#|| verse || taking the black ||

[letters-to-rosie]

fanfiction on ao3

Powder and Ekko have been orbiting around each other for years. When their courses shift and they collide, Ekko makes a deal: revolutionary vision for information on Silco’s operations. Powder may be no politician, but she has her mind, some unlikely friends, and a score to settle. If only it weren’t complicated by her falling in love—and into bed—with her former worst nightmare.

real review left by @xsuicunex2 haha thanks to them for letting me use their words! 🤍

[scholar-of-yemdresh]

Why yes I am using the Silt Verses to push propaganda for some of my faves 🤭

If you like TSV for its weirdo eldritch gods and cosmic horror most of these would fit.

If you're specifically looking for capitalism-core with a dash of lovecraft type shit The Craft Sequence and The Dead Take the A Train got you.

If you're looking for the Ace/aro Mood while attempting to comprehend the horrors and being persecuted for your creepy fantasy religion try Winter Tide/The Innsmouth Legacy.

You looking for the unhinged queers who do murder in the name of their gods + a middle-aged trans MC who's just trying her best™ No Gods For Drowning might be for you.

Ya like the messed up saints?the body horror?and devastation that the gods in TSV bring? The Black Iron Legacy might do you some good.

Suppressed religions & dangerous gods 2 electric boogaloo aka The Divine Cities. Also got that sweet sweet political intrigue and commentary on colonisers/colonised dynamic among other things.

TWs:violence, death, gore, body horror for most of these. Some sexual references but nothing too graphic, In the Craft Sequence I do remember Three Parts Dead having a non-consenual kiss, can't recall any further SA atm.

I'm bad at explaining but just try them. K thx bye.

[tvgals]

the way spider byte and hobie were immediately down for miles as soon as they met him js warms my little black heart

like yes black solidarity 🙏

+ the fact hobie sees miles like his little brother and that’s so cute to me 😞

[mokeonn]

I am honestly still absolutely flabbergasted that those "Gorillaz without the rap" videos exist. Like bro I just don't think you like Gorillaz at that point.

[skidkiid]

My Radiantsona! More pictures and some info about him below:

His name is Alec Fisherman, he's 19 and in his freshman year of college. He took a leap year off so he could focus on getting a job, and figuring out what he wanted to major in (computer science). He was on his way to the library when a meteor crash landed in the street right next to the parking lot he kept his car. He decided to touch it because, why not? And became Radiant Purple :)! So far he's using his powers for good but you never know.

His bangs are star shaped btw :D!!

[butevrythinggoesaway]

So I already headcanon that Benj is pretty much immortal because of the Spider God, and that Marvel Noir actually does have colour it just changes in saturation sometimes, and that Marvel Noir and the Arkhamverse are the same world because pretty much worst case scenario...

AU where Benj finds Jason before Slade can, immediately adopts him without realizing. If I continue drawing for this au, I will post on either my spiderverse and arkham knight blog and reblog to the opposite blog, and switch between that. Either way, it'll end up on both blogs.

[beatheprincess]

Weekend was good! ~♡

Weekends are never bad for me🥺💕 just hope I can make it through the week, highly appreciate the love I've been getting on my posts lolol I thought I was shadowbanned for posting too much >.< but thank uu🥺 free cookie 4 u --> 🍪

Goals for this week ✅

Try to eat 3 meals a day😭🎉✌🏽

wish me luck I don't wanna keep being inconsistent ~♧

[calamitys-child]

Flint is Highwayman by the Highwaymen and Madi is Highwomen by the Highwomen but unfortunately Silver is The Pilgrim by Kris Kristofferson

[a-world-in-grey]

Ok, last one, I think (I could be wrong (: )

Sola and Thrown to the Wolves au. Specifically, the version where Regis never goes to Galahd, so all he knows is what Mors told him before he died and whatever he found in the archives.

Now please take a moment to imagine all the potential angst that comes from the fact that Regis' first baby is under Adagium's Curse. (Whatever that's supposed to mean, because the royal archives are surprisingly silent on the topic.) His tiny teeny baby girl who was born premature and who fought for her life so fiercely is supposed to be a monster in human skin.

I don't think Regis would ever abandon her, he's not called the Father for nothing. But he's certainly not going to have a good time in this verse. +Sola's less-than-human instincts would probably make things even worse.)

