#(but cannot be discussed because. the plot twists :( )

[unearthlycat]

the downside of writing longer fic is that i have so many thoughts and i cannot express any of them because it is. spoilers

[cursedcola]

Prompt: Couples will evidently begin to mimic their better half after some time. What traits do you steal from him, and vice versa? Fandom: Twisted Wonderland Characters: Everyone - because I want to and I’m amidst fleshing out all my Yuu/Character dynamics + designs Format: Headcannons. Masterlist: LinkedUP Parts: Heartslabyul | Savanaclaw | Octavinelle | Scarabia | Pomefiore | Ignihyde (Here) | Diasomnia (Here) A/N: HUZZAH YET ANOTHER SERIES FINALLY COMPLETE

Habits You Steal:

Heels (Developed): Malleus is quite tall. No, scratch that. He towers over everyone. The horns give him an added height that really sells the deal. Unless you want to crane your neck back and develop a hump? It's wise to start wearing heels.

Prose (Inherited): Malleus. We love his little riddles and mysterious aura . He obviously read the wrong script and came straight out of an early 2000s YA novel named 'Evermore' or something akin. Yet he quite literally cannot get to the point sometimes. It’s a Diasomnia thing for sure but he’s the worst of the litter. It's infuriating. On one hand, your vocabulary has vastly improved. If only he could rub off on Grim, Professor Trein would be ecstatic. The problem is that sometimes you lapse into an 18th century sonnet, and your friends give maximum shit for it. Especially Ace. No mercy.

“Apologies everyone, it’s now past twilight hour and both the prefect and I need to conclude our evening agenda. Please excuse our absence and continue to delight in the night’s festivities.”-> Dear god Malleus - just say you’re going to walk them home and that you’ll see everyone in the morning. The misunderstandings that come from using big words is worse than sounding improper.

Sleeping on your side (Developed): Malleus requires a special pillow to sleep and it's one of those long ones that is positioned center of the bed. Most nights he rests like the dead, flat on his back so his horns don't tear the cloth. Laying on his side is a challenge, but he also wants to be touching you. It's one of those scenarios where once someone who's touch starved gets a taste, they can't go back. So most nights you'll sleep on one side (doesn't matter which) with either your head on his chest or your arms wrapped around one of his. Oh yeah - you get to keep one of those fancy pillows in Ramshackle. It's stored in a spare room but grim steals it quite a bit since the quality is high. The nights Malleus isn't around, you'll wake up with Grim smothered in your arms instead. Guess the whole 'can't go back' thing doesn't apply ONLY to Malleus here.

Luck (Inherited?): Fae blessings are a thing - we have confirmation within a 'discussion' during the main plot. I won't say when to avoid spoilers. Point is, the partner of Malleus Draconia most definitely has fae favorability cast upon them. You could make a HEFTY deal with Azul if he ever found out, so maybe keep the knowledge in your back pocket for a rainy day. Maybe offer to sit by him during a game of poker? Haha, no. You're actually 100% unaware. Only other fae can sense a blessing, and Lilia isn't a snitch. Expect your luck to turn around. Perhaps not entirely, but enough for the grey hairs to stop sprouting prematurely. It's difficult for other fae and supernatural to sense who placed a blessing, but they can recognize raw power. There is only one person on campus with enough magical potency to cast such a powerful charm. All thy need is two brain cells to connect the dots (some do lack this, unfortunately). You won't be sucked into any messes such as the Ghost Bride, etc. anymore, at the very least.

"Hm? I've little to no involvement with the others in my dorm, dearest. Yet, is it not a good happenstance that they treat you with the upmost respect? Do other dorms behave so uncouth that you are wary of proper manners? Diasomnia would welcome you, all you need do is ask." <- It is technically not a lie? He's not explicitly making anyone behave a certain way, but surely the strong aura acts as a deterrent for anyone with bad intentions. It just so happens that most fae-born students reside in Diasomnia. Not that he'd take kindly to any of his acting like anything but proper gentlemen towards you. This includes Sebek, by the way. The tonal whiplash with this one is insane the moment he recognizes Malleus' magic.

Gargoyles (Inherited): There is not much to say on this topic. Malleus is the sole member of Gargoyle Studies, and while he won't force you to join? It would make him very happy. You will become accustomed to travel and find comfort in desolate places. The dewy chill in deep ruins, nature's overgrowth from time's passing - certainly Malleus revisits places he once knew held life, and have been left to deteriorate. You can't truly feel the heavy nostalgia as Malleus can, but the appreciation is still shared.

"I once deeply enjoyed the solitude of ruins. The weathering of time somehow captured in architecture. Trapped in place as the world continued to live on. Yet I now find more joy in sharing them with you, rather than basking in their atmosphere alone. It perplexes me, and yet I find no problem with it." -> Malleus discovered the happiness that comes from simply being near someone you love. He just...doesn't realize it yet? It's a difficult feeling to characterize in words. Different than with his family, certainly. The entire point of going to a ruin was to enjoy the abandoned atmosphere. Malleus cares for his family yet there is a divide. Unspoken, and unable to be crossed. His world turns while he remains at a stand still. Yet whenever he discovers a new ruin, he couldn't find that tranquility he used to. Enjoying it alone is almost unthinkable - harrowing. He can't without you, or else it feels lacking. Even if you sit together in silence, he'd be happy. He just wants you there, your reactions, your company - it brings life back to the emptiness. Leaving the place more harmonious than he found it, coating it with pleasant memories for future visits. Hopefully ones where he is not alone.

Habits He Steals:

Artistry (Developed): Malleus has plenty of time to develop skills. The resources as well. He's fearful that one day your memory will become just that - a memory. One where he cannot picture your face in his mind. Where he's the only one left who recalls your existence. Be it because you pass on, or decide to leave him prematurely and return 'home'. Even if he firmly believes that there is nowhere more 'home' for you than in Twisted Wonderland. Regardless, he doesn't trust others enough. He needs to capture your likeness on his own. With his hands rather than magic - even if using magic to do so is child's play. He does not tell anyone of this budding desire or disquiet in his heart. Not even Lilia, who's likeness is forever immortalized in textbooks. The unspoken implications are too much for Malleus to confront.

People Watching (Inherited): It’s a work-in-progress, getting Malleus to see people as…well, ‘people’ and not subjects or those he’s obligated to protect. To cure his social awkwardness, there’s a need to get him ‘loosey-goosey’ and in touch with improv. What better way than to people watch? Except you don’t just sit there with him to observe. Malleus is thrown for a loop when you start making up backstories for everyone - based on their clothes, what they might be doing, or whatever else. None of it’s true. The ideas are all super embellished and with characterization holes…but it’s fun, and it gets him to think about how specific a person’s life can become, whether they live a lengthy life or not. Something utterly pointless to do, suddenly becomes one of Malleus’ favorite pass times.

Earth Slang (Inherited): It's a give and trade scenario. He improves your vocabulary, while you do Lilia proud by being the newest gremlin on Malleus' shoulder. Rather than teaching him Twisted Wonderland slang, it's much more entertaining for him to learn Earth lingo. Which is different. It's our metaphors, legends, and phrases like 'it's raining cats and dogs'. You're going to talk in SpongeBob quotes to him and he's going to believe it's philosophical. How novel, indeed. He gets to learn more about you as a person, and you get to have a bit of fun while also fostering a language shared only amongst the two of you? Like a secret code that friends have, or lovers? Huhu. It's not hard to crack at all but still fun.

"Hm? An 'updog'? Is this another saying or legend from your world? No, I have never heard of an 'updog' anywhere in Briar Valley. What is an 'updog'? A terror of some kind?" <- Heh.

Domestic Tasks (Inherited): Be still Sebek's heart, because bro might need to be resuscitated. Malleus wants to help you. Except he's found a situation where there isn't anything he can offer? Sure, he can offer coin and trinkets. Anyone can. It also is not his place to insert himself and solve your problems. You're an independent human and he isn't foolish enough to overstep that. So? Acts of service, even if said acts are 'beneath' him. This revolves back to him simply enjoying your presence, no matter what. Since you come with him to enjoy hobbies, it's only fair he does the same. Now he doesn't fully believe that you 'like' cleaning, but it's what you do most. So he'll help hang the sheets outside and then cast wind magic so they dry faster. He'll set up security charms outside Ramshackle, and enchant the paint brushes to freshen up your fence while you both share a pot of tea on the porch. You seem happy, and even a tad amused. So he'll relinquish some pride. If only for you to smile.

“Do all without magic need to take such…’extreme’ measures to clean windows? Please do not perch on the sill like this when I am not near. Else allow me this task, a simple water spell is far more proficient and safe” -> Man catches you ONE TIME, leaning out one of the second story windows to clean the outside glass and his heart skips a beat. Not that you wouldn’t make a lovely gargoyle on the roof, but spare him. He cannot fathom why one of the ghost residents can’t do it in your stead, but Malleus much prefers your feet planted on firm flooring (who’s going to tell him about all the holes and weak floorboards in Ramshackle?)

Nicknames (Developed): Malleus ceases calling you 'Child of Man'. There are many other children of men. It just so happens to be his default when you met. You are more. Much more. Which is why you cannot be his 'Child of Man'. Malleus actually takes to calling you your name more often than not. Names are meaningful, after all. Yet he dubs you 'Mooncalf' as well.

“Mooncalves are beautiful creatures that inspire. A name given to ‘those who dream’. That is what you do, is it not? Dream, and bring novel ideas that spark life in others.”

Strength (Developed): This is quite difficult. Controlling his strength when touching another is like trying to crack an eggshell with a power-saw. Yet the more you are together, the more he desires to touch you. So he has to learn. Since if he ever injured you, Malleus would never forgive himself. Often he hovers near, guiding you yet never making direct contact. His palm hovering near the small of your back as you walk, or taking extreme care when holding your arm. He's broken more teapots than you can count, and it takes months to share a bed. The fear of hitting you in his sleep caused insomnia for days...just, goodness. Don't even start on his tail. That thing has a mind of it's own.

"Fascinating...Hm?. No, no. I am by no means upset. Quite the contrary. Could I trouble you to humor my curiosity with examples? Oho, this is a wonderful evening indeed." <- Malleus showcases one of his pointed smiles - chin grasped between thumb and index as he listens intently to his juniors go in great detail about how you've begun to resemble him. The one other students will shy away from, but little do they know just how genuinely overjoyed he is. At first they showed mild distaste for the Ramshackle Prefect daring to go after someone like Malleus Draconia, yet all know better than to admit such a thing to his face. Else pity the fool. Yet nothing could dour his mood, their formal report reading like a lovestory in his mind. It is not that he is 'naive' to your mannerisms. You are always changing - as are many - and he would not dare to make any assumptions. Yet if others are noting these subtle changes as well? Malleus is...overwhelmed. Joy, appreciation, humor, and a bit unsettled if one asked for full honesty. If you are admiring him, including him in your person, as much as he is to you? It's an intimate commitment that comes once in a lifetime for his kind. He needs to think, but for now he will enjoy the 'implications' as much as he can.

Habits you steal:

Light Feet (Inherited): The king of jump-scares, ladies and gentlemen. Lilia is quite the cheeky fellow. He wades through corridors, skulking around like a bat on the walls. Both body and humor seem to ascend to new heights with this one - who without a moment's hesitation will drag you into his schemes. You may not be able to float, but that is no excuse to clomp about like an oaf! No, my doves, the greatest joys in life come from a good thrill. Others learn to keep a keen eye out for this bat's lover, as you slink about and appear at the most random moments.

"Oho!....my, my - your stealth is improving by the day. Don't get too cocky now, else I'll be forced to show you how a professional jump-scare is done!" <- Leona KingScholar himself has threatened to stick a bell collar on you, those from Savanaclaw taking a step back as you begin to resemble the more worrisome Diasomnia residents by the day. Dropping from treetops and banisters aplenty, the trickster ghosts at Ramshackle love their new fourth (and fifth, counting the ancient bat who haunts the halls just as much as they do).

Impish Glint (Inherited): Kehehehe~ it's physically impossible not to mimic that mischief laden smile of Lilia's! It's not as intimidating without the fangs and blood-red eyes, yet still oh-so charming. Why, the bat himself finds it positively adorable. It's one thing to have others call him cute - he now gets to witness the effect first-hand. The fact others can point your resemblance to him is just an added bonus. All you're missing now is the pink streak in your hair...can he? It would make such a lovely memory!

"Well aren't you just the most fetching gremlin this world has ever seen. Come along dear, I want to stir some youthful envy!"

Nose Picking (Inherited): Just kidding lol.

Historical Info-Dumping (Developed): One can only be corrected so many times before learning a topic inside-and-out. History lessons are a breeze with a personal dictionary at your disposal. Lilia is happy to help, but get ready for long stories with his bias weaved in-between. He never outright lies though, and it's a fine evening to sit with him by firelight and talk the night away over junk food. Treat it like hearing the story of an elder veteran. Except Lila has hundreds of stories to tell. There will come a day where your knowledge abut Twisted Wonderland extends far beyond what you ever knew of Earth - and you are the person people come to for notes. Even the studious Riddle Rosehearts trusts your word-of-mouth as much as his precious texts (only for history though, fair warning).

Speed Dial Takeout (Developed): This one is self-explanatory. Lilia's curiosity in the kitchen isn't something you want to deter him from. Let bro live his life, so long as it doesn't lead to the end of yours. It took months to find the TWST equivalent of speed-dial Chinese, yet a slip to Azul along with some recipes was enough to get the ol' ball and chain rolling. The food already exists, but you just had to plant some ideas to make sure that 3am last-second-craving availability was indeed an option.

"Don't look so glum now - once the oven is fixed I'll whip up a batch of Silver's favorite Mushroom Bisque! Ah - there's no need to cry. Now where did I put those takeout menus...." <- Now it's just Lils, Silver, and yourself chilling out at midnight with some egg rolls and moo-goo-gai pan after the fourth oven's been blown up in the past year. Thank Seven Malleus worked a plan with Azul set up a chain in Briar Valley, else y'all would starved.

Briaran (Inherited) : Briar Valley is indeed a land of tradition. You don’t need to learn their language to converse with fae. Most people in TWST are Bilingual - knowing common tongue and that of their homeland. Plus there are spells to help. Very few speak the ancient dialect from hundreds of years ago, which dwindled out after the war between man and fae with the ushering of a new generation. You already speak common tongue, but as for Lilia? Fluent in multiple languages. Ancient Briaran being one he slips in from time to time. You will undoubtably pick up many phrases of Briaran. Especially when he converses with Malleus, Silver, and on occasion Sebek. The third still a beginner to his personal chagrin. It’s like being a child in an immigrant household where your elders talk in their native tongue when they don’t want you to understand the conversation, so as a kid you gradually put together meanings through context. Y’know, as they go in between languages.

"I hadn't thought it possible to fall fall deeper in love - yet as always, you continue to surprise me." <- Lilia never asked you to learn, but nothing makes him melt faster than seeing you pick it up. You’re listening to him. He won’t ever jest over this, no matter how tempting, afraid it might deter you. He adores the way you mumble words under your breath, even if they’re mispronounced. He will only interfere if you ask, and be more than willing to teach. Ask him.

