#your death is in that cage

[foreverppl]

Orla’s liberation comes at the price of the merc’s. The further they entrench themself into being used as an implement for her to use to her ends, the more divorced they become to themself (though, even that’s a bit complicated. Who is the merc without Orla? Her guiding hand. Her crook shepherding. Her word governing.) She’s building her empire; the merc’s shoveling their grave. But at the same time, her empire doesn’t necessarily guarantee her own (true) freedom and is, in fact, a kind of gilded cage in its own right. You painstakingly build yourself a palace behind enemy lines, with all the luxuries you can scrounge together. Give yourself every comfort, loud music to drown out whatever ghosts you’re still trying to outrun, good sex, good food, people who will jump to murder for you without blinking an eye… yet it’s difficult to truly allow yourself to relish in any of it for more than a couple fleeting moments when you know there are serpents slithering just right outside the gates. Doesn’t matter how much you fortify your house of cards, it can still all come crumbling down with a gust of wind. And what then? One king (queen) deposes another, Vapolis continues on. No one will mourn. Orla knows this. Orla is terrified by this.

Anyway.. @vapolis sending you my therapy bill as I type this.

[scarefox]

current QLs I am enjoying~

Every You, Every me (Thailand) : alternative universes, drama, soulmates, boss x assistant, car mechanic x customer, guitar teacher x students brother, BL actors, falling in love in every universe, humor, struggles, fluff, death, loss, abusive ex partner (not between the mains) See Your Love (Taiwan) : crime, thriller, drama, rich brat x caretaker, mafia business, mute + deaf main, martial arts, hurt / comfort, attempted murder, rich brats assistant x mafia assassin, dysfunctional family, loving family, friendship

Caged Again (Thailand) : mystery, drama, humor, animal to human transformation, boarding school, bullying, shy x feisty, animal trafficing, spirits, swim tournament, school clubs, friend group, nerd x dorky Jack & Joker: U Steal My Heart! (Thailand) : action, humor, debt collector x thief, poverty, (friends to) enemies to lovers, time jump, mafia, dysfunctional family, costuming & cross-dressing, from parents disowned children, heists, betrayal, secret relationships, wound patching, social injustice, martial arts, rich snob x poor thief, child adoption, rich to poor, violence, false friends

Miseinen: Mijukuna Oretachi wa Bukiyo ni Shinkochu / Our Youth (Japan) : high school, nerd x delinquent, abusive parent, secret friendship to lovers, hurt / comfort, opposites attract, wound patching Doku Koi: Doku mo Sugireba Koi to Naru / Love is like a Poison (Japan) : investigation, humor, lawyer x conman, court battles, cohabitation, stern x playful, power couple, blackmail, trauma, abusive parent, talking with succulents (lol), street kids, underground gang, corruption

Petrichor (Thailand) : thriller, mystery, serial killer, forensic investigation, detective x forensic pathologist, crime investigation, enemies to lovers, autopsy, gore, incompetent police, feisty x cold, corruption, lovely siblings, coworker friend group Winter Is Not the Death of Summer but the Birth of Spring (Thailand) : thai prison setting, strangers to lovers, rough environment, prisoner x prisoner, homophobia, sexual harassment, based on a real story, hookups

Love in the Air: Koi no Yokan (Japan) : Love in the Air remake, students, senior x junior, bike racing, auto mechanic, dominant x submissive, friendship, seduction, sexual abuse in the past Bad Guy My Boss (Thailand) : boss x assistant, mutual pining, power couple, possessiv, business life, multiple hookup partner, dubcon, attempted murder, shady business, jealousy, so many HR violations, blackmail, cheating, abusive side couples, spying, scheming, miscommunication, slightly dark romance

recent finished ones I rec to check out:

