#Doleful sequel

[sundrop-writes]

Pathetic

Sub!Spencer Reid x Switch!GN!Reader x Dom!Elle Greenaway

Summary:

Spencer needs to be punished, and as always, you and Elle are very creative with it. One of these days, he might learn to behave - but you hope that day is not anytime soon.

Dom!Elle Greenaway x Switch!Gender Neutral Reader x Sub!Spencer Reid. Established Dom/Sub Relationship. Smut/PWP.

Word Count: 2,600

Criminal Minds Masterlist | AO3 Link

Detailed warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: this is just straight up smut/pwp; this is a threesome/poly relationship - the characters have been in this kind of relationship for a while and they're all very comfortable with their roles; there is no mention of safewords, but it is implied that the characters are all comfortable with each other and safety nets exist in the background; Elle is dominant, Spencer is very submissive, and the reader is a switch - being dominant with Spencer and submissive towards Elle; the reader's genitals are not described in any way and the reader is gender neutral; mentions of Spencer having a humiliation kink; hair pulling (towards Spencer); mentions of Spencer being 'punished'; penetrative sex/unprotected piv sex - Spencer fucks Elle's pussy (without a condom, oops); mentions of Spencer wearing a cockring; orgasm denial/orgasm restriction (towards Spencer); light bondage - Spencer's arms being handcuffed behind his back; mentions of Spencer being spanked (does not take place during the fic); some nipple play (Spencer receiving); the reader calls Elle 'm'am' (Spencer calls her 'Miss'); at one point; Spencer is called 'pathetic' and 'a little bitch'; (so I guess degradation kink too?); the reader gives Spencer a handjob; some cumplay/cum eating; snowballing (in a kiss between the reader and Spencer; mentions of chastity belts/genital cages (not used during the fic); there is somewhat of a rivalry going on between Spencer and the reader?; the reader is kind of a brat, competing with Spencer for Elle's attention; and I believe that's it.

A/N: This could be viewed as a sequel to The Perfect Brat, or it could be viewed as taking place in the same universe as that fic - the reader character in this fic is Gender Neutral and does not have their gender described where as the reader character in that fic is female, so I wouldn't say specifically that it is a sequel - but it could be. Anyway - this is mostly inspired by my love of Spencer's slutty waist. I hope you guys enjoy it!

...

“God, he’s so pathetic.”

The words came out of Elle’s mouth as an airy chuckle, truly punctuating her thoughts on the situation. The man between her thighs was nothing but laughable - in the most pussy-wetting way. 

Naturally, Spencer let out a chest rattling moan at her comment, finding nothing but pleasure in the humiliation that she doled out. Even if he refused to admit it - it was his nature. He thrived off of being mocked and praised; punished and rewarded. 

You let out a chuckle of your own, running your fingers through his hair, a jolt going down your spine when you tugged sharply on those pretty brown locks and he let out a pretty gasp. 

Elle watched on with inquisitive eyes and swallowed up a low moan inside of her chest - controlled, composed, as she always was. 

She made a clear effort not to lose her precious composure in front of Spencer. She never needed him to think that he provided her with any kind of elite pleasure. That he could give her something that she couldn’t get from someone else. Especially not from you. He was just another tool in her belt. One that needed to be polished by her before he could be properly used. 

(He really needed to learn to keep his mouth shut, but he probably never would.) 

Even now, when he was balls-deep inside of her, her face remained smooth and neutral - not giving away a single flicker of the pleasure she might be feeling. Because it was all a big game, and she had to win. She was entirely demure as she stared up at him from her position, laying on her back in the middle of the bed. Technically, she was the lowest in the room, but always the one in the highest seat of control. Always the one with the most power in the room, no matter what. 

And unlike Spencer, you weren’t going to mess with the status quo of that power. 

“I think it’s almost… cute?” You remarked, knowing you sounded utterly condescending as you let out another giggle. (Especially if Spencer’s pleasurable gasp was anything to go by.) “At least he’s trying.” 

Spencer let out a choked whine, clearly humiliated and turned on by the way the two of you spoke - talking around him as though he wasn’t even there. As though he wasn’t important enough to even acknowledge. 

Spencer was currently stuck between the two of you, in a way that felt unfair yet perfectly and pleasurably melted his brain. 

With his cock speared deep inside of Elle’s warm, commanding pussy, while you stood behind him - a lingering presence that trapped him there, he knew that he had nowhere to go. Which he loved and hated at the same time. You were somehow still completely clothed - the fabric of your outfit feeling rougher against his completely naked body as his skin became overstimulated and sweaty, but he couldn’t escape you, not for a moment, while you crowded more and more into his personal space. 

“Please,” Spencer whimpered out.