Habits He Steals:

Walking (Developed): Aside from when he's cheeky and looking to have some fun? Lilia will not float near you. He prefers to walk, feet firm on the ground, his hand in yours and enjoy the sweet serenity. There isn't a need to rush. Not anymore. Strolls with Malleus are a commonly discussed subject, but with Lilia? It's less like a sonnet in steps and more akin to walking the streets on a cold, winter night. Plenty of laughter as your linked arms swing between. Somehow slowing your steps on purpose, drawing out the time shared. Even if your lungs hurt a bit and joints are stiff. You don't have to. He could easily zip you both wherever need be, but the journey is part of the fun. He's gone his entire life at differing paces - and now Lilia is happy to match his final gait alongside yours.

Repeating Others (Developed): This goes hand-in-hand with you learning Briaran. Without prompting, Lilia will often repeat things his sons just said in common tongue. Sometimes dropping context clues so you can piece things easier. Not in a way that makes it obvious for you (sparing your feelings), but definitely noticeable to others in the Valley. It's an unspoken understanding not to ask 'why' he repeats himself two maybe three times tops.

"...eh? Scuzele mele. Ne vom întâlni în trei ore pentru antrenament. Da. Pentru practică. Asigurați-vă că nu vă zăboviți, altfel veți rata antrenamentul! - why that face, Sebek? Careful or your muscles will freeze like that khee hee!" <- Does it come unnatural? Maybe, but two out of three of his conversation partners can usually pick up when you're struggling to understand something. Sebek fails, but wouldn't dare question Lilia's speech and risk offending him. Translation: "My apologies. We'll meet in three hours for practice. Yes. For practice. Make sure you don't linger, or you'll miss practice!"

Intimacy (Inherited): Lilia is cheeky with most, but not touchy-feely. Not in the way that matters. He becomes clingy. It's odd being with someone actively seeking to be at his side all the time...and yet he does not mind. Which is unheard of for the loner - he spent 700 years of solo trips, wouldn't change a single one (okay, maybe a few. He could do without some scars), but the taste of a couple's vacation? A couple's intimacy? Romanic candle-lit dinners atop the castle ramparts, legs dangling over the edge as mindless talk comes and goes. Hiking through mountains hand-in-hand. Running raids online, shouting at each other from the next room? Sipping mimosas on a cruise ship - picking out souvenirs for your family an tasting cuisine. Even if it's places he's been before...with you? It's all new.

""You know...it was quite cruel of you to leave me behind. When? On that little journey to Fleur City, of course! Be it ten years ago or not - I understood at the time that it was a decision out of your hands, and yet you hadn't brought me any souvenirs...the hurt lingers to this very day and can only be healed through another vacation, won't you be my guide this time around?"

Normalcy (Developed): Lilia actively pushes the cute bit with others. Many portray his character as two sides of one coin: Lilia the General, and Lilia the Cheeky Prankster. What you get to see is...just Lilia. Not even Lilia The Father - because even with his kids, he has a part to play. Has to set a good example. Is it corny to say that he doesn't have to act cute for you, because he trusts you'll adore him? Isn't that what love is? To truly release your guard around him and not stress? It's like how on earth we all have our work mode, family mode, public mode, and then...well, us. The person we are when in a quiet room, alone, and simply being. That is the Lilia you, and only you, get to see. Lilia wouldn't get involved with someone that couldn't bring this side out of him. The one jamming out to metal while pretzeled on the ground, sifting through his wardrobe and eating burnt crisps out of a bag with chopsticks.

Time (Developed): In his last hundred years of life, with his magic dwindling, Lilia casts a glamour that lets him physically age with you. Not technically a habit, but also something he would never have spared the energy on without you as a deciding factor. Time comes for us all. He’d rather not emphasize this to his sons more than necessary…but they’ll watch you age. In an odd way, this is Lilia’s greatest ode to you. To them. To himself. You won’t have to age alone, watching him in a standstill as he’s been the past 700 years. This is his final thrilling experience, his final adventure- to grey and feel time in his blood beyond magic.

"You are as lovely as the day we first met, dear...surely I'm just as cute too, no?" <- No matter how quick you reply, he still is the same cheeky lil shit at 780 as he was at 700. Only with one heavy case of arthritis.

Nicknames (Developed): Lilia calls you ‘Dove’ for reasons best derived on your own rather than my telling. He will also be an ass and use teasing ones like 'shnookums' and 'poppet', but dove is for the softer times. On very rare occasions he will say ‘inima mea’ which is Romanian for My Heart, also known as Briaran in the world of TWST.

"Why, thank you! Kee hee hee, is it so obvious that I adore my little dove beyond comprehension? I've finally found my 'partner-in-crime' as you kids say, and my days have not been this lively in many years. Humor the musings of this old-timer, enjoy the blessings life offers while they are within your grasp." == Those who have lived as long as Lilia in Briar Valley are witnesses to his personality change. The general from hundreds of years ago is not the same bat flying about. He's a prime example for fae and humans alike that time changes us all - and so he doesn't mind popping in to humor gossiping soldiers. If anything, he hopes his open adoration serves as an example that it's never too late to welcome sweeter things in life. Family, friends, adventure, and even the once in a lifetime 'eternal love'.

Habits you steal:

Calling Lilia ‘Dad’ (Inherited?): Not Father. Just Dad. Daddio. Peepaw. Pops. Ye old man. So informal. So funny. Lilia loves it and Silver turns red every time. One? Because you’re already thinking of him and his Father as your family. Two? Please. Please, let him breathe. Flustered is the most consistent emotion he shows aside from that graceful little smile of his, and people are starting to notice. He’s not used to such bluntness and it’s killing him. You need to be more careful! Not everyone knows about his situation! Lilia is such cheeky as shit over it and teases his son every off moment. Welcome to the Vanrogue’s, my friend. It’s a clusterf*ck. You’re going to love it.

“…N-no, I haven’t seen father since lunch. Perhaps check over near the club rooms. I can escort you before my next lesson, come along and take my hand.” -> Silver will never get used to you asking ‘Hey, have you seen Dad anywhere?’. He bites back the warning for you to lower your volume. It’s turmoil - truly. He doesn’t want you to ‘stop’ per-say…but maybe keep it in private? He adores your energy but the rumors.

Compliments (Inherited): Silver gets plenty of compliments. He’s amazing, after all. This is a habit because his reactions are priceless. Why is it developed? Because the man in question is the most wholesome being to exist. He effortlessly drops one-liners out of thin air, and then has the gull to act confused when you clutch at your chest. Silver is brutally honest when it counts. His words and his reactions are genuine. Truly priceless. His confidence desperately needs that bolstering, so much that you never go a single visit without paying him a compliment. It’s only fair. You do it until he takes them with anything other than a pass off or a denial. Even after, because appreciating Silver is the best part of your day. Congrats. You’re a simp. Big Ol’ simp - side note, being so forward for his sake has turned you confident in other aspects of life as well. Congrats on being the social one.

"Your hands are unnaturally soft for a student. Perhaps I am used to callus' from training, but yours are warm enough to feel through my gloves. I heard once that you can tell a lot about a person by their hands. Yours must reflect a gentle personality, which is true - hm? What's wrong?" <-Wholesome. Fucking wholesome.

Animals (Inherited): How do you feel about woodland creatures? Would you consider raising bunnies, or leaving the window open in the mornings for songbirds to perch? The answer is yes. Always yes. Otherwise they will whack at the glass until you do. Silver is beloved by nature. Being around Silver means being around all the animals that perch at his side when he clocks out in random places. Eventually you'll be waiting with birdseed in your pocket, prepped to distract those that perch on his head. Ramshackle has multiple bird baths out in the gardens, and you've built shelters for the wildlife on campus to camp out in when they visit (always when Silver does. Coincidence? No).

Just Chilling (Developed): Not relationship-exclusive. Any time you find Silver clocked out, it’s instinctual to just drop everything and lay down next to him so it looks like you’re both chilling out. Doesn’t matter if he’s asleep for ten minutes or two hours - you don’t leave him. Not unless someone trustworthy comes to take your place.

Haircuts (Developed): A lil snip here, a chop there - and you're cutting his hair in the kitchen at 9:00pm with one of the old sheets tied loosely around his neck like a bib. All it took was one time for him to nick his ear while doing it himself, and you so graciously forced him in a chair. Now you cut both his and his father's hair. Since Lilia's a little turd, and if Silver gets a freebie than so should peepaw. Briar Valley could use another stylist, y'know. You already have two loyal clients!

"Thank you. My bangs can get in the way of my training, so I try to keep them short. Maybe I should adapt a cut similar to Kalim's?....Why are you looking at me like that?" <- Kalim's hair is adorable, but if Silver cuts off his shimmering silk-soft locks it will literally be a crime against cosmetology.

Alarms (Inherited): You sleep through alarms. There isn't much to say. Have you seen his bedroom? There's like - a dozen clocks in there. The only one that gets him up is you, usually whacking him with a pillow because no amount of love will ever make up for dealing with nonstop ringing every morning. You started off having a near heart attack on the first night. A few years down the road, and it takes about 2-4 of the clocks to go off before you're up.

The Way Of The Sword (Inherited and Developed?): Another one without much to elaborate. Silver insists on teaching you some swordsmanship. He does not play around either, and is a very stern teacher. Lilia engrained the danger of weaponry and battle into him from childhood.

"Steel your nerves. They will only impede your progress. Do not worry about anything other than my instruction while there is a blade in your hand. I am here for that." <-The sword exists to protect, but that does not mean you are invincible. He won't put you through a Knight's training - but as one of the few 'sane' people? Homie, you really need to learn some self defense. It isn't even about his feelings (although he does worry).You are a walking magnet for bad luck, and a firm understanding of defensive combat is necessary so you don't end up dead in a ditch.

Habits He Steals:

Wet Wipes (Developed) : It’s so tempting to draw on Silver when he’s complete zonked out in the ninth dimension. How he hasn’t woken up to any uh…hehe, ‘special’ and ‘totally not vulgar’ images all over him on a daily basis is an honest shock. Especially in a campus full of dudes. Some not so friendly with the whole dorm rivalry going on. Then again…maybe it’s his aura. Drawing a dick on Silver’s forehead feels like a crime punishable by Lilia’s homemade gazpacho.

"...I sense a disturbance." <- Regardless. It’s your civic duty to make him a work of art…much to Silver’s reluctant compliance. Some day’s it’s heartwarming. He’ll wake up and find little hearts on his cheeks, or a note on his collarbone. A lipstick kiss left smack center of his forehead…which takes endless scrubbing to get off before equestrian club. "Mngh...ah, you're here father? I could smell jasmine and oakwood and thought - wait, isn't that MC's pencil case?" <- Other days Silver wakes up covered in tic tac toe games with his father snickering over him and your form making a speedy guilt-ridden retreat off in the distance - and yes, Ramshackle smells of Jasmine and Oakwood. From repairs and the herbal cleanings.

You’ve Got Mail (Developed): Squirrels make good messengers. It helps that you live in a dilapidated dorm with a lovely forest not too far for them to skitter about. It would be troublesome if you lived somewhere like Heartslabyul…Riddle would never allow Silver’s animal friends to stay. Since you’re so open to suggestion, and skittering about yourself, he’s made a habit out of using the animals for communication.

"Please take this gift to them, would you? Today is a special day, I must take precautions not to forget." <- He’s not too big on phones since he might pass out and miss a call…or forget. So Silver likes to pen his notes when he can and trust his little buddies to make sure you get them. It especially helps with big events like anniversaries or days he cannot make it home.

Mints (Inherited): Someone get this man an Altoid, stat. Whatever curse is on his ass, crack open that tin and shove three strong peppermints between his teeth. They’ll spark more than just a crack of the great beyond in him. Giving Silver a tin of strong mints is like giving a Victorian child one singular sour patch kid. You carry the things around to punish Grim. Y’all know it’s bad if the living garbage disposal won’t even eat them….now if we could just somehow compress Lilia’s cooking into a pill form, we might be onto something bigger.

"This is a remedy from your world? Oh - it's candy? Maybe it will work then...thank you. I'll update you if there are any changes."

The Open End (Developed): Silver’s precautions extend to all matters, big or small. He’s trained to be Malleus’ guard since he was a little boy, going through strict training and beyond in order to match royal standards. Some might think him cold, but his father raised him to care deeply, truly, and so he is proactive in ensuring your comfort. When at the cinema, he sits in the inner seat. Both so he’s blocking you from strangers and so you can have the chair with two arm rests. He walks on the street side of the sidewalk, shares his umbrella but covers you fully at the cost of his sleeve, gives you more of the blanket at night and once gave you his shoes when yours were pinching your toes. If there are two cupcakes, he pushes you the one with more sprinkles, and he never forgets to ask how your day is.

"Are you happy today?...I see. That's good. I've been working hard to not disappoint you as a partner. It is nice to know my efforts have been yielding results." <- Ever the hard worker. Silver works on your relationship like it's training - but not in a bad way. He just doesn't want to reflect poorly on you, especially when this is new to him and tracking his performance in a relationship isn't the same as studies or physical training. He could do with some verbal affirmations, just saying.

Smelling Salts (Developed) : Silver does not want to sleep all the time. He is determined to overcome it - and you support him by suggesting method after method. Sometimes it takes an otherworldly person to bring in new ideas? Another cook in the kitchen, y'know. Can you believe that in all of Twisted Wonderland, with their fancy shmancy potions and charms, no one thought to get him military-grade smelling salts (or trigger his fight/flight by putting a bit of Lilia's pot roast in front of his nose)? His curse is potent, but it staves the episode off just enough for him to get to a bench or out of a clearing. I swear - magic spoiled these people. It's a blessing and a curse. It's no cure but he'll take anything at this point. Who knows what other ideas you might bring.

"Mm...thank you. I am lucky to have someone as wonderful as them in my life. I strive to be a good partner and influence. Your compliment makes me quite happy. I will be sure to pass on the message." <- Silver's expressions are typically difficult to read, they're so miniscule. Yet it would take a blind man to miss the way his disposition softens. One might mistake the far-away look in his eye for an incoming siesta, but no. He's merely in love and excited to tell you how appreciative he is to have you in his life. Whatever dreams he has that night, you're in them. As always.

Habits you steal:

Volume (Inherited) : Spoken like a true Queen. Literally. Sebek’s volume blasts your eardrums like a child’s screech plugged into an amplifier broadcasted over the Night Raven intercom. Mans has his vocals, there’s no doubt about it. The thing is that Sebek won’t stop until he’s been heard, so you have to get loud for him to listen. That can be hard to tone down when he’s not around, and you have to remind yourself that Epel will hear you just fine at a level 2 not 6.

"Disrespectful! My human can speak to their desire, apologize for suggesting otherwise this very instant. It is an honor to hear their voice!" <-Aye...sometimes your volume hits the frequency where people cover their ears, just as they do for him. He misinterprets this as a smite on your freedom of speech.

