Tell me your 5 favorite lines that you have written
I. Couldn't pick lines. So chunks? And more than five... orz
The Lindworm's Lullaby
“Tell me about your little one,” says Lecter anyway, and Will sighs. If the good doctor is so determined…
“Lenore,” says Will. She whom the angels call - as she fusses back. “Lenore Graham. She’s six months old, and looks like the cross between a princess, a pixie, and a dumpling. I had her in March.”
Commencer par La Faim
Beverly falls in step with him, leaving the rest of the food in her bag. “I know, right? Good thing too - the morgue’s all corpses and fungi at the moment, which has pretty much put us all off everything Italian until at least next week, so we’re all temporarily embracing anti-mushroom pescetarianism.”
Swallowing, Will squints at his burrito. Black beans. Seasoned rice. Cheese. Onions. Shredded lettuce. Sauce. “This doesn’t contain any fish though?”
“Yeah, Jimmy’s been squeamish about the cafeteria seafood ever since a tuna sandwich from there gave him the runs.”
Fair enough: Will usually doesn’t touch the fish options in the cafeteria either, although his avoidance is based on the fact he has plenty of - fresher - fish at home that he had caught himself. But if the cafeteria food made Jimmy ill…
“You’re really not convincing me I shouldn’t’ve bought my own lunch.”
“Too late, you started eating the bribe,” Beverly says ruthlessly, and snorts when Will only sighs pointedly down at his burrito. It’s ruined now. Sort of. Food is food, but now it’s food associated with Jimmy Price’s diarrhoea. “Oh, shut up and eat your fibre.”
---
“There are more species of fungi, bacteria and protozoa in a single scoop of soil than there are species of plants and vertebrate animals in the whole of North America. And yet, animals are more closely related to fungi than any other kingdom - more than 600 million years ago we shared a common ancestry. The branch of fungi that eventually led to animals evolved to capture nutrients by surrounding their food with cellular sacs: essentially primitive stomachs.”
“We had stomachs before we had souls.” Abigail’s gentians have been shifted to the windowsill, the older bouquet moved to give way to the new. Will reaches out thoughtlessly, brushing light fingertips over bruised, tired petals. “Says something.”
“Hunger is and always has been a primary drive throughout nature.”
“And maybe fungi developed a more... efficient means of dealing with it than we have as a species.” Will catches a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye and glances over - Lecter, coming over to join Will at the window, step by openly curious step. “You said it yourself: fungi predates us, and it’ll probably survive us as well, devouring that which kills us and feeding that which forgets us.”
“Rising from the rot,” Lecter muses, “consumed by that which will also one day rot.”
“An ancient cycle of growth and decay,” Will says, and drops his eyes to the other man’s collar when Lecter looks at him directly.
[...]
“Fungi are the grand recyclers of our planet,” Lecter says, hands tucked almost casually into his trouser pockets like he’d pry open Will’s skull with his nails if his hands aren’t otherwise occupied, “the interface organisms between life and death.”
Transgressive in Will’s mind’s eye, three bodies intertwined in the greater body of the woods, neither fully flesh nor fungi. He frowns, and Lecter takes it as prompt to go on.
“Mushrooms, as you asked about them, are merely the visible above-ground protrusions of sometimes vast underground networks of mycelium. They’re quite remarkable: mycelial nets have been shown to share the same architecture as that of astrocytic brain cells, both networks creating neurological pathways for distributing information as efficiently as possible.”
Will parses that. And then drops his hand from the gentians. “...Mushrooms are sentient.”
“Mycelial networks are arguably sentient. Of which mushrooms are a minuscule but visible part.” Lecter’s voice turns thoughtful. “An intricate web of connections.”
---
Lecter manages to condense so much judgemental distaste for the peanut butter cup melting onto Will’s lips in one look, he might as well package up the solid product and sell it as a flavour of its own.
Will very pointedly shoves the rest of the candy into the hollow of his cheek before acknowledging the other man. “Dr. Lecter.”
“Is that your lunch?” asks Lecter, continuing to radiate the disapproval of genteel schoolmarms everywhere: don't talk with your mouth full.
“I have three more in my bag,” says Will, who had been planning to supplement the peanut butter cups with a hot sandwich from the cafeteria but now feels almost committed to seeing if he can survive the rest of the working day fuelled only with coffee, filched Halloween candy, and spite. “Along with two giant sour gummy worms and a packet of candy corn.”
“Truly,” Lecter says dryly, “a balanced meal.”