I'm always up for asks if you've got more! (they make for a great breather from studying for finals)

You are right. This is so angsty. >:)

Regis' heart breaks when he puts his little Sunshine through the ritual, when instead of needing the potion held in a white-knuckled grip, Sola's skin slowly knits back together under the faint glow of golden magic. But even as he holds his wailing daughter close, wiping away blood to reveal skin unmarred by so much as a scar, Regis knows he cannot abandon his daughter here. Adagium's Curse or no, Sola is a child. His child.

Regis leaves the broken shards of a potion and doesn't look back.

And the Vitae watching from the shadows wonder.

In this 'verse, Sola grows up having to hide her golden magic. This is not the time of the Rogue or the Wanderer, technology is everywhere and Regis cannot risk Sola living beyond the Wall with the war in an uneasy ceasefire.

The court believes Sola without magic, and rumors abound of Sola not being Regis' daughter at all. Sola looks so like her mother, but she acts much like Cor, and it doesn't take long for the gossips to speculate that Cor and Aulea were having an affair behind Regis' back.

No one in the royal family is amused.

Even after a paternity test is provided to shut up the worst of the gossips, the court pushes against Sola as Regis' heir. Surely the Ring will not accept one without magic, they argue. And for all Regis tries to shelter Sola from the court, he cannot stop everything from reaching the ears of his sharp little girl.

When Sola, all of five years old, tells him that she refuses to be Queen, Regis' heart breaks all over again.

None of the adults tell Sola the truth of her golden magic. They tell her that she cannot use it because it will hurt her and those around her, but they do not tell her about Adagium's Curse. Regis and Aulea hope, that with love and care, their bright and fierce Sun will not grow up to be the monster described in faded legends.

Oh, they see her less than human instincts. Watching Sola so closely, they'd have to be blind to miss them. They worry, because they think this the grain of truth to the legend, a manifestation of the Curse.

And yet... Sola isn't malicious. She's fiercely protective to the point of bordering on possessiveness, more inclined to attack first and ask questions later if she perceives a threat to Hers. But Sola doesn't attack anyone who doesn't attack or threaten her or hers first. She never subjects anyone to abject cruelty. If Regis hadn't seen Adagium's Curse first hand, he'd think Sola simply too similar in temperament to Cor.

Then Sola tears out a man's throat with her teeth.

In the aftermath, Sola's fairly certain she wasn't supposed to overhear Regis, Clarus, and Cor talking in Papa's office. But she does, and she overhears 'Curse' and 'not-human', and Sola's already heard more than a few people referring to her as a monster these past few days to realize that Papa and her uncles are talking about her.

Sola sneaks around the library looking for anything she can on curses, dodging suspicion from her papa and uncles by insisting that she's more than old enough to find her own books. One of the librarians, a woman with really cool dark eye makeup and lipstick, helps Sola with her research. Unfortunately, Sola's unable to find the answers she's looking for, but one afternoon when she's curled up with Noctis for an afternoon nap, Sola resolves that Curse or not, monster or not, she will protect her little brother. No matter what.

When Sola's old enough to formally apprentice to Cor, Regis shares his magic with her, as Noctis is still too young yet to properly create a Retinue bond. There's no question Sola is Noctis' Sword, just as there's no question that Gladio and Ignis are his Shield and Heart, but they're planning to wait until Noctis is at least sixteen.

Only, Noctis gets kidnapped before that can happen, then picked up by a wandering Vitae and brought back to Galahd.

Where originally Noctis would be utterly baffled by Galahd's insistence that Regis was a bad father, Galahd knows how Regis loves and cares for Sola despite her so-called 'curse.' Galahd knows it to be no curse, knows Sola's non-human instincts instead come from the Draconian's Blessing (Galahd's been dealing with those same dragon instincts for millennia, they know it when they see it and Sola's very dragon).

Regis knows none of this. He had every reason to abandon baby Sola to her death and erase her from the records.

He didn't. He lied. He kept her hidden, kept her safe and loved as best he could, and the handful of Vitae spies hidden amongst the Citadel staff have seen it all.

It seems the Father is the Mother's child after all.

When Regis and Sola arrive, Regis demanding to know where his son is with Sola's rumbling growl reverberating through their bones, Sola's growl cuts off with a jerk of surprise when one of the Furia trills at her, reassurance-Hoard-safe-not-seeking-fight brushing up against the embers of gold magic suppressed inside her soul. Sola stares at the Furia with wide eyes, because no one, not even Uncle Cor for all his growls and chuffs, has ever responded in such a way to her.

