#to their undead mother-corpse
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Last Line Tag Game
I was tagged by @blind-the-winds , @thatndginger , @thetruearchmagos and @tabswritesfor the last line tag. Since all of you tagged me, you get a whole scene!
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“Mama?” she said. The empty corpse at the door paid no attention. Resigned, at this point, Nicolette pulled loose a whisp of magic from the bundle in her chest. “Mama?” She tried again.
At this, her mother’s body paused, and turned sightless eyes toward her. But only for a heartbeat, and then it went back to scratching at the door with animalistic ferocity. Nicolette’s cheeks burned with unusual cold, and as Nicolette rubbed at her face, she discovered she was crying.
“Mama.” She couldn’t stop the tears and now she couldn’t stop the words either.
“Mama please. You shouldn’t have left me like this. I don’t have anything now. I have nothing, I only ever had you. Why did you leave me?”
She was shaking uncontrollably. Her voice climbed to a wail and she rocked frantically, making the wood chair scream and creak.
“You can’t leave me, what am I supposed to do? I’m nothing, I’m nothing, I’m nothing, why did you leave me? Why did you leave me? Why did you leave me?”
The chair gave out with a final shriek of complaint.
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I'm tagging @cwritesfiction @owlsandwich @dyrewrites @gltownsend @emabatis @emilydevoursstories @ceph-the-ghost-writer @macabremoons (no pressure!)
#tw: zombie#i guess its close enough#tw: undead#wip Mortal Sparks#my writing#tag games#writeblr tag games#last line tag#character has a mental breakdown#or alternately expresses the mental breakdown they've been having for the past year or so#to their undead mother-corpse#chair abuse
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Felt like drawing My Girl and her sister
#lamordia#ravenloft#dark elf#changeling#doppelganger#this for those new is the titular banshee of lamordia#and her well. best term for their relationship is sister but It's Complicated#you ever kill some people but like against your will due to being a ghost at the time#then later resurrect after your mom sewed parts of your corpse into the corpse of the people you killed making them frankenstein esque#and then reconcile with one of them because you did hurt her and she now can't remember her life before you killed her#but also she knows the root of everything is your mother is Evil and hurt you deeply and forced you to lash out and become an undead#and so you become friends with a sibling esque bond#yeah that's what they've been through#but sisters is the shortest way to describe that#my art#kindness#gabrielle von brandthofen
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even in undeath - chapter 1.
lich king aemond x reader a 'world of warcraft' AU. prev | next
The Lich King is the master and lord of the Scourge. Consisting of thousands of walking corpses, disembodied spirits, beasts of the north, and damned mortal men, the Scourge is a terrifying and insidious enemy.
word count: 2.3k
@huramuna-fics - follow & turn on notifications for just my fic postings! no taglists right now, sorry.
content: DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT, DUBCON, smut, heavy heavy angst, graphic depictions of violence, allusions to cannibalism, imprisonment, kidnapping, murder, suicidal thoughts and ideation, mutilation of corpses, obsessive aemond, dark aemond, a happy ending is not in our future. PLEASE MIND THE TAGS! This story will be pretty dark.
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It was dark and cold. There was a faint dripping of water somewhere off to the side, but you couldn’t quite see where. The echoes of whimpers ricocheted off of the craggy walls, stinging your eardrums.
This was the descent into madness, wasn’t it?
You weren’t sure how long you’d been chained up for— how long had it been since your village burned to the ground? Since you watched the ghouls rip apart the cow farmer from down the road. Since you watched hellhounds crunching on little Mary Jay’s bones. Since you had watched your mother and stepfather plead and beg for their lives, for forgiveness, for mercy, for absolution of their supposed sins before the death knight’s sword lopped their heads off.
How long has it been?
Shifting slightly, the chain tied to your throat clinked against the wall. There was no light, no passage of time to be had in the dank, pitch black cave they stowed you and a few select others in. You only had on a ragged potato sack as a dress, the sensation of dirt and grime caked on your hair and under your nails making you feel less than human.
But— you were still human. For now. The Scourge had ravaged the Eastern Kingdoms without mercy, swiping through the North and South like a fast traveling plague, curdling and damning everything it touched. Hordes of undead zombies, ghouls and hellhounds were the first to raze the cities, driving out the people like mice from the walls. Then the banshees came, along with the necromancers to raise the dead, adding them to a forever amounting army.
Not even Quel’thalas had been able to resist it, an ancient elven city hewn in magic.
What chance did you have?
More than most, evidently. Your mind wrought itself over and over as to why— why were you alive? Why were you still human and not merely a risen thrall?
The clinking of armor scared you as it ascended the hallway. You pressed close to the wall and closed your eyes.
Please don’t stop here, please don’t stop here.
Clink, clink, clink… closer… closer…
Then it passed, descending further away. You let out a breath, your blood still pumping in your ears.
Clink, clink, clink. They were coming back. Clink… silence. You felt bile rise in your throat as you shook, the chains rattling noisily. You knew they were standing there, you knew they were here for you.
A harsh tug upon your chain, your head hitting the floor— some words were mumbled, the voice sounding far away and broken. Your eardrums rang with the ferocity of your fall, drowning out any semblance of what your jailer was saying to you. Then, you were tugged upward, the cool metal of the collar biting into your skin as you were dragged like a petulant child away from your cell…
You didn’t want to open your eyes. You couldn’t face the horror you knew was around you— corpses, living ones and dead, the clatter of bones, the heavy breathing of gargantuan abominations, bodies and faces of countless people stitched together into a new body, hewn with thread and necrotic magic until it gave way to something else entirely. Something unnatural, something made of nightmares. The dermis of those who were used to make the monsters would still twitch, reach out on its own, and if it had a mouth, it would be twisted into a scream. You swore that you heard them whispering as you were dragged by.
The monstrosities were one of many abhorrent creatures at the Scourge’s disposal. Hellhounds, ghouls, gargoyles, wraiths, crypt lords, geists, banshees, and other things of horrific nature were only some of the power wielded by the Scourge. It felt like it was all pulled out of a child’s fairytale, changed and twisted and defiled into what it was now.
It all felt like a very bad dream.
Your eyes opened on their own and you took in the image of death knights, former paladins who served a higher power, the Light— now are nothing but undead heretics, glowing eyes and gaunt stares that bored through you.
Some of the monsters chittered as you were dragged past them, leering and looking hungry.
‘Scrawny that one. Perhaps she will suffice for hellhounds to pick their teeth.’
‘Speak for yourself, her skin will do beautifully on a new abomination.’
‘She won’t be knighted. Merely a maid’s bastard, I’ve heard.’
You forced your eyes to close once more, the sudden light stinging them. You forced yourself into another time, a better memory than what you were experiencing.
They were right, you were a maid’s bastard. Your mother had served in the royal keep for years, with you under her feet. You didn’t know who your true father was, nor did you care.
You became attached to the second son of the King— Aemond Targaryen. He was a sprightly boy with near white hair and luminous violet eyes. The two of you were attached at the hip.
Childhood friendship blossomed into more as you grew into teenagers and young adults— you shared your first kiss together, you held hands and shared sweet nothings. As he trained by day to become a paladin of the Light, he held you close by night, vowing to never let you go. You were both terribly in love and so terribly, terribly naive. He was your first in everything– your first friend, your first kiss, your first lover. You promised yourself that he would stay your first and only.
‘You can never marry a maid’s bastard, Aemond! You’re a prince of the realm-‘
‘I don’t care! I want her, father. I’ve always wanted her!’
Your mother quit her job at the castle— moreso, threatened into quitting by some of the King’s advisors. She was given a considerable amount of coin and told to take you far, far away and to not contact the prince again.
Heartbroken, you left him your sapphire ring, the only thing of value you ever had, which had been passed down through your mother’s family for generations.
It was left on his desk with a note of few words but much feeling.
‘I love you. I’m sorry.’
That was over ten years ago. You hadn’t seen him since, but you missed him horribly. Especially now. You wondered if he was still alive, fighting against the Scourge like his knightly vows dictated.
Maybe he was married and moved across the sea to Kalimdor where it was safer.
Or maybe he was dead. Dead like almost everyone else you knew.
You heard a rumor, fleeting and without much more information, that his father had died– no, that his father had been murdered. The fall of the king, Viserys, is what started the Scourge war. Did Aemond know, wherever he was?
You imagined him holding his arms around you, kissing your neck and fanning his breath over your skin. He liked to encompass you completely with his body when you laid together— you never could emulate the feeling with heavy blankets and pillows, as much as you tried. Putting yourself back into that memory, you wrapped your arms around yourself, willing warmth into your body.
But you didn’t feel any warmth. All you felt was cold, cold down to your bones. They felt brittle, like ice, splintering into shards as you were thrown on the floor again in a different room. Pain bloomed in your arm as it cracked at an awkward angle. Broken.
Your ears rang again as your mouth opened into a scream, tears of pure anguish squeezing from your eyes. But you didn’t hear a thing besides the rush of blood dampening your senses— and the sickening crunch of your broken bones.
‘What have you done to it, Lady Deathwhisper? It looks broken.’
‘It’s human bones are so brittle, it was merely a slip of the hand. I cannot help that their living constitution is so weak.’
‘His grace will not be pleased if it is broken beyond repair.’
‘Worry not, Lady Alys. Most things can be mended— and if not, it can always be raised.’
‘Physical defects aren’t the only issue. What of its mind?’
You feel an acute sensation over your skull, reaching into the depths of your cranium. Its cold, but not stinging— like a soft caress upon your brain as your mind is rifled through like a tome. You can feel your memories being perused, all of the most intimate moments of your life flashing in your head like playwright’s prose. The physicality of your mind being invaded wasn’t painful, but the act of your memories being ripped from you was damning. Tears fell down your face on their own, your mouth opened into a silent scream.
‘She is the one— I saw it. You are lucky that you did not break her mind completely, Lady Deathwhisper.’
‘As are you. You do not have a deft hand when it comes to memory perusal, Lady Alys. I am surprised that it still has a brain in its skull.’
‘Shut up and bring her to him. He will be pleased she is still alive. Barely.’
You felt yourself being moved again, still reeling from the invasion of your mind. You tried to put yourself back into the safe haven of memories, but they were… locked. Locked behind an iron door with no keyhole. They were lost to you.
What were you trying to remember?
Flashes of white hair and violet eyes flitted behind your eyelids, soft caresses and kisses, heavy breathing and love filled promises, the sensation of skin to skin…
Your eyes opened, vision bleary. A helmed woman followed behind you, wings outstretched. You could see the glint of green eyes under her helm. Val’kyr. The woman behind you was a Val’kyr, a spirit guide who defected to the side of the Scourge. They could move between the realm of living and dead as simply as taking a breath.
“The little human is awake,” she mused. “Your mind isn’t broken after all? I do see a glint of intelligence behind those eyes. Keep them on me, you shan’t wish to look upon Lady Deathwhisper.”
You didn’t want to speak, words caught in your throat like food stuck in your craw. A val’kyr was basically an angel of death and talking to one must mean you are dead.
You wish you were.
The chains scraped against the floor, which was no longer stone like before, but rather, hardened ice. You were ascending upward, it seemed. The architecture of the building was nothing like you’d ever seen— dark metal was plated upon the walls, inscribed with glowing runes. The runes looked… familiar to you, somehow. But the memory that contained them was locked away, or mayhaps stolen by the Val’kyr, Alys.