---
Price sets down his fork to carefully unwrap the poor thing. The doughnut isn’t terrible appetising after the many hands it has passed through to arrive in Price’s; it’s been battered and half-flattened by careless fingers and thumbs, and a great deal of the neon orange frosting that had been decorating the top of it has now stuck to the purple tissue that should have protected it.
“You don’t want it?” Price asks - somehow without the slightest trace of sarcasm.
Will grimaces. “Alpha-gift,” he explains.
“Ahhh,” says Price with all the sympathetic understanding of a fellow omega, and then immediately tears off a chunk of the doughnut to pop into his mouth. Guilt-free. “Who’s the unlucky suitor?”
“Professor Ericson -”
“And you’ve given it away?” Beverly announces herself by slamming her lunch tray down beside Will’s mostly-forgotten baked potato, looking down at Will semi-reproachfully. Of course she knows Will’s feelings about Ericson, but she can’t help the little instinctive flash of hurt she must feel as an alpha watching an omega discard their gift. “He’ll’ve put his feelings in that.”
“I wasn’t encouraging him by eating it,” Will tells her, and Beverly huffs at him as she sits down.
“You hear that?” Zeller asks Price, hot on Beverly’s heels. (Will idly wonders what must’ve held them up in the lunch queue.) “You’re eating a man’s feelings.”
Price, already halfway through the doughnut, doesn’t look at all bothered. “You want some?”
Zeller puts his tray down beside Price’s and tears off a piece of the doughnut to chew himself. “...His feelings taste like artificial colours and preservatives.”
---
“You look put-out, doctor,” Will teases him, touching his fingers to the crease of Hannibal’s elbow for a moment to guide Hannibal around a fallen log as they turn back towards the house. “Did you get something nasty on your shiny boots?”
“Strangely enough, I do not recall a warning about there being something nasty out here to step in,” Hannibal sallies back, taking the opportunity to step closer to Will and push Winston out just in front of the two of them. The dog gives him a dirty look, but Hannibal ignores him and turns his next question to a murmur close by the shell of Will’s ear. “Was I led out here under false pretences?”
Will, delightfully, shivers, and tries to mask it by lifting his hand to that same ear, leaning away from Hannibal to tuck his hair back behind it. “I would think someone who is at least reasonably intelligent should already know that woods, in general, tend to contain many nasty things, and so, when planning to go for a trek in them, should be prepared accordingly.”
“Putting aside the implicit remark about my reasonable intelligence -” Hannibal says, smiling when Will begins to laugh beside him, “I would remind you that physical, mental, and emotional preparedness are all separate considerations. An individual may be fully prepared in advance for anything the elements may physically throw at him, but only understand the full mental and emotional ramifications after the fact.”
The white fangs of Will’s grin flash in the dark. “You need to be prepared emotionally to get coyote shit on your boots?”
“If I were actually attached to this pair, I might never recover.”
---
Cold, creamy blue sludge slides against Hannibal’s tongue, heavy with cheap syrup, processed sprinkles and cream. Lemon-raspberry-marshmallow sweet and tart.
“...It tastes like the Lucky Charms leprechaun just died in my mouth.”
Abigail chokes whilst swallowing her milkshake.
---
“No rest for the wicked,” Price sighs as yet another grim-faced technician trundles down the Pagoda stairs and past them to convene outside, and God, if that isn’t the motto of the day. “But better this weekend than next, I suppose. I’ve got a two-day meet-up with the family.”
Zeller eyes him dubiously. “You think the Chesapeake Ripper wants to keep his schedule free for the Black Friday sales?”
“If it’s the Ripper,” says Will.
[...]
“It’s the Ripper,” Zeller insists, just as Price chimes in with:
“What, you don’t think serial killers like discounts? Who doesn’t like a bargain?”
---
“Speechless as well as breathless,” Will says with a frown. His mouth still tastes sour from vomit, even after sipping some water and grabbing some mints from the nearest vending machine. “But the heart is unaffected?”
“Wholly intact and in place,” says Zeller. “Seems like the Ripper doesn’t go for love.”
“Struck, but not in the heart. Huh.” Price ponders for a moment. “Maybe it’s just a puppy crush?”
Will’s frown deepens. “If the Ripper wanted to show us he had a crush, he’d’ve literally filled this man’s stomach with butterflies. No, this is a more ardent declaration than that.”
“You’re a picky date, Graham,” Beverly says with a sigh. “Psychopaths aren’t renowned for their emotional intelligence. Maybe this is a case of delayed realisation.”