Affair (Thailand) : childhood friends, rich vs poor, family tragedy, time jump, friends to lovers, possessive, mutual obsession, stalking, rich to poor & poor to rich, abusive ex, divorce, secret relationship, suicide attempts, doctor x musician Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo (S. Korea) : martial arts, strangers to friends, friends to lovers, bullying, unrequired love, abusive parent, time jump, stern x dorky, poor vs rich, hurt / comfort, misunderstandings The On1y One (Taiwan) : enemies to friends, mutual pining, cohabitation, nerd x nerd, power couple, dorm life, exam phases, not blood related soon to be step-siblings, forbidden love, secret love, coming of age, yearning, teacher x teacher side couple, hurt / comfort, unrequired love

4 Minutes (Thailand) : crime investigation, mystery, alternative realities, time jumping, patient x doctor, mafia, shady business, murder, hookups, drug use, corruption, death, violence, criminal x cop, hallucinations, cheating, blackmail, abusive lover (not mains), abusive parent, fixing mistakes Battle of the Writers (Thailand) : romcom, childhood friends, writer x writer, fictional parallel universe, secret relationship, friends to lovers, editor x writer, writer collaboration, BL writing, social commentary, childhood trauma, strangers to lovers Eccentric Romance (S. Korea + Thailand) : mystery, crime, romcom, childhood friends, friends to lovers, mutual pining, murder, bilingual, language students, working out, school club, friend group, investigation

Meet You at the Blossom (China + Thailand + Taiwan) : historical, fantasy, humor, dark romance, magic, rich noble families, playboy, crossdressing, noble son x assassine, fake identity, intrigues, fuck or die, royalty, doctor x servant, betrayal, childhood friends, misunderstandings, hurt / comfort at times, abduction, obsession, jealousy, abuse, imprisonment, torture, illness, implied unrequired cousin crush, abusive parent, dubcon My Damn Business (S. Korea) : office romance, short series, humor, boss x subordinate, misunderstandings, fluff, jealousy, teasing, drinking buddies, BL comic, talk about exes The Hidden Moon (Thailand) : historical & present, ghosts, mystery, horror, unrequired love, death, murder, accident, different era time jumps, ghost x human, time loop, friend group, enemies to lovers, forbidden love, f/f m/m m/f side couples, violence

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

so. I just got to Maruki’s attempted persuasion of Ren before the deadline and. hey what the fuck. what. what.

Akechi is the sole bargaining chip? Akechi’s life and their continued connection is what Ren wished for?

[s0fter-sin]

i don’t know how many times i need to say it, tag your reader and self insert fics and imagines as reader and self insert

[butchlesbian]

She was so nice about rejecting them. I would have gotten blocked 😐

[ace-and-ranty]

Once again I would like to tell Balthasar Lake to eat his own dick.

[sforzesco]

I hope you will be happy to know that the whole Cassius and Trebonius thing has officially taken up several floors of residence in my brain thanks to your commentary (and it's really really fun because I get to see Cassius as his own guy and not just an afterthought)

yes YES my cassius agenda is working

also. do you want to see another echo involving Cassius that I think about a lot

Crassus, Plutarch (trans. Warner)

(ibid.)

there's something incredibly funny to me that both men, around the same age, had a similar sort of interaction where they both managed to annoy an older man in a relative position of power over them, only Crassus assumes Sulla's role in this repetition. Cassius even rises to the occasion, much like Crassus did.

[carriecarriecatgirl]

just thinking about how 3 of tdkr's four major antagonists are people who swore to change their ways and show the public a new face before reverting to old habits

[s0fter-sin]

if you lie to valeria and say ghost is in charge of shadow company, she says she doesn’t want a callsign, she wants a name and all soap says is that they call him ghost and he wears a mask. he’ll give her graves’ and alejandro’s names but he refuses to give up ghost’s even though he proves in the alone mission that he knows it, i can’t-

[brdcge]