Beneath him, Elle was clad in one of her signature bright red bras - overwhelming his field of vision with the sight of her perfect cleavage and her beautiful hair splayed out across the bed. And somehow, even as dewey sweat gathered on her skin, her makeup stayed perfectly in place, unsmudged and turning her into a goddess-like vision that only made him dissolve more into that pathetic puddle that you both mocked him for being. 

With your hands on Spencer’s hips - you kept shoving him forward harshly, forcing him to fuck into the unforgiving heat of Elle’s cunt while his cock panged with twinges of pain and pleasure, stuck pulsing through the aching restriction of a cockring. His arms were bound behind his back with Elle’s cuffs, his hands brushing against your front - but he wasn’t allowed to touch you, no. If he was caught copping a feel, then he knew that he punishment would be even more severe. His ass was already red and sore with the spanking that you had given him earlier. 

“Oh god, please.” He whined out again, not even sure what he was begging for - for this to stop, or for it to continue without the cockring so that he could finally cum. 

You were getting a great deal of joy out of this, a wicked grin forming on your lips that Elle loved to see. 

You loved using Spencer’s body like a puppet; having him acting like a ragdoll to your whims while you kept your hands tight on his hips, digging your nails into his flesh in a way that you knew would leave satisfying bruises there the next day. You loved nothing more than driving him forward, forcing him to fuck into Elle like he was nothing more than a toy - a human dildo to be used for her pleasure. 

With both of you standing at the end of the bed, Elle’s ass right on the edge of it, her legs spread wide to accommodate both of you; you were standing right up behind Spencer, not letting him go anywhere, not letting him move an inch to escape the overwhelming tight pleasure of her cunt. The feeling edged him so fiercely, that perfect vice gripping around his cock, with the cockring making him unable to cum. You gripped him tight and forced him to fuck forward into her, despite his whining protests and begging to have the cockring off so that he could cum. 

This was a punishment, after all. The punishment being - fucking her for longer than he could take it with no release. Feeling her hot, wet pussy around him and not being able to cum. 

“He’s not trying.” Elle argued in reply to your comment, sarcastic venom in her voice. “That’s why he’s so pathetic.” 

She reached up and tweaked one of his nipples hard, delivering a bit of pain to put emphasis on her words, and Spencer let out another whine. (Only further proving her point with how utterly pathetic he sounded.) 

“Please,” He said, begging once again. “Fuck, please, I promise I’ll be good, I-” 

“Shut up.” Elle barked at him. “Go harder.” She said, glancing around his body to look at you. 

She didn’t give this order for her own benefit. She wouldn’t enjoy the sex with any more heightened pleasure if his cock was fucking into her harder. She said this because if you forced his hips into her harder, then he would have to feel it more. It would be more punishing for him. 

“Yes, M’am.” You easily agreed, biting back a gleefully evil grin. 

You shoved his hips forward harder, in faster increments, pulling him back quickly and shoving him forward again. The results were beautiful - his thighs quaked and he let out a pained sound as he limply fell to the movements, like a ragdoll. Letting himself be fucking into Elle, rather than willingly fucking her himself. 

His cock was so painfully hard that this left little needles pricking up and down his shaft; sharp shocks of pleasure and pain flowing through him as the wetness coated him warmly and became tangled in his pubes - the most beautiful, mind-numbing torture he could have ever conceptualized. He needed a break - he wanted it to stop, but at the same time, he knew that he would cry and beg for more if his cock was pulled out of that warmth, a place his body knew as a home now. A place that he couldn’t leave. 

This was where he belonged. 

Stuck between two perfect people, ruling over him, taunting him. 

“Please!” He gasped out again. “Please!” 

You pushed Spencer forward again, hard, and his legs began to quake as Elle’s pussy squeezed him. 

“I can’t!” He shouted, his voice throaty and hollow, half choked in spit. “Fuck, I can’t!” 

“Yes, you can.” You said, shoving him forward again, loving the sound of his hips smacking against Elle’s inner thighs. “You’re just being a little bitch about it.” 

You leaned in, putting your body flush against his, trapping his arms tighter against his back. You used the motion of your own hips in tandem now, using your body weight to shove him back and forth - causing increasingly wet, sloppy sounds from between him and Elle as she became more turned on by his desperate, humiliated state. 

Elle let out a laugh. “It’s like we trained him for nothing.” 

“Maybe you trained him to bitch out.” You sighed. “That’s not my fault.” 

Elle glared at you - but before she could reply, you shoved Spencer forward again particularly hard, using him like a human dildo inside of her to shut her up. She swallowed down the gasp in her throat, though, biting her lip. She was trying her hardest not to let you know that you had gotten to her in any meaningful way. 

Spencer let out a throaty whine. 

“Please, let me cum.” He begged, his voice wavering and pathetic. “Please! I’ll do anything, just let me cum!” 

