art blog(derogatory)
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Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
roma★
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Today's Document
shark vs the universe
dirt enthusiast
styofa doing anything
Claire Keane
Sade Olutola
JVL
Andulka
@theartofmadeline
we're not kids anymore.
⁂
Stranger Things
i don't do bad sauce passes
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wallacepolsom
seen from United States
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seen from Netherlands
seen from Malaysia
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seen from Finland
seen from Australia
seen from Germany
seen from Canada
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@theacidvats
my ideal video game would be survival horror that slowly turns into a dating sim because the monsters think im cute
i am a single father and my daughter is going through that demon summoning phase but shes really successful with it and all of these hellish monsters keep showing up in our small rural village, however i am very cute and the monsters all want to kiss me
Haha this is too real
n’zoth: i will consume the very essence of your being
otis: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
n’zoth: you know what-
i didn’t put too much effort into this but i still apologize for it
That graphic novel I really want to finish already, about a Lovecraftian apocalypse happening as two people become bffs b/c their spouses leave them for each other/to become eldritch cultists.
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“I can see her lyin’ back in her satin dress In a room where ya do what ya don’t confess Sundown you better take care If I find you been creepin’ ‘round my back stairs…”
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Sundown
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“He’s cute, cuter than I expected. Me? I’m not always a party, I know. I know it’s low self esteem gnawing on my nerves, tellling me it’s no wonder someone would leave me. I’m all right looking, classic features under pale skin, dark eyes, dark hair, generally slender. But I’m a complicated bitch and always have been and part of me has always known it must show on my classic-white-girl-features face…that I think too much. That I’ll probably get into it with your dumbass buddy at a party.”
*Jolene plays in the background of a fucking shootout*
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This is fucking awesome!
Family
Can I tear him to pieces
“Istari,” For the first time in nearly fifteen years, Arderis thinks that he’d cry, could his eyes do so much. The girl is bright, smiling, taking his bony claw in her hands, looking so like her mother, her aunt.
Can I tear him to pieces
“He died when Deathwing fell upon Stormwind,” She tells him, gently, shaking her head, “Imogen saw him into death. Dora….she…” The girl falters, looking away, into the moss-laden trees. “…She accepted him, in the end.”
Can I tear him to pieces
Dora showing up at his door with Mo, riddled with undeath, pleading with her uncle Mal what to do, how to wake her, how to make her know them
“No!” She laughs, sipping his dry, old tea politely, “No, Vizriel is very good to us. Nothing like…” She draws in a deep breath, “…That’s. It says a lot about father, aye?”
Can I tear him to pieces
Dora bending over to give Mo her potions, the low back of her dress slipping, the raised scars visible and angry and oh gods little Izzy is still stuck in that house but he’s an undead wretch who could never enter Theramore and drag her out and
“I promise, I’ll visit again next month,” Izzy smiles, so bright, so happy to have that much more family back, “I’ll bring Bit! And maybe mum, you know though, she’s still….still getting used to everything. But if I say your name….oh Uncle Mal, she’s only ever had the BEST memories of you!”
I will tear him to pieces.
He embraces her carefully, kindly, kissing the top of her blonde, live head.
That night, he begins the long trek into the old Plaguelands.
The Paladin isn’t Jameson Adkins, but he looks well enough like him.
The process is the same as ever, the screams filling his humble shack.
The hide fetches a fine price at market.
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I truly envy her skills! Fiancelf writes so well.
Me: Forever bitching about fanart that reduces Drae and Nelf women to simpering 5′6″ blue waifus.
THIS! Stop being afraid of da big ladies. Azeroth has plenty of very tall ladies, and that's okay. It's okay to draw them bigger. Trust me. You can. It's perfectly acceptable to make them the size they are.
Smelly Ones.
((Of all the toons I need to write stuff for, this is the first scrap of something that demanded to be written!))
He’s big, for either an Orc or Human child his age. Thoran is eight years old, and already broad, his hair falling in thick shaggy red curls over sharp green eyes.
'Brightstone eyes,’ Myk thinks, privately, for all he and Wynn had left their father’s surname buried in Gilneas. His eyes were a piercing link between them all, and his tough little lad carried them on, against olive skin and over two small tusks.
Presently, Thoran has his tongue poking out, concentrating hard on the task at hand - arm-wrestling his mother. In a shadowed corner of the tavern in Booty Bay, Myk had managed to catch Gaezull between ports, on her way off to heal her fellow Horde soldiers. Their contact was sparse, meetings always brief…but for the sake of their lad, who was already trying to figure out who, exactly, he was, they tried.
“Yer given me a time of it, boy!” The orc woman grins, allowing herself to be bested. The boy grins wider.
“Aww, yuh let me win,” He scoffs good-naturedly, picking back up a hand-pie from a plate of them, tearing into the pastry and meat happily, “Schtill, better fight ‘en Kern. E’ always cries uncle!“
Gaezull chuckles, drawing a long drink of her ale. Myk just smiles from the shadows, leaning against the wall. "You get along with yer cousins, though? They are good friends?” She asks, casually enough, but with a glance to her son’s father. Myk nods very slightly.
“Oi yah! Bes’ friends!” Thoran tells her earnestly, “Call ourselves our own wolf pack, us an’ some other ‘eadlan’ kids from school.”
“Fits in jest fine there,” Myk notes, sipping his own brandy slowly, “E’s learnin’ 'is numbers an’ letter an’ such at 'is Aunt’s schoolhouse….lotsa scrappy kids.” He smirks. Gaezull nods, approvingly, giving Thoran a nudge.
“One day, you can teach me to read an’ write in Common, maybe.” She suggests. The boy brightens.
“Caw ye!” He bounces, chattering on, and Myk doesn’t imagine the way Gaezull’s throat tightens, at how smart he is, how much he speaks with a Headlander brough. How he makes plans about what they’ll do when she comes back, if he can see her, of course.
Later, when they part, she will to a terrible job of hiding her sadness when Myk casts the slightest of glamours over Thoran. It hides his tusks, and the slight green cast to his skin, leaving him looking like a big ginger human lad with ruddy skin and bright green eyes. But still, so much of her features in his face. “Jus’ fer travelin’,” Myk says, softly.
“Ye, cause folks is dicks!” Thoran pipes up. Gaezull snorts, clutching him close and tight even as Myk scolds him softly. His mum undoes all that good work, and Myk’s glad she’s there to do so.
“Yeh, they’re all big ol’ smelly dicks.”
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some of you haven’t stayed up all night to rp back and forth with a fellow roleplayer in a different time zone and it shows.
Spare Part
((my writing brain is so very gone so very often these days. But I did throw together a bit of a ramble/backstory last night.))
Abityria Lorcain found herself, at 21 years old, so very alone. She’d been an orphan since she was 12, and lived with her best friends and their parents ever since. One day, it came to light (as simply as such things can be explained) that their childhoods had all been dragons correcting a terrible mistake in the timeline, and her adopted family were going to leave her, for their “right” timeline. It didn’t take much convincing to let her go with them…she was a casualty of the event, a ripple in time, and she had no one.
But their “right” timeline was wrong for her as well.
Not for Ben, or Patrick, or their sisters. They seemed to slip right into it, with friends commenting that Angela and Agravaine looked suddenly a bit older. Bit, though…she looked around and saw a whole version of her world that had been lost, including her household.
Her parents were in their 20s and still alive and all her da’s demons were still with him. There was a little girl who was just like her at 5 years old, and had all the same pets she’d had, and…
It was hard. It hurt. It hurt so bad to see them okay, whole, happy, and she immediately warned them not to do The Thing that had killed her own parents. She would ensure that little girl got to keep them, while Bit lost them all over again.
But if she’d stayed, she wouldn’t have Ben…
(As it was, she lost Ben anyway.)
Angela still felt like her second mum, but Angela was also getting her deserved second chance, having left Aggy and rediscovering how fun life could be with her new mate. Agravaine was doing much of the same, and while Bit knew her friends all loved her, they also all went immediately to the four winds. This was their proper world…this was a world with family and friends all set and waiting for them to greet adulthood with good choices and bad ones, adventures and drama long set in motion before.
She was a Secondary. She was shrapnel they carried from That Place, that bubble Aunt Calline had pleaded their case with her flight to allow them. Bit was an afterthought these days, if an afterthought who was still loved.
What does an Afterthought, a Spare Bit, do?
In Bit’s case, they made the most of it.
She made as good of friends with this timeline’s version of her parents as she could. They in turn helped her craft an identity as a cousin of Vizriel’s, young and fresh at a local Abbey. That got her through the rest of her Priest training, and a well-worded recommendation to the Castle Library. And that was where she started to bloom, roots winding under the Stormwind cobbles as she found herself a little flat, a little cat, windowsills filling with cacti, shelves filling with books and tinkering tools.