“Maybe the Ripper’s aromantic,” Price says, and shrugs when the rest of them turn to look at him. “I’m just putting it out there.”
[...]
Beverly tilts her head. “Really don’t think the general ace community would appreciate adding the Chesapeake Ripper to their ranks, but I’m not sure if that idea is better or worse than picturing the Ripper as a lovelorn dumbass with issues of romantic self-understanding.”
“I, for one, am deeply comforted by the thought that the Chesapeake Ripper’s love-life sucks more than mine,” says Zeller.
“Not trying to woo people with corpses probably helps,” Price chips in.
Will moves away from the body. “In some cultures and during some periods of history, it was a perfectly valid - and encouraged - courting technique. What’s a better trophy than the body of your vanquished opponent?”
“Can’t say a corpse would win my approval,” Price sniffs. “What’s wrong with a bottle of tequila and a few tubs of Ben & Jerrys?”
“Half Baked?” Zeller asks.
“Phish Food, please.”
---
Hannibal - surprisingly - helps, sitting in a chair at Will’s side and folding Will’s hand closest to him between both of his own. His thumb running soothingly back and forth over the slight swell of Will’s scent gland. “You’d be surprised at the sheer range of items I was called upon to remove from the rectal passages of patients in my days as a surgeon.”
Will’s head thumps back hard onto the bed behind him, and he turns his incredulous eyes on Hannibal.
“Cucumbers were quite a popular choice,” Hannibal blithely continues, completely ignoring Will’s nails digging pointedly into the back of his hand, “but the top 10 list of rectal foreign bodies I was called upon to remove, outside of broken sexual aids, also included shampoo bottles, bottles of alcohol, carved root vegetables, beaded necklaces and barbie dolls.”
“We had a gentleman in here not too long back who’d shoved three baseballs up there,” Dominic says, casual as he pleases. (This is what Will gets for actually introducing Hannibal as ‘the father’ for this ultrasound rather than just ‘the support’.) “It was worse than the one time my eldest shoved his favourite Batman lego figure up his nose. I don’t envy his surgeon.”
“The worst I had of the kind on my table was a young artist who had poured Plaster of Paris up her rectum,” Hannibal says, simply squeezing back on Will’s grip on his hand at Will’s muttered oh my God. “She wanted a mould of her colon, but only succeeded in glueing her sphincter - and the rest of her lower passage - shut.”
“This is supposed to be a touching moment,” Will says - perhaps a little bit louder than necessary - when it looks like Dominic is about to continue the disturbingly focused surgical conversation.
The technologist clicking away on the computer beside them barely manages to mask his laugh with a cough, smile hid against his raised arm.
Hannibal lowers his face to Will’s shoulder - where Will can feel the nuisance grinning against his arm. “My apologies, Will. It seemed as though you would appreciate a distraction.”
---
“In my defence,” Beverly says, looking up from where she is blatantly googling encephalitis on her phone so she can frown melodramatically at, first, the dog plushie with a bandaged head that she had brought Will as a get well soon gift and, second, Will’s own head - which is very much bandage-free -, “you just said ‘head injury’ on the phone.”
“Pretty sure I said that I had a problem in my brain,” says Will, absently rubbing one of the plushie’s (extremely) soft floppy ears between forefinger and thumb as he watches Beverly tap through to wikipedia, her chair pulled up beside his hospital bed. God, Will misses his dogs.
“Yeah, but you’re known for being self-deprecating and shitheads are always saying you have a problem in the brain due to Lounds and her readers,” Beverly points out - reasonably, annoyingly enough. “When have I ever taken that seriously?”
“I’m touched by your support,” Will says - mostly - without sarcasm. It feels good to have someone in his corner. It feels good to see a familiar friendly face when he’s stuck in hospital, the long hours stretching out before him otherwise fairly bleak. “And the dog.”
“He has your eyes,” Beverly says, cheerfully ignoring the burst capillaries in Will’s own whites from excess vomiting to nod at the machine-embroidered big blue eyes get well soon puppy is sporting. “Definitely no chance of your skull getting sawn open for a matching bandage?”
“Don’t think that’s in the official autoimmune encephalitis treatment plan, sorry.”
Beverly just snorts, still shamelessly browsing wikipedia for information on Will’s condition. In front of him. “...Only you could develop encephalitis just to wriggle out of a social invite. Good ol’ migraines too plebeian for you, Graham? Even your encephalopathies are rarefied. They only described your version of the disease in 2007.”