You grinned at Elle over his shoulder, pausing your movements and stilling Spencer’s hips for a moment. He let out a sob - even this was torturous pain, reminding him how his orgasm was like a sickness in his stomach. It was a pure, swollen ache in his balls - right there, but unable to come to fruition. He needed to cum so badly. 

“What do you think, E?” You asked, using your playful nickname for her. “Should we let this pathetic little boy finally cum?” 

You were feeling slightly bad for Spencer, so you reached around his body - thinking of something that might sway her. You rubbed your thumb over her clit, putting your powers of persuasion to the test. 

“I kinda wanna get him out of the way so I can have my turn.” You added on, pressing down on her clit harder. 

For the first time that night, Elle let out an uncontrolled, deep moan. 

“Fuck.” She sighed. 

You quickly let up the touch, knowing that teasing her would be more powerful. 

“I know what you’re doing.” She told you, throwing you a nasty, knowing smile. It was a warning. “Pull him out.” 

You were filled with a terrible excitement. Either she would punish you for trying to scam her, or she would give you exactly what you wanted. She was a lot more lenient with you than she was with Spencer. 

You backed off and put your hands on Spencer’s hips, easing him out of Elle’s pussy. 

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, Miss, thank you-” Spencer repeated the words like a sacred mantra under his breath, and Elle quickly cut him off. 

“Shut up.” She barked at him again. “You won’t be thanking me in a minute.” 

This shouldn’t have turned you on as much as it did. 

Spencer’s cock popped out of Elle’s cunt with a filthy sound, and he only made it back far enough to graze the swollen bright red head against her entrance before she sat up on her elbows and moved to grab the cockring around the base. You watched with your gaze around his shoulder in interest, your hands drifting around his waist to hold him gently from behind. You thought that she would take it off and maybe finish him with her hand to get him out of the way as you had suggested. 

But instead, she took off the cockring (which caused a wounded sound to emanate from his chest) and left his bright red, sore looking cock dangling between his thighs as a few thick strands of precum leaked from the head, dripping freely onto the bed between her thighs. 

“You feel bad for him.” Elle told you, a dark look in her eyes. “So get to work.” 

You wanted to laugh. That certainly wouldn’t be a punishment for you. 

With your arm already slung around his waist from behind, you reached down and grabbed his sensitive, achingly hard cock - at the touch, he nearly bucked out of your grip. He cried out in perfect agony and his whole body shook. 

Perhaps the punishment would be trying to hold him still. 

Elle giggled at this and you used your free hand to dig your fingers into his hip, giving his cock a firm squeeze in an attempt to make him still. 

“Stay still.” You ground out, and he quickly complied. 

You pumped your hand up and down his cock, the precum and Elle’s wetness being more than enough lube. You did have to enjoy how perfect he felt in your hand - his cock was a thing of beauty, so long and thin and so red when he was overstimulated like this. 

Your hand was fast and tight, determined to make him cum as quickly and efficiently as possible. And it took less than thirty seconds of greedy pumping to make it happen. Spencer beginning to wail like a maniac, his jaw dropped open wide and his eyes squeezed shut, his thighs shaking. 

All the while, Elle’s eyes were flickering between the sight of your hand as a blur on Spencer’s red cock and Spencer’s orgasmic face, a devilish grin growing on her. Spencer was cumming hard, his cock spurting out generous, thick ropes of cum that landed on the bed, on Elle’s strong inner thighs, and along her bare cunt and her pelvis, where she was perfectly positioned underneath him with her legs open. 

You pumped Spencer right through it, even reaching down to fondle his balls - milking him fully of a very large load that was a signature of just how long it had been since Elle had last let him cum. That thick cum seemingly going everywhere - and when he was shaking and about ready to collapse, you finally took your hand off his cock. 

“Alright, you two.” Elle announced. “Now get down on your knees and clean up your fucking mess.” 

Of course. That was the catch. That was your punishment. You had to share with Spencer. 

You wanted to complain about it, but you decided better of it. You didn’t need a vibrating plug in your ass for the better part of tomorrow because you decided to talk back. 

Spencer, still panting and dizzy, was quick to fall to his knees in front of Elle and start lapping at her pussy. He had to balance himself well with his hands still cuffed behind his back, but as usual, he was an overeager puppy. He shoved his tongue deep inside of her to taste her, rather than intentionally trying to clean up his mess. You let out a growl of annoyance and knelt down yourself, trying to shoulder him out of the way, poking your head in tightly beside his between her legs. 

“Share, asshole.” You growled, moving to grab his hair to pull him out of the way. 

“If you two don’t behave, then there’s gonna be some cages tomorrow. No keys for a week.” Elle warned in a dark voice, clicking her tongue in disappointment. 

“You better not fuck this up for me.” Spencer whispered to you, seemingly trying to talk too quietly for Elle to hear. 

“Hey-” Elle tried again, warning. 

