call me Zaz, she/her :D |●| Nova my Zentryx :]] |●| in my early 20s nothingburger arc |●| ninjas, psychonauts, and many other interests |●| five times whumptober completionist |●| I write more than I draw which is. uh. hm. uh oh |●| the masterlist is my pinned post!!
Hi! I absolutely love your corpse drag au so I gotta ask, has Dion ever kept souvenirs or mementos from any of his body’s and if so why?
Depends on what counts as a souvenir. He takes the hairties, he'll take his boots and knife and (if he dies with it on) his vest, he takes flesh and offal for his autocannibalism habit, and sometimes he takes his shorts and/or tights to break down into spare fabric. He hasn't tried bone marrow yet.
He hasn't taken any bones at all actually, because he fears that even if he takes something innocuous someone will find it and recognize it as human and then Dion will be faced with questions he doesn't know how to answer. But ohhhhhhh he wants to take a skull so bad, wants to clean it and bind the pieces together so he can have cool awesome symbol of death and his own immortality. But once again, he doesn't have a good answer to "why do you have a human skull" so his imagine spot of juggling several skulls laughing-in-the-face-of-death-style remains in his imagination 😔
Not sure if it counts as a souvenir (maybe a memento?) but death does leave a mark on his body. Death scars, if you will. They fade with each new body so only the freshest ones are super visible—but better safe than sorry, so Dion always has some kind of bracelet on his wrist.
“Ah—” Augustus starts, moments before the generator sputters and gives out. The still-working fairy lights and connected lanterns all wink out, bathing the entire camp in dimness but for the dim evening light and the campfire Frazie's keeping an eye on. Mirtala and Raz cry out in dismay; Queepie continues dancing next to the battery powered radio.
So much for finding the spent bulb, Augustus thinks, setting the fairy lights at hand to the side.
Donatella grabs a flashlight, flicks it on, and turns it towards the generator. "Please tell me that can be fixed.” They might have the funds for a new generator, but it'd cut uncomfortably deep into the budget.
“I'll take a look at it.” Augustus nods, moving to do just that. The generator's only a few years old, so he's fairly hopeful that something can be worked out. He grabs a toolbox from the crate nearest the generator.
Donatella stands behind Augustus as he kneels, flashlight angled to give him as much light as possible. He pries open the panel to look at the internal parts, going through his mental checklist of potential problems… hm, maybe if he… no, that won't work… well, perhaps… nope, that's dead too… but surely…
“Auggie…” Augustus doesn't need to look back to see Donatella's grimace; he can hear it in her voice. The evening light has faded to near-nothing, Nona and the children all gathered around the campfire. But maybe if Augustus tries… no, that's not working either. He has the engine in pieces and it's too clear to ignore: they need a new generator.
Donatella audibly winces. “Don't tell me you can't fix it.”
“Okay,” Augustus starts putting away the pieces and tools. “I won't tell you.” He hears Donatella stifle a snort, and smiles.
Everything put away, Augustus stands to face his wife. His mother and children are all watching from the fire, Dion from the basin.
Augustus purses his lips. They can make do without power for a night—even if they did need it to cook, dinner's already passed. But the cost of the new generator will eat a hole into their budget—not that Augustus or Donatella will say that in front of the children.
Hm. So much for getting that wading pool anytime soon.
(If a part of Augustus that gets queasy at the sight of deep water is quietly glad that they can't get that pool—no. It's just a thought.)
“Your mother and I will have to get a new generator in the morning,” Augustus announces, “We'll make do with the fire and flashlights for tonight.” And that's that. Augustus and Donatella settle by the campfire with their family, conversation flowing easily. The fire slowly dies as everyone winds down; Augustus helps his mother into the caravan when she starts to doze off, and Donatella and Frazie get the younger children ready for bed. Soon, all that's left to take care of is Dion, and the washbasin.
Dion climbs out at Augustus' approach, allowing him and Donatella to haul the basin off to the side and dump out the old water. There's a water pump just a short walk away from the Aquatodome; Donatella brings the basin into the caravan and emerges with two buckets and the flashlight while Augustus carries his son inside.
“Are you certain you can't fix it?” Donatella asks, as they fill the buckets at the pump.
“I can give it another go in the morning.” They each take one bucket on the way back. “Perhaps it might be cheaper to get it repaired by a mechanic?”