The temperature was cold, you were being lofted upon ice, of course, but you didn’t wholly feel it. You were partially numb, heat radiating from your broken arm. You knew you should be feeling pain— but you were just… numb.
Your escorts stopped in front of two large doors, inscribed with the same glowing runes. Against Alys’ advice, you glanced at ‘Lady Deathwhisper’. She was skeletal, floating upon the ground with no legs to speak of. Her robes were purple fabric, molded around an incorporeal body. She spoke in a language you didn’t understand, the scratchy voice of hers coming out of a bone skull, but the mouth wasn’t moving, maw open as the words came out.
You should have listened to Alys.
The door opened with a rumble, opened by ancient magic, likely imbued by the runes, as they flickered and flitted above your head as it opened. The room beyond was open and bereft of almost anything, except for a throne. A throne forged of ice and swords.
Someone was sitting upon it in a lazed position, one plated gloved finger tapping on the arm of the throne.
“We’ve brought her, your grace,” Lady Deathwhisper growled, shoving you forward. You skidded across the floor, which felt slick like grazing atop an ice-capped lake. “Alys confirmed it is her.”
The clinking of armor caught your attention, the sound of metal grazing against ice. It was irritating and made you grind your teeth. As whoever was on the throne got closer, the force was oppressive. Whimpers and tiny cries were ripped from you as they walked towards you, the aura exuding from them causing you to fall flat to the ground, feeling as if someone was sitting atop of your chest and not letting up.
The steel plated boot was in front of you now and your hair was grabbed rather harshly, pulling you up.
Don’t look, don’t look. You cannot look.
“Look. At. Me.” the voice growled. It was quiet but commanding at the same time, rattling in your bones and making a home amongst the marrow. It felt familiar… so…
You lifted your bloodshot eyes, not out of your own volition, but from the authority of the voice.
“Hello, little dove.” he mused.
It was him. It was… it… Aemond. You knew him so well, even with ten years gone. His chiseled jawline and chin and the dimple of the tip of his nose…
But his eye was missing, a jagged scar bisecting it. In its place was a sapphire. The sapphire from your ring, grown into something to make home in the socket.
You felt everything and nothing all at once, your stomach flipped and flopped like a fish hoisted from the sea, sputtering for air. You couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t–
Your best friend, your lover, the one you vowed to never forget, to never forsake.
Aemond Targaryen.
Aemond Targaryen was the Lich King. A defiler, a mass murderer, an unholy being in his own right.
“Now you won’t be able to leave again, will you?” Aemond murmured, his violet eye roving you. It was glowing slightly– his skin was a pale gray pallor, cheeks sunken slightly. He was undead.
Your eyes rolled back in your head, vision going black.
#aemond fic#aemond fanfiction#aemond targaryen#hotd aemond#aemond x fem!reader#aemond#aemond one eye#hotd fic#aemond fanfic#aemond smut#dark aemond smut#dark aemond angst#my writing#even in undeath#hotd au
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Thinking about how Harrow was brought up knowing what she cost. That her price was the death of her House. How she had to be a perfect necromancer to prove to her parents that cost was worth it.
And thinking about who she asks for help when she is at her most desperate.
Harrow, who has never belonged to herself.
He reached out for your hands. You could not refuse him, and in any case had no choice of doing so; your body reacted long before your mind did, and the meat of your meat and the flesh of your flesh belonged to God.
Harrow, who only ever experienced love as a response to her worthiness.
Her most vivid memory of her mother was of her hands guiding Harrow’s over an inexpertly rendered portion of skull, her fingers encircling the fat baby bracelets of Harrow’s wrists, tightening this cuff to indicate correct technique.
And how that colours her entire perception of kindness. Of what those who try to love her want.
“I would like to give you something,” said Abigail Pent. This was to Harrowhark. She watched as the capable hands—strong, for a necromancer’s, beautifully formed and with very even nails—took a bit of folded paper from the table. She passed it to her Ninth colleague as though it did not hurt her to give away such precious material.
How John imagines Harrow as his daughter, but can only love her selfishly; her creation a mirror of his own sins.
You’d make a hell of a daughter, Harrowhark. I sometimes indulge in the wish that you’d been mine.
How Abigail, in loco parentis, having exorcised the children that weren't quite her's either so that she could help to keep Harrow safe, wants to comfort her but can't.
Abigail Pent took off her glasses and popped them down into the top fold of her robe. She reached out to touch Harrow’s arm, and Harrow flinched away; she winced a little in sympathetic apology, and removed her hand.
How Harrow is haunted throughout HTN not just by the actual ghost trying to destroy her, but by the memory of her parents, their touch, and by those who for better or for worse want to parent her. Abigail, who loved the children whose planet she was annexing - a fate Harrow viscerally feared. And John, who will show his love for his unexpected daughter by making her an undead construct. However well meaning, Harrow cannot conceive of parental love without possession, without an agenda.
The Emperor set down his tea and finished off his biscuit, and did that terrible thing that he did, on occasion: he reached over to touch your shoulder in that brief, tentative way, the lightest and swiftest of gestures, as though afraid that he might burn you. Your mother had guided your hands over bloating corpses. Your father had held down the corners of great tomes, and his sleeve had brushed your six-year-old-fingers as he showed you how best to turn their pages. Both of them had pressed a rough rope made of coated fibre into your hands—you recalled the pressure from their palms, their attempts to be gentle. When the Emperor touched you, your body recalled, unbidden, each rare and terrible touch committed by your mother and father.
How the one touch Harrow doesn't flinch away from is Ortus, who acknowledges his failure to protect Harrow and wants to make amends.
It was difficult to know what to do with this type of touch. It made her whole soul flinch, but at the same time opened some primeval infant mechanism within her, as though the embrace were a mirror: having someone hold up an image by which you could see yourself, rather than living with an assumption of your face. It was not like the touch of her father or mother. When she had first sat by the tomb in shivering awe, she had fancied that the Body’s ice-ridden fingers had shifted for hers, minutely. Gideon had touched her in truth; Gideon had floundered toward her in the saltwater with that set, unsheathed expression she wore before a fight, her mouth colourless from the cold. Harrow had welcomed her end, but suffered a different death blow altogether—and she had become, for the second time, herself. She untangled from Ortus, more reluctantly than she’d expected.
And now Abigail Pent and Ortus are (probably) dead. Gideon is John's daughter. The Body is Alecto, awake and on the move, meat loving meat.
Desperately hoping that in ATN Harrow and Gideon have an embrace without agenda where they are both simply themselves.
#the locked tomb#tlt meta#abigail pent#john gaius#harrowhark nonagesimus#John is *constantly* touching Harrow in HTN even when she's quite obviously upset by it.#Meanwhile Abigail accepts that Harrow doesn't want to be touched however much it clearly pains her.
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okay apocalypse dbf!jake will not let me go again so- I need the confession 🙏 I need the tear-stained first kiss after an attack, with too much adrenaline and too little care for the inappropriate age gap
EEK me either me either me either ! I’m so insane about him rn
And I feel like this particular attack would be a big one. Resources are running low and Jake won’t leave you up on that mountain by yourself, so he has no choice but to bring you with him. He has done what he can, preparing you for this.
It scares you, even when it’s just all pretend with him. He’s not as kind when he’s training you. Even as you’re crying and telling him to stop it, that you don’t want to, he’s yelling and insisting that you aim straight and breathe — that these things won’t stop no matter how much you cry, or scream, or beg.
He doesn’t mean to be cruel. It would be far more cruel to leave you unprepared, to let something happen to you.
This is a low stakes run, but you can feel that he’s unhappy having you here. It’s itching at you that maybe it’s because you couldn’t hit that target last time. He had tied a thick tree branch to a length of rope, pushed hard, and let it swing. Your first moving target. Not so much as a chip in the wood. You’ve got a pretty big knife, one that could tear muscle from bone— he won’t give you a gun.
You know he’s focused on protecting you, it’s an awful feeling to think that you may not be able to do the same for him, especially after all he has done for you so far.
It’s a gas station, back off of the road, early enough on that it hasn’t yet been completely raided. Heavy metal shutters cover the windows, but Jake makes quick work of the padlocks on the back door. The power has all gone out by now, it’s just the light from your flashlights to guide the way. Jake is two paces ahead, close enough to jump back and pull you behind him if he needs.
It’s eerily quiet. You’re stuck to him like a shadow as he surveys for danger, and ultimately decides that it’s okay.
Keep away from the doors and windows, stay where I can see you. Dejected and feeling more uselessly childish than you have in a long time, you sweep the shelves and take what you can while Jake does the same. Continually, he checks over top of the shelves to see if he can see the top of your head.
It’s going too well, it tricks you both into thinking that this is going to be easy. You’re focused, on your knees and rummaging through the medicines to take everything you could need. You don’t even notice the noise that you’re making. Jake doesn’t mind the rummaging sounds, it means he can hear where you are without needing to watch.
But then, so can the employee who took such care to fortify this place before he took swallowed back a cocktail and pills the second that he saw his home in flames and his undead mother staggering around on the news footage. He made himself comfortable before he passed. His shoes and his jacket are in the back room. His socks are almost silent against the linoleum as he staggers around the corner.
He’s tall, and skinny, and hadn’t hurt anyone in his entire life. But he’s close enough by the time you spot him that his height gives you no room to stand up. His eyes are wide and gorging, the sockets sullen and lifeless. You haven’t seen one of them so clean before, part of him still looks human. His lips are pulled back, animal, growling weakly as he reaches for you and tumbles forwards.
Jake hears the scream and he swears that he’s going to be too late. Even just across the floor of the gas station — it takes seconds for one of those things to get their jaws around you. He’s sick to his stomach, his gun pulled and the safety off, uncaring about if the sound draws attention for miles around.
He rounds the corner and spots the puddle of dark, thick blood first. His heart sinks to his stomach, until he realises that it isn’t yours. You push the corpse back, off of you. Your knife is plunged through the socket of its eye, it’s dead. You take one look at Jake, and crumble, tears pouring from your eyes as you stare at your blood soaked hands.
“Shh, I’m here. Shh, shh, shh. You’re okay,” Jake whispers, sinking to his knees and pulling you off of the floor, cradling you in his arms as he kisses the top of your head. “It’s alright, I’m right here. You’re safe, you’re okay.”
“I didn’t— I didn’t see it— it was —“
“I know, sweet girl,” Jake whispers, rubbing soothingly at your back. He presses his lips together and kisses softly at your temple. “You did so good. You did it. You’re alright now.”
Again, Jake kisses your temple softly, hugging you closer. His weight and his smell, his strong arms wrapped around you. All of it almost makes you forget where you are. Blinking back any more tears, you turn your head as he kisses at your temple again. This time, you’re looking at him as he pulls back.
Tears soaking your lashes and your cheeks, staring up at him. Jake’s throat feels thick, his mouth suddenly dry as your fingers press into his arms. You are okay, you did it. He’s here. You sit forwards first, and Jake’s met with the exact thing that he has been trying to stop himself from thinking about for these past few weeks. Your lips are just as soft as they look, and your hands pawing at his arms make him melt into you.