You then decided to do something very much in the name of sharing and behaving. (You needed to act boldly, quickly - before Spencer got you both in trouble.) 

You licked a long stripe up Elle’s thigh, gathering up a healthy amount of Spencer’s cum onto your tongue before you grabbed him by the back of his hair. You yanked hard, pulling him to your mouth, shoving your tongue right into his mouth for her to see - mixing the essence of her that was already on his tongue with his cum. You purposefully made the kiss sloppy, pure tongues and very little contact of lips, like porn made for straight men. You even moaned loudly, putting on a show just for her benefit. 

Spencer easily fell for it - moaning loudly when you pulled harder on his hair, and easily following your lead as his submissive instincts kicked in. 

“That’s much better.” Elle sighed in delight.

...

A/N: Please keep in mind, this is a standalone oneshot. This fic is not intended to be continued, so please do not ask for a second part or a continuation. If you like this dynamic and you would like to see it repeated in a different fic (maybe with different kinks/different circumstances), you can definitely let me know by sending me an ask - but for now, if you're going to comment on this fic, please comment about the body of work that has been written.

[buttercupjosh]

Take My Hand

(Gif credit to @neekshq)

word count: 992

genres: established relationship, fluff, self-insert

A/N: This story is based off of the song "Older” by 5 Seconds of Summer, and I make references to this songs throughout the story. I highly recommend listening to (or reading the lyrics to) this song before reading my story. The title comes from the song, Take My Hand by 5 Seconds of Summer. This story is very short but sweet. (Note: I did write a Nico fic back in 2023, which you should check out. It’s not intended to be a sequel to that story but it can be if you choose to interpret it as one). It’s not set at a specific moment in time (It’s taking place in a fictional future but you could also say that it’s set during this ongoing season or even a past season). It’s written with a female reader in mind because I’m a female of color but the reader doesn’t specifically have to be a POC or a woman and there’s little dialogue. As always, I’m open to any and all feedback, comments or questions; just put them in my inbox or dm me. Thank you so much in advance for reading, I appreciate it😌

(P.S. I have other stories (linked here) that I have written for other players as well if you want to check those out

“Just me, just you”- Older by 5 Seconds of Summer (feat. Sierra Deaton)

You couldn’t sleep. The sound of the ocean waves were normally peaceful, but not tonight. You were enjoying your time in Hawaii; you got to swim in the Pacific Ocean, go hiking, and eat lots of Dole Whip and Hawaiian lunch plates all with your incredible fiancé, Nico, by your side. Despite all of the fun, in the back of your mind, you were so stressed out about wedding planning. There was so much to do and decide; time was moving so fast. To add to your stress, you also had a big financial work presentation to do once you returned from your trip. Nico could sense your restlessness as you tossed and turned in his arms. You didn’t intend to disturb his rest after a long day of exploring Maui, and felt bad about doing so. Nico awoke and you talked with him about the things that were currently stressing you out. He began to rub small circles into your hand as you spoke in an attempt to release the tension you were holding in. You had always adored that Nico would always listen to what you had to say, no matter what it was. Nico wished that he could make this stress go away for you; he jokingly suggested that he would just go into your office and give that presentation for you. You smiled at Nico before he subsequently suggested that you should just elope while in Hawaii. Your fiancé was right; you did have to legally get married at some point before the summer ceremony, so why not check that off your list in a very beautiful place? It was a crazy thing to consider, especially since you and Nico had discussed simply getting married at the courthouse back in New Jersey before going to Europe during the off-season. Nico reminded you that you would still be able to have your wedding ceremony with your loved ones at the Chateau in the French Countryside that was rented for the big day. In the early morning hours, the two of you filled out the marriage license application and were able to pick the document up from the court clerk later that same day; Nico agreed to handle getting an officiant for your ceremony.

After getting your marriage license, you took an Uber over to the mall and found the perfect white outfit. You returned to the hotel to get ready to meet your soon-to-be husband with a sense of both nervousness and joy in your heart. On the car ride over to the beach, you requested that the driver play the classic song Chapel of Love by the Dixie Cups, and quickly began typing out your wedding vows for the ceremony.

You met with Nico and the officiant at a lava rock-studded cliff that had the most stunning view of Ironwood Beach below. As usual, Nico looked so handsome in his white polo shirt and dress pants. To start the ceremony, the officiant blew into a conch shell and chanted a traditional song, both part of the Hawaiian wedding traditions. You and Nico exchanged colorful leis and sweetly kissed each other’s cheeks. During the ceremony, the two of you shared short but sweet vows.

“From the moment I met you, everything in my life has changed. Early in our relationship, I started dreaming of diamond rings and knew that you were the one I wanted to marry. I don’t want to continue to get older without you by my side. Y/N, you bring so much love and light into my life daily. If given the opportunity to choose someone again, I would always choose you. I will never let you go and I will always love you forever”, Nico read from a handwritten note while sprinkling kind words in Swiss-German to you.