She made friends at work. She made friends at the forges in the Dwarven District, where she tinkered with inventions and repairs for folks. She even started tinkering little metal versions of the pets she’d had as a little girl, and selling them around the markets. Her tiny counterpart absolutely got one, too. And in the evenings she found herself going out for dinner and drinks at the Tavern with the girls from the library or the Abbey more and more, like real adult friends did.
It took longer for her, and she had less to start with, but. Abby Lorcain began to grow into this world as well, to leave the old one behind her.
((any tears in reality leading to the afterlife would really throw a wrench in all that growth))
@agoodbear @suncrest-legacy
This woman writes amazing lives into being.
They tried. - for Myk
((hey hey hey, let’s go back to Draenor! :|))
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He’d always thought it a bit of a cliche, when people described the loss of time that came with being imprisoned. Surely, it was an exaggeration. Well, Myk was eating his own thoughts now, slumped against the side of his rickety cage. How many days had it been? He didn’t know, the sky above this damned planet was cruelly unchanging, in most places. To think, he’d found it quite calming when he first came to Draenor, standing on the banks of Stormshield.
Now, watching the shifting nebula above him was less calming, and more his only escape from reality. Above the stink, the guttural noises, snarling, and laughter of the Iron Horde camp, it still moved in beautiful, indifferent colors and lights. He only had one eye now to watch it with, but still.
He wondered if any of the men under him had made it back to the Garrison. It had been a fucking slaughter, but once he’d shown himself as more than a cannon in cloth, that he was also a beast with anger and vengeance to spare, he’d been put among some mighty warriors. These Iron bastards couldn’t have gotten them all.
Myk shifted where he was tied, wincing, the days’ open wounds scraping against the rough wood. A paltry little prison, really, except for the four crude rune stones set at all four corners, keeping him from conjuring, from reaching the Arcane. Even those he could’ve easily broken, with enough knowledge, were they not keeping him starved and bleeding. He huffed harshly into the night air…he doubted he could even shift at this point.
A noise broke through his dulled musings, registering in his cloudy, beaten head as…something new. Outside of the usual racket. It took him a few moments to realize, as Iron Orcs ran in numbers toward the southeast end of the camp, that something had happened to the ammunition stores. One, and then many small explosions, culminating in a blast that rocked the ground slightly under him. Half the camp was moving, it appeared, though he didn’t spot ol’ Kragh among the mob…
A flash of movement in the opposite direction stole his attention, and his breath. Two swift blades flashing in the torchlight, and the one grunt still watching the cage dropped without a sound. On his back, a lithe little Night Elf looked to Mykhael O’Donnelly, grinning wide at him. Myk felt a surge of something he hadn’t known in days, hope welling in him, trying to get his damned voice to work.
“Dale is hauling ass away from the munitions!” The young elf hissed, lightly jogging to him. Myk shook his head, thinking of his gnarled Paladin second. Of course he, and Niria here, had made it out…only to come back. For him. He stuttered over his own tongue, as the girl neared his cage.
“Niria, wait! It’s…!”
She didn’t see the ward until she’d stepped over it, a light exploding over Myk’s cage, knocking her onto the ground, hard. His heart in his throat, the mage felt everything in him mustering, yelling for the wolf to tear out of him, as the elf struggled back to her feet, dazed, clutching her head.
Kragh was already there, his axe cleaving into the girl before she could take a step, laughing as a primal, visceral shout tore through Myk’s ragged throat. The twisted, scarred old Orc laughed on and on, wheezing, shaking his head, cleaning the elf off his blade. His hands tied behind hi back, Myk began bashing his head against the bars, snarling, willing his exhausted body to do SOMETHING.
But the worgen didn’t come, couldn’t, and Kragh’s hand reached through the cage, a fist around the mage’s throat. “Your friends are a supremely stupid breed, dog!” He boomed, amused.
Myk’s breath heaved, a twisting, wicked pain and guilt in his chest. He knew it would earn him another round with the whip. He didn’t give a proper shit in the moment though, mustering the only thing he could, sending a wad of bloody spit into his torturer’s eye.
“They tried.”
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The woman I love is writing again!!! Fuck yes!
Relief of Tension
((A bit of post War Campaign fun. I haven’t written smut in ages, and I figured I could use the practice. Bear with me!))
There was a nervous energy in Orgrimmar that was palpable, and it seemed to overtake the sadness in the wake of Saurfang’s death. Gehryn knew that the High Overlord would have wanted it no other way. He wouldn’t have wanted people to sit on their laurels and grow sedentary in their mourning. Gehryn agreed.
The demon hunter looked out from the front gates of Orgimmar, watching the Alliance forces disperse, and their siege engines be dismantled or wheeled away. He opened a small bundle of fruit that he’d purchased below and set it on the wall in front of him. He leaned on his elbows, and crossed his arms. Occasionally he would spear a strawberry on one of his claws and pop it into his mouth, sighing at the sweetness of it as he watched the goings on below.
There was still much to be done. There were still loyalists to the Banshee Queen to be rooted out and dealt with. There were families to reunite, or to attempt to reunite. There was a great deal of tension that needed to be relieved all over the city.
Gehryn thought about how close he had come to siding with Sylvanas in the beginning. How close he had come to siding with Death, unknowing though he may have been. The prospect made some sense to him. He could see her reasoning, and agreed with it in some respects, but he found in the end that he preferred the chaos of life to the mindless order of death. He was glad he chose the way he had, that he sided with Saurfang, that he decided to fight for the side that wanted to protect Azeroth.
Or rather, he nearly had. As of course, a war was so close to happening, and then it didn’t. Varok Saurfang, tired of needless bloodshed, and unwilling to pit the Horde against the Horde once again, gave his life to expose Sylvanas for what she really was. Thank goodness he did. Even so, to be on the precipice of a battle without taking the plunge. It does leave one feeling rather unfulfilled.
Gehryn looked down at a cherry amongst the pile of fruit before him. He cut into it with one of his claws and spread the crimson juice out over the white cloth it was wrapped in, sighing before popping the cherry into his mouth. He had just spit the pit over the wall when he heard a voice behind him.
“Hey!” The voice came from a female orc. Gehryn turned slowly and leaned back against the parapet, resting his elbows on the wall and letting his hands fall at his sides. He crossed one long, slender leg over the other as he watched her approach. She slung her axe at her shoulder and relaxed somewhat as she recognised him.
“Ah, Gehryn. I was worried I’d have to mop up a loyalist.” She said. A grin crossed Gehryn’s full lips and he shrugged.
“Hello Brikka. Worried, or excited?” He asked. She gave him a glance, then smirked, shrugging as well.
“I won’t lie, to be so… ready for a battle only for everything to end so suddenly.” Brikka growled. Gehryn felt a shudder go up his spine at the sound, and he nodded his horned head.
“I know. I feel it too.” He said. He reached with one hand to the bundle of fruit on the parapet beside him and moved it in her direction. She nodded and walked up beside him, leaning on the parapet and grabbing several pieces of fruit, throwing them all into her mouth at once and devouring them, pits and all.
“My axe still hungers.” She said once she’d finished swallowing her food. Gehryn grinned, still leaning back against the wall, but leaning his head back to look at her face.
She was beautiful in the way that orcs were beautiful. The bright orange of her eyes blazed against the green of her skin, and her skin contrasted the dark purple of the thick mane of hair that ran down her back. Her muscles rippled beneath her skin as she tensed and shuddered in anticipation of a fight that she wouldn’t get to have. Her frame was powerful and firm, but the curvature of her silhouette, even covered in Orgimmar city guard plate, was not to be denied. Gehryn bit his lip as he studied her features, then took a steadying breath. Brikka glanced at him and unashamedly let her eyes roam.
Gehryn, while only an inch or two taller than Brikka, was every bit as battle-hardened as she was, though his frame was more lithe and built for dexterity. While by orc standards, Brikka was definitely feminine, Gehryn’s form and features didn’t land so clearly on either end of a binary. He was androgynous in appearance. Somewhat alarmingly so. But the power in his form was plain to see, and his every movement was so fluid, patient and confident, belying further, less visible strengths. Brikka watched as he affected a slow roll of his hips for her viewing pleasure. Her eyes darted up to meet his and she turned away to look back out over the fields outside Orgrimmar.
“It’s you that hungers.” Gehryn let that sentence hang in the air for a while. “It’s us who wanted the intimacy of combat. Though I’m sure our weapons are just as eager as we are.” He said. Brikka glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, then nodded after a while.
“Eager is right.” She grinned at him. “Thank you for helping me catch that pair of assassins.” She said, grabbing more fruit. Gehryn nodded.
“The pair that became the trio.” He nodded and chuckled. “It’s what we were there to do.” Brikka nodded, swallowing another mouthful of fruit.
