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#prologue is up!
sweetsmalldog · 1 year
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The problem about having brainrot for your own fic is that I want to talk about it constantly but I don’t want to spoil anything but I want to talk about motives and characters and just the events but I want to preserve mystery and suspense
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after-witch · 2 months
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Damn Your Eyes [Chapter One] [Yandere Ren Hana x Reader]
Title: Damn Your Eyes [Chapter One: The Last Day] [Yandere Ren Hana x Reader]
Synopsis: Years ago, you were the captive of a serial killer named Strade. And you weren't the only one he kept. After Strade was killed by one of his victims, you ran away--and now your past is finally catching up with you. Chapter one is set during Boyfriend to Death.
Word count: 6352
Chapter notes: Yandere, kidnapped reader, past noncon, graphic violence, descriptions of blood, violence and gore, descriptions of death (not reader)
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She was crying again. Well, no wonder. There were holes in her feet, dotting the top of her thighs. Blood had dribbled down from the gored holes in her flesh like little streams, then dried out. 
The thin, wavy dried out trickles made you think, abruptly, of unfettered period blood, then of Carrie by Stephen King. The scene in the shower, where she gets her period and freaks out. The other girls threw tampons and sticky pads at her and shrieked, chanting, bonded by a morbid commiseration of the entrance to so-called womanhood: Plug it up! Plug it up! Plug it up!
Plug it up, you thought.
But she couldn’t, even if she wanted to. Her hands were bound behind her. Did he tie them back like that so that she couldn’t try to hurt him, or because it gave him easier access to her flesh? Maybe a bit of both.
She looked uglier when she cried. Snot bubbled out of her nose and joined a dried streak of blood that went from her nose down to her chin. Her nose was probably broken, hence the blood; the flesh of it was black and blue and an awful shade of green.
One part of you longed to retrieve an ice pack from the freezer and hold it to the bruised, swollen flesh. Hush her cries. Give her an ounce of humanity that might carry her for another few hours, the way Ren once did to you. 
Another part of you, the new you forged under Strade’s knife (and boots and hammers and power drill) wished she’d just die already, so you wouldn’t have to hear her cry or be standing here obediently, waiting for Strade to come back down. You were probably going to have to participate in this next stream–why else would he call you down in the middle of one of his “projects”? 
Unless he was lonely. But even so, he could always kill two birds with one stone. You, here to give him company; and you, here to entertain his horrid audience. And himself, above all. Himself, always.
 The basement door at the top of the stairs creaked open and you heard his heavy bootsteps–thump, thump, thump–before he called out jovially.
“Are you still there, Liebling? You didn’t run off, did you?” 
As if you were stupid enough to do that. You were many things now. Stressed. Afraid. Desperate. Tired. More selfish. Maybe a little bit masochistic, a trick of your brain to keep you from totally losing your mind as you were tortured. All these things and more besides, but stupid was not one of them. 
“Wouldn’t dream of it!” You called back, lightening your tone. It was important not to sound too scared. Strade wanted you scared, yes, but he didn’t want you to be some obedient, squeaky little mouse. That was too boring. It was best to act as normally as you could, considering the circumstances. That seemed to please him more, at least on most days. Some days nothing you did was right and you went to bed with a swollen eye and broken fingers, eased by frozen peas that Ren snuck you from the kitchen before he went to sleep. 
You’re not the only one who noticed him coming down. The woman in front of you began to tremble and sob more violently, pulling at her bound wrists. It wouldn’t do any good. It never did. How long did she have to live? How long did any of you in this house have to live? 
By the time Strade made it down the stairs, her cries were practically at a fever-pitch. You didn’t want to look to see what he’d run off to fetch, but he didn’t give you a choice.
He called your name. “Come here, darling, I need your help with this.” And oh, you kept your eyes downcast until all you could see was his boots. But then it was time to look up, and you did, and no matter how many times you witnessed him preparing to torture another person, it still made your stomach roil.
He’d brought down a p[ot of boiling water, which he carefully held by the handle with both hands. Tucked underneath his armpit was the bag of frozen peas. The bag, you thought, because for as long as you’d been here, no one ever cooked them. They got passed around between you and Ren under cover of night.
Here they were, in the light of day. You suspect you wouldn’t want to re-use them after this. 
“Be my Lamm and take the peas, won’t you?” The sensible part of you eyed him warily; it wouldn’t be below him to toss the pot of boiling water at you while you reached for them, just to fuck with you. But you didn’t disobey him, either. You carefully leaned over and slid the bag from underneath his armpit, and held it in your hand.
He smiled. Grinned, really, which was a bad sign for the sobbing woman tied to the pole. His good moods and bad moods were both equally shitty, but in your unfortunately well-experienced opinion, it was his good moods that produced the most painful scenarios.
“Now!” He crouched down in front of the crying woman and grabbed her chin. She shrieked and tried to jerk her face away, but he held her tight. “I’m sure your wounds are sore, aren’t they?” She sobbed out something–meaningless pleading that you’d long since lost the ability to discern–and he tsked.
“Oh, poor thing. I know just what might help!” He snapped his fingers and looked back at you. “My lovely friend here will give you some ice to help you feel better. Won’t you?” He grinned wider and you nodded, feeling both scared and numb in a confusingly equal measure, as you crouched down next to him.
She yelped when you placed the frozen bag on a group of puncture wounds on her thigh, but you held it fast. It probably hurt more than it soothed. An icy bag right up against wounded skin didn’t sound pleasant. But maybe it would numb it a little. That might be better than nothing. 
“Perfect! Now…” He reached over and picked up the steaming pot of water, still bubbling from its boil on the stove. “Hold still, my Lamm… wouldn’t want to splash you.” 
It was so strange, the way that your time with Strade had made it possible for you to actually keep your hand there, despite the fact that you knew he was about to pour boiling water on the skin of this poor woman. Pour it right where it would surely splash on you a little, if not a lot. Probably a lot. Two birds, one stone, and all that.
It didn’t matter if it was strange. Your fingers flexed and your muscles tensed as you saw him turn the pot over slowly, and steaming water came flying down, pouring over the woman’s wounds.
She screamed. It was loud. It hurt your ears. The irritation of it distracted you from seeing Strade move the pot around so that the water trailed over the frozen peas–and your hand keeping it pressed against her–as he covered her thigh in the water.
“Fuck!” You said, biting your cheek hard. Your fingers danced on the bag but you didn’t dare pull away. You could see your own skin turning a shade of red. Her thighs had taken the brunt of it, though. There were even blisters forming on her skin already as she sobbed and cried and begged for someone, anyone, to help her.
