want a medieval fantasy setting that's richly illustrated, deeply cognizant of the interplay between class and religion, and with a good grasp on the psychology of siege warfare? The Starving Saints
want Catholic-flavored horror about a desperately hungry population being exploited and then controlled by forces beyond comprehension? The Starving Saints
want a knight who is just bursting with guard dog imagery, who is desperate to be a blade, please god let her be a righteous blade (she'd be a good little blade) and bathe the battlefield with the blood of your enemies? The Starving Saints
Update: this is the best post I've ever made because everyone is sharing their Warm Beverage recipes in the notes. Go check the notes for more Warm Beverages That Will Fix You.
please please tell me about your space horror take on the voltron IP. that sounds fantastic
*extremely massive inhale*
The voltron IP so far makes tragically little use of the fact that the entire premise rests upon ancient quasi-magical sentient machines who pick humans based on nebulous criteria. This is a pretty standard mecha setting - basically a blueprint for anything ranging from neon genesis to august kitko.
And these ancient sentient machines all have special powers. because of marketability but what if also because of plot. because of themes. what if?
I will forever be salty and incredibly vocal about how Voltron wasn’t at least TV-14 so they could really explore the sci-fi horror aspects they set up perfectly. I.E. the mentioned-but-never-explained rift creatures??? Like what was going on with that??? The cosmic horror potential they dropped in favour of making every single terrible decision possible
strangers to friends to i won’t leave you even though i should to i want to eat you so you can become a part of me to i will burn the world for you to i spent hundreds of years lovingly creating a new body for you and handpicking each detail so it feels like home to you
i’ve been trying to think about what it is about leech that made it such a compelling story.
some of it is style: bouncing between hive-mind and into and out of individual narrative was fascinating
some of it was world: watching the world peel back layer after layer, not having it handed to me in clunky exposition but letting me uncover the shit i found compelling.
but mostly i think that it’s like: it was a story about infection and disease that was undoubtedly sold before the pandemic, given when it was released and i really think it was fucking cathartic to read about that in a horror setting? on the one hand, it was nothing like the outbreak of covid, but the creeping fear, the unknown source, the unknown impact, the complete and devastating change to your life—it was fucking cathartic to read that in this scifi-fantasy-horror hybrid.
i know the publishing industry writ large isn’t going to touch virus/pandemic stories for a while, but i wish it would. i wish it would remember that sometimes, catharsis comes through fiction. that is, indeed, the whole fucking point of fiction.
I Thought Peace Would Set Me Free, But It Was Momentary
For @novaemberbingo 2023: Prompt Free Space + Death
On Ao3
Cyrille had no idea how she had gotten here, wherever here even was. Pulling herself up off the ground, she tugged a broken stalk of wheat from her hair and tossed it aside as her gaze roved over the landscape. She was in a wheat field, one that seemed to go on forever, with the only sign of anything but wheat a small wooden shack in the distance. It appeared to be night, and yet she could still see perfectly fine, with the soft glow of the wheat illuminating her surroundings.
Wait…wheat doesn’t glow , she thought.
To reiterate, where in the name of all that is holy was she . The last thing she remembered was searching for the missing man in the forest with Elouan’s con artist, her chest getting tighter and tighter as the night went on, breathing getting harder and harder, until she collapsed and woke up here.
She would put every penny to her name to bet that that she was dead, and that this was some version of purgatory.
Sighing and pushing her hair away from her face, Cyrille hauled herself up, stretched the soreness from her aching muscles, and started walking in the direction of the shack. Maybe there would be something- or someone- there that could help her figure out how to get out of this field.
As she trudged towards the shack, she thought back to the events preceding her (presumed) death. As much as she doubted that necromancer was actually what he said he was, she hoped he would find his friend (partner?). And him, what had he called the missing man? Something with an R…Raziol! She hoped Raziol would be okay, and that he was found quickly, especially now that she wasn’t there to help out.
She had made it to the shack, and it seemed like there was somebody inside. She knocked, and a light voice called her in.
“Cyrille Le Valois,” a lone woman said, her dark eyes meeting Cyrille’s before she could look away, “I have been waiting quite a long time for you to arrive.”
The woman stood and stepped towards her. Cyrille had frozen, whether in fear, confusion, or remnants of pain, she had no idea. What did she mean, she’s been waiting for me, and how does she know my name?
The woman spoke again, “I am Death, and I have been waiting centuries for you. Your name has been written in the passage of time since the beginning, remembered by the stones for millennia, and you will now fulfil your destiny.”
Before Cyrille could question what the woman- no, Death- was talking about, she continued, “Death is a mantle, worn by those the universe deems worthy. My time is up, and now it is your turn.”