“I don’t like that we had to fight the Horde.” Brikka said. Gehryn nodded. “But you fight well.” She said, nudging him with an elbow. Gehryn grinned at her, leaning into the nudge. She felt his lithe frame tense against her arm and he watched her pause. There was a brief silence between them before Gehryn responded.
“As do you. I’d like to see you fight again someday.” He said. Brikka grinned and nodded, the ring that pierced her tusk clicked as she did so.
“I’d ask you to spar with me, but with the state of things in the city, that would be unwise.” Brikka said. Gehryn nodded and sighed. Brikka reached for more fruit and realised that she had taken the last of it. She paused and glanced at him. He smiled and nodded, watching her chew, then swallow, studying her lips, her jaw, her throat. She then picked up the cloth that the fruit was on and licked at the stain of cherry juice that Gehryn had left on it. His eyes went wide and he gasped a little. Brikka paused, her tongue still pressed against the white cloth. She then slapped the cloth back down on the parapet and looked at him, affecting an annoyed look.
“What?” She asked, watching his fel-green eyes. He smiled slowly.
“Just noticing that we have similar tastes in armour.” He said. “Or rather, the lack thereof.” He grinned at her. Brikka smirked and nodded. “Some would say that we’re unnecessarily distracting.” He said. Brikka snorted.
“They are fools.” She said. “Mobility in combat is an effective and valid form of defence.” She said. Gehryn nodded. “And so is distraction. We arm ourselves the way we do because we want our foes to know our fearlessness, and the undeniable strength of the Horde!” She said, turning to face Gehryn and spreading her arms wide.
“Tell me, elf. Could you deny this?” She said, slamming her fist against her stomach hard. Her muscles didn’t flinch, though a lesser opponent would have dropped to the floor before her. Gehryn took in the display, his eyes roaming her form hungrily. The anxious energy of the day was causing him to tremble, and he bit his lip to steady himself. He looked her in her bright orange eyes and shook his head.
“No. I couldn’t deny you if I tried.” He replied. There was a growl in his voice that sent a shiver up her spine and the two stood, staring at one another for a moment that seemed to last hours.
“Kiss me.” Brikka said. Gehryn needed no further prompting and stepped toward her. One hand rested at her jaw, and the other wound around the small of her back as he leaned in quickly, their lips pressing together.
Brikka’s lips parted quickly and she sucked his lower lip between hers. One hand gripped the back of his neck, while the other grabbed his waist. She dug her thumb into the crease of muscle that defined his hips and led down between his legs. She felt Gehryn flinch and heard him gasp as she bit down hard on his lower lip, drawing blood. She started to pull away, but Gehryn held her close.
“You won’t break me, Brikka.” He said, his lips brushing over hers as he spoke. His tongue dragged across the wound she gave him, and then over her upper lip. The taste of his blood, and his affirmation was all she needed. She arched her hips against his and tugged him hard against her. The plates of her armour pressed into his skin, spikes and all, and she took his lower lip into her mouth again, sucking on his wound.
She felt him shudder against her like a panther anticipating bloodshed. His fingers wound in her mane of purple hair and tugged, then pressed her harder against his lips. His tongue explored her mouth, teasing at her own tongue. She stroked his tongue with hers, drawing it further into her mouth before she bit at it as well. She chuckled deep in her throat at his gasp and his moan. He shuddered again, and dragged his clawed hand up her back to rest at her shoulder. She knew he drew blood. It was her turn to groan into his mouth. Brikka pushed him away suddenly.
“Those munitions crates. Back there.” Was all she said before heading behind them. The pile of unused ammunition from the war that didn’t happen was high; heavy crates that made for perfect cover. Gehryn followed right behind her. The anticipation of what was about to happen was electric between them, and set a chill over his skin.
As soon as he got behind the crates and out of sight, Brikka turned about, grabbed his shoulders and threw him against the wall of wood and iron. He chuckled at the impact and dug his claws into the wood of the crates, dragging them upward and leaving little curls of wood in their wake. Brikka closed the distance between them with one step and grabbed his belt, pushing him hard against the boxes. She yanked at his belt so hard that it snapped. Both of them paused. Brikka looked down at the ends she held in each hand. Gehryn grabbed her hair again and tugged, directing her gaze to meet his.
“I can afford repairs.” He said. She grinned and nodded, yanking him close with the snapped ends of his belt in her hands. As he came forward, Gehryn grabbed one of the straps holding her pauldrons in place and unfastened them in one fluid movement. He did the same with her other pauldron and cast them to the ground behind her. Brikka grinned.
“Done this before, have you?” She asked. Gehryn smiled, licking at a droplet of his blood that had been coaxed out of the corner of his mouth.
“Not with an orc yet.” He said. Brikka looked into his eyes, her cheeks already flushed a deeper green.
“Really? Well I must apologise for ruining you for any others in the future.” She chuckled. Gehryn grinned a wicked grin.
“Oh, I forgive you for everything you’re about to do to me.” He said. Her eyes went wide and she watched his blood-stained lips as he spoke. Gehryn recognised the famed bloodlust of the orcs moments before she was upon him.
One of her hands let go of his belt and grabbed one of his horns. She tilted his head back and pushed him against the crates with such force that his vision swam for a moment. He chuckled to himself as her other hand shoved downward, dragging his leather pants down on one side. He gripped at the leather harness that kept her chest plate in place and pulled it to press her against him.
She leaned in to his exposed neck, licking at his skin first, then closing her lips over his flesh. The wet contact made his body writhe against hers, and she pushed his head back against the crate again. His fingers worked the buckles that fastened her chest plate, undoing them as she shoved his pants down far enough to expose his member. He wrestled her chest plate and leather padding out from between the two of them and cast them on the ground beside her pauldrons.
Brikka took advantage of the lack of armour between them and ran her hands up his bare chest, her finger tips roaming the creases of his muscles and exploring the thick scars that formed his demon hunter tattoos. She grabbed at the belts holding his pauldrons in place and snapped each of them with ease, throwing them to the ground. She then further tore open his already open vest and pressed against him as she sunk her teeth into his collarbone. Gehryn moaned aloud as her teeth scraped bone and dragged his claws up her back, drawing blood again as she drank at his newest wound.
Brikka wound her powerful arms around his body, encircling him entirely as she licked, kissed, sucked and bit her way down his chest It was difficult to believe that there was a soft part of this iron-clad orc, but the warmth of her breasts pressing against his stomach as she carved a path of victory down his body made for a noticeable, and pleasing contrast. He sighed long and loud in her embrace until she bit hard into the bone of his left hip. Gehryn cried out loud, his hips bucking against her tusks, and his claws raking her shoulder blades. Brikka growled like a ravenous beast as she licked away the fruits of her assault, a saliva-diluted stream of red flowing from the fang marks in his skin.
“Well well, elf…” Brikka said, sounding satisfied. Gehryn was so lost in the ecstasy of the pain that he didn’t understand what she meant. He barely had time to react before he felt her mouth descend upon his member. He felt his neck go slack and his head fall backward, his eyes, had he not sacrificed them, would have rolled back into his head.
Brikka pressed the pad of her thumb into the wounds she left in his hips and pulled herself off of him, the head of his cock leaving her mouth with a soft popping sound. With a sharp intake of breath, his eyes went wide and he looked down at her.
“Stay with me, Gehryn. I have more planned for you than this.” She said. Gehryn chuckled as he watched her, his demonic eyes burning hot. He ran his fingers through that thick mane of violet black hair again, gave her hair a tug, then dragged her down onto him until he felt her tusks jab the skin of his pelvis. She groaned her approval and grabbed his hips tight, pulling him back and forth as her head bobbed up and down in a counter rhythm.
Over their panting, the two heard voices approaching. Brikka slowed her pace, and Gehryn cocked his head to one side, but made no efforts to quiet his moaning.
“Ya ‘ear dat, mon?” They heard a deep troll voice say.
“Yes, I do. Do you think someone’s in trouble?” A higher voice that sounded Tauren responded. Brikka grinned and looked up at Gehryn, nodding as her tongue ran circles around his shaft.
She mouthed out the words “You are”, her lips dancing over the head of his sex as she spoke.
Gehryn let out a shuddering laugh and then moaned as Brikka took the entire length of him back into her mouth. They heard the Troll voice chuckle.
Brikka pulled her head off of Gehryn and stood up, kissing him again. Gehryn moaned against her lips and Brikka growled in response. Without warning, she grabbed his horns and dragged him to his knees. With the same nimble fingers, Gehryn unfastened her belt and dragged her belt and short pants down. Gehryn’s fingers ran up the back of her thick-muscled thighs and grabbed her firm ass before leaning forward and biting her left hip, tasting her blood as it coated his tongue. Brikka moaned aloud and Gehryn grinned as he licked her matching wound clean.
