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boundinparchment · 9 months

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Undertow

He stopped officiating weddings a long time ago. There was no time for such things as the Chief Justice of Fontaine. But your family insisted. As nobles are wont to do. Only the finest for their eldest daughter. Besides, you two were friends, after all. Neuvillette/Female Reader; in which the Chief Justice can no longer deny his heart on the day of your wedding. AO3 Story Link

A joyous day.

It should have been, at any rate.

At least for you.

As long as you were happy.

Or so Neuvillette told himself. Duty came first, after all. He had a whole nation to keep from setting itself aflame, be it from Focalors’ whims or the people’s fury. In serving everyone, he was, in fact, serving you.

And in turn, you, too, served the people. Few were so generous with their time and their skills, especially those in your social standing. Fewer still went on to study law, as you had; as heir, you needed to understand property laws and taxes and the words that bound your family to its estate and your place in parliament. Neuvillette would never let it be said that you did not know the meaning of long hours and hard work. Amid the vain and the greedy, you were pragmatic, and not without the wit to prove it.

That was what drew him to you. So many in your position used their wit as sharp daggers to stab others during conversation in a clever, charming way. You flipped the conversation back on perpetrators so often that he wondered why you never pursued certification exams.

“For one, it benefits my station far too much,” you said. “My ambitions are to be able to make life sustainable for all I’m meant to govern. Naive, perhaps. But I think those in my rank need to earn their keep, prove they’re worthy of their legacy. We owe it to the people of Fontaine.”

You were certainly not without a vision, even if you were Unblessed. It was better that way. You didn’t deserve the eyes of the island above on you anymore than they already were.

Neuvillete adjusted his cuffs as he glanced down at the book in his hands. A book you’d given him, annotated with your favorite passages and thoughts. He’d stayed up far too late trying to conceptualize anything other than his legal obligations for the ceremony.

The courtroom buzzed with anticipation. Focalors had rolled her eyes when she caught him getting ready but even she had made herself scarce for once after mumbling to just get it over with. Funny. And here he thought she might be present to laugh in his face and call him a fool.

A fool who took an hour to painstakingly braid his hair in a fashion that mimicked an Oceanid’s tail, as you had once shown him.

He stopped officiating weddings a long time ago. There was no time for such things as the Chief Justice of Fontaine.

But your family insisted. As nobles are wont to do.

Only the finest for their eldest daughter.

Besides, you two were friends, after all.

You would have settled for far less; or rather, you would have been happier with his presence in another capacity. He knew as much. His estate for the ceremony and party. A speech at dinner. A dance. Your smile had been so forced throughout the entire exchange about an officiant that Neuvillette was certain you might snap right then and there.

And yet you remained rooted. Dedicated.

If only the finest would do, why did they even consider the dolt standing before him to be eligible?

Hardly remarkable in accomplishments. The family coasted on interest earned through their holdings but were not without the occasional cousin who ended up with a debt record as long as one’s forearm. Neuvillette couldn’t even justify an excuse for a pedigree; bloodlines couldn’t, shouldn’t, be about trying to maintain whatever purity they claimed to hold.

No one could make that judgment.

Celestia might try, at any rate.

And the Chief Justice could hardly see your future husband comforting you should such a thing happen, let alone caring for the people. Neuvillette could only stare when the nobleman’s eyes caught his; your fiance looked away first and Neuvillette smiled briefly to himself. No. There would be no comfort in this relationship, no challenge, no ambition.

This man would snuff your flames with his own self-importance.

Neuvillette should have offered his hand instead when you’d told him. You seemed so resolute, so determined, to carry out your duty. And he was so patient that he might as well be a coward. Time would wait for him, not you. Instead, he’d pulled every string he could to find every shred of information for you, for your parents, approved the match with as much grace as a ruling.

Mulled over every file with a glass of brandy, trying to convince himself things would be fine.

Wouldn’t they?

Nearby, a musician began the song you had chosen to walk in with and the gallery rose in unison, like the sea, to watch.

The only thing you’d had control over was the dress, you’d admitted one night after dinner. Repurposed, you’d mentioned; all lace and fashionable lines, practical but elegant in its shape. He couldn’t pull his eyes away and he tried to remember to breathe as you made your way down the aisle. In all his years, he had seen many things, including the stunning shimmers of the previous Hydro Archon, but all of them paled to you.

Likewise, it seemed you couldn’t look anywhere else but straight ahead, Neuvillette realized: most looked towards their future spouse but your gaze was fixed on Neuvillette himself. His grip on the book tightened and he was thankful for the swell of the music to hide the squeak of leather.

You weren’t making the stabbing knife in his chest any easier.

The words came quicker than he liked as he began the usual spiel. Welcoming guests, reciting the names of the parties involved, and starting off with a brief speech on the strength of a union. He could read the passage from the book backwards if you asked him.

As a judge, he was meant to be the impartial interpreter of the law. There was no place for bias, for emotion.

His eyes would give him away to any discerning onlookers. Neuvillette was no stranger to rumors and gossip columns and no doubt someone could already see the questions he couldn’t keep from surfacing. It would be obvious, he realized. He kept looking at you and not the crowd, not the man with eager eyes who held your hand the same way one held a horse bridle: too tight.

Neuvillette cleared his throat and pushed away the anguish. It had no place here.

As the Chief Justice asked you to repeat after him, to recite the vows all Fontaine citizens gave on their wedding day, something inside him cracked. Couldn’t you see this would lead to nothing but misery? Weren’t you worthy of more? If you must marry for duty, then at least commit yourself to someone equally committed…

Your lips, painted to perfection (unnecessarily so, for you were already beautiful without such coloring), opened but silence followed. Neuvillette swallowed. Your eyes left his long enough to stare at the man holding your hand before you thrust your bouquet at him, gathered your skirt, and dashed back up the aisle.

Behind you, the courtroom ignited with all of the shock and drama as a high profile murder case as you threw the doors open and dashed into the lobby and eventually out of sight.

The only trace you’d been there at all was your veil as it floated to the floor silently, forgotten.

A joyous day.

It should have been, at any rate.

And yet you shouldn’t shake the knot in your stomach and the claw clenching around your heart. Sleep eluded you for the better part of the night and your maids tutted, pressing cold spoons to your eyes before you were allowed to eat. Food tasted no better than dirt over the last few months and all anyone saw was how careful you were watching your figure.

How you wished things were different. The ring on your finger felt heavy, clunky; a ball and chain around your ankle would have been easier to manage.

It hadn’t been so burdensome at first, of course. Things took time. Perhaps, eventually, you might enjoy your betrothed’s company for longer than a few hours. The potential was there.

But was it enough?

Your maids fixed your makeup, did your hair, swatted your hand away when you reached for just one sip of water.

They all gushed about your fiance, how handsome and charming he was, how well conversation seemed to flow. Every single one of them forgot that the conversations were nothing more than surface level discussions that made you want to gouge your eyes out with a spoon.

You’d almost begged Neuvillette to forge something, anything, that would make this arrangement null and void. Every meeting since the engagement had been heavily supervised under the guise of protecting the Chief Justice’s reputation and your honor, whatever that implied.

Expectation had been there for years, lingered like a ghost. Not from you but from everyone else who cast their eyes on your station. One rarely, if ever, captured the Chief Justice’s attention, after all. Your family had hoped, as others had, but you were content to simply converse over dinner, at parties, exchange books and philosophies and see the man’s smile reach his silvery eyes. He spoke of opera and art in a way so few of your contemporaries could. You tried to control the flutter of your heart when he locked eyes with you across the courthouse foyer after parliament adjourned and you swore you saw his eyes glow.

He was engaging, enthralling, and it was easy to see why the nation considered him such a celebrity.

But your friendship was more than the attention, than the allure of the Chief Justice and all that he encompassed. Some might not call his rulings fair but he saw all of the trappings that Fontaine itself was guilty of pressing onto all of its inhabitants. When you came up with ideas for proposals, it was him you went to for proper language and legal references, always attempting to stay within his schedule, of course. More often than not, he would continue to prompt you to think the proposal through, consider scale and the impact and the precedent.

Never once did he give you an opinion, naturally. Just a different perspective.

“You can be dazed tomorrow,” your mother said as she snapped her fingers in your face. “Your flowers just arrived and the photographer is insisting on family shots here, at the house.”

You resisted the urge to roll your eyes as you were dressed by deft hands. It had been something of a game with your maid to pass time when you felt like trying your dress on; little had you known how the practice would backfire.

Something tugged at your gut and you fought the urge to vomit at the thought of the hands (the wrong hands) that would undo the buttons.

No, you made your choice, you reminded yourself. The guilt would fade. The love would fade.

You were closer to thirty than you cared to admit. What your family took for a phase they realized would be a dangerous precedent for your siblings.

Everything you did was for the betterment of the people, you would argue.

What good was the betterment of the people when you were neglecting your duty to your family, was often the retort thrown back with as much acid as your grandmother’s strong tea.

Family.

Duty.

Honor.

All of it was bullshit if the common people were unhappy and left to fend off wolves from above and below.

You’d never subscribed to these notions and they were content to let it be until it was inconvenient. Rather than let you advise on financial planning, to grow an endowment that could take care of the yearly costs of the estate, you were to be cattle in exchange for financial and political support.

Or you would be cast aside, disowned and dishonored, your position taken from you as if it were a rug underfoot.

And so, you accepted all of it with a smile.

You endured.

Just as you endured the flash of the kamera, the fussing over your flowers and your veil during the carriage ride to the courthouse.

The press were eager, as they always were, for gossip and fashion and for a glimpse of the Chief Justice presiding over the ceremony. They weren’t here for you, not truly. Why, of all things, had your parents insisted he be the officiant?

Wasn’t it enough that you were giving up parts of your life, parts of your soul, for a person who would never appreciate them?

Your feet already ached from your heels. A wave of dizziness slapped you across the face as you entered the lobby and you pushed through it. Music began, the doors opened, and your body moved of its own accord, just as you had practiced the night before.

Neuvillette had declined the rehearsal dinner. The one time you were glad not to see him. If you had, you wouldn’t be here now, you were certain.

You gave a cursory glance to your fiance but your attention whipped back to Neuvillette almost instantly. He’d done his best but you could see the faded dark circles under his silver eyes. How late had he stayed up, you wondered. And how long had that braid taken him?

He’d let you style it once, and only once, in the privacy of his library. Waterfalls of silken fabric couldn’t compare to the beautiful blue and white locks between your fingers. He’d been attentive when you showed him the technique, pausing his case review to do so, but…

An ache from your feet ran up to your heart and sat, heavy with longing; it hurt to breathe.

The music swelled to a close and your father kissed your cheek before he passed you along to your fiance. He smiled and you tried not to be disgusted at the sweaty hand that held yours. You held your flowers in your other hand tighter, glad that the florist had missed a thorn in trimming your flowers.

Before you could blink, Neuvillette was already speaking.

And although he was addressing everyone as he read the passage you read aloud to him on a particularly gloomy evening, his gaze never left yours. The man witnessed and knew of the cruelest things the nation allowed, worked under Honorable Focalors Herself, and yet the expression on his face (such as it was, for he was known for his unreadable countenance) was as if…

It was gone in all but a moment as he cleared his throat and prompted you to recite your vows.

It was the subtle raise of Neuvillette’s eyebrows, the way his eyes widened just enough for emphasis that did you in.

Doubt. Anguish.

Was this what you wanted?

You turned your head, every intention to get the words across your tongue and past your lips in mind, when your voice simply wouldn’t comply. All you could see was a life shackled, compromise after compromise and always made against your favor. Concessions that eventually wore down to wondering why you ever bothered.

Did you want to throttle yourself, your spirit, your drive, for potential that wasn’t even there? When the man you loved would be forever kept out of reach?

If not this, then what did you want?

The answer was literally staring you in the face.

You shoved your flowers into your betrothed’s hands and pulled away, not caring if your dress carried sweat stains as you gathered the skirts and ran as fast as your legs could carry you out the door. Commotion behind you roared to life as you haphazardly made your way through the lobby, down to the entrance, and then dashed to the side garden to avoid the headline-hungry press.

There were few options to hide, all of them easy enough to locate. Your family would drag you back if they found you. Assuming they weren’t bickering and that the wedding was even still on from your fiance’s point of view.

A single drop of rain plopped on your head, sudden and cold. Followed by another. And then there was no sun left in the sky as rain came down in sheets, heavy and frigid. Thunder rumbled through your entire being. You couldn’t stay here. Over the roar of the rain, you could hear your name. You wouldn’t heed.

You were tired of coming when called, of giving your loyalty and love to those who sought to keep you from your happiness. No better than a hunting dog.

Soaked, your hair and dress now destined for the Abyss, you slid off your heels and made your way towards the one place you might be able to wait out the rain in peace.

Over the chatter of the crowd, the rumble of thunder was unmistakable.

Of course it would rain. It wasn’t like he’d done a terrific job of hiding his own bias.

The speed at which you’d run back up the aisle was a feat, given the shoes you wore. No doubt those wouldn’t do you any good in this weather. You were probably cold, overwhelmed…

Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and Neuvillette’s hand shot out. He grabbed the nobleman’s arm before he could move, already poised to go after you.

“Leave her be. These things happen. It is best for a neutral party to resolve these matters. Wedding planners, family, or friends are usually equipped for these situations,” the Chief Justice said matter of factly.

Fight back, you absolute–

Your betrothed’s arm relaxed in Neuvillette’s grip and it took everything in the Chief Justice not to summon his power and drown him there and then. If there was one person deserving of being reduced to their primal element…

Neuvillette’s voice cut above the crowd as he called for order, requesting that guests remain where they were and that, no doubt, everything would resume shortly. Your parents were already doing a poor attempt at damage control with your supposed-in-laws. Your siblings were casting looks at the door, half-debating if they should go after you; they weren’t like you, not as headstrong, not as independent, and one look from your matriarchal grandmother sent them further into their seats.

He intervened, diffusing arguments with ease, all the while wondering if you were okay. Your parents wanted to use city resources, send out police. For once, your fiance chimed in that such a thing might scare you and you needed help, not to be dragged back kicking and screaming.

“You should go, sir,” the young nobleman said quietly as the bickering picked up again. “You said it yourself: family or friends, and her family doesn’t seem keen to fight for her.”

The man’s smile was shaky but the Chief Justice appreciated the sentiment. At least he had a brain in there somewhere.

“Be sure to keep them from saying too much to the press. Should any ask, Her Honor is also behaving…in her usual fashion.”

Neuvillette was certain his absence wouldn’t go unnoticed and the fact that the press were still clamoring at the front stairs despite the downpour wouldn’t help matters. He paid them no mind as rain pelted him, drenching his robes and suit jacket underneath. The rain did nothing to affect his vision nor his drive to find you; he was unbothered by the chill but you…you always did love curling up right next to a fire and being bundled in winter.

There was one place you might go, he pondered, that few knew about and fewer had access to. Short of you running through the city in your dress (which would not be like you), you had little options to avoid the press but to stay near the courthouse.

He found you as he expected to, under a pavilion tucked away into a quiet garden on the property, wringing out your skirts and pacing, feet bare against the wet stone. You were never still when your mind was lightyears ahead of you, be it from following trains of thought or when you were attempting to force a filibuster. Your thoughts were likely half-way to Inazuma by now and just as tumultuous as the storms he heard so much about.

His breath caught when you jumped as you caught sight of him, eyes wide and anguish carved into your face. Neuvillette stepped under the cover of the pavilion, his robes and braid dripping unceremoniously and you immediately reached to wring his hair out gently, without so much as a second thought.

The Chief Justice took off his gloves as he let you finish before he took your hands in his. He could feel the bump on your finger where you held a pen, the tender spot where your flowers pricked you.

“I can’t do it, Neu,” you choked out, shaking your head. “I can’t do it.”