You were someone.  You were anyone.
You couldn’t help her.
“Language, liebchen,” Strade said, teasingly. You mumbled out an apology, although you doubt he actually cared. 
He sighed when the pot was emptied, and tossed it on the floor.
“I don’t know… I just don’t think it’s enough. Do you?” He grasped your burned hand and you couldn’t stifle the sound of yelping pain as he gripped it hard. Your skin would blister too–it was already peeling a little. 
“What…whatever you think is best,” you stammered. 
“That’s right,” he said, grinning. He gave your hand a squeeze and you groaned. “I think I’ll work a little more on this project myself before dinner.” He let your fingers go, and you cradled your hand against your chest. “Have Ren take care of that. Come back down when it’s wrapped up.” his free hand grabbed the chin of the sobbing, bleeding, blistered woman again. “I think we’ll make a movie, and I need my prettiest co-star to help me out.”
“Of course.” You gave her one half-pitiful glance–the way her frightened, bloodshot eyes darted to you with a mixture of anger and pity made you want to hurl–and went up the stairs.
By the time you’d made it to the top, you already heard Strade pulling out his video equipment.
“It… doesn’t look too bad,” Ren said quietly. He held your hand underneath the sink, letting the cold water soothe your burn. But every time your hand trembled and the stream went just out of reach, it burned again, and you winced.
“Most of it hit her thigh,” you whispered. Though you didn’t need to, since both of you were well aware that Strade was busy in the basement. Old habits die hard, however. “She got it worse.”
Ren hummed. “They usually do.” He told you to keep your hand in place while he fumbled in the cabinet under the sink, looking for supplies. “I don’t know if he has–oh!” His ears twitched and perked up as he found what he’d been looking for.
It was a tube of burn relief ointment. He flipped it over and read the back, mumbling all the while. “It’s expired but…”
You smiled, just a little, and finished his sentence for him.
“Better than nothing, right?”
Ren smiled, and you caught sight of his tail curling behind him as he turned off the sink and told you to sit down on the toilet so she could wrap you up.
Was it wrong that some of the most pleasant moments in this house, if you could call them pleasant, were with Ren? Especially quiet moments like this, where he took care of you, or you took care of him. You were both well acquainted with fixing up the results of your time with Strade by now. 
He’d cleaned out deep cuts on your back, and you’d iced and splinted his broken toes. He let you curl up in his nest of a bed after a particularly awful night of torture, and you let him slide under your covers when he’d had an nightmare about the last time Strade made him kill someone.
It was transactional in some ways, you supposed. But when you saw his ears perk up or his tail swoosh or the way his eyes seemed to light with something genuine behind them while you talked with him, you realized it wasn’t all practical. It couldn’t be. Not when you were in this together.
Ren made quick work of bandaging your hand. The cream was smoothed over the reddened, flaking parts of your skin and he wrapped your hand up with a bandage. It hurt, still, but nothing to write home about. Hah! As if you’d ever be allowed to write home.
Hell, if by some miracle  you could write home, how would you even word the letter? 
“Dear mom and dad, last night my captor-who-also-fucks me made me keep my hand on a table while he hammered nails underneath my fingernails and asked me which one hurt the most. P.S. The milk in the fridge is expired and he’s threatening to make me or Ren drink it because of the waste.”
The thought made you snort. Ren looked up from his spot on the floor, where he’d taken to impromptu digging through the cabinet to look for some undisclosed item. 
“What’s funny?”
You mulled it over. Sometimes, you didn’t like to tell Ren what you were thinking. You trusted him, to an extent. You liked him, to an extent. You were friends, to an extent. How far did that extent go? It depended. 
He was here first, and sometimes, the tension between the two of you was too taut and fraught to ignore. There was always that underlying worry, an electric buzz you couldn’t turn off all the way: what if Strade decided he didn’t want two captives? Or what if he felt two was his limit, and he wanted to bring someone new in?
Which one of you would get the ax–literally?
But this was maybe not the type of thing that Ren might murmur to Strade in a moment of weakness. It was harmless, wasn’t it, to make a joke about writing home?
“I was just imagining what I might write home in a letter to my parents.” You flexed your bandaged hand. “I mean, if we were allowed to write home.”
“Like from a summer camp?” Ren asked. He pulled his knees up and rested his chin on them. 
“I guess,” you replied, smiling a little. “Although this would be one…” Fucked up, disgusting, hellish– “Specialty summer camp.”
Ren snorted a little. “Definitely not like the ones in movies.”
“Maybe horror movies,” you added with a grin. One of your front teeth–not from the center two, thank hell–was missing now, so you rarely grinned. But it felt different when it was just you and Ren alone. It was okay to let him see those imperfections, because he had them too. Maybe not missing teeth, but…
“Sleepaway Camp!” He blurted. “Or Friday the 13th…” 
You started to open your mouth, ready to tell him that you once saw a screening of the first Friday the 13th at a summer camp, when an all-too-familiar sound came wafting up from the cracked open basement door.
“Liebling! It doesn’t take that long to bandage a little burn! I hope I don't have to come get you.”
Ren’s tail went straight up at the sound of Strade’s voice. The sing-song nature of his words did not hide the danger in them. If you had a tail, yours would be standing stock straight too. But your body had to make do with your muscles tensing and your bowels clenching hard.
“I have to go,” you murmured, hopping off the toilet seat. 
You paused in the doorway. Ren had his knees hugged to his chest, his ears flat against his head. No doubt he was wondering if Strade would call him down, too. Or if he’d be pissed off about something and take it out on Ren later.
“Thanks for patching me up, Ren.” His ears twitched, and he glanced up at you. “Really, I mean it.” You smiled–grinned, showing off one of your missing teeth. “I’m glad you’re here with me.”
His tail relaxed a little and he smiled back, an almost puppy-like grin crossing his expression for a moment, and it was enough to give you some vague emotional relief as you left the bathroom before Strade was forced to come up the stairs and retrieve you. 
She wouldn’t last another day. That much was clear. Her blood was everywhere now. On the floor. Smeared on her skin. On Strade’s hands–on yours.
Of course he’d made you participate. You were his lovely assistant, after all. Although he always said Ren was better at the work, when it came down to it. You were too prone to trembling and hesitation. To say nothing of your occasional habit of vomiting at the sight of anything more than blood–guts, in particular, were your weakness. 
Hers, too, by the way she quivered at the sight of the large hunting knife Strade twirled in his hands.
“I think this has gone on long enough. Don’t you, Schatz?” He looked back at you with a thoughtful smile. “Shall we end it?”