Before all of this, Jake tried so hard to fight it. You’re so much younger. Your father would have never approved. Now, he supposes — it doesn’t matter. What matters, is keeping you safe, and he’s so glad that you’re safe.
His hand grabs firmly at the nape of your neck as he presses closer, deepening his hold on you, kissing you firmly.
#dbf!jake#apocalypse dilf jake#dads best friend Jake#jake Seresin#jake hangman Seresin#jake Seresin x reader
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Under the Gun - Abby Anderson x Reader
Are you living for love? When the road gets too tough, is your love strong enough?
-under the gun by The Sisters of Mercy
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SUMMARY: You’ve been running from your reality, you had to leave your home in Oregon, it couldn't get worse after all, you had lost it all. Arriving in Seattle you hear yelling and grunting from afar, when you see a muscular blonde woman being beaten and dragged you freeze, you wouldn't be able to rescue her. Stealthy you follow the people with a scar on their face, a feature that relates them to another to what it seemed like their camp, you hide waiting for the moment to take the blonde girl from the rope restraining her up in the air incapacitating her.
You and Abby’s story begins when she saw the end of hers.
Warnings: 18+ minors dni, smut (further along you perverts!) angst, desciptions of weapons and violence.
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Chapter 1: What if it was you
Growing up in Oregon was a gift and a curse, the peace that came with it also brought loneliness. Growing up you only had your mother by your side, your father passed away before you were born trying to protect your family farm from the undead creatures that roamed earth alongside surviving humans. It was you and your mom, against the world as it was always proclaimed by the both of you. She was THE wonder woman in the flesh, raising you, teaching you how to survive and how to take care and keep the farm alive.
When you were nineteen she passed away peacefully when you went on a hunting trip on your own. You found a letter she left and you carried it with you in your leather jacket pocket.
She had been sick for a while, never telling you of the symptoms, you always saw her complain about pain and went on scavenges trying find medicine to take it away but you never thought you would find your mothers lifeless corpse, she didn’t want you to kill her like she had done to the love of her life.
“Your dad and I got engaged on the infamous space needle in Seattle, my wish was to take you there for your birthday but this illness took me way too soon. I never wanted you to see me fade. One day I hope you can see how beautiful the view is from there;”
So you packed your backpack angrily, never wanting to see that house again after burying your mother it would never be a home again.
With tears in your eyes you grabbed the old notebook your mom got you in a scavenge six years ago, you remember it like it was yesterday, it was her way of giving me privacy and I cherished every word I’ve ever written on it all these years.
"Dear diary, it's weird picking you up, it's been a while since i’ve talked with you. We are grown and alone, I've never been so afraid.
I remembered the old pick-up truck that belonged to the neighbours that once lived by our side, I have no memories of them, only that they were kind according to mom. I’ve been running like a mad woman trying to get gasoline for the last 2 days. It's a quick ride to Seattle. I just really need something good to happen to me."
When you finally got enough gasoline you swear you could believe in god for finally having your prayers answered. Walking back to the fields you knew like the back of your hand, you searched your neighbours house for a tool box, you needed a screwdriver badly.
“Finally!” you yelled so loudly and regretted it, hoping nothing heard you.
“Okay” you said to yourself “How do I hotwire this fucking car…” rubbing your hands on your head you tried to recall how your mom did it flawlessly for you, how if it went to go sideways she would be the one getting shocked, protecting you was her greatest accomplishment and you lived by loving and caring for someone that deeply.
Shoving the screwdriver in the ignition system and moving it around, you manifest it working since this car was older than you and your mother too probably, a couple minutes of turning it and jiggling it around you heard the motor start.
Beating your legs using them like a drum, you cried of happiness, you could finally escape, a fresh start.
The farthest you could drive too was still far from your destination, you spent one week on foot, you could barely remember what sleep was like when you heard a commotion, it was gunshots.
Instinctively you held your gun in the palm of your hand, you had to be sure that if needed it was on its holster ready to protect yourself no matter what it took. Scoping far from the building you understood it was one person who did the job, it made you curious of what may have happened, and whatever it was, you didn’t want to get on their bad side.
Getting closer to the building, being careful not to draw attention to yourself you saw a muscular blonde woman starting to leave the building, sliding on the dirt ramp when out of nowhere someone with an enormous sledgehammer got on top of her. You were panicking deciding if you should or not get closer, to rescue her but you saw her handle herself biting the woman's ear but in a blink of an eye, two men came closer and someone knocked the blonde woman out.
Whoever they were, they started dragging the unconscious girl and you couldn't bear the sight of it. This wasn’t part of the plan but you needed to help her, something inside of you told you to do it, it could have been you.
You were light on your feet, stealth was your best friend and the people in the long jackets didn’t hear or see you, but from afar you noticed it all. Wherever they were bringing her too was bad, it made you sick, were they cannibals? Was it a cult? The only thing that made them related to another was the scars they had on all their faces.
They tied with rough ropes the ankles and wrists of the woman they called “wolf”, it was soothing due to her frame, they dragged her to a place where people were gutted and hung by their neck, you had to save her.
The people with scars tied the rope on her neck and pulled her up, you got ready to aim and shoot the woman that was pointing a knife to her abdomen when suddenly a young woman was brought to the camp violently.
The woman that was prepared to kill the blonde woman flipped instantly at the tumult created by two strong men grabbing the girl.
From what you could gather the girl was named Yara, and the sight was too violent, you had never experienced such cruel humans in your life. One of the men that was holding her down obeyed the orders of the woman who told them to “clip her wings”, they ended up smashing her arm with a hammer.
It was now or never and you decided to make your moves to help the woman down, arrows were shot out of nowhere, taking one of the men out and Yara took out the other with the same hammer that was being used violently on her. Quickly you started making your way to get behind the blonde woman to get her down. She was able to catch the tall woman who threatened her before who now was confused at the attack, the blonde trapped her with her strong legs, starting to choke her out but you showed up and stabbed her with a screwdriver in the neck, letting her choke on her blood falling to her death.
Taking the blonde woman out of her restraints you gave her a hand helping her down.
A young boy came in desperately running towards the Yara girl who now had her arm broken and all you could feel was anger at what she had been put through, hearing them talk you were able to pick up that the boy's name was Lev and you heard her say that “Demons are coming.” Whatever that meant, it sounded like it was going to be hell on earth.
Gazing back at the blonde woman, she rubbed her neck trying to regain her breath and thoughts into place, getting her stability back she grabbed the hammer the girl had thrown across.
“Watch your backs,” the woman said.
You grabbed the gun out of your holster getting yourself ready in position, you were all gonna leave this place alive, even if it meant dying for the safety of these strangers.
It was a bloodbath fighting against all the clickers and runners that came across your escape out of the woods. You and the woman realised the kids were with us, helping us leave even if they were related to the people with scars in their faces and that made you filled with hope in escaping to safety.
After running and crouching underneath a fence, you believed you had left the thrill of the rush to a temporary safe haven in this mess and introduced yourself to the woman.
“I know this isn't good timing but I’m (Y/N)” giving your hand for the woman to shake.
Shaking your hand the woman said “I’m Abby.”
In the blink of an eye the woman you had seen before, the one with the sledgehammer that knocked the woman down prior to this was attacking the kids, Abby got up instantly to fight without any weapons. You fumbled with your hands trying to search for more ammo to shoot her down but Abby got around just fine with her bare fists, the last thing you recall is hearing her question the tall woman if she was wearing her backpack and before you could recollect your thoughts on what you were witnessing, Abby had smashed the skull of the scared woman with the sledgehammer.
You made your way down trying to open the rusted auto-shop door and heard Abby talk to Lev and Yara but you couldn't hear it over the door you were trying to pry open.
“Through here c’mon” You said to the people you were stuck with for the moment.
When everyone got inside you let go of the door, you were searching your backpack for your flashlight when you felt someone’s presence getting closer.
“(Y/N)? Is that right? Abby asked.
“It is.” you confirmed looking at her eyes, even if you never crossed her path again after this, you wanted to remember the strange womans features.
“Thanks for you know, helping me down. Do you need anything, anything at all?” She asked with her blue eyes never breaking your gaze.
“Don’t thank me Abby, I’m sure you would’ve done the same.” You replied wiping your sweat away from your forehead, “Right now I just need us to get out of this shit hole.”
Abby respectfully nodded and left you to search while moving towards the struggling kids who were trying to pry open a door. You desperately needed ammo so you wouldn't rely on your screwdriver as your weapon of choice but this was odd, you wouldn't admit it to yourself or out loud that the only thing stealing your attention from a completely focused supply search like you had done millions of times was Abby's piercing blue eyes that were stuck in your mind, what had you gotten yourself into.
#abby anderson x reader#abby anderson#tlou#tlou2#tlou smut#tlou fanfiction#abby anderson x you#abby anderson x female reader#abby anderson x y/n#abby anderson smut#abby x fem!reader#lesbian#wlw#sapphic
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" Married to the Undead "
A Corpse Bride x Welcome Home AU created by @sketchquill
Idea: Y/N failed the wedding rehearsal and ran to the nearby forest out of fear and frustration. They rehearse their vows. When they finally get them correct, they unintentionally agree to marry.. a corpse?!
Reminders: Psst, hey! This will contain spoilers for Corpse Bride, it is heavily recommended that you watch the movie before reading here in order to understand the story! Also, keep in mind that this is NOT related to the cannon story of Welcome Home!! I do not know Clown or their friends personally, nor do I have any works associated with them!! This is purely for fun!! None of the characters or ideas belong to me!!
Reader is gender neutral!
In case you're new here, Wally is the groom (or Bride in the movie!)
I'll shut up now, I hope you enjoy!!
♡------------♡
Oh god, what have you done?!
The rehearsal did not go according to plan, not even close. Not only did you screw up the vows on more than one occasion, you set Howdy's mother on fire. On fire!! You were a nervous wreck in there, and you couldn't bring yourself to stay there another second. Without looking back, you ran out of the room, leaving everyone inside behind. You couldn't help it. The way everyone stared at you when you slipped up was adding more and more pressure until you couldn't take it anymore. Their glares was drilled in your mind as you ran tirelessly.
You ran and ran until you came up to the bridge. On top of the bridge, you stared at the frozen water underneath you. You hung your head in defeat, taking out a small flower that Howdy had generously gifted you hours before. It had a nice scent to it, like lavender and honey. You frowned, furrowing your brows as you sighed.
"Oh, Howdy.. I wish I could say them perfectly to you. Instead, I walked in and set your mother on fire."
You stood quiet, taking in the cold chills that filled the air with snow and icicles everywhere. You allowed yourself to slip away in thought for a moment. You couldn't help but think of the wedding tomorrow. You couldn't deny that Howdy was very handsome, but was he really the one for you? Goodness, it's better off if you just ran away and never came back. Maybe that'll fix the issue.
Your thoughts came to a halt when you heard someone call your name from the distance. You perked your head up, glancing over at the city that was far from you.
Oh shoot.
It was Eddie. It was difficult to read his expression from how far you were, but you knew he was worried from how he spoke.
"Y/N? Y/N, where are you?" Eddie shouted for you, hopping for your return as he longed to know if you were okay. Guilt filled your heart as you stepped away. No, not yet. You couldn't bring yourself to return. Feeling much worse, you turned on your heels and walked away into the frozen forest that laid in front of you.