“You don’t have to if it’s going to make you unhappy, if you cannot see a future with the person standing at the altar.”

He worked in rulings, evidence, facts; managing Focalors emotional outbursts was a terrible part of his job description but they never teetered into this territory. He was used to fleeting whims and de-escalation.

This? This was a decision that would change the course of your life. Not immediately, of course. But the future was a terrifying, uncertain thing, and you had expectations to contend with.

Expectations that did not involve him.

The pall of fear lifted from your face slowly, the same way morning dew disappeared from the grass. Something else blossomed in its place, like a sweet flower pushing through the cracks in the cobblestone streets, resilient and resolute.

“The thing is, I can. Just not with the man I was about to marry.”

Shooting him would have been less painful. Such an admission should have, as with all things today, been enough to make a heart soar, even manage to turn bitter water into sweet ambrosia. Your lips parted again before he could speak.

“And I understand you feel differently; you’ve never given me reason to believe otherwise and I am not asking for more than what you have to give. I would never do that to you. If I marry the man in there,” you nodded your head in the direction of the courthouse, “it will always be a lie. Maybe I’ll grow to tolerate him but I will never love him. Not like I love you. As I do now, I will spend the rest of my life looking into his eyes, wishing he was you.”

Neuvillette’s hands dropped yours to cup your face of their own accord. Before he could process anything else, he’d tilted your head up and pressed his lips to yours as if he was a man deprived of air. You were warm, despite the weather, and he could make out the familiar scent of your perfume amid the fresh flowers in your hair. He felt you relax, curve yourself into him, hands finding purchase on the soaked lapels of his robes.

He broke away, his face hot as he admired your swollen lips. Mixed in with your slight daze was that inquisitive expression he would never tire of, one you often gave to silently encourage him to continue speaking.

“Then no more wishing, mon amour,” he whispered, brushing away the stray tears pooling at the corners of your eyes. “Marry me.”

“Don’t just—”

“I should not have let it get as far as it has. What good is duty if your heart is elsewhere?”

“And where will we go, my Chief Justice? The people of Fontaine and our Archon might enjoy this scandal a little too much…it would be quite a spectacle.”

“Qiaoying Village is nice this time of year. I have an acquaintance in Liyue I can persuade to be a witness. Beyond that…we’ll let the current decide.”

His words shook something in you as you reached up and tugged at his cravat to pull him into another kiss. Longer than the last, smooth and steady like a morning tide, passion dancing like an undertow.

#neuvillette #neuvillette/female reader #neuvillette/reader #chief justice neuvillette #genshin impact neuvillette #arranged marriage #angst with a happy ending #fluff #romance #love confessions

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embossross · 6 months

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From His Mind to Hers

chapter 13 >> Chapter 14>> masterlist

✣ Pairing: Hanma x AFAB fem!Reader

✣ Warning: 18+, minors DNI; unhealthy relationships & dark content

✣ Chapter CW: Processing trauma from abuse and sexual violence (rape aftermath), unhealthy coping mechanisms, revenge porn, slut shaming/misogyny, suicidal ideation (sort of – threats)

✣ Story CWs: patient/doctor relationships; smut (oral, ptv, pta, etc.), degradation, stalking, torture (not of y/n), murder, dubcon & abuse in c13, discussions of trauma and abuse, drug use, and more

✣ Synopsis: Forced into therapy, Hanma expects to waste his time and yours, but you’re not about to let the chance of a high-profile and higher paying patient slip through your grasp. The fact that you’re both attracted to each other doesn’t hurt either.

✣ Word Count: 5.5k+

The janitor deserves a raise.

The floors gleam, pearlescent and buffed to a shine that threatens to serve your reflection back to you. Where you sit, elbows to knees, staring at the floor, you notice every shoe scuff and dropped luggage tag. Fleeting messes that the janitor is quick to erase from existence. A few sweeps of the mop and everything returns to its former state, beautiful and shining.

“Flight NH451 to Okinawa is now boarding,” a crystalline voice announces first in Japanese, then English, then Mandarin.

No one else has time to study the floors. Compared to the bustle of Tokyo-Narita, Haneda Airport is calmer, but all airports in your experience share an atmosphere of restrained anxiety. For many people, it’s the one time they must completely surrender any pretenses of control over their lives and accept that they are subject to the whims of weather, technical failure, fate.

You know a thing or two about that.

Fussy babies burp and cry while their older siblings fare little better. The line for the Hong Kong Express baggage check stretches around the corner, creeping forward at a pace that promises a missed flight for whichever fool arrives with only two hours to make it to their terminal. A group of college-aged girls kneel on the floor, bags spread out as they shuffle the contents around, trying to find the magic formula that will sneak them below the weight limit. Hunched like they’re already exhausted from standing for so long, an elderly couple waits in mute silence, in a place beyond words. Nearly everyone else stares at their phones, willing the minutes to pass. It’s a fair difference from the energy you’d find over in arrivals, where half the passengers are haggard from a long day of international travel and the other half sprint, energized, into the arms of waiting loved ones. It churns your stomach to think about all those people, crying through tears of joy.

It may appear like the line isn’t moving, but it’s like the Argonaut. From where you’ve sat to the side watching for the last four hours, you know an assemblage of new faces will gradually replace these, the line somehow never shorter but its components entirely new.

In all this time, not one person has taken note of the woman rooted to one spot, the perpetual observer of the thousands of people who all have better places to be.

The promise of invisibility is what drew you to the airport this morning. Amid the minutiae and petty concerns of the mob, you may as well be furniture. Surrendering to that invisibility evokes a blissful relief.

It is your natural habitat.

As a child, you mastered the art of being there and not there at the same time. You remember miserable days spent locked in your room whenever you caught so much as a sniffle. Your mother would banish you to the narrow three tatami mat room, terrified that your germs might spread and infect her.

At first, every minute would tick by with the weight of eternity. Staring at the ceiling, phlegm draining back through your sinuses and stomach in a pounding knot, you would count each tile one by one. The trick was to stretch the count as long as possible, to sit and savor each number in your mind’s eye, because you knew when you finished it would be back to one again. No windows opened to the views outside, no toys to distract you. The most the little room offered was its thin walls through which you could hear your mother move about the house, her loud laugh down the receiver of the phone, the hum of the TV. All while you shook from fever, unattended.

Time would pass so slowly in that room. Gradually, impossibly, it would slow even further as your stomach grumbled, your throat spasmed from thirst. Your mother never thought to leave you any food or water to survive those long days in that room.

The thirstier you grew, the less you could ward off the realities of the body, thoughts fixating on each ache and pain, until finally, you learned to stop your thoughts altogether. To be there and not there at once.

Then, time would resume in a sprint, a long blink and night would fall. Once the sounds of your mother’s untroubled life ceased, you would make your move. On sock-covered feet, you would slip from your prison and edge your way to the kitchen, praying for invisibility, for no one to spot your midnight heist. You never dared fetch a glass, mimicking a thief’s caution as you leaned into the sink, mouth closing around the tap, where you would turn it onto a trickle and let the life-giving water permeate your cracked lips. In those moments, you would be there, brilliantly, blindingly there in spirit, but your body remained locked away in that room.

The tricks you learned in those days in that house have served you well over the years. Invisibility sometimes feels like a curse, resigning you forever to the periphery of life, but it also greets you like an old friend when you are most in need of protection.

How traumatizing then to search for it last night and find that old friend missing. When you needed it most, the old detachment abandoned you.

Hyper-present, you suffered every moment of Hanma’s pain and perversion. Countless times, you reached for your invisibility, hoping to slip out of yourself like a specter and leave your body to Hanma’s cruel hands, but you were only left twice as terrified to find yourself trapped inside yourself. Your mind, body, and soul were devastatingly one as you experienced the certainty that Hanma would shoot you dead as he brutalized you, as he held you with the gentleness of a lover, as he…

Your phone vibrates in your pocket. You know it’s him. It must be. His smell still lingers on the fine hairs of your nostrils, singeing them with the stench of bourbon that bled from his pores. In the blue-black dark, you could barely make out his features as he threatened you – a masked intruder hovering above you – but fuck if you couldn’t smell him, stinking up your once safe, sterilized bedroom.

Just thinking about it makes you want to…

With trembling fingers, you hunt through your purse until you find a wad of tissues to wipe the sweat that beads across your brow. It is swelteringly hot in Departures, a mix of the unseasonably warm weather and the heat of hundreds of bodies thronging together, their every exhale warming the room.

Searching through the mass of bodies, you find the janitor still at work, fix on the friendly lines of his face. He gives no indication that he notices the heat, the throngs of people, or anything else but his work. The janitor mops the floors, contented. Like you, he has no designs to go anywhere else.

The line moves several meters forward while you watch the janitor. Eventually, he lifts his head and notices you for the first time. The muscles in your face ache as you summon a smile. The result must be obscene or hostile because he hurriedly returns to mopping, a few half-hearted brushes just for show before he scurries away entirely.

Now, you are alone again.

You put your head between your legs and try to breathe like they suggest people having panic attacks do in the movies. The position does help chase back your rising gorge and settles your rolling stomach. It does nothing for your thoughts.

You remember when Hanma’s long fingers found your clit, how he exploited his knowledge of your body to rub you to a forced little orgasm, like he wouldn’t be content until you were made an active participant in your indignity, his forever accomplice, the Stavrogin to his Fedka.

A thundering accompanies a plane taking off from the tarmac, loud enough to chase away the memories. You watch the massive passenger plane soar north until it becomes a speck on the horizon. It will never cease to amaze you how for the hundreds of people aboard that plane, each knows exactly where they are going and why. Their destination is well and truly decided. Too late to change their minds or second-guess.

Whenever you try to think of where you will go next – because surely you can’t live in the airport departures lounge, surely someone, anyone, will eventually realize the ghost of a woman has made a home there, will recognize that you’ve overstayed your welcome, will chase you out, right? – your brain throws up nothing but roadblocks. You imagine returning to your cold, hostile apartment, and the contents of your stomach dance in protest. Your apartment is no longer a safe space.

Your phone vibrates again, and this time, you don’t have the strength to ignore it. Fished from your pocket, you stare at the characters in Shuji’s name, tracing them one by one. Your finger hovers over the button to answer.

What he did last night – did to you – is unforgivable. You may not know what happened to Haitani, but it doesn’t matter. You did not deserve that.

And that should be that. A definitive break with Hanma is the only logical next step. Everything you built together is decimated, just so much sawdust stamped beneath his paranoid feet.

But where does that leave you? You know there will be no returning to your old life? The apartment will never be safe again now that Hanma’s been inside, not since you invited him inside. It will never be clean after what happened.

And maybe you won’t be either. Something inside you is fundamentally changed. Because even now, some part of you wants to go to him. Perhaps want is the wrong word. Without the old survival tools that carried you through the years, you feel cast adrift, weaker than when Hanma found you.

Eventually, Hanma will escalate from ignored phone calls and, vulnerable as you are, will you be able to say no to his face? Worse, will you lean into him, longing for his protection from the demons he himself unleashed on your life?

You don’t take his call, but you don’t leave the airport either. Nothing can change so long as you stay here, but then again, nothing can hurt you either.

Stuck, your return to staring at the floors.

You choose to take the elevator up to your apartment, spending the better part of the ride convincing yourself that no demons will await you, so all five senses revolt when you find the hallway outside your door laden with cardboard boxes. They’re not taped up like a delivery would be, and besides, you pick your mail up from the mailroom downstairs. Peeking into one box, you see it’s filled with your old textbooks from university, the ones that should be neatly shelved and collecting dust in your bedroom.

Inside, pornographic moaning greets you. Stopped in your tracks, you almost miss the changes: the photographs in the entry hall have been removed, your shoes are missing from the alcove. There is no mess, just gaps where your life should be.

While taking an itemized inventory of what’s missing appeals to you, the lewd sounds coming from the living room force you forward. On the TV, a naked woman rides a man. She carries on like it’s the best damn dick of her life, touching her own body like something sacred as she cries out.

The woman is you, of course you can see that much, but your brain struggles to play catch up and process this baffling, foreign view of yourself. It’s almost harder to comprehend how wanton you appear in the video rather than that such a video exists in the first place.

“I think we can agree there’s no need for a scene.”

Emerging from the bedroom, Takashi’s doesn’t spare the screen a second glance. It would only take one to confirm that the woman in the video is you, and that the man is decidedly not him.

Between self-indulgent rounds of sex with Hanma, you often wondered how you would feel if Takashi discovered your affair. Secretly, you longed for guilt. A great tsunami of devotion to Takashi and the concept of monogamy would rise within you, the tears would fall, and seconds later, apologies would follow. You hoped for a scene out of the soap operas, something normal.

The reality is less fraught as you are too stunned to summon up any response at all. If only Takashi would turn the video off. Then, maybe your brain would work again. There is no room for coherent thought around the wet, slapping sounds intermixed with moans coming from the TV.

“I knew you were sleeping with patients for months now. It never bothered me too much. So, when I saw the videos, I didn’t understand at first why I was so repulsed by it. But then, I put it together. I had figured some fat, rich fuck at work offered you enough money, and I could hardly blame you for that. If a client offered me money to fuck, I’d do it, too. But watching the videos, I realized, you weren’t just fucking this yakuza creep for money, were you? You liked it.”

There is a forcefield around Takashi that repels your gaze. You can test its parameters by starting at the juts of his knees and slowly climbing upward. It’s around his neck, the first bit of exposed skin, that the forcefield kicks into effect, and you find you cannot bring your gaze higher than the hollow of his throat, and even that takes a supreme effort. You turn back to the video playing out on screen.

“So you’re leaving me, then?” you say because it must be said if things are to continue from here.

“Things are busy at work. I don’t see why my life should be disrupted when I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m sure you’ll take responsibility as the offending party and move out without a fuss.”

“That would be sensible,” you agree.

Heady with the realization that this is actually happening – you are truly breaking up with your boyfriend – you force yourself to look at him, one last look to imprint forever in your mind. Immediately, you wish you hadn’t.

Takashi looks past you to the video on screen, where the you of only a few weeks back is loudly and visibly announcing how much she likes every stroke of dick before erupting into a shaking orgasm. Lips curled as if tasting something foul, Takashi regards the woman in the video like something subhuman. You try to watch the video through his eyes, but you can’t break free from the chains of your own perspective, a fuzzy migraine cresting in your temples at the sight of Hanma’s body, memories of this pleasurable tryst weeks ago mixing with last night’s events until you feel like the edges of your brain are collapsing inward.

There is no point to torturing yourself with the video or further conversation. Ignoring the shame in your gut, you follow numbly a step behind Takashi as he finishes packing your things. Most of your meager belongings are already stacked in the hall, but still, there is something stunning about how quickly your life is packed up out of sight. After living together for eight years, you would have left such an indelible mark that only industrial strength tools could strip your essence from the walls of this place. There are a couple overlooked items: the vase of artificial flowers Shuji gifted you, a box of tissues if you care to be petty, the spoons with scalloped edges, but, functionally, your life is stripped, relegated to boxes, and pushed aside within a measly half hour.

All the while, the video plays on. When it finishes, autoplay kicks in and offers up a second to continue your humiliation. The second is slightly preferrable as you make less of a spectacle of your delirious pleasure in it, yet worse because it shows Shuji more clearly, the dragon tattoo on his back flexing as he pounds into your prone body, face crinkling in animal pleasure. You can’t stand to look at him.

These videos…the only explanation for their existence is Shuji. They’re an abomination, something that shouldn’t exist and can’t be allowed to continue to exist. The gall of their existence builds in you until you discover enough anger to break the silence that’s drawn tight between you and Takashi.

“Takashi, if I go quietly, will you please delete these videos?”

