hey, i'm vagabond! i wrote an original novella about faeries in space, grieving the living, the cycle of violence and revenge, and what not to do if your sex life gets upturned by a magic being. it's free on ao3 if you wanna check it out!
multifandom + original work. 16+ please
tarot commissions are: open!
quotev // insta // ao3
personal tags
crater of grace (original space opera with themes of grief and justice)
rivers & gates (christopher lightwood romance fic, time travelers and irish mythology vs the last hours)
genderbent shadowhunters (exactly what it says on the tin)
playlists
#teaspoon fm
have i mentioned or invited you / to my vast imagination?
#excuse me but are you telling me that the Apollo pic is made with the help of the SUN and the Artemis one with the help of the MOON??? #that's actually so poetic i want to cry
@gorandomshesaid wait i need to sit with this one. wait.
Hey guys you should totally get into this thing i like. Yeah it's mid at best. It also aged poorly. You'll get nothing out of it at all. You'll like the idea of it more than the actual thing. But at least only takes half your natural lifespan to finish it
What the hell happened to the energy around gender neutral bathrooms. Remember when we were fighting for all bathrooms to be gender neutral. But now we can barely argue that people can use the gendered bathroom of their choice. Maybe there's some single stall bathroom tucked away in a basement somewhere.
Folks gassing up literary fiction and looking down their noses at sci-fi and fantasy because the former is "grounded in real human experiences", then you look at your average piece of literary fiction and the author's notion of how the real world operates is at least as fantastical as Narnia.
All I'm saying is if your whole thing is plumbing the depths of the human condition, it might possibly be a problem if I can reliably see greater psychological realism in a randomly selected episode of Star Trek.
If you're gonna be dismissing the whole of fantasy fiction as Dungeons & Dragons bullshit, you should at least be willing to double-check that your own stuff is less Weird About Women than Gary Fucking Gygax, which should not be a high bar to clear, and yet
Via Fiona Tribe: "Yes, Swiss scientist Fritz Zwicky coined the term 'dark matter' which is impressive, but he also coined the term 'spherical bastard' to describe people who are bastards no matter which way you look at them, and I think that should be celebrated more."
OP: The carp leaping over the dragon gate 鲤鱼跃龙门 is a classic Chinese folk symbol. It stands for people overcoming hardships to achieve success. We often use it to wish others a bright future and smooth progress. If you spot a carp leaping over the Dragon Gate, good luck will come your way.
death (ferry reaper oc) × gn!reader // steampunk hawaii // chronically ill reader // two for a drug overdose // part two
Solving a murder means seeing the dead . . . and snooping around in their house. Lots of snooping. You're pretty sure you're doing this wrong.
It's strange to have this be the reason Death leans so close: helping you with fiddly fastenings on your clothes. He doesn't smell like anything, in a way that's slightly unnerving, as if he's less than fully there. His hands are still cold. Against the feverish heat of Hawaii in summer, even the slightest touch feels so damn good. You want him to wrap a hand around the back of your neck so you can lean into it and escape the oppressive warmth.
And then you're all done with the buttons, and he's pulling away. You would be ashamed to say you miss it, just a little. You’re not supposed to miss things like this. It isn’t proper.
“Alright,” you breathe, trying to get your head back into focus. “Where do we go?”
◈◈◈
You go to Chinatown. It's a hot night as all of them always are, the moon full and lighting the puddle-pocked streets with fay silver. Death leads you to an empty-looking, dingy third floor apartment, where a body lies dead in the bed.
You make a face.
“I'm sorry,” says Death, which feels slightly ludicrous in a way that you struggle to articulate. “It's never pretty.”
“I didn't expect it to be.”
Like most of this city, there's little of modernized technology here. No elevator to the second floor, no pressurized communications boxes, no mechanical cleaning aids. No steam, no gas, the only electricity a janky brass fan whirring in the wall. It's a far cry from the steam-heat floors and mechanical blinds of your old home.
At the very kindest, the poor man died in his sleep. He's a grey heap, so much rags and bones now.
“History will say he was a victim of the last dregs of an opium pipe,” Death says. “But tell me what's wrong with that image?”
“Where's the pipe?”
Death’s smile is a little unnerving in a way that's difficult to place. “Exactly.”
“So someone poisoned him with the residue, then forgot to leave a pipe as evidence . . . and of course, will the police care about him?”
“Not if the rich white men downtown have anything to say about it.”
“Isn't that the ugly truth?”
“Mm-hm.” Death nods. “The living and the dead share prejudice in common, but the dead hunger for things like justice or vengeance, or reconciliation. Humans hunger for things like elevation, and that makes you blind and deaf. Especially when they already have more than their fair share of what they think they're owed.”
