off the Thorned Dragon; and yet, peculiarly, you give no hiss as you press your thumb down against a thorn - in fact, your lips curl into a quick grin, eyes dark in interest when the thorn nearly pierces your flesh.

“-Why are you here?” His question is one rather improper, though he finds himself perturbed and cannot bring himself to feel remarkably bad. Indeed, your dreamy hum silences any doubt that may linger in the back of his mind, “It was my assumption not many come to Aegon's Garden anymore.” He admits. 

And something about his words must be amusing to you; a grin that you hide with a tilt of your head, your hand leaving the thorn on the vine. He can smell the scent of your hair; a honeyed thing, a gentle thing. A sweet thing. 

“I tend to it,” you murmur, voice gentle as a psalm, though your eyes flicker off towards the peak of a twisted treeline upon the far end of the garden, past the murky bog. “-Though sometimes I feel as though it tends to me.” 

Dreamlike, your eyes glaze over - and Jacaerys is left rather uncomfortable against the cooling stone. A foreboding prickles at the edge of his mind; and as fog creeps towards the shore each morning, he has a sudden urge to back away from your curling chill - there is something familiar within your lilt, in the way your eyes shift under dappled sunlight. His aunt had much similar a tone when they were young; with fingers that slid between bars of small cages, prodding creatures which nuzzled back against her, musing words that never quite strung together right. 

“And you?” You add now, fingers cupped within your lap. His brows draw as you murmur again, “What brings you here, my Prince?” 

Behind your shoulder is the long path narrowed by closing hedges, by twisted trees and creeping vines untamed and wild with life; with life, a part of him rejoices silently, life, though so much death looms over Dragonstone these days. 

His hesitation lingers in the quiet thick fog that creeps through the grass. “I’m…” His brows furrow, a sudden cloud of amnesia confusing weighing his tongue. He feels almost blank, save for the sweet scent of you beside him. 

“...I don’t know.” 

A flicker of your visage in his peripheral, as if you’ve moved - though when he turns to your countenance once more, he wonders if the sharp, darkly unnerving smile that had flashed onto your face was only in his mind. It unsettles him deeply within his stomach as your eyes remain upon his, muscles lax, as though the smile you’d given earlier was the first in years. 

His mind is too clouded - Rooks Rest has weighed heavy on the tongues of the council today, though it seems it weighs even heavier so on the mind. He must be rather exhausted. 

 “I…” He struggles once more, unsettled by the false image of that hungry grin, gaze focused upon the soil, fresh and puffy below his boots. “I thought I was…looking for something.” It is said absently, straining to recall his initial intentions - and it feels only slightly incorrect. 

You do not say anything to this, and for the sake of his nerves, he pretends to ignore the growing smile slow over your countenance in the corner of his vision.

In a breeze cooler than expected, his unnerved eyes rise to the Castle - up, to the window of his own chambers high within the spire of the Stone Drum with such direct view of the garden, of this very statue. 

Gulls cry in the distance; the blooms overgrown above your head seem to droop, as if bowing towards your companionship. A beauty Jacaerys has never once fathomed; though he is momentarily distracted by the movement of your hands, once so still within your lap. 

It is with surprise when he finds your fingers delicately peeling away at some foreign fruit, revealing the glistening flesh within - and your lips, wettened with your tongue as you pluck at the tissue of its skin. 

A heaviness in his throat, muddled bewilderment leaking through the cracks of his mind; though any true alarm melts away as you slowly bring the fruit to your gentle, awaiting lips, its crimson juice staining your fingers. 

Slow bites, teeth sinking into tender flesh in the stillness of the bright garden; and Jacaerys, transfixed upon the glow of your skin, the gentle sigh from your chest at the taste. It is bizarre he has never once seen you here - perhaps you are new to the island; with the influx of residents within the castle, it has provided ample new jobs for the smallfolk around. He is certain he’d have remembered such arresting eyes. 

It is a sight so innocent, yet so incredibly salacious in its sudden intensity - he finds it a battle to cast away his gaze; his toes drag through the dirt upon the earth, watching the sprouts bounce back upwards once the pressure of his presence is relieved. 

“Have you ever had one?” Your voice curls through fog, some sweet melody that startles him. His cheeks are flushing red, though you are much too enraptured with the fruit, lips stained dark as wine. “-A fig,” you mend, an afterthought as your eyes rise once more to the larger of the trees deep in the gardens; and a buzzing haze that creeps through Jace’s mind as the empty shell falls from your fingers onto the ripe dirt below. 

He watches it lie to rest, bespeckled with the damp dark of soil. 

The circle turns. 

His mouth is dry, and he struggles to swallow; “No,” he admits, clouded by déjà vu and a sudden, mild perplexity. “I haven’t.” 

Your lips curve into that slow, knowing smile once more - less unsettling when it is fixed upon his gaze this time. Your fingers trace the smooth skin of another fig before your palm extends, offering it with a slight tilt of your head. “They are divine,” your words lilt, syllables sung out into the garden’s thick air. Divine. 

And gods, you are divine - an arresting thought, one that jolts him out of the trance he’d so unwittingly tumbled into - and with a blink, he hesitates. 

A half-remembered tale told in the dim light of hearths drawn moons, years ago - and he shakes his head, the thought of food at a time like this rather sickening. “Where did you get them?” he wonders instead of accepting, though your palm remains outstretched, enticing. There is a thrumming in his ears, though he realizes with a start that his headache has ceased. 

“They come from me,” you reply coyishly; though there is some glint in your eyes, some shift of the breath you take - and he looks away just before that smile reclaims your face.

A strange girl, he decides. A strange girl, yet quite endearing. 

He cannot help the smile he returns to you, a short chuckle, mostly out of nerves from him which is echoed rather enthusiastically, nearly unsettling in its fervor, by you.

His heart beats faster, though he cannot say why - his lips are wettened by the prod of his tongue, and he pretends not to notice the flush upon your hollowed cheeks, nor the way your head seems to dip lower to observe his countenance. 

“No, thank you,” he declines, voice barely a whisper; and his eyes search yours, your name echoing heavy in his mind - so familiar a name. 

Your smile returns, though this time it is sharper; and with darkened eyes, the corners of your lips twitching as if you already knew what his answer would be. When you respond, it is not what he expects. “As you wish, my Prince.” 

And then you bring the last fig to your chest, fingers delicate even when they tear at the little flesh as though you've been starved; his stomach rolls, entranced as a drip of juice rolls down your chin, crimson against your muted skin. 

Night falls. Council will be called soon, he knows - and the bells will be rung though they are barely heard from outside the inner bailey. Jacaerys is hesitant to leave, yet there is a chill that has begun to seep through his bones; a pit that grows within his stomach. Each pulse of his blood through his heart, a bite of your teeth into the fruit of the fig - but he waits until you’ve finished your repast to clear his throat. 

“I must return,” he decides, a strike of hesitance at your look, that kind stare that flickers in the death of sunlight.

You hesitate as he rises, just for a moment - and then, leaning forward as crimson fingers grasp the stone bench, your smile drops. A fleeting thing, a sparrow upon a windowsill, a hummingbird through the morning air.

 “Thank you, Prince Jacaerys.” 

His brows furrow; and you, staring up at him with a gaze so unalloyed, so pure - a lingering darkness in his chest that grows each day of unrest cooped up in his coddled little nest within the island. 

Though he smiles only gently back at you - a twist of soft pity that bleeds into an odd affection for such a sweet stranger; a much needed respite from the faces much too familiar and suffocating in the choking smoke of war and duty. 

“I suppose I find myself rather lonely,” you confess, eyes dropping to stare at the figs that now rest in your lap - a blink from Jacaerys at the sight of them, once more bewildered at their presence. “Not many come to the garden anymore. I worry I tend to it only for myself these days.” 

Jacaerys finds himself rather uneasy - there is that guilt that coils familiar, a serpent squeezing his stomach. The circle turns, he thinks.  

“I will have to return then, my lady.” He feels rather uneven on his feet, “This garden is quite beautiful.” 

And if you bristle at his assumption of your title, you do not show it; an absent look has plagued your seraphic features, leaving you with shallow breaths and a plumped lower lip. “I would hope so, Jacaerys.”

For a dreadful moment, he fears you might begin to cry; a stoke of regret and pity through him. Though it is quelled rather abruptly as you snap up, eyes staring down the row of hedges behind him before returning to his own, much more warm than before.  

You hold his gaze for a horrible few breaths - and he knows not what to do, as you sit faraway and dreamlike, your hair moving in a breeze he cannot feel.

“Are you turning in soon?” He wonders, unable to quell his curiosity - he cannot imagine your duties much require you to extend your services into the dark of night, though he admittedly has paid less than staunch attention to the Housestaff as of late.

Your eyes remain distant, though a soft wisp of a smile grows as you rise to your height, standing oddly against the vines which creep down towards you. 

You look back beyond his shoulder, a glint of firelight in your eyes though the sun still whispers its last stretches of breath across the indigo sky.

“Not so soon, I'm afraid. The roses need pruning,” you sigh. “I detest thorns.”

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[heavenlee773]

Fairly Odd Parents; A New Wish finale spoilers!!

Okay so am I the only one who didn’t like the fact that Hazel’s friends now know about the fairies?

Because like, how do you go on from that? Maybe it’s because I never really got attached to her friends the same way I did with Dev, but it’s just racking my mind over how the episodes in season two will go.

It kind of feels like them knowing about the fairies will only cause troublesome situations like “oh it’s fine! Hazel can just wish us out of this mess” or “Hazel can you wish this for us please?” Which will probably cause a lot of problems, and there’s no going back from that.

It could be because on every site I watched FOPANW for free, it’s missing “The Wellsington Hotellsington” episode which I’m pretty sure is the episode where Winn gets formally introduced, and the trio’s friendship cements. I’ll probably have to buy that episode since websites don’t want to add it for some reason…

But now Season 2 most likely will be focused more on the trio and their shenanigans, so I don’t knowww… I’m really biased though, I love Dev as a character and I love his and Hazel’s dynamic (before the whole taking over fairy world thing)☹️

I like Jasmine and Winn but I just don’t care for them, you know?

And onto Hazel’s brother Antony, he’s cool and all but why does he need to know about the fairies?

Like I know this makes it SO much easier for Hazel, and it’s basically a huge weight lifted off of her, but story wise?? Eughhh I don’t know😖

I mean, if they explore his and Deja’s relationshipppp hmmm okayyyy😋😋 But I just know how they’d segue way into that, and thinking about it makes me uncomfortableeee!!

Basically what I’m saying is, I CAN’T WAIT FOR SEASON TWO AND I HOPE THERE IS MORE DEV CONTENT!!!

PLEASEE don’t have Dev just be a one off antagonist☹️☹️

The theory that Dev keeps his memories because of his shades (and also his similarities to some other rich kid that was in the original series of whom I forgot his name) is cool, but also awkwarddd— because what does he do with that information?? Like okay buddy, you remember. Now what? He never had the best relationship with Peri in the first place!! I’d prefer if maybe season one went on WITHOUT Irep interfering or at least appearing but not appearing again until the next season, because THEN Dev and Peri could’ve connected at least a little, and Dev could have more realizations about “maybe I don’t need my father’s approval” or something— then in season two when Dev goes on a spiral or something, let’s say his dad ticks him off;

Dev tries to have a heart to heart with his dad after Hazel and Peri push him to,

“I feel like you don’t care about me, and all I want is for you to be proud of me—“

And his dad is like,

“Come back to me when you do something I can be proud of.”

SO THEN he becomes bitter at Hazel and Peri for “making” him go do that, and turns to Irep to take over Fairy World.

Eughhhh but this is a kid’s show after all, and they want to cater to their attention spans so a show that takes a while to fully flesh out their characters would probably go right over some kid’s heads (or not, they could probably become smarter.)

I still love the show, and fanfiction exists for this exact reason—

I guess that’s enough of my Ramb-Lee’s for now, if anyone wants to talk about FOPANW, I’m here😝.

(Dev looks so CUTE in this scene🥺)

Peace!!