Without thinking much, you nodded. Yes, it had gone on long enough. Yes, you wanted her to just die already. Yes, you wanted to go over to the sink and scrub your hands until they were pruney and wrinkled and there was no trace of her visceral fluids on your skin.
“Go on,” he told you, gesturing at the trembling woman. Covered in cuts and gouges and burns. Where there had been dried blood earlier today, there were now smears of fresh gore. From Strade’s boots and the knife. Strade had even taken a blow torch to the burns caused by the boiling water, making them go from peeling and red to a series of gouged, pus-like craters in her flesh.
Cold seeped into your socks from the floor as you walked over to her. She regarded you with dull, dying eyes. She opened her mouth, maybe to say something, but whatever word she might have come up with wouldn’t come. Her swollen, bruised lip trembled as blood dribbled out of it. 
One of the handcuff keys was taped to the back of the poll. Strade always liked to keep extras around, in case he lost the original but still wanted to uncuff someone. He usually didn’t uncuff people unless they were being bound in some other way (usually not a good sign) or he was just about finished with them (definitely a bad sign); and in this case, you knew she was being released only to make killing her a little more fun.
Her hands flopped forward as soon as the cuffs were undone. There was a brief moment where you saw her regard her wrists, all reddened and cut from where the metal handcuffs dug into them. 
But the moment was over as soon as Strade stepped forward and pulled her close with a decisive yank of her hair. She yelped–you were surprised she had the yelp in her, her voice should have been shot from all the screaming–and he twisted her hair tight to keep her still.
“It’s been fun, but it’s time to go now. Don’t take this personally, hm? Or do, actually, it might make you feel better.”
She didn’t have time to respond. He rarely wanted them to say anything, you thought. It was just part of his internal script, a set of syllables that gave him extra pleasure as he snuffed out someone’s internal light. 
He stuck the hunting knife into her gut and twisted. She didn’t scream. She barely shouted. The sound, instead, was one of strangled horror. Like she couldn’t believe what was happening to her. He twisted again, and she grunted and gasped, a sound that was almost like a deep, gaping hiccup.
“Shh,” he murmured, a sick grin splitting his face. His eyes darted over her face, and you got a front-row view of how his expression was gleefully illuminated by the sight of her own life fading away. He enjoyed it so much, he even let go of the knife handle so that he could grasp her face with both hands and keep her dying gaze in his sights.
Who was she? What had she been, before the basement? Was she thinking about her friends, her family? Did she have children that were going to be left behind? Maybe she was in college, maybe she’d been studying for exams that would never happen. There would be uneaten prepared lunches in her fridge, a bookmark that would never move past a certain page. 
Her hands went tremblingly to the handle of the knife sticking out of her. She held the handle tenderly with bruised, bloody hands. Didn’t Strade see it? No, he was too focused on her face. But he didn’t even see the way her expression shifted. 
No, he saw it. But maybe he didn’t know what it meant, because he’d never been on the other end. The way she went from looking confused and horrified to determined. 
She didn’t act right away. 
You could have said something. You could have called out a warning. 
But instead you watched as the dying woman yanked the knife out of her gut, viscera and blood coming out with it, and stabbed it right into Strade’s neck.
He gasped now. A gaping, strangled sound. His hands went instinctively to his neck and it took him a few slow, trembling tries to pull it out. You saw the blood arch and spurt–an artery–and he fell to his knees.
The woman stepped away with what must have been her last ounce of energy. She had only enough life left in her to turn to you and smile–she was missing teeth, too–before she collapsed on the ground. She was still alive, but her shock would come soon after.
It wasn’t her you were watching, anyway. It was Strade.
His eyes darted to and fro until they landed on you. He had his hand pressed against the wound now, but it wasn’t doing much good. He would need a proper compress… an ambulance… surgery of some kind. 
You don’t know why you called him. To help Strade? To help you? 
“Ren.”
Not loud enough.
“Ren.”
Still not loud enough.
“Ren!” 
Before you knew it,  you were simply screaming his name, filling the basement with a different pitch of scream than it was used to. Your own voice was barely recognizable.
The basement door slammed open and you heard frantic footsteps pounding down the stairs. You saw Ren, only a blur of orange in your shock, take in the scene. His own mouth slowly gaped open, but unlike Strade and the unfortunate woman on the floor and your own panting lips, no sound came out.
Ren said your name. You think it was Ren, because Strade was surely in no position to talk. It shook you out of your stupor and you ran to him, clinging to his arm, crying fitfully. He wrapped one arm around you and the two of you stood, together, watching Strade bleed.
“What do we do?” The inside of your elbow pressed hard against Ren’s back as you held him. You wanted to snuggle, like the way you did on good nights. You wanted him to make it all go away. 
Maybe he sensed this. Because while the two of you had clung together in so many occasions, this time, he stood up taller. He held you tighter. And then he assessed the situation.
Ren watched Strade quietly for a long moment. Strade gazed up at him–at you, too, but mostly Ren–with wide-eyed helplessness. The look didn’t suit him at all. He seemed to know it. 
“Help me,” Strade managed. It almost didn’t feel like speech. Maybe the knife had grazed his vocal chords. 
Neither of you moved at first. There was a long moment in which either of you could have sprung into action; could have ran to the supply cabinet and grabbed thick gauze to press against the wound, while the other could have bounded up the stairs to call an ambulance.
But you didn’t. And Ren didn’t. 
And then Ren looked at you, and took a step backward. He pulled you with him, and you went willingly, taking another step, and another, until the two of you were standing at the bottom of the stairs.
“You…” Strade gurgled out the word, and blood came bubbling out in between the fingers pressed against his neck with it. “You…”
He didn’t get to finish. His eyes widened and you saw the light leave them before he collapsed on the floor. 
For the first time since you’d been brought here, the basement was truly silent. 
Strade was dead.
Neither of you moved for a while. And then you felt a hoarse sob coming on. Relief, terror, and shock coursed through you, fighting for the surface in a way that could only result in tears. 
Ren regarded you with an unreadable expression and slowly removed his arm from your shoulder. You whimpered–don’t leave me, you wanted to say–and he smiled, a soft, little thing. 
“Don’t worry. I’m just going to make sure he’s dead.”
Oh. That was a good idea. But what if he wasn’t? What if Strade got to his feet and oh, the two of you would be in for it. He’d probably kill both of you–or at least you–and it would be slow and awful and you’d beg, beg, for death.
“Ren,” you said, almost stammering, swallowing a thick lump in your throat.
He turned back towards you, curious.
You pointed to the table of tools at Strade’s disposal. “Take something. Just in case.”
