#which i'm sure is part of why (in addition to him being a vamp with no soul) buffy and everyone else doubted that he really did love her

[izzyspussy]

i do love that everyone is visibly shocked and grieving when buffy dies, sobbing, crying, stumbling, etc, but spike fucking collapses

[casketjones]

I'm not sure how to info dump for a bunch of character concepts in a way that's digestible but eh whatever

Concept work for a group of mafia hitwomen and their long suffering handler. They're likely going to be used in a underground illegal wrestling ring arc because that's all I really want in my media.

This post plus additional sketches and more background info will be going up on my patreon and kofi tomorrow.

more under the cut,

They're all vampires that I really cooked up to test a concept for vamps for my comic project. Based on a blood sucking animal and a historical anti-vampire burial method, some of the burial methods are gonna be pushed and fibbed because there's not that many of them. so yeah incidental vampires will have a cage motif even tho I know good and well that cages were to prevent resurrection men getting in not vampires getting out. I feel that's thematically close enough. There's so many really good sanguivore animals out there these are maybe too safe even.

The other thing I really wanted to accomplish with these designs is targeting lesbians, hey ladies these are for you. How am I doing?

going left to right here we got

Flea- She's a Flea I tried taking a lot from Blake's Ghost of a Flea but I don't think it comes through. Her grave-shackle is that scythe coming out her shoulder, it's maybe a bit of a stretch, the real thing was buried in the ground next to the corpse so if it rose it would decapitate itself but I didn't really want to complicate the design with a bunch of dirt or something. Regardless I like her design a lot. Short hairy goblin of a woman, someone stop me from naming her Puce.

Mosquito- Her hair took a little bit to sort out, it used to be real bad but this mess is perfect. Horrible 90's stylized part call back, reminiscent of boxer braids while being ostentatious enough to work in any setting. That cool bangle is her grave-shackle, an actual shackle this time. Her build was immediate, huge arms, weird long butt, perfection. She's the easiest to dress which isn't that surprising considering shes thinner but usually big arms are really difficult in women's wear. Flea is actually the second easiest to dress. There's gotta be a better name than Malaria, but i could call her Mal.

Geo(?)- small mafia man, constantly put upon, constantly behind the 8-ball with upper management; you know the type. The other guys definitely tell him he's lucky all the time but they'd never switch assignments with him. Why is he so small? because I can do whatever i want. His name might be Geoffrey.

Lamprey- Went through the most iterations, was very hard to piece together a woman this disaster lesbian. The spike through the heart, traditionally meant to keep the alleged vampire pinned to the ground was always part of the design, so was the long neck and heart lipstick, the hook earring came and went. Everything else was difficult; general build was pretty similar but i didn't actually work until I gave her a gut and dropped her waist. I used to have gill markings on her neck that looked like vampire bite marks and that took a while to give up but that hair is too good. She probably will end up being named Nakkila, it's a Finnish town with lamprey on their crest.

Leech- Took just two stabs to get her hair, body and face where I wanted it. Those bright red eyebrows work so well to subtly mimic leech markings, her hair shapes are perfect and I love drawing them. It's hard to tell at this size but her lips are sewn together which works almost too well for the theming, the cartoon jack'o lantern shape just sits right on a leech. Being built like a brick shithouse with fantastic fat rolls really gives the body diversity in the group the punch it needs. But dear god in heaven she is so hard to dress! I'm liking this dress a moderate amount right now and I really love the shoes but it's not perfect. I've tried suits instead, I've down active wear, all crazy difficult. It's like fashion doesn't want to accentuate horizontal stripes on large bodies or something? I gotta keep trying on it. I've almost convinced myself to name her Annelid.

[bonny-kookoo]

Noir: Memento Mori 3

In which Jungkook is painfully reminded that living eternally is never simply a blessing, but a curse as well; and he can't help but wonder why he's still roaming around, living on, when there's nothing there to live for. Or is there?

Tags/warnings: hopelessness, death and mention of funerals and cremation, jungkook being stuck in the past, soulmates and other shenanigans, more TBA as the story progresses

Additional Chapter Warnings: mentions of harassment

Previous | Next

As you walk back into the kitchen of the restaurant, you take a moment to drink some water. "You're okay?" A coworker asks you, as she prepares some drinks to take out to the tables. "They're quite a handful. If they get to much, remember to call Harvey over, you know he'll help." She says, as the man named Harvey shouts at one of the cooks, before grabbing two plates to prepare a dish for someone to bring out to the guests.

"I know." You say, sighing as you rub your forehead. "I'm gonna be fine." You tell her as you adjust the small scarf around your neck, velvet fabric hiding the scar you'd had since you were a child.

"Tell Harvey I told you to go right after finish today. Don't stay for cleaning; we'll take care of that." She tells you, as you nod.

"Thanks Jenny, you're a lifesaver." She smiles as she pats your back, resuming her work as you do yours. When you walk out, there's a single person sitting at a table in the far corner, seemingly waiting as you grab a menu like second nature. "Welcome sir, would you like something to drink?" You ask, as the man looks up.