Gotta Keep Up (Developed): Get those legs moving prefect. Ya gotta go sonic fast. Sebek-y long legs over here moves in big strides. Big strides for his big personality. One of his steps is the equivalent to three of yours, no matter how tall or jittery you are. He will out jitter you with his Type-A pacing. You’d think he was on a mission and not on a date with how Sebek zooms through a shopping mall. Sebek, honey, we’re here to buy clothes, not race the evil sales clerk and save Malleus from the storage room.

Bookies (Inherited): You never know when you’ll be stuck waiting around or following Malleus with him. Sometimes it’s a sacrifice you have to make for some quality time together, and it’s not so bad. Malleus is cool with it, Silver’s good company, and Lilia is mildly stressful company. You could just go on your phone to pass the time, but Sebek limits your screen time. No IPad partners or brain rot on his watch. Read a book. Don’t make him quiz you, ‘cause he will.

"I have been thinking to start a book club, and you can be the first among many initiates! This week we will be reading My Liege's autobiography as sourced from the Royal Palace. I can think of no better introduction!" <- Dear god, he'll put in the request too. Stop him. You love Malleus to pieces but 600 pages on his birth alone is just destructive.

Prim and Proper (Developed): It’s a bit hilarious that he takes personal offense when you’re not groomed properly. Especially when near Malleus (of course). If you want to follow with the troupe, you need to look the part. He’d likely ask for a Diasomnia uniform on your behalf if it wasn’t against the school dress code. Secretly though? He enjoys fixing your tie, hair, etc. It makes him feel useful but that sweet emotion gets masked by a scolding.

"Tsk. It is an honor to wear this uniform. You should take precautions to ensure your appearance doesn't reflect on Lord Malleus. As his chosen friend and my partner, you are a representative of Briar Valley. Step forward and allow me to preform an inspection." <- Sebek has more than one jealous bones in his body. They’re all jealous bones. Make sure he’s the one to fix your tie and not Rosehearts, unless you want him to sulk.

Battery Pack (Developed): Lowkey? Sebek zaps you frequently. Think the electric buzz from pulling out a plug too quick. The sparkles come out when he gets very emotional - which is all the time. So…yeah, you might secretly carry ointment for that. Don’t tell him? He feels awful. Not awful enough to stay calm when you ask him to charge your phone. Jokes on him. The anger zap brought it to 100%.

Habits he steals:

Response (Developed): Sebek has this teensey-weensey annoying habit of answering on your behalf. He thinks it a way of proving his devotion. Partners are meant to know each other down to the tiniest detail, no? So when he responds correctly, it’s like he’s passing a test by knowing exactly what you’d want.

"They will do no such thing! Your childish antics will only reflect poorly on your dormitory. You will not taint them into participating in needlessly reckless activities!" <- While his intentions are pure, the act itself can be frustrating. Especially when he puts his values in your mouth when chatting with friends. It’s a work in progress, but he will still become overzealous to order your coffee or recall your schedule if asked.

Handkerchief (Developed): Exchanging handkerchief with one’s partner was a popular courting method in the past. Considering the handkerchief Sebek carries is meant for his lord, him offering it to you is a grand gesture. Especially since he does not replace it with one meant for Malleus, as this is something exclusive to lovers, and carries one from you instead. If you don’t have one? Well - expect to get one asap. Author’s authority dictates that you will not disappoint him.

"The embroidery on this handkerchief is exquisite. According to Master Lilia, it is the same style as lacework from my homeland's establishment...and it is yours. Please accept this as a token of my affections."

Portrait (Developed): Sebek keeps your picture hidden at NRC. There's one stuck between his mattress and the boxboard, one behind his ID card in his wallet, and a small portrait he keeps taped under his deckchair. He cannot properly display it like Malleus' - partially from not wanting to disrespect his Lord and partially from bein emotionally constipated. Expect the exact opposite when he is older though. Listen. Do not try to tell me this man wouldn't commission an extra-large oil painting of his spouse to hang up in his barracks room in the palace. He's literally the blueprint of a fanboy, and if there's no available merch then us nerds get to commissioning.

Escort (Developed): Sebek Zigvolt can and will sit in the husbands' chair while you try on clothes in the store. He will carry your bedazzled hot-pink purse with pride, guarding the thing like it's worth millions. You can leave your cup with this one when at a ball worry-free. You have somewhere to be and he isn't on duty? Sebek is hot on your heels. He has no shame. Better yet? He's the one shaming anyone unable to do such simple things.

Gotta Slow Down (Developed) : Pairs with 'Gotta Keep Up' as he tries to match your stubby legs. At first Sebek attributed your slow pace to a lack of stamina, but no. He's just a jitterbug. Obviously he can't tug you along or stop every other minute for you to catch up either. It's funny watching you both try and forget to consider the other. On loop, a never-ending cycle. NRC hasn't seen a pairing like this in centuries.

Chivalry is not dead (Inherited...just not from you) : Lilia fucks with him and you’re subjected to many, many odd courting attempts…some he unironically takes a liking to.

"What must I do for you to reciprocate my intentions?! I have bestowed pearls shucked with my own hands, invited you to dance under moonlight, hung dried thyme over every door and given earthly offerings to all your kin! I implore you for transparency this instant!" <- Oh...oh, His trust in your batty elder wanes for months after being tricked so cruelly. Only until you accept (out of pity?). Then he feels guilty for ever doubting Lilia and begs for forgiveness. At least life never gets boring? Haha...hah...ha...

‘My human’ (Developed) : Sebek gets hit hard with a crippling awareness for your mental well being. He defended your 'honor' once and had it thrown in his face that he calls you a human more than your own name. Old habits die hard, and he prostrates himself on the ground as an apology. He really didn’t realize it came off so derogatory. Especially considering your relationship. Felt awful. Apologized profusely. Only says it in an affectionate way or with pride now. Tacking in the ‘my’ makes it better somehow? It's a work in progress.

"An apology is in order. My actions until now were unbecoming, and I am truly repentant. I cannot begin to beg for forgiveness, knowing that my words have struck you. I was wrong. You are no mere human, you are my human. A very special one whom I could not have foreseen in this lifetime" <- You know it's bothering him when he takes a gentle tone, looking directly in your eyes with shame open on display. Responsible enough not to look away and face his wrongdoing in the face. Even after you forgive him, Sebek will carry this lesson with him forever.

Flower preference (Inherited): In the language of flowers, which means a great deal to fae kind, he goes for the one associated with your birth month. Carries a pressed one as a bookmark, changes his cologne, and places a vase of blooms by his bedside that never seem to wilt.

"It is an honor! I shall never cease striving to improve. It is only natural that my partner does the same. Your acknowledgement is noted and appreciated. Please continue to treat them well." == Insulting Sebek is a challenge. The comment could be made with the most nasty undertone, but he only hears that you're behaving like a model citizen. You must, if you are beginning to resemble him in so many ways. Hearing that you are a positive influence on him is nothing short of baseline knowledge. Of course you are? He picked you to be his partner? Honestly. If people have time to sit around and gossip, they could go do something more productive.

Habits you steal:

Acronyms (Inherited): Does this truly come as a shock? Big L on your part if so. C'mon, this is Idia we're talking about here. Bro cannot go two sentences without pullin' some quote out of his mental backlog. Since you're stuck in TWST, not watching their culturally founding shows and cartoons is a crime. You'll be speaking in pseudo-lingo like how Spongebob quotes make their own language around these parts.

"Whehehe way to debuff your charisma stat - you might want to craft some mimic gear before Professor Trein locks ya in detention....n-not that I care! It's just that I'll have to solo tonight's raid and you're the one with the rotation buffed character!" <- On one hand? You get all his jokes and are able to translate what he says to other people. That's good. Less work for Idia. On the other hand? You get all his jokes and are able to translate what he says to other people. They're totes going to make fun of you now and it'll be his fault. You'll get lingo-lashed by professors and feel burdened and - okay. He'll shut up now.

Evil Laugh Who? Villain Where? (Inherited): We all know Idia has two modes: nerdy and sofuckingarrogantheneedsacoldshower. You know exactly when he's feeling number two via his laugh. That over boisterous 'WHEE HEE HEE' which is way too high pitched to belong to a villain but perfect for when Idia's in the zone. It comes out when you're feeling especially ecstatic or embracing your inner gremlin. A bit more subdued than his, but you've seen him do it so many times that the adaptation is subconscious.

"Ah -?! What w-was?....No! NO I DIDNT SAY ANYTHING! Just hurry up before we gotta interact with more NPCS! Awahhh my blood pressure's already spiking back up..." <- He first caught it when you insisted on playing one of those cheap festival-games outside the main market in Fleur City. All he wanted was to grab a grape juice and get back to his group before they noticed he ditched, but you saw some handstitched plushies and just like in some mainstream otome, he just had to get it for you. It was easier than sitting there watching you get cheated by a sleaze. He was amidst convincing himself that he robbed you of the fun, handing the doll over while sucking down his second grape juice when he heard it - on one hand, is this what he sounds like to other people? Scratch that. No way he's this cute - wait. No. He didn't just think that -

Gatcha (Inherited): One of Idia's go-to hangouts is playing an MMO. The dude already gave you a console as a gift for what happened at S.T.Y.X. One inkling of interest towards one of his main games and he won't hesitate to build you a PC. He'll take care of the maintenance and even send over some matching accessories. Ortho will be the one to drop it off of course, but it'll already be set up with whatever games he thinks you'll want to tag-team in and some extra money to explore on your own....and thus, the addiction begins.

"Hey, press this button for me real quick. I need to test something. N-no! I'm not setting you up, uggh just do it would you?" <- Your pulls are better than his and Idia can't decide if lady luck is smiting or blessing him. On one hand? Ultra rare pulls are going to a beginner account. Yet you're more likely to keep playing this way....fate truly tests the Shroud name every day.

Night Owl (Inherited and Developed): Freedom...is powerful. As the Shrouds are responsible for Blot Control, you're left with little to do at S.T.Y.X. You can work anywhere in the facility. As a lab assistant, tech maintenance, heck even the kitchens if you want - but Idia's on that night-life and likes to work when most are asleep. So you match it. Maybe not to a T - going to bed at 6:00am and waking at 4:00pm like him - but time does get a bit disoriented in a place where the sky is simulated.

"Why're you still up? This isn't a 24hr stream, y'know. Even I'm not crazy enough to do multiple all-nighters in a row...well, I'm off for now. Wanna watch the PREMO concert from last week with me?"

Vitamins (Developed): You take them. Idia is taking them. No matter what bro says - he cannot live off the Ignihyde snack machine. Get him the kiddy gummies if you have to. You started taking vitamin D in preparation for moving to S.T.Y.X in the future. Surely they've got something better than the options at Sam's, but you won't be developing Seasonal Affective Disorder anytime soon.

Snacks (Developed): A very simple kindness. Idia uses deliveries as an excuse to get you to visit Ignihyde, and in the future that doesn't change. Expect calls to do deliveries around S.T.Y.X and run 'confidential' reports whenever he's antsy for a visit. We all know he won't explicitly ask...ah, it's reminiscent of all the bogus orders he'd put in at Sams so you'd stop by.

Habits he steals:

Financial 'Responsibility' (Inherited): You both are very bad with money - and by bad? I mean that Idia is a jerk who thinks he can solve everything with money. Minor red flag - something to address. Definitely the type to apologize by sending an unnecessarily gigantic stuffed bear or something akin since he's afraid of saying something that will make it worse. Then pray you don't say anything as he stews over a fight like 12hr simmering sauce.

"Please spare me your double-standards the next time you're shoving vitamin water in my snack stash. SRSLY, Headmaster's a worse deadbeat than I thought if you're living like this....uh, don't tell him I said that" <- On the flip side, he's also flippant with that Shroud inheritance and will buy stuff on your behalf all the time. He's the type to go 'Oh, I thought it was going to be more. You live like this?' when wiring you money for groceries (because Grim ate your allowance in tuna smh). As for how you're bad? You're just flat broke man, so he's responsibly irresponsible as a result.

Vitamins Again (Inherited): Bro. Bro, genetics are making you pale but that diet is what is making those eyebags so prominent despite having a decent skincare routine. You need Vitamin D but he needs the whole spectrum. His potassium is so low, that you'll be staring him down with a plate of cooked salmon in one hand and a bottle of vitamins in the other. Is it pushy? Sure, but you don't want him keeling over within the next decade. Eat the vitamins or it's time to raid his search history. Ortho, get them medical reports out stat.

RPG (Developed): Every chance he gets, Idia will model his MC after you in an RPG. A character customization screen HATES to see this man coming, because he will sit there for hours until it is as close to your image as the system allows. You won't even know since he plays these games solo and has photographic memory to recreate you without a reference. If caught, will deny it despite the evidence being right there. Flat out takes this to the grave.

Sour Candy (Inherited): Fun fact? Citric acid is the perfect stimulant to shock someone out of a panic attack. You find the sourest candy he can tolerate, and it does it's job. If anything it creates a placebo effect, where when Idia tastes it he'll make an association with being anything but anxious. One time he ran out while stuck in a work meeting, and Ortho had to swipe a lemon from the cafeteria.

"Eugh! Sour! Sour! My tongue's gonna shrivel up like a prune! I should have knew this was a prank -" <- Proceeds to forget why he was anxious. Stops himself mid-rant, face sours realizing that you were right, apologizes under his breath and doesn't question you again.

Protective (Developed): Idia teeters the yandere line, to be fair. He's highly protective of the things he considers worth caring about - scratch that, the things he allows himself to care about - which are few. Very, very few. His self-doubt both keep this protectiveness in line while also fueling it. He is quick to convince himself that he has little right over your person, and that it's only a matter of time before his role gets snubbed or written out. Yet the moment his position becomes threatened by something he considers inferior? He hates the thought of some noface coming along and making a muck of your life. It's not his fault if you don't realize Idia's doing just that - but he'll be damned if someone else puts their two cents in, pushing him towards a bad ending.

"Hey - so uh, totally unprompted question that you can just ignore in all honesty - but what's it like living with so many ghosts? They don't give you any trouble or anything - 'cause if they do we've got a few empty rooms over in Ignihyde....only if you wanna! I mean - we're a buncha shut ins but it's pretty quiet and stuff. Okay, fading into the background now." <- Do you remember the Ghostbride? Idia does. Vividly. He also remembers you were the only person aside from Ortho who actually wanted to help him and didn't need cohersion. Stupid move on your part but he's hyper aware of the paranormal now regardless.

Sharing a bed (Developed): Unheard of. Especially since he's stated how miserable he was sharing a dorm - Idia surprises himself with this one. Not a single person would believe just how clingy bro is - but he's only clingy because 'you're' clingy - or so Idia loves to say if anyone teases him for going back on his whole 'solo for life' rants. He goes from the whole 'eww normie love bleh bleh' to 'oh you normies just don't get it because you don't have it hwee hwee'. Look. You're the one matching his sleep schedule, making him used to sharing a bed and having something other than a pillow to curl around - he didn't want to get used to it, he was adamant that this lifestyle was an absolute no-no, but now he's ten years too deep and he's screwed.