Ren stared at the weapons that had been used to kill countless people. At the blades and torches and nails that had been used to hurt him, and you. Then he grabbed a heavy hammer and slowly approached the bleeding corpse (please let it be a corpse) of Strade.
Strade didn’t move as Ren approached him. Or when Ren knelt down, hammer at the ready. Or when Ren’s fingers slowly reached out and pressed against his neck, his wrist. 
“No pulse,” said Ren.
Ren set the hammer down and used both hands to shove Strade’s body until it was fully on his back. His eyes, dull and dead, stared up at the ceiling without seeing anything.
He was dead. Truly dead. 
Really most sincerely dead, your thoughts echoed in a half-mimic of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.
You barely registered Ren digging around in Strade’s pocket before he returned to you, wrapping his arm around your waist as he began to lead you upstairs.
“Let’s not stay down here,” he said. He gave Strade’s corpse one last look before staring ahead at the basement door. How many times had the two of you gone up and down these stairs at Strade’s whim? It always meant you would get hurt, or you would help Strade hurt others. It was never willing, going up these stairs. Never a choice.
And now the two of you were going up them together, Ren leading you, of your own free will.
Free will! What a concept. One you thought you’d lost forever. And yet here it is, given by the hands of a woman whose last days were filled with unnecessary, unfair agony. You wish you knew her name, so you could thank her properly.
Ren shut the basement door. It sounded louder than it ever had before. Or was it because the house was so quiet now? 
“Come here,” Ren said. And you didn’t know why he said it–shock, confusion, uncertainty still reigned–until you saw what was in his hand. 
His collar. It was… off. But how and–
Ren held up the key he’d taken from Strade’s pocket and shook it back and forth, like a well-earned prize. That’s what it was, in some ways. 
You stepped towards Ren and turned around, breathing heavily at the thought of being truly free from the collar. Strade only took them off the pair of you when you were showering and, once you had learned to behave well enough, when you slept. But they always went back on first thing in the morning, and their threat was an ever-constant presence in your mind, just like the metal was ever-constant around your neck.
Ren’s fingers brushed the back of your shoulder. You heard him breathing just as heavily. For a moment, he didn’t do anything. Wasn’t he going to…?
“Ren?” You asked, voice quivering. The air felt suddenly too heavy, your collar weighing you down more than normal. There was an awful thought, then: What if he doesn’t take your collar off? What if Ren is… what if, what if…
But then you felt the pressure from him sticking the key into the back of the metal contraption, heard it twist, and felt cool relief on your neck as Ren lifted the collar away from your neck and set it down on the coffee table. 
Both hands went to your neck. The skin was sensitive, bruised. A few days ago, Strade had come into your room at night for a session of “fun,” which ended with you being choked into unconsciousness. You’d woken up to Ren splashing cold water on your face. “Thought I’d lost you,” he’d said. 
The bruises Strade gave you would fade away in time. At least the ones on the outside.
And Ren…
You turned around and gave him a fractured smile. You leaned in, and Ren leaned in, and you hugged each other tenderly. Not just because it was the nicest way to hug, but because Ren’s rib fracture was still healing, and your back hurt, and both of you were littered with scars and cuts and bumps and bruises.
After a while, Ren pulled away. “Let’s… sit down.” 
He sat down on the sofa, which was dotted with sprinkles of Ren’s orange fur; no matter how much you lint-rolled the furniture, you could never quite get all of it out. 
Well, that didn’t matter now. You’d never have to clean up this living room, or the kitchen, or the brain matter and blood stains in the basement, again. You could go home.
And Ren could go home. 
And the nightmare would be over.
For now, you sat, side by side, on a sofa that had never seemed more ordinary. The house had never seemed more ordinary. Its secrets were primarily down in the basement. The rest of the house was bland and boring by comparison. Unless you counted upstairs, as it was not unheard of for Strade to take his particular brand of “fun” into your respective rooms. 
And now? It was quiet. Still. There was no chance that Strade would come walking up the stairs. No chance that you’d be called down them to torture someone.
Certainly no chance that he’d call both of you down, which never ended well. He liked to see Ren hurt you, because it seemed to hurt Ren. But sometimes, sometimes, you thought… there was a glimmer of something in Ren’s eyes in those moments. 
Something that reminded you too much of pleasure to ignore. Just a spark of it, but that was enough, when you were bound to a table and he was clawing open your thighs at Strade’s behest.
“Ren?” You forced yourself to stop thinking like that. That was the past. This was now. No, more than that: this was the future. A future without Strade, without this house, without pain. 
Ren looked over at you, slowly. The realization of what had just happened, and what it meant, seemed to be catching up to him, too. “... Yeah?”
Your fingers scratched at some of Ren’s stray fur on the couch. Some of the orange fur had already started clinging to your bandage. 
“What do we do now?” A simple question for you to ask. Several plans rushed through your head but it was hard to make sense of them. What was the best course to take; which authorities did you appeal to, when there was a dead serial killer and one of his victims in the basement, but your hands were on the torture tools, yet the same tools had been used to hurt you? 
You swallowed hard, shaking your head, willing the dizzying thoughts to quiet down.  “Do we call the police first? Or… an ambulance? Or–or–” 
Ren gripped the hand that idly scratched the couch. He intertwined his fingers in yours, and when you looked up at him, his eyes were wide. And just a bit wild.
“We could stay here.”
Your heart thudded. Once, twice. A third time.
“What?” You shifted on the couch, facing Ren more clearly. “We… we can’t, it’s–”
Ren squeezed your hand, a little too hard–the burn–and you winced. He didn’t let up, but he didn’t know you were hurting, did he? It was all just a rush right now, confusing, scary.
“We can,” he said, as if it was the simplest thing in the world. His mouth broke into an almost childish grin as he continued. “Strade’s got a lot of money, we can use that to keep up the bills. Buy whatever we want. We won’t have to worry about anything!” His tail swished behind him, thumping into your side. 
When you didn’t respond–words weren’t coming–his grin deflated a little. “I’m… I’m a good roommate,” he said, ears flattening. “I’ll take care of you.” He squeezed even tighter now. “We’ll do everything together, and we don’t have to worry about Strade getting mad about it. We’ll watch movies or-or play games or whatever you want.” He swallowed and you watched his throat bob. “And I promise I won’t leave fur everywhere.”
“Ren–” It was your turn to give his hand a squeeze, and you took his other in your free hand and clasped them both. “I’m not worried about your fur.”
His ears perked up and his smile came back.
“It’s… we can’t stay here,” you said, voice wobbling but gaining more firmness as you went on. “We need to leave. We need to call the police.”