“Sure,” he agrees simply, but at their mention, Takashi then looks back to the sex tape on screen, and that same revulsion morphs the contours of his face into something unfamiliar. “I suspected it for months, and then after reading your diary, I knew it for certain, and still…seeing it? When I watched the first one, I debated if it was even real. It had to be some kind of tasteless hoax. Because that’s not you in these. You’re like a stranger. I mean, look at it,” he says, gesturing to the screen. “That’s not you. And that guy…How does touching that criminal freak not disgust you? It’s like watching a pig take a mud bath. Disgusting.”

The shelf where you once stored your medical magazines is barren. Naked. There isn’t much dust though. You had spent a few hours cleaning last Sunday. That’s good, you think, one good thing. Everything Takashi says about you is true. Your lack of fear or righteous hatred of Hanma signals a great moral failing on your part. You are a failure, Monstrous.

Spinning out in self-loathing, you stand mutely for a solid minute before your brain hooks onto a single detail and everything clicks firmly into place.

“Wait, you read my therapy diary?”

“Don’t go crying about privacy now. I could tell you were running around on me and wanted to know,” Takashi snaps.

The finer details of what you recorded in that diary escape you, but you know you frequently wrote about your conversations, encoding but not entirely skipping over references to his business. It was stupid, of course, but the diary was intended for your eyes only, an exercise in self-reflection. The same Takashi who told you he was coming into an unexpected windfall of money at work. The same Takashi who had ripped your bedroom apart, supposedly looking for signs of your infidelity. The same Takashi who had demanded details about your patients. If that same Takashi had read your diary months ago he would have known about the HKJ deal, about Haitani soliciting you, about far too much.

“You weren’t reading my diary because you were jealous. You were paid to spy on me, weren’t you?”

And you know just who paid him as well. Based of your three interactions, you should have predicted that Haitani is not a man who accepts defeat easily. He is like a river. When he can’t force his way through an obstacle, he finds a way around.

“I did what you should have done in the first place,” Takashi sneers.

It is not defensiveness, at least not as far as you can tell, that spurs Takashi to confess. In his mind, you’ve already been reduced to something subhuman, a creature undeserving of consideration let alone sympathy, someone he could justify the worst abuses against, so convinced of his own righteousness. But whatever grievance Takashi may imagine against you, nothing can compare to what Takashi cost you. If he hadn’t betrayed you to Ran, then last night…Hanma…

You think you could gouge Takashi’s eyes out and he still wouldn’t understand the hurt he caused you. Minutes prior, you felt completely extinguished, like your flames had been put out forever, but now a pilot light flickers and it’s enough to bring forth an inferno, a heat you didn’t dare hope you would ever feel again.

“How dare you! You want to lecture me about getting into bed with the yakuza when you’re climbing into the bank with one! What if you had gotten someone hurt or killed? Did you even think about what would happen to me? You’re a slimy, despicable, cowardly –”

Shouting over you as you continue to levy every imaginable invective against him, Takashi spits, “Like you’re some paragon of virtue. Were you thinking about your patients when you started screwing them? Or did you not give a fuck who you hurt? Last time I checked, they don’t let yakuza whores keep their licenses. Speaking of which, you should know I’ve already sent these videos to the Japanese Psychological Association. You can look forward to a call from the ethics board.”

The bomb drop has the desired effect. It collapses the floor beneath your feet, gobbles up the words in your mouth, and implodes the tiny sliver of security that you still clung to. A life gone in a moment.

You are going to lose your license.

No job.

No home.

No friends.

No boyfriend.

No security.

Nothing.

The last box of your things and the vase of flowers are shoved into your hands. They feel weightless in your arms. On autopilot, you accept them and Takashi’s pushing hands on your back as he shepherds you towards the door.

This is the last time you will see this apartment that you called home for so long: the warped wood that’s risen under the heat of the window, the lightbulb in the kitchen that flicks if your run the dishwasher at the same time, the dent no bigger than a thumbprint, or more accurately, a door handle in the wall from where the front door slammed into it with too much force.

You want to press pause, to slow down the moment. You would take a final photo if you could, breathe in the smell of this place and bottle it for a future date. Anything to linger for one second longer before you are cast out into the unforgiving cold.

Takashi does not take mercy on you.

“You should be thankful you don’t have a family to shame,” he hisses.

And then the door slams shut. With you on one side and your life on the other.

Everything you once were is gone forever.

On second look, there are fewer than a dozen boxes stacked in the hall. Such a small life. You thoughtlessly heft a small, light-seeming box onto the bundle already in your arms. Dazedly, you stumble past the rest, leaving them behind with no plan for when or who will come to collect them, and even less of an idea of where you’ll send them.

There is no hurry. Nowhere to go. Yet, you too quickly find yourself pressing through the revolving doors that lead out onto the street and the blinding midday sun, which fittingly leeches the color from the world, so that everything’s cast in long shadows. On instinct, you raise a hand to shield your eyes, dropping the little you own to shatter on the sidewalk. A pitiful relief wells in you as you drop to your knees to retrieve your belongings; it is something to do.

Since Takashi cratered the foundations on which your entire existence rested, the normally persistent voice in your head – the one that would caution you against calling a taxi when a subway ticket cost less than 200 yen or would push you to stay that extra hour in university, the one that essentially kept you alive – has been traitorously silent, and so you know that you ought to figure out a place to stay for the night, to calculate how long your savings will last, and brainstorm a strategy to fight the ethics board, but you can’t keep any one thought in your head long enough to develop something concrete. Each stirring of a thought drips through the cracks between your fingers, like trying to collect water in the cup of your palm. You can’t make a plan. What you can do is kneel on the dirty sidewalk and clean up your mess.

First, you right the little box you scooped up from the hallway. Peeking inside, you see it’s mostly filled with socks and underwear. The second box that Takashi forced into your hands is less useful. Inside are shattered picture frames, the photos inside detailing the lives you shared or, at least, lived in parallel. You can’t tell if they cracked in the fall or if Takashi ritualistically broke each as a parting gift. Even less useful somehow is the vase of fake flowers Hanma gave you, now lying scattered, a collection of jagged ceramic shards.

You herd the broken pieces into a little pile, careful as you do to avoid slicing your fingertips against the sharp edges. As you delicately lift one piece, you feel out something small and round affixed to the inside. With an emotion milder than curiosity, you peel the coin-like anomaly off. Holding it to the light, you puzzle at what looks like a microchip.

And then, all you can do is laugh, as your memory offers up an old spy movie where you saw a device just like this, hidden in a flower vase. It’s a bug.

Of course, he bugged your apartment. Even a gesture as simple as gifting you flowers in apology is warped, twisted into something malicious with Hanma. He’s been laying the foundation for your downfall for months now. Just waiting to crumble you to dust in his hands.

A familiar car pulls up to the curb where you sit, laughing maniacally to yourself. You laugh harder when you spot it. Perfect fucking timing.

The window rolls down, and for one terrible second, you lock eyes with Shuji. Terrible, venomous eyes, the gaze of a viper, hidden away behind glass lenses as if without that layer of protection, he might penetrate you to your core. No, not a viper, a basilisk.

The way he’s dressed, hair perfectly coiffed and in the tailored suit that is his work uniform, offends your sensibilities. From his height advantage, he peers down at you like a scientist watching a bug through a microscope. You feel as small as a mite.

“You can spend the night at my place,” Hanma says, without so much as a greeting because he need not dignify you with niceties. A person needn’t spare a termite a hello before stepping on it.

A plane flies overhead, so low it tricks the eye for a moment, makes you think it’ll crash into the skyscrapers dotting the cityscape. You follow it with your eyes until it’s long out of sight, retracing the chemtrail it leaves in its wake. You almost forget Hanma is here, watching.

Pressed through a sigh, Hanma says your name. His voice, toneless and impossibly deep strikes you like a whip, a thousand times worse than seeing him. It is the charge you need to act.

Bursting to your feet, you leave all but your box of underwear and march determinedly in the other direction. Adrenaline courses through your veins, a jittery but appreciated focuser, and for the first time, you are able to think outside your fugue state. You will find a hotel for the night, something cheap that pays by the hour. If you walk for five minutes, you’re sure to find something.

Anything is better than Hanma’s offer.

“Get in the car.”

You ignore Hanma’s first call and his second, pretending his voice doesn’t make your hands shake so hard you fear you’ll drop the box. The Bentley keeps pace with you to the right. At the first intersection, a redlight stops the Bentley dead.

“For fuck’s sake!”

The curse is a warning before Hanma charges out of the car, arms extended as if to grab you and drag you into the cavern of his Bentley. The dark interior beckons ominously, hinting at a cacophony of horrors. To go into that car is to die.

His fingers don’t so much as graze yours before you start to scream.

Hoarse, guttural screams that turn the necks of every passerby in the area emerge from your bruised throat, a scream that must be tearing your throat apart, but you can’t feel the pain through the adrenaline rush. Heads pop out of nearby shops to see who is making such a ruckus and why. Amid the animal shrieks, the occasional curse takes place, a well-timed “motherfucker” or “waste of space.” To anyone watching, you appear unhinged. A lifetime of pain and rage unleash in one concentrated exhale of agony. If you could bottle the force behind your bellows, they would blow a hole through Hanma’s brain and vaporize what’s left. You scream in his face like you hope to erase him from existence like he did you.

Time holds no meaning now, and you think you might black out or suffer a psychotic break that blacks over just what you say or do in those precious moments of freedom. Whether Hanma is appalled by your behavior, if it makes him want to hurt, fuck, or kill you is irrelevant. Blissfully blank, you become the beast Takashi thinks you are and growl and rage and bare your teeth.

Stunned into stillness by the spectacle, Hanma’s gaze darts between you and the spectators who could intervene, but as no one steps forward to help the crazy woman having a breakdown, Hanma loses his patience.

He slaps a hand over your mouth, muffling your hysterical shrieking. His body is so much larger than yours, something you once craved, but now it crowds and bullies you toward the parked door, where the wide-open passenger door signals your doom. You go silent. You transfer every bit of energy from your throat to your body. Biting and bucking, you fight him with every ounce of strength you possess.

No amount of thrashing could overpower Hanma at full-strength, but he treats you gently with none of last night’s brutality. Kid gloves try to handle you with care as if he would never think to harm you, no not you, his precious, beloved pet. How could you even think such a thing? Unwilling to hurt you, Hanma grapples against your flailing arms for a full minute before backing off, hands tugging at his hair in frustration. He is panting though not half so hard as you are.

“Would you fucking stop!” Hanma snaps. “You should be grateful for what I did. You should –”

Whatever lovely suggestion would have topped off that sentence, you don’t wait to hear, lashing out with a closed fist before he can finish.

You aim for his cheek, but Hanma sees the blow coming, so your fist glances off his neck.

The next punch is somehow more pitiful. Powered by your righteous indignation, you throw your full-body weight behind it, but Hanma bats you aside, so that your shoulder collides into his chest and the punch dies out against the air. Hanma folds the leftover arm behind your body and pins you to his chest, so that all the bucking in the world won’t be enough to break free. He is a titanium wall of muscle and violence, and he has you in his grasp. You think you might vomit.

All the energy in your body evaporates, and you slump into his embrace.

“Finally,” Hanma mutters but without frustration. There is a hint of satisfaction there. A hint of humor at your suffering.

“Let me go,” you whisper.

“Will you behave like a good girl if I do?”

“Let me go.”

Hanma sighs, “Oh, Doc, come on. All this carrying on over limp-dick Takashi? He’s not worth it.”

“Didn’t you hear? While you were eavesdropping, didn’t you hear?” you chuckle a little, a sound strange enough that Hanma eases up on his grip, enough so that he can peer down at your face. You are both equally surprised to discover that you are crying, little matte tears slipping down your cheeks. “I didn’t just lose my boyfriend and my apartment. Oh no! I’m also going to lose my fucking license!”

“What? Why would you lose your license?” Hanma visibly startles, and on any other day, you might have enjoyed one-upping him, but not today. And never again.

“Is this what you wanted from the beginning? To lay me completely low? Did you think that when I was broke and starving, I’d have no choice but to rely on your limited generosity? To let you play with me until you get bored? Because I have nothing left to give, Hanma. I’m not even a human being anymore. I’m nothing.”

“Listen, Doc, relax. This is a panic attack. I’ll take care of Takashi and whatever he did. I’ll make it go away. You just come home with me, and I’ll take care of you and –”

“I may be nothing, but I’d rather be nothing than be with you,” you spit in his face.

His hands slacken for a moment, and you use that moment of weakness to break free.

Once more, Hanma’s hand reaches out as if to grab you, but you turn to him and with every bit of solemnity in your soul, so that the words read with all the gravity of a blood oath, you swear, “If you force me to go anywhere with you, I swear I will find a way to kill myself.”

The fingers on Hanma’s hand flex. The veins pop and strain like his body is rebelling against him, urging him to clutch, grab, cage. But then that hand falls to his side, stills.

This time, when you walk away, he doesn’t follow.

#hanma shuji #hanma x reader #tokyo rev smut #tokyo revengers smut #hanma smut #tokyo revengers x reader smut #tokyo revengers x reader

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torao-d-water-ya · 1 year

Text

Trafalgar Law, the Don Quixote brothers, and why Doffy takes such personal offence to the existence of Lawlu (Part 1: Faith)

1. How can you trust Straw-hat so much?

Doflamingo kicks up a huge fuss about Law forming an alliance with Luffy from the get go, and continues to go on about it till literal moments before he gets put down by Luffy at the end of the arc.

Up until this point we've seen Law act pretty casual about his relationship with Luffy – he saved him at Marinford on a whim, he's forming an alliance out of convenience, "this doesn't mean we’re friends". It isn't until we see Doflamingo's reaction to this development that we realize the importance it holds for Law's character, and stop to think about what it might represent, given the context of his past. To Doflamingo, who’s seen Law at his lowest – who’s seen the kid who’d stopped believing in anything, and wanted to destroy the world – Law’s faith in Luffy, who seems to stand in antithesis to all that Doflamingo stands for, is a huge fucking deal.

Doflamingo already knows, of course, what changed his heart all those years ago. But he asks anyway, because Law showing up here with Luffy, even after all this time, feels like salt being rubbed in the wound; Doffy’s pride can’t take it. Law gives him the easy answer – the simple, surface level answer. He trusts Luffy because he believes in the will of D, because Cora-san believed in the will of D.

But we all know there’s a lot more to it than that.

2. Why did you choose him, Law?

13 years ago, Doflamingo lost Law, his chosen successor, to Rocinante. That’s what he’s seeing every time he’s faced with Law’s partnership with Luffy – that’s why he’s so hung up over it. Law being here with Luffy just serves as a reminder of him choosing Corazon, all those years ago. A reminder that even though it was Doflamingo who pulled the trigger to kill his own brother, in the end, Corazon won. They were both children of the same wretched circumstances, but where Doffy decided to destroy the world for what it had done to him, Cora chose instead to save it. Then along comes Law, another child ravaged by fate, and Doffy sees in him an exact mirror of his past. Sees a weapon, ripe for the taking – one that might someday be used to destroy the world at his behest.

That is, until Corazon manages to save him, too. And in trying to live up to the man Cora-san would want him to be, Law stumbles into becoming the sort of person who would stand side by side with the ‘fool’ that is Straw-hat Luffy.

3. Why do you want to die in vain ... alongside this dumbshit?

It isn’t about the Will of D, not really. The first time Law laid eyes on Luffy, he watched the guy punch a Celestial Dragon in the face without a second’s hesitation, because it was the right thing to do. If it weren’t for this moment, Law would never have been compelled to sail to Marineford, thus putting his entire crew in danger, to save the life of an almost-stranger bearing the initial of D. There’s a quality in Luffy that drew Law to him, and it’s the same sort of quality that incited Cora-san to ditch his mission and run off to save Law’s life.

It’s the sort of quality that Doflamingo, for all his talk, could never hope to understand.

