If we're talking about sadnesses, can I just say I always thought that Mal du pays wouldn't ACTUALLY just look like Siffrin but dark if it got to manifest fully outside? I always figured they were like that because they were still getting formed/In Siffrin's head....
There's some humanoid sadnesses in game, but even they have something funky going on, so I always thought it was a bit of a pity to just leave mdp unchanged design wise... Not to say people are wrong to do that tho!
I felt like it was especially ominous personally!! Because its just. Its just siffrin. Imagine how goddamn terrifying it would be to roll up on this thing like “hey siffrin” and it just slow turns and has that spiral eye.
Like the analog horror potential for THIS ONE SPECIFICALLY is also high.
Ive also seen interpretations where the closer to the form of the person that made it, the more intense and concentrated of a negative emotion it represents, which would make sense considering sif’s timeloop induced hell stew of self loathing and isolationism.
And it seems. Way more focused in its directive than any of the other sadnesses we see as well, which i think is due to the sheer AMOUNT of that bad feeling that was fed into it.
But seeing it manifest differently could also be really fun!! I dont know what it would look like though, I feel like it’s kinda perfect the way it is.
Also so scary to see it following behind the party when they were taking him up to Euphrasie.
At this rate I might have to write my own lil horror one shot of this fucker showing up lmao
Phillip Graves x Reader | political marriage, Graves is down bad and buys an engagement ring, reader gets shy about her personality being taken into account to choose said ring, Graves' older brother continues to be an asshole | word count: 2,033
Phil’s always been smart, so it’s never really been a problem to see why Pete’s his father’s favorite. He’s the eldest, salt of the earth rancher following in daddy’s footsteps, obeying the old man to the letter of the law. While Phillip himself, well, he’s been a fighter his whole life.
School was a struggle, since he's never liked being told what to do, but he was just too damn efficient at acing his tests for any teacher to do shit about his attitude. They did call home to complain, though; got his dad good and fired up for when Phil made it to the house. Where he found himself doing everyone's chores for months on end before he backed down. Which is why, he figures, the old man was actually real pleased when he enlisted and got his ass into West Point.
Phillip Graves Sr. probably thought the military would straighten out his problematic namesake son, and maybe it would’ve, if Phil hadn’t run into the same problem, made even worse by a much stricter hierarchical structure. Thing is, he’s smart, he can pinpoint better ways to do shit, if you let him look at it long enough, and it gets on his last fucking nerve when people don’t even try to listen to what he has to say.
So he waited his contract out, poaching as many worthwhile guys as he could along the way, set his own private army up; and ended up exactly where he promised himself he never would: folding to his father's designs.
Except, it doesn’t fucking feel like it.
Here, heat drunk and mostly horizontal, lounging on a recliner as the senator’s girl swims laps from the dock to the property’s edge, he feels unburdened.
It’s nice, being this relaxed with someone he thought he was going to fight with for the rest of his life, or at least the first couple years. The way Pete did so famously with his oil heiress that even Phil overheard them have a go at it during one holiday or another, before she resigned to the particular blend of manipulation and pettiness his mother is so fond of.
No, Phil’s never had a fight in the few months he’s been traipsing around through weekly breakfast dates, being fed waffle bites and smoke tasting kisses.
He tells himself that it’s because neither of them care enough for it, but truth be told he just likes this girl who’ll gladly ride him at ten in the morning when he shows to pick her up, so he can play footsie at the restaurant table knowing how she sounds when she comes around him.
Likes her to the point of requesting a safe link to call her from half the world away, probably making a weird face about it, since more than one shadow commented on it, ribbing him about it being ‘suspicious’. And that’s after he swore Vance to secrecy for hearing her answer with a surprised chuckle and sleep in her voice.
So now, he’s in town for Pete’s birthday with the folks, senator’s girl in tow, and the engagement ring he finally settled on burns a hole in the back of his mind. Nothing in his heart but the rabid, acidic satisfaction of doing what he can to ruin his brother’s event. He’s quite proud of it, too. Having spent months looking for a ring that encompassed all those things he’s come to associate with his soon to be wife —the glint of the thin chain she always wears, the lines of her clothes over her body; being warm and naked under her, chasing shapes across the overcast morning sky that looked endless from the giant windows of her apartment in the city.
“Your mother hates me”
Phil isn’t exactly expecting her, so he almost flinches when she drags herself out of the water, reaching to brush wet fingertips against the overheated skin of his arm. And since he doesn’t expect it, he can’t think before reacting. The shock of temperature and the instinctual violent response he’s trained in himself have him pulling her down over his thighs in a second.