Ren’s ears twitched. He looked thoughtful, opening his mouth, and shutting it. He was just confused, that’s all. Like you were. He needed to be reminded that if Strade was gone, the both of you were free. You’d go home, and he’d go home, and you could call or text or email or something but…
“Don’t be stupid.” 
The firmness in Ren’s voice shook you a little. More than that, it made you worry. He frowned at the sight of your tense shoulders, the quirk in your mouth. “Think about it,” he said, gently saying your name. “Remember all the people who watch his videos? Don’t you know who’s in those chats?”
The reminder of the chatrooms came hurtling straight into your guts. The chat… the people there paid money to watch people suffer. Watch them die. How many times had they encouraged Strade to indulge in some fucked up torture? Hell, they’d asked him countless times to string you up, cut you open, pull out your guts while you were still alive. Strade had danced away the requests with a teasing lilt, but the threat was never gone.
Ren let go of your bandaged hand and gently cupped your cheek. He spoke slowly, almost sweetly. “They’re rich. Important. Mayors. Politicians. Doctors. Police.” 
The anguish your stomach began to stretch. Ren didn’t stop talking.
“They know both our faces. Do you know what they’ll do to us, if they find us?” 
Tears pricked, unwanted and unbidden, at your eyes. He was right. You couldn’t go to the police. You couldn’t go to the media. This could never get out. But that didn’t mean you had to stay here. More than that: you couldn’t stay here. 
It would be another type of collar, to find yourself stuck here with Ren. And the collar might not be electric, but it would be just as dangerous. 
“Okay,” you said slowly. “No police.”
Ren grinned hopefully.
“But,” you continued. “We can’t stay here. I want to go home. And you–you get to go home now, too.” Ren had never talked much about his life before Strade, but surely he had friends. A family. An apartment or a house. A life. Just like you. 
“You want to leave–” His voice was thin and there was a fissure in it, ready to crack.
The hand on your cheek pressed harder, and you felt the thin press of his claws against your skin. Your eyes must have widened or perhaps you flinched, you don’t know, but Ren saw–and yanked away.
“S-Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to.”
No, he didn’t. He wouldn’t. He was upset, he was scared, hell, you didn’t know whether you wanted to laugh or cry or start belting out show tunes right now. 
Freedom was confusing as hell. 
“I know,” you said, slowly. “It’s okay.”
Ren stared down at the ground. Then he stood up and fished Strade’s keyring out of his pocket and set it down on the coffee table with a jingling rattle. 
“I’m going to get us some water. And maybe a snack. We’ll… we’ll talk about this more. We can talk about it, and not make a decision right away. Okay?” He fumbled with both his hands in front of him, looking like the meek young man you’d met that first night, when he cleaned your wounds and gave you water to drink. 
You stared at him, perhaps for too long.
“Okay, Ren, we’ll talk about it,” you lied. 
You watched him walk into the kitchen, where Strade would never saunter in for a case of beer again. You heard him open the cabinet for an empty glass, none of which would ever again find themselves dashed into tiny shards that could be ground into your skin for fun. 
And then you leaned forward, grabbed the keyring off the countertop, pulled out the key to the front door, and softly padded your way to the threshold that neither of you had been able to cross in ages.
Your heart thudded. Your stomach heaved. But you unlocked the door and bolted, socked feet aching on the concrete sidewalk.
Ren said your name after the third step you took beyond the door of Strade’s house of horrors.
You could have kept running. Maybe you should have.
But instead, you turned around, to look at Ren standing in the doorway. There were no glasses of water in his hand–you don’t remember registering the sound of the sink at all, in fact. It was just Ren, with his hands at his sides, looking at you with an expression that was equally pitiful, agonizing, and worrying.
He said your name again.
You felt hot tears squeeze out of your eyes as you shook your head, turned around, and ran for your life.
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felassan · 9 days
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BioWare on Twitter: "Just like a fine wine, Varric only gets better with age. 👌 #DragonAge #TheMissing"
you could say that he has been..
dragon aging
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thelawsofdaylight · 4 months
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happy prologue day to all who celebrate!
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electrozeistyking · 3 months
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some goofy lil transparent images of the design I use for N, featuring his design from the Ghost Drone AU (he is tired). These are for future references and things where I just need to casually put one in the corner of something
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coolmagoloraskblog · 4 months
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END OF PROLOGUE
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sussysatann · 1 year
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i started playing twisted wonderland
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temeyes · 8 months
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ghost and his new buddy, sommie!ghost (quick dood under the cut!)
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yes sommie poops blue sparkles out of his butt <3
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drawnfamiliarfaces · 2 days
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Not a question tho... I just want to say that I REALLY love your art style for Hero:108! It's just so precious to see it on my tl again... I love them! Especially Lin Chung and Mystique Sonia! (You made me into LinSonia again 🥹)They are my fave! Again...Thanks for drawing them with your awesome art style!!! Have a nice day! 🥰
Oh oh boy QAQ!!<3<3<3<3 Thank you sm for your kind words!!!
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People keep saying nice things to me and I appreciate it so freaking much, but this one kinda gripped by the throat because I was in H:108 mood lately lol and H:108 has such a tiny fandom presence, well anywhere tbh since its such a silly cartoon, and its just very nice to know that there are some people out there who enjoyed silly stuff I drew. QwQ <3
And its really flattering that it reignated your love for LinSonia! They are kinda my fav characters too and I actually accidently started to enjoy that ship too. ;3
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ezlo-x · 4 months
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how do i explain to everyone that my josha comic is abt my au and not fully connected to totk? 👉👈
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gunthermunch · 7 months
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it has come the day in which my therapist wants an extra hour for me to tell her about munch, in detail
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waytooinvested · 1 month
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Forgotten, Not Forgiven - Chapter 1
Still reeling from finding out the truth herself, Lena suddenly finds herself in the midst of an odd role reversal in which she knows that Kara is Supergirl, but Kara no longer has any idea she has ever been more than an ordinary human.
And what’s more, Lena has no choice but to keep the truth from her for her own protection…
This and previous chapters also on AO3
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alex: Have you seen Kara?
Lena glanced at her phone and raised an eyebrow at the text lighting up her screen.
That woman had such a nerve.
She ignored the message and turned back to her computer, only to have another text ping in five minutes later.
Alex: Seriously Lena, she was due back hours ago and I haven’t heard anything. I need to know where she is.
Lena huffed irritably, but gave in.
Lena: I have no idea where she is. Kara and I are no longer friends, remember? I’m sure she’ll turn up in her own time.
Lena: We both know she can look after herself.