The conversation pauses when they reenter the circle of tents. They empty the buckets into the basin as quietly as possible, mindful of both the water and of Nona snoring barely four feet away. Two more trips should do it. Augustus and Donatella both wait until they're out of hearing range to speak again.
“And what if they can't fix it?” Donatella continues, as the running water churns into the buckets, “It'd be a waste of money to see someone and have to buy a new on anyway.”
“Hm,” Augustus nods, “Perhaps we can sell the old one as scrap.” They each take one bucket again. Nona's still snoring when they get back, soft footsteps and mattress creaks still audible on the floor above as they empty the buckets. One more trip.
“Even if you do get it working,” Donatella thinks aloud once they're past the tents, “I'm not sure I trust that device to keep working.” She talks over the churn of the water, “How old is it again? Twelve? Thirteen?”
“I remember getting it before Frazie was born,” Augustus answers, as they walk back. “Well, if I can get it working, then it'll sell for more.” Not as much as the new one will cost, but any amount is better than nothing—
The flashlight is aimed low, towards the ground, and it's for this reason that it doesn't outshine the green glow emanating from the caravan—
The buckets clatter on the ground as Augustus and Donatella rush forwards, throwing the door open to see—
No intruders—no psychic powers—Nona's still asleep and snoring—and Dion—Augustus flicks off the flashlight as a suspicion strikes him—
Dion stares at them wide-eyed, face cast in a soft green glow coming from his tail. He blinks, glances at his tail, and sinks down, chin disappearing behind the edge of the basin. “I don't—” He starts, “I'm not—uh—” The glow dims. Dion curls his tail as if to hide it in the basin.
Augustus sighs in something like relief. On closer inspection, the glow is only in jagged green stripes around Dion’s tail, like a broken spiral. It reminds Augustus of something he’d heard once, about creatures so deep in the ocean that not even the sunlight can reach them—and it’s certainly worrying, this new development—but it’s much less worrying than what Augustus first thought it was—
“Oh, bambolotto,” Donatella croons, already kneeling at the basin.
“It just—” Dion gestures at his tail as he speaks, “it started doing that and I don’t know how to—to make it stop and—and what if it’s—I don’t—”
“Shh,” Donatella presses Dion’s head into her shoulder. Augustus walks over to put his hand on Dion’s shoulder. “It’s okay baby, I’m here. Shhh, come on, breathe like I taught you. In, out. In, out.”
Dion does so, and the glow dims down to nothing. Augustus turns the flashlight back on. He and Donatella share a look, then step outside to go grab the buckets.
“Is it getting worse?” Donatella keeps her voice low as they return to the pump, “That hasn’t happened before.”
Augustus doesn’t know, and that’s what scares him the most—is it the curse that’s changed their son so? Is it a new curse? He thinks of the fish that glow to attract their prey, to the flash of psychic energy in use—it’s still Dion, some part of him argues, it’s still your son. But that soft green glow like sunlight through a murky tank linger in his mind.
“Whatever it is,” Augustus forces his voice to stay steady as they head back, “we’ll keep an eye on him. Perhaps it’s just…” He’s not sure he can say it. It sounds so absurd. Maybe the generator breaking is a blessing, if a bigger pool will make Dion’s affliction worse. Will it? Or are you just forcing your son to rot in that cramped tub for nothing?
Donatella nods, lips pressed into a thin line. They reenter the camp, reenter the caravan, and empty the buckets into the basin. Dion scoops water into his hands to carefully wet the part of his tail sticking out, and Donatella hands him a pillow to balance on the edge for his head to rest on. Augustus puts the buckets away. Nona’s still snoring.
“Good night, son,” Augustus ruffles Dion’s hair while Donatella presses a kiss to his forehead.
“Good night Dad, good night Mom,” Dion returns. He settles down, and Augustus shoots him one last glance before climbing the ladder. Donatella follows, and they stop on the next floor to say goodnight to the rest of their children before climbing up once more to their own bed for the night.
Sleep does not come easy. That green glow stays in the back of Augustus’ mind all night.
so your mermaid dion has lungs and gills? how does that work?
His lungs became swim bladders without losing the ability to function as lungs—which we see in lungfish!
His chest got wider and deeper, and his organs shifted around, to accommodate his gills. He doesn't need to continuously swim forwards like a shark to keep water flowing through them; his diaphragm helps push water through his thoracic gills like the head muscles in bony fishes.