"Snkk - funny joke, Ortho. Almost got me there with that one. Inheriting any of my skills is like welcoming a one-track path straight to doomsville. You and I both know it." == Ever observant Ortho is very eager to share all the little changes he's seen in both yourself and Idia. Especially when the latter enters self-deprecation mode and is insistent that your relationship is nearing a band ending. In truth? Idia notices. He doesn't feel entirely himself anymore, and it terrifies him. Not everyone's meant for companionship, and for a long time Idia thought he was one of them. Someone perfectly content on their own with absolutely zero need for other people. Especially those hot-shot nosy hero types that would try to fix him without asking if he wanted to be 'fixed'. Thing is? You haven't pushed him to change at all - and he's freaking out because he's not supposed to want this. You're not supposed to want him.

[luna-azzurra]

Emotionally Questionable but Artistically Valid Things To Do When You’re a Writer Losing the Plot (Literally or Figuratively)

Write your WIP’s obituary. “She lived a chaotic life, filled with plot holes, unresolved arcs, and one very confusing love triangle. She is survived by a Google Doc, 74 sticky notes, and a Pinterest board titled ‘vibes but make it pain.’” Bonus catharsis if you make it weirdly tender. Double bonus if you actually cry a little.

Make your WIP a dating profile. Age: Timeless. Location: Trapped in your brain since 2018. Looking for: A writer who won’t ghost me mid-draft. Interests: Slow burn tension, morally gray decisions, and long walks through traumatic backstory. Will it match with anyone? No. But you might remember why you fell in love with it in the first place.

Assign your plot holes a Hogwarts house. That one you keep ignoring? Slytherin. The subplot that’s doing too much? Hufflepuff with main character energy. The gaping logic error you swear you’ll fix later? Ravenclaw, but drunk. Somehow this helps. Somehow this feels like control.

Write a resignation letter from your genre. “Dear Fantasy, it’s not you, it’s me. Actually—it is you. The worldbuilding demands are emotionally abusive, and I just want to write messy little humans having conversations that ruin their lives.” You can always go back. Or not. You’re allowed to genre-hop like a chaotic frog with a laptop.

Host a fake podcast episode where you psychoanalyze your protagonist. Today on Therapy, But Make It Fictional, we discuss why Aiden cannot maintain a single healthy relationship, the consequences of childhood abandonment, and how trauma is not a personality trait (even though he tries). Record yourself. Don’t post it. Unless you do. I won’t stop you.

Put your WIP characters in a reality show. Big Brother: Emotional Damage Edition. Who cries first? Who forms a secret alliance? Who self-destructs on Day 2 because someone used their emotional trauma as a joke? (Yes, this is basically writing. Yes, this counts.)

Create an “Am I the Problem?” chart for your WIP. Spoiler: You’re not. The plot arc from hell is. But mapping it out like a true crime board will help. Use yarn. Use vibes. Use Google Slides if you’re a Virgo. Just externalize the chaos.

Write fanfiction… of your own book. That spicy scene you know you won’t put in because it messes with pacing? Write it. That “what if they shared a bed but didn’t touch” trope you secretly crave? Give in. You are your first fan. Be delulu. Be free.

Create a soundtrack for your villain’s redemption arc that will never happen. Include Lana Del Rey. Include Mitski. Include at least one angry violin solo. You don’t have to redeem them, but you can imagine them staring into the rain while “The Sound of Silence” plays.

Doodle your plot like a crime scene. Victim: Narrative Cohesion. Suspects: A surprise third act twist, a talking sword, and that one flashback chapter that broke the timeline. Go full corkboard-and-pushpins energy. You’ll either solve it or at least feel like an unhinged genius. Which is basically the same.

[rafedarling]

Can you write a moment of an interview with Jimmy Kimmel asks Drew one or two questions about his relationship since him and actress!y/n have confirmed that they are together on an instagram post (that they are currently this year in a relationship according to the rumor of Internet users and media) and Drew mentions actress!y/n abt how she's amazing, that he will love to work with her one day :)

since i already wrote one for drew at jimmy, i think i should put them both on the norton show. hope you like it!

𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟𝐟 𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐧

pairing: drew starkey x actress!reader

summary: you and drew are invited to the graham norton show to promote your upcoming movie, set to release in april. however, the interview isn’t just about your movie, it also touches on your recently confirmed relationship, sending the audience into a frenzy.

warning(s): english is not my native language. fluff, playful teasing, past pining, and drew being the sweetest boyfriend ever.

au: like, reblog and feedback are much appreciated. discussion can be send through my ask box, please feel free to send in anything. ⭐️ taglist | tagging: @rubixgsworld @rafeyslamb @bisexualcvnt @tracymbcm @maybankslover @anamiad00msday @stuffyownswrld @httpsdrewstarkey @mileyraes @enjoymyloves @akobx @noobmazter69 @victwrvale @xoxohoneymoongirl @xoxosblogsblog @wearemadeofstardust0 @saviorcomplexrry @percysley @littlelamy @winniemoe @emberaurora @watercolorskyy @kravitzwhore @issabellec7

marie’s note: i just opened my wattpad account! from now on, you can read my fanfics on both tumblr and wattpad. however, i can’t guarantee that i’ll be very active on wattpad. a little update on my upcoming work, i’m currently working on the return of superman mini-series!

Graham grinned, waiting for the applause to settle before dramatically placing a hand over his chest.

“Alright, alright,” he said, pretending to catch his breath.

“Let me sit down first because I simply cannot stand here and do an interview with such a powerful couple.”

The audience laughed, and you shook your head in amusement. Drew leaned back, his arm resting casually behind you on the couch, a smirk playing on his lips.

“So,” Graham continued, eyes twinkling mischievously.

“Not only are you both co-stars in your new movie, but also lovers off-screen. Is it true?”

The crowd went wild again.

Drew chuckled, shaking his head at the dramatic reaction.

“Yes,” he confirmed, his Southern drawl making the words sound even more charming.

“We are lovers off-screen.”

Graham leaned forward, clearly loving every second of it.

“Since you’ve already confirmed it on Instagram, let’s dive in a little. How did this all start? Y/N, do you want to take this one?”

“Sure,” you said with a smile.

“I actually met Drew through his sister, Brooke. I was in her friend group, and she invited me over to her new place once. That was the first time we met.”

Drew nodded.

“Yeah, Y/N was one of my sister’s friends, but after that, she kind of disappeared. We didn’t see each other again for a long time, maybe a year or so.”

“Ah, so was there an instant connection? Or did it take a little while to realize, ‘Oh, that’s the person I want to know more about’?”

Graham asked, clearly invested.

Drew turned to you with a teasing smirk.

“If we’re talking about our first meeting… I didn’t have feelings for her then.”

The audience gasped dramatically, and you burst into laughter.

“Hold on, hold on before you boo me!”

Drew added quickly, grinning.

“At the time, I was crushing on someone else. But when I met Y/N again later, it hit me hard. Like — why hadn’t I asked her out before? What was I doing?”

Graham gasped, clutching his chest for comedic effect.

“Scandalous!”

“I know, right?” you joked.

“Plot twist, I actually liked him from the very beginning.”

Drew’s head snapped toward you, eyes wide.

“Wait, what?”

Graham looked like he had just struck gold.

“Oh, this is juicy. Tell us more!”

You chuckled, shrugging.

“Yeah, I had feelings for him when we first met, but I knew he had a crush on someone else, so I just… kept quiet about it. I liked him so much that I couldn’t even date other guys.”

Graham covered his face, laughing so hard he had to lean back in his chair. The audience reacted with a mix of cheers and sympathetic awws.

“Wait, wait, wait… hold on,”

Drew said, pointing at you in shock.

“You never told me this!”

“I know,” you said, giggling.

“I guess I thought it was silly.”

“Silly?” Drew looked at Graham, then back at you.

“Babe, I feel like I need to apologize to past you.”

Graham wiped away imaginary tears.

“Oh, this is the kind of romantic drama I live for!”

Drew shook his head, smiling.

“I can’t believe you were out there suffering in silence while I was being an idiot.”

“It’s fine,” you teased. “You figured it out eventually.”

The audience burst into applause, and Graham clapped his hands together.

“Well, I think I speak for everyone when I say, thank goodness you did! Now, Drew, if given the chance, would you want to work on-screen with Y/N again?”

Drew didn’t hesitate.

“Oh, absolutely. She’s amazing; such a talented actress. I’d love to work with her again.”

You turned to him, surprised and touched by his words.

“Really?”

“Of course,” he said softly.

“I mean, I get to see how incredible you are off-screen, so getting to experience that on-screen again? That’d be a dream.”

The audience erupted into cheers again, and Graham dramatically fanned himself.

“Well, if you two ever do another movie together, let’s hope it’s a rom-com, because this kind of chemistry needs to be on display!”

Drew laughed, slipping his hand into yours.

“We’ll see what happens.”

Graham then leaned forward, eyes twinkling with curiosity.

“And Drew, since we’re on the topic, what has it been like dating Y/N? Fans are dying to know how you feel about it.”

Drew’s grip on your hand tightened slightly, and for a moment, he looked at you instead of Graham. The teasing smile softened into something more sincere.

“It’s honestly the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he admitted.

The audience collectively sighed in adoration.

“I know that sounds dramatic, but it’s true. Y/N is just… she’s amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who balances me out the way she does. She’s the most patient, kind, and ridiculously talented person I know.”

You felt your heart swell at his words, heat creeping up your cheeks.

Graham pretended to wipe away tears.

“Oh, this is too sweet. Keep going!”

Drew laughed but continued.

“She makes everything feel easier. My life gets pretty crazy, you know? Between filming, traveling, press there’s a lot going on. But with her, it’s like… I always have this anchor. Someone who keeps me grounded. And the best part? She never tries to change me. She just lets me be me.”

The audience let out a chorus of “Aww!” and you squeezed his hand, feeling overwhelmed by how openly he was speaking.

“Okay, this is getting too romantic for me,”

Graham joked, fanning himself.

“I feel like we’re intruding on a private moment!”

Drew chuckled, looking back at you with a grin.

“Well, you asked, man.”

Graham shook his head playfully.

“I did, and I’m so glad I did! You two are adorable.”

The interview wrapped up soon after, but that moment the way Drew looked at you, the way his words made your heart feel like it might burst, was already making waves across the internet. Fans were calling you the Hollywood couple of the year. And honestly? You didn’t mind one bit.

[oceansoul001]

After 170 hours I've finished Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and I cannot even start to describe this emptiness I'm feeling now, knowing that there is no more of this great story waiting for me to experience (at least for now). What a wild ride it was and what a surprisingly amazing game, with all the twists and turns of the plot, all the memorable characters that I deeply cared about and rooted for, all the emotions of Henry's journey and all the thoughts about war, revenge, duty, and finally making peace with the past and moving on. The emotional spectrum of the game is astounding - it can so flawlessly switch between being extremely funny or delightfully absurd to being heartbreaking or devastating in the heaviest moments. But as the game’s content is so dense and rich, that writing down all my thoughts would require a whole book, or at least a dissertation, I would like to specifically touch upon one, nomen omen touchy subject. The Henry-Hans romance.

I'm not sure if it is possible yet, but I would also like to skip over all the controversy-driven discussions regarding this romantic subplot, clearly lead in bad faith and mostly by people not even engaging with the game, and be able to talk about this topic and analyze it as it is, without questioning its right to even exist in the game. Why do I focus on this quite small and optional aspect of the game at all? Well, I’m not gonna lie – I always find the RPGs with possible romances more engaging and captivating, as love – as a general emotion, with different shades of it – is in my eyes one of the crucial aspect of any hero. So if we are already talking about the love towards parents or other family members, patriotic love for your country, or king, platonic love between friends and comrades, and then all of a sudden omit only the romantic love, something is not adding up for me. If you want to give me a rich RPG experience, give me at least one good romance option, and I’m sold. But it is not easy at all, especially the “good” part.

But as KCD2 is a very unique game when it comes to its different aspects – like the demanding, slow-paced gameplay, or the unique blend of open-world with more contained main plot missions – it is also very unique when it comes to the romance options, or, let me say it aloud – when it comes to THE main romance option, the most integral romance option, the most naturally developing romance option in the game. The Henry-Hans (optional) romance that we can observe growing very slowly throughout this 100+ hours, is for me one of the best and most meaningful depictions of love in any RPG with player's agency. This relation, even if you opt out of romance, simply has it all - is intertwined with the plot, is rooted in character development and has the possibility to depict characters together during many different situations throughout the whole game. And this is how a good romanceable character should be written in a video game – as an independent character first and foremost, NOT as a character that was created with a sole purpose to serve as said romance option. In this case Hans ALWAYS plays a meaningful part in the story, and ALWAYS shares an important bond with your Henry, regardless of player's decision whether to engage with the romance or not. But many other games seem to forget about that, or don’t manage to create the bond between characters first, before the option to romance them appears.

And then comes the hard to describe aspect of THE FEELS. The slow development of this relation, the steady growth of feelings, up to the point, when you cannot deny it any longer, and when you cannot allow yourself to not act upon them - because of the circumstances, because of this sense of impending doom, that makes all the risks worth taking, as any of you might anyway be dead the next day. Audentes Fortuna Iuvat, remember? The risk that Hans takes in the decisive moment of this relation is THE epitome of his saying, and I don’t believe it is a coincidence when it suits so perfectly to the whole theme of the game and to Hans as a character in general. And this bold risk taking is so gut-clenching and heartbreaking, but also heartwarming in this one stolen moment of happiness that seems unreal. Say what you want, but you simply cannot tell this kind of story, invoke this kind of feelings - without first having two equally developed characters, that the player equally cares for and have cared for before any romance possibility was on the horizon. Add to the mix very real external hardships (all good romances need a hardship to overcome!), that due to the time and place make this relation tragically doomed before it even has begun, and there you have it - one of the most compelling romantic stories I have experienced in a video game, hands down.

And please don’t start with medieval this, medieval that, before you stop and think about greatest medieval love stories (that we know of) – these are always stories of impossible love, of doomed love, of forbidden love. Of two people, that cannot and should not be together because of the class they belong to, because of the promises made, because of duty, because of sin and religion dogma. Don’t tell me you cannot see the comparison between Henry and Hans, and, say, Tristan and Isolde, THE number one medieval chivalric romance couple, where they commit sin against God and betray their King at the same time, every time they are together. Don’t tell me that Henry, who clearly aspires to all the ideals that we associate with knighthood – chivalry, protection of the weak, devotion to land and rightful king, and generally noble idealism, let’s call it – is not the perfect hero of chivalric romance, with Hans being of course his damsel-princess, way above his league, already promised to another and soon to be in a loveless, political marriage, spending parts of the game either captured in some tower or stuck in some castle, having to wait for his knight to safely return to him. It is all there, I am sure not accidentally, and it fits all the themes and motifs known from both actual medieval literature and their pop culture representation SO WELL if you think about it for a second.