“Naaah, mon, dey be juuust fine.” The troll said. They heard the heavy clopping of Tauren hooves get closer. Gehryn looked up into Brikka’s bright orange eyes as he licked and bit her stomach, slowly teasing his way down between her legs. The orc bit her lip and glared at him.
“Are you sure? They could be hurt.” The tauren said. The troll laughed.
“Nah, watch dis. FOR DA HORDE!” The troll shouted. Both Brikka and Gehryn laughed. Brikka responded first.
“FOR THE HORDE!” She shouted. She looked down at Gehryn and, still gripping his horns, tipped his head back and nodded her head toward the sound of the voices.
“FOR THE H-MMM!” His shouts were cut off as Brikka pulled his horns and pressed his mouth between her thighs. They heard the troll laugh aloud.
Dey be doin’ fine. C’mon! Plenty of people be needin’ ta be close after today. Let dem be.” The troll said.
“Oh. Uh. Yes. Of course…” The tauren said, both voices trailed off. Gehryn dragged his claws down Brikka’s backside as she rolled her hips, pressing her sex against his lips and his tongue. Gehryn licked, and kissed, and sucked, and bit, and Brikka steered his attentions with his horns. Gehryn looked up at Brikka, watching as her eyelids fluttered and her lips pressed together as she did her best to stifle the higher moans that he was coaxing from her.
His tongue would massage a circle around her clit and she’d shudder suddenly, jerking his head away, and then back down onto her. Gehryn chuckled every time. A long, low rumbling sound that came from somewhere deep within his chest, and Brikka would moan as the low sound would roll up through her core.
“Stay with me, Brikka. You have more planned for me, yeah?” He asked, a sly grin on his face. Brikka looked down at him and grinned, lifting him back up. She let go of one of his horns, then grabbed him by the throat and pulled him in as if for another kiss. Just as Gehryn was leaning in, she pushed him back against the crates again. The demon hunter grinned and glared at the orc as she, still grabbing his throat, pressed in against him. She raised one leg and propped it on one of the crates beside them.
“Enough play, beautiful.” She said as her other hand grabbed his cock and she pressed his head against the lips of her entrance, rising to her toes to accommodate their height difference and his length.
Brikka let out a long, low groan as she slid down onto him and her grip on his throat relaxed. Gehryn leaned his head back and moaned along with her, both of them sounding as though they had just lowered themselves into a hot bath at the end of a taxing day. Gehryn wound his arms around her and nearly buried his face in her thick violet mane. Before he could, Brikka regained her composure and gripped his throat tight. Her other hand gripped his ass and anchored there, using it as leverage as she began to roll her hips and thrust herself down onto his cock in a rhythm of controlled bursts of movement.
Gehryn thrust his hips counter to her rhythm, thrusting up as she thrust down, as best he could. Brikka’s iron grip on his body ensured that she was setting their pace. Gehryn moaned with each thrust, feeling his manhood surrounded by her passion-slicked sex. His claws dragged over her rippling back, tracing up the groove of her spine and causing her body to tremble as he hit sensitive parts of her skin. Brikka looked into his eyes again, her eyebrows furrowed, and her eyelids half-closed. She moaned low with each thrust down onto his member and inhaled through her teeth as she pulled back up.
“Kiss me, Gehryn.” She said. Her hand wound around his throat to clasp the back of his neck and she pulled his lips against hers again. Gehryn moaned into the kiss, biting into her lower lip and drawing blood. Brikka giggled, a sound which caught the demon hunter off guard, then she ran her tongue along the new wound and slipped her tongue into his mouth. With a hungry shudder and a low growl, Gehryn sucked her tongue clean, nipping it hard before letting it go. Brikka groaned as she rode him harder and faster.
The orc leaned back a little and, her hand still at the back of Gehryn’s neck, pulled his head down to her breasts. Gehryn pressed his lips to her green flesh, drawing a soft sigh from the hard orc. He wound one of his arms across her back to hold her against him, and gripped her other breast with his free hand. He gripped her breast firmly, squeezing her nipple between his ring and middle fingers. Brikka gasped as he sucked her other nipple between his lips, then traced a long, slow, wet circle around it with his tongue.
“Bite it.” She let out a sharp whisper. Gehryn obliged, pressing his teeth down into the sensitive skin and tugging at it. He did the same to her other nipple, pinching it between his index finger and thumb and tugging at it too. Brikka let out a loud moan, gripping him tight and pulling him against her. She thrust down onto him harder, the hand at his hips tugging him into her as deep as their physical bodies would allow in that position. Her body quivered with each thrust then she tossed her head back and let out a long, trembling growl that quickly became a low moan.
She pulled his mouth away from her breast and met his gaze, her eyes wide and studying his face.
“You didn’t, did you?” She asked. Gehryn shook his head. Brikka grinned and pushed him back against the crates. “Good… I’m not done with you just yet.” She said. Gehryn nodded and smiled.
“Lucky me.” The demon hunter said. Brikka nodded and smiled, then eased herself back down onto him, the walls of her sex pulsing tight around him as she trembled in the throes of orgasm.
“Not just yet. Don’t leave me yet.” She breathed those words into his ear, and a shudder surged up his spine. He moaned in response.
“No. I’m yours.” He said. She whimpered at his words, but caught herself halfway through the sound. She kissed him hard, tugging his hair to press his lips against hers. When she broke the kiss, she panted into his ear.
“Fuck me, Gehryn.” She said. Gehryn growled in response. He then grabbed her ass with one hand, and with the other he grabbed the leg she had propped up on the crate. With a fluid motion that Brikka was barely able to track, Gehryn had lifted her up and spun about with her, pinning her back against the crates. Brikka gasped and giggled again at the display of speed and strength. She wound one of her arms around his chest, and gripped one of his horns with the other.
Gehryn leaned in and kissed her again, holding her legs tight as he began to thrust into her. Brikka wrapped her legs around his waist, the spikes of her boots pressing into his backside as the new angle allowed him to push deeper inside of her, and to hit different spots as well. Gehryn groaned as, since he had her pinned, he was able to thrust with the abandon that he couldn’t when she had restrained him.
Brikka’s eyes rolled back as he impaled her on his cock, the walls of her canal tightening around him. She wrapped one arm around his back, and ran her other hand through his hair, holding him tight.
There was a sudden snapping sound, like sails in the wind, and Brikka opened her eyes to see that Gehryn’s wings had unfurled behind him. She stared at them as Gehryn then folded his wings close about the two of them. Brikka released Gehryn’s hair and stroked her fingertips down one of his wings. The demon hunter shuddered and gasped.
“You like them?” He asked, his voice was shaking and his breathing was ragged. Brikka nodded biting into her lip as she panted with each thrust.
“They’re beautiful.” She gasped as he thrust hard inside her. Gehryn kissed her neck, her cheek, then her lips, then kissed her ear.
“You’re beautiful.” He whispered. Brikka gasped and moaned. She was beyond words, and he was right behind her. Pinned against the wall as she was, he was hitting the perfect spot with each thrust. She pressed kisses against his neck, his ear, and down to his shoulder, gripping his wing with her other hand to keep herself steady.
Gehryn kept her pressed to the wall, his claws pressing into her skin and causing dots of red to well up around his fingers as he clutched her tight. His thrusts were coming harder, his hips slapping against hers with each pass. The crates shook and juddered against one another. Both orc and elf moaned and gasped in sync, growing louder and more desperate.
Brikka cried aloud, pressing her mouth against Gehryn’s shoulder and biting down hard to stifle the sounds of her second, and more powerful orgasm. She wrapped her arms around the demon hunter, squeezing him with her legs and pulling him deeper inside of her as if she hoped that they would somehow fuse together.
Gehryn crushed Brikka against him and threw his head back, arching his hips against her as tight as he was able, obeying the commands of her legs. His hips bucked and he cried aloud with each thrust as he came hard, deep inside her. His wings snapped outward and shuddered before curling and shuddering so hard that they shook both the orc and the elf together.
They stayed that way, clutching one another so close that it appeared they were afraid of falling off of the surface of the planet and plummeting upward into the nether. Each panted and vibrated, a tangle of live wires, coated in sweat and blood, and looking for all the world as though they had survived a particularly brutal battle. Slowly, and with great reluctance, they began to stir, and then parted.
Brikka’s feet touched the ground, and she wobbled a bit before righting herself. Gehryn propped himself against the crate with one arm, his other hand on Brikka’s cheek. She gave him a giddy smile, laid her hand on his, then turned her head to kiss his palm, nipping at the skin between his thumb and index fingers. The demon hunter chuckled. His skin felt like he had been struck by lightning. Every inch of him was sensitive.