She laughs high at being suddenly straddling his torso, crushed against his chest; it makes him pause long enough to look at her, sun kissed and shining water droplets hanging off her lashes.
“If she liked you, I wouldn’t.”
Phil can’t help but smile at how she isn’t afraid of him, even now; can’t stop the way his cock hardens under the pressure of her hips. But the impulse of brutality is still there, motion and strength, flesh on flesh. So it’s a rough, clumsy thing to get his mouth on her, clacking teeth and bruising fingers on the back of her neck.
Her gasp tastes of the Bellini she’d been sipping before her swim. And her hands come up around him for purchase, sliding delightful and drenched and cool against his flanks. Until she finds the curve of his ass and tugs with the same sort of fierce compulsion he’s lost to.
It jolts him enough to pull away, panting like a fucking dog against her. She’s out of breath too, but chuckles again, peach sweet, and she doesn’t let him go, just nudges her body a little further into his half chub. Her flushed face fills Phil’s chest with the sort of pride he feels for his shadows; amused and startled at the fucking stones on her.
“Marry me.”
It comes out of him as a demand, with one palm steady over her thigh and the other dipping into the chill of the cooler for the tiny square box he stashed in there just in case.
“I thought that was a given.”
“Not until I’ve given you a ring,”
“You’re going to propose to me at your brother’s birthday dinner?” the look in her eyes is sweet fucking poison, shines like there’s nothing she’d rather do with her night but cause a good bit of chaos.
“No,” Phil flips the lid open and offers the ring to hopefully soothe the sting of disappointment that furrows her brow, “no one’s gonna yell at you during your proposal. But we’re gonna make damn sure everyone sees it tonight.”
He expects her to laugh, go along with it, because he’s used to having her on his side by now, in a way that suddenly seems incredibly dangerous. Hell, he’ll even take her complaining, but she just stares down at the ring in his palm in complete silence, expression unreadable.
“You don’t like it? Want it bigger?”
That gets him a giggle, higher pitched than anything he’s heard from her, even in bed. So he leans into the innuendo, even waggles his eyebrows, dumbstruck at how much he wants her to like this stupid thing. She has to like it, Phil’s not gonna have her wear something of his, that marks her as his, and not be fucking proud of it.
“I love it,” she says, in the end, looking like she can’t fully put into words whatever’s going on in her head, “it’s mine.”
“Damn right it is, baby.”
She has the gall to come off shy —when he slips the ring on and it fits as right as he knows it would—, sitting over his cock in her little bathing suit, kissing him like she means to make them late to this damn dinner.
“Your mom’s really gonna hate me now.”
“And why would that be?”
The playfulness finds its way back to her smile, squeezing relief into his bones until he’s pretty much hanging off the lounge. She follows, pressing her body onto his, tilted sideways so her body blocks the view from the lake as she gropes him over his shorts. And Phil needs this conversation to move away from his mom, expeditiously.
“‘Cause you’re her favorite and she doesn’t want you to be anyone else’s”
“Yeah, well, too fucking bad.” And he’s gonna let go for now that she doesn’t clarify if she means he’s now her favorite or just hers, which in a way are one and the same with that goddamn pleased cat look she keeps giving him. “Now, you’re gonna stop talking about my mom, you’re gonna get this ass in the house and I’m gonna bend my wife-to-be over the first surface I find. How’s that sound?”
“Like we’re gonna be late, husband-to-be.”
…
It’s been a hell of a long time since Phil’s had a family event like this. Generally he comes in, shotguns a drink or two, plays with the kids for an hour and dips with a bag of leftovers and the annoying opening notes of a headache. And he honestly thinks he could hardly be blamed, when the conversation revolved around either cows or school districts, or Marnie’s —Pete’s pretty blonde wife— friend’s struggles to express milk, of all fucking things.
Occasions at his folks’ saw him show up already tense, looking for his way out even before he made it in the house.
Well not today. Today Phil’s excited.
He feels it in every muscle, bubbling as laughter in his chest, easing his joints with the residual afterglow. So he breezes past the birthday boy, and the nephews and Mama Graves, keeping his senator’s girl tucked to his side out of a compulsion that’s borderline need.
She laughs under her breath at the ugly look his mother gives her, she pours his drinks and perches on the armrest of his single seater for cake slices in the den, like she did the first time, close enough to smell his aftershave on her skin. Therefore, Phil has no choice but to pull her all the way into his lap, abandoning his plate so he can play with her free hand. And he presses a deliberate kiss to the diamond on her finger just to see the glint in her eyes when he shit-stirs on purpose.