And there's one more component that elevates this particular relation to S-tier for me. You can have superb writing, you can direct the most impressive cutscene, you can have the build-up ready - all of these won't matter and won't work if the actors don't sell you the romantic feelings in the key moment. Which I assume is not easy, when for the most part you play other aspects of these characters and probably were not cast with this specific plot point in mind. But here comes Luke Dale, showing us the side of Hans Capon that we have not seen before, with the most heart-wrenching expression of his fears, with voice breaking at the exactly right moment, the trembling, the anger, the despair, but also the tiniest bit of hope - and in just two broken sentences he conveys it all, and it's all so bloody real. It's a masterwork, and I'm so happy that I could witness it in game, even more - become part of this relationship as the playable character himself.

I sincerely hope that the end of the main game is not the end of this subplot, as there is still so, so, so much more to explore with these characters in these circumstances. And their relation is so unique, comparing to popular fiction in general, but even more so in video games, that it would be a great loss to just leave them be as they are at the end of the game. I cannot wait for the possibility to go through more emotional turmoil with Henry and Hans, probably because I cannot even remember when was the last time I’ve fallen in love with fictional characters so much and so fast, as with these two. And as already said, love is the key. 

[amongemeraldclouds]

Fresh Out The Slammer

A questionable kidnapping leads to a revenge plan backfiring (fluff).

Lorenzo Berkshire x f!Reader

Warning: fluff, one use of y/n, cursing, mildly violent thoughts. Has one magical rule that’s not canon, using my creative license here to drive the plot. Based on the Taylor Swift song with the same title.

✿ Masterlist | 860 words

“I need to see my Cormyyy!” You whined, trying to twist away from Enzo’s grip on your shoulders as he led you down the hall.

Mattheo saw you struggling against Enzo and walked towards the two of you with a smirk. “We’ve been through a lot of shenanigans over the years, but I never imagined kidnapping would be one of them,” he whispered to Enzo as he and Blaise joined you.

“Stop sounding so pleased,” Blaise chided Mattheo.

“Cormac, that wanker had the gall to give y/n Amortentia the day after she publicly broke up with him. I’ve got to help her,” Enzo whispered back, explaining.

“Enzie’s got a little crush,” Mattheo teased, poking him on his side.

“Piss off if you’re not going to help,” Enzo huffed.

“What are you whispering about? Take me to my Cormyy!” You whined.

“Nothing, your bloody Cormy is right this way,” Enzo replied quickly. He grit his teeth as he fantasized a literally bloody Cormac after he beat him up with his fists. 

Never mind the amusement and hope he felt when he witnessed you finally come to your senses and realize what a tosser Cormac was. All that was crushed when the potion took over your mind tonight and you forgot you asked Enzo to meet up because you needed to tell him something. 

“Theo would know what to do,” Mattheo suggested.

“I just saw him at the common room,” Blaise added and the four of you headed there.

Theo looked up from his book when you approached. Noticing the struggling girl, he lifted his eyebrow, “we’re kidnapping now?”

“Who’s being kidnapped? I’m here to see my darling, Cormyy!” You squealed, clasping your hands together, giggling at the thought of how wonderful he was. Theo’s eyes widened, he was with Enzo when they watched you dump him.

“We need your help,” Enzo declared.

“Clearly,” Theo said, thinking through his knowledge of Amortentia. You weren’t exactly friends with the infamous Slytherin boys, but Enzo had drooled over you, his partner in Divination class, long enough for them to know about you.

“Do you know how we can undo the potion’s effects?” Enzo asked.

“Well it would take too long to brew an antidote and we don’t know if we can get all the ingredients,” he replied.

Theo’s knee bounced as he willed himself to remember something useful. “Some texts say that because Amortentia cannot actually produce real love, a kiss from someone who loves her might break the spell.” At least that’s what Theo probably read, the gears in his mind continued spinning as Enzo approached you.

Everyone looked at Enzo expectantly and his cheeks blushed. “Come on, you did not go through all this trouble just because she’s your Divination partner,” Mattheo encouraged.

“Okay,” Enzo approached you and you scrunched up your eyebrows in confusion. “I’ll take you to Cormac after this. I just have to save you first. Also because I want to,” he admitted, “but if you hate it then punch me or hex me when you’re better.” Before his words could sink in, his lips were on you.

“Wait!” Theo called out, “I remembered it wrong. It has to be someone she loves! Not the other way around.” Enzo quickly pulled away, but it was too late. He did not need to get rejected indirectly by a potion. Never mind you hexing him, he might as well hex himself in shame.

That was until you blinked. You placed your hand on your head as the world spun for a second and Enzo quickly caught you. “Bloody potion,” you spat, wrinkling your nose in disgust as you recalled your potion-induced obsession.

Blaise grabbed Mattheo and Theo’s arm, leading them to the dorms. “Come on, seems there are things they need to discuss.” 

“Then we beat up Cormac,” Mattheo called back.

“Count me in!” You exclaimed as you stood upright.

“She’s a keeper!” Mattheo mock whispered to Enzo, pointing at you.

Enzo chuckled, “already looking for trouble?”

“Oh my punches won’t just be for the potion. When I’m done with Cormy,” you shuddered at the nickname, “he’d regret even breathing in my direction.”

“Before that, can we talk about what happened?” Enzo asked. “You said you wanted to tell me something tonight?”

You blushed, your anger giving way to butterflies in your stomach. “Well, the potion probably said it better than I could have,” you recalled Theo’s words just as the potion released you from its grip. “I really like you, Enzo. I broke up with Cormac when I realized that. He may have actually helped me with his foolishness. Maybe I should thank him,” you considered.

“No,” you decided after a moment, “I still want to beat him up.” Enzo chuckled in response.

“Don’t worry, we’ll deal with him. First,” he said moving closer to you, “I really like you too. We make such a great team in class, I’d love to see what else we’d be good at as partners. For instance, are you certain the potion completely lost its effect? Maybe we should break the spell again a few more times to be sure.”

Your eyes glinted with mischief and desire. “Oh yes, we need to be thorough,” you agreed as his lips crashed into yours.

✿ Masterlist

A/N: I haven't written for Enzo in a while, glad I could add him to my series of TTPD one shots!

[letsgobarbs]

Did anybody ask for my two cents in the dbf!joel discourse??? No <33 but I'll give it anyway in the spirit of discussion and dialogue. I was really surprised to see dbf!joel as some sort of topic of discourse because... I love dbf!fics. I enjoy reading them (especially ones where it's forbidden, and Joel resists the connection while the reader pursues. I like it when there's build up and tension before the smut). And yet I think we've collectively lost the plot, and have forgotten that nuance can, indeed, exist.

Can people dislike the trope for whatever reason? Absolutely.

Can they post and "whine" about not liking that trope and complain that its oversaturated and how eeeeeeverybody is writing it? Absolutely, it's a free world— which also means freedom of speech and expression. We're allowed to complain and make fun of shit in good spirit.

Can they send anon hate to people writing age gap and dbf fics? No. That's insane. Don't send hate to anybody, that should be obvious.

Now, I will be very honest. Maybe it's just because of the space I have curated, but I haven't actually seen anybody get hate for this. Nor have I seen more than like two posts talk about not liking dbf fics?? And those posts weren’t even about joel miller, they were multifandom posts.

I think everybody's concerns about censorship, conservatism, patriarchy and racism are real and valid. We live in very difficult times.

But I do believe, that there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what censorship is. Censorship, by definition, cannot exist amongst two people, or even two groups of people. It exists between an authority— a social media platform, a school, a state, a government— and the people who are under their authority. People saying they don't enjoy dbf trope, isn't censorship. Censorship on tumblr at the moment is posts about queerness, politics, genocide, smut and art being thrown behind a "sensitive content" label.

Do I think that people not enjoying the dbf trope makes them somehow conservative or upholding the patriarchy? Absolutely not. I think people, me included, have very real reasons for not enjoying the dbf trope— specifically dbf!joel. I don't think a lot of us realise how invasive and encompassing patriarchy can be in our lives. Remember girl math? Girl dinner, girl this girl that? And we all had a lot of fun with it, until we realised that what was just girls having fun was now being twisted again to invalidate and demean them. Then we all moved on from it. Another example, is makeup. The opinion that makeup is an art and wonderful method of self expression can coexist with the idea that makeup is a tool for the patriarchy to police and regulate women and their self-expression. Similarly, the idea that policing what women write plays into the patriarchy can and should coexist with the fact that the dbf trope has a way of reinforcing the patriarchy because it often paints the idea that young, impressionable girls need an older man, a patriarch, to take care of them and their lives.

A very quick scroll through the dbf!joel tag, will show you predominantly skinny, young white girls in moodboards and in fics. Which brings me to the racism of it all. Many of the dbf!joel fics are in no way inclusive. Moreover, a lot of them are uncomfortable to read because they perpetuate the same old racist bias and fetishization of a man of colour. I have lost count of how many I've read with a big, rugged man of colour who's gaze is lecherous and dark and wrong, preying on a young, white, virginal woman who is asking for it but doesn't know what she needs— and she needs her daddy to show it to her.

I am all for don't like, don't read. It's a policy I adopt for my own interactions on here. However, I think we, as women, can hold each other to better standards. For ourselves. And for the actor we admire.

You can read and enjoy dbf!joel fics, I know I do. But it's important to be aware of the undertones of race and gender that line it. That trope is indeed a breeding ground for conservatism and racism. I have read so many of those dbf!joel fics pushing the trad wife agenda. It's just not cute.

A thing that personally makes me uncomfortable, are authors over 30s/40s/50s writing dbf!joel fics with young 18/19/20 year olds. They can do that, if that's the story they want to tell. But Joel Miller is a character where you could have a reader or an OC that's more grown in a dbf fic. I know these women have lived longer than me, seen more world than me, experienced more than me. So, I know they have more colourful stories to tell, rather than centre teenagers or people in their young 20s. Which is where I believe that people have started using tumblr as any other social media site to garner interaction and notes, rather than writing for themselves.

I've watched this entire discourse with pretty apathetic eyes, but there has been just one teeny tiny thing that on a personal level hurt me. There's this idea that many people have that racism is somehow a lesser issue than patriarchy. And I'm not gonna point fingers at any blogs because I have had no less that three separate interactions with people who believe that patriarchy is the top dog, last monster to defeat in some video game of life. That, sadly, is the most tone deaf take. There was even a creator who implied that woc must learn to coexist and dialogue with racist women because we cannot be divided against men who are the true oppressors. Just because you, as a white woman, have faced the patriarchy does not mean it's the biggest problem. BIWOC face the patriarchy as well as Racism, and they are both equally harmful.

Racism and other systems of oppression are not underlings or byproducts of the Patriarchy. More of us need to be aware of and practice intersectionality. Racism, Patriarchy, Capitalism, etc are all intertwined through Colonialism and they exacerbate each other and are seeped into our daily lives. Just as a practice, I want everybody who reads my post to read all the other posts on the topic of dbf!joel miller fics. And I want all of you to analyse the tones, the words, the sentencing and the way of communication. Because as I sat here forming my post, I had a ball of anxiety in my stomach as I thought and re-thought how every word would come across and whether I would be heard and understood rather than smeared for an opinion. I had to deliberately restructure and soften my opinion to be made palatable. While many other white creators didn't have to do that. Had a woc made a post with the tone, words and attitude that they utilised, the tone policing and hate anons would've been patrolling their asks. When a woman has to be conscious of how she presents in a man's world as well as a white world, then it is both those structures at play.

I know it's exhausting to many of you to always have to hear about these topics, but these are things we live with everyday. I know you don't want to have to think and discuss because fandom is a reprieve for you. But it is a reprieve for us too, and we deserve a more inclusive space. And it should not be made more difficult. Dbf!Joel fics in my opinion, were a non-issue that's being blown out of proportion when nobody was @ and nobody was sent visceral slurs and hate in their inboxes. If you have, that is sad and tragic. But this is an odd hill to fight over, when there are bigger problems in the world. I have ceased to tell people to go touch grass. I live in a country where protesting is illegal. Log off, step out for your community and for people whose voices can't and won't be heard. There are ways to bring out meaningful change, and you could be directing your energy towards that.

[wangxianficfinder]

Fic Finder

Sep 5th

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1. Hello :)

I'm looking for this fic where lwj, jwy and maybe some others use wwx's inventions to travel back in time to before wwx was brought to yunmeng after wwx died and both lwj and jwy have all these plans to make wy's life better. lwj wants to bring him to gusu while jwy is planning to make his mother treat him better.

But, plot twist, the years pass and wwx hasn't been found and the time travellers start theorising that because it was his invention, maybe it pulled him back w/ them. later on, my is killed further establishing their theory that wy is alive and avoiding them. this goes on for years until the wen discussion conference when the top shooter is an archer from the wen sect named wei ying. the closing line of this fic was jwy, lwj and the others thinking that the sunshot campaign has been lost before it even started.

Also, there was a flashback showing that wrh's spirit had lingered after his death and he saw everything that happened after. so, when he saw them making the time travel array, he entered and went back with them. also, he was the one who killed my, I think by slitting his throat.

I don't remember if this was a multi chapter fic or not (I'm only like 60% sure it was), but I remember one of the author's notes saying that while jwy is saying that he'll make his mother treat wwx better this time, he knows deep down that this isn't true and that his form of love is selfish.

Hi again. I'm #1 from the sept 5th fic finder and I'm sorry, but it wasn't sunset, sunrise. It was more jwy-centric, and it's implied that wrh is still planning a war

NOT FOUND! Sunset, Sunrise by Ariana Deralte (ArianaDeralte) (T, 41k, WWX & WRH, WangXian, WIP, Time Travel Fix-It, Crack, Temporary Character Death, sorry I killed a-Yuan for a few paragraphs before the time travel, WWX is a Wen, Genius WWX, WRH gets to rewatch the series as a treat, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, in this house we acknowledge that all the sects have flaws, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, WWX Has ADHD, Bad Parents JFM & YZY, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Autistic LWJ)

FOUND? Lost Oppurtunities by Scarlet914 (T, 5k, JC & LWJ, WWX & WRH, Canon Divergence, Time Travel Fix-It, JC Needs a Hug, Sad JC, JC is Bad at Feelings, JC-centric, Golden Core Reveal, Sad LWJ, Sad LXC, BAMF WWX, YLLZ WWX, POV WRH, Qishan Wen Sect Wins the Sunshot Campaign, Gusu Lan Sect, YZY Bashing, Bad Parent YZY, Mentioned JYL, One-Sided WangXian, WWX is a Wen, Inventor WWX, Genius WWX)

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2. hi thank you for all you do! i’m looking for a fic that starts during the cloud recess arc. wei ying steals lan zhan’s clothes/blankets and makes a nest on his bed? and lan zhan notices someone is stealing his laundry but doesn’t immediately realize it’s wei ying? @hashtagad

FOUND! this mattress is a desert island by bbyminmaki (E, 19k, wangxian, A/B/O, no sunshot au, mating cycles/heat, nesting, omega WWX, alpha LWJ, getting together, scenting, pining, friends to lovers)

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3. Hello! I have a request for ficfinder!

I don't remember much about it, but Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian were married (it was not post canon) and Wei Wuxian was walking in the woods at Cloud Recesses without his sword, and Su She attacked him. Wwx was able to dodge Su She's attacks. Su She was insulting Wwx and his relationship with Lwj, and Wwx was taunting him for being jealous. But then Lan Xichen showed up and was really angry at Su She. I think Su She got exiled and Wwx was kind of uncomfortable with that punishment, but the Lans were like "he attacked an unarmed person in the woods, even if you weren't married to Lwj, exile is a light sentence." I cannot for the life of me remember anything else about that fic, just that I think it was kind of long?