Gills are very delicate; with the exception of animals that can breathe in both air and water via their gills (e.g. crabs, amphibious fishes) gills will collapse out of water. This collapse/compression, especially in his cervical gills, is what tells Dion's body "oh we're out of water, time to use the lungs". His cervical gills are too small to get enough oxygen for his body, hence the need for thoracic/body gills—rather, his cervical gills help keep water out of his lungs until his thoracic gills are up and running.
Is having two separate breathing systems for his body to automatically switch between as needed a little overcomplicated? Probably. Does that overcomplication allow more room for failure? Of course it does >:]c
"Hold still, Didi!" She's almost done, just a bit more—there! Mirtala ties off the braid with an elastic band, then leans back to examine her work.
She thinks she did pretty well; she wove in two of her ribbons, one green and one blue—Aquato colors, since Nona's still working on adjusting Dion's vest to fit him again. And the blue matches his eyes, and the green is a really pretty shade that Mirtala just loves.
Dion pulls the braid over his shoulder to examine it; Mirtala side-hops so she's standing face-to-face with him. She catches the soft little smile he makes and beams wide. "You like it?"
"It's fantastic," Dion praises, the fins on his face doing that butterfly-flutter they do when he smiles. Mirtala beams even brighter.
"Yay!" She can't help but cartwheel her excitement. "Do you like the colors? I picked them to match your scales!" It was scary, when Dion was sick and changing—but he's better now—
Dion's face falls. "Oh." He knocks his braid back behind him. "That's..." he swallows, and doesn't finish.
—but not really better. He mopes for more than half the day and can't get anywhere without help. Moody, that's the word Frazie used to use—but it's worse now.
"You don't like it," Mirtala says. She idly wonders if Dion likes anything these days—that's a stupid thought. Of course Dion still likes things.
"No no, I—" Dion spreads his hands placatingly, the webbing glimmering in the afternoon sunlight. "Of course I like it, Tala, I just—" He glances at his hands, and then hurriedly shoves them down under the water.
Mirtala huffs. She's not even sure what made Dion change his mind about the braid to begin with. She wants to call him a drama queen, or try to milk his guilt a little, or—
"Your brother's going through a... rough time right now. You'll have to be patient with him."
Mirtala sighs. She's starting to get tired of being patient. "Well, I'm not undoing it—and you can't either!" She puts her hands on her hips in a close approximation of Mom.
Dion nods. "I won't touch it without your approval," he grins, voice taking on a sillier lilt, "your highness." He ducks his head as if to bow, and Mirtala giggles and curtsies. "Does the princess have any other decrees?"
"Always!" Mirtala answers, leaping to her hands. "Watch this flip!"
And Dion does, eyes never straying from Mirtala as she flips, rolls, and tumbles. He relaxes a bit, head coming to rest on arms folded on the edge of the basin, and for a few precious moments everything feels normal again. Fine, even.
Besides physical features, has Dion also experienced any other changes eg instincts or diet? That is if he’s been eating at all
He's eating! Just... less. He's got molars to chew with, but his canines and incisors were replaced with sharper, shark-like teeth—good for shearing through flesh... except they're not properly set in his jaw because they came in before his jaw had fully shifted. So they're crooked/crowded together (not really painful but Dion finds it embarrassing) and it hurts to bite down. Dona's been overcooking a lot of his meals (vegetables especially) to soften up his food trying to work around that.
He's still omnivorous, but he's been craving fish a lot more lately... not that he'll admit that. Sweet foods like fruit make his facial fins flutter (happy), though he hasn't realized this yet.
Dion gets the urge to duck his head underwater fairly often; running water through his gills is soothing for him. But he won't admit this under any circumstances—sometimes not even to himself.
He doesn't know about this yet because it hasn't come up, but if something small, shiny, and quick darts by it'll catch his attention real well. If this does happen (perhaps with a shiny ribbon in Mirtala's hair when she's running around), Dion will hard deny it.
Dion tried to out-stubborn his own body and go without water—he felt like he was going to die by the fourth hour but persisted on through sheer spite. By the end of the day even Augustus was telling him to "please just get in the basin, son, it hurts me more to see you hurting yourself like this than it does to see you in the water". Dion got in the water and his body stopped dying. He then cried because the whole event very firmly confirmed that he needs water, AKA the one thing Aquatos are cursed to die in, to live.