You remember him from the park incident, although he looks q bit less chaotic now; the suit he's wearing nice and clean, black dress shirt unbuttoned at the top. He's in all black, several rings adorning his ears as he nods, silver piercings moving in motion. "Do you have any menus for uhm.." he points at the side of his mouth, a silent sign of vampirism as you nod understandingly.

"Ah, or course."You say, before you walk off to get a different menu from the kitchen. "Harv, there's another Vamp out." You tell the head chef, as he nods, preparing his ingredients. When you walk back out, there's comments flying your way from a table of several young men, celebrating the day before marriage for one of them. The man at the table waiting looks a bit more serious now, accepting the menu you give him.

"Is it only you serving?" He asks, as you shake your head, trying not to stare at the way he sits. He's got one leg over the other, his entire posture very sure of himself and confident- yet somehow not overly aggressive with it.

"We're two servers tonight, this part of the dining room is mine though. We always split it to make work a bit easier." You say, as the man nods, occasionally glancing at the loud table, before he places the menu back into your hands. "Number 6, and a large bottle of water will be fine. I'll let you choose the appetizer." He says, looking at you for the first time. You've had bad experiences with vampiric people before, so the red in his eyes makes you a but nervous.

You nod, as you walk off to type in his order and maybe catch a breather outside for a second.

The rest of the night carries on rather well, until the young men decide to get up after paying- the restaurant trying to close for more than twenty minutes now. Once you're outside again, they're there- calling out to you, walking closer, two vampires among them who seem rather starving even after their meal.

You blame the alcohol.

But just as you're about to walk to the bus stop, there's a person next to you. "Play along." He hums to you, before he leads you to a car parked close, without touching you at all- his hand hovering over your back as he helps you sit down in the passenger seat. "They're already leaving. If you want to take the bus, stay inside for a moment until they're gone for good." He says, looking out the window as you pull your bag a little closer.

"Thanks." You say, voice quiet.

"Scared of vampires?" He asks, no bad tone in his voice, but simple interest.

"A bit." You admit, as he nods.

"You're honest." He replies, and you hum a reply. "Thats good. Be careful with it. " He says, as you nod, slowly opening the passenger door as if to test if he'd let you.

He doesn't even move.

But you notice later on, that he only begins to drive off once you're safely inside the bus, his headlights following you for two streets before disappearing.

You make a mental note to visit your doctor the next day, as your scar hardly let's you sleep that night.

[jessicanjpa]

Ooh, now I'm intrigued! Would you like to share some of your Jasper and Maria headcanons? How do you envision their relationship dynamic changing over time?

I still have those two separate headcanons about whether they were sexually involved (explained here)- basically, in my regular prequel headcanon (Tale of Years) they weren’t, and in my newer, SST headcanon they were.

In both, though, she tried (duh), but not immediately, because he was too unstable.  So in the yes-they-were-intimate headcanon, they were both incapable of really ever enjoying that intimacy- Maria, because I take her grief/vengeance trope at face value, and Jasper, because his gift was repulsed by Maria’s emotions surrounding said trope.  So their coupling was miserable anyway, didn’t happen often, and Jasper was super relieved when she cut him off after his betrayal of letting Peter run away.

Lately I’ve been more curious about Maria herself.  Like I said, I’m mean so I totally take her “vengeance is my life now” theme at face value. (also because subtlety and Maria are not acquainted and never will be)  I mean… what was she like before her mate was killed? I infer that she was “born” into the whole Southern Wars culture, but how warlike was she before she had her own personal vendetta?  I HC that she and her mate were both created by the same vampire and, being “raised” in that Southern Wars culture, both had a strong sense of filial loyalty to that creator, in a warped “military family” sense. I guess a lot would depend on whether their creator already had a vendetta going.  I assume so, since she seemed to be all about “reclaiming Monterrey” as a relatively young vampire, so again I infer there was already something going on vendetta-wise in her venomline before she was even created.  (I’m making a bunch of huge logic-jumps here, but how else would headcanon-forming be any fun?)

I also don’t know what to think about her mate.  I finally talked about her love/anger at him in my version of the Calgary incident, but like… how warlike was *he?  Would he really have wanted her to devote her existence to such a futile quest for vengeance? (Because I also HC that Maria is majorly stalling much like the Romanians are; this HC is explained more here)

The real question is: how would she feel if she finally achieved that vengeance, or if she was to learn that Lorenzo (the arch-enemy in my HC) had been killed already? I imagine a huge, burdens-rolling-away sense of relief, and it’s anyone’s guess what she would be left with.  According to SM’s rules, she’d have nothing left and be ready to die.  But there’s enough evidence to say that every vampire deals with grief differently, so… it’s possible she could return to whatever state she was in before the whole mess began.  Which could be totally indistinguishable from her current state, or the complete opposite.  What was she like, back as a human or Young Vampire In Love?  We’ll never know.  *Jasper will never know.  He asked back in the day, and quickly learned Not To Ask.  It irked him for a long time, since Maria was, for better and for worse, the most important person in his life, and he felt he couldn’t accurately deal with her without all the details.  Now that he has a new Most Important Person, he’s stopped caring. Mostly.