The cold air was bitter, you shivered as the sounds of snow crunching underneath your feet filled the atmosphere. While you were walking, you thought that perhaps, this would be a good time to rehearse. No one to stare, no one to judge. You took a deep breath as you ventured through the forest.
"With this hand, I will lift your cup. What, no!" You face palmed in embarrassment from your mess-up. Lift your sorrows, not cup, you mentally told yourself. This was going to be awhile..
"Your wine will- No. Your cup will never empty."
"..What was that last line again?"
"With this candle, I will.. I will set your mother on fire, ugh. It's no use.."
You groaned in frustration. Is this how you'll do at the wedding? Mess up in front of a large crowd? Mess up in front of your soon-to-be groom? It felt pointless, it was slowly dragging you down as you felt you couldn't get the vows right. You sat down at a nearby rock, head in your hands. Maybe you really weren't ready to marry. The thought shook you to the core. You had no choice, yet you kept messing up.
You reached into your pocket and took out the ring. It was a simple gold, yet it held so much meaning. You looked at the ring in hopes to find the right words, maybe a small reminder should do the trick. You stared at it for a moment as thoughts ran through your mind. You took a deep breath and stood up, raising your right hand as you held your left hand to your heart.
"With this hand, I will lift your sorrows."
You turned to a nearby tree. It had multiple branches sticking out of its sides. With a small smile, you dashed to it and took one branch into your hand.
"Good evening, Mr. Pillar. You're looking fine, if I do say so myself."
You turned your gaze to another tree, one that has been cut and dead. You shuffled your way towards it, patting it a few times on the rough surface if the dead oak.
"My goodness, Mrs. Pillar, you look simply divine!"
There was a decently sized tree bark that stood out to you. You ripped it from it's place, imagining it as a candle.
"Your cup will never be empty, for I will be your wine."
You took a few paces up front, kneeling down and positioning the broken bark piece to a twig, pretending that it was another candle. You imagined the bark in your hand was lit with a spark.
"With this candle, I will light your way into darkness."
The air seemed to have gotten colder, but you didn't mind it for the moment. There was an oddly shaped branch that stood out from the ground. At least, you thought it was a branch. It looked perfect for the quick practice. You knelt down to the branch, raising the ring above it.
"With this ring, I ask you to be mine."
You place the ring onto one of the sticks. You felt the air go stiff. The crows around you began to fly away in a hurry. You turned around, looking around as you felt accomplished for saying the vows so perfectly. You smiled to yourself. Sure, you'll have to explain your absence, but at least you're prepared for the upcoming wedding.
Your thoughts came to a halt when you heard something snap.. and take your arm!
"AAH!" You screamed. You tried to pull your arm back, but that something was pulling you to the ground. Your entire right arm was in the ground. You could feel your arm get pulled out of its place. You shrieked in pain as you turned and pled away as hard as you could. It had a strong grip, but you eventually managed to break free from the grip. You stumbled back and fell on your back. You quickly shuffled to get up, looking down to.. see an arm on your arm!? You screamed once more, frantically waving your arm for it to let go. Just as you managed to fling the decapitated arm away, you felt the ground rumble.
You begun to back away as another arm reached out of the ground. It was a rising corpse. Oh. Oh god. What have you done?!
The corpse rose from it's grave. From the looks of it, it was dressed up as a groom. The groom stood over you, its veil covering the face. Your heart began to race, your breathing became heavier as the groom lifted his veil, revealing his face. A stitched up corpse that stared at you with a large smile.
"I do.." He whispered.
Oh hell no.
With no second thought, you immediately pulled yourself up and bolted out of there. You ran and ran, trying to get away from the corpse. The moment you turned your head, you saw him following you. He had just stitched his arm back into place. The way he stared at you with a large grin was creeping you out.
As you ran, you slipped and ran in place on the frozen water. You were just about to fall when you grabbed onto a nearby branch and pulled yourself out from the ice. You didn't dare to look back. Despite feeling breathless, you ran as fast as your legs could carry you. The moment you turned your head to look, you slammed yourself against the tree.
You backed away as pain overwhelmed you. Your vision became blurry. You turned around and barely made out the groom that was still approaching you. You couldn't tell if he was walking or running towards you, but you didn't want to stick around to find out. You immediately turned around, accidentally slammed yourself against the tree once more. You groaned in pain, but just managed to get out of there. Upon leaving the forest, you ran through a a dead bush that still had many sharp twigs intact. You didn't think twice about changing routes, so you ran straight through, causing your clothes to get ripped in some places.
The crows flew nearby as you ran up to the bridge, breathing heavily. You paused to take a breather, frantically looking around to see that the undead groom was nowhere to be seen. Thank goodness..
Just as you turned around, he was right in front of you.
You yelped in surprise and backed up, but was blocked by the wall of the bridge. You leaned back, feeling your heart race faster as fear and anxiety overwhelmed you. The groom stood close to you, cupping your face. His hands were ice cold, causing you to shiver. Your eyes met his. His eyes were dilated, you could've sworn you saw hearts. You tried to lean farther back, but the groom held your face in place.
"You may now kiss the groom.." The groom closed his eyes as he slowly leaned in towards you. You wanted to push him away, but you were frozen in shock. You couldn't move. You began to feel dizzy and lightheaded. You couldn't bear to look anymore. You squeezed your eyes shut. In a moment's notice, you felt his lips meet yours. You grew breathless, and before you knew it...
Everything went black.
♡------------♡
I'm going to end up writing the entire AU as a movie, aren't I?
But in all seriousness, thank you all for the support of my last writing. It geniunely means a lot to me. I was not expecting it to get so well received, but I'm happy that you all enjoyed it. Remember to take care of yourselves! <3
#welcome home#welcome home au#wally welcome home#eddie welcome home#howdy welcome home#wally darling x reader#howdy pillar x reader#eddie dear#wally darling#howdy pillar#corpse bride#x reader#corpse puppet au
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who do you think fucked up worse…gehrman or maria?
This is an interesting question, and I kind of didn't think of it before! Time to take a closer look at their crimes I guess. Some of these will be held on the possibilities and 'safe assumptions' though and addressed for the full picture!
1) Both were involved in Fishing Hamlet massacre!
With Maria, we can conclude as much because she discarded her weapons in the well at the place specifically. Her version in the Nightmare realm, a Hunter again, is supposed to be what punishes her, and she is focused on keeping Kos/OoK away from rummaging through. Considering the nature of the Nightmare, as well as the Doll who has spiritual connection with her, it should come from her guilt and regrets rather than.. I dunno, discarding the hunt over natural 'character development' and just picking a cool place to forsaken her past!
Gehrman sleeps better according to the dialogue Doll has after you kill OoK and free it's soul, so if it tortured him so, I think it is safe to say he had to be personally involved too rather than stay back while his students did the job:
They both were involved with Byrgenwerth, following their quest for obtaining the eyes of the dwellers from their skulls, and I suppose cord of OoK?
The thing about this point is that the description is written as though it was Gehrman's curiosity which ruined Maria's "idealisation" of him, or WOULD ruin it had she learned of it! This makes me wonder whether she was really involved in Byrgenwerth all that much, or whether she was aware of the real purpose of Fishing Hamlet massacre beforehand? Her goal, within the Nightmare, is stated to mercy-kill us so we don't allow that curiousity corrupt us to the point of "rummaging through corpse" and similar things, further supported by her visceral attack being an embrace if it is lethal!
I am just saying that here the balance might slightly shift towards making Gehrman 'worse' than her. Maybe she was not aware that it all was not just killing "monsters" but also a pregnant mother with her divine baby, but "well you didn't ask :/". Maybe Gehrman deceived her to use her aid. Maybe he didn't think it would be a big deal for her seeing that Maria was also interested in evolution through talking with Great Ones, and assumed she'd be just as callous about which means to accomplish the goals with?
2) Both were grave-robbing, or at least okay with that!
This one is a little less obvious, but Tomb Prospectors were not the first to go to the Chalice Dungeons! ...It were actually Willem, Dores and Gatekeeper lol:
BUT ALSO it were Old Hunters! We can see the remnants of it by Old Hunter Vitus being one the summons in Chalice Dungeons, hear Gehrman encourage us to go into the Chalice Dungeons to become stronger as via "tradition" of the Old Hunters,
and the fact that one of the things that torture Maria (again, remember that Nightmare Realm is Hell that punishes) is a Chalice:
(A video ( x ) for a better look at the Chalice from a figure)
I'd say that it is not very nice to disturb the undead Pthumerians just struggling in remains of their civilisation! Interesting thing: we can conclude they are even staying there to protect the Great Ones or their remains!
There has been some sort of civil war between ancient great-ones-respecting Pthumerians and who late became Cainhurst nobles! Maria, ironically, fell onto the side of "entitled guys" descendants! But yes, I could see why bullying zombie guys to get more history and archeology relics from them might not seem like much for her at start. Experience in the Fishing Hamlet likely retroactively ruined this period of her life for her: delving into Chalice Dungeons was likewise 'not leaving the corpse alone'. The remaining Pthumerians were right having some honour and dignity. So, that came to haunt her in the form of Pthumeru Chalice. Gehrman is.. well he's here too I guess dfshfdhs
3) Both knew a little too much about Laurence's shady business and did nothing?
Old Hunters used to be friends with Healing Church's Hunters and even had their workshops located close to one another! Gehrman was friends with Laurence and Ludwig, who are both quite strongly involved with Moon Presence (Ludwig's sword and guidance, Laurence's affiliation being known since Byrgenwerth times), as well as the key figure in creation of Hunter's Dream:
This was most likely a bait-and-switch, seeing how the cord itself is still in the real Workshop, and not in the grasp of Moon Presence (unlike, say, Wet Nurse taking Mergo's cord)! I think the purpose of creation of the Hunter's Dream was to "buy time" for the research conceived by the scientists! Remember: Gehrman was known to have "madness of curiosity" that Maria resented, or at least would resent had she known! He might have been fully aware of what Laurence wanted to do and support it! My point here, that with such proximity, he must have known of all Laurence's crimes and agreed with them!
Maria was at least overseer of the Clocktower's Research Hall, which, again, was just beta!Choir.
This last line IS a bit confusing, because it makes it sound as though the nerds looking for the Eyes Inside and the Blood Ministers got split. Laurence and Ludwig make it weird, as Moon Presence is also an Eldrich creature and Ludwig is for sure full of eyes! What also makes it strange is that Choir, and then School of Mensis, are both upper echelons of the Healing Church, but Laurence is supposed to be above both of them.
I think this can be worked with! Let's say what if Choir formed after Laurence's death, which also happened after Maria's death, and Vicars after him were somewhat "powerless" and walked over by Choir and Mensis, only leaders in the name! But that still leaves the bit that the mentioned "division" happened after Choir was formed! Maria and Adeline, however, are locked to the existence of the Research Hall, so, the timeframe when doctors and blood ministers were 100% working together! We find the Eye Pendant that opens the access to the Research Hall in Laurence's hand, and human Skull of Laurence on the platform that hides the secret elevator to that Research Hall. Again, by the Nightmare Logic, they must be connected with Laurence's sins: he started this research, or sponsored it, or was overseeing it, and so on.