[neathbound-fiends]

copy pasting from DMs and expanding on this a little actually

Thinking abt the fact that Elliott is an unreliable narrator and will just outright lie about things about himself, or twist them so severely that they threaten to break in order to be palatable and not say anything he thinks people won't want to hear. Man who spent a lot of years lying about his family, and upbringing, and sexuality, all because none of it was something someone else would want to hear and he doesn't want to be seen as broken, or a bummer, or to speak ill of the dead. It's better to mangle the truth until it fits whatever narrative you want to spin than it is to say something that's going to horrify someone

[rosehippiefield]

While taking name of somebody else is not the most logical step, it makes sense why Sou of all names is the one being chosen. Not only Midori's behaviour was being copied, he made a big enough impact for Shin to react to his name. Otherwise it would be like:

Sara: hey, Makoto, have you investigated this part of building?

Shin: ... (Who the heck is Makoto?)

Shin: .... (Oh wait that's me now) *reacts after like a minute* oh yeah miss Sara definitely

Sara: (that's definitely suspicious behavior)

[gemharvest]

Fascinating things going on in this mix.

[reel-fear]

👁️👁️

You must tell 👀

*rubs my little hands together* sorry for taking a bit on answering this! My brain has not been braining lately but your ask couldn't have come at a better time bc Grant has been on the mind as of late and I am hyped at the excuse to infodump abt him- [this is gonna be long I am so sorry-]

now for quick disclaimers for anyone reading this that isnt the asker or me- we're not discussing canon Grant Cohen, we're talking my Grant, this black haired dude, that guy. Another fun disclaimer, I was HEAVILY, inspired by Grant's role/character in abomination for my Grant. Taking time to awknowledge every part of his character or story that was inspired by it would make this 10x longer so if similarities are spotted know its very likely I did that on purpose bc I just really love abomination KJHFSDGKJDHGSD-

Alright with that outta the way I'ma talk a lot abt what happens to Grant in the canon of Showtime to explain what I meant and also maybe a bit of me rambling about aus that explore Grants relationship with Sammy n Joey under a more romantic lens. Should be obvious but spoilers for It's Showtime down below~

So Grant in Showtime after he dies ends up joining the ink demon cult, becoming a lost one and earning the title of The Priest.

When the cult was all together him and Sammy worked together to run it. Sammy used his connection to the ink demon to recieve messages and learn more on how to survive in this new situation and Grant made sure the lost ones acted accordingly. [A role not so far off from the one he was forced to take when the studio started facing troubles before his death] Grant also took the job of dealing with sacrificing souls and sending them back to the dark puddles, which sometimes was members of the following chosen at random and sometimes whatever poor soul found themselves captured by them.

However when Malice rose from the puddles and made a deal with the Projectionist to seize a considerable amount of the studio as theirs, the cult was split up, Sammy and Jack forced to flee to the music department and Grant with the rest of the following being down in the area of Chapter 4. This put Grant in a very bad spot, the lost ones were very shaken by this event and since then Grant worries their faith in him has wavered.

An important thing with the ink demon cult was that it is meant to be a more realistic take on how a cult works. The Ink Demon runs the cult, he is the most powerful figure in it and yet the hardest to contact, so Grant and Sammy are little more than middlemen tasked with keeping things running or else they face the ink demon's wrath. Sammy is sadly very aware that the ink demon is not as benevolent as he or the lost ones would like the believe. Grant likes to think being the Priest will at the very least protect him if things go wrong, but he is sadly mistaken.

Grant is in a very dangerous spot, he knows the lost ones beneath him are getting angsty and worried about just how truthfully safe the cult is or if they should believe in the power of the ink demon. But he also knows if things fall apart the lost ones will come to tear him apart long before they go for the ink demon. Despite him merely being a puppet for their lord. A role Grant is not ready to acknowledge, not because he isn't smart enough to see he is just a pawn, but because he chooses not to think about it, less his paranoia eat him alive yet again... A very important thing to keep in mind with Grants character.