I generally assume that his sparing Maria’s life multiple times is mostly due to his gift, and the understanding it forces him into.  He’s been with her so long he’s felt every point of her Grief narrative, and totally understands why she’s the way she is.  And by the time he met her again in Calgary (and was given new reasons to kill her, but didn’t again), he had a mate of his own and understood even more. I think it’s up for debate whether he spares her out of spite, or out of pity, (in addition to a vestigial sense of affection/honor) but either way, by that time he was a Cullen and mercy is what Cullens are expected to do.  He was relatively new to the family at that time, and more impelled to prove that he could be what they (and more importantly, Alice) wanted him to be.  By the time Bella and Bree come around, he’s kind of over that.  Threats should be neutralized, and there’s not a day that goes by that he doesn’t regret sparing Maria’s life back in Calgary.  He spent most of the Saga asking himself why he didn’t “Accidentally” kill Bella back before Edward reached the point of no return, so when Bree comes around he decides not to make the same mistake a third time. (referring to my HC that he totally “helped” Carlisle and Esme suddenly be okay with Bree’s execution)

Does he miss the Maria days now? I’m sure there’s some teeth-grinding, sarcastic “at least I didn’t have to sit in a damn high school” self-talk every other day, but in general, no way.  There’s a broader feeling that he misses feeling powerful, and important, and productive, and respected/feared by his soldiers and all that… but of course in retrospect he sees how much of that was a lie all along.   Because I HC that he really did believe Maria’s lies.  Sure, he spotted the holes and inconsistencies in her storytelling (and who knows what his gift picked up in terms of outright lying) but by that time he was already so wrapped up in Maria’s blood-approval-importance-blood feedback loop that he couldn’t comprehend living any other way.  By the time he understood the pattern (that his soldier’s lives didn’t matter and neither did his) he had several years’ worth of logic built upon the foundation of the Worldwide Vamp Wars totally existing (and his having seen enough to believe it).  In retrospect he had some evidence to the contrary, and he feels stupid and angry about the whole thing (and completely mystified that his gift let him fall for it), but to his credit, as a human he was unaware of the Southern Wars raging in his backyard, and yet here they are. (I hope to sorta-soon write a 1865 one-shot that connects the Galveston chapters to the 1941 chapters, and covers his newborn self-talk.)

But aside from Maria’s creativity, how much self-talk got him around to that logical foundation in the first place?  Who knows. In Tale of Years, he’ll never figure that out himself.  His sense of honor prefers to think that he was totally fooled, so that he doesn’t have to face the possibility that he *chose to stay in that life for 78 years.  He’d much rather sacrifice his pride. In SST Aro is totally going to pluck that (largely invented) self-talk out of his memory and throw it in his face. Anything to further dismantle Jasper’s self-image and rebuild it as suits him best.  He’s a little concerned about Jasper’s gift picking up on this process, but he’s encouraged by Maria’s success, and in any case Chelsea’s been busy.  Now Jasper’s logical foundation is that Aro Is A Good Leader, and everything will follow from that point.  For now.

Sorry, I’m off track again. How has Jasper/Maria shifted over time? It’s intriguing to note that Jasper’s relationship with her was kicked off *while she, Nettie, and Lucy were technically the joint leaders.  He had to choose, very early on, which one of those leaders he was going to support.  It was a foregone conclusion that he would choose Maria, but this had long-lasting effects in their working (and/or intimate) relationship, especially once he helped her destroy the other two. Maria’s fear of betrayal never left her after that, and despite Jasper’s show of loyalty there, he’s too wrapped up in that betrayal narrative to ever be separated from it, in her mind.  But he knew how to survive, and proved his loyalty often enough to keep her satisfied  Other than his continued slide into revulsion/depression over the decades, I don’t think a whole lot changed between them from then on until Peter’s desertion.  (though I confess that’s mainly because I haven’t written anything about those intervening years.)That was when Maria officially began to turn against Jasper and perform a paranoid dissection of every word that came out of his treacherous mouth. (more on this in the final scenes of SST chapter 1)  The five years that followed were basically a slow descent into well-founded mutual suspicion, and finally deteriorated into the assassination plots.  Enter Peter at the last minute as per the usual Twilight Coincidence Magic, and all is well.

And now they’re “friends”. Which… in this universe, is a pretty broad term, so I choose to interpret it as a polite, unspoken no-kill pact that was kicked off in Calgary. It continues to this day, and let’s not even get into the weirdness of Jasper thinking about asking Maria to come “help” in Eclipse.  I assume that blackmail was going to be the larger part of that AU subplot, which is apparently a standard part of the “Friend” thing too.

As far as the future goes… I’m curious if SM was heading toward some resolution of the Jasper/Maria plotline, sometime after BD?  I’m so curious about this, and 100% open to ideas.