The two gathered their armour and began to dress themselves again. Gehryn chuckled as he gathered his armour together and set it on a nearby crate. Brikka looked at the torn leather straps and bit her lip. Gehryn shook his head.
“It was worth it.” He said. Brikka chuckled, tightening the straps on her pauldrons and covering up so much of what he had just been enthralled by. She smirked at him.
“Ever thought you’d be bested by an orc?” She asked, giving him a wink. Gehryn laughed and bit his lip.
“Well, the word best does come to mind.” He said, his eyes passing over her solid form once again. Brikka looked away, her face flushed a deeper green than it already had been.
“I should finish the rest of my patrol before I’m found out.” She said. Gehryn nodded, leaning back against the crates which were now very much in disarray.
“Certainly. I wouldn’t dare stand in the way of your duty… any longer than I have.” He shrugged. Brikka nodded, slinging her axe over her shoulder. She saluted Gehryn, and he saluted back. As she began to march off, Gehryn began to reorganise the crates.
“Gehryn.” He heard Brikka call to him. He shoved a crate back into place then turned to look at her.
“Yes?” He asked. Brikka walked back to him, standing close.
“My patrol ends at sundown. I… I have a place above the Valley of Honor…” She said. Gehryn nodded and shoved another crate into place.
“Where does your patrol end?” He asked.
“At the north end of The Drag. Near the gate to the Valley of Honor.” She said.
“I’ll see you then and there.” He replied. Brikka smiled then nodded.
“Okay.” She said under her breath, then repeated louder. “Okay.” Gehryn leaned in and kissed her once more, and she said it a third time, under her breath again. “Okay.” Gehryn blushed and bit his lip.
“Okay. See you then, Brikka.”
“See you then, Gehryn.” She said in a low purr before turning around and walking away, her stride far easier than it had been when she first approached him.
Gehryn watched her leave for a long time before gathering the remains of his armour and tying it together the best he could. The repairs would indeed be worth it. He walked to the edge of the wall that led into the city, leaping onto the parapet and preparing to glide down into the Valley of Strength to find someone who could fix his gear for him.
As he looked down, he saw a number of people staring up at the wall and at him, casting knowing glances his way. He paid them no mind as he gripped the torn ends of his belt together in one hand and leapt from the wall.
Wrote some smut one day! Spoilers for the end of the war campaign. I figured everyone already knows them, but to hell with it. Always good to be nice.
this is really gross? like you couldn’t stop being homophobic for actual people ? you had to like a gay fictional pairing?
Not even remotely true.
But even if it were, does it ultimately matter what stops a homophobe from being homophobic, as long as they…yanno…stop being that way?
As @discoursecatharsis said, I’m sorry us older millennials grew up in a far more homophobic culture where no one talked about being queer except as a joke or a tragedy, if it were even talked about at all. For a lot of folks, fandom was the only safe outlet to explore this stuff. Anime was still a growing new thing and one of the few places in media where being gay wasn’t always a punchline so OFC all the baby gays still pretending to be cis and/or het glomped onto it.
Was it perfect? No. Even back then, I was distinctly sick of the uke/seme dynamics being forced into every pairing no matter how ill-fitting. But at least yaoi didn’t bury their gays or censor romantic attraction, so we took it and ran with it.
We grew up–society changed and we too updated our ideals of what being gay meant. More importantly, more people we knew came out. My cousin’s been gay my whole life so I had that but my friends didn’t start coming out till they’d left the little hick conservative town we grew up in. I grew up in driving distance of San Francisco. If my Californians were that fucking scared in a state that considered gay bashing a hate crime in the 2000s, how do you think the rest of the country was doing?
I mean, Twitter OP has a bi flag RIGHT FUCKING THERE.
Think, for God’s sake. 🤦
I can think, can you?
Dont come at me with that bullshit that “things were worse” when there were people who knew what was right.
I’m a queer person and I hate to think that someone got over their homophobia over fictional characters vs having human compassion. and if that works you up and gets you mad, then that’s genuinely very sad.
You’re the one calling a clearly bi person (the flag in the icon is very visible) gross when you know nothing about them aside from one out-of-context tweet. Being queer didn’t stop you from acting like a judgmental asshole.
And human compassion is the prerequisite for any kind of anti-homophobic revelation. Fiction is just one vehicle of exposure to different concepts. For it to work as it does, there HAS to be a capacity for compassion already. So from one queer person to another: put your human compassion to use and stop judging your fellow LGBTQ+ people for what kickstarted the fight against their conditioning.
A lot of people can’t “get over homophobia with real people” because they don’t know any real people who are queer, LGBT, MOGAI, etc. Or at least, they don’t know that they know any. They have two sources of information about queer people:
Their homophobic communities,
Media representation.
I am THRILLED to hear someone got over homophobia without having to drag some poor queer person through months of questions and awkward misunderstandings and random stabs of bigotry because they didn’t realize what they were doing or saying was hurtful.
It WAS different, though. This is disjointed and messy, but hear me out.
I was born in 1977. I’m an 80′s kid. I grew up in the second largest city in Oklahoma. It’s a pretty liberal city, but still, it’s Oklahoma, and, again, this was the 80s. AIDS was burning through my elders’ generation like a wildfire; hospices were full; sodomy was a crime people were still imprisoned for; there was no explicit representation in entertainment, and precious little implicit. People. Hated. Us. Even more openly than they do now.
Matthew Shepard was murdered in 1998. He was only half a year younger than me. More heinous things had happened, and still do happen, but that? That one made the local news, and even as we shuddered and wept about it, it was the first time I or any of my colleagues had ever seen an act of homophobic violence publicly condemned in mainstream media of any kind. One of his murderers still tried a “gay panic” defense, and we had to see that, which hurt.
Things were pretty bad.
I was raised by agnostic/atheist people, my father was from L.A. out of liberal Boston stock. My mother was Oklahoman by way of Texas and Louisiana, from a moderately conservative family (they weren’t pricks about it, they didn’t let their -isms show around anyone but other family).
So I honestly had about as liberal an upbringing as you can expect anyone born and raised here to have.
I still heard, from family and from adults around me, awful gay jokes. There was no internet, so there was no googling for LGBT resources. I found the local LGBT teen outreach program by finding a slip of paper tucked into a library book, and I didn’t know when I called the number, or even when I showed up the first time to a meeting, whether it would be legit or run by anti-gay bigots looking for a captive audience and possibly some kids to blackmail or out to their parents. I didn’t even have a concept of “transgender” until I was in my later teens, and wasn’t comfortable with the idea until much later which, oops, SURPRISE, I’M NOT CIS!
I knew a lot of kids whose parents didn’t let them read anything that wasn’t pre-approved. Many of them did not read well anyway, and didn’t have an interest in books (which is not a bad thing, some people just don’t and that’s fine as long as they aren’t trying to keep others from reading). Many had their television viewing restricted, and there was zero representation anyway. People had fits when a prime time show had their hetero main character become a single mother via IIRC artificial insemination. SINGLE MOTHERS? THE WORLD IS FUCKING ENDING. When Ellen came out, oh my god, people lost it. You should have heard the things that got said about her in our newspaper, which everyone read because there was no internet to give them other sources for news and the corner store only ever stocked 5 copies of the New York Times that were from 2 days before.
When you are raised in an environment where nothing is there to show you what a better world looks like, you are left to find that world for yourself when you are older. And even then, you have to go looking for it, and you may not have any idea of how to go about that.
YES, there were people who knew better. But you don’t get people like that right out of the gate unless they are taught better, usually by family (schools still don’t do enough of this, when I was a kid they still taught that it was morally wrong, and conservative states fight like hell to have even less information, and to be able to label queers as deviants). Dismissing someone who was confused, possibly even bigoted, but who came to a deeper understanding via fiction? That’s not right. The resources might not have been around them at the right time. Or the resources may have been there, maybe they didn’t care, and for some reason it was fiction that finally broke through that wall for them.
Regardless of the climate now, things may have been very different when/where this happened for them. And if not? It’s not less valid. Yes, things are so much better now (unless you were there, or are willing to listen to and understand people who were, you won’t understand how much). It’s amazing. Absolutely amazing. I’m watching She-Ra with my own two eyes and feeling the pain in my heart that the child I was didn’t have this show, because she really needed it and might have grown up to be a better person sooner. I’m holding hands with my girlfriend in public in Oklagoddamnhoma and nobody hisses or calls the cops. Things are so much better. Not good enough, but better.
One of the reasons we clamor so stridently for inclusion is to normalize queerness for folks who are not queer. And with the internet, with fanfiction, even fiction that doesn’t have queer representation can still have that effect through fandom-created queer content. I don’t know if Free! had explicitly queer content; not my fandom. I do know that literally all the fan content for Free! I saw was queer. Very, very loudly so.