-🤍

[henrenologist]

fuck it reposting my henren ivf essay

the fact that the ivf storyline follows so soon after henren's custody over denny was challenged (TWICE). karen doesnt just want another child, but specifically a biological one. and further, henren pursued an anonymous sperm donor rather than a friend/acquaintance. like they were trying to minimize threats (even illegitimate ones) to their custody as much as possible. im sure karen had many reasons beside that for wanting a biological child, but her proposal follows too soon after the custody challenges for that to not be on her mind in any capacity.

and eva, of course, is haunting this whole thing. it'd be understandable if karen harbored some jealousy over the fact that eva gave hen a baby ("all the people i love the most belonged to you first"). which then compounds karen's grief over the failed ivf: another way in which she cant measure up to eva. eva, who kept threatening karen's parenthood. here's something eva cant take away: my own flesh and blood. and she'd have been right in that logic, because biological parents ARE afforded more security in custody.

so of course karen wants a biological child, even though she can love a non-biological one all the same. she's been beat down by the heteronormative system. this IS the best option for her; it would give her a legal and mental security she hasn't yet had.

until she's beat by her own biology. a scientist, an expert on planets and stars and all that far-out stuff that exists beyond the bounds of human imagination, and she's defeated by the limits of her own body.

and then there's hen, who after three weeks of karen's mourning is frustrated. hen is self-professedly angry with her. she doesn't understand karen's grief; she tries to, but can't. karen herself doesn't even understand all the levels to her own depression. when karen emphasizes that the embryos weren't just an "idea" for her in the way it was for hen, she's not just talking about the physicality of it, but karen's faith in her own capacity for motherhood; an indisputable motherhood. one that eva can't touch, the courts can't touch, unknown fathers can't touch. no one could question her maternity, no one could take her baby away.

and the worst part is the's story's ending—or lack thereof. hen gets into that accident at work and karen drops her grief to take care of her. the ivf is forgotten. hen says "it's like that ivf stuff never even happened" and she's right. a crucial point of development for henren as wives, for karen as a character, is dropped unceremoniously, replaced by another tragedy where karen is relegated to the role of Supportive Wife.

[writingquestionsanswered]

I don't know if this question will make sense or if it's too vague, but here goes: how do I get my OCs to feel more like blorbos? With my favorite characters from books/movies/etc, I go feral about them, I want to put them in jars and poke them with sticks and see what makes them tick. But with my original writing, I'll have ideas for stories but despite following all the traditional advice for fleshing out character motivation, flaws, etc, I keep finding myself horribly bored with my own characters. This might be too vague to answer because what makes a blorbo for one person won't necessarily be the same thing that makes another person go feral, but I was wondering if you happened to have any thoughts on what keeps my OCs feeling so un-blorbo-ish? Thanks!

"Blorbo-izing" an Original Character

Quick question to start with: have you ever cast your characters with real actors or models, or commissioned an artist to create character art of your character? I feel like it's a fairly common thing for writers to do these days, but I'm still always surprised by the number of writers who don't do this.

I have a post about casting here (Guide: Casting Your Characters) but here I'll just say that, for me, casting or getting character art made is an essential part of "blorbo-izing" my characters. I spend lots of time creating and fleshing out my characters before I ever cast them or have character art made, but they almost never feel completely real to me until I have a visual representation of the character that exists outside of my own head.

Outside of that, I thing it's a really good idea to do some character development exercises that go beyond the scope of your story. Some of my favorites include:

Character Interview - imagine that you’ve pulled your character out of a story into the room and now have the opportunity to interview them. What questions would you ask them? What do you want to know about them that you don’t already know? What do you think the reader would want to know? What might be pertinent to the story that you haven’t thought about yet?

TV Crew follow around - Imagine you’ve dropped an invisible TV crew into your story’s world to follow your character around through an average day (even if it's anachronistic). Follow them from the moment they wake up until the moment they go to bed that night. What are they like when they wake up? What is their morning routine? What do they eat for breakfast? How do they get ready? What do they do throughout the day? Who do they interact with? What else do they eat and drink? What do they do for fun or relaxation? How to they make money or meet their basic needs? What is their bedtime routine like?

Letters or Journal Entries - Look at your character's back story, off-screen events, etc. and find something for your character to write about in a journal entry or a letter to another character. What would they say about this event? How does it make them feel? What do they think about it?

Use Your Character in a Writing Prompt - Look at some writing prompts and do one using your character as the main character. You can keep it within your story's world or plop them into a whole different world. Whatever works for you and your story. This is about getting to know this character in a different context than the events of your story provides.

Create a Character Mood Board/Aesthetic - Mood boards go a long way in mentally fleshing out a character for me. Being able to have a visual representation of their style, their vibe, things that are important to them, etc. really turns them into real people in my mind.

Create a Playlist for Your Character - I think playlists can also be a really great way to mentally flesh out a character in your mind. Sometimes, just having a particular song or a playlist of songs that makes you think of them gives them some dimension they wouldn't otherwise have.

I hope that helps!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

♦ Questions that violate my ask policies will be deleted! ♦ Please see my master list of top posts before asking ♦ Learn more about WQA here

[maissafespace]

I know you.

Shigure Sohma x Reader

synopsis: Shigure Sohma, a complicated man with a lot of secrets, knowing him gave you everything, from love to happiness to frustration and pain. It can’t help that you cannot get away from him.

warnings: age gap relationship. angst. mean!shigure, domestic fluff, heartbreak, arguments, mentions of break up, mentions of cheating (not happening). nsfw. emotional s*x, doggy style, missionary, cream pies, mentions of pregnancy, breeding.

a/n: it’s a brief story for one of the men that has my heart, but unfortunately is in a unique situation with a person I loathe lmao. It’s something that I needed more than anything, I haven't written for some time so I hope it's decent. please like, comment, reblog, send a coffee! thank you for reading!!!!

Masterpost • Masterlist

Living as a zodiac and as a Sohma, Shigure never saw anything beyond the walls of the clan when he was young, and he never thought about it either.

When he was kicked out after the whole thing with that woman and the other as well, he had no option but to. He had to find a house, find a job, a routine to follow, to live a life as a normal human and not one of the zodiac.

In that, he could not forget to fill his own release. How to pass time when he had the time to distract himself.

First, it was his few flees here and there, Mayu as well. But nothing and no one that made him feel less like the dog of the zodiac, only loyal to one woman in mind. No one was ever serious enough or enough in itself.

The appearance of the kids was a welcomed distraction but not ‘it’ yet, it was another failure. Their fights, their presence made him observing of what the zodiac was, therefore made her existence even worse and far more amplified.

When he met you, nothing changed at all at first. You were and are younger than him, just another woman, meeting him during your first year in uni in a random cafe in the city while he was 25.

It took you a bit of time to actually talk to him, to get the glances and looks to have an effect, to have him take you seriously at all beyond an 18-year-old looking at a slightly older man.

Maybe at that moment you were looking for a distraction from the workload as well, he doesn’t know really the motive behind your pursuing.

But he knew that neither of you were actually taking the situation seriously, it was all out of lust, for him to not think of Akito and the curse, for you to probably not think of family and your own problems.

Things weren't supposed to be taken seriously.

Yet, after three years, here he was, thrusting into you deep and hard, groaning into your mouth as he muffled your moans and made everything echo with the slick on your skin.

Your legs spread apart, feet planted on the futon while his hands pinned yours down. Chest against chest. Forehead against forehead.

You knew his secret.

His attraction grew even more after the discovery, you stayed and listened, you stayed and understood, you stayed and didn’t care.

You stayed.

He knew the difficulty in it though, you were a very affectionate person, for years you wanted to hold him, the man that was making your head go crazy but you couldn’t without ending up with the cute version of his dog.

Because while it was at least something, after years, and a title, it was still frustrating.

As he fucked you thoroughly, he could see the way your legs twitched every time to wrap around him and feel the most. He wanted it too, feel your legs tightly around himself, feel your arms around his back and leaving all the marks you wanted.

As he spilled into you, hands firmly on your waist, digging into your flesh as he pushed as deep as he could, he showed you the same amount of want and need. The marks perpetually being left on your skin, everyday you saw them, every time you remembered that none other would fit them as his hands would.

Panting against your chest, he was feeling your nails brushing through his hair, your lips leaving light pecks on the crown of his head.

It was an experience looking into your eyes every time. He never felt as overwhelmed as in those moments.

So much care and love that he probably shouldn’t deserve for who he truly was. He had told you things but not nearly as everything as he should have.

His head was still split into his zodiac and human, but now there was you, thinking of Akito felt like a betrayal each time, he felt shame that he still couldn’t figure out a way to break this curse and shame of feeling a pull that he would never feel with you. It was something unique with Akito, unfortunately and till then, when she called he would be with her as she wished.

While nothing physical had happened, that was the bare minimum. Just his thoughts were near enough awful for someone in a relationship, he couldn't do anything about the chain that tugged when she wished even in moments like these, where he had the only woman who truly loved him unconditionally with him, making love to her.

Much that he only snapped out of it when he felt you push him off your body. Scrambling around with the sheet covering yourself to find your clothes while he just closed his eyes with a sigh, knowing he had fucked up royally, his hand going to his face, eyes looking down with guilt and then at you, putting on his t-shirt and pants with your shoulders going up and down irregularly.

"I'm sorry." Is all he could say.

"It's not enough." You said with a crack in your voice. "I understand, okay? I do, I did for three years but I can't just ignore it every time. I know she's in your head but where am I? Are you wishing it was her? Are you just doing this out of pettiness? Are you just wasting my time? Am I wasting my time with a man that cannot stop thinking of his ex lover even when we are having sex? Did you cum because of her or me? These are all the questions that come to mind whenver this happens, I'm tired of it, Shigure." Tears were freely rolling down your cheeks, looking at him with sadness and disappointment as he just felt guilt. He couldn't even hug you.

"I know it's not enough but I'm trying. I don't want to think of her, I don't want to, I want to be with you. Why do you think we are where we are now? I want you, but I cannot stop that! I cannot break it." He said through frustration.

"And I get it! But you cannot expect me to not be hurt!" You said back to him.

The room fell in silence. When your breathing regulated, you started to walk off to the door, but he held you back by the wrist. "Where are you going?"

Snatching it back. "I will sleep with Tohru. I cannot be with you tonight."

You closed the door behind you. Shigure just fell back into bed, hunched over as he repressed the need to scream in frustration. He didn't want to admit defeat, unfortunately whenever this happens, he would lose you for three days at least.

He could not do anything, he had not found the way to break the curse yet. He was really trying, for you and for him to live a normal life. He was also sure that it will still take time for it to happen after he discovered a way.

He slept sporadically in the night, waking up every hour and hoping to find you back on the other side of the bed, but it was always empty. In the early morning he woke up and walked down to find the kids all up and about, you were with Tohru by her side wearing his long sleeved shirt and his sweatpants, with your hair wet after what he assumed was a relaxing shower whenever you felt stressed.

Tohru greeted him as gently and kindly as always, Kyo and Yuki doing the same with less enthusiasm, you stayed quiet, he only met your eyes briefly, recognizing the puffiness and the slight redness you tried to cover up, looking away as quickly as possible.

The kids knew to not ask. They ignored whatever had happened every time it happened. Breakfast happened as normally as it would've.

When the kids were gone, so were you, locked up in your shared room with him as you worked from your computer, he knew already he had to stay out of it, he stayed in his study room, writing when he could not do nothing but think to how fix things with you this time.

The first two days went exactly as he predicted, each of you staying in your own spaces, not a word said between you two. He felt anger that you got mad at something he could not control at all and frustration that he could understand it. He saw you each day with the same puffiness around your eyes.

The third was not as he imagined, after the kids went to school, he waited for you to walk up the stairs and disappear till they returned, instead you spoke to him. "We need to talk, Shigure."

Those words didn't inspire faith in him, just fear. Hearing his full name from your lips felt even worse, whatever it was, it was not something he probably wanted to hear.

You two sat in front of each other in his studio, in silence, heart racing in both your chests as you tried to find the right way to put it out. But there wasn't a right way, so you just said it.

"We should break up."

Your words felt like a bucket of ice poured onto him. His eyes widened and he spoke without even thinking. "No."

"I'm not asking, Shigure."

"I said no. I'm not breaking up with you, I don't care whatever you have to say about it, I am not ending my relationship with you." He said, anger visible in his eyes. "We are happy."

"If you think happy means having an argument every two weeks because of another woman, I doubt and am scared of your definition." You said with a chuckle.