Alex didn’t respond again, so naturally Lena assumed that Kara had indeed turned up in her own time, and that everything had been fine after all.
That is, until she saw the headline in the news a week later:
SUPERGIRL MISSING?
She almost didn’t click the link.
Since she had found out the truth about Kara three months ago, Lena had done her best to comprehensively uproot the weed of their friendship from her life, and so far had been reasonably successful.
She had deleted Kara’s number from her phone before she had even made it back to her jet after her run in with Lex.
On the flight home she had called her assistant and asked her to make sure that Kara Danvers was escorted off the premises immediately should she show up at L-Corp, and had left a similar message with the security staff in her apartment complex.
Selling Catco had taken a little longer, but only because dealing with such a large asset could not be rushed. She might have been in pain, but Lena was a shrewd business woman and ensured that the sale was made with a hefty profit, the value of the company boosted by the revenue generation improvements she had made while in charge. She had also wanted to take her time to pick the perfect boss for Kara: someone who would inarguably make the magazine more profitable as a business than it had ever been before, while systematically and comprehensively destroying everything about it that had made Kara love her job there.
The new three year contracts with a non-compete clause thrown in had been a nice touch.
She could have taken her revenge further than that – had even planned exactly how she would do it.
The night of Kara’s Pulitzer prize. A damning speech about truth and lies, followed by Andrea Rojas leading the exposure of Supergirl’s secret identity to the world. Betrayal returned like for like, and Kara left as broken hearted as Lena had been.
Oh yes, she could have done it. Luthors were scorpions, and Lena knew how to sting.
But something had held her back from taking the final plunge that would have ripped safety and anonymity so irrevocably from Kara’s life. She wanted to believe it was her own compassion – an innate goodness that led her towards the moral high ground and made her fundamentally better than the Luthors she had so often sought to distance herself from, but it wasn’t true.
The reason she hadn’t done it was Lex.
Maybe if she had managed to pull the trigger last time they met, if she had murdered her own brother in cold blood for the sake of her traitorous false-friend, maybe then she would have done it. If Lex was dead and buried and out of her life for good, Lena could finally have stepped out of his shadow and stopped framing every decision she made against what he would have done. But Lex was still out there somewhere, laying low for now but undoubtedly still scheming, killing, making the worst decisions a human being could make while still being labelled as such, and that made a difference.
Revealing Supergirl’s identity to the world was a plan that Lex would have wanted her to carry out.
And so Lena hadn’t.
That had been enough at first, but as the weeks passed and the first fire of her rage cooled from white hot inferno to mere black smith’s forge fire, she found she was glad that she hadn’t taken the nuclear option. Kara might have deserved retribution for what she had done, but exposing her identity would put everyone she knew, including the entirety of the Catco staff and her unsuspecting apartment neighbours in serious danger from every human and alien criminal out there with a weapon and a score to settle, and Lena wanted no more innocent blood on her hands than had already been passed down to her as part of her dubious Luthor inheritance.
And she didn’t want Kara to die.
That didn’t mean she cared if Supergirl really had gone AWOL. She had had nothing to do with it, and it was none of her concern anymore...
Lena clicked the link.
According to this site, Supergirl had been observed flying off to the north of National City on an ‘unknown errand’ eight days previously and had not been seen since, leaving two major bank robberies, a fire at a children’s hospital and a collapsed ceiling at a swimming pool without support from ‘everyone’s favourite hometown hero’.
Eight days. That tallied with how long it had been since Alex had asked if she knew where Kara was, allowing for the full day that had passed before the DEO Director had made the decision to reach out to her. It struck Lena now that it was an odd thing for her to have done under normal circumstances. She might not have done anything to Alex specifically during the first fierce storm of her separation from their little group – at least not beyond a few short, sharp words and a door slammed in her face – but Alex had taken Lena’s swift and total removal of Kara from her life if anything even worse than Kara herself had, and had been round to yell at her over hurting Kara’s poor little feelings before the end of the first week.
She must have been desperate to have reached out to Lena like that after all this time.
Now she was looking for them, Lena found that there were dozens of similar stories popping up, ranging from serious think pieces about what this could mean for National City and Supergirl’s own welfare, to tabloid trash that suggested she might be having some sort of torrid three way affair with a sexually promiscuous alien couple from Saturn (why Saturn? Unclear. What was clear was that the entire story was utter garbage apart from one essential point: Supergirl was nowhere to be found).
Lena picked up her phone and tapped in Kara’s number, her chest tight with unease as she waited for the call to connect.
Of course she knew Kara’s number by heart. If she hadn’t she would never have been able to make herself delete it from her contacts.
It rang.
Maybe Kara was carrying a big stack of files and didn’t have a hand free to get her phone out of her back pocket.
And rang.
Maybe she was in the shower and didn’t want to rush out to answer the phone while wet and covered in shampoo.
And-
‘Hi this is Kara! I can’t get to the phone right now, but please leave me a message and I’ll get back-’
Maybe she was just screening Lena’s call. After everything that had happened between them it was what most people would have done, and Lena would understand that.
She hung up and redialled.
‘Hi this is Kara! I can’t-’
Kara would never have ignored a second call from Lena. No matter how angry she was, if she could pick up the phone, she would have done so by now.
Again.
‘Hi this is-’
She tried Alex instead.
This time, the phone was picked up before the end of the first ring.
‘Do you have Kara?’
A stone thudded into the pit of Lena’s stomach.
‘She really is missing then?’
‘Fuck. Yes she’s missing. You didn’t even know?’
‘Not until I saw it on the news just now. When I didn’t hear anything more from you after that last text I assumed she’d made it back safely’.
‘No, you had just answered my question and clearly didn’t want to help, so-’
‘Yes well, I thought she had just taken a detour to France for crepes or something, not that she was actually gone’.
‘Right, and you were so concerned you waited a week to check’.
‘Much as it may surprise you to learn this Alex, I don’t make a habit of keeping tabs on people who have betrayed me. So if you don’t want my help finding Supergirl I’ll just-’
‘No, Lena, wait. Look, I’m sorry okay? I’m just worried about her. If I send you the co-ordinates for her last known location do you think you could see if you can find anything? She went after this weird energy signature we’d picked up, but then her radio went dark and we couldn’t get anything else from her. We went out there to see if she was in some kind of trouble, but the place she was headed: it’s just a field. There’s nothing there, not even a trace of the energy we got before, and no sign of a struggle or any kind of indication of where she went next’.
‘Send me what you have and I’ll see what I can do’.
‘Sending it now’.