This point is not an absolute thing though, because one or both of them might be freed from guilt here. Maybe Gehrman was not as informed and agreeable as we could assume and Laurence did lead him around? Maybe Maria wanted but could not do anything being caught in the web of complicated connections, blackmail and risks for the people she cared about?
4) Both are willingly involved in questionable practices (Maria with research, Gehrman with the cycle of Dream and Hunt)
This point I feel like transcends the morality a little bit, as it touches the matter of 'it is bad if you do it, but it is also bad if you DON'T do it'. I really love Soulsborne universes for having guts to say "you can't win, just pick your poison", but I think it is still worth addressing!
It is up to interpretation in which quantity Maria is involved with the Research Hall! Nothing states whether she founded it, joined in the research later, stepped in and turned the tides (ba dum tss) of the research, or simply was a caretaker/nurse/etc of the broken mess while Research Hall was getting ready for a bit of rebranding. She can be very guilty, or she can be barely guilty but in either case if that was her "redemption arc" that was a pretty bad way to go about it. ...or was it?
Fauxsefka turns people into Celestial Emissaries so they physically can't become beasts instead, and is even stated to be a hero / heroic researcher by Miyazaki:
First, I don't do Death of the Author (in terms of interpreting media I mean, not in terms of a style of writing)! Like, nope. Never. It is just not for me. Creator's word is the final for me; Fauxsefka is the good guy in the story, apparently, and it makes sense considering the fundamentally broken place characters are in! Maria has similarities with Fauxsefka: not only both of them have Cainhurst roots, but also both of them seem to favour 'Stars' line of evolution for humans!
Whereas other patients are afraid of the horrors of the Deep Sea, a concept Miyazaki could not get over well into DS3, Adeline desires them! Other patients seems to have gotten it right, and you can see one of them also clings to Maria mentally to "not drown"; Adeline "didn't understand"! The balcony that Maria wants Adeline to go to so she can forsaken the Deep Sea and seek something "happier" holds unique kind of patients who can shoot cosmic arcane spells:
Herself, Maria is associated with these lumenflowers: their petals are all over her boss arena, and the way to her lays through a much bigger batch of flowers, where Living Failures, other 'Stars' Kin are, whose song lyrics also feature lines 'ave stellar' and 'ave Maria'!
So, how this is different from what Fauxsefka is doing, who is stated to be as much of a good person as possible within this context and with the burden of her knowledge? Fauxsefka was doing more or less rinse-and-repeat practice, with maybe a few patients not surviving the procedure but we don't know what happened: maybe that person was already at the brink of death and she tried to make them live like this.
^ This guy I mean. Maria, on the other hand, is in the time period where the doctors and scientists were only testing the waters (BA DUM TSSS) (ok I will stop) and it was not SO certain what was at the stake, what were the alternatives, what was awaiting the humanity. It is even possible that the beasts problem was not yet bad to the point of "you'll either become a beast, be eaten by a beast or become a Kin, humanity is DONE for!" ! This was an unethical research at the cost of real people! The weight of Maria's sin here really depends on the interpretation, though
As for the cycle of Dream and Hunt, this is complicated and lingers on one's interpretation of what the purpose of the Dream even IS! Its existence provides two things: 1) a hunter who is immortal for the night, thus can sustain the beasts with efficiency like no other, but also effect the continuity of the night ( x ) and 2) supposed sustenance to the Great One Flora of the Moon, who holds the hunt as a concept!
I used to be a bit more set on the idea that if beasts are not sustained and hunted, they will simply overpower those who are yet humans and eat them! It is a self-feeding cycle of people needing to self-defend from beasts, thus having to consume the blood as urgent means of healing and power-up since beasts are too strong, thus risking to become beasts themselves because the blood they consumed during that hunt corrupts them. So, the Hunter's Dream would be a good thing, as it'd help to 'buy time' during nights of the hunt in which not only beasts are more active but Great Ones too! While the Dreaming Hunter holds everything together, the greatest minds of the Healing Church can efficiently study the ways to end beasthood, or ANY problem of humanity, once and for all! It is just better to throw the hunting resources on the Dream, so the scientists don't worry about the beasts and can focus on research. However, I almost forgot that:
This implies that had there not been Mensis Ritual ongoing, people WOULD have the chance to simply 'wait away' the beasthood problem. That, since Rom is not stopping Mensis Ritual but just conceals it, what really makes the inner beast within everyone who consumed the blood inevitably come out is Mergo's cry that draws the Bloodmoon close!
So yeah, the point about Hunter's Dream being helpful for the research of evolution still stands, especially under assumption that the deal with Moon Presence helped to bring more Eldrich Arcane close for "feeding" her. The point about how if the beasts are not hunted they'll simply eat everyone, though, is vague. It is safer to assume that the Hunter's Dream and Research Hall both are both example of hubris of man even if approached differently. Attempts to draw in something dangerous and horrifying, but it is "justified risk" because if you manage to 'tame' arcane/blood, sure, humanity will prosper!
Like... yeah, sure, there IS dangerous and undesireable nature of man that ruins everything and might or might not still linger in humanoids' genes after Loran. But did humanity ASK any of you guys to keep trying to fix it with so many victims and sacrifices? Like, was it WORTH it?
This point is closely tied to 'knowing Laurence's bad antics and doing nothing', yeah. Maria didn't seem to like blood ministration very much, as she disapproved of Adeline becoming a Blood Saint, but she also didn't even approve of blood antics of her own clan! I am not sure what would be her opinion on the Hunter's Dream had she lived to the point when it was created, just that she herself is not willing to ever hunt, so I am leaving this point aside. Is this just blood ministration that she opposes but proximity with a Great One Moon Presence would be something she can see the potential of? Or would she and Gehrman have a pointless cat fight about whose methods are better when they are both hubris of man? In both versions they are 'guilty'! Besides:
In the end none of THIS matters either and everyone was fooled ( x ). The blood offering is a blood offering in any way; whether it is through spilling blood violently during the hunt, or offering the blood's 'red' with how celestial Kin all bleed red. Moon doesn't care what paints it red, in the end.
___________________________________
My conclusion is: both of these characters fucked up almost equally! I think the balance shifts just a little bit and Maria is slightly better than Gehrman since she had some limitations set on how far she was willing to go. Her motivation was not in "curiosity" but strictly in helping humanity, even if in unfair ways, which is apparently not the case for Gehrman?
I'll say this though, NOW I am hooked on the idea of Maria and Gehrman being petty "rivals" ideologically (for as long as they could before Maria's own demons caught up with her). Especially since neither approach is better than the other and they are both cringe loosers! Again, lost comedy gold over Fromsoft making Gehrman's tender and warm feelings for her before and after her death plain. What is not lost, however, is the fact that the two should just kick Laurence and go home :pensive:
#bloodborne#lady maria of the astral clocktower#gehrman the first hunter#again: blaming laurence is a solid strategy#honorable mention: even more of maria's blame might be lifted depending on how strong gehrman's influence was on her#we don't know when he started training her. maybe it was since very young age? so a lot of her actions as a hunter were unwise#again it depends because as of now she is a grown thinking woman and could have processed it BEFORE pregnant mother got killed-#-and her child stolen!#so I am on 'maria's agency' side here!#I think it is more like gehrman FEELS as though he 'ruined' her with the hunt#like you know how sometimes when we feel guilty we become illusioned about how much impact we had on another person's actions and feelings#we need to be TOLD that it was that person's choices in the end because we might feel like we 'controlled' them#and of course his guilt would be amplified and impossible to reason with considering she took her own life!#(as far as we can assume)#ask replies#bloodborne observation#bloodborne headcanons#analysis
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HELOI THJERE:
so long story i rewatched corpse bride had a brainrot of it + vil brainrot and i was wondering about a corpse bride au vil x reader (like possibly vil being a corpse/undead groom (idk if i used that word correctly) if that makes sense, and the reader just reciting their wedding vows and accidentally marrying him
tldr: vil x reader corpse bride au where vil is an undead groom request
This was actually kind of fun to write, Lol. I surprised myself with how interesting this was! Thank you for the fun lil' request <3
My (perfect) undead groom
Vil X reader
General warnings: Gender neutral reader, corpse bride au
You stood at the altar to be married off with some...stranger. Riddled with nerves you could not help but become a shaking stuttering mess, after managing to set your soon-to-be mother-in-law on fire and stumbling over your vows, you left in a moment of embarrassment and weakness.
You wandered into the forest, rubbing the engagement ring in your hand with your thumb as you swung your legs back and forth sighing.
"How can I possibly be so stupid," You grumbled to yourself, "Can't even remember just a few silly words? I swear I had them down earlier! why can't I just..."
You took a deep breath with your eyes closed, holding the ring in your hand with a tight grip before exhaling and slowly opening your eyes. With one hand on your chest and the other holding the ring up to the sky, you began to perfectly, clearly, and confidently speak your vows. As you came to the finishing line, you gracefully placed the ring onto a thin branch before your final declaration, and your ultimate life sentence;
"Will you marry me?" A moment of silence, the wind blowing through the leafless trees as you let out a breathless sigh and a pitiful smile with sad eyes. The moment you bent down to retrieve the ring, the branches seemed to come alive as your wrist was suddenly grasped tightly within the brambles, pulling you to the ground. You let out a screech of shock as you pulled your arm roughly back from nature's grasp, falling to the ground. Before you had the chance to get back up, a tall figure was looming over you.
Whoever it was, was incredibly handsome. Strangely, you couldn't really describe how uneasy yet...attracted it made you feel. The man had skin of a blue tint, sunken cheeks, and torn-up wedding attire. One arm was fully shown to be a skeleton, with a portion of his rib bones showing in an opening of his torn tuxedo. Despite this...he was tall, with his blue-tinted skin free from impurities and hair forming his facial features elegantly. His arms were crossed, staring down at your trembling body.
"W-who-"
"Hmm," He said, bending over to get a better look at you with a finger up to his chin in thought. With a tilted head, his beautifully decorated yet empty amethyst eyes looked you up and down- you suddenly felt incredibly insecure at the sudden attention.
"Unkempt outfit, unconfident gaze, and the resemblance of a half-priced sack of potatoes," You shook your head and furrowed your eyebrows, flabbergasted at his brazen comments. You opened your mouth to protest before he roughly grabbed your cheeks and turned your head left and right. "However, confident vows, elegant execution, and heartfelt emotions" You felt yourself side-eye awkwardly, feeling this very one-sided conversation further your confusion (and lowkey hurt your ego while inflating it all the same.)
"You could use some work, but.." He removed his skeleton hand from your face to take a look at the ring you had put upon what was a branch only moments before, admiring the way it glittered in the moonlight. The strange man smiled fondly before looking back down at you.
"I do."
"You do what?" You exasperated.
"I will marry you, potato."
You suddenly scrambled to your feet and began to spit out incoherent words of protest- all falling upon deaf ears. The tall, mysterious man grabbed you by your hand and began to lead you into his world.
"I must introduce you to Rook and Epel," He said, turning to you with a handsome smile, "They must know I have finally found myself a spouse. And I need all the help I can get to fix you up to be suitable to be called mine."
