she/her | adult (no minors please) call me crow (or any variant nickname from my username that strikes your fancy) this is the deathsquiggles writing blog zone. i love you
okay okay okay. i am very busy this week BUT!! i want so bad to get back to werewolf avid that i’m making it my personal mission to post next chapter on my birthday. which is friday! so fucking pray for me i need to get stronger
okay i am so sorry to do this but i found out that i have to do like HELLA overtime at work the rest of this week so i won’t have the chapter ready today ;-;
it’ll go up ASAP but i’m only able to work on it sporadically so it might be a few more days, sorry everyone :((
COOL NEWS i was gonna spend this weekend writing to get ahead a bit but then instead i spent it very very sick so i’m afraid the catastrophe of legend has indeed occurred. i gotta skip this week and give myself time to rebuild a buffer now that i’m finally able to look at a screen for longer than a few seconds without my brain trying to exit my skull.
very very sorry for the delay!! but also wow what a spot for it to go huh. the universe really said everyone is gonna sit on this cliffhanger and deal with it for an extra seven days
small spoiler for chapter 8 (already posted last week) of for the wood wakes below the cut because my beta reader lowkey read me to filth and it’s incredibly funny to me
mogey slam dunking me straight through the earth and out the other side (colorized)
listen. in my defense. baths are such fertile ground for richly symbolic and subtext-dense character interactions okay. the vulnerability. the rituals. the acts of service. the transformative return from sullied to clean.
what am i supposed to do, NOT take advantage of all that beautiful opportunity?????
plus it’s just funny to have characters with an amount of unresolved sexual tension working very hard to stay on task while the object of their desire is touching them no-clothes style
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 9/16 (ish)
Words: 60,072
Chapter Word Count: 10,821
Rating: Teen
Fandom: Vampires SMP
Relationships: Legundo/Owen, Legundo & The Goldsmith Coven, Avid & The Goldsmith Coven
Summary:
“Ah. Am I making a house call?”
Owen nods.
“Could you describe the patient’s condition? I need to know what to bring with me.”
“Our wolf has fallen ill.”
The doctor frowns. “I’m not a veterinarian."
“He isn’t always a wolf.”
-
A continuation of children of the night by @audioeidolon.
by popular demand, here is the full ruleset for the card game played in chapter six of my fic for the wood wakes.
disclaimers:
i have made no attempt to balance this game, nor to check if the rules make certain cards impossible to use. no one should ever play this. if you make the mistake of doing so, that was your decision, and i will not share in the burdens wrought by your futile toil.
requirements:
one (1) standard deck of 52 playing cards
starting a game:
assign each player a penalty card value. assignments may be arbitrary or richly symbolic, as the players wish. but each card may only be assigned to one player.
shuffle cards thoroughly.
deal five cards to each player. remaining cards form the draw pile in the center of play, as equidistant between players as reasonably achievable.
each player picks one card from their hand to sacrifice. the highest value sacrifice wins. J = 11, Q = 12, K = 13, A = 1
the sacrifice winner earns the right to play first. their sacrifice card goes to the burn pile of the player who offered the lowest sacrifice card. all other players add their sacrifice card to their own burn pile.
main gameplay loop:
each turn, a player must do one of four actions:
draw a card
play a penalty card
form valid couplings
divorce
after taking one of four actions, the player’s turn ends, and play moves clockwise.
let us examine each action in turn.
draw a card
add one card from the draw pile to your hand.
play a penalty card
if one of the cards in your hand is the designated penalty card of another player, you may play the penalty card. the penalized player takes the card and adds it to their burn pile.
form valid couplings
if two cards in your hand constitute a valid coupling, they may be formed. place both cards in front of yourself vertically, stacked atop one another in a manner which ensures both values and suits are visible. multiple valid couplings may be played each turn, but valid couplings are not required to be played.
if the formed coupling is a SOULMATE pair, place the coupling horizontally instead of vertically.
divorce
separate one of your existing couplings. place the divorced cards on opposite sides of your other couplings, oriented horizontally to indicate their marital status change.
divorced cards remain horizontal on the play area but are considered part of your hand until they form a new coupling by playing another valid card onto them. this valid card is also played horizontally.
divorced cards may be played with other divorced cards, but only pn the same side of the play area. right-hand side divorced cards may not form couplings with left-hand side divorced cards (this is akin to dating your good friend’s ex-husband after a messy breakup).
divorcing horizontal cards or soulmate couplings results in those cards instantly going to the burn pile. they are horizontal in the burn pile and cannot be counted toward negating burn points.
special conditions:
certain circumstances allow a player to take multiple actions in one turn or to act outside of their own turn. these include:
you play two or more valid couplings, leaving you with only one remaining card in your hand, which is the penalty card of another player. you may play this penalty card immediately and end the game.
anyone able to see or otherwise perceive the cards earnestly asks why the game is called vampire. all players may reach for the draw pile. the first player to touch the draw pile may draw a card for free outside of any turn actions.