“Nico, ever since we started dating, I began to believe that our love is tailor-made, uniquely beautiful, and created just for us. For years, I thought a love like this was out of reach for me, but here it is in the form of you. You mean the world to me and I want to spend as many days and nights with you for the rest of our lives. I want to hold your hand forever. I am fully devoted to the wonderful man in front of me and I promise to love you forever. I also promise that my actual wedding vows at our summer ceremony will be much better”, you read from your phone notes.

Nico giggled and also promised that his vows would be better too, but you both knew that the vows you both presented were more than enough. Although the officiant was observing the ceremony, it felt like you and Nico were the only ones there. Before ending the ceremony, the officiant traditionally sprinkled water over your rings. Nico surprised you with a gorgeous wedding band that had the word, agape, engraved inside to accompany your engagement ring and a ring for himself matching with the same engraving.

“By the power vested in me from the state of Hawaii, I now pronounce you married”, the officiant announced and you and Nico sealed your marriage vows with a lovely kiss.

Unbeknownst to you, a photographer suddenly appeared and she continued to capture photos of this special moment. Those photos would later be used as your formal engagement photos and to inform your loved ones that you had eloped. She had also captured some video footage of your elopement ceremony from a distance. Hand-in-hand, you and Nico ran towards the sandy beach, ready to start this new chapter as spouses.

After splitting shaved ice from a nearby food truck and watching the sunset on the beach together, you and Nico ventured off to share a delectable dinner at Merrimans to celebrate the new relationship accomplishment. The most spectacular day ended with you peacefully drifting off to sleep in the arms of your amazing husband.

[ladykailitha]

Baby's First Christmas

Hello and welcome to my Christmas AUvent Calendar! Every day from now until the 24th I will be posting a ficlet that is 500-1500 from an AU I've done over the years.

All stories will be marked with the tag #12 aus of christmas so you can follow along as I will only be tagging my permanent list for this (it would get too confusing otherwise).

The next one on our list is: omegaverse! You can read the first story here and its sequel here. All links will be to the first chapter, but the chapter itself will have links to the rest of the story.

Steve is fretting about making Winnie's first Christmas special and oh boy does he deliver!

First fic here.

~

Steve was fussing. Eddie knew his spouse and mate was fussing but after the third time Steve snapped at him, Eddie raised the white flag of surrender and nicely backed off.

Steve was bound and determined to make sure little Winnie had the best first Christmas possible. Never mind the wee lad was only six months old and wouldn’t remember it or the next two for that matter.

But Steve kept saying it wasn’t what he could remember, it was that Steve made it magical for him. Which was why Eddie had wisely decided to stay out of it. He knew Steve was only doing this because his own Christmases as a kid were white and sterile and boring. Something he did not want for Winnie.

Plus Eddie was not going to turn down the chance to spoil his babies. So he let Steve do whatever he wanted and Eddie tailed behind with the credit card. Yes, yes. Technically Steve’s card could max out his and still have a lot left over, but it was the principle of it all and after talking to Steve about how he wanted to spoil his family, Steve relented too.

Right now in the center of their entryway was a giant fifteen foot Noble fir tree decorated in red and white with presents already piled up under the tree.

Everyone was going to be there, even Chrissy who had requested the week off and got it. She was Starcourt’s brightest jewel now, especially after Roxie took her under their wing.

And Steve couldn’t be happier for her.

It was nearly time for their guests to arrive and Eddie had to admit, Steve knew how to throw a great party.

There was food laid out and drinks of all kinds. Eggnog both alcoholic and not, same with the cider. Hot chocolate and of course a wide range of Christmas cocktails all doled out by people Steve had hired.

Steve laughed as Winnie was handed off to another of the people who loved him. First it was to Grandpa Wayne, then to Robin. When it time for a diaper change, Jeff grabbed the little one and had him in a new diaper within minutes.

Eddie came over with a couple of mugs of eggnog and handed Steve one, then slid his newly freed hand around his waist. “You did good, Stevie. There isn’t a person out there that isn’t having a good time. Your son especially.”

Steve blushed. “Thanks, babe. I love seeing everyone so happy. I never thought I’d have a family like this. I thought it was going to be me and Robin against the world for the rest of our lives. But looking at our family I can’t believe how lucky I am.”

The night wore on and everyone left, leaving the small and happy family to rest from a great night.

The next morning after opening all the presents and fantastic breakfast made by Steve, they all curled up on the sofa watching the lit tree.

“What’s up, sweetheart?” Eddie cooed once Winnie had dropped off for his mid-morning nap. “You barely touched your breakfast.”

“I have another Christmas present for you,” Steve murmured and pulled out a white tube from his robe pocket.