~~
Masterlist
#twisted wonderland#Twisted wonderland X reader#Twst#Twst x reader#twst headcannons#twst fanfic#twst fanfictions#twisted wonderland fanfictions#twisted wonderland fanfic#Vil#Vil x reader#vil schoenheit x reader#vil schoenheit#Twisted wonderland Vil#Vil twisted wonderland#Vil twisted wonderland x reader
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I watched Mossbag’s new video on the Pale Kng’s Biology and it made me realize something about Vessels.
They’re dead. More specifically they’re zombies.
As Mossbag points out, the eyes of Vessels are sunken, like the inside of their shells are hollow, just like the many corpses found in Hallownest.
Vessels are made by taking an egg from the Pale King and White Lady and sticking it in the void, where the void seems to literally fuse with the egg. Given how void reacts to basically every living being like some sort of fantasy radioactive material, slowly poisoning them from exposure until they die with void leaking out of their eyes, this no doubt kills the child in that egg.
But the egg still hatches, and out comes a walking corpse, an empty shell reanimated by primordial darkness.
It has no mind because it is dead.
It has no will because it is dead.
It has no voice because it is dead.
Ghost and the other vessels don’t appear to ever grow because they’re not alive. Their bodies are not capable of growing because their bodies are dead. That’s also why they don’t seem to need food or water (or sunlight honestly, as their mother is some sort of plant).
This even explains a thing about focusing.
When Hornet heals herself in the Silksong demos and trailers, she swiftly surrounds herself with silk and seems to quickly patch up all of her injuries, sewing wounds shut and healing damage, made easier by the soul, the lifeforce of a bug that keeps them alive, infused into her own silk.
It’s quick and it heals several masks, several injuries, at once.
But when a Vessel focuses:
The process is slow, drawn out and requires several seconds of focus from the vessel where they cannot move. Where Hornet’s healing is quick and seems to be a technique with her silk that was developed by her and practiced until it was good enough, Vessel focusing is slow and seemingly built into the Vessel as a base ability, with both Ghost and the Hollow Knight being capable of it.
But then consider what Vessels use to focus. Soul. The literal lifeforce of other bugs. Another thing worth pointing out is that out of every creature capable of using soul, only vessels can focus. None of the bugs in Soul Sanctum can. Hornet can’t. Only Vessels can focus.
Focusing isn’t just magical healing done through soul. It’s the Vessel, an undead creature, forcing the raw energy of life into its body, forcing its dead body not just to live and begin the natural healing process, but speeding that process up so even the largest wounds heal in a matter of seconds. Focusing is forcing life energy into an dead body to get it to briefly act like a live one. That’s why it takes several seconds of the Vessel standing perfectly still and focusing to just heal a single mask while Hornet can heal several in a fraction of the time. Hornet preforms actual healing on herself, sewing up wounds with magical silk. A Vessel forces its own body to live and heal itself naturally in a fraction of the normal time.
And that’s not all. The only Vessel that’s actually grown by any amount is the Hollow Knight, who lived in the White Palace and was basically supercharged by the soul produced inside. Living inside the White Palace didn’t just give the Hollow Knight more power, it made the Hollow Knight’s corpse of a body alive again, giving it the ability to grow like a living creature.
Vessels are Zombies, and focusing is a surprisingly fucked up process.
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Devil Flute Upon Graves, Wei Ying
The newest and youngest of the currently known existing Supreme-ranked ghosts. His emergence from the Kiln is treated by the Three Realms as the start of what could be a new generation of Calamities. His notoriety comes from his second "death" where he leveled the infamous Burial Mounds, swallowing more than half the ghosts and resentment within the Mounds, and releasing enough backlash to force Mount Tonglu to awaken.
Under the cut are more details about his reputation, appearance and abilities as a Supreme-ranked ghost.
REPUTATION (as a ghost)
His moniker, Devil Flute Upon Graves, references his use of the Devil Flute Chenqing to control the undead and harvest resentful energy from them.
Wei Ying is considered by many to be the first of a potential new generation of Great Calamities. His close association with both Hua Cheng and Xie Lian has others considering him as Hua Cheng's "successor" Calamity, much to the chagrin of both Ghost Kings.
His territory is considered to be the Burial Mounds and sometimes the greater Yiling area. Within the area, he has a few scattered worshippers after his short stint of helping the Yiling civilians post-Sunshot Campaign, and his "cleansing" of half the Burial Mounds in the wake of his "death". Turns out eating half of the vengeful ghosts/corpses and dispelling most of the condensed resentful energy around the area helped improve the lives of the Yiling civilians greatly.
Additionally, his existence as pure yin energy straight up unnerves many who come across him. Though he appears quite animated in the outside, many describe his presence as unnaturally cold or empty or still. There's no natural balance within him at all and the dissonance between his outwards appearance and his ghostly presence just freaks people out.
APPEARANCE
His true appearance is similar to his time as the Yiling Laozu, though healthier (as healthy as a ghost would look like) and more androgynous in the sense that the features that he inherited from his mother, like his eyes and nose, have been enhanced. His eyes have also become a more intense silver, though it could be just the effect of his red eye makeup. His clothing remains in his signature black and red palette although the black is more prominent now. His outermost black robes have bright red feather designs clinging at the end, giving them the appearance of dripping blood. Overall, his appearance invokes the feeling of a crow that had recently bathed in freshly shed blood.
After the failed summoning by Mo Xuanyu, Wei Ying's primary disguise is that of a young adult ex-rogue cultivator named Mo Shanxi. His facial features are a mix of his original appearance and Mo Xuanyu's, to claim distant blood relations. His clothes as Mo Shanxi are in whites with hints of deep, almost black reds, and are reminiscent of the clothing of his mother, Cangse-Sanren, and his martial uncle, Xiao Xingchen.
ABILITIES (as a ghost)
Pure Yin Energy Body: Wei Ying's ghostly body is made of pure, condensed yin and resentful energy straight from the Burial Mounds. Just by being in his presence alone can agitate the most peaceful of spirits. WY can either consciously suppress his yin energy or he hangs around people with an abundance of yang energy to balance him out (hint: LWJ). The composition of his ghostly body means it's ridiculously easy for him to switch back and forth between male and female forms, though his natural form remains androgynous in appearance thanks to the abundance of yin energy.
Ghostly Cultivation: His signature cultivation style. His main instrument for this is Chenqing, which is known as the Devil Flutein the Three Realms. Since he is now a ghost, practicing this path has no repercussions to him anymore. In fact, using resentful energy boosts his natural ghost powers. At some point in time, he will also learn how to use other people's hatred of or negative emotions towards him as a power booster as well
Ghostly Demon Crows: Everywhere he goes, he is accompanied by a murder of red-eyed, crows made of condensed resentful energy. They seem to be empathetically connected to him and can act as additional eyes and ears. They're chatty, yappy things who are notably fond of Lan Zhan, Wen Ning and the junior quartet (LSZ, LJY, OYZZ, JL).
Wei Ying's crows tend to eat Hua Cheng's silver butterflies, but they quickly spit them out because according to Wei Ying, the butterflies "taste super nasty". This habit of his crows is often a point of contention between the two Ghost Kings.
Demon Crow Transformation: His outermost robes seem to allow him to transform into a demonic crow at will, sort of like a corrupted version of the "Swan Maiden". According to him, he gained the robes/ability long before he became a Supreme/Devastation rank ghost since it was apparently a "gift" from the Burial Mounds itself
Connection with the Burial Mounds: Since Wei Ying was "born" as a ghost from deep within the Burial Mounds, he seems to have an empathetic connection with it. He doesn't know the full extent of this ability since he is still technically a newborn ghost.
WHERE ARE HIS ASHES?
His ashes are in the form of a near-indestructible chai hairpin that he wears. It looks like it's made of a silvery, metallic material and carved into the shape of a crow's wing. It seems to be held in place by supernatural means since it never falls off even in the heat of battle.
(Yes, he does give his hairpin-ashes to his Lan Zhan. Yes, he gave it before the Big Confession. No, he isn't aware that the entire hairpin exchange gave off the vibes of a newly-engaged lady giving her fiance a hairpin as a love token.)
#mdzs#grandmaster of demonic cultivation#mo dao zu shi#wei wuxian#wei ying#lan wangji#lan zhan#wangxian#mine : devil flute upon graves au#mine : character sheet#calamity wei wuxian#ghost king wei wuxian#mdzs x tgcf crossover#tgcf#tian guan ci fu#heaven official's blessing
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A zombie apocalypse au for @medusashima collab! Find the collab master list HERE! Be sure to give the others a read too!
Warning: graphic, violent, and sexual content intended for adults 18 or older.
Synopsis: Shelter isn't hard to come by in the End but good, untouched, shelter is. When you find paradise in the middle of a dead field in the shape of a 900 square foot home you start to break a few of your important rules. Always keep moving and don't help anyone. Especially if that anyone is a hot headed blonde bounty hunter sent to settle score you'd rather forget.
Peachy Keen Master List
Chapter One - Never overstay your welcome, keep moving
Winter
It scares you at first, the mummified body facing the door in the cramped living room of the home you found tucked away in a field of corn long past it's harvest.
Petrified you, like the farmers that sat facing one another. In wooden rocking chairs, gnarled fingers slack around the handles. Coming closer to inspect and seeing no signs of teeth marks or infection. Letting loose the held breath you kept as deft eyes looked over every liver spot and wrinkle in the leathery skin. No fluid on the hardwood floors beneath their rocking chair or in the blankets around their shoulders.
And by some miracle, the cold, the house didn't smell like rot.
You figure they must have died earlier this winter, it lasted damn near since October as the Earth naturally cooled in the fall of the human race.
With critical climate change hitting irreversible levels and long lasting damaging effects in just a few short decades, Mother Nature took matters into her own hands. Doing what she does best.
She evolves, she changes and grows, makes a deadly cocktail of pathogens and fungi that rids her realm of blight.
Humans.
You were just surprised a nuclear war didn't wipe humanity off the map first.
You hadn't meant to live this long, six whole years in the apocalypse, honestly you were one of the many who'd rather take their own lives. Least then you had a say in how and when you went.
But the body has a funny way of forcing you to survive. To dissociate in some feeble attempt to keep the body going for an organ that tortured itself daily with endless, grueling tasks and for what?
So you could experience your first kill? Watch your friends and family die when the Feds bombed cities instead of trying to quarantine sections? Of you walking until your feet bled, fleeing the city just to live in the outskirts to hear the screaming and wails as the undead met the living? Tied to a tree limb with your worn belt to sleep or maybe it was so you could loot the dead man for his tent but not without putting a bullet between his eyes as a parting gift first.
No longer does Grim accept the coins laid upon the eyes of the dead. Now payment for a safe travel down the river Styx is paid with the bullet lodged into the third eye of the deceased.
A tradition sure to be passed down to the generations to come.
Despite the rage you've aimed at yourself for still living, the home was a welcoming sight. The old farm house made of gray cinder block, stout in the field of the tall stalks that you yearned to see each sweltering summer when you were stuck in the city before the world went to shit.
Now the sight of the dried crop makes the nostalgia coat your tongue thickly, like the bitterant of a large pill.
You think you choke when you swallow.
