a red tide, endless

gumi, resident aisphobe (ignore the 10k ais character study i wrote in 5 days) and @laymes-art's writer half. i'm hitting ais with an aro beam and you cannot stop me it is already done

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As if she was carved from winter itself. Not so much the frigid cold but the pristine serenity—beauty akin to the freshest of snowfalls, untouched and unsullied by human hands. Something prickles at my skin, perhaps the very same thing that made any words I had bury themselves in my throat, though whether in warning or otherwise—

“S-Sister Sabri…!” A stuttered wavering, as if the Senobium guard had been plunged suddenly in the thick of icy waters. It might’ve been a cathartic watch, his surly attitude towards me fresh enough to leave an after image, except fear had a nasty habit of being at least a little contagious. ‘We’ll… we’ll get out of your way!’

Eyes slid shut. Stride slow but measured with purpose. Sabri does not respond to him, nor does she acknowledge either of us. Instead, she passes both of us in a strangely gossamer existence, and I’m left to wonder what would make her look at someone proper—whether I wanted to be that person.

domestic bliss? no. domestic rage. domestic huffing and puffing. domestic “i’m only sticking around so that i can be there when they inevitably humiliate themselves”

bonus: reality (above) vs. fantasy (below)

hehe, thank you, anon! <3 i grew it myself! 🫶

(posting this on mobile so hopefully the formatting isn’t weird!)

very close, anon! 🥰 alongside people she loves (or recognises, but relatively speaking that’s basically the same thing to her) she can also be harmed by the senobium, because they have the other half of her second heart (kinda like earned familiarity vs. stolen familiarity!).

but i love your question A LOT. the thing is, thanks to tiên’s “childhood” of being a science experiment, tiên has EXCEEDINGLY low standards of how she’s treated. there’s likely absolutely nothing an average person can do to her to make her think negatively of you (though that goes for the flip side as well—tiên doesn’t have the means to think positively of anyone either), because the baseline is literally years and years of torture and deprivation haha. that being said, tiên does have an in built feature to deter people who would take advantage of this sadistically—her lack of emotive reaction to anything pretty much ensures that most people aren’t even aware that she has insanely low standards lol.

and as for your question if they’d be glad if their downfall was at the hands of someone they loved… tiên’s only desire, or anything remotely resembling a desire, is to use their strength on something that is worth it. dying for someone she loves most definitely counts. (a shame her death would kickstart her monster heart flooding the world… but that’s a different question altogether.)

aww! i’m flattered that piqued your curiosity! i think tiên does remember them in her own way, but not to any kind of degree that we as humans who have emotional intelligence (beyond tiên’s level of absolute zero lol) would consider substantial. most of her memories of others really only boils down to the physical sensations OR conclusions they left her with, but nothing beyond that, and certainly nothing identifying. tiên doesn’t even know what this person looks like due to her facial blindness, but can very faintly recall the spots of kindness she was offered in the past in that differed from the cruelty, and more strongly adhere to the lesson she was taught after the death of this ex-senobium scientist—that escape and company both are meaningless things that cause harm. and tiên doesn’t enjoy causing harm—it feels beneath her. it’s why in canon she’s a deeply isolated figure, with the most intimacy and connection she gets from other people being from when she is ordered to kill them and anything you see contrary to that is an au lol.

with one exception! which nicely leads into your next question. tiên doesn’t view anyone as a parental figure, because for starters, she has such little understanding of relationships that i don’t think she has any way to differentiate between any of them, even categorically. 😂 BUT, there is someone that has insinuated themselves as tiên’s mother figure, particularly after she proved herself not just useful, but enough to be one of the most favoured. as you can imagine, given she was responsible for the experiments that made tiên into what she is, there was no kindness to this action—but simply ego and ownership. and because i felt it appropiate that tiên was in a pseudo mother/daughter + weapon/master relationship with the abbess.

after her strength and power became obvious, the abbess finally allowed tiên some measure of humanity—arranging lessons so that they were taught to read, write, etc. she’s even responsible for the outfit tiên wears—“kindly” finding something that tied her back to her cultural background and even making sure she learned the language. as if she wasn’t responsible for stripping tiên of everything in the first place, but priorities, amirite?

a heaven, dripfed

you turn away from your oc/canon for a second and suddenly it's severed arm sunday 🙄

idk what it says about me that i haven’t thought of a good ending before you asked me lmfao, but i think a good ending with tiên would have to involve the destruction of the senobium. that’ll always be hanging up in the air otherwise, because she is bound to them by enchantment, which would be an obstacle that would surely eventually be a lethal one.

after that, perhaps the two of you will go on a mutual journey? i’m not sure if i envision the mc’s curse cured in tiên’s good ending, but because tiên herself is also a human with monstrous adjacent features (and, unlike mhin, isn’t wrestling with that fact), perhaps it becomes a theme of accepting one’s flaws instead. but i’d want it to be open ended, where the new goal becomes to find a way to stop tiên from experiencing constant physical agony. something like that, perhaps :3

hi wifeeeeeeeee i love you too!!! u3u

BAD END: ASCENSION

oh, that’s really cool! it makes a lot of sense that it’s an alien parasite then. and as to why its weakness is fire. i’ll have to see if i can watch it at some point!

(but yes! tiên’s blood is exceedingly protective of her, even at her detriment haha)