"Are you unhappy?" He asked directly.

"I'm not happy entirely." You swallowed. "We have our happy moments, I know, everything apart from this is perfect. But I just can't overlook it every time. It hurts, Shigure, I feel it breaking me all the time physically and emtionally." You said to him. His jaw clenched.

"I'm trying, it's not something I asked for. I want to break it as much as you do and live a fucking normal life."

"And how much time is that going to take? A year? Two years? Five? Ten? Never?! I am 21, I am young and have time to start and build something with someone else, Shigure. I'm not wasting time being your second choice, I will want to get married and have children. What will happen then? Akito will have me end up like Kana and then what, Shigure?"

"You're not a second choice-"

"I am if there is another woman in your heart and mind. Because there shouldn't be. I do not have another man pop up every now and then to which I cannot say no, to which I cannot not accept advances from."

"You know, nothing ever happened. Don't start that shit with me, Y/N. You won't end up like Kana, I won't let Akito get close to you, I made sure of that for three years and Hatori knows he cannot. This conversation is over, I'm not breakiing up with you, forget it." He got up and started to walk away.

"Shigure. Shigure. Shigure!" You yelled following after him up till you were in your shared bedroom. "Stop behaving like this."

"I told you I'm done with the conversation."

"But I'm not. Can you not understand that I'm hurting and we have no way to know if this will end up in tragedy or will work out."

"Do you think I don't want that? I just want to have a fucking life, away from that, now that I'm with you. I did think of it, I want to get married and have a family with you, I just need time to figure this out and break it." Tears rolled down your cheeks at the thought of not having that.

You had fallen in the deep end with him.

"I'm not throwing away the best thing that happened to me." He said sincerely, with fear in his eyes as he looked at you. "I know things are not the best right now, but we endured it and I'm not giving up."

You sniffled, frusteation growing in you as well. "What if I want to get married right away?"

"Then we will get married, tomorrow if you want."

"First you'll have to get permission from the head of the family." You spit back at him.

"I don't care. I've been kicked out, despite being called back from time to time, I call all my choices. I'm marrying you, whether you want it or not, tomorrow or whenever you think it's right." He shrugged. Your jaw clenched.

"What if I was pregnant? What would happen then when you get called back, when she finally wants you openly because she will not want you with another? Where do we end up? Shigure, just understand, for once, things will not change." Your voice had some sincerity, his eyes narrowed at it. Looking at you up and down.

"Are you?" His voice was hoarse, in disbelief.

"I said if I was."

"And I'm asking if you actually are." He just looked at your frown, the veil of tears that was buidling up in your eyes as you shut your mouth in a thin line instead of giving him a proper answer. "You are." He said taking a step towards you, as you took a step back.

"I don't know if I'm keeping it, don't get your hopes up, I'm not raising a child in these conditions." Your words held bitterness. "You didn't even want anything when we started our relationship, you didn't want the committment, I'm sure a child was not in it as well."

"Things changed you know that. For fuck's sake we live together, how do I not want committment? With you? I just told you I'd marry you tomorrow if you want. I'm 28, a child is not going to scare me off and make me break up with you. It's just making me love you more."

Your breathing became visibly irregular from the anger or frustration he didn't know. But you had only given him a reason more to fight for you. "Gure, please." You just cried, breaking. "I am scared." Your head fell down, eyes shutting as you cried.

Despite it, he understood. He understood your fears, he understood that you were scared, you were young, pregnant and in a relationship with a man that it's chained to a woman he grew to despise, and that could not touch fully without becoming a dog.

His gaze softened, walking towards you and leaning his forehead down to the top of your head, the most intimacy he could give you, kissing your head. "I love you. I truly and incredibly am in love with you." His hand slid on top of your flat stomach. Your hand going on top of his. "I'm here with you, just hang with me a little more."

You faced him, lips colliding with yours as you locked in a burning kiss. Your hands quickly pulling down his yukata from his shoulders, pooling on his waist as your nails quickly dug into his skin as always giving him indication of your need for him.

It wasn't long after that you both found yourselves naked on the bed, his cock into you as he dug his fingers into your thighs to keep you down and yours in his shoulders in a position where it didn't trigger it.

His length going in and out of you deeply, whispering sweet things into your ears as you just moaned his name, making something snap in him, something he wasn't quite sure of.

"Mine, mine..." He repeated as changed and pounded from behind you, his hand keeping your head to the side, looking at you fucked out state as he erased any idea of breaking up from your mind.

He felt the pull, growing restless to have his attention, but he just couldn't, he was caught up, he had you, he had you forever, and with you he had a child that was enlarging his own proper family, that tied you in a way that he cannot be tied with anyone else, his dream of a normal life with you and away from everything else.

A tear fell down his cheek as you moaned out his name coming on his cock as he kept going in and out of you sloppily, reaching his own point of release as he came deep in you, spilling his seed in you once again, feeling the knot releasing and something completely breaking in him.

You both panted for air, crying silently and he fell on you, the urge in him to hug you tightly.

So he did, he hugged you.

[morverenmaybewrites]

Made New

| Synopsis: Your husband, Kento Nanami, comes back home after Shibuya. Only he isn't quite the same.

Pairing: Kento Nanami x Reader

Content Warnings: Body horror, Creature! Nanami Kento

Story:

Grief, you think, can make you do strange things.

When your brother died, you remember going around all throughout the house, opening all the doors in all the rooms, convinced that if you find the right one, you would find him there. 

Lying on his bed, perhaps. Sprawled on the couch like a cat catching a sunbeam. In the garden on his hands and knees, dirt under his fingernails as he carefully repot another plant, a new member in his already vast collection.

You had even checked the cabinets and the drawers in one last, desperate bid, to find your brother still alive. Perhaps shrunken to the size of a mouse, to be kept in the cup of your palms, in the stitched pocket of a well-loved shirt, where you could keep him safe, always.

Grief does not, however, make you hallucinate.

You open the tap. 

Water, clear and cold, gushes out onto the glass. 

Fills it. 

Spills out.

You don’t move. You barely even feel the wetness on your hand.

“Honey?” Your husband’s voice fills your ears. “The glass is filled.” 

You look down, surprised. 

Oh. 

Then you drop it, and it shatters. When you laugh, it sounds like there is broken glass in your throat. You are surprised you do not bleed. 

“Sorry,” you said. “I’ll get another one.”

Kento does not answer. 

You don’t even bother cleaning up the mess in the sink, instead filling another glass and bringing it straight to your husband.

He is, after all, thirsty.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. 

His fingers leave a red smear on yours when he reaches for it.

(Grief does not cause you to hallucinate. It does not leave physical marks.)

The blood on your fingers is a physical mark.

You close your eyes.

Grief does not have a scent. 

(Or perhaps it does: you remember how after your brother’s death, you could no longer stand the scent of roses. They had been given by the dozen during his wake.)

But you do know this: grief does not smell like blood and burning hair.

Something in your chest unclenches. Your heart perhaps, finally being able to beat again. Your lungs, finally being given permission to breathe, after having been robbed of it for so long. 

Your husband is alive. 

He’s returned. 

You would thank every God that ever existed except–

(Dear God, why did he have to return like this?)

Your husband, Kento Nanami, has come back a horror. 

You open your eyes to find your husband choking, he vomits up blood and ash, a smear of black tar on your pristine kitchen table. Acid rises in the back of your throat. It smells terrible. 

But your body remembers him, even when your mind struggles to call him familiar, and you are at his side before you even have time to think about it. The process is so familiar it is almost mundane: one hand reaching up to rub circles on his back, the other reaching up to brush back his sweat-slicked hair.

Except your hand meets empty air. Your fingers scrape against the smooth, bloodied flesh of his scalp, where all the hair had been burned off.

You flinch.

He notices.

“I’m sorry, my love,” he says quietly. “It must be hard to see me like this.” 

Your breath catches in your throat, your heart clenches in your chest. You feel as if you are watching the news of Shibuya station all over again. The realization that Kento, your Kento had rushed into that madness. 

That burning, sickening feeling in the pit of your stomach at the idea that maybe, just maybe, your husband will not be able to come back home after this one. 

But he is here, he is alive, and you are ungrateful. 

Grief wells in you like tears. It is a rock in your throat preventing you from speaking.

“I’m sorry,” you gasp. “I’m sorry. I’m so so so sorry.”

His hand–the one where the flesh hasn’t been burned off, to lay bare the muscle and bone, the one that is still whole–reaches up to squeeze yours. 

“There is nothing to apologize for,” Kento says softly. “It’s a shock. I understand.”

He had come back from Shibuya two days ago, a shambling mess of blood and muscle and bitter ruin. The left half of his body had been burned beyond recognition, an empty hole in his skull where his eye should be.

(He had told you later that it had popped like an overripe fruit in the heat, then boiled and burst into flames). 

It is an injury no human could have–should have–survived. 

And yet, he is here, he is here. In your pristine kitchen, trying and failing to drink even a glass of water. 

You should have been grateful. 

But all you can focus on is the streak of vomit on the kitchen table, ash and tar, as if his blood had boiled from the inside. 

“I’ll get you another one,” you say softly.

“I don’t think it’s necessary, my love.” 

His voice is heavy with resignation, and something in you aches. You had never heard your husband sound so defeated. Tenderness wells in you like tears, and before you can stop yourself, you bend down and kiss his unburned cheek, leaning your weight against him, so sure in the knowledge that Kento Nanami will always, always hold you up.

(And he does. For whatever else the fire consumed, it has not taken this, his firm, dependable presence against you. No matter what,your husband will always, always hold you up. The solid bedrock that you had chosen to build your life around.) 

“I’ll get you another one,” you repeat.

He smiles and his face is a bitter ruin, you can see muscles working on the left side of his face–

(For all the skin had been burned away in the fire.) 

He turns his head so he can kiss your wrist. Lingers there. where your pulse beats rapidly underneath the paper-thin skin. 

(Five years of marriage and he still makes you feel like this: like your blood is a fizzing thing, the frothing foam of a cold soda on a hot day, water beading on frosted glass. It is a wonder you do not float away.)

(Your husband is thirsty.)

“I can’t drink it,” he says softly.

(He has come back a horror.) 

“Kento…” On your lips, his name is both plea and prayer. 

It has been two days since he had come back from Shibuya. Two days since he had been able to eat or drink anything. 

You wonder if it’s because his esophagus had been burned in the flames. And you wonder if he will ever be able to taste anything again.

And, inexplicably, you think back to your wedding day, and how he had kissed you so tenderly that your makeup did not even smear on his lips. 

(And how, later that night, he had told you that you were the most delicious thing he had ever tasted.) 

(Delicious, delicious, delicious.) 

“You have to eat something,” you murmur softly. 

He closes his eyes. 

(Eye. The other one had been burned in the fire. Burned and popped like overripe fruit.)  

When he opens them again, he refuses to speak. Instead, he stares at the fading kiss mark on your neck, just above your pulse point. 

(Had it really been three days since the two of you laughed about it over breakfast?) 

Despite his silence, there remains a single immutable fact: your husband is starving. 

His single remaining eye is haunted as he looks at you choke down your food–for he insists that you shouldn’t neglect your health when taking care of him. You saw the way his throat move, the Adam’s apple bobbing as if swallowing an invisible meal.

(Your husband is starving.)

You had tried, heaven knows you tried. First with all of his favorite meals: bread from his favorite bakery, so soft and freshly-baked that the scent rises through the packaging, then prepackaged meals from the convenience store, then soup, so thinned that it held only the ghost of flavor. 

And now, finally, in one last desperate bid, a glass of water.

And even that, his body rejects. 

(Your husband is starving.) 

“Kento, you have to take something,” you insist.

“I know.” 

“It’s been two days.”

“I know.” 

“Isn’t there anything you want? Anything at all?” you ask desperately. “Please, baby, whatever it is, I’ll go get it.”

He closes his eyes.

(Eye.) 

(You can hear the lie before he says it: it grates at him, so sharp that you are surprised that it does not make his throat bleed.) 

“No,” he breathes. 

(On his lips, the word is both like plea and prayer.) 

There is something he wants, but he refuses to say it. Your heart squeezes  

The word grates at him, a lie so sharp you’re surprised that it does not make his throat bleed. 

“No.”

“Please,” you whisper. “Please.”

(You are losing him.)