#lawlu #trafalgar D. Water Law #donquixote doflamingo #donquixote rosinante #monkey d. luffy #trafalgar law #corazon #luffy #doflamingo #dressrosa #one piece #one piece analysis

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xx-vergil-xx · 23 days

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Can I ask what pushed you to end Hounds the way you did? It's a fantastic ending, but I'm curious. I expected the Fates to revive Dream, or allow him to inhabit a new form (such as one made by Daniel, so that Dream becomes a dreamthing), etc. But instead, his death is made to have never happened. Which makes it partly feels like Hob's whole road trip journey was for nothing since he lost all those memories and connections with Matthew, the Corinthian, Delirium, Despair, Desire, Death, etc. (thank god he kept the farmhouse). But it's almost like he traded all those memories and connections for Dream. Unless I missed something while reading (I was crying very hard).

Again, fantastic ending, and I'm also glad it's a happy ending. But I'm curious as to why you didn't go in the other direction

howdy! thanks very much for the ask — an excellent query, one which i��m happy to answer

(verg of the future: this answer ended up long! there’s a short form at the top here and at the end <3)

in brief: he did make that trade you described! but not strictly for dream — it was the price of swapping genres!

an explanation:

what i had in mind while planning and writing was less the idea of erasure of prior narrative action and more a subversion of the expected genre, in particular the genre tropes that follow dream in the original arc of the comics, where his story is very classically tragic (with the understood weaving of hob into that tragedy, this being a dream/hob telling and all)

for reference, i also drew a lot of inspiration for hob’s road trip odyssey from the aeneid, an epic that is, yes, about the founding of rome but also (at least to my reading) a fundamental tragedy — the cost of founding rome is aeneas’ home, many of his friends, much of his core family, and the very end of the story is not some victorious depiction of the glory of rome to be (which we do get earlier in the book, with the ekphrasis on his shield) but aeneas, overcome with fury and loss, killing a man who begs his mercy. i’ve always felt that the aeneid, while certainly stepped in the expected amount of roman nationalism, is centrally about a single man and his singular suffering as an instrument of higher destiny.

i wanted to model hob’s arc around the aeneid (minus, y’know, some of the chunks that are strictly battle sequences <3) both because intertextuality is a huge part of how i wanted to handle hounds (story about stories, made of other stories, etc), but also because hob and aeneas are fundamentally parallel characters — nomads with exceptional ordinances, permanently displaced by the passing whims of higher powers, men who are made to reckon with both extraordinary wonder and extraordinary tragedy regularly while still, at their core, just being human. that’s what makes aeneas so compelling — he’s just a man. and so is our beloved hob — that’s his whole thing, his whole narrative function and his whole central ideal, humanity

so then, approaching hounds with both the thought of the sandman’s original tragic contours (see: the whole lead-in to daniel. christ above is the way that goes devastating to read) and the man vs fate core of the aeneid, i was considering a lot of things about how to mess around with both notions without gutting them entirely. i tend to dislike tragedies that become un-tragic without some sort of Serious Payment For It (not to say i don’t like happy stories because i very much do! but i get ticked off when high stakes get deflated too quickly) and i didn’t want to undermine the very real fact that the Fates are typically not versed in notions of empathy and/or leniency, and that dream and hob and those around them did experience and endure devastation and loss, and that death is a fact typically immune to argument.

the world of sandman is not one with easy answers, and to my mind there’s no such thing as a bargain with the Fates where you break even. for hob to get what he wanted, something had to be given, something dear and vital and real. there’s more to what hob actually gives the Fates than he verbally stipulates, which i tried to address largely via the corinthian and his perception of the situation, especially those last conversations with dream in the “swamp”. i have a lot of options about the corinthian in his function as “dark mirror” having a blistering clarity of understanding much of the time, which is why i foisted the onus of those complexities onto his dialogue, rather than hob, who (and i say this with love) is a creature of bias and often blinded to greater repercussions of his actions insofar as they extend beyond his immediate objectives/enjoyments, or dream, who can see the bigger picture but i think often really keeps himself from doing so when it comes to anything at all that’s personal (king of stories has a blindspot for his own). what hob gives the Fates actually costs him almost nothing, in the long run, if we operate with the idea that he cannot remember, nor is there any lasting effect from, his 600-ish heavily-relived years. there’s narrative and symbolic weight, of course — he gives them love as an oath and as nostalgia (sidebar: his driving force is an almost pre-nostalgia, a continual love of the moment as the moment is passing, but anyway) (cuff links), he gives them in a captured moment the lovely discomfort and simultaneous brilliance of being alive (the hook, the finger prick the blood), and he gives them a rich and complicated experience of humanity (those 600 years). but practically, what is actually taken from him that he doesn’t just get back?

only those few months — and in them, a web of real and known connections, all of which matter, and all of which change his understanding of and relationship to things like grief, and loneliness, and fear, and forgiveness. those are important changes, real changes, that would affect how he operates in the world going forward. that development is gone. he returns instead to the (of course, fought-for and hard-won) stasis of what was, which becomes what will always be. in making the Fates and their judgement more complex, he has actually made his own life less complex. now, i’m not going to sit here and argue that “suffering has inherent value” or some shit like that because i think that’s bullshit! pain is just pain. but he does lose experiences which would have shaped him in new ways, and, i think, good ways. even important ways

and he may well be shaped towards similar courses with dream (especially re: learning that lesson about loneliness — i think hob suffers from the curse of always, ultimately, being alone (immortality etc there’s so much discourse about this), and the road trip was in part about him learning that though it is the simplest path it is neither the sole nor the best path), but he certainly doesn’t learn them the same way, with the same faces, with the same acuity and clarity and intensity.

the thing with the Fates (to me anyway) is that you don’t ever just win. maybe you can get what you want, but it’s not easy (it make take a thousand repetitions of your lifetime until friction and the touch of your hands wears the sisyphean boulder down to a pebble — like the parable of the bird scraping its beak on the mountain), and it’s sure not free.

so yes, those months are lost. that’s a big part of the price. and we don’t know, at the end, how much of that thing he really gave ultimately comes back — his new relationship depths with deanna or cori or the other endless, those things aren’t seen. the main arc is resolved — hob and dream — but there are still pieces missing. he loses a piece of his human experience, he gets tossed back around through the wringer of his life (which is often distinctly not pleasant), and he is, as he ever was, a character with a path whose impetus and dictation rest heavily on external forces. even in attempting to channel his life elsewhere, he still has to bargain, and is still subject to the choices of the fates, and in some ways the story remains irrevocably a tragedy, in that one way or another it has loss in a central place. in the latter half of hounds hob really became my attempted version of an aeneas type — a man with a quest and a fated directive, a deeply human and flawed individual, who can alter the path and even irrevocably change the genre of his own narrative, but only at cost.

of course let’s be clear! some of all the actual rendering of this ended up as it did partly because i am not always a clean writer, and for that i apologize! but i did genuinely want that sense of gaps — of faces and voices given over to the gravitational well of the principal narrative arc of hob/dream versus the Fates. i think those things are gone. the narrative is forcibly re-centered around hob and dream, and in doing this — in shifting the story genre — other ties and bonds are not just cut, but unwoven entirely. when you change the kind of story you’re telling, the change is done at the expense of something else. kind of like how there’s a fixed amount of matter in the universe? you can’t create or destroy matter — to make something new you have to take from another place. (sidebar: wow i’m realizing something about my fundamental storytelling beliefs right now! laws of physics! anon your ask has really got my cylinders firing, and most sincerely thank you <3)

still, they might come back. though i didn’t write it as fully as i could have (i will freely admit there was a great deal of burnout at play towards the end there), i had a lot of thoughts re: repetition and density, namely that if you stack a thousand repetitions of a lifetime against each other it’s the equivalent of writing a word over and over and over on a page. when you erase it, the channels remain. language flows most naturally in the direction once etched for it. maybe hob learns those same lessons and knows the same people in the same way — maybe he and the corinthian find that odd patch of common ground, maybe he takes a long drive with delirium through rural maryland. maybe there are echoes. maybe even if it is gone what was still shapes the topography. maybe a kindness or a word exchanged still ring out when you can’t see them or remember them. while the milestones of our lives rippled the most visibly, i think we’re shaped a thousandfold ways by accumulations of small things we can’t distinctly remember. only a feeling of a thing, or the negative space it leaves.

well. tl;dr — i didn’t want to let hob get away without actually giving anything up, nor without his choice to bargain affecting others besides himself in equally irrevocable ways (sidebar: at his core is a selfishness that is both charming and ignoble — he wants to do a good thing for dream but also he makes a call that changes a plenitude of lives other than his own, and i don’t think he really asks, he just does — grey areas are his whole gig to me), because nobody makes a deal with the Fates for free, and changing genre has a price tag. it was my effort to make the tone of the whole beast more authentically sandman-esque, since sandman does a lot of that sort of water-muddying, especially when using understood narrative models/archetypes/etc etc

i am. sorry this was as long as it is! jesus! but i’m sending it off all the same. anyways, anon, thanks very much not only for your lovely kind words and the high honor of your tears (no pulitzer could mean more to me than knowing a thing i wrote really moved someone, seriously thank you) but also for giving me a blank check to go buck wild and ramble about my own damn writing and Things I Just Think <3 i hope you have a lovely day/morning/noon/night, and thanks a bunch for dropping by <3 <3 <3

#the sandman #hob gadling #dream of the endless #dreamling #hounds #vergil says hello #vergil says way more than fuckin hello tbh #vergil writes a manifesto woukd be a better line for this #anon has given me the greatest gift: License To Monologue #fingers crossed any of that actually answered the question at hand #thanks for saying hi and asking things because i love both experiences immensely #<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

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kehideni · 2 months

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There is one thing i'm really wondering about.

When did Rayla fall in love with Callum? I mean i get the why, and i ship it "yay" but she was so good at hiding her emotions i can't really pinpoint when she tipped over from "Callum is a friend." to "I can't lose him."

You can pinpoint when she turned from weird ally to friend. It was when Callum asked her to go to the Banther Lodge, his "heartfelt speech" was relatable to her.

We know she was already aware of her own feelings regarding Callum by the time he did dark magic.

We also know she was already very protective of Callum by the time Villads had to stop the Ruthless because of the storm. "If you die out there, i swear i'll kill you."

Before that they were flying on Phoe-Phoe, and before that they were staying with Lujanne where the only thing remotely suggesting any of her feelings was that she was disgusted by Claudia's clear approach to Callum. Which i hardly accept as Soren was also disgusted eventhough he showed support for Callum's approach to Claudia before. And also because... as an aroace i did find it cringe too. Somehow Claudia's romantic relationships end up being cringe.

I'm sorry, idk how to say it nicely but she doesn't seem to do well in romantic relationships. She is very Azula-esque in many ways(i mean... duh) They are both very close family oriented characters, both are essencially victims of their broken family, both are incredibly talented and powerful despite being hella childish because parents forgot to raise them, oops. And being raised so fked up they seem to be unable to form actually functioning romantic relationships.

Even with Terry, i felt like Terry loves her and Claudia is just happy to have a mostly yes-man by her.

But this is a Rayla post, sidenote over.

On Callum's part i'm fairly sure by the time he used dark magic he returned Rayla's feelings, as unaware of it as he was. I mean dude pretty much decided on a whim to throw his principles out the window for Rayla's sake(and ended up corrupting his own soul in the process but he didn't know that)

You'd think that he didn't love Rayla when they were still with Lujanne because he still had a crush on Claudia, but that's not entirely correct.

In the novelization of season 2, when he hangs out with Claudia he is acutely aware of Rayla's whereabouts and opinions and doesn't want Rayla to see him with her even in pretty normal circumstances. The guy just... didn't think it's weird to be hyper aware of someone who he apparently has no feelings for.

So... what's my guess on when Rayla started feeling more than friendship towards Callum?

Hmmm.

Probably when they made up on the frozen lake where they dropped Zym's egg.

And Callum eeeehhh probably earlier he just didn't know? I mean in chapter 14 "the sad prince" he was completely unaware he drew Rayla and he quickly hid it from her when she returned, eventhough Callum is not shy of his drawings.

Siiigh... book 3's novelization is still months away, i wonder what insight that's gonna give.

#the dragon prince #nyeeeh i hate ship tagging but this is a ship post technically #rayllum

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anneapocalypse · 1 year

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Right to Their Faces: Sera's Romance Quest

The Sera Series: Exploring Sera's character and background.

This one was originally going to be part of another post I have in the works, "Sera and the Inquisitor," but I realized that I had a lot to say about Sera's romance quest and it really deserved its own post.

Disclaimer: It is absolutely fine if you don't like Sera or don't like Sera's romance, don't connect with her, don't find her relatable, whatever! I'm not here to tell anyone what they can or can't like. I just want to talk about my read and my feelings on this romance quest. If you don't like Sera and are not open to positively discussing Sera, that's just fine; feel free to scroll right on by, no need to inform me in the notes.

Sera's romance quest, "A Woman Who Wants for Nothing," triggers once the Inquisitor has confirmed her romantic interest in Sera and Sera's approval is high enough. The Inquisitor is prompted to find a gift for Sera because—okay look, we really need to spend a minute on how this quest begins, because it's truly delightful.

When the Inquisitor comes to Sera's alcove, Sera runs up behind her, excited, and exclaims all in a rush, "Listen! I got you a hat, but it's ugly, so I drew Coryhe-whatzit's face on it, and stuffed it with apples. Everyone's hitting it with sticks! I really hope you like it!" and then runs away giggling.

I mean, it's pretty clear here that this is all in fun to Sera. She wanted to give her Inky something, but the hat she found was ugly, so she decided to turn it into a joke and hoped Inky would be entertained by it. It's the Inquisitor, charmingly, who decides to take this super seriously, looking after Sera and saying thoughtfully to herself, "We're giving gifts now?"

The Inquisitor then goes to all her other companions looking for help finding a gift for Sera. Practically no one has any good ideas, or any ideas at all really. I want to pause on that aspect for a moment. Why doesn't anyone (including the Inquisitor, who is actively seeing her) know what Sera would like?

I mean first of all, the clue's kind of in the name of the quest. No one can think of a gift for Sera because Sera doesn't particularly want anything. She is not very concerned with owning things. She doesn't covet fancy clothes or shoes or hats or jewelry. The Undercroft keeps the Inquisition supplied with arms and armor, so she doesn't have need of those things as gifts. She likes books, but she has Skyhold's entire library at her disposal. She likes food, a lot, and she likes cakes, and if pressed I'd say that of all the material gifts she could receive, a cake made just for her would probably go over the best, but I don't think it would be better than what we ultimately get in this quest.

Sera does like collecting various objects, and we find her catalog of these in her journal, "Sera's Cabinet of Wonder Whose It Was," but these are all mundane items: a Circle banner, a goblet, a halla statue, a deck of cards, masks stolen from the Winter Palace. Little curiosities, things she finds meaningful or strange or funny. This is a collection curated purely on Sera's whims, and it could be difficult for even someone close to her to guess what kind of object might catch her fancy in that way.

And here we have the ironic meaning of the quest title. Usually, the expression that a person "wants for nothing" means that they already have everything they could possibly want, but for Sera it takes on a different meaning. Sera "wants for nothing" because she not only lacks a life of wealth and comfort but has actively rejected it and all the baggage that came with it. Someone will probably point out here that Sera is interested in making a profit with her Red Jenny shenanigans, and she is, she says so! but what she is not concerned with is accumulating and hoarding wealth or possessions. That is a life she has very consciously rejected.

I also don't think we should ignore the role of class in the way the other Inner Circle members treat Sera, even the "nicest" ones. There's not really any getting around the fact that other characters—including characters we like—look down on Sera because she's low class. Sera is not the only elf in the Inquisition, and there are definitely characters who treat Solas poorly in various ways, but they do not treat Solas the same way they treat Sera. Sera gets the most abject disrespect both for being an elf and for being low-class, and—this part's important—for looking and sounding low-class, and being proud of it.