Less than a minute later Alex’s email arrived with the relevant details about Supergirl’s last known location attached, as well as everything they knew about the energy signature she had been investigating.
It wasn’t a whole lot to go on, except-
There was something vaguely familiar about the signature. It reminded her of…
Lex.
It reminded her of Lex, and the trap he had once devised to lure in a certain type of pseudo-photosynthesetic alien who fed on a very particular wavelength of light that wasn’t naturally produced by Earth’s yellow sun. Once it was absorbed the aliens could be hooked up to a generator that would produce massive amounts of electricity and could have made fossil fuels all but redundant overnight. In theory. In practise however Lex had never been able to make the conversion work, and had eventually given up on the plan.
So why was it showing up again now? And what did it have to do with Kara’s disappearance? It seemed far too much of a coincidence to imagine that the two things were unconnected, especially when Lex was the common thread.
Quickly, Lena skimmed through her options, and picked one she could adapt to this new purpose. The DEO had been scanning for days with no luck, but she had one thing they didn’t.
She knew her brother.
It took another two hours to fine tune the software and upload it to a satellite with scanning capabilities, but at last it was ready. She cast a wide net, centred on the location Alex had given her but stretching out from it to search a 30 mile radius. If it really was Lex then the place he had lured Supergirl was a decoy, and would be located well away from wherever he actually wanted her to end up.
She had to extend her search parameters twice, but at last she found it. Not the same energy signature – that would be too obvious. No, what Lena had been looking for was the special coded frequency that Lex had developed in his teens. To most people it would look like background radio noise, but Lena knew better.
It was him alright.
She reached for her phone to call Alex, then hesitated. All she had actually done was locate her brother, or at least somewhere he was broadcasting from. But the site was more than 80 miles from where Kara had last been seen, and Lena was working on a hunch rather than any kind of real evidence that Lex had taken her.
Besides, if the DEO got him they would just send him back to jail, and it had become abundantly clear that a maximum security cell was not enough to contain him.
No, Lena was going to have to do this herself. She would find Lex, and if he really had kidnapped Kara, she would finish what she had started the night he revealed the truth about Supergirl.
She was going to kill him.
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if-mirrormine · 9 months
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the morning after
summary: the follow up to drunken confessions
pairing: grayson x mc
word count: idk bestie alot
based on the request: you had a drabble that was grayson drunkenly confession his love to mc at a party and it was chefs kiss and i remember sending an anon message saying that i think a follow up of the next day would be amazing. i can't find the ask anymore but think in my original anon message it was something like they talk about it and mc reciprocated and they get together the next day (yay fluff) and it's either the day before or the day of callies birthday party and they're planning on telling everyone at the party but oh no mc never shows up and grayson only got to live his dream for a few hours before mc goes missing for 10 years be (yay angst). You replied like "sounds like a good drabble idea" and bestie I haven't stopped thinking about it since
**unedited//this is kinda all over the place and idk how good it really is but i think my eyes will start bleeding if i look at it any longer**
request a drabble here!
grayson wakes with a start and a pounding in his head that rocks his senses. he pauses, willing his headache away and failing miserably. groaning, he slumps back onto the bed and drags a hand through his hair.
he feels movement beside him and squinting in the harsh light of the morning, he sees mc sitting next to him on top of the duvet, their laptop on their lap. they pause their work to smile at him.
"morning, sleepyhead!" they say as they reach for a glass of water on the side table and hand it to him. "i was wondering when you'd rise from your coma."
he takes the glass and drinks from it greedily, the cool water soothing his dry throat. "what time is it?"
they hum. "a little past eight."
he groans again, leaning over the mc to put the glass back on the side table. "why didn't you wake me up sooner?
they scoff before going back to their work. "you don't think i tried? you sleep like the dead, gray."
he hums in reply and lies back down on his pillows, his arm slung over his eyes. now that he's more awake, his headache has worsened to a steady throbbing behind his eyes. his mind drifts back to the night before and everything he did to get to where he is now. he remembers the party and drinking way more than he usually would, losing the mc somewhere along the way and reuniting with them. telling them he’s in love with them. twice.
embarrassment takes over, flooding his sense and twisting his stomach. he can’t believe he was so reckless, he should never be allowed to drink again. the thought alone of what they must think of him is makes him groan again, his face buried in hands.
"gray?" they say, nudging his side. "you okay over there?"
i don't think i'll ever be okay again, he thinks to himself but all that manages to come out of his mouth is a muffled, petulant no.
they shuffle on the bed next to him, the old bed frame creaking slightly and he peeks out from under his arm to see them leaning over him. "is it your head? i think there's some paracetamol in the medicine cabinet, if you want." he's quick to shake his head, groaning when that only exacerbates his headache, and they chuckle softly. "only you would martyr yourself over a hangover," they tut, staring down at him in amusement. "wait here, i'll go get them for you."
they're off the bed and out of his room before he can even comprehend it. with another groan, he sits up and, glancing down at himself, he realises that he's in pajama bottoms and one of his sleep shirts. he barely remembers getting home let alone changing into sleepwear which means the mc mustve done it for him. somehow that's even more embarassing than his drunken confession.
"here you go, gronk," they say, suddenly reappearing next to him with two white tablets and his half filled glass of water. he takes the medication and swallows it down in one fluid motion before turning to look at his best friend with a critical eye. they don't seem to be out of sorts. there's no pity in their eyes when they look at him, put off by the idea of him being in love with them for the past six years. no, it's as if the whole thing didn't even happen. they're still mc, he's still grayson. best friends. nothing more, nothing less. for all his hoping though, he knows that's not the case.
"so," he starts, clearing his throat, his anxiety at the situation rises to new levels. "about last night -"
"you mean your love confession?" they clarify and his eyes widen exponentially. this can't be real, he thinks. lord, if you're out there, kill me now please. despite his embarrassment though, they can't keep from smiling at them. "i was wondering when you'd bring that up."
"i- um... i-i don't know what you're talking about," he says quickly, his face burning red and his eyes anywhere but their face.
they pout at him, reaching out to take his face in their hand. "don't chicken out on me now, donohue. you know how long i've been waiting for you to finally say those words?"
he's looking at them now, only half because they're forcing him to by holding his face, and he can't believe the loving smile on their lips. "what?" is all he manages to get out and it makes them chuckle, his cheeks somehow getting even warmer.
"gosh, do i need to spell it for you, gray?" they move their hands from his face to his shoulders, where they proceed to lightly shake him, mindfully of his pounding head. "i love you too!"
