high-humanity-reminders ("reminder that you are not your Beast" and "reminder that killing is bad, and you should feel bad when you do it" sort of thing)
vtm-reminders ("have you made your rouse check this evening" and "have you fed lately" sort of thing)
spc-generator (posts premades/random combos, allows asks for random spcs/custom-built spcs/random details about spcs)
i-suggest-diablerie (exactly what it says on the tin)
i-sssuggessst-diablerie (as above, but more obviously a minister)
how-many-nosferatu (spotting nosferatu in posts... with auspex. always answers with "at least one", possibly more depending on how many are actually out of obfuscate)
your-vamp-is-valid ("vampires [of X predator type] are valid" sort of thing, can take requests)
will-the-beast-win (poll blog)
days-til-gehenna (don't do this)
has-gehenna-happened-yet (every post is "no")
canyou-usethisdiscipline (poll blog, disciplines and powers)
vtm-hunting-simulator (people send asks with their predator type and dietary restrictions and gets an answer with what happens)
days-since-masquerade-breach (counter for how long tumblr goes without a masquerade breach)
tag-the-vtm-oc-who (calls to tag vtm ocs who have certain traits/have done certain things)
Describing aromas can add a whole new layer to your storytelling, immersing your readers in the atmosphere of your scenes. Here's a categorized list of different words to help you describe scents in your writing.
🌿 Fresh & Clean Scents
Crisp
Clean
Pure
Refreshing
Invigorating
Bright
Zesty
Airy
Dewy
Herbal
Minty
Oceanic
Morning breeze
Green grass
Rain-kissed
🌼 Floral Scents
Fragrant
Sweet
Floral
Delicate
Perfumed
Lush
Blooming
Petaled
Jasmine
Rose-scented
Lavender
Hibiscus
Gardenia
Lilac
Wildflower
🍏 Fruity Scents
Juicy
Tangy
Sweet
Citrusy
Tropical
Ripe
Pungent
Tart
Berry-like
Melon-scented
Apple-blossom
Peachy
Grape-like
Banana-esque
Citrus burst
🍂 Earthy & Woody Scents
Musky
Earthy
Woody
Grounded
Rich
Smoky
Resinous
Pine-scented
Oak-like
Cedarwood
Amber
Mossy
Soil-rich
Sandalwood
Forest floor
☕ Spicy & Warm Scents
Spiced
Warm
Cozy
Inviting
Cinnamon-like
Clove-scented
Nutmeg
Ginger
Cardamom
Coffee-infused
Chocolatey
Vanilla-sweet
Toasted
Roasted
Hearth-like
🏭 Industrial & Chemical Scents
Metallic
Oily
Chemical
Synthetic
Acrid
Pungent
Foul
Musty
Smoky
Rubber-like
Diesel-scented
Gasoline
Paint-thinner
Industrial
Sharp
🍃 Natural & Herbal Scents
Herbal
Aromatic
Earthy
Leafy
Grass-like
Sage-scented
Basil-like
Thyme-infused
Rosemary
Chamomile
Green tea
Wild mint
Eucalyptus
Cinnamon-bark
Clary sage
🎉 Unique & Uncommon Scents
Antique
Nostalgic
Ethereal
Enigmatic
Exotic
Haunted
Mysterious
Eerie
Poignant
Dreamlike
Surreal
Enveloping
Mesmerizing
Captivating
Transcendent
I hope this list can help you with your writing. 🌷✨
Feel free to share your favorite scent descriptions in the replies below! What scents do you love to incorporate into your stories?
speculative fiction writers i am going to give you a really urgent piece of advice: don't say numbers. don't give your readers any numbers. how heavy is the sword? lots. how old is that city? plenty. how big is the fort? massive. how fast is the spaceship? not very, it's secondhand.
the minute you say a number your readers can check your math and you cannot do math better than your most autistic critic. i guarantee. don't let your readers do any math. when did something happen? awhile ago. how many bullets can that gun fire? trick question, it shoots lasers, and it shoots em HARD.
you are lying to people for fun. if you let them do math at you the lie collapses and it's no fun anymore.