ending a game:
the game ends when one of three conditions is met:
the last card is drawn from the draw pile
a player assembles the queen’s court
a player has no cards remaining in their hand
after the condition is met, each player takes one final turn, ending with the turn of the person who triggered the endgame condition.
tallying the points:
each coupling is worth one point. each card remaining in your hand is added to your burn pile. divorced cards on your play field are also added to your burn pile.
if you have all four suits of a card in your burn pile, they cancel out to zero.
the face values of each card in the burn pile are added together, square rooted, rounded up to the nearest whole number, and subtracted from your coupling total.
any toxic couplings remaining on your play area have their face values added together, doubled, square rooted, and subtracted from your remaining coupling total.
the player with the most points after this process is the winner.
if the game ended by assembling the queen’s court, then the player responsible for assembling the queen’s court wins.
valid coupling rules:
spade and club which add up to a number divisible by three
two spades or two clubs which add up to a number NOT divisible by four
two hearts cards which have been divorced
two diamonds cards which have no valid couplings available within your hand and field of play
heart and a diamond which add up to less than five
divorced heart and a diamond which add up to greater than ten
heart and a spade face card (J, Q, K, A) [SOULMATES]
heart and a club face card (J, Q, K, A) [SOULMATES]
heart and a heart face card (J, Q, K, A) [TOXIC]
heart and a diamond face card (J, Q, K, A) [TOXIC]
diamond and spade which add up to less than nine
diamond and club which add up to a number divisible by two OR greater than eight [NOT BOTH!]
the queen’s court
if all four queens are coupled together into two pairs after divorcing, you have assembled the queen’s court (as in, they are now coupled with each other. yuri wins)
oh damn i forgot to mention also!!! because i posted 12k in the last week i’m gonna push my updates out a little?? stagger style, because i want to get back to late monday/early tuesday eventually, but gradually so i’m not stuck trying to speedrun lmao i don’t like the effect that has on my prose
so IDEALLY barring catastrophe it should roughly be:
ch9 on 5/7
ch10 on 5/13
ch11 on 5/19
then ch12 on 5/25, and back to the usual weekly schedule from there.
that’s my cool plan
goldsmiths be like
🧛🏻👩🏽🚒
👨🏻🎓🧝🏻♀️
🐺👨🏻⚕️
and i love having fun so here’s some spoilers in hieroglyphic* form
🧎🏻♂️➡️🫱🏻🫲🏽🧎🏽♀️
🪡🪢❤️🩹
🙎🏻♂️💆🏻♂️🙍🏻♂️
🕴🏻👁️🫵
*i know emojis are not actually hieroglyphs please do not come for me linguists i’m just being silly
brass_balancer idk if you’re a fellow tumblr girlie (gender neutral) but the word count on your comments is over 12k already and when this fic is done i’m gonna get the whole thing printed and bound just so i can include a section at the end of just your comments
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 8/16 (ish)
Words: 49,248
Chapter Word Count: 6,249
Rating: Teen
Fandom: Vampires SMP
Relationships: Legundo/Owen, Legundo & The Goldsmith Coven, Avid & The Goldsmith Coven
Summary:
“Ah. Am I making a house call?”
Owen nods.
“Could you describe the patient’s condition? I need to know what to bring with me.”
“Our wolf has fallen ill.”
The doctor frowns. “I’m not a veterinarian."
“He isn’t always a wolf.”
-
A continuation of children of the night by @audioeidolon.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 7/16 (ish)
Words: 42,998
Chapter Word Count: 6,666
Rating: Teen
Fandom: Vampires SMP
Relationships: Legundo/Owen, Legundo & The Goldsmith Coven, Avid & The Goldsmith Coven
Summary:
“Ah. Am I making a house call?”
Owen nods.
“Could you describe the patient’s condition? I need to know what to bring with me.”
“Our wolf has fallen ill.”
The doctor frowns. “I’m not a veterinarian."
“He isn’t always a wolf.”
-
A continuation of children of the night by @audioeidolon.
wrist is still fucked, so slight change of plans! instead of a double length chapter, i'll just release two chapters this week. first one will go up tonight, second one hopefully by friday. sorry about that!
per comment demand, i will post the full ruleset for the vampire card game i made up for ftww. i don’t have access to the notes i made with all the rules right now but once i do, i will type it all up 🙏
anyway next chapter is gonna be a double feature length because i have a LOT to get through before we can properly kick off the next act of this story and i don’t want to make people wait that long to get to the fuckin meat of this thing.
further meta commentary under the cut because it technically contains mild spoilers if you really squint
i love seeing people speculate about what’s going to happen next for a lot of reasons, but in this case it’s great because no one has quite clocked what i’m cooking up. lots of people have noticed the pieces but thus far no one has quite lined them up correctly. i hope it’s a satisfying reveal when we eventually get to pay all of that setup off LOL
i think next chapter will be a big hint toward some of what i’m building in the background.
