Just a Filthy Casual

the whole point of ao3 is that it’s a safe space for all fics, and that includes fics about taboo subjects

ao3 has always been firmly against censorship since the day it was created, that’s why it’s run by fans, for fans, on fans’ donations, why it’s a nonprofit organization, that’s also why it has no ads or algorithms or any of those capitalism bullshit

THE FREQUENCY THAT PLAYS SECONDS IN IS A SEIZURE INDUCING PITCH!

please mute the ad or click skip!! in our ad we couldn't click skip in time because it made us sit through the beginning of the pitch.

Further text on the screen advertises The Conjuring Last Rites

A talented boi

I didn’t till this field with my bare hands at dawn just so some random NPC could wander in and start “checking” my radishes like they own the place.

No. I don’t care if you’re the seasonal festival coordinator. I don’t care if your tragic backstory includes a tulip farm that burned down in the Celestial Collapse. GET OUT OF MY FIELD.

I planted those tomatoes. I watered them. I talked to them. I gave one of them a nickname (his name is Toma, he’s the biggest one, don’t you dare touch him).

Then here comes Villager B, all smiles and idle chat, stomping through my baby turnips like it’s a casual stroll.

They have the audacity to say, “Wow, your crops look great! Hope you don’t mind but I went ahead and rearranged everything”

YES. I. DO. MIND.

Do I come into your house, rearrange your furniture, and then compliment your aesthetic? No? THEN LEAVE MY LETTUCE ALONE.

I didn’t survive a blight storm, three dungeon ambushes, and a boss fight with a demonic tree just to have my yams manhandled.

You want produce? Marry me.

You want access to my herbs? Romance me.

You want my bok choy? Die in the wild and earn it like the rest of us.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk.

What if you could find the Divine Beasts in the Depths?

You’re in this dark, alien environment, strange noises echoing around you, the inescapable anxiety your only companion. Squinting in the distance, you see a frighteningly familiar shade of blue flicker, faint in the distance.

Cautiously moving forward, you begin to realise the blue belongs to something much, much larger than a possible guardian. Eventually, an ancient behemoth looms overhead, still, silent, and empty, both at rest and unnervingly calm. A strange, restless melancholy replaces the sense of creeping dread, no less uneasy than before.

Entering the resting stone, in the corner of your eyes, you see movement flicker. At first you think a spirit, perhaps the Champions still linger… but deep down you know they’ve passed on… right?

Echoing footsteps fill the silence as you press on, avoiding gloom where there had once been malice, a desecration of a sacred resting place. You see the flicker again, turn on your foot and see for a split second, a beloved friend, an uneasy rival, a stalwart protector, a steadfast leader, an ally, a painful reminder of your worst failure. Even now, years later, it stings.

You try to get their attention, but there is no response. Instead, you watch. And realise. And mourn again. There are no spirits here. Not in the vast, decaying depths, not in the final resting places of a final hope.

These are echoes of the ones you knew. You can see them in the corner of your eyes sometimes, going about preparations for that ill-fated battle. It’s eerie, made no better by the Grand Poes gently swaying, their locations random but making uncomfortable sense.

Sometimes, on unlucky days, it is not preparations that these echoes go through. Pain torn screams faintly heard as their final moments are played out, a play on an eerie stage.

Vah Medoh groans in the dark, as the image of her pilot slams limply on her back, wing torn, and struggles to get up, defiance in his glare even now.

Vah Ruta cries a warning, as her pilot slumps over the controls, never seeing her killer, her last thought to warn the others.

Vah Rudania braces herself, as the echo of her pilot does the same, but the shield shatters, a flash of phantom heat coating the area, followed by darkness.

Vah Nabooris strides steady, until her pilot, fatigued from a relentless assualt, makes one fatal misstep in her final dance, lightning crackling in the air.

The stone beasts are restless, aware of the new threat, and unable to let go of the last pilots they’ll ever have, desperately trying to fight once more. But instead, they lay still, silent, a monument to their pilots lost to time.