(Your husband has come back to Shibuya. And yet he will die in your house, in your arms, because he is starving.)

When he opens his eye again, he stares at you but does not speak. 

Kento stares at the fading kiss mark on your neck, where just three days ago, he had pressed his lips against your skin and promised to come back safe.

He does not speak–

(And yet somehow you know. One cannot love him the way you have and not learn how to read his silences. You know him better than you know yourself.) 

Somehow, you know.

He is not staring at the mark on your neck.

Instead, he is staring at what is underneath it: the wild, restless beat of blood underneath your skin. He is staring at your pulse. 

You are sure of this knowledge, just as sure as you are in the fact that your husband is starving and that he will die–

(in your home, in your arms)

–if he does not have something to eat or to drink. 

And that, no matter how much he needs it, he will not ask for this.

(And you are sure, too, that if it had been you who was starving, he will give it to you without hesitation. He will bleed out every last drop.) 

You stand. 

The motion startles him.

“My love–” Kento says, but you shake your head.

Walk to the sink, where shards of the broken glass still lay. You can hear the scrape of his chair against the floor as he stands.

“That’s dangerous, let me do it–” 

But you barely hear him, there is a ringing in your ears that muffles his voice. It is as if the entire world is underwater. The glass is so sharp that it doesn’t even hurt as it splits your skin, clean through the meat of your palm. 

(He had told you that you were the most delicious thing he had ever tasted.) 

The blood that runs down your wrists is so hot that you are surprised it does not set you alight. When you turn back to Kento, he is frozen in place, his single remaining eye is focused on you. The red stream running from the split in your palm. 

You wonder if it had been the same color of your lipstick the way you were red

(He had been so gentle when he had kissed you that it did not even smear.)

You lift your palm.

“Please,” you said softly. “For me.” 

His hand is trembling when he reaches for you–

(How strange, you think, feeling strangely detached. You had never seen your husband tremble before.)

And Kento Nanami lifts your palm to his hand–

And he drinks.

Your husband has come back a horror. And yet, as he drinks, you can see the burned flesh knitting itself, new skin growing over muscle. Your husband, come back from the dead to return to you. 

Finally made new. 

[shapard]

Thorned 🥀

Human!Lucifer x fem!reader

Zombie Apocalypse Au

Writing the first words of a story really is a pain in the ass sometimes.

mention of SA and gore (English is not my first Language so errors ahead!)

And here I am to feed y'all another Lucifer x reader!!

In the Closet

Chapter 1 > Chapter 2

It should’ve been a normal school day in your boring life. You are a silent nerd student in college just trying to survive with all the college bills. 

Your parents aren't very supportive nor did they care about you. So, you moved out of your parents house trying to make something out of yourself.

And let's just say your mother wasn't pleased with the news and declined all your calls.

Not even your father bothers to get in contact with you. When you do get lucky he just shrugs you off and says he is busy.

Clearly a complete lie.

Your head laid on the desk not caring what the Professor is saying right now. 

Your life is pretty boring. No romance, no drama and no friends. Not that you mind. You're here for a good education rather than a tragic love story.

Your mind was drifting somewhere else and thinking about the rent you must pay. It was a struggle you wished you don’t have to face. 

Beside college you worked in two other part time jobs which drained you completely out. No private time or going out.

High school was the only time where you went out partying and met your ex-boyfriend. He was toxic and very self-centered.

A loud scream caught your attention. Your eyes travelled down towards the tumult that started outside. 

The Pick me girl from the upper class was screaming and pressing her hand tight on her mouth. Your eyebrows raised in question, even though she is the pick me girl she never reacted this terrified? 

There was screaming, gasping and sound of metal meating flesh.

Interested you watched the scenery as the girl got jumped by a guy. Shocked you saw how that guy, or rather that thing, ate her face bit by bit. Your heart felt like sliding down to your stomach, you wanted to puke. 

Her new boyfriend swung a baseball bat onto the monster. The bloody tone that played when blood started to burst out was disgusting.

It made you sick to the stomach.

This is different than any movie or series you watched. This is real. No actor playing a role and no CGI.

Soon enough alarm sirens rang through the town and in the college. You tried to keep a cool outside but the panic inside you was immense. The whole classroom was screaming and some even had panic attacks. 

This type of reaction wasn’t helping at all.

In your whole life of existence, you’ve never imagined that this could be really happening. 

A Zombie Apocalypse. 

You’ve seen it in movies and Series but never have you imagined that it really would happen.

The Professor closed the door and told you all to wait till the police comes and handle the little situation. But help never came.

You pulled out your half-charged phone hoping that the news would report that the government can handle this. All you saw was that the Police departments were under attack, and almost no one survived. 

The whole city was on lockdown. And you were hiding in your classroom with your classmates. 

The professor never came back. He probably died in the chaos at the own hands from his students who are just trying to protect themselves. or by Zombies. 

Now the classroom seems like a save place but for days, weeks maybe even years (when you’re still alive) you knew that escaping the college is the safest idea. 

Searching in the classroom for any weapon that could help you found a dissecting knife. You took it fast into your position before anyone can take it from you.

The classroom was quiet, too quiet. Like the calm before the storm. 

You must find a better weapon than the small dissecting knife that’s used for surgeries or inspections on dead animals. 

Most likely you wouldn’t find a weapon here in the classroom. 

Your eyes shifted towards the door that has been locked, in hope none of those creatures would come here. It was a fake feeling of safety. 

Everyone knows what a zombie is. But these are different. The way they move, the way they ate and who knows how they are created? Maybe a bite isn’t the only thing that transforms someone into a zombie.

A loud crashing sound made you snap out of your thoughts, and you looked at one of your classmates attacking one of your ex-friends. 

Everyone watched in horror and didn’t knew what to do for themselves. The screams pierced your ear and the other didn't move an inch.

Without wasting time, you ran to the locked door and jumped with full force in the hard wood door. You have to escape and watching a slaughter isn’t the way how you’re going to die.

The pain from the harsh compact against the door didn’t stop you. You will not give up and most likely will not die in here. 

Your classmates were watching how you were trying to open an escape but didn’t try to help you.

They were afraid that if they move that the zombie attack. 

Your friend laid there in full display; half of the face is eaten away by the monstress being. 

Your bone cracked slightly, you hissed in pain but continued. The adrenaline was pushing you to things you never thought you'd do. The pain only fueled more Adrenaline into your system.

Your heart raced a mile per minute. Your body heated up and you swung your body every time harsher against the wood surface.

Your skin, flesh and bone begged for a break, but you pushed your body against your limits. The door whined in protest as you lunged your body another time against it. 

The door burst open, and the blood covered college hall came in your view.

You stumbled forward when your other classmates ran against you, the others almost walked all over you. 

Your hands covered your body hoping it'll protect you from getting stepped over.

Assholes. 

You looked up from the floor, your breath hitched as you looked at your dead Professor. In the middle of the floor there laid your professor in a pool of blood.

Karma hit the guy that rammed against you in full force. Your professor raised and lunged at the defenseless boy.

His screams were unbearable to hear. The anxiety in your body only grows every second.

You wanted it all to stop.

You sat in the middle of the chaos, your skirt you chose to wear today was soaked completely with blood. 

You watched helplessly how your class clown got eaten in the most disgusting way. 

The zombie lunged towards his body as if he searched something, something that he misses. But what could that be? 

The zombie clawed with his short nails into the skin ripping the e guys fully open. Your body trembled under the disgusting sight.

As the professor seemed to not find what he was looking for, his body shifted to your direction. 

His arms stretched out wanting to grab you, and a sound escaped him, a terrifying one. 

Your body didn’t move as panic started to settle in, you’re the next to die. Tears started to burn their way in your eyes.  

You are terrified.

His other arm was ripped off and he was still bleeding. But the zombie professor couldn't care less. A lifeless body who was searching for something desperate.

A bloody sight you wanted to look away from but couldn’t.

A hand clasped around yours and pulled you up on your feet. You were being dragged across the college, you stumbled a couple of times but never fell.

Your gaze never left your professor though as you ran through the red painted halls. As he wasn’t in your sight anymore you looked at your savior just to see your ex-boyfriend.

Striker.

“Are you okay sweetie?” His deep voice was irritating for you and brought flashbacks from your relationship.

He tried in these couple days to get back to you even though he cheated on you. 

You forgot something in his house and just wanted to get it back. It was a short visit so you didn't tell him that you're going to pay a visit.

That’s when you saw Striker pounding into one of your friends Nova.

The betrayal was hurtful, you trusted her with all your heart and that stung more than some guy. Your heart ached from the loss of your boyfriend and your friend.

Striker only said the usual line: This is not what it looks like. Seriously these men need to have better excuses than this.

You pulled your hands out of his. “Fucking asshole, keep your disgusting question to yourself.” Striker rolled his eyes and tried to take your hand again, but you dodged his attempt.

“You got quite rude stallion. Remember when you used to get all cuddled up with me and begged me to dick you down.” He winked at you, and you rolled your eyes. 

A cold shiver went down your spine at his pervert comment. “You’re disgusting.” Striker hummed at your respond and looked you up and down.

“Only for you baby.” He purred and stroked your cheek. You slapped his hand out of your face and walked towards the exit of the college.

He didn't change a bit.

You’d rather find a way to survive than staying any longer with your ex. Ignoring striker is the best option right now. 

As you walked outside of the gates from the college grounds that was covered in corpses just to be met with way more outside. The sun was burning down on you making you sweat in anxious and the sudden heat.

A shiny object met your eye, it was a small butterfly knife. You sprinted towards it and danced in victory.

fuck yes! “Why are you dancing?” You cursed under your breath, “I thought you were already dead.” Striker chuckled and laid his hand on your shoulder. “You’re so mean baby~” He whispered in your ear. You wanted to gag at the nickname.

Since when was he behind you anyways? 

“I know a place where we can stay.” Finally, something helpful from striker. “Yeah? Where?” Your positive voice brought a grin up to striker’s face. “Just follow me hottie.” His grin only raises a suspicion, but nonetheless it was safer with him than with these monsters.

As you followed behind striker the anxiety in you only grew and your suspicion was high. You two were now in the middle of nowhere in some kind of forest. 

A large one at that. 

Your pace started to slow down a bit and you regret your past decision to follow your ex-boyfriend in some lonely woods. 

It’s not uncommon that exes kill their ex-partners. And in a zombie apocalypse no one would disagree with being a cannibal if it means to survive.

Humans were always self-centered. Even if some are generous. In the matter of living or dying every human is on their own and always just see themselves. Even you would hesitate when it comes to sacrifice yourself for a stranger.

Striker stopped and you walked right into his back, and you snapped out of your deep thoughts. 

You Apologized and asked striker, why he stopped so sudden. “You play all brave and mighty but here you are quivering in fear.” You didn’t even realize that you started to shake in fear.

Striker spun around and pulled out a rather beautiful knife, “Now listen little bitch. Either you’re going to do what I say, or we can do it in the more fun way.” His tongue ran across the silver, and he laughed in pleasure. 

You knew this was a bad idea. “What do you want striker?” 

Stand tall, stand tall Y/n. 

“I want you stallion.” His hand went out to grab your hair throwing you onto the grass ground. Confused you looked around and saw the butterfly knife laying peacefully in the green. It must’ve fallen out of your hand as Striker forced you to the ground. 

“You really thought you could break up with ME?!” His hand collides with your shoulder, and he pressed down hard.

You bit on your tongue to stop the groan of pain. The damage of the door breaking was still fresh and introduced itself. 

“Oh, babe you messed with the wrong one.” His knife ran across your cheek drawing red. His tongue ran across the new wound. 

Your hand searched for the weapon but it was too far away from you.

“Let me go Striker” It was like you’re talking to a wall; he pushes himself down on you. His erected member was pressed onto your thigh, and it was disgusting.

You really hoped that his dick wouldn’t be anywhere near you.You wanted to puke into his face right now.

“You’re so hot stallion. So pretty and perfect for me.” You spat in strikers face. Striker growled in anger, but you don’t regret it even a bit. And it only angered Striker even more.

“Fucking cunt!” He shouted out loud and you just smirked bitter. But when Striker started to smile you frown. What has he planned? His hand travelled down onto his belt, and you heard it buckle.

Oh no.

He laughed at you terrified face. Now he hit your nerve. Striker was about to pull his trouser down but got interrupted.