Things get sorted out, and before they leave for Insomnia, Sola and Noctis and Regis get to meet their aunt/sister and cousin/nephew, and Sola's given an invitation to come back to Galahd to properly train her gold magic.

@secret-engima if you want to add anything from Galahd's perspective feel free to join in!

[yeonban]

The thing about Tobias and betrayal is that he makes it look as if he only hates people who betray him. In actuality, he dislikes anyone who betrays anyone. He's not stupid, so he'll definitely take advantage of every person who's willing to double-cross their allies if it's helpful for his own situation, but they'd live under a false impression of safety and comradery the whole time bc Tobias would absolutely end them the second he'd be finished with their boss/friend/etc and have no more use for them either.

In his eyes, if you're able to betray someone else, even moreso a friend or a boss you've sworn loyalty to (*regardless of circumstances), why would you not betray him too? What use could he possibly have out of you which would override the amount of tracking he'd have to do to make sure you don't repeat what you just did to your former allies, this time to him/his friends? He has -100 trust in anyone who's given him information or aid to take down their allies, and while he'd be amicable and friendly to them the whole time they're useful, he would never give a solid damn about them. More than that, he'd make sure they'd die one way or the other, very likely in the same manner the person/people they betrayed did. #Retribution

[13urningstars]

M!A Luck Sinkhole: For two days your luck is so terrible that it may bleed out and affect those around you as well!

The day starts off horribly, if her luck is anything to go by. She was out of her meds and Joy wasn't available for a restock meeting until next week, so she pilled on another full nighter to her previous roster. It's not so bad really, she has experience living through life while running on fumes, and the weather looks perfect today! All she needs is a glass of energon and she'll be on stable feet in no time.

And then, groggy and tired, she trips on the rug and falls down her stairs down to the main floor.

[clemencetaught]

Psst, from Quinn 💋

gossiping from the knight ( behind their back gossip meme w/ @uroborosymphony )

Send “Psst” for 10 5 Things My Muse has said About Yours Behind Their Back.

“She might have good intentions, but that doesn’t mean her actions are good. She didn’t even think about who else wouldn’t been hurt from her little stunt. No one, not even her boyfriend would've stopped her.”

“What do you mean she’s around the corner- Pawn, where is she? …Fuck.”

“She needs to go. No Rook, we’re not killing anyone- we just need to get her out of the way.” 

“She’s not dipping her paw in this case. I’m not doing damage-control today.” 

*frowns and puts coat on* “…I changed my mind; I’m leaving now.”

[adhdo5]

Hand Me My Shovel I'm Going In is neither a WWX song nor a CWL song but it does hav lyrics that pertain to both so it's pretty good

[compacflt]

okay here to pick ur mind…i know you’ve alluded to it throughout WWGTTAI and debriefing but do u think bottoming is something that i’ve struggled with throughout his relationship with mav-especially if he enjoyed it-bc it may have been “more gay” in his mind and therefore harder to excuse due to the inherent misogyny wrapped up in men’s homophobia? it’s something we’ve talked abt in my gender studies classes so i just wanted to know how you think your ice may have approached that due to the repression of his sexuality so throughly and for so long!

as always with questions like this there’s a diegetic (in-universe) answer and a non-diegetic (writing theory) answer so I’ll start with the diegetic answer (not tagging this as nsfw but obv refer to the subject matter & discretion advised):

he isn’t thinking about it. I mean, he has to think about the mechanics of it, because sure there’s a lot of prep work involved, but he’s not really thinking about what it means, because no one’s telling him to. He knows it’s “wrong” —but the whole thing is “wrong,” anyway! The fact that he’s doing anything with Maverick is already wrong... I think he categorizes things as “not-fucked-up” and “yes-fucked-up” in his head, and any form of non-societally-approved contact with another man is “yes-fucked-up,” and there’s not really a sliding scale. Which is why Maverick’s weird extended hug thing right when Ice leaves TOPGUN (ch.4? I forget) is like literally the biggest deal in the world to him. I think Maverick could’ve actually groped him and he would’ve responded the same way. It’s all fucked-up, in his head. No difference between hugging/kissing/fucking/being fucked; it's all the same. There are the rules, and then there’s breaking the rules—no gray area in Ice’s mind (though note, in turn, Maverick’s analysis of Ice bending the rules—there is a gray area, just an unacknowledged one). 