Cullen may have been born a commoner but he sought a respectable profession, became a templar and ascended through the ranks (however he may feel about that now) and is now the Inquisition's commander. Leliana may have been the daughter of a servant, but she became a bard and has spent her life hobnobbing with nobles and Very Important People, eventually becoming the Left Hand of the Divine. Blackwall may have been born a commoner but he is (so far as everyone knows) a decorated Warden-Constable. Vivienne may have been born to merchant parents and sent to the Circle at a young age, but she's made the most of her position and become First Enchanter of Montsimmard, then Enchanter to the Imperial Court. You see where I'm going with this. Even our common-born companions have for the most part sought to climb the social hierarchy in one way or another. They've "bettered" themselves. They have titles, if not noble ones. They're Somebody. They're Important. And many of the others are just straight up nobility. Even Varric, who carries himself like a common man, is from a well-connected Merchant Guild family as well as being a famous author; he's basically a noble who enjoys slumming it.

Not only is Sera a nobody, she patently rejects the idea of being Somebody. She operates as a Red Jenny under a mythical name who may or may not ever have been a real person. When placed in a situation where she needs to be formally introduced as Somebody, the ball at the Winter Palace, she openly mocks the entire concept and the supposed solemnity of the occasion by submitting a vulgar joke name.

I bring all of this up because this is why I think the other companions are so unhelpful. They can't imagine what Sera could possibly want because they already know she doesn't want what they want, and even the ones who do like her I think struggle to actually relate to her. They see her motives as, at best, confusing. (As does the Inquisitor in a lot of early dialogue, but that's another post for another day!) But in fact, Sera's desires are very simple. (I think Cole is the one with the best shot at actually figuring out what Sera would want, but he gets hung up on the concept of what a gift is before he can get there.)

Vivienne and Solas in particular are not just confused by Sera but actively offended and dismayed by her existence. I think it's pretty easy to see why she gets under Solas's skin so badly (though I could write reams about how interesting their relationship is and how much it reveals about Solas, but not today). Sera represents to him just how far the elves have fallen because of him, and I think he's both deeply frustrated by her and deep down feels responsible for everything that's "wrong" with her. Vivienne and Sera are also fascinating foils to one another, as both came from humble origins and both were afforded some unique opportunities given those origins—but they've taken polar opposite approaches to the problem of social hierarchy and power. And like so many Dragon Age characters who act as foils to each other, the existence of the other needles at them so badly because they challenge the foundation of their beliefs about the world and their sense of self. So it's no surprise that these two are the companions that give active disapproval when the Inquisitor reveals her relationship with Sera.

(It also makes for some absolutely wonderful humorous irony later if the Inquisitor decides to take Vivienne's clearly-sarcastic suggestion seriously, after which you get a bonus cutscene of Sera and Inky in bed together laughing over whatever it is Inky has shaved into her ladybits. Vivienne turns out to be the only one who had a good idea, and she didn't even mean it!)

The actual quantities of disapproval are frankly negligible, and easily made up elsewhere if you, the player, care deeply what Solas and Vivienne think of your character. If I'm being honest, I think they could have gone even harder with the disapproval, especially in a game like Inquisition which doesn't pull its punches with approval the way the previous games do and doesn't allow you to avoid ever taking a negative hit. But the exact number isn't the important thing here. The important thing is that without some tangible and in-your-face social cost to openly loving Sera, this quest would have no teeth.

I trust I don't have to explain that the opinions of characters (for whom said disapproval is entirely in-character) are not necessarily the opinions of the writers. It's also not indicative of the game telling you that you made a "wrong" decision. Nor is it the first time companions have disapproved of the player character's love interest—far from it. Both Origins and DA2 have some truly spicy party banter in that regard, and Inquisition keeps with tradition. Love it or hate it, companions hating each other is a time-honored Dragon Age tradition.

And in this case, the disapproval is the point. The Inquisitor is meant to receive the disapproval and decide that Sera is worth it to her. The point is that the Inquisitor cares so much for Sera that she openly declares her affections without regard for the disapproval of others, and that this kind of love and acceptance is entirely foreign to Sera's experience and the greatest gift she could ever have received. Sera says it outright: "Wait, wait, wait. You went to everyone and said I was your lover? Right to their faces? They must have… Oh, Vivienne must have puckered pinky-tight! Best gift ever."

And if you've read my other Sera Series posts, or simply spent a lot of time talking to Sera, it's no mystery why this means so much to her.

This is what this quest is all about. And to me, it's one of the most moving expressions of love in the whole game and maybe in all of the Dragon Age games. I love it so much. I get emotional re-watching it in YouTube clips. I cannot imagine being happier if the Inquisitor had just, I don't know, baked Sera a cake, or brought her a bouquet of flowers from the meadows filled with bees. This quest gets at the core of who Sera is, her sharpest hurts and deepest desires. It is deeply meaningful and it is perfect for her.

My sole complaint about this quest is that I never got to see the hat full of apples with Corypheus's face drawn on it and everyone hitting it with sticks.

#sera dragon age #dragon age sera #sera series #dragon age meta #dragon age inquisition #dragon age #blunders of thedas #sera x inquisitor #sera x female inquisitor

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callsign-phoenix · 9 months

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I wrote this for my 1.5k follower celebration, I hope you like it!

It is a Natasha ‘Phoenix’ Trace x gn!reader blurb, requested by @pansexualwitchwhoneedstherapy.

The prompt requested is: putting a hand over the other’s mouth to shut them up.

Warnings: none really? I guess getting caught making out, this is not proofread

Sneaking into Cyclone’s office on a drunken whim was a dumb idea, but you had followed Nat there anyway.

It was like always when it came to her, when she led you followed, no matter what she did.

As her WSO it was kind of your job anyways but you were so entranced by her that you followed suit.

Officially the two of you were just friends but it was clear to everyone who knew you better that the two of you couldn’t keep away from each other.

Even Mav usually smiled at your affection for each other, and you loved him for it.

What you were doing now was far more reckless, but Nat had come up with it after her fifth shot of vodka and you honestly just wanted to be alone with her, which thanks to her idea you got.

Natasha was walking ahead, her hand stretched out and wrapped around yours as you followed her.

It radiated a heat that not only warmed your hand but also the rest of your body, you could feel it seeping up to your cheeks.

The moment you entered the office Nat pushed your back against the wall, connecting your lips as her hands ran over your shoulders and down your body to be able to grab your hips.

You were always intoxicated by her so every single touch had you breathless, doe-eyed and needy for her.

The more she kissed you the less you were able to catch a clear thought, you were entirely at her mercy.

Tiny moans left your lips that grew louder with every passing minute, until Nat halted dead in her tracks.

Your eyes flickered open and your lips moved to form a complaint, but Nat raised her hand to cover your mouth quickly.

It took you only a second to hear the steps that drew closer, and the realization ran through you like ice water.

You were rather mesmerized by the situation you were in, pressed by Nat’s body against the wall with her hand covering your mouth.

But that happiness was rudely interrupted by the sound of the door opening.

Your heart beat a mile a minute and you could feel Nat’s grip on you tighten as if she wanted to reassure you, just when you came face to face with a more than just surprised Maverick.

Your wide eyes met with his widening ones and he stopped in his stride towards Cyclone’s desk, a smirk flickering over his face before he managed to swallow it in professionalism.

There were a few seconds of silence between you before Mav finally managed to say something.

He wasn’t able to meet your eyes and the smirk was still playing with the corners of his mouth, as he fought to stay professional.

“You better go or I’ll have to write you up,” he grinned and you visibly relaxed, nodding at the same time as Nat did.

Maverick moved towards the desk to retrieve a folder, turning around just in time to catch you before leaving.

“It’s a good thing I saw you sneaking out towards the base and managed to convince Cyclone I could catch the papers he wanted to get for him. You’re not the first ones to want to get it on in the big boss’s office, I for one had my fair share of those encounters,” he winked at you, and a giant rush of heat traveled to your cheeks.

Nat was grinning, though, and as long as she was happy you were undoubtedly happy as well.

tagging: @starkleila @mayhem24-7forever @green-socks @letsfvckingdance @shadeds-library @yespolkadotkitty @whateverbagman @neptunes-curse @sweetheartlizzie07 @top-gun-rooster @iloveprettyboysblog @ateliefloresdaprimavera @imjess-themess @littlebadariell @angstyjellybean @marchingicenotes7 @midget713 @supernaturaldawning @gspenc @adorephina @gigisimsonmars @bespinnn @malindacath @aerangi @kassieesworld @kwanimations @18crazybutcutealsopsycho @marvelandotherfandomimagines @mavericksicybabe @kendra-rose @desert-fern @mavrellover91 @allivingstone01 @rhettabbotts @withakindheartx @trikigirl271 @cherrycola27 @footprintsinthesxnd @bonitanightmxres @ratcatcher2world @glowingtree @wingmanvenus @oliviah-25 @natasharomanoffisbaebby @d0ingitwithpassi0n @eggscrambler84 @tamix44 @katesmadness @red1culous

(please tell me if you want to be added to the taglist, or use this link)

#natasha phoenix trace #natasha phoenix trace imagine #natasha phoenix trace x you #natasha trace imagine #natasha trace x reader #natasha trace x you

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naancypants · 6 months

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After reading Julia's fabulous Honest Drew Crew Endings post, I literally can't stop thinking about it. It's the way that their endings were not only empty shells without any real significance tailored to their characters, but were in fact EXACT CONTRADICTIONS to the growth arcs that were set up for them in the first place.

Nancy Drew themes: Self-acceptance. The lynchpin to Nancy's development has always been about overcoming her demons, accepting shortcomings, and learning that she is not inherently a bad person and is in fact worthy of love and good things. Nancy Drew ending: Her soul is intrinsically linked to a horrendous murderer and oppressor of the town, something that shakes her so violently she has to leave Horseshoe Bay to find any sort of peace; the town where she recently decided to put down roots, to "grow where she's been planted".

Ace Hardy themes: Finding family. As a loner, Ace always longed for a community where he felt he truly belonged, which he canonically found with the Drew Crew. These friendships fueled his drive, self-esteem, and gave him purpose. Ace Hardy ending: His friends are all too caught up in their own lives to spend time with him anymore, so he dives headfirst into an isolating career in medical examination that drives him even further away from everyone. Oh, but also, they're all splitting apart anyway so who cares.

George Fan themes: Breaking the cycle. An absent father and deadbeat mother forced George to work hard to provide for her sisters, which also closed her off from forming deep emotional connections for many years. George Fan ending: George leaves her sisters behind to pursue an exhaustive, difficult career path on a whim. She ends the series in a new surface-level relationship rather than one that helped her open up and be vulnerable.

Bess Turani-Marvin themes: Creating a happy life. Bess arrived in Horseshoe Bay to connect with family and escape from an empty, traumatizing life on the run. She seeks joy and stability; somewhere she can finally call home. Bess Turani-Marvin ending: Bess randomly loses her room at the Drew home (?), her entire found family leaves her after less than a year together, oh yeah and her fucking HOUSE BURNS DOWN.

Ned Nickerson themes: Building community. He wants to improve things in his new town, now that he's proclaimed he's finally found where he belongs after a troubled adolescence. Ned Nickerson ending: Nick's several attempts to make a difference (buying The Claw, starting a youth center, running for council) all go nowhere. His efforts are a flop. He essentially gives up and takes a job with Tom Swift instead (career choice is consistent for him, at least).

Absolute insanity.

#cwnd #nancy drew #cw nancy drew #nancy drew cw #drew crew #negativity tag #analysis post

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tumblingxelian · 3 months

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Wednesday Fanfic Concept - Soulmate Struggles

Summary:

Wednesday has always loathed the idea of a Soulmates. Emotions of warm nostalgia and love forced on her for a stranger by the whims of fate? IF she ever meets the people whose marks match hers she will ensure she doe snot become a slave to passion as her parents did!

Bianca had always feared meeting her Soulmates. Already terrified of the power she had over the minds of others she could think of nothing kinder than to reject them as harshly as possible.

Enid had always longed too meet her soulmates, hoping to find two kindred spirits who could perhaps love her without conditions or demands.

Too bad for the three of them what they got was each other.

Concept:

This is likely one of m most painful ideas, and definitely the one that explores Wednesday's toxic traits the most overtly.

The nature of soulmates in this world is that as you grow and aspects of your personality, temperament ETC settle in you develop a connection with your soulmate/soulmates.

But all this means is that you have some base comparability. It says nothing for beliefs, ideologies and little for life experience.

Despite this, because of the schooling systems and such most people meet their soulmates in their onw age brackets, communities. schools ETC. & from this comes the entirely cultural expectation of romance, despite the fact soulmates are not inherently romantic or platonic, they just are.

As a result, lots of people with soulmates outside their age range or no soulmate tend to experience some stigma or at least judgement.

This also means a lot of soulmate relationships actually end up really unhealthy and or destructive but not enough that its become a talked about problem. But yeah, basically despite the comforting feeling a soulmate provides, any relationship actually requires work.

This story was also inspired by the concept of "This will always be our first" That is to say, a first meeting, a first reaction, a first date and one party intentionally making it worse either out of some mild selfishness that just exploded or even a degree of malice.

The two inspirations I drew from were:

RWBY's volume 9 with main character Ruby Rose, having been driven to a breakdown lashes out at those around her. Including her sister and her girlfriend because their budding relationship and happiness is just agony to see when she's in so much pain. Any other day or time she'd be over the moon for them, but the tragic thing is this will always be the reaction they all remember.

The other was from a Wenclair fic, where despite having been engaged for months, Wednesday did not tell her parents until she & Enid touched down at the airport. Morticia was awkward & Gomez was distraught and ended up fighting Enid who then went to her & Wednesday's room to be depressed because that too will always be her first meeting with Wednesday's parents.

The first being bad is not something that cannot be worked through but it is inherently bittersweet I feel.

Characters:

Enid: Wow I have two soulmates… Maybe they will, I dunno, love me unconditionally? 🙂 Wednesday: Emotions. Complicated. Vulnerability. Awful. Hate them, you did this to me, how dare you. Stay away! Bianca: I don't like affecting anyone's mind by my mere presence, I hate the idea of someone doing it to me even more, I will not be made vulnerable, so stay away!

Bianca & Wednesday: You made me feel emotions against my will. Die. Enid: Wow, both my soulmates are like this… Great… I'm so lucky... :/

Kinbott is actually a better therapist in this cos her soulmate is platonic, IE Cassie from Uriah's heap. SO she is a bit socially isolated herself and more thoughtful. She also has a thing for Principle Weems who was Gomez's soulmate but that didn't pan out.

Chapters:

As noted, this story would definitely be delving into some of Wednesday & to a lesser extent Bianca's more toxic defense mechanism and general attitudes.

Be they born from being indulged by her parents but socially isolated in Wednesday. Or traumatized by her mother and adopting an extremely toxic self image in Bianca.

Enid will be contextualized below:

Chapter 1:

When encountering Enid for the first time, both register they are soulmates. Desperate to avoid her parents cooing, Wednesday is quick to evacuate the situation and Enid surprisingly enables her.

Through the tour, Enid is much more indulgent of Wednesday and generally open even revealing her issues with transforming. She in essence pulls her rib cage open so Wednesday can see her heart.

Wednesday uses this as a chance to stomp on it.

Partially because of her complexes regarding emotions but also because she thinks Enid is just 'that way; because of the Soul Mark and she just wants her gone and so is generally the worst.

Enid puts up with it until the next morning, where she gently confronts Wednesday and Wednesday keeps trying to antagonize her:

"I really wanted you to feel welcome and safe, to make the feeling the mark is meant to give real. & now… That first day and night will always be how we met. (Deep breath) You didn't want I offered, and fair enough, but-"

"Are your ears as broken as your transformation pick it u-"

Enid literally tackles her to the floor, nearly breaks her wrists and snarls against her throat.