Chrille really didn’t like where this was going. One could just become Death, and the next was going to be her? She is- was- only an investigator, she wasn’t some important figure who would go down in history for their deeds. Why should it be her?
Death spoke again, “You will be eternal, alone in the neverending realm of the dead. You will mercilessly cut down lives, souls old and young, in peace and in violence. You will never again feel the touch of another, for even those who can visit cannot touch for fear of demise. You will forget those you loved, who loved you. You will be forgotten. You will never again be known, remembered, for your life as one of the living is to be over and forgotten. You will be afraid, you will be feared. You will be lonely, so painfully lonely you will wish you could die a second death. You will be Death’s incarnate, Death itself. You have the choice.”
Cyrille backed away a step, covering her ears as if it would help her hide from the weight of the words the woman- no- deity- was throwing at her. “Do I, though?” She protested, trying anything, everything to not take up the mantle of the ever lonely, ever monstrous being standing before her, “It appears that you’re saying I have the choice, but my options are nothing but eternal loneliness and the embodiment of the stories told to warn against alleyways, bridges, men, and all of the horrific, bloody, traumatic ways you could die, or eternal loneliness and nothing to gain from it besides being the story told to warn against leaving behind your station, family, livelihood, to ‘follow your truth’ and be nothing but the cheap imitation of a woman. I don’t want to live forever, and I certainly don’t want to live forever in whatever Hell is, because I am certainly not getting to Heaven.”
Death scoffed, stepping closer, closer to Cyrille until they were barely a metre apart. Cyrille watched, horrified, as Death’s form shuddered, then hair and skin, flesh and muscle, peeled away to a skeleton, radiating with so much sheer power she could feel it in her own bones, and deeper, into her soul, her lifeforce.
Death stepped ever closer, nose to gaping skull, “Is dying really so much more of a tragedy than living? You speak as if being alive is the closest to Heaven human souls will get while living, but I know your story. I orchestrated your story, I was your story. I know you, I am you. You can’t run from your fate Cyrille, you can’t run from your shadow. They are one and the same. You are Death, you will be Death, you were Death. And you will be magnificent .” By the end of her speech, Death was impassioned, skeletal hands laid upon Cyrille’s shoulders as if she could shake her argument into her. As much as she tried to deny it, avoid it, pretend it didn’t exist, Cyrille was…falling for the argument.
Would it be so bad, to be the one with the power, the one everybody feared, for once in her sorry life? To actually have power, rather than some semblance of it laid in sweet words, only to be taken at the drop of a hat at even the slightest fault? If she had been more powerful, more talented, more feared, more , she could have saved Émilie, allowed her to flourish in the ways she never could growing up.
It was that thought that did her in and broke down her final, teetering barriers.
“I accept, I will take the mantle of Death,” her voice shook at her acceptance, wavering in her uncertainty. She pushed it down, deep into the cavernous depths of her body, into the gnawing, ravenous pit in the depths of her soul. This was the best option, the only option. There was no room for uncertainty at this moment.
There would be plenty of time for the crashing, soul-crushing weight of what she had just committed to. An eternity of it, in fact.
Death seemed to smile, as best she- they- it- could with nothing but a skeleton.
“Come then, we must do this quickly. Now that you have accepted the mantle, I don’t have much time left. We must get to the source, quickly.” An unnervingly skeletal hand still on her shoulder, Cyrille was ushered towards the door of the shack.
“Wait!” she dug her heels in, resisting both the pull of Death and that of an unknown on the deepest parts of herself, “Will they be okay without me? Will Émilie survive Father’s hand, will Elouan move on?”
Death sighed, their empty eye sockets meeting her fear-filled eyes, “They will grieve. They will beg, plead, bargain for you back, but their prayers will go unanswered. It is said Life is kind, gentle, and Death is painful, aching. Those conceptions could not be more wrong, Life is unbearably, undeniably cruel and will revel in their grief. But grief will drown them less, they will see you in fleeting moments and happy memories, and they will move on. But they will not forget. They never forget, they will never forget. It will be painful, but you will never be forgotten, they will remember you, love you, until their dying days.”
Their words brought some semblance of peace to Cyrille. It would hurt, but they would move on she repeated to herself, a mantra of her impending loss.
The next time Death pushed at her shoulder to usher her out of the door, she complied, stepping through the open door into the vast swaths of the fields.
Cyrille was pulled along too quickly to fully take in the sheer vastness of the seemingly neverending fields, their shocking beauty. She was surprised at her own surprise, surely she should have conceptualised that the land of the dead could be so beautiful in its bleakness. But was it so bleak? The neverending golden wheat was peaceful, drawing her memories to the warm spring days when she had the time to fall asleep in a garden somewhere, in her Father’s countryside manor with the windows open.