“As you can see,” Will says dryly, with a gesture down the length of himself, cannula, hospital bed and machines around him all, “I am deeply committed to being on-trend.”
---
“Basics first then,” says Abigail, resigning herself to her fate. “Got it. Slicing, dicing…”
“Washing up,” adds Hannibal - solely to see the expression that immediately slides across his companion’s face: disgusted teenager. “You will, I’m sure, be glad to know that I have a dishwasher to assist with most of that task.”
“‘Most of that task’?” Abigail inquires - and then answers herself before Hannibal can. “Of course you’ve got a bunch of stuff that’s super old or delicate or isn’t dishwasher-safe. Who needs fancy flourishes when you can plate dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets on Count Dracula’s own dishware?”
About to pick up a potato of his own to join Abigail in peeling, Hannibal pauses. “...I’m sorry to disappoint you, but none of my china is Translyvanian.”
“He probably imported.”
“...A valid supposition,” Hannibal concedes, bending his head to his own task with a knife. “I shall be sure to examine my dishware for any vampiric provenance. The dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, however, are still out of the question.”
[REDACTED - if you recognise the fic, shhh]
"Do you take your coffee with arsenic or without?"
[Vampire/Werewolf Universe]
"You just... slept through the British Empire? Two World Wars? The atomic bomb?"
"You seem to believe these are things a person would wish to be awake for?"
---
"Please put the clothes on that I brought you."
"I see no reason."
"Common courtesy?" When the plea seemed to fall on deaf ears - "I will sit here and make unflattering comments about your mummified dick until you oblige me."
---
"I have loved others, I think. But, for so long, did not allow myself to be in love. Love brings pain." --- "Love always means loss eventually, and I had had too much of that already."
"And Arthur changed your mind?""
"My mind. My heart. --- "You think I was happy about it either? I told you I love him, but, ai… you have met him."
25. “I don’t care that you’re hanging up lights, get off the roof!”
With the UK Brothers if that’s alright with you
Requested by @needcake
Dylan looked up at Andrew, precariously standing on the icy roof, holding a string of fairylights. He pinched his nose, restraining himself from strangling Arthur and Sean, who were currently keeled over on the ground laughing like a pair of asses.
“Andy–”
“I’ll be down soon,” Andrew said, almost slipping, managing to grip the ladder at the last minute, “Just need to put the lights up.”
Dylan felt like he was going insane.
“I don’t care that you’re hanging up lights, get off the roof! There’s ice up there, you moron.”
Beside him, he could see Arthur and Sean were now curled up on the floor together, still laughing hysterically and clutching their sides, and Dylan was tempted to let the lot of them freeze and finally have some peace and quiet.
Ok ok you can't just leave it at that! Hahaha why didn't you like Bly Manor?
Oh Cake 😔 it's so sad
For one, for /me/, the accents are terrible. They're supposed to be English but they're just n o t and it's so grating. It's nitpicky, I know, but some of them are SO bad that I couldn't take the characters seriously and I was thrown back to reality, which made it impossible connect to the storyline
Same for the sets- again I'm aware this is VERY nitpicky but the house looked nothing like an authentic old English manor. It looked like a cobbled together American set of several different eras of history and fantasy which again made it hard for me to take seriously and broke all immersion. It felt very fake to watch and listen to, and it was hard to ignore these and focus on the story when there were so many things wrong and they were so /obvious/
Those two problems though I can see not being an issue for non-British audiences and I think they could be easy to overlook/ not care about
My other big grievance however was the story itself. It was so loose and wasn't very neatly tied together, but mainly I found it dull orz. So dull I don't remember much, other than me and my friend lamenting it as we watched.
I think that, on its own, it's probably not that bad for a ghost story! But compared to The Haunting of Hill House which came before, and /especially/ as all the actors were the same, the difference in quality was jarring. Hill House was so good, so well acted and written and designed that I had huge expectations and hope for Bly Manor. The actors were perfectly cast for Hill House, perfectly in their element, and in different roles, with different dynamics amongst them, I felt as though it was a lesser performance. They didn't quite fit.
Basically, high expectations from the quality for Hill House combined with Bly Manor being about an English experience made by an inaccurate American perspective, made it a sad experience for me 🥲
THATS A TOUGHY.... pre ottoman turkiye and the various turkish groups running around always gives me a big headache when i try to think abt it too hard kjdkfdkskl
But I think at the very least, back in those days he was a kiddo with a lot to prove, and spent a lot of time kicking it with Iran/Persia, totally trying not to fanboy too hard over everything persian culture and then being totally aghast and #betrayed when Iran left the Seljuk Empire for the Khwarazmian Empire )-)o
I am here to ask you for 5 hcs on France, but at least one needs to be painfully human
Thank you 🌻
oop ok its an ask about my trash baby strap in
1.