"I have spent my entire life pouring love and dedication down a bottomless pit. I will not do it again. You don't want me? Fine! But I am not your servant, not your friend and not your family. Never demand anything of me again you spoiled brat!"

Then she gets up and walks to class like nothing happened.

Wednesday lies on the floor for awhile longer processing:

1: She drastically misread Enid's personality. 2: She just got physically outdone by a peer for the first time ever. 3: Evidently the soul mark did not make Enid a simpering wreck. 4: For the first time in years, Wednesday felt a spike of fear.

Chapter 2:

Displeased by all that, Wednesday wants to get back on the horse so to speak and restore some of her damaged confidence and also figure out how the hell that happened.

Mostly cos it runs contrary to how she thinks soulmates work despite she herself not following the 'rules' of soulmates.

She & Bianca have their encounter and there is not even any speaking. Both register the other as their soulmate and draw swords and it is on sight, because both of them would rather an enemy that let someone in close.

Wednesday still loses so she's still not having a great time. Especially as it turns out Enid is more interested in chatting up a vampire than her or Bianca!

Enid is not outright blanking her, or hating her, but just treating her like any other student she happened to share a room with.

Wednesday would find cloying affection smothering but not unexpected and she would find hatred acceptable.

But it turns out just being kind of dismissed, really gets under her skin. So she storms off, meets Xavier, is generally caustic ETC.

After the Gargoyle incident Enid did show some concern but very generalized, "We're both Outcasts & you are a person who almost died?" and then gets distracted and spends the rest of the night chatting with Thing.

Wednesday's music garners no real reaction from Enid, though we see Bianca having a not emotionally fun time of it in her room because of it.

After that when they go to be, Enid even says, "Night Wednesday." But that's also its, it's so dismissive, it's so... casual.

Wednesday was not built for casualness.

Wednesday was built for soul crushing devotion be it hatred or love!

Chapter 3:

Because of these elements she does not have Enid's help trying to get out of Nevermore. As a result she may actually turn to Bianca because "We both want me gone, help me make it happen." Which may even cut Tyler out for a bit.

Still, the two otherwise remain in their ongoing "We will be eternal enemies/I will ensure you never get close" stalemate. Its not healthy but both deem it acceptable.

Meanwhile Enid begins to fixate on Enid either in her first session or a later one, talks to Kinbott solely cos she wants an outsider perspective on Soul Marks and obsession.

We learn about her ties to Uraih's heap and that soul mark obsession is just down to obsessive people.

IE, Wednesday is obsessing because she's prone to such behavior and because Enid dismantling and then dismissing her is a huge blow to self identity. Wednesday is used to being rejected, or hated, or feared and even adored without resveration from her family.

She is not used to being looked at like a spoiled teen and summarily dismissed as unimportant and it makes her feel like Enid is 'winning' some kind of contest she's not even playing but Bianca is.

Chapter 4:

Wednesday & Larissa do get that hot choc, & Wednesday does fix the machine & Tyler says he owes her. Later, when drinking, Tyler interrupts claiming Thornhill called and could not get through on her mobile.

Its a brief distraction but it lets Wednesday scribble a note demanding his number and she gets in on the receipt and organizes her extraction.

Cue the festival a brief interaction where Enid warns her of Tyler's hate crimes.

Wednesday tries to ply it into being about her rather than Outcast solidarity but is shrugged off as Enid goes off with Yoko, leaving her in a bad mood.

Yes Wednesday is still jealous of Yoko, she cannot escape it XD

Kinbott is there and chatting with Larissa but not enough to distract her.

Then Wednesday blocks two darts flying at her head and one ends up in her hand.

Bianca shouts "Rowan!" Who takes off running and is followed by Wednesday into the forest.

His ambush doesn't work though cos Bianca was after him to and she knows he is a telekinetic. So she manages to knock him out with a drug and steal the book. Bianca likely knows she has it but won't cause a scene around the sheriff.

Gaplin tries to shoot her but is stopped by Weems and Kinbolt makes sure Rowan is alive before practically shouting the man down and then helps carry Rowan back to Nevermore while Weems rounds up all her students.

Wednesday wants Bianca to use her siren song to make him talk which makes her livid and Kinbolt has to intervene a bit and also reveals its not useful for that as the subject just says what the person wants to hear in their own head not their own mind.

After that, Enid arrives.

Turns out Thing fell out of Wednesday's pocket and she was so pissed off she sort of forgot him in the chase.

So, Thing is sulking & Wednesday is initially more interested in trying to get info on Rowan and or proving a point to Enid to acknowledge it so they clamber back over to Enid to sulk and they go off with Yoko to do their nails.

Though not before revealing Rowan was "More like a normie than Kinbolt."

IE, he did not like other outcasts besides his fellow psychics.

Basically a more extreme version of Xavier's distrust and contempt for Bianca and Sirens in general.

Enid: (Puts Thing in her hand) Rowan was always like, 'Oh you may be outcasts (Sneers) But I am the only Outcaaast! (Falls back and it caught by Yoko. They then put an equally dramatic Thing back on her shoulder and leave.)

Wednesday and Bianca are shooed out while Weems and Kinbolt try to get Rowan to talk (Gaplin is being yelled at by the mayor for almost killing a 15 year old)

She & Bianca likely have a tense stand off regarding the book Rowan stole but Bianca needs to keep her secrets and despite being presumably able to Siren Song Wednesday into giving it to her does not. Instead promising to collect it with her scaled hands later, before ominously vanishing through a secret passageway.

Wednesday returns to her dorm room to find it empty.

Her victory over Rowan, briefly a restorative of confidence now tastes like ashes, the book seems useless, Bianca refused to fight and Enid is still vexing her mind.

She shatters the window, as loudly as possible.

Enid comes racing up and Wednesday antagonizes her and Enid's claws and fangs come out and she's barely held back by Yoko and Thing. But more by the arrival of Thornhill making them all have a "Sleep over" with Yoko cos its dangerous to be in a room with so much broken glass.

The three mostly ignore Wednesday and go on about their nails and let Enid vent about the window, but it never ties back to soulmates, or romance, or anything Wednesday wants it too and they eventually go to sleep, with Thing giving her a judgmental vibe lecture while safety out of reach.

Back to square one, incredibly frustrated!

Notes:

As noted, this story is kind of exploring Wednesday at her most intensely bratty, but I think the window would be the farthest it would go so after that there is nowhere to go but up.

Ya know, maybe.

But she & Bianca still have a lot of issues to work through and if either of them ever want anything more than a superficial understanding of Enid she will need to overcome her distrust.

It will likely be revealed in the Rowan bit that Xavier lied to Bianca about not having a soulmate when trying to become her boyfriend. This also comes up in the herbology class when he tries to flirt with Wednesday and fails hard.

Chapter 5:

I think Wednesday may actually, after a point call her mother and kinda low key ask if she's spoiled and or being childish.

"Your father and I wanted you to have every freedom, every opportunity to explore your passions as you pleased. We have always been astounded by you, but... Perhaps in doing so we did not impart to you some key lessons."

"You think I am broken. The-"

"NEVER. A child cannot be wrong or broken or unwanted in anyway. All this is is that your father and I expected your to enter a contest without imparting to you the rules, you are not at fault for anything."

She later asks Wednesday for a favor.

"You are doing very poorly at imposing limits, mother."

She wants Wednesday to tell Weems she and Kinbolt will have a lovely tea together in her office.

Cos of the attack, Wednesday has another appointment with Kingbolt earlier and imparts the message to her instead and claims its the Weathervane to try and see if she can influence visions. She doesn't get to know if she can.

Also Rowan is taken off campus by his father so he lives but Wednesday gets no more answers from him.

Final Notes:

But yeah that's about where I am with it.

But I wanted to explore the idea of soul bonds but with the romantic angle being entirely socially engineered. Pus other aspects for the casts as you may have noticed :3c

Oh, also Bianca is more shocked by Thing than Kinbolt, a hint that she is from a background that isolated her from the Outcast community compared to Enid or Yoko who are just sorta like, "Weird but neat" and "My sire has a haunted samurai mask that constantly yells at us. Thing is way more polite."

#wednesday netflix #wednesday series #wednesday addams #enid sinclair #bianca barclay #Wenclair #Goth Bees #Enid/Wednesday/Bianca

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kkbardd · 2 months

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hello! i haven’t sent an ask in a while because schoolwork has been piling up infinitely :[ , but your recent posts have been really interesting to me! i really liked the room sketch one, I can’t exactly explain why but there’s something so indescribably human about it. i love spaces that looked lived in, that have personality, and I think that your room (current one? made up? old one?) has done a great job of showing that. and I’m not very good at giving advice— I can hardly follow it myself, but if you don’t know something, don’t know what you want to do, try things. it’s okay if you don’t like them. i recently found out I’m more competent in languages than I thought! i can already read and understand simple sentences in german.

there’s always more to yourself than you’ll know, I think, but the world is kinder than people think. If anything, everyone is still very new at this. we’ve never lived before. do the things you like, branch out, don’t become less of yourself for other people. everything has a place, and my best advice is to treat life as you would a vacation. do all the things you can while you’re here. build a life that makes it worth it. (sorry for the long ask and my rambling, or if this is overstepping in any way. i just read what you wrote and kind of related to it in a way. thank you for continuing to create art, it brings me a lot of joy! :] )

hey isopod!!! thanks for the ask & I wish u good luck with ur school work!

Thank u so much for the compliments, im really glad the vibe of my room was conveyed in those doodles. i absolutely looove drawing my room! It’s extremely small (a renovated utility closet) and just barely fits a bed + my desk but its packed full of the things i love. It’s very lived in and I feel like it reflects my character well.

when i drew that page I was in my senior year of high school and pressures to decide my future were overwhelming. I never thought much about it until then and I didn’t have any idea of what I was going to do. The only thing I felt I had going for me was art but I didn’t want to turn my only hobby into a job I hated. I remember going through a master list of majors on random college websites and one-by-one asking myself if I’d be okay doing it. In the end I had nothing. I was really crushed about it and felt stuck. This was right after the covid quarantine too so focusing in school was difficult & I couldn’t bring myself to apply for scholarships. I started skipping classes, smoking weed, and pushing off my assignments. All of this only made me feel more miserable, of course, so everything seemed pretty bleak at the time.

But luckily I had the support of my family and especially my mother. She would always remind me that “we have option”, “we always have options”. Because I did! This was a fresh start to try my hand at a totally different experience than what I’ve done so far. I ended up choosing my major on a complete whim after hearing my aunt had a job in an adjacent field. I was pretty sure I’d drop out after a semester, yet here I am about to graduate soon & I’m having a ton of fun!! (Hell, I’m 10 hours out in the middle of nowhere right now for my Field Methods class!) It’s not that I had a knack for Geology that I just never tapped into, or that i secretly had a passion for rocks this entire time; I just found something that seemed like an okay fit and grew interest from there. I think that a small level of commitment like that is more than enough to get you going. I had a ton of ideas in my head about how I needed to have a perfect fit major that would connect every dot I’ve laid out in my life thus far, but that’s not true at all. Life is much more messy and unpredictable than that.

But enough of my rambling!! That time of my life may have been stressful but I’m very grateful that I went through it! It changed how I viewed problems and it taught me to always look for other options when everything seems helpless.

Thank u so much for ur encouragement, I really appreciate it <33 I completely agree with everything u said!! Life is an ever changing experience & often leads u in unpredictable directions!

#ask #ilu isopod #I often look back on those sketches (and more that I just haven’t posted)#I find a kind of beauty in it idk how to explain it #teenage angst is just something we all gotta go thru #ranting #we have options

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amadeusgame · 1 month

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The World's Longest And Most Sentimental Development Log (Marketing Retrospective)

It's been a month since the demo release, and Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee ~ Episode 1 ~ Waltz has just reached 100 wishlists on Steam. I'm incredibly grateful for the support and interest.

Because this has been the month following a major release, most of my efforts have been focused on communications as opposed to development. I still want to discuss these efforts, both as a retrospective for my own reference, and in case anyone else finds it enlightening. This was meant to be a short and to-the-point marketing discussion, but it accidentally... and inevitably... transformed into something incredibly long and sentimental.

The long and short of it is that I've had an overwhelmingly successful month by my standards. Discussing marketing means I have been analyzing why that is. In doing so, I slowly became aware of just how much of my entire life has been building up to this.

I originally planned to mention other things in this update... discuss the recent demo livestream, announce an upcoming "100 wishlists" celebration... but those no longer really suit the tone of this update. I will post about them another time. I wasn't prepared to celebrate 100 wishlists this quickly, anyway! I had no idea I would get that much in the first month! I'm not ready to make that announcement! I would like to do something appropriate for this milestone, so please give me some more time to put proper thought into it.

You can reference here for the livestream video and other resources: https://linktr.ee/amadeusgame

I don't expect very many people to read the rest of this. But I am writing it anyway because it's important for me to express. And if you got anything out of the Amadeus demo, you probably got the fact that I am a bit of a long-winded and sentimental person. Bearing that in mind...

On Marketing Amadeus

Overall, I tried a lot of different things—many of which flopped—based on the question "what kind of communications would I like to see, as an audience?" Some combination of all of these somehow worked. I don't think it is particularly useful to try and pinpoint what specific individual things made Number Go Up the most, because the real takeaway was that I put enough messages out in enough places that over 100 real actual human beings came across them and were interested in what I am making. That number is probably tiny to people trying to earn a living in games, but as someone just hoping to get my art out there... the number 100 is significant and motivating.

I am happy to share the things that I've tried, and my impressions of how well they worked for my situation and purposes. Before that, though, I must stress that having assets to share in these communications in the first place was an invaluable step, especially since visuals and aesthetics are a very core part of my game.

Creating Marketing Assets

(When uploading a game to Steam, there are approximately 8 million different aspect ratios and dimensions you need to create branding assets for, so I chopped that source poster up into different pieces and spent about a week just making different combinations of them to suit various needs.)

Again: I was not thinking ahead to the Steam page when I drew this in October, not really. I was just drawing something that I wanted to draw, inspired by art that inspired me. If I hadn't indulged that desire and "procrastinated" a bit, I wouldn't have the assets to advertise the game when it came time for launch! This is something that I've experienced again and again throughout the process of development: making things for fun, doing things on impulse, taking breaks and indulging whims... many of these activities somehow end up being essential for the game. If I had refused that self-indulgence to focus on Important Development Stuff, I wouldn't have the cool piece of art I needed to successfully advertise the finished game on launch. Moreover, the final art in the game would not be as good, because I wouldn't have gotten ideas about art direction from making this poster.

(Also... I wouldn't have had as much fun making the game. Since this game's budget is $0 and all of my free time, it REALLY matters that I am having fun while making it.)

Even more important than these visual assets, though, was the trailer. How many games have I checked out just based on the trailer? I recently purchased Raging Loop on Steam, a game I have been considering for months, because I finally watched the trailer and realized "okay, this game is me-core." The trailer is so important. It's not about how pretty the trailer is; it's about whether the trailer shows me a game that I, in particular, want to play. I don't know who my audience is, but considering my goals and inspirations, I think it is something along the lines of "hipsters who love some combination of Umineko, werewolves, and unique aesthetics." So I needed a trailer that would connect with those people. A trailer that, if I watched it, would make me realize hey, this game is me-core.

Making a trailer is its own skillset, though! Completely separate from game development. Communicating something in video form is different than communicating it in another medium.

Fortunately... I have actually done a lot of just-for-fun video editing projects very recently! I edited together a "trilogy" out of roadtrip camcorder footage I took, and also put together the video for an audio-visual collab album. I already have tools and a workflow that I like to use.