They stopped at a river, wide and flowing gently. “The river Lethe,” Death said, “As you have taken the mantle, you are to be spared from its effects for long enough to cross. Until you have taken the title and the power, though, you can still be washed away if you linger. Traverse quickly, for remembering your life is the only thing that will get you through some days, centuries. It will be a small comfort in your eternity. You must go alone, so you will meet me on the shores of the sea. Straight ahead.”
Cyrille closed her eyes and breathed. Calmed her racing heart. She had wanted this, agreed to this. It was her mantle, her burden. Her title.
She stepped into the river, wading deeper and deeper until her hair floated around her like a sea of golden seaweed. She kept on, resisting the current tugging at her, desiring her body and memories to be dragged away.
The banks of the Lethe were different on this side, she thought. Ruins littered the land, standing grey and worn against the golden wheat of life. Death’s skeletal figure stood out among the landscape, yet simultaneously fit seamlessly. She stepped towards them, clenching her shaking hands to fists so tight she could feel the bite of her nails into her palms.
As she got closer, Death’s form fractured, and she saw swaths of figures behind the scythe-wielding skeleton that was the second most powerful being in the entire universe, to her knowledge. It clicked, then. She wasn’t special, she was simply yet another body to wield the title and power of the final judge. It was a shocking comfort.
Death spoke, their voice echoing around her, inside her, layers and millennia of people chosen to hold the title, “You will take the scythe, go deep into the sea, to the source. Immerse yourself in it completely, allow it to be within you, around you, you . You will take the title of Death. We will be with you, within you, and you will learn the ways of Death,” every figure turned to her, then, their voices layering to a bone-shaking echo, “Good luck, Cyrille Le Valois.”
Cyrille took the scythe, pushing down a flinch at the raw power she could feel resting innocently in her hands, and stepped into the sea.
✯✯✯✯✯
Today, if you happen to hold the title of Necromancer, you may have been given the ability to access the land of the dead, the never-ending fields of golden wheat. If you go, you will arrive in a cabin, warm, with an open book laid aside on a chair. Shelves full of books, trinkets, an old scythe hung on the wall.
If you look closer, you will find a sheet of parchment laid carefully on a shelf, folded and refolded so many times it looked close to splitting into two, four pieces from use. If you unfolded the letter, curious, you would find it was not one, but two distinct letters. One, with scrawling cursive, poetic, romantic lines uttering well-wishes and sweet nothings to the recipient. The other, the words of a child, innocent in their content and unconditional in their love.
If you then ventured out of the cabin, letters in hand, you would see, far within the fields, wielding a shining scythe, a lone woman with trailing golden hair amidst the stalks. You will know who the centuries-old letters were for, then, as you caught a glimpse of her expression- lonely, yearning, empty. For Death is an everlasting, lonely job, and passing on is no more inevitable for the wielder.
__________
Hello!
This fic came to me like a lightning strike while I was at rehearsal for my university's spring show (Eurydice) and I then proceeded to write more words in one sitting than I ever have. Now at least there'll be something posted while I fight with the Novae/Cyrano AU! About 90%, if not more of this fic, is me taking KaiJu's amazing world and adding onto it while I can, so extra big kudos to the authors for letting us play in their sandbox.
Title is from 'Momentary' by Jake Wesley Rogers
Again, this fic is entirely un-beta'd (save my roommate reading the very end section), so any (constructive) criticism is appreciated.
Preemptive T/W: Self-inflicted transphobia; Frank discussions of death (and Death). No actual description of dying though, if that makes it easier to stomach
End Notes:
-- If it isn't obvious, Cyrille's thoughts on herself and her gender are not my own. Girl's been through some shit and definitely needs a therapist.
-- A line is directly taken from an actor in my university's spring show: "Is dying really so much more of a tragedy than living?" (J. playing as a Stone)
-- As we've seen in Novae canon, the title/role of Death seems to be passed down, in a sense. Thus, away I went! More angst for my girl!
Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5hVxhGHn959ajVgpq3eRSN
Wife mutual back again to ask about, you guessed it: Voltron AU where canon Shiro is replaced with our wife (either gen or ship of choice)
I swear to god the only thing I think about isn’t Voltron (it’s not. I also think about women)
aw fuck yeah, more Wife asks! 5 headcanons, let's go!