“That’s not how you treat a Lady, y’know.” Striker stopped as he heard another voice that wasn’t yours and you sigh in relief. 

Striker closed his belt back and let you go. Your feet pushed you away to the next tree and your eyes travelled to Striker towards your savior. 

He had a large smirk onto his pearl white face, he had a weird sense of fashion. A white cylinder with a small snake on it was on his head. He was kind of short for a Man. 

His eyes were brownish but a scarlet red shine through them, it fits perfect on him. Beautiful Man, beautiful eyes. You could watch hours in those eyes, it was like they were telling their own story. How they flicker and shimmer when the sun hits the iris was so beautiful.

“Who the fuck are you?!” Striker hissed, a reminder that he was still very near you. “Lucifer, not so a pleasure to meet you.” His smirk widens as Striker tried to attack him. 

Yep, tried. 

Lucifer dodged him perfectly and kicked with his heel right in the back from Striker. Striker hissed in pain and rolled on the floor. “You better leave and never come back to her, or you’ll regret it.” Lucifer voice was filled with Venom as he looked down at Striker. 

His eyes shrunk in a snake like eye, scary but sexy at the same time. With a whimper Striker ran far away from Lucifer. 

Fucking pussy.

Lucifer sighs and turned around to you. His hand stretched out for you to take it and you gladly accept. “Thank you for saving me.” Your thanking warmed his heart, “No Problem, it was the least I could do.” 

You felt save around the new stranger. Maybe it was again the wrong decision to just trust a random handsome guy but how can you not.

“Lucifer, right?” Lucifer nodded with his head. “The one and only, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” Lucifer bowed his hat firmly in his hands and you giggle at his antics. “And who are you darling?” He readjusted his hat and smiled as you Introduce yourself.

“I think we both could use some help and company in this mess.” Lucifers voice was almost like a warm sun breeze. Complete contrast than strikers. “It all happened out of nothing. First the zombies and then this.” You didn’t want to cry but at that moment you felt weak. 

Your body betrayed you and you just cried in front of your new friend you could say.

_____

After a while you two found a cabin in the middle of nowhere. It seems to be a lost place, and no one lives in it. You and Lucifer planned to stay in the cabin for a while. 

Life in the cabin was peaceful. Lucifer was the greatest room mate you could’ve Imagined. He was supportive and helped around the household. A man that women can only dream about. 

Today Lucifer was out looking for any food he could find meanwhile you built up a fence. 

When Lucifer came back you couldn’t help yourself better than to watch. 

His shirt was draped over his shoulder and his god given abs and waist were showing. You gulped hard as you watch how the sweat pearls pearled down from his chest. 

His body was more than just perfection, you almost felt jealous because of that waist of his. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.” He winked at you, and you only rolled your eyes which earns you a chuckle. 

“You’re so mean kitty.” You huffed and gave him a side eye, “I’d stop if you wouldn’t be so annoying.” Your hand stretched out to get another nail. You hissed as the nail pierced through your fingertips. Lucifer laughed at your clumsiness. “This is already the fifth time kitty cat. Or should I say sleepy beauty.” You rolled your eyes at him. Your heart skipped a beat at his newfound nickname for you. 

“Let’s get you patched up.” 

A/n: FINALLY I CAN SHARE THIS. So, First thoughts?

💫

@i-have-no-life-charlie @sirenetheblogger @concentratedconcrete @ylovei

If you want to be added please comment on the post I linked below under Taglist.

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[skzstoryvault]

Let Me Love You (Felix, spicy and angsty)

Just a little something I wrote while sick in bed. Story features Felix and afab reader The angst comes from reader's own bitter expectations One-shot If this is not yout thing, please scroll away. If you're underage, this is definitely not for you. Please scroll away. ***

“Wow you shouldn’t have.” Felix says, the moment he sees the cake on your kitchen table. His hands are already snaking around your waist, pulling you close. “I’ve had sugar flung my way since the day began. I was hoping for some other kind of sweet-” He interrupts himself, leaning down to suck a gentle nibble into the skin of your neck. “-treat from you.” 

You still wonder what he sees in you or when he’s going to dump you, replace you with a newer, more attractive model. He is so loved, so powerful in that way; he can have anyone. He would only need to say one word and even someone like Hyunjin would crawl on his knees before him. But Felix keeps seeking you out. Coming to your house at night, sometimes staying the whole weekend. Fixing minor things, helping you, cooking for you. Maybe it’s the fantasy for him. Of being an ordinary man, not an idol. A man, not an androgynous angel of desire or the keeper of everyone’s affections. But the fantasy only has power because it’s fleeting. No man dreams of having less power. 

When his lips find yours, his Romand Juicy Glasting Tint smears and transfers to your mouth. He always tastes clean, neutral, like taking a deep breath outside in the summer rain. It makes you doubt he’s really human. But he kisses like a god, and the gods of legends do have a habit of coming down as rain or beautiful animals to seduce unsuspecting ingenues. That tracks perfectly, the more you think of it - except you never get to, whenever Felix is around you can’t string two thoughts together. 

When you’re alone again and clarity strikes, you feel vulnerable and under siege. But when he’s with you, the spell he weaves is potent and thick like the 3D reality.

When you’re with him, your only reason for existing is to receive his love, in whatever flavour he deems you deserving of that day. It’s like he gauges his power by the way you fall apart beneath him, by how strong and uncontrollable the shivers of your body get, by how lost and inhuman your sounds of pleasure and abandon get. 

Before he set his eyes on you, you were certain you were over dick and the headaches it came with from the men attached to it. But Felix is not other men, and his pull on you is irresistible precisely because it is unique in its manifestation. Now, your small items of clothing fall away as though he wills them out of existence and he takes you in as many ways as it takes him to feel satisfied with your offerings. He knows the exact ways to curl his fingers to bring you to fountain-like, gushing orgasms that alter the cadence of your heartbeats. He measures how gone you are with his lips on your ankle, on a pulse point he can feel there, beating against his tongue. He can see it in the spasms of your leg and ab muscles, in the way your toes curl, beyond your conscious control. 

“I need you, baby. I need you to be good and take it, alright my sweetest?” He whispers in his dark, low as the pits of hell voice. Even at just that, your core tightens like the string on a bow, taut and ready and quivering with tension but not wanting to snap yet. He commands your body effortlessly with you as a mere passenger in it. 

You lose track of time and the world around you when his plump lips close around your straining clit. His fingers spread and smooth out the flesh around, exposing every idle nerve ending to his touches. It’s so mind-blowingly good, he eats you out like he really means to leave no crumbs, and you black out and come back several times before he deems you ready. Your bones have softened to mere cartilage, the contours of solid shapes only. By the time he removes his jeans and underwear and crawls between your open legs, he can plaster himself against you so closely you can’t tell where you end and where he starts. Tears run down your cheeks when he enters you, sealing you perfectly shut around him; the tears are not of pain, but overwhelm at the simple, yet unbearably intense pleasure of being perfectly filled, made whole for a fleeting, perfect moment. He doesn’t even need to prop himself up. His hands seek out yours and your fingers entwine on either side of your head. Even if he doesn’t move at all, you’ll still pass out from how unbearably flawless this feeling is; how connected he makes you feel - as though thoughts and feelings can truly pass between you unrestrained. 

He does move, wanting to witness your ruin and know that it is by his doing, over and over until your world is reduced to only him and your lips can only say his name. How does the song go? All gods bleed. All gods die. All gods will pay. You could love him unrestrainedly. You could feel like a girlfriend to him, a deserving, equal mate if he were not an idol. If the image of him that millions around the world see and worship were any less effective. You don’t want to be by-catch in the net of his allure. A footnote in a memoir written by a ghostwriter for him. So you remain a willing prisoner of this nightmare reality where he is the monster coming to feed off of whatever sweetness draws him to you for this quick moment in time. 

It never crosses your mind that the only one dishonest here is you; the only one cheating the other out of the joy of the here and now is also you. And in the process, you rob yourself of the very future you burn for. But Felix’s sweet tooth for you might just be stronger than your bitterness. 

[jvliaxox]

My favourite quotes from the Neapolitan novels

To cause pain was a disease.

... there are no gestures, words, or signs that do not contain the sum of all the crimes that human beings have committed and commit.

'What does "a city without love" mean to you?' 'A people deprived of happiness.'

I thought of the neighbourhood as a whirlpool from which any attempt to escape was an illusion.

'For your whole life you love people and you never really know who they are.'

'Life without seeing and without speaking, without speaking and listening, life without a covering, life without a container, is shapeless.'

They dived in without hesitation, Lila with a long cry of joy. They were happy, full of their own romance, they had the energy of those who successfully seize what they desire, no matter the cost.

... the beauty of things is a trick, the sky is the throne of fear; I'm alive, now, here, then steps from the water, and it is not at all beautiful, it's terrifying; along with this beach, the sea, the swarm of animal forms. I am part of the universal terror; at this moment I'm the infinitesimal particle through which the fear of every thing becomes conscious of itself.

It was as if she wanted to take the power away from even the realistic possibility of violent death by reducing it to words, to a form that could be controlled.

... it's not the neighbourhood that's sick, it's not Naples, it's the entire earth, it's the universe, or universes. And shrewdness means hiding and hiding from oneself the true state of things.

... every choice has its history, so many moments of our existence are shoved into a corner, waiting for an outlet, and in the end the outlet arrives.

The mind, ah yes, the evil is there; it's the mind's discontent that causes the body to get sick.

While men devote themselves to undertakings in space, life for women on this planet has yet to begin.

The new living flesh was replicating the old in a game, we were a chain of shadows who had always been on the stage with the same burden of love, hatred, desire, and violence.

How much I had lost by leaving, believing I was destined for who knows what life.

... we struggled to understand what a woman was. Our every move or thought or conversation or dream, once analysed in depth, seemed not to belong to us.

Eve can't, doesn't know how, doesn't have the material to be Eve outside of Adam. Her evil and her good are the evil and good according to Adam. Eve is Adam as a woman. And the divine work was so successful that she herself, in herself, doesn't know what she is, she has pliable features, she doesn't possess her own language, she doesn't have a spirit or a logic of her own, she loses her shape easily.

Oh God, how out of order everything was: they, I, the world around us: a truce was only possible by believing lies.

In what disorder we lived, how many fragments of ourselves were scattered, as if to live were to explode into splinters.

Should I remain this shadow -- my mother, all our female ancestors -- or should I let her go?

So what resurrection? It was only cosmetic, a powder of modernity applied randomly, and boastfully, to the corrupt face of the city. It happened like that every time. The scam of rebirth raised hope and then shattered them, became crusts upon ancient crusts.

Where is it written that lives should have meaning?

... evil took unpredictable pathways. You cover it over with churches, convents, books... and the evil breaks through the floor and emerges when you don't expect it.

Every intense relationship between human beings is full of traps, and if you want to endure you have to learn to avoid them.

... I want to leave nothing, my favourite key is the one that deletes.

I am still alive -- I thought -- and yet I can't feel any different from that big body lying lifeless in that sordid place, in that sordid way.

Unlike stories, real life, when it has passed, inclines towards obscurity, not clarity. I thought: now that Lila has let herself be seen so plainly, I must resign myself to not seeing her anymore.

[ghostinthegallery]

So a thing I’ve noticed about necron books…

I do not think it is controversial to say that Robert Rath and Nate Crowley really defined how a lot of us (especially me) view necrons in modern 40k lore. They did so much heavy lifting to take the faction that was literally just Terminator ripoff (aka Tyranids but worse) and make them into characters.

But they did it in such different and almost contradictory ways. And I think it boils down to this:

Rath's necrons are gods who were once mortal. Crowley's necrons are mortals forced to become gods.

(disclaimer: I don't think one author is "more correct" or whatever. Different characters experience the universe in different ways, embrace a little subjectivity does objective truth even exist?)

Let's start with Crowley. In both Severed and Twice Dead King, memories and bodies are defining features of their narratives. Oltyx can and does revisit his memories at will (not without consequence get your pins out and put em in). He is haunted by disphorakh, this feeling that he should have an organic body but does not and that this disconnect is actually killing him. The flayed ones' whole existence is steeped (literally) in flesh and blood and disphoria.