I am developing a game, but it has helped me so much to have experience making a stupid trilogy of camcorder footage roadtrip videos.

I worked on those video editing projects because they were fun. I had absolutely no ulterior motive. In doing so, I still gained an important skill that transferred directly to marketing Amadeus. As someone who has always struggled to focus on just One Thing, it's incredibly affirming to realize that having done a lot of random stuff is actually really helping me as a solo game developer. I feel like I've finally found an art form where this is an important skill, and not a hindrance or distraction.

So... well, I suppose this means that I have no useful advice for other developers. I want to be honest about my experiences, and my experiences are that I only was able to prepare good marketing assets for Amadeus because I did a lot of for-fun art projects outside of game development. From my perspective, this is amazing news: it tells me that allowing myself space to be an artist and a person outside of this project has actually helped make the project itself better. It tells me that there are no downsides to being experimental and giving time to other projects too. But to anyone reading this hoping for some advice on putting together marketing assets, I'm sure it's the least helpful or relatable thing in the world. I'm sorry about that.

Getting the Word Out

Once the demo released, it became a matter of presenting the materials I had in the right ways, and in the right places. This is what I have been spending most of my waking hours doing this month. A non-exhaustive list of everything I've tried:

E-mailed all of my professors from grad school whose courses influenced my compositions for the game in some way. (This wasn't so much about the numbers, it was just motivating to get nice comments back. :D)

Joined a few Discord servers for communities dedicated to indie game developent; tried to engage in meaningful conversations there and check out other games while also sharing my own work. (I'm asking others for a favor, to take a look at my work, so I try to check out theirs too in return.)

Posted the trailer on the Visual Novels subreddit. (This flopped.)

Posted weekly* on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and a few other places. (This has been the bulk of my ongoing communications; see below!)

Posted on a forum I joined last year to discuss music composition.

Found and followed a lot of other indie game devs making things that interested or excited me.

Shared it in a Discord server I moderate** as a "creative mod." (I host monthly art-focused events, curate spaces for sharing art, etc.; see below.)

Shared it with basically all of my friends! Especially friends who are also artists and creators!

To sum, I used every single available avenue to talk about it. But I really need to expand on the two points bolded and asterisked above. I have something additional to say about them, and I cannot overstate how much it matters.

*Weekly Posts

As indicated, ongoing weekly posts on various platforms are the meat of my marketing. I post regularly, but it's really important to me to not just post the same stuff all the time and annoy everybody. I try to highlight different aspects of the game each time, use different framing, and do a variety of weird and silly stuff. Some things perform unexpectedly well and others are complete flops. But I think it's been key to not be afraid of failure and just try things. That way it's still interesting to the people who already checked out the game, while hopefully reaching new eyes too!

(Full disclosure, however: sometimes I will do something that has 0 chance of doing numbers, just because I think it would be a fun thing to post. Since I am completely self-motivating on this project, I have to do things that are self-indulgent, or I will burn out. So, hypothetically, I might be compelled to, say, post a photo taken on an Instax analog camera of the game hooked up to a CRT TV.)

(Step 1 of marketing is to have fun and be yourself?)

BUT ALSO!

AND THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS POST!!

I only have any sort of audience on these platforms because of other, unrelated things I've been doing for years. I met a LOT of people on Twitter and Instagram through cosplay and Tales of Symphonia speedrunning, who stuck around somehow. I met some people on Tumblr from recent Ghost Trick ROMhacking, and others from Homestuck meetups in 2012. I met people on Discord from a forum about video games I joined in 2006. I was already connected with a lot of like-minded people to share my game with! I know—I KNOW—that this is something that is only easy to say in retrospect, but: doing stuff and meeting people over the course of a lifetime has added up. I hope that this will continue to be true, and maybe some people who find me through Amadeus will stick around for whatever comes after, once I've fully completed the 5-episode story I have to tell here. And I will see it through.

So, please bear this in mind when reading about how I promote my self-indulgent game every week on Instagram. I did not attend Anime Expo 2015 in order to build an audience for the visual novel I would make 9 years later. I was just meeting and connecting with other cosplayers, because I thought I would still be doing cosplay indefinitely. But many of those connections have persisted over the years, and some of those people are interested in my game. None of this seemingly-unrelated life experience is wasted. In the words of one of my teachers from grad school, "it's an accumulated life." I have ended up somewhere unexpected, and I did not plan to end up here, but all of those past experiences were still a part of getting me to where I currently am.

**Discord Server Mod

I want to highlight this particular place where I've promoted my game, because it's important in a way that connects with basically all of my rambling above. I want to make it clear that absolutely everything that went well this past month started so much longer ago than that.

In this point, I am not saying "step 1 of indie game promotion: simply have been a creative events moderator on a Discord server for years first!" as this is incredibly useless advice. Hear me out for a moment.

About 2 years ago, there was no "creative events" moderator on this particular Discord server. It was mostly a space to talk about video games with friends. You could also post art there if you wanted, and you might have gleaned a react or two.

Also about 2 years ago, I began to think very deeply about my relationship with art and the internet. When I was a tweenager, there was this video game forum—a forum that migrated to the Discord server in question recently—where you could post your art (usually video game fanart, but could be anything), and the moderator would always engage with it and provide meaningful, thoughtful feedback. That space is one of the biggest reasons I drew so much when I was younger, and worked so hard trying to learn how to draw and shade and color better, because I wanted to have my efforts praised, and I knew they would be.

2 years ago, I desperately needed a space like that again. Lacking one, I decided to pick up the torch left behind by the moderator from my tweenage years, and become the person who would always, always provide thoughtful engaging feedback when people posted their work there. Literally some "be the change you want to see in the world" shit. I knew that someone else doing that for me fundamentally altered the course of my life, so I wanted to try and be that for others if possible. More selfishly, I hoped that this would also create the much-needed space for me to share my work and get feedback and responses, too.

Now, about 2 years later, that channel is pretty active. People regularly share their creative works, and it is one of my favorite places to post my own stuff because people are really good about engaging with each other's stuff there. It's been one of the most important places for me to share progress on Amadeus, because that external motivation helps a lot. And once the demo came out, I have absolutely no doubt that this server was a significant proportion of the initial support and momentum it received on launch.

I did not even have so much as a delusion of being a game developer when I made these changes in the Discord server. I was working in IT and considering applying to music school. I just wanted to build a community around art.

So, why am I writing about my 2-year journey as a Discord mod in my development update about marketing? Hopefully it makes a bit more sense now. I'm really trying to emphasize that the marketing I did this past month didn't start last month. It started 2 years ago on this Discord server, it started in 2006 when I joined that video game forum. Really, my marketing efforts have gone as well as they have because—whoops, I am tearing up writing this—I have made a lot of incredible connections in a lot of communities over the years, and now that I have something very important to me that I want to share, they have really helped support it. I've had some friends go so far above and beyond what I would ever ask them to do in sharing my game, and that kind of support just... I can't put a number on it; it's invaluable.

In Conclusion

Go to conventions and meet cosplayers. Speedrun a 6-and-a-half-hour-long JRPG from 2003 on Twitch. Join a forum and when it migrates to Discord, organize art events and comment on other people's work. Draw self-indulgent stuff and make silly roadtrip videos scored with Logic Loops. Make 90% of a ROMhack of a Nintendo DS game. Get completely obsessed with other visual novels on itch.io and write essays in their comments.

My name is Leo, and my marketing advice is You Only Live Once. I hope this helps. Have a wonderful evening and I look forward to presenting you with a more coherent update next month.

#amadeus: a riddle for thee #indie game marketing #devlog #indie game dev #visual novel

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tavyliasin · 14 days

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The Scent of Cinnamon 2 - The Contract, The Kiss, and The Cambion's Pride

With the talking over, it is time for the deal to be sealed. However, Haarlep is not willing to relinquish their physical form so quickly, nor are they in any rush to finalise the contract with Raphael without enjoying it first. 4,965 Words - AO3 Link Click Here

--- Summary: Haarlep draws out the first kiss into far more devious uses of their own lips as well as Raphael's. They will ensure he doesn't forget a single thing about them. The sound of their voice, the feel of their touch, the taste of their- Pairing: Raphael/Haarlep SPICE Rating: 3.5/5 Content Warnings: Oral Sex, Shapshifting, Power Play, Mild Choking, BDSM, Aphrodisiacs, Incubus Kiss, Mild Blood, Mild Humiliation/Name Calling

Spoilers Vague House of Hope and Act 3, but most of this series is focused on what came before. Canon Compliance As before this is now taking on my canon and headcanons for this section. Other Notes Haarlep has the ability in this to change their form, which in my HC here is only for when they are in their original body. So unfortunately not something we will see later in the series when they have Raphael's form, but they want him to remember. They want you to remember too~

Song Pairing (Click the song title to open it in spotify) Diabolical by NYXX "I love the night That's the only time I feel really alive! I'm sugar on your tongue My name sounds so sweet Swimming in your blood I'm under your skin, baby Well, I got you strung out You just can't get enough, oh"

--- FULL CHAPTER BELOW THE CUT --- ---

The Contract, The Kiss, and The Cambion's Pride

The moment their lips touched, Raphael could feel a heat that rivalled his own. Haarlep curled one arm around his waist, the other hand reaching up into his hair to pull him closer. Their tail snaked out from behind them, grabbing at the base of the cambion’s own tail and squeezing hard. Raphael’s mouth opened involuntarily at the sensation, exactly as Haarlep planned. Their tongue dove between his lips, hot with sweet cinnamon and an edge of hellfire that immediately drew a low moan from his throat. Their wings fluttered happily, he was responding perfectly. They could feel the well defined muscles of his body beneath the layers of silk shirts, a pleased purr rumbling in their throat as they continued to devour his kiss, tasting the edge of black pepper and coal fires. The cambion was pliant, willing, the tension beginning to soften as the aphrodisiac began to work its way into his infernal blood. Had he been mortal, Haarlep would have pulled back, consciously weakening the effects of their saliva lest their partner’s body burn entirely to cinders in the heat of lust. But Raphael was no mortal. Inexperienced, perhaps, or at least he had yet to bed an incubus, succubus, or concubus… He would be able to withstand what Haarlep demanded of him. Their words had been no passing whim or idle threat. They were determined to burn their very presence into his soul. Their tail pulled his leg up, hooking his now bent knee around their hip as their hand moved down to grip his thigh, the hint of sharp claws making their presence felt through the fabric. The move was reminiscent of an old romance, a lover bringing their bodies closer, holding them together with affection and a dire need to be connected in their passion… Romance, however, was not in Haarlep’s vocabulary. This was all about power. —

The cambion was now balanced on one leg, forced to cling to the incubus to retain his balance, lips still locked together and moaning softly from the effort it took to cling to what remained of his pride. His mind was becoming clouded by desire, a lust risen from a libido he had long thought to be non-existent. His body responded likewise, fine silks straining as he unconsciously pressed his hips towards the Harlot he had invited to get closer than any others had been permitted. This felt different to the boring performance required to satisfy mortals foolish enough to lust after him while chasing the power his contracts held. Those times he simply went through the motions, physical stimulation enough to prevent anyone foolish enough to complain from voicing them. His pulse did not rise, his breath did not turn ragged with desperation, and his tongue certainly did not seek to drink in the sweet cinnamon of mortal conquests. When they pulled back, he was breathless, lips already seeking theirs for a moment before they tugged his hair slightly to force eye contact. The emerald green was even brighter, the slight glow colouring their tan cheeks, made all the more vivid by the dark makeup they wore to accentuate their features. Raphael’s arms were around their back, holding tightly to keep his balance still, though one clawed finger stretched up to the base of Haarlep’s wings. They smiled as his sharpened talons drew the slightest drop of blood from their skin, a slight shake in their breath from the sensation. Good, he thought to himself, feel it, I will not give you everything quite so easily.

“Marking me already~” their voice purred close to his ear as they pulled him closer, “do go on, I shall return every mark in kind. I will ensure your body knows nothing but me.” “You are very sure of yourself, Harlot.” He growled deeply, pushing back against their control again, even as the heat in him built further.

“My my, Archduke, you gave me a name and yet you do not use it? Very well…” Their lips pressed to his ear, quickly replaced by sharp teeth that bit down and made him hiss from the moment of pain. They smirked as they licked the droplet of blood from his heated crimson skin. “When you lose control, when you give yourself over to me, when you are ready to turn over your pride to the pleasure that only I can give you, when the only word left upon your breathless tongue is me - that is when you shall call me by my proper name.”

“If you believe yourself capable of such a thing, you are welcome to-” Raphael’s voice was cut short. He had forgotten about their wicked tail, but now the almost sharp arrowpoint tip was at his throat. “It is adorable how you fight me even as you want me. How your lips speak of rebellion but your hips are pressing you to my body to seek your greedy release already.” They kissed more softly now, each touch of their lips a heated lie of affection, another spark to his overheated libido. They began to alternate little bites with their soothing tongue when they reached his neck, nudging his frilled collar out of the way even as the tip of their tail still pressed into the vulnerable flesh beneath his chin. “Go ahead, Archduke, let yourself go. We have all night, or longer if I have to - I shall not let you have a moment’s rest until our deal is complete. Do not think you shall get away with finishing swiftly and considering our business finished.” “Haa-” Their tail pressed down now on his tongue, stopping the word even as his body quivered against them with his release. “Too easy, and not even honest. There is more to your pride than preventing the stain spreading through your smallclothes.” They smirked, aware of the damp spreading through the layered finery. All Raphael could do was groan against the invasion in his mouth. The Harlot pressed against him did not seem to care one bit for how easily he had been overtaken by a swift climax, driven over the edge by the stimulation of their voice in his ear, their body possessively gripping him, the scent of cinnamon hot on their skin…

— Haarlep withdrew their tail from the groaning cambion’s lips painstakingly slowly. “My, what a mess you have made…” They gazed down at the infernal fire in his eyes, still fighting their control over him. “Oh, very well, I shall indulge my poor Master a while longer.” Their words might have spoken with a respectful title, but the tone carried no such deference. They found it delightful to peel away his pride as easily as they begin to peel away his outer clothing, finally allowing his feet to both remain on the floor. For now. “Do not expect me to be so generous with you every time we meet. This is…a special occasion. We may only make our deal once, after all, and then you shall be intimately bonded to the form you wish me to take.” They ran their hands down his exposed body, tracing the lines of muscle with sharp claws. He was young, lithe, and undeniably strong. But that strength would be so much more delicious when it bent to their will. Raphael bit his lip, Haarlep watched with amusement as they continued down until they were on their knees. “You know, the next time I do this for you, you will feel it too. Can you imagine, tasting the ghost of yourself on your own tongue, your lips parting just as mine do, your throat filling with your own heat-” The incubus stopped with a laugh as they saw him already responding without a hint of their touch. “But you will remember this face, Archduke. You will hear the echo of this voice even when I speak with yours, you will see these eyes buried behind your own, you will feel the touch of my hands to the point that touching your own body will feel like me.” —

Their words sank into Raphael’s consciousness, burying deep into his lust-clouded mind. He had no way to know if this was another part of the deal, if it was just a game they were playing to toy with him, but some part of him - some very deep and intimate part of the core of his being - was paying very close attention. The moment their tongue began to taste him, curling around the ridges of his tip, he groaned. His wings spread behind him, tail pressing down onto the floor, both of them an attempt to maintain his balance. Haarlep’s own tail coiled around his hips, pulling him closer as they suddenly took every inch between their infernally heated lips. He felt their throat tighten as they swallowed, pulling every last drop that had spilled into their mouth with a soft moan. If Raphael had any care for the gods, he would’ve sent several silent prayers for his own sake at the sight of the incubus looking up at him. Ebony hair still perfectly sleek, horns wickedly sharp, and those perfectly green eyes gazing up at him as they pulled back until only his tip was still in their mouth. Even though they had stopped talking, he could still hear their voice. The night had barely begun and they were living up to their promise… Sharp teeth kept his thoughts sharper, not allowing him even a moment’s lapse in concentration as they continued to work every nerve with only their mouth. —