Absolutely 100% disagree with this. Numbers give things weight and realism. You absolutely should give numbers in such cases where the characters would realistically be thinking about numbers, you shouldn't just dance around these things because you're worried that a fan will write it down and then check it against every other number you give.
Your characters are getting on a ship. How large is that ship? Don't just say "large", that's terrible writing. I mean, you don't need to give an exact number, but you do need to write a number down for yourself, then figure out how many crew that ship will need, and all that other shit. Regardless of whether you give a number or not, you're going to have to say something, and your fans will work backward on their own even without hard numbers.
Numbers are good. Use numbers because real people use numbers, they're not vague what the population of a city is or what the things in their backpack weigh or how many calories are in a meal. If you don't use numbers, you risk everything feeling light and insubstantial. The characters would know how far it is from one place to another. They would know how large the enemy army is. They would know how much a train ticket costs when compared against their savings account. Put in the work, do the research well enough for 99% of the audience, and you get rewarded by having everything feel like it was well thought out. You don't need to literally put the numbers in the story, but you shouldn't be vague just because you're worried about being called out.
Why are so many writers worried about one guy with a PhD being a stickler about small details? Toughen up and write a good story, don't do this defensive writing shit that makes the story worse.
If you are afraid of a mythical motherfucker with a PhD and an autistic axe to grind then you have already lost.
Put in the work because your audience deserves it, not because you're worried about somebody writing 20,000 words about how a part of your worldbuilding is wrong.
If that's what you're worried about then you might as well stop writing full stop, because you can be wrong — and you will be wrong — about more than just numbers. You can be wrong about textiles, about modern medical practices, about whether "Tiffany" is an appropriate name for this socioeconomic group in this culture during this time period.
He knew Crowley better than he knew anybody. There should have been no doubt in his broken mind that the demon—er, the other demon, would fall apart at the news of Aziraphale’s, well, Falling.
Though Aziraphale wasn’t really expecting anything—thinking of anything—as he made his way up the escalator and back to Earth. He didn’t feel like it would do any good.
He didn’t feel anything.
He suspected all the feeling was burned out of him the moment he collided with the molten sulfur. The Fall itself had been a blur of screams and burning feathers. Its impact is what did him in. Her Love, his holiness, and his grace had been ripped from his very being the moment Heaven’s floor gave out under him. Anything left of him must have been burned away during his struggle to escape the boiling pool of sulfur. It felt like years from the time he landed to the time he was able to crawl onto the rotten ground of Hell. In reality, it must’ve only been a few minutes, but that hardly mattered when the Aziraphale that came out of the sulfur was not the Aziraphale he had been before.
There, on the grimy basalt ground of hell, Aziraphale looked at himself to inspect the thing he had become. As far as he could see on the outside, very little had changed. His clothes somehow survived the Fall, but the bottom half of his body was surrounded in a great plume of ash. It settled until he gathered the strength to pull himself into a standing position. The moment his feet met the floor, the ash kicked up again, reforming the great plume that would follow him in the same manner flies followed Beelzebub.
When he looked inside himself, however… that was a different story.
There… wasn’t anything there.
No Love, no grace, not a single particle of holiness remained. Inside him was a vast and empty blackness. A void. A vacuum of nothingness. His multitude of eyes, his flaming wheels, his true self… were all gone.
He may have had the body and the name of Aziraphale, but there was nothing left of the angel he once was.
The emptiness inside him explained his lack of feeling. Aziraphale had nothing but a body, his memories, and a forever ruined set of clothes. He did not have the capacity for emotions or feelings anymore. He supposed he should be grateful for that, but that would involve the use of emotion.
So then. There wasn’t really much to do now. He’d failed his task of fixing heaven. Although he knew deep down that such a thing wasn’t possible, he had to save face in order to try and find a way to protect Crowley and himself from both Heaven and Hell—
Crowley.
That was the whole point of this mess in the first place, to protect Crowley.
And now he was Fallen. He was no longer the angel Crowley fell in love with, but the sad husk of what was once desirable the demon.
There are many things Aziraphale should have felt about that, but he couldn’t muster the energy.
Instead, Aziraphale turned and made his way out of the sulfur pits.
If nothing else, he could at least inform the demon of his Fall. Then the poor thing would no longer need to wait for an angel that would never return.