Her smile is the sharp one he likes the most, for a second that feels stretched huge like sugar syrup, before the gesture sends his father roaring into a mess of congratulations. Shouting and clapping shoulders, the old man rushes out for the champagne from the cellar; while Mama Graves follows close, most likely to slam a couple cabinets with the excuse of breaking the good glasses out.
“You know he’s only marrying you so dad won’t cut him off the inheritance, right?”
Pete’s voice rises, mocking, in the silence that’s left, because of course it is. Pete isn’t dumb either, he can pretend to behave when he’s got their parents eyes on him, but he has no compunction being a fucking asshole when it’s just someone he considers beneath him in the room.
It’s got Phillip’s skin itching in a way that’s also quite nostalgic. Their last physical altercation’s been a few years in the past, too, and he’s got a whole host of new tricks to keep Pete from thinking he can ever talk to his girl like that again. But she shifts, while he’s still considering it; chuckles into the skin of Phil’s neck, leaning so far back that she’s looking down her nose at the rest of the room.
“So?”
She doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t justify a goddamn thing. She simply stares at Pete as if she’s waiting for him to explain why he thinks he has any right to question her decisions.
The question floors him, Phil can see it in real time, how there’s no possible answer for it that doesn’t involve admitting that the effort to humiliate her failed so badly, that Pete’s probably gonna be resenting it for months to come.
She waits a minute for a response and then giggles when it doesn’t come, gloats so deliciously that Phillip has to cling to her; has to kiss her. He has to sit there and pretend to pay attention to his parents when they come back, because against all the odds he ever thought he was going to have to deal with, he can’t wait to call this girl his wife. He can’t wait to make sure no other man ever gets her in his ranks.
Thanks for the tag @felixantares 💜 🤍 🖤
Relationship status - single. Still passively hoping someone will marry me for health insurance one of these days
Favourite colour - depends on my mood, but dark army green, purple, or grey are usually top three
Favourite food - if someone else is making it I will literally never turn down red curry + thai roti
Song stuck in your head - I Don't Love You by MCR
Last thing you googled - uhhh “beta blockers” to confirm that they’d cause more issues than they’d solve
Time - 11:11! make a wish (did I write this at work and then wait to post until I got home? Yes. editing on mobile sucks)
Dream trip - I’d love to do an extended Europe trip, either backpacking or, more realistically, rent an apartment somewhere and do weekend trips because I do not have backpacking stamina
Last book/fic you read - book was still Gideon the Ninth despite being ages ago I still have hope to get to book two. Eventually. last fic has been mostly WIPs— I'm reading along with HPFC Power the Dark Lord Knows Not by @fantismal and Jormandugr, and keeping up with what's past is prologue by quiettewandering/ @wanderingdream, and snippets from seattle by @thesameoldstreets (which is... technically not a fic? but also not really a book? it's OF and I've been screaming about it all week)
Last book you enjoyed - see above! I very rarely finish a book I’m not enjoying
Last book you hated - nothing I’ve finished recently, but I do occasionally grab ebook samples of uh, questionable romance novels just for fun. Sometimes they’re very good. Sometimes they’re very very bad.
Favourite thing to cook/bake - i love baking! I love tinkering with new recipes to make them better/allergy safe/vegan etc. Not sure I could pick just one, but I have very good vegan fudge, soft pretzel, and pie crust recipes (pie > cake, always)
Favourite craft to do in your free time - ooh a bunch! Knitting or bujo, but also I own a Cricut and a lot of fancy pens because that's half the fun
Most niche dislikes - I’ve been labelled a very weird picky eater, even without taking the allergies into consideration. I can’t stand spinach or eggplant, truffles (the mushroom), and when I could eat them, bacon and most non-mozzarella cheeses. I also only eat peas frozen or in peapods, or frozen blueberries (sorry this turned into just food lol)
Opinion on circuses - I had a weird experience with an off duty clown a while ago that’s put me off of them a bit, but in general my opinion is it’s a very specific performance art, which I appreciate but also it’s not really my thing.
Do you have a sense of direction and if not what’s the worst way you’ve gotten lost? - yes and no. if I’m actively paying attention, I can usually keep myself decently oriented, but it absolutely takes effort and intent. But also I can look up and realize I haven’t been paying any attention to how I got somewhere and have no idea how to get back 😅
Tagging: uhhh probably all people who have done it already but I don't care I'm gonna make ask you nicely to do it again anyway. @mkaugust @everythingbutcoldfire @lunapwrites @broomsticks @nanneramma
So I’ve seen some people get mad that the team doesn’t respect Sara as captain because they don’t listen and go behind her back. Look guys, they did the same thing when Rip was captain. It’s nothing personal they’re just disobedience children with the attention span of a nat.