Still even with the two harmless corpses it was an amazing find. The shingles of the roof are all in tack and the old wood stove holds the reminiscence of a charred log and ashes.
Logs lining either side that would last through the winter and then more still kept under an open awning out back. Plenty of birch wood to burn white smoke making you sigh in relief.
First things first and with the few hours of sun you had left you needed to get to work burying the couple. Half debating over taking their rings that were about to fall off before thinking better of it.
Grabbing the shovel from the makeshift shed and going to the edge of the corn field out back. Only you were stubborn, stupid enough to fight the frozen ground as you shoved the sharp spade into the Earth. Moving it to your will as sweat collects on the inside of your thermal undershirt making it stick to your back and the nape of your neck uncomfortably.
Your calloused hands protect you from the biting wood as you spend the better part of your day light going six feet down. Using the height of the shovel as a measuring stick.
I wonder if their kids and grandkids will visit. I'll have to make a good marker so they won't miss it.
And then it hits you. The realization of what you're thinking. Fat droplets blurring your vision as you chide yourself over wasting quickly dwindling time.
You hadn't even cried when you watched your friends being torn apart from the force of the bomb but here you were crying over two strangers and their imaginary family.
Except they weren't imaginary were they? They were hung neatly throughout the home.
Ya know the multi generational home that you planned to squat in. The one with the warped photos in warm senpia of when the family first arrived and built the modest country home to the vibrant color photo of the grandparents smiling ear to ear as their kids and their kids' kids stood on the still sturdy porch with corn cobs in their small hands.
Another sob racks through your body forcing you to take a break from carving out your last foot hold so you could climb out of the grave you'd just dug.
Should you start digging your own now too?
Since no one else was going to be around to do it.
Once you're back in the house you try to think of the logistics of bringing the pair out. You start with the wife, taking her delicately preserved body with the blanket around her shoulders.
"’Xcuse me." You murmur to her as you lift her up, surprisingly light compared to the other corpses you've carried or moved. Careful to avoid banging her up against the door jamb accidentally before you make it out the few yards to the edge of their little property.
Easing her down into the hole using the long and strong quilt that she must have made until you could slip it from beneath her to bring the fabric back up.
"Sorry." Another involuntary pleasantry as you scoop the husband and his quilt up. Repeating the same action until he rested beside her as much as he could be. Dropping the first and second quilt over them as if tucking them in. You just hoped they wanted their holy matrimony to be reflected in the after life as well.
Rooting around in your pocket for the few spare ammo you've got left.
"For the toll." You murmur dropping a bullet each before tackling the grueling task of shoveling dirt back into the hole you half killed yourself to dig. Returning to the house only to place their wooden rocking chairs at the foot of their grave before heading inside for the night.
Telling yourself not to look for their names, refusing to and that the wooden rocking chairs would have been enough.
But it gnaws at you as you move around their furniture to better suit you, as the old wood stove fills the home with a warmth, with a luxury, you've long since forgotten.
Knowing full well she would have been the type of woman to have a farmer's log.
A handwritten one or a more accurate family log written in the old bible that sat on her night stand.
You left it alone, thankful they hadn't died in their queen sized bed as you moved it into the living room frame and all.
The moon shining bright over head, peering in through the kitchen window over the sink as if to check on you. To see if you were still awake.
And of course you were, when was the last time you've ever had a restful sleep?
Your mind back to the "holy book" specifically the one with the worn leather and cracked spine. Even to the end the wife was a woman of faith, a bible open on the coffee table that you quickly used for kindling.
Because what has God ever done for you?
He sure as fuck wasn't as merciless as he claimed to be.
Although he'd given her and her husband an easy enough death hadn't he?
You were sure the rest of her family didn't meet the same gentle fate.
In the end there was only one true God and that was Death.
Ever waiting and watching, coming to steal you away before you could even blink with nothing to show you ever existed at all save for your own headstone, least til that crumbled away.
You jolt out of bed, rushing towards the book as if it whispered your name all this time and now it was shouting.
Screaming, demanding your undivided attention until you flip open the front cover. Old cursive greets you as the pages sigh, rolling over birth and death dates until you're forced to flip to the back, finding the first two names without death dates but plausible birth dates that would line up to their age and the End. Slamming the generations old book as you rise.
Finding yourself outside, bare foot. Knife in your hand and your breaths coming out in ragged puffs.
Scrapping along the tops of the wooden rocking chairs like a woman possessed, carefully carving the letters into the headrest of the rocking chairs.
Stepping back in a fever to admire your work, feet numb from the biting cold ground before you turn on your heel.
They echo back to you as if you'd carved each curving letter into your psyche instead of the smooth stained grain. Unsure if the haunting was that of thanks or scorn and you were sure a poltergeist was the least of your concern.
Even as you drift the names burn your retinas as if to remind you whose home you spent the night in.
ASTRID EMROY
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The next morning you find yourself trapped in the house by deep snow so you poke around the home. Rearranging some things here and there but not to disturb the personal belongings just yet.
Even though you know you won't stay long, never breaking one of your many rules that lead you to survive this long. But why not disturbing their belongs matters to you, you aren't sure.
Maybe it's the way that this home is untouched. Truly loved and lived in, while the other houses you've squatted in were long since looted. Ransacked and trashed, taken back by the unforgiving weather and those desperate enough to defile what was once someone's home.
For others, their Hell within four walls and maybe the big End meant nothing to them anyway. Besides, it wasn't like you weren't one of the many who rooted through homes and hissed when you found nothing of use, just fading photographs and old DVDs and CDs. Shit that didn't matter now.
Right now you were mostly looking for a good pen with a plan to roughly guess the year so you could add the rough date beside their names and put their bible up somewhere. As if compelled to end their chapter properly so that they may live on despite, their bloodline most likely having died long before them.
The couple really didn't have much and you were sure if you tried you could dedicate one small wall and bookshelf to their personal belongings to honor them. The thought makes you suck your teeth, so easily you cling to sentimental bullshit, out of spite now their things would be lucky to be stored away in a box.
On the dusty coffee table are two sets of coasters, tops well worn from sweating drinks, a black leather book and a copy of The Great Gatsby with a broken spine.
The book peaks your interest, hadn't read it since highschool and even then that felt like a foreign memory. Of harsh fluorescent lights that buzzed loud enough you were sure you'd go deaf to them after having lived in silence for so long. Tossing the tattered paperback onto the old wood top before your fingers grab for the worn leather spine, flipping the pages to see dozens and dozens of entries.
You settle into the old couch, the fire in the wood stove keeping the place warm as the sun lazily bleeds in through the windows to provide you with just enough light to read as you flip it open you're met with a threat.
If ya settle here ya better watch over our goddamn farm.
The cover page makes you snort, flipping the thick page to consume what you could, hoping there would be some hints on where they stashed their canned goods and supplies. Even if it didn't provide you with anything, at least it helped past the time.
Jan 31 20XX Six years after the "Rapture"
It's ain't all fucking peachy keen as I'm sure ya can see and I'm comin to realize that I ain't built to live forever.
And if I was, I couldn't imagine a worse hell than this.
If ya settled here in our little house I've got some rules.
No drinks on my damn coffee table without a coaster. I got plenty of 'em. The ones from my birthday (they got cats on em but the paint'll be rubbed off by now I'm sure) or the ones Emroy made outta small trees. Hell use a book if ya gotta.
Two, you best sweep this home. I don't care where ya came from or who ya came from, what god you do or don't worship but there is one thing for certain, house as old as this has a spirit and ya best keep it happy. Open the front and back door (good cross breeze in the sweltering summer) and you sweep my damn house.
Or I just might be the spirit that haunts ya.
Reckon that's it. So I'll quit my belly achin and step down from my soapbox to learn ya a thing or two.
Now if you're a country folk and from 'round these parts y'all'll know two things. When snows a coming, or rain, y'all can smell it real easy in the air. Can't tell ya the smell but if you know ya know. And the second being it always snows heavier in the next coming weeks before spring than it will in the dead of winter.
Now if you're from the city or just can't smell like ya used to, Bets the cow will be able to tell ya. She won't come out, simple as that and by the next day snow'll be up to your knees and Bets will look at you like she told you so.
Hopefully she'll live that long, seems this disease ain't affecting the animals like it is us folks. Reckon we didn't pray hard enough or some preachy shit Gran would've said. Now if the cow ain't there to tell ya, the farm log will. Use yer head, you'll see the pattern even with the blasted greed fueled heat spikes. It's best to prepare for the worst. We've enough canned rations to last us a lifetime in the cellar but Emory and I are old as dirt, it won't last forever but as long as these hands can can, they'll can what he grows.
Emory, my husband, says hello. Wants me to tell the "stranger" that's you I reckon, that the Great Gatsby is worth the read and that if ya find yourself with nothing to do, which ya will eventually, you should read it.
Go on now, get back to surviving and be sure to dust my damn picture frames too.
Yours truly,
Astrid & Emory.
Pushy. You think to yourself but relish in the fact that old folks like to ramble, even in written form. Quick to explore the home to find the cellar doors in the fading short lived light of winter before realizing the age of the home.
Shit, it's probably buried under a whole foot and a half of snow, you could exhume it now but you and twilight always seemed to have bad luck.
It's when you've been raided most and almost bitten more times than you can count and after finding this place you don't wish to push your luck. Even if the undead were few and far between in bumfuck nowhere.
Flipping open the cabinets in the kitchen you find a few manufactured canned meats. Fingers smoothing out the old label for any sign of denting or damage that could lead to botulism. Finding none makes you pop open the can to sit atop the old black wood stove, glass casting the room in a soft orange that rivals the sunset. It makes you pull the blinds closed in caution, not wanting any light to attract unwanted guests and when the wind howls you wrap tighter in one of the many blankets lying around.
Three days pass and there is only so many times you can study the farm logs and widdle wood into pitiful shapes with your dull knife before you drive yourself mad. Still avoiding the books for now in some sort of spite or rebellion to God knows who before you're outside and bundled up. Shovel in hand as you scrape the metal spade all along the foundation of the house until you hear a satisfying tink.
Your luck would be to start in the wrong direction and have to walk all the way back around the house just for the damn thing to be on the left side of the back porch instead of the right. Shoveling away the icy snow before coming across the wooden cellar doors. You wonder if you'll have to replace them soon but your curiosity of the future dies when you spy a combination padlock. Sucking your teeth pull a bobby pin from your hair, straightening it out and wiggling it between the rusting dials, scraping it around before feeling the soft give of the locking mechanism. You jab roughly and the lock pops open making you smile as if you hadn't picked anything ten times as hard.
Taking the steps into the deep cellar where the air was cool yes but warmer than outside. As if it were deep enough in the Earth to stay a balmy fifty degrees even in summer heat. Flash light paints the darkness in harsh white when you spy a candle and a box of matches into an enclave built right into the old cobblestone.
Once the fire flickers to life you switch your flashlight off, pocketing it as the candle washes the old glass jars and few metal cans aglow.
Jarred jerky catches your eye first as you snatch for that, then a small jar of syrupy looking strawberries, as bright red as when they were first picked, making your mouth salivate. The place neatly organized and labeled, the metal cans of all of those beef stews that were upstairs despite there only being enough of those left to last through this winter. Even if you stretched them out with water. Finger following the shelf lining to try to find more sweet fruit coming across the word peaches under a layer of dust.