Which, of course, led him here to his bookshop where Crowley was now on his knees, desperately grasping onto Aziraphale’s filthy coat and sobbing.
He could smell the charcoal of his own wings behind him, but he didn’t bother to turn and look at them. He knew they were black. He didn’t bother to look down at the weeping demon, either. Instead, he stared at the far wall of the shop and considered his current options. There weren’t many, but that made choosing his next task much simpler.
He finally moved his head down to look at the fellow demon. He was still kneeling there, sobbing and calling Aziraphale an idiot. It provided further reason for Aziraphale to go through with his next task.
“Crowley.” The word was flat and toneless, but it got Crowley to look up at him, nonetheless. “I have a question.”
Crowley, of course, was a wreck, still mourning the loss of his angel. It was probably insensitive to interrupt him, but the former angel wanted an answer.
“Do you hate me, Crowley?”
The other demon’s eyes widened, and he stood up abruptly to be eye to eye with Aziraphale.
“W-what?”
Aziraphale was fairly sure Crowley heard him the first time, but he repeated himself again anyway.
“Do you hate me?”
Crowley then made a series of sounds that were very much not words. Mostly sputtering, really.
“What kind of question is that?!” he demanded, looking very hurt. That wasn’t Aziraphale’s intention, but he could do nothing about it.
“I just need conformation that this form is no longer necessary.”
The expression Crowley wore went from hurt to confused very quickly. Not wanting to wait for Crowley to ask him to explain, Aziraphale continued.
“I wanted to keep us safe so that one day we may truly be free, but I failed. I’ve Fallen. I am no longer the angel you cared about. I want to be sure that I’m no longer needed.”
Crowley’s eyes widened again, this time in fear. He grabbed Aziraphale by the shoulders and pulled him closer. “Angel, what are you talking about. You’re not making any sense. What do you mean ‘no longer needed?’”
Despite his inability to feel, he nearly swore he was about to become irritated by Crowley dodging the very obvious subject.
“I can no longer serve God, and I doubt I’ll be of any use in Hell. You meant more than anything to me.” Aziraphale wondered if saying that out loud to the Metatron in his enraged state caused his Fall. “I want to be sure that what you say is true, that you are better off on your own. If you hate me, then I will know that there is no reason for my existence to continue. It is getting late in the day, and I believe most of the churches with fonts of holy water will be closing their doors soon.”
Crowley gaped at him for a solid five seconds before he began shouting in Aziraphale’s face again.
“You absolute fucking hypocrite!”
“It was a yes or no question.”
“NO!” Crowley nearly screamed. In that moment everything went very, very still. The sounds of traffic outside ceased along with the usual bustling noises of the city. Later they would discover that Crowley accidentally froze time for a few minutes, but for the moment, their only focus was each other.
“No…” Crowley said in a softer, almost defeated voice. “No, Aziraphale. I don’t hate you. I never will.” Carefully, Crowley gathered Aziraphale’s hands in his and simply held them.
Aziraphale’s abdominal area felt strange.
“But I hurt you. I abandoned you, and I failed you. Surely you hold nothing but contempt for me? I’m also Fallen now. I am no longer your angel.”
“You will always be my angel,” Crowley promised with honest and sincere eyes.
“…Even when I am like this?” Aziraphale gestured to himself and the ash that had almost entirely settled on the bookshop floor.
“We all started out that way when we Fell,” Crowley admitted with a pained crack in his voice. “You can become like your old stuffy, fussy, book-loving self again. I’ll help you. And maybe there’s even a possibility that we can make you an angel again. I can’t promise you anything on that front, but the Metatron did mention that demons can rise again, yeah? Maybe if Heaven discovers that they lost the only truly good angel there was, we can get you risen. You never know.” Crowley shrugged.
He was always Aziraphale’s beacon of hope, especially when it seemed all was lost.
Aziraphale’s throat felt strange now, too.
“You still want me? Even as a demon?” It didn’t make sense to him at all.
“Aziraphale, you could be a worm and I’d still love you.”
Love.
They both knew it, but still, hearing it for the first time was something entirely different.
There was a strange prickling sensation in his eyes now. Perhaps his corporation had been more damaged than he realized.