Thank you all so much!

FOUND! 🧡 Stunted, Starving Juvenility by TomatenMark (E, 859k, WangXian, WIP, Fix-it of sorts, Talisman master WWX, Not JFM Friendly, Study Arc, Getting together, Fluff and Angst, Engagement) They aren't married yet when that happens, but very engaged.

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4. Hi! This is for fic finder. Ithink this fic is about LWJ and WWX in arranged marriage. I think its for LWJ protection (? Not sure about this part). Then WWX is sent to a war but failed to come back and declared as dead. LWJ become a widow (it is a correct term?). Because he is still young, many pressed him to remarried, but he use a griefing period to avoid that. I think he write a poem and become famous because of those romantic poem and ballad using a fake name. And then near the end there are a negotiation to exchange prisoner and WWX is not one of them (?) It was revealed that someone want him dead and dont want him be rescued (i think it was yxy?). A yuan, who should not be there tells lwj about wwx. Wwx then rescued and the three of them in the inn. As wwx rest there, JWY visited and talked. Lwj then bring wwx and a yuan to his house in capital. I think there are a sheep/goat involved?. Wwx healed but there are some injuries that cant be fully healed. I think because of that he cant do something he was proud of doing. I dont remeber if it was his hand or leg or maybe his eyes?. I think then lqr teach wwx something. Thats all i can remember. Thanks

FOUND! ❤️ Where the nightingales are singing, and a white moon beams. by Moominmammashandbag (M, 52k, wangixan, jin zixuan & lan wangji, no powers au, grief/mourning, aftermath of war, angst w/ happy ending, reunions, fluff & smut)

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5. Hiiii, can u pls help me find a fuc where lwj plays cleansing gor wwx coz if he does that wwx will be free of resentful energy but his body is literally held together by resentful energy so it almost kills him but wen qing saves him and the core secret is also revealed. Pleaseeree help me find it, thanks!

FOUND? 🧡 decay by antebunny (G, 15k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Angst, Misunderstandings, Miscommunication, Fix-It, Angst with a Happy Ending, the fluffiest ending, Hurt/Comfort)

FOUND?🔒A Heart Undying by NonsensicalRambling (M, 114k, WangXian, Undead WWX, Canon-Typical Violence, canon-typical dead things the burial mounds, Fix-It of Sorts, Canon Divergence, Eventual WangXian, No Yīn Tiger Seal, Morally Gray WWX, Animals Eating People, WWX's questionable choices, Morally conflicted LWJ, Oblivious WWX, WWX Creates a Sect | Yiling Wei, YLLZ WWX, Sect Leader WWX, LWJ & WQ have an Understanding)

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6. Hi! For the fic finder

I have scoured ao3 dark lan zhan tag and similar but I still can't find this fic. I remember Lan Zhan gets like cursed (i think he got the curse from a junior accidentally) and the curse like lowers his self control and amplifies darker urges so he takes wei ying to a cottage to live his domestic dreams but at some point wwx realizes lwj is isolating them and wwx tries to trick him to send a letter to lan sizhui. This doesn't work abd LWJ doesn't realize he is cursed. The curse like hides the mark too i think?? It ends happily I think.

I wonder if I'm mixing fics or it's been deleted bc I just can't seem to find it?? Thank you in anycase!

FOUND! Clouded by diamondbruise (M, 15k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Getting Together, Case Ficish, Curses, Dark LWJ, It's a curse, Dubcon Kissing, Jealousy, Sharing a Bed, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dubious Consent, no sex in this fic just in general)

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7. Hi! This is for fic finder. Qin Su ressurected someone (either wwx or jyl im not sure but i think it was wwx). Whoever in that body now do qin su duty and trying to make her own power without jgy knowing. And then there was a flood. She help people there as expected, but she do her duty too competent. JGY now suspect it was not QS in that body and confront her. Thats all i can remember. Thank you! @idontknowwhattowriteforusername

NOT FOUND!🔒Everyanything by deliciousblizzardshark, lingeringdust (E, 46k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Franken-canon, Gender Identity, Gender Dysphoria, Trans WWX, Protective LWJ, Accidental Baby Acquisition, tCanon-Typical Misogyny, Fluff and Angst, Vaginal Sex, Canon-Typical Major Character Death)

NOT FOUND! the problem with authority by isabilightwood (M, 139k, wangxian, qingli, Canon Divergence, Sacrifice Summon, slightly dark!JYL, wq lives because i said so, Angst with a Happy Ending, Chronic Pain, Mild Sexual Content, Top/Bottom Versatile | Switch WangXian, manipulative relationship (background xiyao))

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8. Hello! I'm trying to remember the name of a long fic where wx are hooking up, no relationship. Wwx will come to lwj's super nice modern apartment, they'll have sex in lwj's big modern bed with a moving headboard that exposes restraints and then after wwx will take a bath and sleep in the guest room. Does this ring any bells?

FOUND? A Sure Thing by vesna (mrsronweasley) (E, 95k, WangXian, Modern, Sugar Daddy, Sex Work, Light Dom/sub, Aftercare, Semi-Public Sex, Exhibitionism, Bondage, use of sex toys, boundary setting, Relationship Negotiation, many baths, Barebacking)

FOUND? show me a quiver, give me tonight by spookykingdomstarlight (E, 115k, wangxian, lwj/others, communication failure, mutual pining, artists, demisexual wwx, angst w/ happy ending)

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9. please help oh wonderful mods : a favorite Cloud Recesses Study AU with injured talisman genius Wy, ace Jin Zixuan, good mother Jin, WY explodes badguy Wen’s heads - couldnt find it again!! @oldoni

FOUND! 🧡 To have and to hold by Moominmammashandbag (M, 78k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Major character injury, CQL verse, Happy Ending)

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10. hi i’m looking for a fic i read a long time ago. it was a post-canon jc & wwx reconciliation fic. i believe it was jc and an oc jiang disciple on a night hunt where they ran into wangxian who were also working on that case. i remember there was some sort of misunderstanding regarding this (i think he found some letter?) but not the exact details of it. one scene i remember clearly was jc finding out wangxian were married and being a little hurt that he wasn’t invited. after they opened up, wwx told him he was there for it and when jc realized he meant the two bows in the jiang ancestral hall, he said smth like jyl would be rolling in her grave and demands a proper ceremony i think @nalalie

FOUND!🔒asunder by alessandriana (M, 51k, JC & WWX, JC & LWJ, WangXian, Post-Canon, Hurt/Comfort, Whump, Twin Prides of Yunmeng Dynamics, Reconciliation, Golden Core Reveal, Violence, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Death, Case Fic)

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11. Hello to fic finder so here's what I'm trying to search for I remember it as a podfic and I remember it was in Lan zhan POV I think and it was like him thinking about wei ying leaving the cloud recesses soon and I remember one Pacific scene where Wei ying was teaching the baby Lan how to sew their clothes

FOUND? [Podfic] And Yet Here You Are by zaffre (T, 1-1.5H, WangXIan, Post-Canon, Domestic Fluff, Location: Cloud Recesses, settling down, LWJ needs a hug, Separation Anxiety, Teacher WWX, People being nice to wwx is my kink, And probably lwj's kink too huh, very light angst, Chief Cultivator LWJ, And Yet Here You Are by cosmicmilktea)

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12. hi! i’m looking for a fic where lan zhan has a type of hanahaki where he has a tree/plant growing roots in his back that he removes a few times. i believe he also worked with textile production and the fic itself had a very stylized writing and was quite angsty. thank you!!

FOUND? The Roots Grow Riotous by hansbekhart (E, 104k, wangxian, modern, fashion au, garment company, casual sex, group sex, implied/referenced cheating, switching, recreational drug use, angst w/ happy ending, single dad WWX, panic attacks, implied/referenced self-harm, grief/mourning, catharsis, body horror, floral horror) is the absolute masterpiece , Roots Grow Riotious by Hans Bekhart , it's taken off ao3. however I have a copy and I've gotten permission to share from the author, DM your email so I can send you a pdf. @/the-marathon-continues-nip

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13. Guys~ I love u blog and am so desperate so I will cut to the chase:

There was this wangxian time travel fic where they meet their younger selfs and go back again. I think it was 7 chapters. Pov was mostly LZ (Young and old) and young Lz was confused about why he "didn't" marry Wwx ( Wwx introduced himself as mo xuanyu)

Hanguang-jun’s Husband by lilacevergarden (T, 6k, Time Travel, post-canon wangxian being disgustingly in love, wwx bullying teenage wangxian, Yeah that’s it, Jealous WWX)

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14. Hello, hope you’re doing well! I’m asking about a fic I read a while back. Lan Zahn and Wei Ying meet as children, but Lan Zahn doesn’t take him back to the cloud recesses. Instead, years later, they meet during the disciples visit to Gusu. Lan Wangji remembers Little Wei Ying as Wei Wuxian, but Wei Ying has no memory of him.

Highlights include drunk lan wangji with other disciples, su she getting punished for trying to assault lan wangji, and more I don’t remember. I read this in 2019, so my memory is pretty spotty.

It’s probably been deleted, but I really enjoyed this one. Thanks for your help. @myshallweplay

FOUND? Sun on a rainy day by MiiMi (M, 194k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Childhood Memories, Childhood Friends, Idiots in Love, Happy Ending, First Love, Fluff and Smut, Angst, Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Reversible Couple, Bottom LWJ, Top WWX, WangXian/XianWang, XiCheng, Top LWJ, Bottom WWX)

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15. Hello! I'm looking for a Wangxian fanfic. It took place in a modern au. LWJ and WWN's entire family were gathered for a barbecue, and Wangxian was fighting. There is a moment when Lan Wangji is about to eat something spicy, and Wei Wuxian stops him from eating, but they continue to fight. I remember that at some point, Wei Wuxian is eating this spicy dish, and Lan Wangji gets up to kiss him. And horrified by this situation, Jiang Yanli spills a glass of wine on Lan Wangji's shirt. I remember the story ended with Wei Wuxian saying that her husband was a knight with him and them going away to clean Wangji's shirt @a-ghostking

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17. This is probably some sort of canon divergence, not post-canon. I think it might take place somewhere after WWX busts out the Wens but before the shit hits the fan. Anyway, the specific detail we're working with here: WWX asks how the yin iron pieces were destroyed, please don't say you just chucked them in the volcano, then tells the sect leaders they fucked up and Qishan is going to explode with resentment if something is not done soon. Thank you 🖤 @linderel

I don't believe I've read this before, and I'm pretty sure the fic I'm looking for was neither crack (treated seriously or otherwise) nor time travel, but I'll certainly mark it down for later!

NOT FOUND! 🧡 built by the fires of volcanoes by isabilightwood (T, 26k, wangxian, time travel, crack treated seriously, canon divergence, fluff & humor)

FOUND! 🔒In search of safety by SomeDumbGuy (M, 22k, One-Sided WangXian, Canon Divergence, Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Incomplete Fix-It, Unreliable Narrator, JZX Lives, distruction of the yin tiger seal, Is it still hurt/comfort if it's comfort then hurt?, Blood and Gore) Here is a quote from chapter 3: “What do you have on the destruction of the Yin Iron at Nightless City?” Wei Wuxian asked. “We don’t have anything. It was thrown into the lava in the aftermath of the battle,” Lan Xichen replied.

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18. Hello

I'm looking for a fic published @ 2020 or so

Idk if it was dark lwj, but at the meal in Yiling, LWJs inner monologue was very critical, on how Yuan had no manners and the Wens were very bad for WWX.

Wwx might've also been outwardly hostile, but put up w it for the food @midnightlighthowlite

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19. Hiii, hope you're having a nice day :)) i was searching for a certain fic in which both wei wuxian and lan wangji are assassins and housemates. They both dont know that the other is an assassin too but they keep coming across on their missions.(i think they were competing and sometimes lan zhan was just watching wei ying do his job? idk) i remember wei wuxian accidentally revealing his identity by talking?? Something like that! Hope you can find it bc i've been searching for it nonstoppp T-T anywayss thank u in advancee!!! @for13years-i-play-inquiry-foryou

FOUND? silhouettes to steal this night by moonsteps (T, 51k, WangXian, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Modern, Assassins & Hitmen, Roommates, Rivals to Lovers, Fluff and Angst, Identity Porn, Violence, Blood and Injury, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Secret Identity)

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20. Hi! This is for fic finder. Its modern with magic (i think? Because the tech is not showed much) and single parent wwx. I think that lwj is sent by an institution to make wwx accept a contract to familiar because he didnt have a familiar for years and usually people who didnt have a familiar for yearst went crazy/died (i think it was a familiar. Not sure about that). In wwx house, lwj meet lsz. He then tried to confince lsz to study in institution. After that, i dont remember much. I think lsz transform and became a dog that kinda declared to the world that he is a wen. Lsz is left by wq as a baby and found by wwx. Wwx then raised lsz. I think they have a cat (or crow) that reminded wwx of wq. Lwj found out the reason why wwx didnt go crazy/die is because wwx make a clone of himself and killed it. Lwj found the corpses in wwx's backyard in a grave. That grave is near a tree. Long story short, at the end of the story, it was implied that wwx faked his death with jyl, jwy, jzx, and lwj help and moved to england (?). Thank you! @idontknowwhattowriteforusername

FOUND! Howling by MimiSpearmint (E, 40k, WangXian, Modern with Magic, Mortal Instruments Fusion, Horror, Eldritch, Domestic Fluff, Single Parent WWX, Witchcraft, Getting Together, shifter!lwj, yllz!wwx, Intercrural Sex, Hand Jobs, Angst with a Happy Ending, Switch WangXian, a bit of a degradation kink, anti-STI sex talismans, Anal Sex, Oral Sex)

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[abattre]

It's actually so disappointing that Naruto's narrative took the route that it did. Kishimoto created an incredibly interesting world and premise, and ruined it by having everything amount to a shallow message of forgiveness that undermines almost every meaningful element in the story. And it's like,, I want to appreciate the world outside of the plot, but the moral framing of the story makes it virtually impossible because of how disingenuous it is. It completely undermines the audience's understanding of the tragedy and horror of the world so that Naruto becoming Hokage and being the most powerful person in the world by the end doesn't come across as distasteful as it actually is.

Like it's made abundantly clear throughout the story that the village system, and Shinobi society as a whole, is incredibly flawed. Kishimoto goes out of his way to show us that Konoha's council is made up of objectively horrible people. We see first hand how the council's short-sighted ideas of what 'protecting the village' means results in devastating tragedy for people both in Konoha and outside of it. It's clear in how Danzo and the rest of the council act that their atrocious behaviour is them just blatantly abusing their power to maintain their authority. The council has no remorse in anything they do; human experimentation, genocide, slavery, and blatant exploitation is all fair game to them if it preserves their status quo. And instead of maybe, like, addressing Konoha's skewed morality in a sensible way and setting the village up for reform, the narrative just tries forcing the audience to perceive Konoha's genuinely heinous actions as necessities. Which, you know, will work when you're like 8, but once you've grown up and developed some reading comprehension and critical thinking,,, it just feels annoyingly manipulative.