So queer entertainment reaching people? This is the kind of thing we say we want to see. It’s not right to then tell people this isn’t a good enough reason to clue up. It is. Any reason is good enough. This isn’t a test of virtue, babes. We aren’t weighing our hearts against feathers. This is, literally, a fight for our lives, and we should not give one tin shit in a teacup why people fall into the trenches with us. We should welcome them. Is it sad they didn’t realize it sooner? Sure. Yes. But we don’t throw out allies, especially other queer people, because they hold the “right” beliefs for the “wrong” reasons. If you talk to other queer people and allies outside of Tumblr, especially in person and especially your elders, you are going to find that there are a lot of reasons people come around, and not all of them are going to be narratives that make you comfortable or that make them look particularly virtuous. We are a diverse community with many voices, we came here down many roads (some of them shitty ones), and that is what makes us so powerful, so enduring, and so proud.
So y’all who are disgusted that it took fanfiction to break through this person’s walls, I get where you are coming from. When you’ve had your ass kicked for liking the wrong kind of person, it is frustrating to feel like the suffering and pain many queer folks go through wasn’t enough to get through to someone. I understand that. I get that. I feel you. It’s lamentable, yes. Christ, the way people are still treated today is a fucking tragedy so it’s not like things are all roses. If harm was ever done to you, that’s horrible and I’m sorry and I will be fighting beside you to keep that from happening to anyone else until my dying day. But for pity’s sake, “Imaginary gays helped me incorporate the idea of queer people into my worldview in a positive way!” is not gross or bad enough to warrant pushing people away.
We are in this together.
I don’t know how you got here. You are here, and that’s all I need to know. Give me your hand, you gorgeous disaster, we have other beautiful people to save.
Terrible Character Ideas:
A monk based on a European Christian archetype. They have sworn a sacred oath to defeat the giant snail plaguing the countryside.
A dragonborn desperately trying to convince the party that they’re really an aarakocra with a skin condition that made their feathers fall out.
Your standard horny bard, but they play a washboard.
A sentient hat piloting a mannequin.
A dark elf who’s afraid of the dark, and terrified of spiders.
A peasant farmer who joined the adventure because they’re going through a midlife crisis and want to ~find themself.~
A druid who got involved because they’re the party’s weed dealer.
A werewolf who doesn’t believe in the moon.
op change the title to “Great”
OP are you kidding
THESE ARE AMAZING
what if they were all in the same group tho
That Druid is Literally Lathrien. @theacidvats
Hah! Wow, that is 100% true.
Anxious and Depressed? Go Figure.
((A quick Trigger Warning at the top here. I am discussing my anxiety and depression here, and I get into some pretty dark territory. While I don’t do it directly, I do bring up self-harm and suicidal thoughts. If this could cause you harm in any way, please scroll on past. You don’t need that, and you don’t deserve that. Thank you.))
So I’m writing a book of horror short stories. It’s going to be relatively small, but I want to complete it, if only to say I have written something book length, and that I’ve published it. It’s fun telling stories I want to tell, and it definitely comes with challenges. I’ve run into challenges I’ve read about in every “how to write gud” book, and there are things I’ve come across that I didn’t expect. They’re fun to analyse, adapt to, and overcome.
Most of them are.
The challenges that aren’t fun to overcome are the ones that I’m faced with every day, no matter what I’m doing. Depression, anxiety, impostor syndrome, and all the twisted little disguises each of them don in order to slip past the guards and attack my inner sanctum. I’ve started to think that someone’s paying the guards off. Maybe there are plants, corruption in the force that’s meant to protect my smooshy, terrified brain.
Anxiety is my greatest foe, and it’s grown so strong in the past few years. Really since watching my stepmother pass away due to breast cancer. It rocked my world so incredibly. She was a force of nature who seemed unconquerable, and something invisible took her away. Less than a year after that, my step sister took her own life, who had brain cancer as a child, and severe diabetes later in her life, along with a host of medical problems that came with both of those conditions. Physically she was such a frail individual. But she held out longer than I think I ever could have in her situation.
Since then, I went through a phase of judging people for freaking out about nothing, to freaking out about nothing myself.
It feeds, and it grows, and evolves the more you let it. Not like a cute thing like a Pokemon, but like... Tetsuo from Akira. That’s quite accurate, the more I think about it. Like, room-spinning terror, harming those around you who you love, lashing out at strangers, a brief period of overconfidence, followed by a complete overload and subsequent breakdown. All of that is followed by an uncertain peace that resembles a rebirth.
Yeah, like that, but... daily. Sometimes that character arc takes a few days to resolve, sometimes a few weeks. But it’s always there. It has good days, and bad weeks. But it is always around.
There are times I can get a bead on it, shed a spotlight on it because I recognise what’s going on. Those moments are occurring more often now. It helps, but it has also unveiled something that makes it even more sinister.
These are the times when I can recognise it when it rears its ugly head, but it still can do what it does. It still can set me vibrating like a chihuahua, and feeling about as small and vulnerable. Have you ever been on a roller coaster, or fallen down the stairs, and for a little while afterwards, you feel weak, and your whole body feels like a live wire, humming with electricity? It’s like that but sometimes for days, and you also have to carry on like nothing’s happening.
And all the while, your brain is telling you all the worst things you can think of:
You’re a burden on the people you love.
You’re lazy, so you’ll never accomplish a thing.
Nobody wants to be around you, they’re just being nice.
You’re incredibly selfish, and it’s hurting the people you care about.
Those evil mantras I can usually shake off, because of the amazing support system I have. The people I love and care about are amazing. My family are so caring and kind. My girlfriend is absolutely the best. She is anathema to so much of my anxiety. She’s that superhero who shows up and knocks the villain into the horizon. She’s Arwen, when the Witch King’s blade is seeking my heart, and her very presence cuts the gloom (And yeah I know it’s Glorfindel in the books, but my girlfriend’s Arwen.)
For me though, my anxiety’s most powerful “Final Form” is Impostor Syndrome. It’s the voice that tells me that nothing is good, that I’ve earned nothing good, that I don’t have the right to enjoy myself, because I’m not good enough. For any of it. I am inferior, I am not worthy, I am a failure, I am a fraud, and it’s only a matter of time before the whole world finds out and they all come for me.
It’s the hardest for me to reason my way out of, because it’s the easiest to make a case for. Believe you me, I can take nearly anything and turn it into a reason why I’m not good enough. Or at least my anxiety can. I’m not talented enough to do that. See? Told you.
But it is the hardest to banish with reason, or reality. With other aspects of my anxiety, I have the people who love me who are living proof that I worry for nothing. Impostor Syndrome takes the people who love me and uses them as a reason why I’m not nearly as good as I think (and that’s already not that good).
You’re a shit writer/animator/artist/person in general. The people who are telling you otherwise are just doing it because they love you. Because they have to. Everyone knows the truth, they’re just not telling you.
I hate it. I hate it so much. It makes me hate myself, and it’s so good at it.
I know it’s diverting my energy and will away. I can watch days go by, my life go by, because I’m stuck worrying about nothing.
But the one that really scares me is raw depression, and I didn’t realise why until relatively recently.
I’ll explain what I mean by “raw depression”. Normally, my depression joins forces with my anxiety, and they team up on me. Depression, when mixed with anxiety manages to get me to give up on fighting, and it uses anxiety as justification for doing so. The two are so alike that it’s hard to recognise when they’re allied against my citadel of brain matter.
Or at least I thought so. It was only a few months ago that I experienced depression without anxiety, and it scared the shit out of me.
Anxiety is horrible, yes. So far I’ve only outlined what it can do when it has the advantage, when it gets the drop on me, or when it musters up enough energy to take on the dreaded Final Form that is impostor syndrome. But I have managed defences against it. There are times when I get a moment of clarity, In those moments, I can recognise it and convert it to a nervous energy that I can use to increase my productivity and focus. Those moments are rare, but they feel like such a victory when I can manage them.
A few months ago, I had a period where my anxiety had seemed to go on vacation. I’m not sure where it went, or why. Maybe it was fed up being converted into productivity, so it went to a seminar on how to be a more wily little bastard. When it left though, I was left with depression in its raw form. I had no idea how it operated on its own, because I had only faced it when it was coupled with my anxiety.
It is cold, unfeeling, uncaring, and it wants to be terminal. I was sapped of any joy at all. All I could think of was how pointless all the things I had done, or would do, were. I’ve always been a pretty fidgety guy. I usually need something to keep my senses occupied, and I can get deafened by silence (thanks to anxiety no doubt). I had never sat, staring at nothing for an hour before. Not sleeping, not reading, not watching Netflix, but staring at the same part of my bookshelf. Inanimate. Lifeless if not for breath and pulse and thoughts that I hope I never entertain again, but know I most likely will.