“So, what you said before…”
“I’m a demon,” Crowley shrugged. “I lied.” Without waiting for a rebuttal, Crowley leaned forward and wrapped his arms around the being that would always be his angel. “I love you, Aziraphale. We’ll make things right again, I promise you. Even if it’s just us as a pair of demons trying to save the world, we’ll make it through to the other side. Together.”
“…On our own side…?”
“Yeah, angel. Our side.” Crowley squeezed him harder, holding and promising him that they'd fix this.
After several moments of Crowley holding him, Aziraphale finally reached around to wrap his arms around Crowley. It only seemed appropriate.
They embraced.
He couldn't remember a time they’d ever done that before.
And then he felt something.
Suddenly a spark caught somewhere deep within Aziraphale, deep in where his angelic soul used to reside, deep where Her Love used to culminate within him and disperse throughout the rest of his being, making him the angel he was-- or, the angel he used to be.
But now there was something new there, something bright. No, that wasn't right. It didn't exactly feel new. It felt... familiar. As if it had actually been there the whole time, hiding, lying in wait.
It came out now, this spark, this one little star in the dark, vast oblivion that was his being.
It felt so, so right.
It was a connection. It was them. The both of them. Together as they were always meant to be. It really had been there all along, but with Her blinding, ever oppressing Love taking up most of his True Self, it never truly had the chance to shine on its own.
Aziraphale inhaled a sharp gasp and squeezed Crowley back. He pulled the other demon closer to him as that spark suddenly exploded into a super nova. In one huge rush, every feeling he’d ever had for the demon and the Earth in the past 6,000 years exploded within him. It was glorious and painful at the same time. Feeling was amazing. Feeling was excruciating. But it was real.
The pinpricks he’d felt in his eyes overwhelmed him, and soon he was sobbing just as hard as Crowley was earlier. Crowley’s eyes weren’t dry either, but the intense release of it all had Aziraphale nearly collapsing on his best friend. Crowley kept him steady, keeping him on his feet when he couldn’t himself. Just like he’d always done. Just like they’d always done for each other.
Crowley slowly guided them to the floor, never letting go of him for even a second. He let Aziraphale slowly return to himself as much as he could in his fragile state, and Aziraphale was grateful. He wept in grief for the loss of his grace, but he also wept in relief that Crowley, despite everything, was still there for him. The other demon had managed to ignite something within the former angel, something that had always been there, but was now finally free.
It was something more magnificent than anything She could have given him, for it wasn't made of Her Love; it was made out of their love. The pure, ugly, messy, wonderful human love they’ve found here on Earth.
Another month, another huge creature added to the collection! The Vamster Queen and over 30 more huge boss monsters are available on my Patreon page (alongside many, many more creatures)!
Waves of vamsters foreshadow her coming, distant sounds of thousands burrowing paws seal her arrival. Although she doesn’t need to feed as frequent as her brood, she will be hungry eventually. And after all the endlessly tormenting symphonies of squeaking and squealing, she emerges: the queen of the vamsters – a sinister sovereign piercing the bowels of the earth and with each of her ravaging children the hopes of everyone above. Much like a swarm of locusts turns a a lush field into barren wasteland, so does the ever-moving horde of vamsters strip all life from thriving farms, peaceful villages and buzzing towns. Eagerly and loyal, the vamsters follow their queen; insistently yet with great care their mother guides them, for she knows they must feast.
taking off a mask to reveal what lies beneath as a romantic gesture is overdone, and besides i want to see the romantic or even platonic potential of protecting someone's identity beneath the mask, without any expectation of ever being allowed to see what's under it. picking it up and holding it gently to their face when it's knocked off and they're in danger of being exposed, without trying to catch a glimpse of what they "really" look like under there. throwing yourself in front of them to hide them from view while they put themselves back together without taking advantage or looking back to see what you're protecting. learning to read them by body language, tone of voice, and behaviour so well that you never need to see their face to feel like you know and understand them.
baratheonpilled
jacobvanloon
discoholicmusic
theartofmadeline
stormborns
tangentwithtanner
izzy806
titsay
yousharknotpass
germansingergirl
romaincrisis