Eddie cocked his head to the side. “What more could you give me, Stevie?”

Steve handed him the tube and Eddie took it gingerly. He looked down and saw he was holding a pregnancy test. A pregnancy test with two pink lines.

His eyes went wide. “Is this for real? I’m not dreaming?”

Steve giggled and then pinched his sided, causing Eddie to squirm. “It’s real, you dork. Winnie’s going to have a brother or sister next year.”

Eddie scooped Steve up and hauled him up on his lap. “You beautiful creature, you! Another baby!”

“I kind suspected I might be last week when my heat was so mild,” Steve murmured into Eddie’s neck, “but it really hit home when I threw up the eggnog from last night this morning.”

“I’m sorry I slept through that,” Eddie said, “but I love the surprise. Best Christmas present ever.”

Steve could only agree. The lights glimmered and softly music played somewhere in the distance.

“If it’s a girl can we name her Elizabeth Robin?” he asked softly, his own eyes starting to droop.

“Yeah, baby,” Eddie said with a fond smile. “We can name her after my mom and your best friend. I think Wayne would love that too.”

“Mmmk,” Steve mumbled as he too fell asleep.

Eddie looked down at his mate and just boundless joy erupted from him. Steve had absolutely succeeded in giving them all the best Christmas anyone could ask for.

~

Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Day 9 Day 10 Day 11 Day 12

Tag list: CLOSED

1- @itsall-taken @redfreckledwolf @zerokrox-blog @sadisticaltarts @dolphincliffs

2- @gregre369 ​@a-little-unsteddie @chaosgremlinmunson @cryptid-system @kultiras

3- @maya-custodios-dionach @goodolefashionedloverboi @val-from-lawrence @carlyv @wonderland-girl143-blog

4- @bookbinderbitch @bookworm0690 @forgottenkanji @dreamercec @blondie1006

5- @yikes-a-bee @awkwardgravity1 @genderless-spoon @fearieshadow @thesecondfate

6- @dragonmama76 @ellietheasexylibrarian @thedragonsaunt @useless-nb-bisexual @disrespectedgoatman

7- @counting-dollars-counting-stars @tinyplanet95 @ravenfrog @swimmingbirdrunningrock @lingeringmirth

8- @gutterflower77 @a-lovely-craziness @just-a-tiny-void @w1ll0wtr33 @beelze-the-bubkiss

[popculturebuffet]

Supermay II: Superman Vs the Klan of the Firey Cross!

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to Supermay II: The Sequel You Knew Was Coming. Not brought to you by Kellog's Pep. That's P-E-P PEP!

This review couldn't of come at a better time honestly: With Facisim on the rise, blatant xenophobia and tranpshobia used by the right as an easy tool, and people's bigotry being cashed in for big dollars, there's no better time to talk about both times superman smashed the KIan. First up is the original, a 16 part serial on superman's Radio Show titled Klan of the Firey Cross.

The Adventures of Superman debuted only a year and some change after Superman's debut in Action Comics #1. It was clear the man of steel was a massive hit and getting a big radio program only incresed it. It's also a key foundational piece in the superman mythos: It's where he learned to fly (solidfied by the Flescher shorts a year after), first encountered Kryptonite and met his pal JImmy Oleson, all of which was quickly ported back into the comics, also showing adaptations influcing comics is as old as the medium itself.

This 16 part marvel came about thanks to Stetson Kennedy, someone I had never heard of before doing the research but now want to know everything about. Stetson Kennedy, no relation. Stetson was a civil rights advocate, his views shaped at a young age when his maid and second mother Flo was beaten and raped by the klan. It showed him the lie of the Klan being good cristian men. Stetson was a hero, collecting folklore, diving into racisim and going against racist policies like Poll Taxes and White Primaries, both the kind of thing you just.. know are bad on instinct.

His biggest target ended up being the Klan. Since like yours truly he had a bad back, Kennedy couldn't participate in World War II and being a damn good man decided to still try and do some good. So with the help of the anti-defimation league, crated a second identity and inflitrated every white suprmacist group he could, settling in to primarily target the KKK, from joining the campaign of KKK friendly goverenor, facist and asshole I don't have time to cover here Eugene Talmidge (Check out the podcast behind the bastards excellent 4 parter on the guy).

Kennedy knew just how to attack them: He first planned to explore their weird, hilaroiusly dumb rituals, from calling the days of the week " "Dark, Deadly, Dismal, Doleful, Desolate, Dreadful, and Desperate" to using K words for everything, he recognzied a tool that modern activists have against facists and cult leaders today:

Now you have to be careful with this, not undermine or ignore the fact the people your mocking are a threat, we've made that mistake with Trump and Musk, but don't let them have the prestige they crave. Don't let them be taken completely seriously. Make it VERY clear that they are clowns. It's a strategy that almost worked in the election. If you take away your foe's aura of strength, it makes it that much easier to nail them for the shit their doing.