At its core, Naruto is a story that attempts to deconstruct morality. Like this is transparent in how Kishimoto is constantly paralleling the dichotomy of good and evil literally every chance he gets. In the end though, this dichotomy just doesn't work in the context of the Naruto story because the narrative framing of the village being the good guys is just hysterically ridiculous. Konoha is an awful place, that does awful things, and is run by awful people that refuse to change anything because it benefits them for the village to remain awful forever. To anyone with a developed sense of media literacy the village cannot in any way be framed as morally good, so when the story resolves itself with Naruto becoming next in line to govern Konoha under the same unchanging authoritarian regime, with the same council supporting him because of his sheer physical prowess and complete dedication to their twisted ideology,,, it's honestly just an incredibly underwhelming conclusion to a story that made itself out to be more profound than it actually is.

If I had to guess, I imagine Kishimoto just didn't think through how negatively the world he created would reflect on the plot. Ultimately though, you can't write a moral story that's so deeply entrenched in real world social inequity and decide halfway through that because you don't know how to fix these things your story's going to have to be about how they're actually okay to be doing and perpetuating,,, like that is awful and also a terrible lesson to impart on an audience of children. With how serious the issues are in Shinobi society, trying to resolve things with the power of friendship was always going to fall flat. These broad scale injustices can't be brushed aside in that way without undermining their severity and diminishing the understandable impact they had on the characters that experienced such extreme oppression. That's essentially the trap that Naruto's conclusion falls into though, and so the story just ends up feeling incomplete and unfulfilling because none of the issues brought up are actually addressed or discussed with the gravity they deserve.

[tamlindain]

Good morning and I just did some rereading ya know (coz I'm clearly insane) and I can't deal with how fucking stupid it is for the Suriel to say in ACOWAR he meant Rhys when he said “Stay with the High Lord.” I’m sure y’all had this discussion long before but it’s new to me and hey, I’m allowed to be mad on my blog right?

Like in ACOTAR, first of all, the Suriel specifically starts talking about “the High Lord” saying “I know a good many things about the High Lord of the Spring Court.”

And the quote then goes:

“Stay with the High Lord, human … He will shield you from it, so stay close to him, and all will be righted.”

Okay sure maybe the Suriel was giving her a riddle of which High Lord, right? WRONG. Because the next quote goes:

“The High Lord does not know that you came here today, does he?”

Now why on earth would that be Rhysand? This line is fucking Tamlin because he’s the only Feyre didn’t tell, so what is going on with this stupid Suriel? Does it know everything except English grammar? If you are referring to two people you are supposed to fucking specify? But noooo. We are supposed to be fucking awed that GASP what wat a plot twist, it meant Rhysand all along.

UM NO. Because there’s more:

“Run for the High Lord’s manor. Do not forget what I told you—stay with the High Lord, and live to see everything righted … Free me and return to the High Lord’s side.”

So uh, if this is Rhysand so is she supposed to run all the way to the night court, hm? And why would she RETURN to Rhysand? She’s not even met him yet!!

Like literally fuck Sarah because what the fuck. Why retcon things which cannot be retconned? Like she can literally have made this as Feyre could have been safe with Tamlin but she left him so she wasn’t safe but she was free? Or something? Anything? Or like, never bring this up again like. Guys I’m so fucking furious right now. I can’t. I just fucking can’t.

[thechekhov]

Hello! Just wanted to say I love all your content but I wanted to ask if you had any advice/tips for running curse of strahd? I'm working on getting ready to run it with some friends/my partner and while I've run a fair amount of homebrew stuff this is my real first attempt at a legit module so I was curious if you could share anything since I believe you also are running/had run that module as well?

Thanks for asking! This is a very fun question!

I have indeed run Curse of Strahd. It was my first foray into long-term DMing and my team and I finished that campaign a little under a year ago. It was awesome, and I'm always excited to talk about it. Curse of Strahd had be a great game if everyone is on the same page!

First of all, I'm gonna say

Having Experience with Homebrew will be a huge boon

When I ran CoS, I followed the actual module about... 60% of the time. It was good... as a baseline/blueprint. But the reality is that I changed up a lot of the details. Either because I didn't like the vibes of the story, or because the plot points were antithetical to my team's goals. I changed up an entire floor of Ravenloft. I threw away a whole storyline for a major NPC because I felt it was too boring.

I think most people who run Curse of Strahd do this, actually. I've heard countless tales of how others Homebrewed their own meat onto the skeleton, and still came out of the campaign with an awesome, Strahd flavored experience. So don't worry about that part.

Here's my advice:

1. Everyone should vibe with what Strahd IS as a game.

Strahd can be a lot of things - you can Homebrew your own motivations into him, or make him a her, or change the history of his castle if need be. But if there's one thing Curse of Strahd is... it is DARK.

The Venn Diagram of Parties Who Understand That Suffering Can Be Fun To Roleplay and Parties Who Had A Good Time Doing CoS is probably a circle. You cannot do this adventure with a group of people who just want to hit monsters a whole bunch. It's an inherently 'oh my god this SUCKS' adventure. That's the main theme. Your players need to be able to enjoy that sort of game, otherwise they will just be miserable.

One of my players, upon arriving in Barovia, immediately said 'I hate it here' and then continued to say it for the rest of the campaign. That is kind of the catchphrase of CoS. Your players need to be comfortable with that sort of bleak horror and overall misery. It makes the end and the potential to finally end Strahd worth it.

That being said, Strahd can also just be... a lot. It has death and torture and psychological horror in there. KIDS DIE. Please discuss this stuff with your table, and remove elements if they guarantee a bad experience for everyone!

(Yes, you can trim down some of the viscera if you need to, that's fine. But keep in mind it will still be tragic. It SHOULD still be tragic. I set some boundaries for myself, but I also killed a whole town in an avalanche. It happened to be the only town my players had grown to like. It was a dick move. It was exactly what you would expect to happen.)

2. Read ahead - A LOT AHEAD.

For a self-contained world, Barovia isn't actually that big. It's a very small map, compared to some that span continents. That means you have the ability to flesh it out, as it were.

To add to that... some areas are... severely underdeveloped plot-wise. Sometimes there are places your players will go where it FEELS like it should link up to another point in the game but it just... doesn't. There is room to expand there. Use your Homebrew skills to connect the dots that the module doesn't!

I greatly recommend taking the time to either read through the whole adventure OR listen through some video-essays. There IS some cool stuff that comes in in the later game that you can grab and put down breadcrumbs for from day one. Or add to your own story twists.

My recommended resource for this is the Curse of Strahd DM's Guide video series.

...and to that end...

3. Start living in Ravenloft Castle WAY before your players get there.

Listen..........listen. look.

Look at this, and suffer as all GMs have suffered.

Castle Ravenloft is unarguably the biggest, stupidest, most architecturally ludicrous hurdle when it comes to GMing CoS. And I am here to tell you - IT IS DOABLE.

You can understand the castle, you can grow comfortable with it. But you need to start early. Hell, I think I began to set up Ravenloft maps before my players even knew it existed. Then I stopped, because I was scared.. but then I went back, and I.... roleplayed SOLO on my off-days! I set up little scenes between Strahd and others and imagined him setting traps, and doing other things. It helped me understand which staircase led to where, and what floors were accessible from which angles.

A part of me actually thinks that there should be a mini GMs-only class where a more experienced Strahd GM takes some time with other GMs to guide them through a map of the castle. A CoS Learning Oneshot, if you will.

There's also a LOT of talented mapmakers that create beautiful, digital CoS maps! Here's one:

Even if you are playing analogue, at a physical table, I greatly encourage you to check it out for reference. The official CoS maps are bleak and a little bit more... rustic? Than they are gothic.

Anyway, in order to avoid talking your ear off, I will end it here.

My last bit of advice is... to have fun!

Yes I know I just said that Strahd is an inherently bad-vibes game. But it's actually GOOD to let your players goof off now and then. Don't be afraid to let them do shenanigans. It builds character, and allows them to regain the energy they need to role-play properly heavy elements later.

My group did a whole bunch of funny stuff. They felt so bad about losing Ireena that when they saw Ismark, instead of explaining themselves to him they cast Darkness and tried to scramble away. There was a running joke that the cleric was too good to know about sex, so they used the euphemism 'play cards' around her, much to everyone's amusement. They got kicked by a walking house once and never forgot nor forgave. And finally, they defeated some Flame Skulls by putting them into a bag of holding.

Anyway, the point is... have fun! I wish you and your party the best of luck. :)

[azdoine]

Whenceforth art thou, Hell?

Nona the Ninth appears to confirm Abigail Pent's suspicion that the River has been deliberately broken or sealed, per the comments of Varun and Alecto:

The Captain’s voice was like old teeth. “He left them too long—you left them too long, my salt thing.” ... Afterward Alecto went down to the ship and stood before John, purposing to travel through the River, and was grieved to find it yet dead.

However, a common thread of discussion I see in theorycrafting goes that if John has closed whatever gates may lead beyond the River, then his actions here are somehow for the sake of sustaining necromancy as an institution - as if, at the eleventh hour, we'll learn that all magic has somehow been fueled by burning through God's giant Philosopher's Stone all along. I cannot accept this interpretation. To me, it raises an infinite regression: how could John possibly have used necromancy in order to invent necromancy?

Moreover, this kind of plot twist disregards the internal logic and deflates the significance of TLT's social critique. The Tower doesn't need to be a secret hydroelectric dam in the River for converting human damnation into worldly power, because the engine of suffering has been in the real world the entire time, and it's just called colonialism. The price to be paid for working necromancy is a price to be paid overtly and in this life, either by the coin of explicit necrocapital or by the coin of grief.

If the path to a hypothetical River Beyond has been closed, I think it's for a much more banal psychological reason: John is a mission-oriented avenger who refuses to accept any check on the reach of his judgement.

“There can be no forgiveness for those who walked away,” he said. “Just as there can be no forgiveness for me—even though I rip the very fingers from my hands … throw them into the jaws of the monsters who hunt me … as I run from them across the universe, end to end. Something will satisfy them eventually, but nothing satisfies me. Nothing.” He drew his gaze away from her—his black-and-white, chthonic stare—and looked out over the dunes. He said, “But that’s the grace of it, Harrow. If I’m God, I can start over. The flood, you know? You can wash things clean. That’s all the end of Earth was … making things clean. It gets dirty again, you clean it again. Like those old power-washing ads. Spray and walk away, right? Sometimes I think the only reason I haven’t done it already is that I can’t bear the idea that I wouldn’t be able to touch them—that they’d still be out there…"

People regularly overlook the psychological significance of John's long reach in the context of understanding his behavior. Death and physical distance are no escape from a sufficiently powerful necromancer, because his enemies can be summoned out of the River - which bridges locations across unimaginable gulfs of space - and subjected to further torments in person.

(this is another reason I don't believe that John's expansionist project is being carried out in order to hunt down and slaughter the resettled generational descendants of the trillionaires; based on what we've read, John simply shouldn't need to settle for such a pointless blood feud, let alone carry out his revenge-by-proxy in the physical world. however it came to be that the dead are trapped within the River, everyone who lives is certain to enter his kingdom of death eventually, to sit and wait for him to sieve them from the waters.)

From here, it also makes sense on John's part to arrange for a specific place for the interment of problematic souls. He has to be able to keep some people pinned in place in the palm of his grave-dirt hand - otherwise he leaves a potential attack surface for anyone to try to summon the dead as their witnesses and ask for incriminating information about the King Undying. John certainly admits to deliberately leaving many souls on ice in proportion to their moral desert, for which Harrow accuses him of malfeasance:

"We’ll get them all back … some of them, anyway … or at least, the ones I want to bring back. Anyone I feel didn’t do it. Anyone I feel had no part in it. Anyone I can look at the face of and forgive. And my loved ones … The ones I left, I’ll bring back." ... "I want to know how many of the Resurrection are left, and how many you began with, and what the discrepancies are. I want to know where you put them. They didn’t go into the River. I want to know why she was angry … and why you were terrified."

Alecto The Ninth is set to invoke the harrowing of hell, but I still think we have to be very careful not to overstate these mythological allusions or buy into John's mystique here. The Locked Tomb is a setting with an intensely organic and visceral metaphysics, where the embodiments of the divine - Alecto and John, John's hands and gestures, the human soul itself - are "merely" congregations of smaller powers. "God is a dream, Harrow, and you all dream me together" - the secular minutiae of life and magic are divine only where we remember they're worth deifying!

As John's godhood was once demystified to expose him as an oversized Lyctor, if I want to understand the nature of Hell and the Tower in advance of Alecto, I think I have to let go of my assumption that the answers to all of these questions isn't hidden in plain sight, that there must be a dizzying twist. Let's assume a man did it, and not a god; and ask, how would any man go about trapping ten billion souls or damming the River?

[echodrops]

Why do m/f ships are often regarded as boring and plain in comparison to m/m and f/f ships?

I think it's a combination of things:

1) Over-saturation. M/F romances have been the bread and butter of mainstream media for literally thousands of years. (Although the world's first known work of literature was pretty gay, so there's that lol!) Anyway, because of this, it's easy for M/F stories to repeat old plots, or for audiences to feel as if "there are no new stories to tell." After consuming M/F romance media for a while, people can start to feel like "I've seen this before." When the market is saturated, it becomes harder to find new twists on old tropes, fresh voices, etc., and there's no longer as much sensation of mystery or the unexpected--if you see a hot main female character and a hot main male character in a movie, chances are they're guaranteed to get together. When things become "given" in media, the stakes vanish, and it's much harder to generate interest from readers or viewers. ("This ship is going to be endgame anyway, so why bother worrying about whether they'll get together?")

Conversely, when the romance is M/M or F/F, it still has an element of "newness." Perhaps we haven't seen this particular romantic comedy plot with a queer couple before. Maybe adding the extra element of societal response to being gay changes up how an old trope will play out. Because queer romances haven't been grafted on to seemingly every possible trope and scenario in media (yet), there's still chances for surprises and intrigue. Basically, M/M and F/F have the benefit of newness.

I think it's worth pointing out, though, that this will likely not last. An inevitable side effect of queer romances becoming normalized in mainstream media is that, over time, all those tropes and cliched plots will get played out with both M/M and F/F ships, and we'll one day reach over-saturation on queer romances as well, making many of them feel just as bland as the stock of M/F romances in media too.

2) A lot of M/F writing is just really bad. I've discussed at length many reasons why M/F romances tend to be more poorly written in a lot of mainstream media, and the many reasons are too varied to go over again (misogyny, inexperienced male writers, sexual fixation on the other gender resulting in objectification, etc. etc.), but I think it's key to remember that a lot of stories which contain romantic plots weren't actually intended to be romances at all. They just have a romance because society treats romance as obligatory. Writing a horror story? Wait, you mean the hot male protagonist and the hot female protagonist aren't going to bond over their life-threatening situations and end up together? Writing a movie about the horrific tragedy of the sinking of the Titanic? What do you mean it won't center around a forbidden romance between people of different economic classes? Your high fantasy epic doesn't have a princess for your knight to save?! Huh?