Ok so shiro either came out aged 5 or aged 25, there's no in-between. Because late coming outs are super valid: after a Super Fun Year of no bodily autonomy whatsoever, shiro spends actually very little time (listen, there's aliens and weird machines, no one volunteers to parent these teenagers) contemplating his relationship with gender and decides that bodies are weird, gender is a fuck. But 'woman' doesn't really have a zing to it, yknow? and then keith the absolute autism hurricane goes "why don't you just be a dyke then?" and while the rest of the room descends into Discourse ("can you even reclaim that, keith?") shiro is having several rapid-fire realisations because oh. OH.
I don't think she'd have gender dysphoria? More like general dysphoria on account of the arm etc? Still, while she used to be confident in the dating scene she's a bit intimidated nowadays. Because suddenly women are also hot??? how deal??? semi-confident gay -> useless lesbian magical girl transformation sequence.
I don't think anything would actually change plot-wise from canon? Except of course this is an AU and will therefore be Good. I don't have any ships in mind for this au so i guess anything goes? except not shallura because i dislike shallura. im gonna hit ulaz with my transgenderification beam just to shake things up a bit. would be fun if during the reunion episode they're spiderman-memeing each other.
Her eyeliner skills were always impeccable and her lipstick skills are even better. It never smudges, it's sharp, it's wine-red and ever-present... it's borderline supernatural at this point
She thinks dresses are lovely, sure, but absolutely thrives in a corporate powersuit. i will leave you with this image.
…I’m gonna say it. Ask game for Voltron, literally any number. For the chaos.
oh Wife Mutual you are braver than the US Marines for uttering the name that must not be spoken in 2024... Let's Go!
2. Name your trash ship / 14. Name your crackiest crack ship
Not so much a crack ship as a garbage ship that is on crack like literally on crack the way i'm envisioning it: Shiro/Matt
Like listen, i dont see nearly enough content of any characters being nerds and the possibility for shiro/matt to be absolute dorks is exponential. like. 2 brightest minds of their generation with collectively maybe one(?) braincell between them on a good day. they are traumatised. they are constantly sleep deprived. they both independently got buff because of Space. Questionable relationships with robots. what i'm saying is they would be brilliant for each other and absolutely disasterous for everyone else.
6. who is your trash fave who is so problematic they probably have hate tumblrs dedicated to them
i mean lots of people don't like The Clone (fandom dubbed Kuro)? Babygirl's pretty fucked up. Pretty evil. I like him, he did nothing wrong ever, he was absolutely right lance is annoying(they will come for me with bricks for this.)
10. what is the worst thing you want to become canon (character death, trash-ship etc)
look. many many things. but to name one: i think maybe 2-3 minutes more of Ulaz would have been fantastic. the emotional impact would have been incredible. also i like him.
16. what is your favourite ridiculous au
Look in general, not even limited to voltron: legendary disaster, i am a slut for Crack Treated Seriously and Hyperspecifc Job AUs. There's a fic floating around with Shiro as a SecUnit (murderbot diaries AU) which is ridiculous in the sense that in typical vld fashion it completely bulldozed over the queerness and Gender Deconstruction of the murderbot diaries and de-sexualised The Machine, but it still absolutely fucks because it's well-written and a total tear-jerker.
I'm also so so so supportive of Cosmic Horror (this needed to be explored in the show. tragically underused potential of everything and also the massive ancient sentient machines in your brain).
Voltron would have been so good if it was good.
Anyway thank you Wife Mutual i lov u mwah come invade my inbox or dms any time!
Hello! Just saw ask box is open, so if you have the time/motivation/etc may I kindly request more of my wife (aka transfem shiro voltron) or zuko + toph being the dumb siblings they were always meant to be?
WIFE WIFE WIFE WIFE WIFE WIFE WIFE WIFE WIFE
WIFE
in tears sobbing screaming crying dry heaving passing out from bloodloss (blood all in penis) i am Howling my eyes turn into hearts and pop out of my head on springs my heart visibly beats out of my chest i take out a hammer and bash myself over the head repeatedly
Hello! Just saw ask box is open, so if you have the time/motivation/etc may I kindly request more of my wife (aka transfem shiro voltron) or zuko + toph being the dumb siblings they were always meant to be?
WIFE WIFE WIFE WIFE WIFE WIFE WIFE WIFE WIFE
WIFE
in tears sobbing screaming crying dry heaving passing out from bloodloss (blood all in penis) i am Howling my eyes turn into hearts and pop out of my head on springs my heart visibly beats out of my chest i take out a hammer and bash myself over the head repeatedly
''Rose Opening the black cube'' I've not done fanart in a long while, but these games (and some of the community's amazing artists, honestly) have inspired me, so here it is!
I just realized I posted this same caption in every other social media I have and it had a typo. Im going to scream.