He also knew to hit them where it hurt. See something I didn't realize till watching behind the bastards despite "Superman Smashes the Klan" pointing it out.. was that the Klan was a pyramid scheme. You recurited whoever you could to your hate group to try and rise up a rank. The people who revvived the Klan for the 40's were more concerned with money than racial purity, like certain folks who shall remain nameless but your certainly thinking their names as hard as you can today. So he kept campanging with the georgia goveneor till he eventually removed their non profit status.

He wasn't done either: He worked hard to publish a book Southren Exposure, that threw back the curtain on the structural racisim in the south, with a damming chapter on he Klan, kept on them with the help of radio and even shoed up to huac in his own klan robes to try and get their attention. It didn't work because the far right comitte trying to use anti-communism as an excuse to get rid of anyone they didn't like was never going to give a shit about the Klan, but he gets points for pissing them off, and the Klan who put a bounty on his head.

So he decided to do one better: He was aware the Klan had ties to the goverment and law enforcment so while he had gone through proper channels and such, he knew that wouldn't be enough and could get snuffed. So once again ahead of his time he realized pop culture was a valuable tool in the fight against facists and racists.

So he wrote a letter to the producers of Adventures of Superman asking them to do a story on the Klan, or what ended up as a very thinly veiled stand in. They agreed because hey, they needed new bad guys why not and thus the Klan of the Firey Kross was born, a MASSIVE hit for the show and the Klan's attempt to boycott kellogs, the shows sponsor, was a non starter: Kellogg's was making WAY more money off the show than it would loose from any boycott. So the Klan throughly lost on this one. There was apparently a rumor about codes said on the show being real.. but this feels like an urban legend as having listened to all 16 parts, complete with ads... the Klan nor anyone smashing them never uses code.

So with that it's time to tackle this 16 part behemoth itself, around 3 hours without adds.. which is literal as Kev watched a cut that cut out all the ads and despite me mentioning the ads, didn't bring up this was a thing that existed. I reacted... measured and maturely...

So let's take a look as superman takes on bigots in a shockingly chilling and timeless tale.

Klan of the Firey cross begins from a chillingly mundane place: Young Tommy Lee beans fellow player Chuck Riggs with a baseball after Chuck won't stop crowding the plate, sore that Tommy's replaced him as star pitcher. It's the kind of thing we're used to. Sure superman is there.. but as Clark Kent, while Jimmy Oleson isn't turning into a turtle or anything he's just managing the Unity House Baseball team (Some kind of rec center judging from Smashes the Klan which is all I have to go on as this serial never explains what Unity House actually is. )

It's what starts the story.. and what makes it work so well. What starts this is just a simple scuffle between kids and one kid refusing to apologize and getting thrown off the team as a result. In a better world this would at worst lead to Chuck's uncle being a dick about it. Instead.. Matt Riggs is a monster. Matt Riggs is an abuser, with Chuck afraid of him and afraid to even get into the incident and it later being clear his sister in law, Chuck's mom, only puts up with him because it's Matt's house and being incensed when Chuck starts talking back to her too, refusing to take it from her own son. Chuck thankfully only does because he's worried, we'll get to that, but it shows just how bad Matt is before we learn just what a monster he is: Matt Riggs is a terrifying presence from the jump. While I do think this serial's adaptation does a good job making Matt blend in better, I still like this matt: the kind of evil that even superman can't easily deal with. An abusive monster.. who happens to be a racist.

The second Matt hears the story, the wheels turn and he coaches Chuck on the incident, wanting him to say it was deliberate when even Chuck realizes it was an accident. Matt dosen't see his nephew.. but a solider for a righteous cause.. a spark to light the flame and burn down those he sees as lesser. He takes a horrified Chuck with him into the hills.. and shows him a Klan meeting. The meeting.. is geninely creepy, matt's oration being genuinely unerving as it should be, his gravely voice echoing as he calls for action. Tommy Lee.. is chinese. His father Dr. Lee recently got a job with the health department. And Matt will not rest till they either leave town.. or leave this mortal coil.

The transition really helps... we know where Matt's taking the poor boy but Chuck has no idea and is utterly horrified to find out what his uncle is. ... but has no idea what to do.