“Once more with the ugly truths.” You step toward the bed. “What about ghosts?”
Death looks away. “Minds who refuse to cross over, and minds who run from us . . . I can’t condemn them. They have their reasons. But they condemn themselves to an ugly path, and more often than not become things that their living selves wouldn’t be able to look in the eye.”
You prop your hands on your hips. “I don't know what I’m looking for here. Tell me.”
“Don't bother with the body,” says Death. “We need to snoop in his drawers.”
“Alright. Can you open them or . . .”
Death gives you a withering, exhausted sort of look. “I’m invisible to the majority of the living, not wholly incorporeal.”
“Alright, so some dividing up of tasks then.” You turn toward the bedside table. “I’m no expert, so if I’m about to miss something, let me know.”
Death gives you a small smile, much less grim and wild. “I have a feeling you'll know what you want when you see it.”
“And when the police come and know the flat has been searched?”
“They won't know a thing. Trust me.” Death tilts his head sideways. “We reapers do this all the time. We’re good at putting back what we take apart. I’ll look in the closet.”
You offer him a salute. “Good luck.”
Death smiles again and vanished, leaving you alone in the tiny bedroom with the dead in the bed and whatever secrets he might be holding.
Taking a deep breath, you yank open the bedside drawer. There’s not much. A couple of handkercefs, matches, extra candles, olive oil no doubt for dubious uses. Any ordinary man’s bedside drawer. No bible, but you’ve started to get the feeling that in this place that’s no scandal.
That's a small dresser in the corner, you start yanking open the drawers. Once more, not much to see.
“I think I might've found something.”
You jump so high you slam your hands into the roof of a dresser drawer. “Ow! Good heavens, don't scare me like that!”
“I'm the ‘grim reaper’, being scary is rather my job.” Death stands behind you, holding a cardboard shoe-box. He gives it a small shake. “I say let's open it up.”
◈◈◈
You open the shoebox together in the kitchen, where there isn’t a dead body. Death’s right: it’s full of letters. Together, you pick them out to read them.
It feels more than illicit, feels like a sin, reading a dead man’s letters while his corpse grows cold and stiff in the next room.
They’re between him and a lover, a woman called Ailing.
“It looks like she’s married,” you murmur, holding out one of the pages for Death and underlining the information with a finger. “Jealous husband?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Death shrugs. “Let’s start there in the morning.”
“Sure,” you tell him, “but you’ll walk me home. And I want your help getting me out of the fiddly buttons again.”
Death raises his eyebrows, black and sharp as ink on paper. “I’m undressing you now, am I?”
You look away drom him, face fevering hot. Fuck.
“Sorry,” Death says. “I’ll stop if you want.”
You look at the ceiling. You don’t want him to stop, but you can’t say that. That would be far too forward, and far too risky.
“You’re alright,” you tell him, and hope that’s enough for him to catch on to what you mean. He’s Death, after all. It’s not like he can really ruin your reputation.
“Alright,” Death says. He gets to his feet and offers his hand. “Let’s clean up here, and then yes, I’ll walk you home.”
Idk who (if anyone) needs to hear this but this is your reminder that it is perfectly fine to enjoy a piece of media unironically no matter how many people hate it or will jokingly make fun of people liking it.
You are allowed to like stuff and no amount of negativity people have towards something should impact your ability to enjoy it without feeling judged or enjoy it in general.
Take it from me, someone who hardly ever dislikes something, it's much more fun to just own it :)
(The tags are a bunch that I've seen ppl make comments abt ppl who enjoy them - yes I know a lot of what I tagged is popular, that doesn't mean ppl still won't say stuff - yes everyone is perfectly allowed to dislike or even hate whatever they want but it's really not cool to make fun of people for simply enjoying something that was made to be enjoyed.)
i think most people accept the idea of "you don't control who you're attracted to" in terms of being gay but imo it can go further. like if you're not attracted to men, but you happen to find a transmasc person attractive, i dont think thats inherently transphobic if you acknoweldge that your attraction is incongruent with their identity. you dont need to run yourself in circles creating qualifiers for your sexuality when we live in a world of infinite gender identites. it's not like you have an inbuilt radar that tells you whether that hot stranger at the bar is a woman or not. man who kissed a twink that turned out to be a butch lesbian that thought he was a butch lesbian. etc.
I'm just . . . “ehhhh, I'm attracted to the people I'm attracted to for . . . whatever reason that is” at this point. Some people are hot 🤷🏻 some aren't 🤷🏻 some are but from a distance. It's whatever.