Depression on its own isn’t crying, because you don’t feel the sadness well up inside you to explode outward. At least mine isn’t. With mine, you don’t feel the sadness, or the pain, you just are them. And all it wants you to do is end the sadness and pain. It shows you opportunities. It’s not an urge, it just kind of points you at things.
“Hey, you know it’s two steps away.”
“Hey, that’d be sudden.”
“See down there? That’s where it ends.”
I’m sorry. I really hate going back there, and I hope that nobody read this far who’s experienced them. Those thoughts look so simple on paper, but when you know what it is your own brain is trying to steer you into. It’s terrifying. It’s that slow, creeping, in-your-bones fear of something final. And it’s you. It’s all you doing that.
As terrible as anxiety is, as nasty as it can be, at least it seems to have self-preservation in mind. At least mine does. Fear of death is a big thing with my brand of anxiety. To me, anxiety is a knife wound. You’re bleeding, and you’re in pain, but the pain lets you know that you’re still alive, and that you can still live if you fight. Depression is devoid of life, or at least it wants to be. It doesn’t care. It doesn’t love. It just acts alive until it gets what it wants.
It scares the shit out of me. I don’t know if I said that before.
I’m in the middle of a bit of a spike of anxiety now. Not working is more than likely the culprit. I’m not a workaholic by any means, but I do like being productive, and if I feel I’m not being productive the anxiety and self-loathing creep in and start to punish me for my inactivity.
I managed to get a hold of it this time though. Got the little bastard. Let’s see it hop around now. I decided I’d throw it out into the light for a bit. Let other people see how nasty, petty, and irrational it is.
The book I’m writing has characters with flaws I’m familiar with in it. I’m writing characters that suffer from anxiety, impostor syndrome, and depression. Sometimes this leads them to do horrible, irreversible things. Other times, they manage to do the right thing, despite their own minds doing their best to sabotage their best efforts. I’m hoping that writing about my anxiety and depression, and how I experience them, I’ll have material for later use, or at least a foundation to draw inspiration from in the future.
I hope that this helps me turn my greatest weakness into something resembling a strength. I don’t presume that it’ll do that for anyone else, but I hope that if any of this felt familiar to you, that you manage to find your own way to do the same.
Hopefully next time I write here, I’ll share some of the writing from my book, and things will be much more positive.
Thank you for reading.
Whispers at the Threshold
((Had to write about Vizriel getting his Gift of N’Zoth, obviously. Had this story rolling around in my head for a while, and I figured I’d get out some of my Void theories while I was at it. I hope the zero people who read this enjoy it.))
“What the fel are you doing?” Vizriel asked, shoving himself up from the ground into a sitting position. He blinked his eyes several times while trying to look at his traveling companion. The salty air of Stormsong Valley, particularly nearest the Crucible of Storms was sucking the moisture from his eyes. He rubbed his eyes with his palms, growling to himself before looking up at the woman again. The void elven form sat on the grass, her knees tucked up under her cheek, her arms wrapped around her legs. She grinned at him and narrowed her eyes. The look made Vizriel feel like little more than an appetizer.
“I haven’t watched a mortal sleep before. I’ve listened to their dreams for millennia, but never simply watched what they did when their mind was away, flitting about behind their eyes at the borders of our realm.” She chuckled and smiled wide, exposing perfect teeth. She was breathtaking in her beauty. Onyx and violet hair draped around her face, a shimmer of void un-light passed through it every so often, like the pulsing of an unseen heart. She was beautiful, maddeningly, viciously, terrifyingly so. It twisted his stomach, and made his mind ache.
Vizriel had pulled Xalatath from the hands of a deranged lunatic who was running from a Tortollan trading post. He recognized the blade, having seen it in no other hands than those of his sister, Mithandra when they met one another on the Broken Shore. She was nigh incoherent then, but still seemed to show him some kind of affection, through the insanity that was clearly plaguing her mind. He wondered if the blade had anything to do with it, and was glad that it wasn’t in his sister’s possession anymore. He knew that it was not a weapon that ought to be left alone, or trusted in any hands other than his own, especially in the hands of a raving lunatic.
He was nearly at the portal chamber in Boralus, about to take the blade to one of the many vaults he’d secured near Stormwind, when he heard it. A faint voice whispered to him from the dagger, telling him that he felt familiar. He knew of only a few talking weapons before this one. All of them were dangerous to wield. It was far too dangerous to leave unattended, and so near to his home. So he decided to stay on Kul Tiras, and see what he could learn about the dagger, and from it.
In the days since he first spoke to the dagger, he learned that the Old God, N’Zoth had granted artifacts to his servants. These artifacts were terribly powerful, and could be used to devastating effect against the enemies of the Old Gods. But they could also, Xalatath said, be collected and used against them as well. Her reasoning seemed sound enough. He already possessed one formidable weapon, after all. More would be needed if Azeroth was to stand a chance against N’Zoth now.
Vizriel didn’t like it, but he agreed. For months he had been studying the effects that the blade of Sargeras was having on the planet. Not long into his research and investigations, he learned that the servants of the Old Gods would gather in places where Azerite was hemmorhaging to the surface and were draining the immense power that was leaking forth from the fissures. If other accounts he had heard were true, then all that power was being siphoned toward the final known Old God. He shuddered to think of the effect that such power could have on it. Azeroth would need any edge it could find to drive N’Zoth back.
So he and the knife had been a team for nearly a week. In that time, he had acquired three such artifacts and, following several surprisingly minor rituals, Xalatath had gained strength enough to be able to assume a visible form outside of the dagger. She was far more talkative in this form, and a more adept manipulator, as those who are beautiful can be when they are aware of their beauty.
Something else had been happening as well. Vizriel heard whispers in his mind, more and more, louder and louder by the day. They followed him from the waking world, into sleep and dream. Always the same harsh, hissing, hateful mantra. They were in Shath’Yar, the language of the Old Gods and their servants. The whispers were why he couldn’t sleep, and were why he caught the woman in the dagger watching him as he slept.
“You mutter.” She said. “How fantastic.”
Vizriel glared. “Likely repeating the whispers I’ve been hearing for the last few days.” He fought and failed to stifle a yawn, then pulled his blanket up around his shoulders. Xalatath grinned and mimicked his yawn. The act looked rehearsed, practiced, not at all natural. It looked exactly like what it was; how an alien creature might think that humanoids acted, its best approximation of life. Everything about Xalatath made the warlock’s blood run cold. It was a good thing she was locked away in the dagger.
“Interesting dreams you were having.” She said, ignoring his comment about the whispers. “I know where I recognized your essence from now.” She said, grinning wide again and giving him that predatory look she gave all living things. Vizriel took a swig from his water skin.
“Where?” He asked. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He was aware that Xalatath didn’t have his best interests at heart, or any interests save her own. He knew that she was taking him closer to another Old God. It wasn’t something he was unfamiliar with, having been subjected to, and manipulated by Yogg Saron, and servants of C’Thun in the past. He wanted to get closer. Something in him had always pulled him into the paths of the Old Gods. He needed to know more. The more he knew, the better his chances could be of stopping them. All of them.
“You’re not the first of your bloodline to wield me.” She said with a grin.
“My sister.” Vizriel said. He was keeping his sentences short. He didn’t want to give her more than she already had to work with. Xalatath nodded.
“You dream of her often?” She said, examining her nails in another act of affected nonchalance. Still not terribly convincing. “She dreams of you.”
“What a revelation.” He responded. “Anything else?” He asked before leaning back down as if to go back to sleep. She quirked a brow at him, a faint flicker of another smile at her lips.
“Do you ever wonder what caused her to act the way she does? That vicious madness that twists her mind into knots whenever you’re on it?”
Vizriel stopped and sat back up, a low growl in his chest as he watched the avatar of Xalatath uncurl her body to sit more casually on the ground before him. She crossed her legs at her ankles and leaned back, keeping herself propped up by her hands. Her feet bobbed up and down rhythmically. She was getting better, but still looked wrong in her imitations.
“Did she tell you? Or did you pry into her mind to find out? Did you leave more scars than you found her with?” He asked. Xalatath shook her head.
“There wasn’t much more I could do to her. And besides, I appreciated the way she wielded me. Our goals aligned so very often. Until they didn’t.” She shrugged.
“But what did you learn about her?” He pressed his line of questioning. He had been trying to find out the reasons for his sister’s tormented state of mind for years, more than a decade at this point. If Xalatath could make sense of it, maybe he could finally figure out how to help her. The elf pursed her lips in thought for a moment.
“There is a madness lying in wait at the edges of her very being, always. She has been subject to the will of the Old Gods for a very long time. Longer than many can withstand.” She said.
“But she’s Undead, and has been for so long. The Undead are famously very resistant to the whispers of the Old Gods and their servants.” He replied.