A lot of nations grow up without parents or parental figures, but I think Francis is one of those nations who truly grew up without a family. Yeah, he called Rome "Father" and did his best to please, but even at that young age he was acutely aware of Rome's status as an empire and his own place in the household, and unlike Spain or England he had no older sibling. As I result I think Francis was and to some extent is still bone-achingly, soul-crushingly lonely at his very core. Despite often being surrounded by people who, truthfully or untruthfully, claim they love him, he often feels like he's observing their lives through a window or the lens of a camera. This feeds into his own conception of himself as an "inhuman" being a little, but its really just a coping mechanism to deal with the fact that he feels they cannot alleviate his loneliness. Like, if he can't be human and have human families and human connections even though he's charming and lovely and whatnot, that must be because he's a nation, and doomed forever to witness but not be, and definitely not because he's actually an extremely private and rather distrustful person who's had a pretty fuckin traumatic life. No, Francis doesn't have trauma -- he just has learning experiences.
2.
I mean this man is proud. Like obviously that's a French stereotype, but it's honestly also really true historical in a lot of ways, I feel. A tragic example is Verdun, where the French literally sacrificed over 160000 men just to be able to say that they didn't lose. A less tragic example is after WWII, de Gaulle was so butthurt about being treated like a second rate power that when Britain started this postwar economic community with the Nordics that might have become something similar to the EU, he basically threw a tantrum and bullied the rest of the continent into not joining even though it would have solved a lot of France's economic problems. And he rage quit NATO once, too. Basically, Francis is someone who places a lot -- a lot -- of emphasis on one's appearance, not just in terms of beauty but also dignity, composure and eloquence. To speak well, dress well, host well -- these are all fundamentals for self-respect, not just respect for others. A man's reputation is truly everything.
3.
He prefers not to resort to violent means himself (though he has no problem waging wars from a distance) but when he is on the front lines -- he is no coward. He's still not prone to taking wild risks (unlike England, who will sometimes go in on incredibly crazy schemes if he thinks the payoff is worth it), but psychologically he doesn't crack. It'll take a lot of wheedling and ordering and more wheedling to get him in a grimy ass field uniform and actually in the dirt, but once he's there that man can take a pounding and still smack on a helmet, tighten his rifle trap and march on. In fact the French generals, especially during the World Wars, were often known for their no-nonsense attitudes and strict discipline -- the French army did not take kindly to those who fell out of line or sullied their name, as the military was still (in theory, anyways) the guardian and living symbol of France's glory, it's very raison d'être.
(incidentally that's why it was so politically traumatic that the French were so quickly defeated in 1939 -- no one, not even the English, imagined France could be brought low so fast)
4.
Not sure if this counts as an hc but this man has so. much. attitude. And he can dish it in a way that's both utterly infuriating and completely hilarious to the point of being slightly awe-inspiring. Like, once (true story) during the African campaign of WWII, the Americans had to seize a naval port held by Vichy forces (I forget which). The Vichy French soldiers fought back and managed to sink an American ship before capitulating. Afterwards, the French pulled the ships remains back up so the port could be used and then, with what the historian Rick Atkinson called "breathtaking cheek", billed the Allies for the cost.
5.
To finish on a slightly more wholesome note, I truly believe Francis can be so incredibly warm, genuine, and loving. But he hasn't heard that enough in his life, because the people that surrounded him from birth were always to some extent guarding against him. He's capable of kindness, but no one expected it from him, so with time he didn't even know he could expect it of himself. Nowadays he's coming to terms with the fact (thanks in no small part to the help of Arthur) that not everything he does is politically-motivated -- that if he was truly "inhuman", he wouldn't do stupid shit like write letters to Gilbert even after he could no longer read them, wouldn't check in on Matthew even after he was no longer his colony, wouldn't hold out hope for love from someone who proclaimed to hate him for two thousand years.
"Nyo engport enemies to lover spy au set in ww2 Lisbon"
OWL
😳😳😳😳😳😳
Your miND 💯💥❤❤💔💘💥💯💢❤
I want the engport fandom to trust me & to have more content providers, this ends up in me just posting whatever my brain decides to haunt me with that day so I'm glad you liked it!! (*꒦ິ꒳꒦ີ)