On the slightly less extreme end, in Severed Obyron remembers the flesh times vividly: the battles, the people, who and what he's lost. They are fighting the manifestation of what Obyron fears becoming: a mindless machine, “severed” from his past experiences. And the ultimate stakes in a Crowley book? Loss of memory. Loss of self. Obyron and Oltyx pay this price throughout their stories, and it eats away at them. Necrodermis makes their physical selves immortal, but their minds? Just as mortal as ever. If not even more so. The people they are were formed in flesh times, and all immortality does is wear away at them as they desperately try to cope.

Robert Rath's necrons? Not so much. Sure, Trazyn and Orikan angst about their loss of memory, but the memories of flesh for them are so distant and unreliable that they could not build their personalities around them even if they wanted to. Trazyn's link to the past is external: objects he has collected. Orikan... what memories he has of his past are fuzzy and in some cases straight up manipulated. That's distressing, but not enough to totally rock his sense of self. That’s a stark contrast to how Crowley’s necrons operate.

We all know the iconic Old Man Fight from Infinite and the Divine. Where Rath describes Trazyn and Orikan fighting and points out how stupid it would be back in the flesh times? Just two nerds hitting each other with canes. Well the flip side of that is that what is actually happening is NOT two nerds slapping each other but two immortals with incomprehensible power battling on a scale mortals cannot process.

Rath’s necrons operate on scales mortals barely understand. Oh, the Greek gods destroyed one city? Troy took em ten years? Trazyn and Orikan wiped out a planet's population by accident. And they are both so divorced from mortality that they don't care. Sheesh, Trazyn is so alienated from the idea of a body that in War in the Museum he informs a woman that he’s filled her up with her own dead sisters organs and I legit believe he thought this would make her feel better.

I adore both approaches! The differences in character and perspective, how they relate to the world and themselves. Yes, it creates contradictions in the lore (like why doesn’t Trazyn lose his shit knowing people like Zahndrekh or Oltyx just…remember necrontyr society perfectly clearly) but I aggressively do not care. I love the varying explorations or power, the nature of the self, the truth that none of these people have survived immortality “in tact.” Those are exactly the things that make necrons my favorite 40k faction. Hell, one of my favorite sci if aliens ever. Because both approaches are haunting and hilarious and poignant and so damn cool.

So…uh…thanks guys. Yeah.

[dumbassaimee]

Hi 𝓕𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝓼, here’s another one of these silly stories

summary: you’re invited to a party, as you roamed around you found James cowboy hat, putting it on for almost the whole night, little did you know, that has a little meaning behind it. That apparently you did not know of, if you wore a cowboys hat it indicates your attraction to them.

Warnings: cussing, smut, drinking and mentions of smoke.

————————————————————————

It was a random Friday night with the same cycle of partying, as I sat there on the booth I could see people drinking, couples rubbing against each other, with the stench of alcohol and smoke.

James was talking to me earlier but left to go get more beer for himself, what a shock. Although he left his precious white cowboy hat, feeling bored out of my mind I decided to put it on.

As the night went on I did talk to some people here and there, drank, and danced, though I did feel many eyes looking straight at me, it made me feel kinda insecure like if there was something wrong of me.

It wasn’t quite dirty glares but more of skeptical looks.

Whatever it was I had to check it out myself, I made my way through the hallway of this pub finding a mirror besides the two bathrooms, my eyebrows furrowed as I studied my face.

My mind was a bit fuzzy that’s until I heard James behind me “why are you wearin’ my hat?”

“I dunno I got bored” I muttered not sure what the big deal was anyway.

“Right don’t act all innocent” he chuckled, “I’m not!” I defend before continuing “seriously what’s wrong with it?”

“You wearing it, is what’s wrong” he crossed his arms against his chest looking down at me like if I was a child getting in trouble.

“Oh how helpful” I shot back sarcastically, “if you’re just going to start pointing something out at least tell me the reason” I scoffed.

“Wearing the cowboys hat dumbass..

Ring any bells??” I just stared at him confused out of my mind, I’m actually getting tired of this nonsense, thankfully he caught up that I indeed did not know shit.

“God…wearing my hat means you’re attracted to me among other things” he trailed off.

“What other ‘things’?” I turned my body to face him, he just chuckled “like riding the cowboy for example.”

As I heard those words coming out of his mouth I couldn’t believe it; has people known that this is James hat? This has to be the most embarrassing thing I’ve gone through.

“Are you serious?” I asked not believing I wasn’t aware of that rule.

“Clear as the sky” he smirked at me, “so, wanna play by the rules? Because I can show you a great time.”

“Do I have another choice?” My eyes flickered up to his blue ones before he answered “Nope.”

“Great..” I mumbled under my breath, looking down trying to contemplate this but he grabbed my chin making me look back up at him. “It’s a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ sweetheart.” There it is, that pet name that gives me those stupid butterflies.

“Yes..?” I felt unsure but he took the opportunity anyway, grabbing my hand and taking me to some part of the pub I didn’t know existed, it was a small room, there was a sleek black leather couch, the only lights being blue colored, there was a zebra pattern carpet in the middle which I found incredibly cheesy.

He brought me up to the couch, sitting me down onto his lap as he caressed my sides carefully, like if he were to be a piece of art.

“You should lose these tight jeans” he murmured, obeying I slowly got off his lap, unbuttoning the front of my jeans and slowly sliding them off, revealing the black lacy panties.

He darted his tongue out to lick his bottom lip, as I finally got them off he reached out grabbing my hips and sitting me back down.

He cupped my face “you look so hot right now” he chuckled, before I knew it we both leaned in, connecting our lips together into a kiss that soon turned passionate, his other free hand trailed down to caress my upper thigh, squeezing the flesh gently.

He pulled away and admittedly started to attack my neck with sloppy kisses, gentle bites here and there, as for his hand it rested on my hip but his thumb reached down, moving it in small circles against my clothed clit.

“James..” I breathed out, he just added more pressure making sure I felt everything, making me whimper softly.

“hmm..” he hummed in approval before pulling away completely, taking the hat off my head and hooking his fingers on my shirt and taking it off for me, “I’m gonna take these off yeah?” I nodded giving him permission.

He tugged on my bra taking it off revealing my breasts to him, he groaned “fuck you’re gorgeous” I felt him hardening under me.

“James please” I whined, I needed this man I didn’t care how desperate I sounded right now.

“Patience sweetheart” grabbing the waistband of my panties, wrapping an arm around my waist to pull me up enough to pull them off of me.

Once those were off I’m completely bare the only piece of clothing being his cowboy hat, slowly running his finger along my slick folds.

“Your so god damn wet.” He murmured. “gonna get you ready for me, okay baby?”

Before I could react or say anything I felt two finger enter my hot cunt, gasping at the feeling my walls clenching around his fingers perfectly.

“Shit you’re tight” he sighed and started to plunge his fingers, curling them hitting every spot he finds.

I started to squirm getting overwhelmed by how good his fingers felt inside of me, “stay still” he scoffed fastening his pace just slightly.

My hands went to his shoulders, nails digging onto his shirt as his fingers work on my pussy, letting dirty little noises fall out of my lips.

He started to be a bit more rough, getting faster as he kept his eyes on mine keeping eye contact.

As I was about to reach my orgasm he pulled his fingers out, I whined at the lost of contact of his delicious fingers.

He glanced at his fingers seeing them coated in my juices then bringing them onto his mouth licking them clean, “taste so good” he grunted.

“I need you to ride me, can you do that angel?” I nodded biting my lip lightly. He then started to unbuckle his belt and unzip his jeans just enough to pull his painfully hard dick.

And he was big, made me feel nervous and excited at the same time.

He pumped his cock at least three times before grabbing my hips to make me hover over him, I felt him align his tip against my entrance teasing by rubbing on it a few times, rubbing his pre-cum all over my folds.

Slowly I started to sink down, his length stretching me out making me wince. “You okay?” James Being quick to ask, I nodded “yeah..” being determined to take him all I kept going ignoring the pain until I sat all the way down.

I heard him groan and grip my hips tighter, I stayed in place until I got used to his size, I rolled my hips biting my lip at the feeling.

Holding onto his shoulders still I started to move up and down, sounds of pleasure leaving the both of us, his hand started to help me move at a rhythmic pace.

His length sliding in an out of my wet cunt perfectly, my head tilting back as I kept riding off the pleasure.

“Fuck-..you feel so good” he groaned.

“James please..” I whimpered out, one of his hands trailing over my ass giving me a harsh smack, I moaned at the feeling it was so overwhelming.

“..Mm so close” I gasped, “yeah? Gonna cum for me darlin’?” He started to thrust his hips upward making him go even deeper, my mouth agape as I let him take complete control.

My nails digging onto his shoulders, it’ll definitely leave marks.

“Come on baby” he cooed trying to get me to my high.

Finally I let out a scream of ecstasy, coating his dick.

He kept going, gripping my hips and setting me down all the way as I felt his cum painting my walls.

“Fuck..you did so good for me” he groaned taking a few strands out of my face, I panted softly and smiled tiredly.

We stayed like that for a few seconds before he kissed me sweetly.

[thegnomelord]

was thinking about drawing Ifrit from "Hell has a basement floor" and had some headcanons on his appearance.

on one hand i was thinking to make him tall and burly, built big to store all the mana and power he has, make him built like a volcano.

on the other.... what if and hear me out.... Ifrit.... skinny. tall and gangly, long limbs, underfed, outlines of bones poking out from underneath the skin, sunken eyes for that extra unsettling factor. besides magic does have a cost. maybe it's just your body that needs to be exchanged.

now i thought of the second hc because tall and skinny isn't exactly associated with the kind of brute force Ifrit has but he's still strong even if his lifestyle is gonna put him in an early grave. now imagine when he's finally part of tf 141 they notice that he's not very well in the food and weight department for his height and the amount of energy he spends so... they start feeding him (especially Price and Soap because protect and care hoard/pack)......

i've also been getting into the trope where characters gain weight as a sign of health and living a better life. so yeah tell me what you think

and maybe share your hcs on Ifrits appearance because i don't want to butcher your creation on accident

Okay 1: you have no idea how happy it makes me when I hear ppl want to draw fan art of my stuff :DD, internally I'm like that dog video where the dogs happily tapping his paws lol bc he can't contain his excitement lol. And also yeah, I'm a huge sucker for the trope and your little idea with Price amd Soap tickles my brain.

And 2: man you did some mind reading bc your hcs are actually very close to what I've made up for the lore of the whole au. While I want to overall leave Ifrit's body type ambiguous to give readers some space to imagine themselves in Ifrit's place, Ifrit is 100% underweight with more of a volleyball/basketball player type build, as mages focus on stamina and endurance rather than raw strength bc that can be augmented with magic. Also has stretch marks because their weight fluctuates a lot lol

Okay lore spoilers so if y'all want to find out through the story skip this-

Okay so— magic is increadibly taxing on the body, not just by eating away flesh and creating mage marks as a Mage's power grows, but just by simply existing inside the body magic stresses the body. Because fundamentally magic is toxic to humans, and even mages who have the needed adaptations to utilise magic are no better than our ancestors when they were first learning to stand on two legs.

The best metaphor I have for magic is chemo drugs. They're used to kill a cancer but they also damage healthy cells. Magic, similarly, damages the body by existing inside it, but also is used by mages to heal the damage as soon as it happens. This uses a lot of calories and also why mages have really irregular weights, losing 10kg in a week isn't an uncommon thing.

Someone possessing even half of Ifrit's capabilities would need to eat 3x that of a regular human of the same height and weight. Mages are literally Shaggy from Scooby Doo lol. And that's only to get the bare minimum their body needs, caloric need becomes much bigger if they're active like Ifrit is. So you'll find that many mages, but especially military ones, are underweight and need to regularly get Iv fluids and nutrients to help their body recover from using magic. They also need to eat a lot of highly caloric food, which isn't easy when one of the most common side effects of magic use is puking your guts up.

Most military mages don't reach 30. The average life expectancy is around 25, with active duty (i.e. constant missions and daily magic use) mages lasting on average 3-4 years before their body basically breaks down, but they can last longer depending on how conservatively they use magic.

Now, knowing all that, Ifrit has been actively using strong magic on par with military mages since they were 14-15 years old and while they're not the healthiest, they're healthy as a horse when compared to most mages. The reason behind their continued survival — their mage marks.