Haarlep listened with great enjoyment to the heavier breathing above them. They could feel his pulse quicken on their tongue, and though this was an act they performed only rarely, it was necessary to sear the essence of their being into his memory. Even as the essence of his being quickly rushed out once again, pouring heated lust down their throat. They swallowed hard, being sure to drain every last hint of him. It was amusing that even this carried the faint taste of cherry, a thought that brought a smirk to their lips as they released him from their grasp. “Once again, you are so very easy to please~” They rose slowly from their feet, watching his brow furrow with growing gratification, even though anyone else seeing that same expression from the cambion would be feeling nothing but the knot of fear sinking into their stomach. “Oh don’t be so serious~ you are with an incubus, after all. And not just any incubus. When we are through, I shall be your incubus, just as you shall be mine.” “As I shall be your what?” Raphael’s face darkened more, eyes blazing even as they laughed at his query. “Why, my Master, of course. Although, by your own agreement, not one with any power over me within these four walls.” They began to lead the way to his bed, tail curling around his wrist to tug him along behind them like a disobedient brat on a short leash. “Do not dawdle, Master, if I am to be your loyal servant then I must know every way I can serve you.” They looked back over their shoulder at the cambion, his feet moving automatically across the floor, as they left the last part of their thought unspoken: Perhaps I shall have you call me Master, some day… —

Raphael allowed himself to be led, wondering how he did not already feel drained completely by the incubus’ powers. It seemed they had an easy control over it, just as they had a vice grip on a libido he was not aware that he had. The aphrodisiac they had kissed into him was growing still, a burning that kept him pulled towards them more powerfully than the tail tugging on his arm. “You can serve me without force, Harlot.” He spat the insult easily as they reached the edge of the bed. “Oh, of course I could, Archduke.” They returned the spiteful nickname with his own, their face betraying their quiet amusement at his reactions. “But isn’t a little force a lot more fun ? Of course, if you don’t think you can take any more…speak one word, with your mouth or your mind, and I will show you nothing but mercy. Angel should fit us well, no? I doubt either one of us would utter such a disgustingly divine term.” Without warning, their claws were on his chin, pulling him into a ferocious kiss that still tasted of his own skin and seed. Haarlep’s other hand gripped the base of his tail and pulled on it wickedly, their own tail coiling around his waist preventing him from moving with the vicious yank to reduce the pain. Raphael yelped against their lips, or would have had they not been so tightly holding him, not giving him room to so much as breath. His mouth was filled with a ferocious tongue, the taste of cherry, salt, and cinnamon hot with more of the salacious drug that set his nerves alight even further. He felt his own blood rush lower once more, flooding him with an aching need that made his knees weaken. The cambion’s hands rapidly sought purchase at the point Haarlep’s wings connected to their back, claws digging in to sensitive muscle and drawing a low warning growl from the incubus. —

The pain did not bother Haarlep so much as the audacity to cause it. Still, it was pleasing to them that they could make him lose his grip on his sanity so easily. Perhaps in years to come it might be harder to pull such a reaction, but they relished it now. Even their wings would be in his memory, the feel of every kiss lingering on his lips when they eventually pulled away for the last time in this form. Everything they did was carefully calculated, though. They could not risk giving him too much of their “poison”, there was little point in draining him to the point of death. Instead, the goal was to secure their deal, cement their very being in the core of his soul, and perhaps even gain a little favour in the process. His demise would cost them everything, but the potential of his power could bring them anything. “That’s enough for now, Master, greedy as you are, you should not think yourself enough to handle too much at once.” They licked their lips as they pulled back, pleased to see the hint of disappointment in his proud eyes. “Now, if you would be so kind as to release those claws of yours from my back, kitten.” “Harlot, I will permit you to name me Archduke if you must insist on insulting me, but I am far from some mewling housepet.” He snarled, the attempt at intimidation only amusing the incubus further. “If you say so~” Haarlep purred, silently wondering exactly what his mewling would sound like when they inevitably drew it out of him. That would be an exciting challenge… Their tail was still wrapped around his waist, one hand on the base of the cambion’s own appendage with a tight grip. They chose their timing carefully now, using one foot to hook Raphael’s knee out of balance, their other hand on his shoulder to spin and hurl him bodily onto the bed with the strength of all their limbs working in a smooth and powerful motion. —

The air left Raphael’s lungs in a rush as his body slammed onto the mattress. He would have cursed under his breath had he any left within him to curse with, instead he lay gasping as his wings folded uncomfortably beneath him. He watched as the incubus stood beside the bed, towering over him with a wicked grin. They were clearly satisfied with watching him writhing and vulnerable, looking every bit like a predator about to swoop down upon helpless prey the way their wings spread even further above them casting a looming shadow over him. They finally began to unfasten their robes, allowing the silk to slide slowly over their skin, revealing their body inch by agonising inch, as he felt compelled to watch intently. Unsurprising to the fiend, Haarlep did not wear anything beneath the silk. However, they appeared somewhat smoother than he had imagined. Raphael’s eyes were directed to the hand that wandered down Haarlep’s body, curling in between their legs for a moment before reappearing slick and shining. “Are you hungry, Archduke? You should know that I am capable of transforming this part of myself to whatever I wish, it makes it far easier to devour my usual meals. This does not mean I will deign to receive you here, but your mouth would do well to remember everything that I am, that I was, and that I could have been had I not chosen to accept your terms.” They smiled as they licked their own arousal from their fingers, an act that he found far more enticing than he should as his own tongue absentmindedly licked his lips. “See? You are just aching for another taste, are you not? Use your words now, Master, I should like to hear it clearly, if you please.”

“You insolent-” He found his usual venom running dry in his throat. “If you insist on being so obstinate, hurry up. I will not be kept waiting. I have no issue with what configuration you prefer, if this is what is necessary to fulfil the contract then so be it.” Haarlep laughed again, seeing through his veil of pride easily. “Rationalise it however you like. I prefer my other form, it is more… versatile for the pleasures I can provide, but I will not have any part of me forgotten.” They knelt on the bed, moving forward until they were straddling his chest. “So, tell me. Are you not hungry? Don’t you want another taste?” The scent from them was even stronger now, the essence of lust itself raising his appetite against his will. Raphael moved his wings upwards and out of the way, stretching them uncomfortably above his head. “Must you draw this out?” “Oh do indulge me for one night, Archduke. This is the last time I shall feel such pleasures, at least until you see fit to allow me this form again. Though I should imagine that might well be centuries, so prove to me that it is worth my time.” They moved a little closer, though still keeping just out of reach. Frustrated, Raphael grabbed at Haarlep’s hips, pulling them forwards and onto his face with a ferocity that surprised even himself. He moaned as he began to taste them, the same cinnamon spice dancing across his tongue in a heady cocktail of pure lust. His greed made him messy, a thin line trailing down his chin and neck, holding them tight against him as they moaned wantonly above him. It would be humiliating were anyone to know he was accepting a lesser demon above him, allowing their thighs to grip at his cheeks, giving them everything they asked for and more in an unsightly display of submission. —

The incubus gazed down at the cambion between their thighs, relishing the tight grip he had on them, how his claws dug in to their heated skin. They reached down to smooth some of the hair that had fallen out of place when they threw him to the bed, a moment of softness before they found a firm grip on his horns to redirect his attentions. They moaned a second time as he obeyed the unspoken demand, switching to sucking, nibbling, and flicking his tongue in a way that was swiftly driving them towards a climax they longed for. Even an incubus was entitled to their body’s own pleasures, especially as these sensations would soon be lost to them when they took on his form. This…this they would miss. They would miss the feeling of their muscles tensing, the heat building in a single point, the almost overwhelming sensitivity reaching a near unbearable peak before their head fell back in pure bliss. Their hips were barely held in place by Raphael’s rough grip as he relentlessly continued to devour them, pulling out every last shuddering convulsion, before roughly pulling them forward to delve his tongue deeper inside them again, earning himself a pleased gasp as Haarlep’s wings fluttered in a moment of pure ecstasy. —

Raphael listened closely, judging by the incubus’ breathing and moaning, stopping only when he was certain they would be satisfied. His pride might be reeling at submitting to them like this, but it would also not stand for him to fail at the given task either. It was a conundrum he did not wish to indulge with further thought. That was unnecessary. So long as the deal would be done, he reminded himself, it didn’t matter what it was that signed the line. Or how slick his skin was with sweat and cinnamon scented lust. His head fell back onto silken pillows the moment Haarlep released their grip on his horns, the taste of them still hot on his tongue. Emerald eyes gazed down with approval, as the incubus casually wiped a line of moisture that was trailing down his cheek with the side of their hand. “Good, Master, very good~” They purred their approval, though the cambion felt the title was even more disparaging than before. Still, something about the praise… He shook the thought from his mind. He did not need nor desire the devotions of a lesser being. “Are you quite satisfied now, Harlot?” “You think so much of yourself after a single passable performance?” They grinned wickedly. “You have barely done half of your work, or did your lust-addled mind forget that I told you I can change my form?”

The magic was almost subtle at first the infernal flames wrapping around their hips and curling beneath them. Despite his resistance to fire, Raphael’s hands withdrew from the range of the effects automatically in the way one might recoil from a sharp blade against the skin. He blinked a few times as the light hit his eyes, and when his vision cleared he saw that they had indeed completely changed. With their devilish tail, horns, and wings, he had perhaps expected something more rigid and barbed, similar to his own cambion form, however perhaps to his relief now what he saw was decidedly closer to a human shape. The tip was a little wider, maybe, as if echoing the arrow-head end of their tail- A tail which now cruelly curled forwards around his throat, applying just the lightest pressure so he could feel it. —

Haarlep watched Raphael’s eyes as they changed, wondering what he might be thinking behind his carefully held expression. As their tail took hold of him, however, they felt the bob of his throat as he swallowed subconsciously. “Hardly an impressive trick for someone as long-lived as you, surely~” They mocked him, though both were over a century old he was certainly less experienced in the bedroom. Not that they minded. They were using this time to judge his responses, to get a feel for his body and his needs, to begin learning how best they might use him to satisfy their needs. Besides, this way they could shape his desires closer to their own whims, just as he was going to shape their entire body to fit his designs. “Do not think yourself so impressive,” Raphael lied, “I have simply not witnessed this ability from your kind up close. Cheap parlour tricks, nothing more.” “Cheap?” They were offended by the implication. Everything they had given, everything they stood to receive- “Enough. Pay for your words with that silvered devil tongue. Make that your Parlour Trick, and I might deign to make it pleasant.” Their voice was growing more demanding, their movements rougher as they yanked him forward by the neck and thrust between his lips. —

The cambion resisted the urge push them away, instead working his tongue swiftly, rewarded by the stiffening and growth that pressed towards the back of his throat. The shape was different, but their flesh just the same. Heated, the taste of them becoming as familiar as their scent. He wasn’t yet sure if he despised it or felt a deep desperation for more - the effects of their aphrodisiac made it maddeningly difficult to tell. He felt the same way about the pressure on his neck. It was demeaning, of course, but having that choice of when to act taken away… No, now was not the time to go admitting deeper desires that were blinking into life. The bitch above him, as he decided bitch was indeed a fitting word, demanded satisfaction. Just as he was finding a rhythm, however, copying the careful motions they had used on him earlier, he found his breath leaving him in a gasp as their clawed hand reached behind them and took hold of him again. Raphael almost bit down in a mixture of surprise and frustration. Perhaps they would’ve deserved it if he did, or so he thought…but the pleasure quickly grew to be the greater sensation of the three as that grip began to work him into a desperate need once more. He blinked back his own frustration as they laughed above him. “Oh you are so so delicious~” The grip of their tail loosened slightly, but their hips thrust forwards instead. “And how do I taste, Master, do I satisfy your hunger?” He could only moan as they filled his throat, swallowing hard around their intrusion, and at last remembering he had hands available for more than just gripping the silken sheets beneath him. The cambion slid his hands across the incubus’ abdomen, caressing their form with an act akin to affection but bearing none of the goodwill or pleasant emotion. His claws dug in and drew sharp lines into that far-too-perfect skin, crimson seeping out in drops along rich tan, as if already painting them with his own infernal hues. —

It was Haarlep’s turn to moan now, the pain was unexpected but not unwelcome - pleasure and pain were two sides of the same coin and it was one they enjoyed spinning on its edge. However, they were still not going to take the insult of being coloured with their own blood without incident. Sharp talons pressed threateningly into Raphael’s most sensitive areas, not yet breaking the skin but close . “Now, now, play nicely or be prepared to feel the same as you-” They paused as he redoubled the efforts with his mouth, clearly pleased with the way he was able to stop their words mid sentence. They decided firmly to remove every last trace of that smug look by the time the night was through, however…they felt their release building again with the stimulation of being with a newer partner and tasting so many delicious sensations and emotions drifting from his body. Each touch, every motion they made on him, all the reactions of his body were singing to them - this was a buffet, and one they would take their time over. They released their grip on him now, bringing their hands instead to grab his wrists, letting the thrill of the power raise their arousal further as he continued to work lips, tongue -

Their wings rose high above them, shuddering with the pleasure once more as their tail tightened slightly on the throat that was obediently swallowing everything. He was not so careless to be as messy with his meal this time, though his eyes watered from the pulsing rush that filled him as they moaned through the orgasm. —

The cambion’s body shuddered slightly with the effort, and the complete overstimulated arousal of having the incubus use his body for their own gratification. By the time they withdrew, still pulsing slightly and shifting their weight back over his chest, releasing their tail from his throat, he felt as if the sensation of them within his mouth would leave an eternal impression. He lay gasping a while as they caressed his body with a liar’s touch, the passion of a lover with all the emotion of a chef who was simply preparing a meal, or perhaps more accurately an archivist checking every last letter in the document of a deal. “You did well, Archduke, after consuming that much of my particular poison most would be consumed entirely by lust by now~” They casually pushed their stray hair back over their shoulder, gazing down at where he lay, assessing the reactions in his body. “Although, you aren’t too far from that now, are you?”

“Go on, Harlot, you have me where you want me, do you not? You are well aware of your potent abilities. Do what you will.” His eyes almost betrayed the pleading of his body as it ached, yearned for everything he knew they could give him. They were finding every string in his body, tuning each and every one until they were able to play him like an infernal violin. “What are you waiting for? Permission?” “No,” they smirked, eyes flashing with a light that screamed danger to every remaining sensible thought in Raphael’s lust-addled mind, “I was waiting for this. To see you fall entirely into your own desire. To desperation.” “Harlot,” he began, but found even the insult was dying to a whisper on his tongue. “Please- ” The incubus laughed, a mirthless sound that ricocheted off the walls, accompanied by the display of their wings and tail rising to their full height above them as they glared down at the helpless cambion in their claws. “Be careful what you wish for, Master, you might just get it.”

--- --- ENDING NOTES --- --- The next part will cover the finalising of the deal, and I should have it out within 24 hours as it is already written and published on AO3 - it just takes a little time to transfer. I didn't set out to write what is essentially just shy of 5,000 words of oral sex, but here we are and here it is~ Haarlep would be satisfied with no less. Raphael is not permitted to forget, and neither are we~ They also have the ability here to change their genitals, which I decided makes sense for a genderfluid incubus who has different kinds of partners to satisfy. It's not in lore, but it's in mine now~

The story continues at the link below!

#baldurs gate 3 #bg3 #bg3 fanfiction #haarlep #bg3 raphael #fanfic #ao3 fanfic #ao3fic #the scent of cinnamon #BG3 prequel #prequel series #NSFT #genderfluid haarlep #gender neutral pronouns for haarlep #Spotify

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