open post | 2k25 edition.

[gals]

open post, 2k25 edition. you know the drill. ask for one of the below menaces or an unlisted character you know i play, or if you're feeling frisky, ask for someone you know i don't play but wish i did. pic prompts, text prompts, music prompts, starters, just a general list of vibes, anything goes. the brainworms i have right now: silco arcane game boys: astarion ancunín baldur's gate 3 homelander the boys emmrich volkarin dragon age: the veilguard brainworms (with only a little rust!): oswald cobb the penguin raphael baldur's gate 3 galadriel the lord of the rings alex casey alan wake 2 greatest hits: petyr baelish asoiaf/got danny rayburn bloodline old guys (depressed): wade tillman hbo's watchmen justin crowe carnivàle luthen rael andor/star wars cho sang-woo squid game john wick john wick john childermass strange/norrell james flint black sails jimmy mcgill better call saul old guys (less depressed): dracula bram stoker's tom wambsgans succession forge fitzwilliam d&d hannibal lecter hannibal problematic women: milner utopia jennifer check jennifer's body amy elliott dunne gone girl deeply problematic men: black jack randall outlander kilgrave jessica jones the man in black westworld heinreich volmer a cure for wellness duck teddington mute larys strong house of the dragon anomalies: dale cooper twin peaks steve rogers mcu henry goodsir the terror original characters: anton valentine stella twenty fletcher low levi jansson sam keane six

Comments

smh

[imperatour]

[ In another story, this is how it goes:

There is no stone buried in his belly, feeding off hate and torment to bloom into hope. There is no pursuit, and there is no triumphant return. There is no redemption because the Praetorian Furiosa never returns to the Citadel to spend years waiting under the tenuous guise of protection of the Immortan.

There is a man on his knees who looked upon her, eyes brimming at the magnificence of her monstrosity, at the depth of her hatred, cavernous and yawning and all consuming. It burns hotter than violent, unrelenting sun that hangs over them day after day. She is more poisoned by it than the soiled earth beneath her boots.

In this story, they are two deathless bastards awaiting eternity in the wastes. ]

I should brand you.

[ Furiosa offers aloud from her perch on the front of the car. She uses her boot to nudge a matted tangled mess of hair off the back of his neck and peers at the spot of skin above the metal ring around his neck she could mark.

This is her dinnertime musing, spitting beetle shells into the sand next to him after she's scraped the meat from their tiny bodies for him to scavenge for a few more meager calories. How many days have they been driving? Fifty? A hundred? It doesn't matter. When he complains of hunger, she shoves his face into the mud and tells him to eat. When he complains of thirst, she spits in his mouth. She keeps him alive, in a loose sense of the word. Neither of them are truly alive. ]

I could carve my name across your chest. Would you like that?

[numbed]

[ In both stories, he rots. In one, he is no better than fodder. In this, whatever he once was — he had had a name once, hadn't he? — is blown away like so much dust, gone like the muscles that atrophy and thin as the scope of his life winnows to the chain that keeps him by the car. Once, he'd been a man.

Now, he's just her dog.

She spits out beetle shells and he scrabbles through the dirt for them, sand under his nails, in his teeth as the carapaces break to pieces in his mouth. It's only when her boot finds his neck that he twitches, his shoulder rolling back as if to push her foot off. A starving beast may have no dignity, but it will still bristle at any touch. The collar bites into his skin as he moves — his skin red and raw and chafing — but he's used to that pain by now.

(Do you have it in you to make it epic? In the darkest moments of the nights, he feels something like regret. This life, this existence, is nothing of the sort. But that's the curse they'd both welcomed, the moment they'd realized—

—they're the same, aren't they?)

First, he grunts, the curtain of his hair keeping his expression from view. He glances down, after, as though to imagine how it'd look. ]

'S a lot of letters.

[ He straightens up — as much as he can while still being on his knees, fixing her with a stare. ]

Would you like it, then?

it’s highly lichly.

[ipseite]

( her engagement to the grand duke’s nephew ends in blood.

not hers, mercifully; not his, unfortunately. a chevalier with royal blood in his veins, it hadn’t so much been that the marquis d’merel had been spilling common blood as it had been how he was doing it. even in a world after the shattering of the circles, blood magic is no less forbidden. petrana is as furious at his negligent lack of consideration for her as she is at the crime itself, humiliated in the court, the whisper of his name after hers nearly a physical thing dogging at her heels. when she first protests nevarra, perceiving (correctly) an exile in the arrangement, she is told witheringly:

you would have had a mage either way.

it is not the point. it doesn’t matter. the precise details, no one sees entirely fit to share with her. a matter between the imperial court and the mourn watch, a means by which the baron de cedoux might restore their family’s good name as loyal servants of the throne, to show willing to entwine themselves in this manner… petrana reconciles herself to her fate on the road north, watching the orlesian countryside dwindle into unfamiliarity, considering:

she will have a new life. this will be, pleasingly, the very last opportunity her mother will have to so directly intervene in it. the court would not have become friendlier to her any time soon, and every familiar place in it is an insulting reminder of how easy she had been for all parties involved to discard— )

You must be Professor Volkarin, ( she says, pleasantly and perfectly courteous, a pale lilac orlesian flower in all this nevarran gloom, tipping her head up so the broad brim of her hat doesn’t entirely obscure him to her.

if she’s clever, and patient, and good, then this, too, is an opportunity.

hers.

she has time to decide what she intends to do with it. )

🌱🖼️😌

[freely]

[ It is winter. Daniel sleeps, mostly, and has stranger dreams: of eagles that tear apart two-headed calves, and rain that falls upwards, and snakes that eat their own tail yet still remain ravenous. But it is winter, and when he wakes he feeds his dreams to the small row of potted plants that sit on the windowsill, and it is still winter but Daniel is rested, and he lives with Stella, and there are few complaints.

(Somebody is coming for them. Soon, before the season is over. He hasn't told Stella, not about the dreams, and the omens. But maybe he doesn't need to.)

They are an hour's drive to the nearest hamlet. Frost creeps its way into the English countryside, and the farmland they stay on is no less spared. There is some work to do, but not all: horses that need to be covered, hay that needs to be changed, chickens kept warm in the henhouse. Tasks that are done in the morning. The afternoons are simpler: for rest, or for short trips, or reading by the fire.

On one particular afternoon, Daniel returns. Three hours later, one trip to town and back. Inside the stonework of the farmhouse, with beams that creak and stone that endures, he gently places the furry beast into Stella's lap. Black, fluffy, with gummy eyes and a full belly and small, puppy squeaks. ]

He'll need a name.

[ Daniel offers, pleasantly. He brought other things from town, too: a new heater, food, warmer clothes. And one puppy, a black lab, squirmy and sleepy at the same time. ]