[valle-de-sombra-de-muerte]

Homestuck Reread: Act 4, Part 4/4 (p. 1865-1988)

Read the previous post here.

Oh boy it's the final stretch for this Act. I want to take a moment to express my appreciation for all the new followers I've gained over the course of this reread. I have 60 now, which is incredible. Thank you all!

With that said, this post will contain some... sticky subject matter. I wonder how many of you will choose to dip after this.

[CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of incest starts below the second image]

Oh my fuck it's the ectobiology section. Out of all the convoluted and frivolous mechanics in Homestuck, this one might be the worst in my opinion. Worse than the adventure game jokes cribbed from Problem Sleuth, worse than the punch card alchemy and other ponderous Sburb mechanics... I'd say it's worse than the time travel shit, but this is actually more of a subset of that. So yeah, time travel continues to be the worst thing about Homestuck, and shit like this and the bunny subplot are prime examples of that. But my ire is fully directed at ectobiology at this moment.

The stuff I mentioned before at least has a purpose; they parody needlessly complicated video game mechanics. But ectobiology doesn't have a purpose. It's not funny, nor does it serve the story in a meaningful or even interesting way. So why does it exist? Is it to drive home the point that these select individuals are the "chosen ones" by Sburb? If I had to hazard a guess what Hussie meant by that...

Earth is a vile place and must be destroyed, so sayeth Sburb. Everything living on it is flawed by extension, so its chosen destroyers must be fully disconnected human society and the planet itself. These destroyers have been plucked from the aether and reconstituted from bullshit plot slime in a faraway part of time and space, ensuring that they are unquestionably divorced from anything from Earth, and therefore pure.

Now that I type all that out, it's no wonder none of the kids were all that shaken up about bringing about the apocalypse. Considering that they're essentially game constructs with no actual ties to humanity, it really throws away any sort of conflict and sense of sacrifice brought about by destroying the planet. All the innocents who perished in the meteor showers? Eh, fuck them! They were all NPCs anyway. All hail the slime people!

Okay, I'm sure this wasn't Hussie's actual intent, but if there's no grander symbolism at play, what else is there? None of this adds anything to the plot. The fact that the main cast are non-humans is never touched upon and the whole thing reads as superfluous sci-fi garbage. The only significance the meteors carrying the babies had was that John's Nanna died from a meteor strike. But it was already suggested way earlier that she died because she was crushed by the Colonel Sassacre book.

That was a perfectly serviceable, slightly comedic death befitting of a family of jokesters. There's no need to escalate it and involve a giant meteor.

One other thing I take umbrage with: because the cast were all birthed from the same slurry, this means that Dave and Rose are now """related""". They aren't related by blood, no, but by slime. Which, in the eyes of Hussie and the fandom at large, means the same thing, I guess. Even though they never grew up as siblings, lived separate lives in different parts of the country, and only met online as strangers before developing a (very flirtatiously charged) friendship, the fandom treats them as if they're flesh and blood brother and sister. It boggles my mind. Why is this being treated as legitimate? Did Hussie plan all along to take the two characters with the best chemistry only to pull a Luke and Leia on us? Why would he write them like that if this was his endgame? Does he just have an incest fetish?

I wouldn't doubt it because themes of incest are actually quite pervasive within Homestuck. And that's without even mentioning how Hussie developed an alien race that fundamentally relies on incest to reproduce. Ectobiology creates several relationships, incidental or otherwise, that tie nearly the entire main cast in a complicated web of pseudo-familial dynamics. Like John is actually the kids' progenitor/father because he's the one who brought them all into existence. So even if he isn't related to Rose or Dave by genes or slime, he still gave birth to them in a sense.

I've even seen people say that since Betty Crocker/The Condesce was Nanna's adopted mother, that makes the Egbert/Crocker/Harley/English family tree "related" to the Peixes trolls, so any ship with that combination is "incest." What if I told you that Feferi is related to all the other trolls via bullshit slime mechanics as well? I guess that makes Johnkat incest too. And if John is Dave's father... gasp! Davekat is also incest!? It's over folks, burn everything down.

Anyway, I don't acknowledge Rose and Dave as biological siblings because I don't treat being born from a vat of slime as the same as being birthed from the same womb. That would be treating ectobiology as valid and sensible, which I refuse to do. I don't want to lend Hussie's fixation on incest any amount of approval. All I know is that the trolls are made of the same stupid plot sludge and nobody cares if you ship them. There are no humans and trolls: only slime constructs. Either everyone is related or none of them are. You can't have both.

In the end, none of this matters. The world would be a much happier place if we all collectively agreed to forget ectobiology's existence. If this ruffles your feathers, just block me. Don't come at me because I'll just ignore you.

So Grandpa Harley had time-traveled forward to the future and into Sburb before returning to the past, living out his life on Earth, and dying. Fucking okay I guess!

At least this answers the question I had that yes, Mom Lalonde knew what she was doing before entering the game because Grandpa told her everything. Same with Bro and Dad, it seems.

Ah yes, Dad x Mom. A relationship that ends nearly as soon as it begins. Let's put this right alongside the Exile love triangle and DaveTav in the "relationships that are teased but never manifest into anything meaningful" pile.

"Ackshually, everyone was born from a vat of slime on a distant meteor and sent back to Earth to live out their lives!" - the ramblings of an utter lunatic.

Like god fucking forbid the kids be normal people placed in extraordinary circumstances.

The babies all gravitate to the things they'll have a connection to in the future. Nanna gets her son's hat, Bro gets Cal, etc. Dave clings to Maplehoof, which doesn't seem like a clear connection. Except... that's Rose's horse, isn't it? Ohhh. It all makes sense now. 😏

This exchange is a top 10 Karkat moment for sure.

The supposed saviors that will revive the human race aren't even human, they're slime creatures! Beyond the fact that none of them are human, the Superman analogy falls flat because none of these kids are humanity's protectors. They're just following the whims of a game that ultimately does not give a fuck about any of them.

I need "JOHN EGBERT, YOU HAVE ASSASSINATED MY PATIENCE." emblazoned on a banner or something.

Also Karkat calls Superman a "Caucasian alien" and he also refers to a genie as an "Earth Arabian" in an earlier log.

He really knows a lot about different human ethnic groups, for some reason.

I think about "you always call jail the slammer when you are extra angry" on a somewhat regular basis.

Sassacre is killed, but since he was a human, his death is inconsequential. Grandpa, a slime homunculus just like Nanna, is given new life, which is a cause for celebration. This whole sequence is quite morbid with Sassacre's bloody corpse just hanging out in the frame.

But wait, if Nanna and Grandpa are adopted siblings, and John and Jade are their "genetic children"... augh, never mind! This is what I mean when I say ectobiology produces all kinds of unfortunate relationships. I don't want to think about any of this pseudo-incest anymore. How are there people who make it their whole online careers to dissect this garbage so they can harass people about this shit? Don't they get tired? It's giving me a headache.

Rose is even referred to as John's "daughter" in the title of this flash. I'm not just blowing smoke when I say that John is everyone dad. That's literally what just happened.

Now that we're finally done with this segment, I'll cap it off with this: Nothing of value was added with the inclusion of ectobiology. I know I've been throwing around the phrase "waste of time" in these posts, but this bit of worldbuilding is unequivocally, without a doubt, the biggest fucking waste of time in this entire comic.

Woof. Shall we move on?

While Davesprite and Terezi sort of reconciled in their conversation and formed a bit of a bond, Dave doesn't receive her nearly as amicably. Why is she doing the "1S TH1S YOU" joke with Dave when that was a bit she did with Davesprite?

Oh right, because she thinks that same relationship will carry over to "real Dave". She sees them as the same person just like everyone else. Lovely.

Dave thinks he can burn Terezi by repeatedly insulting her blindness, even though it's clear that it doesn't bother her at all. This is really weak, especially when compared to his log with Tavros where he forced Tavros to block him.

Terezi seems to have completely given up on John and now wants to be annoying and nasty to Dave instead. She has officially been downgraded from minor antagonist to obnoxious interloper.

Tavros could only ever enjoy himself when he could escape to Prospit, be mobile, and most importantly fly. Nobody ever wants to talk about how Tavros has a lot of avoidance issues, how he always shrinks away from action and confrontation, and how he copes with adversity through escapism (both in a figurative sense through his interest in fantasy, and in a literal sense when he dreams on Prospit). A big part of his character comes from Peter Pan, the archetype of childlike escapism! IDK man, it sucks to see people reduce him to this lovable, pure-hearted woobie while ignoring the key part of his character.

Just like with Davesprite, Terezi just needed to send the right drawing for Dave's opinion of her to flip. Fantastic conflict resolution right there.

[S] Descend is the End of Act flash for Act 4. It might be the most ambitious flash up to this point. Lots of guest artists contributed here, and it's at this point where Homestuck really begins to feel like a much more collaborative project instead of solely Hussie's work. I don't mean to discredit the music team when I say that, because they've been around since the start, but this feels more substantial since Homestuck is a primarily visual work.

Anyway, Bro slices a meteor in half to save Dave's life, and later has his rocket board transport Dave into the game safely. Chalk that up to his list of noble deeds to try and balance out his dastardly ones.

Jack fucks shit up indiscriminately, so why does he spare WV? Feels a little out of character for him.

The brief Jack and Bro fight is pretty sweet. I'm not a shonen guy, but I'm getting that same sort of energy from this. Knowing that Bro probably knew all about the kinds of monsters he'd have to fight in Sburb, he has probably been training for something like this for most of his life. Had Jack not gotten god powers, Bro probably could've wasted him.

I like to think that Rose's merging with her doomed self is what causes her to act so destructive and nihilistic from this point on. She wants to destroy the game that killed her.

So okay... when Dave and Rose gave John their bunnies for his present, both of them clearly put a lot of thought in their gifts. Dave gifted him a piece of merch from his favorite movie. Rose restored an old heirloom using John's previous gift to her. Jade assembled "a fun and completely ridiculous thing" that has no sentimental meaning and only carries a vague sense of importance.

Does she just not know what he likes? This is less a gesture of friendship and more of her blindly fulfilling the whims of Sburb. I really struggle to see how Jade fits in this friend group dynamic. She's like the weird kid that the others let hang around out of pity.

Waow! After all that buildup with the box mystery, the bunny and Jack are going to have a showdown! Finally we can see what all the fuss is about and why this bunny is so important.

... Or Jack can just fly away and they never fight at all. Cool Hussie. It's so cool how you spent several pages devoted to this plot point only to let it fizzle out like this. Incredible writing.

How much time do you think elapsed between Grandpa bringing Dream!Jade's corpse aboard his airship and gutting, cleaning, stuffing, and mounting her? He probably did it all after he flew off, but I like to imagine him doing this all before that while Mom and Dad just stood around awkwardly waiting for him to finish.

Act 4 had its ups and its downs. A lot of downs. The ups also felt a little bittersweet because for every intriguing story hook like the Exile love triangle, Dave's relationship with Tavros, Rose and her mother, or anything involving Davesprite and doomed Rose, they all amount to nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Homestuck truly is a collection of fun ideas all unfortunately cobbled together by someone who doesn't know how to properly execute them in a story. The colorful art and the kickass music can only serve to cover up the flaws so much before the veneer peels and you see the ugly cracks underneath. I wish we lived in a world where Andrew "writing is easy" Hussie had an editor to salvage the good stuff and throw shit like ectobiology into the garbage.

If it sounds like I'm wrapping things up, think again. This journey isn't over yet. It's time for Act 5! People like to joke about how you should skip all the way to that one, but after everything I've read so far... I wouldn't blame anyone if they did.

Read the next post here.

[kingmagnificoofrosas]

Analyzing King Magnifico

Oooh boy, I have a lot to say! This is gonna be long. So brace yourself. But first 👇

‼️Note, this is my very personal opinion‼️

I'm honestly glad how the multitude of people realizes that we don't have a villain here. And honestly, while some nag and whine around that they didn't get one, I'm not mad at all that we got Magnifico the way we got him.

So in the end, it doesn't matter to me if disney actually failed to create a villain or purposely created a good guy who changes to be the antagonist.

Ok, now to the analizing part

The very first thing we learn about Magnifico is that he has a pretty dark past. He lost his home and his entire family, anyone he ever loved, all in one night. And in a very curel way. That banner tells us a lot!