The problem is that a lot of people who can write well in one genre cannot write well in other genres. You can have the best horror writer in history... and that person may be completely incapable of writing a romantic plotline to save their life. You can have the most accurate historical political intrigue researcher ever--and then that person has zero experience trying to build effective romantic tension. Unlike other genres which don't have to cross over with each other--your crime drama doesn't have to become a historical drama; your YA fantasy novel doesn't have to become a comedy--writers of practically every genre are expected to be able to throw romance plots into their works and sell them.

When romance is so ubiquitous, it's inevitable that a lot of it is going to be written by people who aren't skilled at writing it, and thus a whole lot of it is going to just be kind of poorly written.

Conversely, we're still at a moment in time when queer romances are regarded as somewhat controversial in mainstream media. It's growing less so over time, but we're still at the point where, if there's a queer romance in a piece of mainstream media, it's because the authors really wanted to put it there. It's not there because of a sense of obligation or viewer expectations, but because someone producing that work really wanted to tell a queer romance story. When you're adding a romance plotline because you really want to write a romance, that plot is (usually) better simply because that plot is more important to the writers.

Furthermore, because queer romance plots are still scrutinized much, much more than M/F romances by editing boards, shareholders, etc., it is likely that these stories are held to a higher writing standard that M/F romances currently. They will be subject to greater editing and require greater "justification" in order to sell decision-makers on the necessity of including the pair. Therefore, across the board, queer romances in mainstream media are likely to receive more of the writers' time and effort than M/F romances.

Once again though, this is a product of media's current situation and not something that will last. Give it a few more years in an LGBT+ friendly administration and M/M and F/F romance plots in shows, books, etc. will become normalized to the point that including one won't be remotely controversial. The level of scrutiny and focus on such ships will fall, and eventually they'll become just about as obligatory as M/F ships, complete with the matching drop in quality. 😂

[hprambles-blog]

As a golden trio fan, this discussion of Snape versus James is stupid and unnecessary because this will always be HARRY’s story, he’s the main character no matter how loud you whine. His father is but a shadow of disappointment, and Harry at 15 is already infinitely better than his dad. if people deny that the Marauders are background characters in Snape’s story (also in Harry’) that’s on them for missing the point when the story clearly paints parallels between Harry and Snape (Voldemort too).

No matter how big the marauders fandom gets,, the Marauders are not important characters to the main plot (the one that actually matters, guys) they’re ghosts, Sirius is a living corpse, and they are tethers of a different time to shed light on Harry and then Snape Normally I would stay quiet, but the marauders fans cannot keep comparing Harry to James or give James credit for Harry being an amazing person, that’s not how it works. if James has a canonical parallel, that’s Dudley, not Harry, never Harry and every time someone says James would’ve been better than Harry I want to get violent. Be a fan of James as much as you guys want, create lore for a flat character that certainly needs it but DON’T TWIST THE LORE THAT ALREADY EXISTS! FYI, even Narcissa is more important plot-wise than the marauders combined

🦅

[hp-confessions]

As a golden trio fan, this discussion of Snape versus James is stupid and unnecessary because this will always be HARRY’s story, he’s the main character no matter how loud you whine. His father is but a shadow of disappointment, and Harry at 15 is already infinitely better than his dad. if people deny that the Marauders are background characters in Snape’s story (also in Harry’) that’s on them for missing the point when the story clearly paints parallels between Harry and Snape (Voldemort too).

No matter how big the marauders fandom gets,, the Marauders are not important characters to the main plot (the one that actually matters, guys) they’re ghosts, Sirius is a living corpse, and they are tethers of a different time to shed light on Harry and then Snape Normally I would stay quiet, but the marauders fans cannot keep comparing Harry to James or give James credit for Harry being an amazing person, that’s not how it works. if James has a canonical parallel, that’s Dudley, not Harry, never Harry and every time someone says James would’ve been better than Harry I want to get violent. Be a fan of James as much as you guys want, create lore for a flat character that certainly needs it but DON’T TWIST THE LORE THAT ALREADY EXISTS! FYI, even Narcissa is more important plot-wise than the marauders combined

~

[facewithoutheart]

My friend said, “What if Season 9 is just all fanfic tropes?” and I said: bet.

Trope Count: De-Aged, Forced Proximity, Amnesia, Secret Relationship, Mpreg.

Season 9 begins with Athena, once again, on an airplane. She’s coming back from picking up Bobby from the government facility. They are having some Tense Moments because Athena hasn’t forgiven him for dying, which, Bobby doesn’t seem to really understand? He’s not actually dead? Logic doesn’t matter; Athena had to grieve another lover and she’s not sure she wants to put herself through that again. Also there are Snakes on the Plane and Bobby looks at Athena to say the line, and she looks at him like, I do not get paid enough to say the line, so Bobby whispers it under his breath and wishes Chimney were there.

Cut to the Hans and Baby RobertNash. Chim is kind of being an overbearing presence, nervous and doting to make up for not being there during JeeYun’s early months (power outage etc.). Maddie is Super Done with it. Shenanigans happen and, plot twist: the season open’s biggest drama isn’t the snakes, but the fact Maddie ends up getting de-aged.

Trope: De-Aged.

Meanwhile the 118 is still reeling from the events of Seismic Shifts. Despite Chim’s rousing speech, he’s not actually there, leaving the team in-fighting and sniping at each other, especially Buck and Eddie. But when Maddie gets de-aged, the team rallies to help Chim out. Because the OG team is still fighting, this results in a lot of unexpected pairings as they search for the cure to Maddie’s sudden youth. Ravi and Karen get a chance to reunite, Eddie and Maddie get some adorable scenes together (picture cute Baby Maddie running up to Eddie with her arms up in the air, like, “Eddie! Uppies!” while Buck’s ovaries explode). Hen and Josh end up being the team that find Maddie’s cure and they do a gay-five which for some reason Eddie tries to join? What’s that about? No time. Athena is back with Bobby and they announce they’re getting a divorce.

Insert a bottle episode where the team reveals secrets and fears and it’s, like, super bonding. They have some friendly pull-up competitions which Hen wins. They play truth or dare (why does Buck keep picking dare? Oh well. He basically gets so many dares he’s like come on guys! But they can’t help picking on him). They even do a fake Bobby Cooking Show. Through it all, each team member takes Bobby aside and tries to convince him to give it another go with Athena but he just won’t budge. He longs for the bell to ring to avoid the continued barrage but it never does. He even says quiet! Nothing. Eddie feels vindicated that jinxes aren’t real and Buck rolls his eyes so loudly. Seriously, what’s going on with them? Right before their shift ends, they end up on ONE call (finally) and of course Athena is there. Buck, stressed from all the dares and mad Bathena is fighting Destiny, Buck steals her handcuffs to try and lock Bobby and Athena together, but only ends up locking himself and Athena together.

Trope: Forced Proximity.

Cue an episode where Buck has to ridealong with Athena while they wait for him to pass the key he swallowed. They bond over missing Bobby, finally having some good grief discussions. Buck is sad they aren’t together but he understands. It’s a sweet healing episode, except for the part where a rookie cop gets a crush on Buck and he has to gently let them down while Athena laughs at him. She gives him a meaningful look about it and he’s like: not one word. Cue awkward scene where Athena and Buck cannot make eye contact as Buck brings out the key and unlocks their handcuffs. They agree never to speak of this again. Meanwhile, Eddie and Bobby adjust to being back at the 118, bonding over feeling like fish out of water. There’s a moment where Bobby seems sad Eddie’s not asking for advice and Eddie gets to thank Bobby for everything he’s taught him. They hug about it.

The next few episodes are your average filler episodes where we see bits and pieces of the 118’s lives. Bobby trying to come back from the dead. Maddie and Chim going on their first date night after the baby. Karen’s up for a promotion at work against The Worst Guy. Hen wonders what she’s doing with her life. Buck and Eddie are still fighting even though everyone else seems to be fine now. Buck decides to try and get Ravi laid which really bothers Eddie for some reason. Josh gets a bad haircut and wears really awful hats to cover it up. Athena couchsurfs at May’s apartment and has an Old School arc where she inadvertently becomes the life of May’s social group, much to May’s dismay. Harry goes viral on TikTok with some new dance and various members of the 118 are caught videotaping themselves doing it, though for some reason Buck refuses to watch Eddie’s video, resulting in Hen and Chim resorting to extreme means to make him see it. They do finally win, even though Buck runs out of the room immediately afterward. What a weirdo.

Hen comes home one night after having wine with Athena (Athena is finally hanging out with people her own age again and Hen has figured out, actually, she does want to be captain). She hears music coming from the kitchen; it’s Harry’s TikTok dance song. Hen groans, like, not you too, and turns the corner to find Karen has slipped and fallen while doing the dance and is bleeding on the floor. Mid-season cliffhanger. Karen survives, but at a cost. When she wakes up from surgery, Hen cries with relief and reaches out for Karen’s hand, which Karen snatches away from her. “Why are you here?” she snaps. “Shouldn’t you be over at Eva’s?”

Trope: Amnesia.

With Karen’s memory reset to the night she found out Hen had cheated on her, Hen is forced to reckon with her past mistakes. The team is also forced to look back over the last few years and admit the many calamities and trials they’ve all experienced. Guess what, guys? It’s a clip show!

Karen slowly begins to trust Hen again, and the 118 is still hopeful they can make it work. There’s a whole episode about love, the different forms of it: platonic, familial, and romantic. Each time they manage a miraculous save. At the end of the episode, Bobby and Hen make big gestures for the ones they love. (There’s a moment where Hen and Bobby are planning their gestures that they look over at Buck and Eddie, who are sitting on opposite sides of the room, still fighting after all this time.) But while Karen is willing to take Hen back, Athena is still not sure she can put herself out there again. Bobby agrees once more to let her live her life.

Cut to Buck, in bed, getting a text message. He sighs. “Athena turned Bobby down.” “Damn,” a familiar voice says beside him. “I really thought they’d make it work.” “Yeah. Guess not everyone can be as lucky as us.” Buck kisses the bare shoulder next to him. The camera pans over. It’s Eddie.

Trope: Secret Relationship.

The next episode’s theme is all about secrets as we slowly get the details behind Eddie and Buck’s whirlwind romance. We see all the hidden moments where they’ve been pretending to fight and then makeup (it’s possible Buck likes this too much). We see Eddie pouting over Buck taking out Ravi, and the horny way Buck attacks Eddie after seeing him be a diligent parent to Maddie. We see Eddie practicing the TikTok dance while Buck bites a pillow. We see late nights at the Diaz house and Buck meeting Eddie’s sisters and how Tia Pepa cries when they tell her they’re together (Chris groans the whole time). Meanwhile every call is about someone hiding something and Hen starts to get Real Suspicious of what’s been going on with Buck and Eddie. Newly reunited, her and Karen go on a mission to uncover what Buck and Eddie are hiding and find out that they’re dating.

Now we’ve got a full-on FRIENDS-esque “they know that I know that they know” situation where everyone slowly finds out about Buck and Eddie while pretending they don’t know. Also a fun moment where Hen tells Athena and Athena’s like … wait, you didn’t know??? Because of course she clocked it the instant she got back into town, confirmed during the Buck handcuff incident. When Buck and Eddie do finally announce to the 118 that they’re dating, the gang has already got a party in the works, complete with a cake that Ravi ordered that says, “Congrats on Getting Back Together!” or something, and everyone has to explain that Buck and Eddie aren’t actually a divorced couple, which Ravi refuses to believe. The episode ends with Bobby looking on fondly, but also wistfully, as he sees everyone finding love (including Josh, who is dating the hairstylist who gave him the bad cut; he tells Maddie he’d rather than be happy than have good hair, although Eddie overhears this and snorts; Maddie has to hold Josh back from taking a swing. “He was in a fight club, Josh. Think again.”)

The next few episodes are fun domestic bliss, Bobby taking on Hen as his vice-captain as he transitions toward retirement. Chimney moves back to the Academy for a bit to fill in for an instructor who fell sick and he wonders if he shouldn’t take on a less stressful role to help out more at home, complete with a new cast of recruits who follow Chim around like little ducklings, something he feels really proud about. Chris starts dating someone and Eddie finds a gray hair, with Buck having to reassure Eddie that he’s not actually getting old even though every call they go on seems to reinforce how out of touch and ancient Eddie feels. Karen gets her promotion and goes on a spending spree, showering Hen with so many outfits that Hen can’t store them all in her closet. They wonder if they should get a bigger house but eventually Hen decides that’s insane and she finds a women’s shelter to donate her clothes; they put on a fashion show to raise funds. May is about to graduate college and is dealing with whether or not she wants to come back to dispatch. There’s an entire episode from B-Shift’s POV which reveals how they read shift logs like gossip rags, with Ravi getting a Begins episode to explore how growing up in a hospital influences him on shift.

Okay. Season finale time. The 118 enter a firefighting competition. Buck and Eddie are thrilled; this is basically foreplay to them. Hen’s excited to show off for Karen, who still doesn’t have all of her memory back but is very excited to see her badass wife out-muscle the men. Chimney opts out because he’s still working at the Fire Academy but he sits in the stands with Maddie to boo/cheer on Buck. Bobby is forced to participate as well, even though he tries to get out of it. Somehow three of the people Ravi is dating show up to watch him participate, resulting in an altercation that Athena is called in to quash. She ends up sticking around and has to watch Bobby be hot and competent. A nightmare. She ends up next to Maddie in the stands and Maddie’s all … mmm need a cool washcloth there, Athena? And Athena’s like … shut up. Chimney thirsts over Bobby, too. Because I said so. Anyway, it’s all well and good until there is an actual earthquake, leaving the competitors trapped in a sinkhole. Chimney, Athena, and Maddie to the rescue! Maddie gets to be hot and competent herself while helping a trapped BuckandEddie. Most importantly, Bobby being a Big Damn Hero recalls every moment Athena watched him before and while they were dating, reminding her that there’s no world where her and Bobby aren’t meant to be together. Brief cliffhanger where only one of Buck and Eddie can be saved and they fight over who it is, but then the next episode Bobby finds a way to save them both. Yay miracles! We do a montage but it’s actually not terrible. Just Bobby passing over the captainship to Hen, and May back at dispatch, and happy Buckley-Han & Wilson families, and Athena hiding away the divorce paperwork, unsigned, and Chimney leaving his Fire Academy fam to come back to the 118 full time. The episode ends at the hospital where Buck and Eddie are sharing a room. The doctor comes in to talk to Buck in private, but Buck reassures the doctor that anything she has to say she can say in front of Eddie. She swallows.

“Mr. Buckley. You’re pregnant.”

End of episode.

Trope: Mpreg.

Suggestions for Season 10: Athena and Bobby in a series of increasingly absurd excuses about why they haven’t signed the divorce papers yet, Buck and Eddie start a fire during their gender reveal party, Hen has a series of trials as Captain of the 118, and Maddie runs into her childhood friend she was jealous of and realizes she’s also bisexual.