(Obviously the Aquatos all need water to live but keeping hydrated and needing to submerge oneself + stay permanently damp are two very different things.)
He gets annoyed when the water in the basin gets "stale" but it took two weeks before he was annoyed enough to actually say anything. The water gets changed every few hours now, creating a new chore for everyone—and a new reason for Dion to unfairly berate and pick at himself for being a "burden".
Swimming would be fantastic stress relief for Dion on a physiological level, but he won't even let himself consider going near larger bodies of water because of the water curse ("I might still die" + "am I still an Aquato? I have to be. Aquatos don't go in deep water so neither will I" but like. not expressed that coherently—if at all).
A lot of any new instincts go unnoticed because Dion represses them; this whole situation is, for him, a nightmare that he wishes he could wake up from, so he's not particularly keen on "allowing" it to get "worse".
Also it's not really a new instinct/impulse, but Dion's really antsy and restless—he can't do a lot of the things he did before, and he spends a large chunk of his days essentially sitting in place in the washbasin, so it's no wonder he's restless. Maybe that's his punishment, he thinks, (it's not), because his self-loathing is wayyyyy too high :[[[
hello! I’m usually not one to send asks because I don’t want to bother people but I saw you post saying it was okay! What are some of your favorite asks you’ve sent or received?
Please bother me I love asks I love talking about blorbos and my AUs—
Favorite asks I've sent.... ohhhhh I mostly send anon asks because I'm shy ("what if they don't like the idea!" kind of worry) and I've sent so many it's hard to pick one.... oh! I did send an ask about Dion-Morris frenemies dynamic that got one of my favorite responses ever, it's soooo good that blog has so many good posts about the interns <333
Favorite asks I've received... definitely ones about my AUs. Especially when it's a suggestion for an issue I'm having with deciding something, or just something I hadn't thought about—it's fun getting other perspectives! And it forces me to look at my AUs from other angles! I probably wouldn't have thought about giving Betrothal AU Cole an anacondrai tattoo without it being suggested in an ask, for example.
can you elaborate on "throwing dion into lake oblongata"?
The basic idea was that Dion, feeling like a burden, slips away one night during a storm. He can smell where the river is, and the mud makes it easy to get there.
He didn't actually mean to leave; he acted on impulse and would've turned back almost immediately—except a) he doesn't know how to swim and b) the current was a lot stronger than he expected. So he gets very lost very fast. He spends the next several weeks on the most miserable journey of his life, loses weight because he's only half-fending for himself, and at the end of it ends up in Lake Oblongata.
Either his way in gets blocked off or he just chooses to stay in the calmer waters of the lake. Probably the former, because it doesn't take long for him to notice Thorney Towers on one shore and a camp full of psychic children on the other shore.
Some loose details in no particular order:
Dion spyhops like a shark because he's too nervous about being spotted. He gets spotted anyway; after Linda is mutated the kids in camp are divided on whether there's two lake monster, or just one that got bigger.
Linda is afraid of Dion because she's a small lungfish perfectly sized for him to eat. Dion is afraid of Linda post-mutation because why wouldn't he be afraid of the giant fish. Linda is still afraid of Dion even after growing too big so they avoid each other.
Loboto fishes Dion up, tries to figure out if this is one of his mutated fish monsters (he's not), and then gives Dion braces. In that order.
Oleander: I'm paying you to mutate the lungfish, not clean its teeth!
Loboto: Oh, no, that project's over there. I have no idea what this is
Raz hears about the two theories and near-immediately subscribes himself to "there's only one lake monster, it just got bigger" because one lake monster is more than enough for him.
Bobby also thinks there's only one lake monster. Raz is immensely upset at accidentally agreeing with him.
Dion: YOU RAN AWAY?
Raz: Yeah, like you!
Dion: [INSTANT K.O.]
Raz specifically reuniting with Dion after the vision of Dogen's brain getting stolen... by a dentist.... Dion are those braces where did you get braces?!
Dion: don't worry about that. you still haven't explained what you're doing here. stop looking at my teeth!
so uh yeah. I think I like keeping Dion with the Aquatos and dissecting how the transformation affects all of them more. But throwing him into Lake Oblongata is certainly very fun!
Villain au// google play icarus by the crane wives
I’ve been feeling a bit slumped with art lately so I defaulted back to a more painterly style lol. I’m probably not going to finish the first but I thought his face was worth sharing
