#loud and clear

[softie-rain]

the amount of people thinking Snow actually loved Lucy Gray is scaring me btw

[joongdunking]

[slytherhys]

Loud and Clear

Prompt: Choice @elriel-month

A/N: I didn't plan on writing anything for this prompt but I had this specific sentence in my head and I couldn't ignore it so enjoy this very short (and sweet) oneshot.

You can also read this on AO3!

You’ll regret it.

The words are said without venom, but Elain still struggles to understand if they’re a threat or simply friendly advice. Still, she pays them no mind. She takes his kisses, his glances, his touches and makes them hers forever.

Do you regret it?

He asks with a curious look on his face, as if afraid of what the truth might reveal. Elain doesn’t lie to him – she wouldn’t be able to, either way. Not when he sees right through her every single time. No, she says, and nothing has ever felt so right.

Do you ever wonder what would’ve happened?

She hears her sister’s words, and it takes her a second to realise what she’s talking about – but the minute she does, a sticky wave of fear climbs up her stomach and wraps around her heart. Because if nothing had ever happened, she wouldn’t have a messy living room with papers strewn across the coffee table, forgotten in the haste of getting her to bed. She wouldn’t have a collection of knives tucked away in their office upstairs, and she wouldn’t have his morning kisses, his longing touches, his loving embraces. She wouldn’t have him, and his love every single day.

So, she tells her sister the truth – she doesn’t care for a world where she doesn’t end with him by her side.  

Are you regretting it, already?

That’s the question Azriel asks her when she finds him sitting in the garden, the soft pink of the dawn sky tainting his skin.

She watches him carefully, tilting her head. She can’t help the soft smile that tugs at the corner of her lips, even if sadness makes her reach out for him. That big, lovely man who, for all the world, shouldn’t be standing in the middle of a garden, already dressed in his Illyrian leathers, watching the sunset with her That gentle man who pulls her into his arms, as if he’s changed his mind and doesn’t want to hear her answer anymore.

So, Elain doesn’t – she simply smiles into his chest, reaches up and kisses him until he’s moaning under her, reaching for her back. Until he gets the message loud and clear.  

You’re the easiest choice I’ve ever made in her life.

[vetteltothemetal]

hello! charles/este figure skating fic….. we must know more!!!!

OMG thank you for asking!!! I’m deep in my eternal research-stage rn and it’s definitely an excuse to combine my two favorite sports, plus a game of how to include as many jokes from both sport fandoms as possible while playing them completely straight. But yes, here’s the gist of what I’m working with here:

SO! Keep in mind I made half the grid into girls in this for my own personal enrichment. Anyway instead of racing, everyone is competing in figure skating instead. Charles (girl) (I named her Charlotte, I like changing names up for my own suspension of disbelief) is competing in solo women’s skating (and killing it!!) while Este (girl) and Pierre (boy 🥱) are being a messy lowkey flop of a pairs team. The fic follows the two season lead up to the next Olympics and is about like… reconciliation when you don’t even know what happened in the first place.

Este and Pierre need to get their personal shit together in order to Succeed In The Pair Skating Discipline. I try to keep it centric around my girls but like Pierre kept haunting the narrative so he’s important to the plot too LMAO. Not too much on Pierre ofc, I do love him. But yes, with Este and Charlotte it’s just a quiet what could’ve been… when you have a falling out with your one friend and somehow you lose another friend in the divorce. Their dynamic is mostly that they’re perfectly nice to eachother but it’s weird and fake and strained and there are just a lot of what ifs. It’s Este’s POV so a lot of it is just her not understanding Charlotte and how she operates at all.

Like what if your ex friend is the It Girl of your sport (in the discipline that gets a lot more attention) and she’s best friends with your partner (the person your career depends upon) and he publicly acts like you’re the worst person on Earth to work with. You’re losing so bad in the court of public opinion and you’re not performing in your sport to the degree you know you’re capable of and HOW THE HELL are you supposed to beat a team like Russell & Albon for the gold when you can’t even jump in sync! And on top of all that, said It Girl ex friend is so nice and friendly to you and always kisses you hello and goodbye but she also crops you out of Instagram pictures…. Makes a girl want to switch over to the Canadian Ice Dance Factory to partner with someone who actually likes you but word on the street is that he has a new partner… (a retired 2x world champion single’s skater from Spain making her comeback 👀)

But I digress! Whole thing’s a mess. Este’s going through it and projecting a lot of her insecurities onto Charlotte (who is Not helping matters.) Over the course of a couple competitive seasons and shared summer shows, they slowly reconnect and start to relearn each other, both in who they have always been but also who they have grown into.

Really it’s all just an excuse for a study on weird girl friendship fall outs and playing around with gender expression (especially because I think rule 63 versions of people would behave differently in a figure skating AU vs keeping it F1! Very different cultures!) Plus, I’m having a lot of fun with the artistry vs athleticism debate when it comes to comparing figure skaters and I’ve been watching onboards and reading forums to figure out how different driving styles would translate to different skating styles. Also watching French reality tv as “research” for dialogue ideas LMAO.

I went on foreverrrrrrrr but yes thank you for asking :) I have a whole little world in my mind so if anyone has any question about what their specific favorite driver (and some ex drivers) are doing this world I very likely will have an answer for you LOL.

[yourfriendlypyrovampire]

I was able to get in a few more wishes before next month and this happened...

Blossoms came followed by In Your Eyes, I gave up after that 😂

He's like, "How dare you pull for another man!"

[darqrai]

bella having a deformed tail is such a strange thing because why do you have to show your hole everytime you stretch

[h3rmess]

Hear me out man

HEARD. VERY HEARD.