First of all, if we study the picture, we see a palace in the back, some houses and right down below young Magnifico and his parents. Now, why is that so important? Back in the days only very important people were potrayed on banners. Such as royals, families of very high status or knights. Banners and wallrugs were also used to tell important stories. And since the palace is on the banner, I'm pretty sure we have a royal family here. That would mean that Magnifico had been royalty from the very start.

Further we see that the bottom got burned. This tells us that there was a big fire. Which leads me to conclude that what Magnifico saw and experienced was most defenitely hell on earth. Imagine, his family, his home, everything burns. Screams of terror everywhere, the stench of dead burning flesh and smoke that nearly suffocates you! And he was very young when that happened. So we now know that the king has big time PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) Keep this in mind, because it's literally the key to this whole analysis.

~

Out of his trauma, Magnifico strived to build a safe haven, where he could make sure no tragedy like the one he'd suffered would ever happen again. He build his kingdom, (on top of already existing buildings, as we know from the art book) He taught himself magic to actually have power to protect. He made sure his people are safe and live well. That no one has to suffer, endure hunger or hardships. Sounds like a evil rotten monster right?

Just look at the way he looks at the (wishes) dreams of his people. He appreciates and treasures them!

His genuine desire to protect and keep safe has always been good!

We only see him snap after Asha triggers him. And while ptsd people react overly sensitive or exaggerated, it is understandable once you know where they come from.

Analyzing Magnifico's ptsd closer and how it influenced his actions and decissions

Magnifico had looked for an apprentice that truly understands where he comes from and shares his ambitions. But the first thing Asha asks as soon as she gets the feeling she has the job safe, is if he can grant her grandfather's wish. I understand, that she cares for her grandfather but I also see Magnifico's feelings. Can you imagine how used he must feel? Constantly feeling the pressure of "I must protect what's dear to me! I must make sure my past never repeats!" And yet, the most people see him as is the "wish-granter".

Trauma shapes you, it shapes the way of thinking and if something triggers a response, you just react. If you like it or not. And oftentimes you're not even aware you're acting up. I can tell from personal expirience ...

So what about him being slightly vain and wanting respect?

Respect is earned. Generally everyone deserves to be threated with respect unless someone gives you a solid reason not to.

So let's recap some of the things Magnifico actually deserves respect for :

Surviving a horrible tragedy and still standing

Building up an entire kingdom and reigning it well (protecting his people fiercly and sucessfully bringing order)

Being selfless

Being king and carrying a freaking lot of responsibility

Now, let's look at Magnifico's "vanity moments" more closely and examine the things he does and says with questions of why?

The thing with his hair. He makes sure his hair looks nice. Ok, is this a bad thing? Does this make one ultimately vain? No. Being content with your hair and wanting to have it look good isn't vain. Neither is being happy about it. Or looking at yourself in the mirror and like yourself. You even should be able to look at yourself and love what you see. Pure vanity is something different.

What about what he says about himself in his song?

I can't help it if mirrors love my face

It's genetics! Yeah, I got these genes from outer space

Lets consider the situation and emotional state he's in. He's pissed. And I'm pretty sure this a way to try and lift himself up a bit. I mean, like mentioned above, there is nothing wrong with liking your appearance. And he IS freaking handsome. He's not lying when he acknowleges that fact.

Of course you could twist his words and say, oh he's arrogant and vain. But people can say lots of things and not actually be a bad person.

And while true vanity is a bad trait, it doesn't make one a villain. Let's compare Magnifico to Gaston for a second.

Gaston is rude from the very beginning. He's selfabsorbed and narcissistic all the way and the only thing he cares about is himself. He shows off to be praised simply for selfgratification and because he thinks he's the center of the world.

Magnifico cares immensily for others and wants acknowledgement for it. Who wouldn't? If you do something great and constantly care for others and still aren't really appreciated for it, who wouldn't be like, "I do all this and you thank me by doubting me and wanting even more? How ungrateful can one be?" And the only things we see people acknowledge him for, is 1. His ability to do magic and grant wishes, and 2. His handsome looks.

I totally understand that he's fed up at one point. Deep down wishing someone would see him for the man he truly is below all his abilities and appearance.

Gaston would walk over dead bodies to get what he wants and in order to look good. He has 0 compassion and 0 remorse.

So, even though Magnifico is a "little" vain, he's not out of evil reasons! It literally doesn't harm anyone and it doesn't cause others to suffer. If someone tells him "You're handsome." He replies, "I know."

Good! Too many people look into the mirror and hate themselves. Of course, humbler people would just reply with "thank you." But still, this isn't a solid point to call someone a villain or bad person.

Ok, now. So far we have absolutely no reason to assume Magnifico is a "villain" so let's skip to the part where it get's interesting!

The thing with the shape shifiting entity (star) happens. Something that is outside of Magnifico's power, something he doesn't understand and it terrifies him! Why? Not because he's a power hungry psycho, not because he enjoys controling people out of complacenty and is afraid to lose that. No. It's the desperation of feeling helpless, the terror of losing control, the fear of having the past repeat itself. That is what drives him mad.

Ultimately he becomes desperate and anxious enough to let himself get possesed. Even during the whole process, he says that he never wanted this, he swore he'd never let himslef be posessed. He further says, "To this book, I don't wanna be tethered, but desperate times call for desperate measures."

Let's hear that again folks! Real loud for all those in the back! He tell us 3 times, 3 times ! How he doesn't want to turn to darkness but he feels forced to do so. Why? Because of his trauma! Not because he's a villain. He doesn't want to lose his control out of fear!

Let me show you something.

There you have it! 🫴 it's that simple. I'm tired of traumatized characters being labeled as villains.

Oh yeah but he literally goes bonkers after he let himself be possesed by the evil from this book!

Yeah, sherlock, of course he behaved EVIL after that. That's literally the evil that possesed him! This doesn't make him a villain! It make's his whole situation even sadder and more tragic. The actions are obviously bad, "villainous" if you wanna call it that, but it doesn't make him a villain!

What happens to a scared animal that you force into a corner? It bites. Does this mean the animal is evil because it bit? No. It doesn't make the bite ok, but it doesn't make it evil either.

So, I, like many others also underline that Magnifico is in no way a villain but a traumatized good guy who sadly slipped.

His personality

Composed when needed

He can be bubbly as much as he can be calm. One of the first things Amaya tells Asha is that Magnifico likes to talk a lot, yet we never truly see him talk a lot! He is more calm than he is loud.

When Asha has her interview, he gives her room to talk rather than showering her in lectures of what he wants and what he expects. He's like "Go ahead, you tell me! Imma listen."

I actually feel this very personally because I'm someone who loves to talk. If I'm comfortable around someone and I made sure I can trust them, I can ramble for hours. I can talk and talk and talk like a waterfall. But at the same time, I can also be intensly quiet and listen well.

Childlike behavior

One of my absolute favourite characteristics in Magnifico is his childlike goofyness. He has this really pure cuteness to him and a bombastic humor. He doesn't pay heed if his behavior could seem akward to others, he just acts however he feels like. He's one of those adults that would still do all the things they enjoyed doing as a child or things that children normally do and I love that!

I cannot stop chuckling over the fact that he hippity hopps down one of his corridors, giving cookies to knight armors. If that isn't adorable I don't know what is! 😂

Also, please, that whole scene! The dance moves, the excitement, the expressiveness! Aaawwww!

He has a whole miniature model of his kingdom and he makes little interactive figures! I laughed tears because it's so funny and adorable! Like he's that kind of man that would cheer at the simplest accomplishments like a child unwrapping the toy the really wanted on christmas day.

There is so much we can find in here. He's :

Playful, creative, quirky, funny, passionate, imaginative, spunky, talented - the list goes on!

But let's keep going and listen to what else shimmers through the things he sings.

I'd give the clothes off Benito's back, if you really needed that

I'd be the first one to volunteer if your home were to crumble, or if you were in trouble

He doesn't just blabber nonsense here or lies. He truly would do all those things! Why else would he sing this while alone? He has no one around so one could say he's saying this on purpose to look good. He's frustrated, offended and slightly hurt and is speaking his mind and emotions. And we are shown this as an audience.

What do these lines tell us then? They tell us just what he actually is! Altruistic. It leads us right back to what we found at the beginning. His actual desire to help, keep safe and protect.

Why would he be the first one to volunteer if a home crumbles? Because his did. A king actually doesn't need to get his hands dirty. He has enough people to do things for him, yet he'd go out of his way to take matters into his own hands because he genuinly cares!

I let you live here for free and I don't even charge you rent

Doesn't sound like a power hungry, wealth loving, gold hoarding dictator to me. Get this, you are living in a kinddom for fee! No rent! The most money you make you keep and only a bit of it goes to the king to sustain the community. That's pretty awesome if you ask me.

I clean up all your messes and I'm always there when you need to vent

So he's not only selfless but a good listener as well. He doesn't judge. He, well -

I give and give and give and give-

He wants to make sure everyone is pleased. That's actually impossible but he still tries and is secrerly suffering deep down from it. If a person only ever gives and hardly gets anything back ... it's like you fill a container with water and there is no hole to drain it. Eventually you are so overly full of others problems, you suffocate or overflow.

It's SO sad that he doesn't have ANYONE to really talk to. He runs across half the palace to let out his emotions rather than seeking comfort from someone. (Which would be the oportunity to talk about Amaya but this is for another post!)

Charming, charismatic, proud, confident

The characteristics that make him attractive besides his looks. He's a gentleman, he knows how to use words well, he isn't afraid to speak his mind and carries himself with confidence, which is displayed in the way he walks. He either strides, has a light bounce to his step or a heavyness.

Ok, now, that we have the positives, we can acknowledge the negative and neutral ones. And everyone has negative traits. Again, some of Magnifico's negative traits are caused and or intensified by his ptsd.

Idealistic and perfectionistic -Magnifico constantly obsesses over how things should and could be. Chaos irritates him. He feels safe in clear structures and always strives for the best outcome for things. If something doesn't make sense for him, he feverly searches for answers until he finds them. If not, he panics. The tiniest feeling of potentially failing wrecks his nerves.

Impulsive - He's got a short temper. Yes, he can swallow a lot but if one crosses a certain line, he snaps. His emotions control him more than he controls them. And that goes both ways. Happy, sad, angry. He feels everything intense and reacts intense.

Stormy and insecure - He reacts very sensitive to stress. He feels a certain degree of urgency in his feelings and tends to be sucess-oriented. He always wants to improve and thus pressures himself.

Controlling - Magnifico's obsessive feeling of need to control comes from his traumatic past. As long as he's in control, he feels secure. He feels safe. Control is his safeplace. Not because he has evil motives but because in reality he's deeply insecure and anxious.

Paranoid and pessimistic - Again a trait that has been heavily altered by his ptsd. Originally he'd belong to the more cautious kind. Being cautious isn't something negative, it can be very helpful since one analyzes and observes carefully before choosing to trust or do something. But his trauma causes him to always assume the worst. He becomes critical where he wouldn't need to be because of his fear. (We see this with his decissions over wishes. He disregards some not because of ill will, ignorance or arrogance but because of his anxiety)

Stubborn - If Magnifico has set his mind on something he could go through walls with his head. Once he's determinded to do something, it's nearly impossible to stop him.

Distrustful - His paranoia and pessimism makes it hard for him to trust others. He becomes hard to read and hard to understand.

Now, once the evil that has been trapped in the book posesses Magnifico, he becomes ruthless, cruel and cynical. He steps into "villainous behavior" but is it what he truly is? NO! Of course not! If people talk about a classical villain, they mean a purely evil person from the very beginning of a movie/story. If we have a originally good guy, who, through circumstances, starts reacting and making wrong choices, we're talking about an antagonist.

And good grief, Magnifico was more than redeemable! If someone actually hadn't been blind to the true struggle of his soul, if someone had actually cared enough to save him! If someone had only truly loved him. He was used, wronged, backstabbed, betrayed, left alone and dropped like a hot potato the second he snapped. Poor Magnifico. He deserved better. Far better.

~

Thank you for reading! I'll soon post more of my analyses. 🧐

Also, creating a redemption story for Magnifico is the most fun I've had writing in a long while. 🌹 I'm excited to eventually share it with you, once it's done.