Grant did in fact play this role in life as well however, when things started going wrong in the studio, Joey was very quick to turn away from what was going on and continue asserting everything would be fine. Which while a lie he himself believed was a lie nonetheless. However Grant quickly became his right hand man as people like Thomas and Wally started noticing cracks forming all through out the studio. Staff going missing, the ink changing in the way it behaved and an eerie feeling the machine created in both of them.

Grant despite deep down being smart enough to know things were going poorly, parroted Joey's words, hanging off of them himself and doing whatever he could to shut down any attempts to bring to light the things going wrong. Of course, him and Joey both ended up paying the price for their lies, but so did everyone else around them. But unlike Sammy, Grant barely even seemed shaken to see that, like a conspiracy theorist seeing evidence their theory isn't true only makes them double down harder, Grant only seemed to double down on the idea that if he followed every order he was given. Surely things would turn out better this time.

So that's canon to the story of Showtime, but I do want to take a second to get some AU non canon ideas out of my brain centering around Grant and his relationship to both Joey n Sammy. In canon Grant's only romantic interest is Thomas, his literal husband and there is a lot of interesting conflict there, but I fucking love shipping so of course I have a million aus merely indulging in ships I think would also be interesting to explore in their own contexts. In this case, I'm gonna ramble a bit about Sammy x Grant and Grant x Joey and the interesting things I think there are to explore in their relationships in Showtime.

So you might've noticed that while not literally [as saying the ink demon is Joey in Showtime, while somewhat true, is not the entire truth of the situation and simplifies it quite a bit] Grant did end up following Joey to the grave... And then kept following him beyond it. Something that is objectively~ very queer of him.

There's just something so compelling about the idea of Grant yearning for Joey so much, being so close yet so far as his right hand man but not being brave enough to become his lover eventually drove Grant's love for Joey to become an outright obsession. The idea that Grant's feelings for Joey became so intense from how hard he pushed them down it blinded him from seeing the truth of the situation outside of the way Joey painted it. Then dying and his obsession turning into an outright worship of him.

The idea of Grant settling for just being Joey's favorite lackey, his most loyal pet and knowing that's his role but not caring bc at least it makes him stay by Joey's side. Ohh it's an interesting one to say the least. I even did a few sketches of them u can see-

They are doomed by the narrative to me and have been on my mind a lot lately can ya tell? KJDHSFGKJHDFSGKJHDFGSD

However when it comes to Sammy and Grant, I think there is a lot of interesting potential between them too. After all they share being the Ink Demon's henchmen in all of this and to see them both come to terms with that and try to find comfort in each other is such a fun idea to me.

An au where they both decide to ditch the cult and the ink demon and on their own try to figure out what happened to Joey and how to fix things is very compelling to me. I could see their relationship starting out as doing all these things for each other under the excuse they just need comfort until it starts to turn to actual feelings for each other. Both of them coming to terms with the fact Joey was not in fact a perfect person and maybe didn't even know how bad things were getting deep down himself but also finally letting themselves hold him accountable for the lies he told... It's a very fun healing narrative and very in line with a lot of the themes It's Showtime deals with.

Either way, I just really love what I've done with Grant's character in It's Showtime, he's for sure one of the most fascinating to me and the themes his story explores are ones that are important to the story as a whole and by extension me. Umm this turned out very long but I hope u enjoyed the read! Tysm for the excuse to infodump abt him, I was itching for one as u can see KDJHGKJDHFGKJDHFGSD.

[lilyliveredlittlerichboy]

me playing landslide: this is about grief

me playing wish you were here: it's about grief

me playing angels: this one's also about grief

me writing my own songs: yeah at the core really all of these are about grief

me playing the guitar in the first place: yup, grief again

me, just going through life: yeah this is really just about grief isn't it. we live and we breathe and we experience and we must die and all things must come to an end. really all of life is just about grief and grief is really about love and how finite it all is. it's all grief. all of it

...... lads i may have gotten myself a grief shaped hammer or something 😶