Delight you look up, just to find the shelf empty and the sight of it makes you snarl.
But at least you had your strawberries.
They taste like late spring, like your childhood when you'd pick the berries at the local farm. How the sun beating down on your back made them taste that much sweeter in the field. A little reward paid by the sweat on your brow and the money your mother would toll out for the fresh fruit.
Well, well worth the price.
Spring is coming like her book says and you sweep and dust her house.
#bakugou x reader#bakugou Katsuki x reader#bakugo katsuki x reader#bakugo x reader#kitten writes bakugou 🖤🐈⬛ 🖋️
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Atropos "Rook" Ingellvar, leader of the Veilguard
When a section of Nevarra's Grand Necropolis was rediscovered, the last thing the Mourn Watch expected to find was a child, let alone the child of two of their missing Watchers. Cradled in the arms of the decaying corpse of her mother, young Atropos' heart was nearly still, her breathing slowed. It was only through the Mourn Watch's quick actions that she survived. Atropos lived her whole life in the Necropolis, raised as the collective child of the Mourn Watch. Due to her near death experience as a child, she had a knack for the necromantic arts. It was no wonder that she eventually joined the Mourn Watch proper herself when the time came. When the War of the Banners broke out, it was Atropos who led the charge against the rebelling undead. Though her actions were brave, and justified in her eyes, the destruction of some of Nevarra's treasured undead nobles soured her to the living patrons of the Necropolis. After the war ended, she was encouraged by her fellow Watchers to leave the Necropolis and see the world outside of the familiar crypts and tombs. She wouldn't stay away from adventure for long though, not when Varric Tethras learned of her...
#dragon age the veilguard#dragon age veilguard#da the veilguard#da veilguard#datv#rook#dragon age rook#rook ingellvar#atroposcore#maeve.png#finally time to introduce her properly heehee#if you see me ignoring some of the canon ingellvar lore dw about it <3#my beloved little freak was not a street kid her ass was IN the necropolis HAPPILY
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The evidence that Nihal is a vampire:
1) She is sustained by others’ tears. Tears are a bodily fluid just like blood.
“For this reason, there was in Nihal the orphan’s burden of the sense of pity that she drank drop by drop from everyone’s eyes.”
(Chapter 3) (italics mine)
“Nihal let him. She leaned her head on the back of the armchair, and sat with a profound smile of relief in her eyes, feeling great consolation in the purity of the tears that were falling onto her knees. Finally she had found the tears that could openly be shed for her unspoken sorrows, and these tears welled up from Beşir’s innocent soul, from his aching soul that bled with who knew what drops of weeping poison.”
(Chapter 15) (italics mine)
2) The characters in the book assign to Nihal a “perpetual childhood”:
“Nihal, who now at fifteen remained a child to all around her, appeared to be destined to stay that way even tomorrow, when she was called a woman, a wife, or a mother.”
(Chapter 18)
Well, we know that people age in the Aşk-ı Memnu universe. Firdevs’s and Bihter’s aging is presented as inevitable. Why should Nihal stay young forever? Well, because she is a vampire, that’s why.
3) This is Nihal’s first description in the book which is in clear contrast to Bihter’s:
“Nihal’s sorrowful, jaundiced face that seemed to complain of being alive; and in its yellow hue the deceptive joy of a fugitive pink, trembling with the delicacy of a rose that will fade at once. Those eyes that tried to fool you with their smile when she was ill, that tried to lull those around her into contentment, that laughed while deep within, her sickening soul wept. He saw the meaning behind all of these. He remembered at that time, his daughter’s illnesses, the nervous fits, the headaches that began all the way at the nape of her neck and continued for weeks…
Suddenly, he thought he saw Nihal’s sad, weeping face looking at him. For a minute he wished to have this day erased from his life. Yes, today should be erased, today, like all other days, should be spent in unsuccessful battles; he ought not to be defeated. But now the application looked like a step that could not be retracted; he could find no opportunity in his heart to change or to yield the distance he had covered. Behind that ill visage was another, one with dark hair, long lashes, and large, sleepy eyes, full of poetry and youth, that smiled at him maddeningly.”
(Chapter 2)
Nihal’s face is pale, almost yellow in contrast to Bihter’s liveliness. But Bihter dies at the end, not Nihal. Why? Because Nihal had fed on Bihter’s life-force to keep herself alive.
4) This is how Nihal looks in the only screen adaptation of the book:
5) Nihal sees dreams where she is both alive and not, she imagines her mother’s corpse visiting hers in her grave, which requires both of them to be alive in their graves. And Nihal’s visions of afterlife seem to denote neither Heaven nor Hell. She is undead.
6) Nihal’s story shares several features with Snow White’s. And we all know that Snow White is a vampire.
The evidence is undeniable. Nihal is (unbeknownst to herself) a vampire.
@julyzaa @princesssarisa @winged-cries
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Alex Strider.
This is a character bio for Alex Strider.
Alex Strider is a human street-kid, born to Benjamin Strider and Abigail Strider. She was born in the Free City of Rooksbury, a city with no formal government, ruled mostly by gangs and plagued by roaming monsters and random violence. She had always been a smart child, and she was smart enough to notice her family’s financial struggles. But it didn’t matter, or so she thought, for they would be just fine, as long as they had each other.
Alex was only 11 years old when it happened. The Jackals, the gang that lorded over their part of the city, increased the rate of tribute again. They wanted 20% of all coin made by the little potion shop her parents ran. If they paid all that, they wouldn’t have enough to eat, thought Benjamin. He decided to hide some of the money, as to evade the hefty tax. The week after tribute was charged, his undead corpse was found aimlessly roaming the streets, the skin on its face removed, and a snarling jackal branded on its chest.
She had, as many broken children do, blamed herself. If they just had more money, if they had just paid their tribute, none of this would’ve happened. But she did not sit still, wallowing in guilt. Instead, she picked up the skills and mind of a thief; pick-pocketing strangers, pilfering from the city’s many markets... Over the course of a year, she stole her way through the city.
Alex was only 12 years old when it happened. She had come back home, pockets full of what did not belong to her, a particularly good haul, she thought. She noticed the smell of alcohol, and paid no mind to it-- she had become all too used to the scent of her mother’s drinking. She left what she had stolen at the door, and went to look for her mother. It was strange-- she had yet to receive her mother’s greeting, the one she always received. It didn’t take long for her to find her mother on the ground, surrounded by bottles and empty syringes. Alex would never find out if it was an accident or suicide.
Alex was now an orphan. She had no one nor where to turn to. She roamed the streets, living off of anything she could steal, never spending more than a night at the same place. She had seen the city inside and out; the siren-infested docks, the underground wizard colleges, the dwarven-elven race wars… She had also profited from it all; the city’s chaos was something that could be exploited for gain, she learned. This lasted for a little over a year. Eventually, she had a run-in with a newly formed “gang”: The Outlawz. In reality, it totaled to little more than a group of teenagers, desperate for some form of stability. Though hesitant, she joined the group. Together, they formed a new family, composed of bonds forged in crime. Now, she had moved from petty theft to something akin to grand larceny (though, there was no jurisdiction to define it as such; Rooksbury is a “free” city, after all). Drugs, jewelry, gold, and many other goods were acquired during the many heists of the Outlawz. After the hefty cut taken by the fence, the gang’s fees for operating on their turf, and the split between the 6 of them, they were left with very little. But it was enough. Alex found herself thinking something she didn’t expect to ever think again: they would be just fine, as long as they had each other.
Alex was only 15 when it happened. The Outlawz had decided it; they would find a way to leave this city, and they would do it together. To accomplish that goal, they planned a heist, one more ambitious than any that came before. Tantalus Inc., a megacorporation, part of the Demilian Conglomerate that controlled a nation’s worth of land, had its headquarters in Rooksbury. A shipment of arcane components worth more than all of their previous earnings combined had recently arrived, and if all went well, would “disappear” just as quickly. Six people walked into that tower. One, the traitor among them, stayed at that tower, taken in by the corporation he’d sold his family out to. One, Alex, left that tower, with scars both internally and externally. The other four were never seen again.
Alex was done being naïve. She was done trusting in others. She was done with this city, this gods-forsaken city… She was done with stealing. She made a choice. One she never thought she’d make. She fashioned a weapon out of a baseball bat and a piece of steel sharpened and shaped to become an axehead. She took all the money she had left and had it enchanted. And then, she signed a contract. A contract with Skulltrader. For 6 months, they provided her with shelter, food, clean water, and training. After that, she was officiated; as the youngest mercenary in Skulltrader’s ranks.
A 16-year-old murderer for hire. No one in their right mind would hire her on her own; she would almost exclusively get ride-along gigs, providing backup for other mercs. She sometimes talked to them. They sometimes even let her come along on the post-job tavern crawls. But even then, it was business. Just. Business.
She got her first kill when she was 17. She couldn’t sleep for weeks after the fact. The second was easier. She can barely remember the fourth or fifth. Eventually, she started getting solo gigs; private security, gang warfare, shake-downs… She even managed to buy a glyph implant, that was installed into her spine, allowing her superhuman speed. That kind of bio-enchant was expensive, but worth every coin. Killing became second nature to her. She was good at it. She didn’t enjoy it, but she didn’t care. It was them or her, after all.
4 years passed. This time, there was no “each other”. There was her, her bat, and the mana flowing through her spine. This city wasn’t going to get the best of her. She wouldn’t fall into its traps again. She wouldn’t let Rooksbury defeat her. She would survive, no matter what.
Alex Strider: Orphan, stone-cold killer, former sucker and merc extraordinaire. She knew better than most: This was No City for Heroes.
#oc tag yaaay#I'm actually quite proud of this one.#kinda wanna rewrite Beatrice's bio in this style.
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Thirty One Days of Horror Movies! Day Three :D
Lisa Frankenstein!
Time for some horror comedy goodness :D
Lisa is a lonely high schooler, dealing with the loss of her mother, the shitty behavior of her fellow students and the general awfulness of her new step-mother. But when a re-animated corpse brought back from the grave by lightning comes into her life it's a recipe for revenge, mayhem and perhaps....TRUE LOVE? As she finds herself falling for the creature while realising that the two of them will need to get some "spare parts" to make their relationship complete
I LOVE THIS FILM
I love this film SO FUCKIN MUCH
As you might be able to tell from the plot synopsis this film is delightfully and gleefully ridiculous. Like some of my other fave movies with that dark comedy vibe like Bottoms and Heathers it takes place in a setting where everything is just elevated to that next level ridiculousness and it works so well here
From beginning to end its an entertainingly weird macabre and funny horror comedy with plenty of great lines and set pieces
And the hilariously twisted romance between Lisa and her zombie lover is actually oddly adorable at times especially with the films wonderfully warped happy ending that it gives the undead couple
It's definitely a horror comedy that is much more on the comedy side of things but honestly, sometimes you want that, you just wanna enjoy some spooky hilarity and monster love
Lisa herself is wonderfully acted and the surrounding characters are so hilariously awful that you can't help but love when they get monster mashed
The movie's gleefully peak eighties energy makes it make a great double bill with Heathers as well <3
So if you are after a humerus film to tickle your funny bone this Halloween, this is a solid pick :D
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