So, yeah, he isn’t really thinking about the implications of the specific act. Maybe he knows that he enjoys it, and that thinking about what it means that he enjoys it would ruin it, so he doesn’t think about it. Also, he’s operating under the unspoken assumption that there’s something “wrong” with Maverick and not with him, because remember that Maverick already confessed to engaging in same-sex acts in ch. 4. There’s something fundamentally “wrong” with Maverick, so anything Ice does automatically looks better in comparison, because (he thinks) his transgressions are isolated incidents, whereas Maverick’s are a known pattern—even if Ice’s “transgressions” amount to literally being fucked by another guy. Hey, well, at least I’m not as bad as rule-breaker Maverick, who does this all the time, apparently! 

In Ch. 8 I was kind of trying to harp on that fact with the use of the word “resentment” during Ice’s discussion of choice/free will—there is kind of a sense that Maverick did this to him against his will, as in, he wasn’t “yes-fucked-up” until he met Maverick/this whole FWB-situation started, and maybe there is some deep-seated resentment about the fact that he might have been “normal” if it weren’t for Maverick (he wouldn’t have been, but he doesn’t realize that). I was close to having him just say this outright in Ch. 8, but as I’ll talk about below, their relationship is already pretty toxic, and there were some lines of toxicity I didn’t want to cross explicitly.

As for the non-diegetic answer, AKA the reason I wrote it this way: I’m kind of hesitant to politicize sociosexual (esp. “hierarchical”) roles in fiction, because I feel like it’s an easy way to betray your own political biases (as a writer) towards male sexual roles—it’s just too slippery of a slope IMO. Especially once you introduce ranks and professional/financial power dynamic differences, I feel like it’s all-too easy to portray the relationship as incredibly and toxically sociopolitically unequal. Yeah, I guess it would make more sense for very-closeted Ice to top 100% of the time, but he’s already “hierarchically” above Maverick 100% of the time anyway—politically, professionally, financially, in terms of social respect, etc. I didn’t want their dynamic to be skewed all the way towards one character having all the social/external/traditionally masculine power, so I didn’t write it like that. That in and of itself is a political decision that betrays my beliefs about male sexuality, and might not make sense in-universe, with characters this repressed, but…I personally felt uncomfortable with the alternative.

I think I’ve explained this a couple times elsewhere, but I wanted Ice & Mav to be true equals in this fic, because it reflects the equality they achieve in canon— “You can be my wingman anytime” vs. “Bullshit, you can be mine.” They are canonically equals. And, yes, of course in a sexual relationship you can be “giver” or “taker” and still be “equal” with the other person, but—like, you see how it would be different, right? If you’re only ever the “giver,” in our society’s traditional understanding of gender roles, you have an insane amount of power over the other person, and I wanted Ice & Mav to be equals when they’re with each other. It’s why I was hesitant having like an actual D/S dynamic with them as well—and the lack of that dynamic is itself a plot point. Ice in ch. 8 rebels against what he thinks their dynamic is—namely, that Maverick always leads/gives the orders, and Ice always follows. He portrays himself as submissive in that moment (“I’ve never had a choice”), but in reality he has just as much control over this relationship as Maverick does—i.e. he is just as “dominant,” and wants it just as bad, he just can’t articulate that. Which is the point of his whole character arc. Their equality is the point, not the transgressiveness of the act itself.

Also related to his character arc is the passivity of the act of bottoming as well, which is maybe why it's "overrepresented" in the story (sorry coming back to add this graf after doing the tags already &then Having A Thought). Like if Ice's whole thing is following orders/not having a choice, which makes him a great naval officer but a deeply flawed and confused person, then it makes sense that his narrative focuses most on the following/passive act of "taking," not necessarily the more leading/active role of "giving." These are simplistic terms obv but hopefully you can see what I'm getting at.

[94erz]

Every day I log on to Twitter now I am infuriated by the fandom. 100 #1's on iTunes for a song with multiple abusers and serial criminals while multiple members of the group they claim to stan haven't reached that yet for multiple songs off their albums.

And then they have the fucking nerve to be like ''we treat and support them all equally'' ''there is not a ML bias in the fandom'' like shut the fuck up already, I hate them so fucking much.

In mere days they've once again shown up in huge numbers for a single member while letting others fall to the wayside and I'm supposed to believe all of these accounts are truly OT7? Bullshit.

[lvebug]

an andie eliot reading guide (tags drop pt 1)