[beigetiger]

Doing that promised yapping about these two. The masked one is named Matteo and the other one is simply called the mannequin.

They exist in a very large circus that bends reality on the regular in order to entertain guests, even if it has adverse effects on the employees.

Lots of different kinds of people work in the circus. There’s the ringmaster, of course. There are chained angels who stop the employees from leaving when a show is on. There are both wild and tamed beasts of all sorts, as well as their tamers. There’s a massive spiderlike woman who crawls around on the ceiling backstage who’s job is to ensure that the performers are ready to perform when they’re cue arrives. Some higher ranked performers have their own shows or spotlights, others exist as part of a larger cast. There’s more, of course. Lots of variety.

As I said earlier, the circus kind of bends reality. There are the higher ranked performers as well as the showrunners, ringmaster, etc. who have a good grip of what is going on, while everyone else kind of just allows themselves to be thrown around by whatever’s happening. The employees are never sure if anything is real or if what they feel is real, but going along and simply performing as need be is what they do to keep themselves grounded as much as possible. It doesn’t help that they generally do not speak to each other at all, not because they’re banned from it, but because they feel no need to. They’re aware of the existence of performers outside their little troupe, but nobody has a full understanding of the extent of the circus and those who work there (except for the ringmaster, of course). Maybe I’ll make a ranking of employees someday to make it all clearer.

Matteo is part of a cast that is dressed in all black and wears animal masks. They’re often support for more unique actors, but sometimes do their own performances. Matteo himself is often objectified for the sake of the show since his body type follows the typical “pretty seductive woman” and that is fully taken advantage of by the showrunners. It’s degrading, but there is nothing that Matteo can do about it because there is nobody he can really complain to and he fears what would happen if he ever tried to stop the performance.

The mannequin belongs to a larger cast of mannequins, all dressed similarly or identically to him. They have even less free will than the masked actors, and by that I mean they aren’t supposed to have free will at all. Occasionally there are puppet masters who control the strings on them, but oftentimes they can just be given instructions that they’ll perform, and they can just be hung up in a closet somewhere after the show is over. The ability of a mannequin to express itself is, during showtime, limited to small gestures like head or wrist movement wgile the rest of it is obeying its orders. After show, they generally don’t move at all. Like the masked actors, they are usually support for a higher ranked show.

The main mannequin is often used as a sort of support partner for Matteo during performances, since it further objectifies him to the audience (the typical “man and woman” routine except for making the masculine one a literal object in order to make the audience focus on the “woman” more), which is how they know each other. Matteo has developed something of an obsession with the mannequin because he is the only thing that Matteo consistently interacts with in a way that doesn’t feel negative or spaced-out.

A side note about Matteo is that he can and does take his mask/outfit off. But he has no memory of what happens or what he is like when his mask is off. His only experiences, as far as he’s aware, are what happens to him while he’s dressed to perform while inside the circus. He doesn’t even know what the surrounding area looks like or how big the circus really is. The whole thing makes him latch on to the mannequin as a way to ground to reality. In fact, none of the performers remember what happens when they’re not in costume.

This whole thing was probably incoherent as hell, I’m sorry.

[wisteriagoesvroom]

tell me why my friend read my tarot for “what will my writing life be like next year” and the death card fell out 💀 which apparently means the hobby could maim me or i will get too sucked in/overly intense about it if i’m not careful

[adnauseum11]

not sure why I bother with ask games and tag games, no one reads them, not even the people who tagged me in the game in the first place.

[sodaneko]

lale, in FINALLY home, and excuse ne, the titke for part??? "𝐌𝐢𝐲𝐚 𝐤𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐛" ????? OH MY GOD. do u hear me? DO YOU HERe ME. that banshee yelling into the void? it me.

teehee

[fourthwonton]

The moment I was sure they have something going on

[helgiafterdark]

[nickthemudkiptrainer]

Ah so it’s possible she has preemptively “restricted” my user account from interacting with her on Instagram as my DM from a few weeks ago is still showing only as “sent” & not “seen”.

Though she also hasn’t posted any new Instagram posts for a few months now so it’s also a possibility that she just hasn’t logged in, but I find it unlikely for her to just ignore a notification & message like that for so long without doing something: i.e. restricting or blocking me. I guess I’m glad she hasn’t blocked me still yet, but it’s basically the same result of no communication either way.

My conclusion is this isn’t something I can fix on my own. This should have been my conclusion 13 years ago but it seems only now am I finally learning my lesson.

I need to meet with the pastor and get her thoughts. Is it truly even productive to attempt to reconnect, given the circumstances? Does she still hold a grudge or worse, is afraid of me, because of my past?

The ball is in her court to reply, but if she’s restricted my Instagram account and not showing up to church now for the past 3 weeks,

it seems that is her reply, loud and clear.

[vetteltothemetal]

i am so confused are you a max fan or not.. Seperate box for max could be both things lol

The Max box is for a secret third thing…

I think he’s objectively incredibly skilled, there really is no argument. I think he is the one to measure against. But his victories don’t move me whatsoever and his fans for the most part annoy me. I think the annoyance with his fans is exacerbated bc I’m clearly a Charles fan and I get annoyed when other Charles blogs celebrate Max doing well when Ferrari is flopping as bad as they are like can we FOCUS.

But yeah, basically I never want him to win, but I don’t feel the same annoyance I do when say, the McLarens win, because I believe his wins are deserved when they happen. But I won’t celebrate either, it’s true neutrality. Glad he’s taking points away from people I truly don’t want to win though, keep at it king.

[skull-ishcloud]

Understimulation might as well be the thing that kills me