“Yes, indeed they are. But few of them have ever been subject to the will of the Old Gods before dying and returning. Fewer still have done so willingly.” She said.
“Willingly? Mithandra? No. Our parents forced her into it. Once I ran away from home I…” He stopped himself. He was saying far too much. He looked at Xalatath. She had that hungry look again.
“Did your parents force her? Or did she see in us a means of getting exactly what she had always wanted?” She asked.
“But, I thought our parents were planning to offer us up to the Twilight’s Hammer, to the Old Gods, to increase their station and achieve apotheosis of some kind. That’s what…”
“That’s what your sister told you?” Xalatath asked. Vizriel nodded, his gaze lowering.
“I don’t blame you for believing her. Making a villain of your parents certainly would make it easier to forgive her killing them.”
Vizriel nodded. It had made it easier.
“As I understand it, you were sworn to the Twilight’s Hammer, but not as sacrifices. You are both special. Too special to be used as mere offerings. Desperation, fear, hopelessness; those are the qualities of a good sacrifice. They taste better, for lack of better phrasing.” She nodded. “Once your sister discovered just how different you both are, and what it meant that you are, she set her own plans in motion.”
“Did she tell you what they are? Her plans.” Vizriel asked, leaning forward, crossing his legs and resting his elbows on his knees. Xalatath shook her head.
“The madness in her mind is a simple, but rather perfect veil over her thoughts. I don’t think she suffers from it. It feels self-imposed. And if it increases when you’re near, it seems to me that you’re the one person she wants to conceal it from more than anyone.” The elf grinned at him, tilting her head back and giving him an appraising look. Vizriel shook his head and took another sip from his water skin.
“That’s…”
“Insane?”
“….yeah.”
“And it works.”
“But what could be so special about us? I know there’s a connection to shadow magic, but… I’ve read, researched, travelled Azeroth. I’ve only been able to find the barest hints. If there’s something different about us, something worth breaking your mind over, I’d think it would leave more of a trace.” Vizriel said, looking out over the ocean. Xalatath watched him, then mimicked his sigh.
“You have heard Paladins go on about the Light choosing them, yes? Shamans, saying that the elements accept them?” Xalatath asked. Vizriel nodded. “Have you ever heard someone say that the void chose them? Well, someone in their right mind, anyway.” Vizriel looked at her and narrowed his eyes.
“It doesn’t happen often. It is extremely rare, in fact. Have you ever wondered why you and your sister could whisper to one another through the darkness as children? Why demons and phantoms show you affection, even form loving bonds with you?” Vizriel shrugged.
“I thought it was because I had died and had been brought back. Monsters looking out for monsters.”
“Not quite. At least, not because you were Forsaken for a few years.” She chuckled. “But close. Other warlocks give you a wide berth, I imagine. So few of them trust you, don’t they? The rest try to learn the secret to the ease with which you wield shadow magic. But they can’t, because not even you know it.” Xalatath said, smiling wide. “And you and your sister weren’t speaking to one another through the shadows. The shadows heard you and whispered the message back to the other.”
Vizriel chewed his lower lip as he thought. He shook his head a few times before looking up at Xalatath.
“I suppose it would explain a lot.” He said.
“Like the markings on your face.” She said.
“What do you mean? I thought these were branded on to me because I toyed with the Nether to undo my Undead curse and become human again. I was told that I was branded as a paradox.” Vizriel said.
“Your sister told me about that. That was a very stupid thing to do. Any other being would have been stretched to their component atoms and scattered, screaming eternally across the span of the Nether. But you were spared. You were spared, and you were marked as a result. You were marked by your saviour. The Nether lies at the meeting place of Light and the Void. It was the Void that saved you, because it recognized you. It remembers you.” Xalatath said.
“So my sister and I are supposed to be champions of the Void? Something like that?” Vizriel asked. The elf chuckled and shrugged. She was looking more natural by the moment.
“If you want to call it that, sure.” Xalatath said.
“But the Void has tried to kill me many times since then.” Vizriel said.
“The Old Gods may have. Faceless Ones may have. They may be of the Void, in its employ, but they do not always act on behalf of the Void. Have you not seen a Shaman reduced to ash by a fire elemental?” Xalatath reasoned. “They have their own tasks set out for them, you have yours. You’ve survived their attempts well enough, I see. Maybe you were being tested?” She said, lifting a brow.
“But for what? And why would I want to fight for the Void?” Vizriel asked.
“Why would you want to fight it?” Xalatath asked in response. The warlock found himself unable to answer right away.
“You could always fight for the Light.” She said. Vizriel shuddered and snarled to himself. The response startled him. He shook his head.
“No. The Old Gods are of the Void. I do not want to protect them. I certainly don’t want to serve them. I don’t want to serve the likes of the Twilight’s Hammer either.” Vizriel said, his voice taking on a low growl. Xalatath scoffed.
“The Twilight’s Hammer. They had no idea what they were doing. They were fighting on behalf of an insane dragon aspect, not the Old Gods. The Old Gods are not so base as that. Children playing apocalypse, that’s all they were. They did not serve the Void.” She said. She held out her hand as Vizriel took another gulp of water from his water skin. He hesitated a moment before throwing it to her. She caught it. It didn’t pass through her. She had gained more strength than he thought.
Vizriel watched as Xalatath took a sip of water. She looked like something that needs to drink water, just like everyone else did. She had figured out how to look effortlessly effortless. She no longer performed one action at a time. She would disappear in a crowd. He knew that’s what she wanted.
“What is the Void then? It seems to merely be all-consuming, like it wants to claim all things for its own. An endless hunger that’ll never be sated.” Vizriel said. Xalatath tossed his water skin back to him. She watched him a moment. There was a different look on her face, in her eyes. It wasn’t sadness, but it was close.
“I’m sure you’ve heard that the Void and the Light have always existed in balance?” She asked.
“I have but…”
“Ah, good. Maybe you know the truth. Do you?”
“The Void was first?”
“Yes it was. It was calm then. It was whole. Then the Light came. It shattered the Void, like the darkness that flees when a lamp is lit, hiding in shadows, wherever the Light isn’t.” Xalatath said. There was bitterness in her voice.
“Life as we know it came from that splintering of the Void.” Vizriel said, following the logic as best he could. The elf nodded.
“And the Void collapsed and fell away as more and more things were created. Dichotomy, oppositions. Life, Death, Chaos, Order, all sprang into being. All the beautiful, wondrous things of this world were made, but all the terrible, horrific things too. The Light caused this, at the expense of the Void. Do you understand?” She asked. Vizriel shuddered, rubbing his hands, cracking his knuckles one by one the way he always did when he was lost in thought.
“The Void doesn’t want to consume for the sake of consumption.” Vizriel said. “It wants to be whole again.”
“And you’re surprised to find out that it’s been watching you.” Xalatath grinned. “Yes. The Void is not the absence of creation. It is purest potential. All things have come from the Void.” She said.
“And to the Void, all things will return”. Vizriel said. Xalatath nodded, smiling wide. Vizriel shuddered and looked at her. The two watched one another for a while. Whispers came up from the entrance to the Crucible of Storms. They were the same whispers Vizriel had been hearing for the last several days. Xalatath watched the doorway a while, then looked back to Vizriel.
“I think it’s time we finish the last leg of this journey.” She said, watching as the warlock packed his belongings. He put his robes on over his underclothes and readied his scythe. “Think more on what I’ve told you tonight, Vizriel. I’ve told you more perhaps than I ought to, but there is still much to be learned below.”
“I will.” He said, looking toward the archway that led underground. “Do I have anything to fear, going down there?” He asked. Vizriel walked over to the dagger, plucking it up and sticking it in his belt.
“Oh yes, there is much to be afraid of down there. But I don’t think you’ll be in any danger.”
“Right. Well, off we go then.”
“Right. Oh, and Vizriel?”
“Hm?”
“This has been fun.”
“That it has.”
Here’s a little thing I wrote! Old Gods and stuff. Whatever.
I've been hard at work on a new project! Horror has always been in my blood. It's part of my genetic makeup at this point. Despite this, I so rarely show this through my art. I've decided to change that today, so I've opened up a "horror only" Instagram account. @the.donnybrook You can check out my newest image over there as well as a time lapse video of its creation process! I hope you check it out and give me a follow! #horror #horrorart #spooky #monster #fantasyart https://www.instagram.com/vancyglor/p/BuSGGNPDF8x/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=kqw389w45svp
The atmosphere of these games still baffles me. Even more so now in chapter 2. Mega kudos to the creators(?) of this game. I adore this. #faithgame #airdorfgames #mortis #poormichael https://www.instagram.com/vancyglor/p/BuPbP0qDdSx/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=sdf6s3dbiy49