"you do?" the words don't make sense in his ears, in his mind. the mc loving him? no, that can't be. he must be going deaf. or crazy. yeah, definitely crazy. sure, he's a little young to be going senile already but there's obviously no other explanation, right?
they laugh again and return their hands to his face. without another word spoken between them, they pull him close, kissing him softly and stealing all the air from his lungs.
he freezes momentarily, unable to comprehend that this is truly happening, but his hands are settling on their hips and pulling them closer. im dead, he thinks. ive died and gone to heaven.
it feels like an eternity has passed before they pull away. still stunned, he peels his eyes open to look at them, that smile of theirs that he loves so much spurring one of his own into existence.
"believe me now?" they quip and he shakes his head slowly, his lips parted and still tingling.
"no," he says, breathless. "maybe if you kissed me again."
amused, they lean forward and give him a peck on the lips, so quick it might as well have not happened at all, and he pouts, following after them when they leave.
"don't tease me," he whines and their smile widens slightly. "why didn't you say anything?"
they shrug. "i was too nervous. guess that makes us even, huh?"
he wraps his arms around them and pulls them onto his lap, resting his forehead against theirs. "say it again."
they hum, their arms going around his neck. "that i love you?"
"yes."
"i love you, gray."
"i love you more."
they're about to protest when he kisses them again. he kisses them long and soft, like he's wanted to every day for past six years and he doesn't stop until his lungs are empty. and even then, he attempts to go back for more.
laughing, they press their index against his lips as they sit back on his lap. "easy tiger," they say. "don't want you suffocating on me."
again, he pouts. "'m making up for lost time." he doesn't know where the boldness - or the neediness - comes from but he chooses not to think about it too much. he's waited for this moment for a long time and now that's it here, he doesn't want it to end.
"sorry, gray; ive gotta put my foot down here," they laugh. "ive got a busy day of errands and you're already late for class."
"i can miss one class," he attempts but they simply shush him again, now using their whole hand to cover his mouth.
"not on your life, mister." against all of his muffled protests, they climb off his lap, moving to the other side of the bed where their laptop sits, turning it off before looking back at him. "youve waited so long, what's a few more hours until callie's party?"
he shakes his head vehemently, ignoring his headache for time being. "nope, can't do it," he insists. "i'll die before then."
"you're so dramatic," they say with a roll of their eyes before moving to kiss his forehead. "school first. and then i'm all yours at seven."
"do you promise?"
"pinky swear."
hooking his pinky finger around theirs, he can't keep the smile off his face. "okay. seven o'clock then."
"seven o'clock," they agree and with one last chaste kiss, he watches them climb off his bed and leave his room, laptop in hand. he lies back down and rolls over onto his stomach, pressing his face into a pillow and screaming in excitement.
he can already tell that this is going to be a great day.
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insertdisc5 · 1 year
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The tumblr q&a is over, but I was curious! I love all the different phrases the characters in isat/sasasa:p use--If it's something you can say, where did inspiration for "gems alive" and other phrases come from?
THANK YOU FOR ASKING BECAUSE I GET TO TALK ABOUT WORLDBUILDING AND SWEAR WORDS AND BRANDON SANDERSON
long post ahead
ok so when I was figuring out the world, I found this lecture on worldbuilding by Brandon Sanderson (go watch it, and also go read his books), and (im gonna paraphrase heavily here) one thing he mentioned is that, to make a memorable world, one thing you can do is pick a couple areas of culture, and go real deep with it. So like, pick fashion, and architecture, and interior design, and develop those a bunch, and bam! you convinced people you have a whole dang world, even though you only developed 3 areas of this world. hollow iceberg everyone thinks is a real iceberg.
he also mentioned the idea of like... getting weird with it? and develop based on a weird detail? for example, in his book The Stormlight Archives, one detail is that women have to hide their left hand at all times. ok, so what does that mean, whats taboo about a left hand? is the left hand shameful, or lewd somehow, the same way ankles were for us? what about fashion, what does women's fashion look like? and how do you live your every day life, knowing you can't show this hand, can you carry things the same way? etc
SO, for me, one of the Big Worldbuilding pillars i picked was, uh, swear words lol. or language and common expressions, more generally. i went on a whole journey where i was like... ok swear words in a LOT of languages (including french and english, both languages i speak fluently) are either sexual, or about gross bodily discharges. you know what words i mean!!!!!
and, well, i also didnt want the game to be full of those words, mostly because i think its a tightrope to use those words without seeming cringe, and also because i have a Core Memory of showing a comic to a colleague and she said "well i wouldve liked to show it to my kids, but you said fuck 12 times in there" and i didnt show my face to her for a week. family friendly family friendly family friendly
so what swear words should my characters use, that arent the same ones we use? and could those swear words actually tell us something about the world they live in? could i actually use those swear words... to show the characters come from different cultures???
and what COULD swear words be like, if theyre not about sex or body stuff? well irl they're usually about religions or belief. "oh god", "goddamnit", etc. as a sidenote, stuff like "oh my god" or "geez" arent used, because jesus christ is not canon to the ISAT universe. alright
i decided very early on i wouldnt have those in the game either, but i COULD have them be about the religions specific to this world. and for insults, i could have them be about stuff those beliefs would see as lesser.
anyway instead of talking about "gems alive" lets talk about "crab"
isabeau+mirabelle+bonnie use "crab" as a swear word because they follow a religion all around change, bettering yourself, evolving, and, the crab meme,
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for those who dont get the joke, its about carcinisation, and about how a bunch of non-crab-like forms somehow evolved to a crab-like form. which would be horrible, for a religion all based around change!!! you mean we change and evolve, but theres a chance we might all become crabs??? CRAB!!!!!!!
anyway having "crab" kinda reads as 1. swear word 2. thats funny and weird (sets the tone) 3. tells you they know what crabs are (world not that different from ours, AND means they live close-ish to the coast, aka not land locked) and 4. crabs are somehow hated/feared, even if as the player you dont get why, it shows this country has its own culture (even if you dont get the crabs joke, which uuuh apparently doesnt work as well in countries that dont have this specific meme. WHATEVER!!!!)
(a few people came to me saying "heh, i get it, because crab and crap are very similar words" and um actually i did not think about that. crab is just a funny word on its own, and also i am a comedy genius without even trying)
anyway tldr: swear words as a worldbuilding tool. soon in theaters
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mihai-florescu · 5 months
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Im sure someone made the joke already but having eichi fs2 with red and green, and keito event with obvious buddhist imagery at the beginning of december was very "it's gonna be christmas soon keito" "so what eichi" of happyele
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badly-drawn-bbu · 5 months
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BDBBU Holiday Spectacular PT. 4!
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prev // next
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