Chuck however.. has already struck. The next day Tommy shows up.. to quit, being terrified after the Klan lit a cross on his lawn. Jimmy convinces him to still pitch but asks Clark to look into it. Why would the Klan do this.. but the answer is simple: Because they exist. The baseball incident was simply an excuse, the kind of thing bigots used all the time back then and now as an excuse. "They pushed me" "They pushed my kid" "they etc etc" when it was the other party that started it. But it dosen't matter. They have what they want: a thin excuse to beat up someone they deem unacceptable or kill them. Whatever gets rid of them. The writers of the show may of been lookign for a new villian.. but they understood HOW these racists worked. They wanted the lees gone already.. Matt just wanted a thin justification to avoid arrest. While the police aren't demonized here, with the police helping best they can, it's clear Stetson Kennedy's words got to them and the subtext I get is that Matt knows he can't be caught easily unless he's caught red handed. And even then eh dosen't care. The cause goes on, the fire burns and the all white future he wants gets closer.

The Klan fail on their attempts on Tommy and Jimmy so they try another way: have another kid plausably injure tommy during the game. Thankfully superman is there and just zooms in and out.. which leads to a thankfully hilarious part of this dark tale: Radio Superman is AWFUL at keeping his identity a secret. Just the worst. Jimmy rightfully brings up botht he blur and Clark vanishing and Clark is just like "Well jimmy you see OH LOOK GAME'S STARTING FOCUS ON THAT FORGET ALL ABOUT SUPERMAN WHO SAID SUPERMAN NOT ME GAME GAME GAME" Radio Clark is five SECONDS from accidently blurting out "I'M SUPERMAN" at any time. It's the best

Matt decides to do the hate crime himself , preparing to tar and feather tommy, a truly horrifying sequence as the klan show up, grab tommy and beat up his dad for trying to stop them. This leads to a tense sequence as tommy escapes...but you feel every second of it desperate for these bigots to not harm this poor child. You feel tommys fear , hearing every crunch. Tommy is caught but falls in a river.

The tension ratchets up as Tommy's only hope is chuck. The boy heard....but doesn't want to call Jimmy as he'd identify him. So he tries calling Clark. This sequence couldve been tedious, tommy trying to reach Clark, reaching the night desk then getting shoed away from the booth. All normal stuff ...but the life of a child being on the line all makes it agonizing.

So Tommy is saved, goes to the hosptial and is.. not seen again the rest of the serial. While Clan of the Firey Cross still gets a lot.. it's still a 40's radio serial. It does not give one Iota of a shit about his trauma having the Klan attack his home, kidnap him and nearly kill him. He's done what he was supposed to in the story.

Tommy is what tv tropes dubs "A Special Aseop Victim" He's there to be introduced, trotted out and usually die. Tommy does not die, but he still gets threated by racists, nearly blown up (In a scene that was apparently missing from my copy or I missed as the racists apparently try a bike bomb), kidnapped, nearly tarred and feathered , nearly drowns and breaks an arm all to show Racisim is what bad without actually ever once asking what he thinks about all this. While some cases of this CAN be better, Tommy's whole purpose is to suffer to show Racisim is bad so that the main characters can solve it for them. He's there as a prop. It's not suprising for the times but in an episode that's so progressive in so many way, that's speaking out about hate showing how it works showing just how TERRIFYING being on the receiving end of one of these hate mobs is.... it's disappointing. Tommy can and should of been the protaganist or deutragonist with Chuck if they had to. But he's not. He's shoved into a closet somewhere forgotten until he's mentioned in the finale and even then STILL dosen't get to show up.

So with Tommy injured Clark decides to look into this like any journalist: Have Perry put out a letter telling the boy who anonomusly contacted him and was clearly afraid for his life to come forward for all the children everywhere.

JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY!

The intentions are good.. but he's betting a lot on Chuck both getting to him unscathed and that the kid dosen't have a relative in his house in the klan or in his neighborhood or somewhere near bye where they can stalk and beat him should he choose to confess. Which is exactly what Matt threatens a little later in the story after easily figuring out Chuck was the informant as he was the only non-klan member to see their secret hq. I get superman had some trouble with empathy back in those days

But even for him this is a lot to just ignore for the greater good. Chuck should come forward.. but Superman should do more to look for this kid than paint a giant target on the child's back.

Perry White has a better idea; A bounty: A thousand bucks a piece for the identity of any Klansman. Matt naturally takes this about as well and rationally as you'd expect and has the clan burn a cross on Perry's lawn, a truly chilling cliffhanger.

So the main trio go to look for Poco. You are not ready for Poco. I was not ready for poco. Poco.. is a fat alien who lives as Perry White's cook who came to earth and just.. stayed and speaks entirely in rhyme.

Yeah even in a mythos that would later include a flying dog, a 5th dimensional imp, a clone that was one half him one half his arch enemy, 80 types of kryptonite, a bunch of swell kids from the future, Jimmy oleson being married to a gorilla with superman officiating the wedding in his most racist costume, superman as pope, supergirl's horse having a crush on her, Lex Luthor posing as his own Australian but compitent son after cloning himself, Pa Kent throwing himself into a tornado to prove a point about how his son shouldn't help people, a half batman half superman super fighting robot, Lex Luthor stealing 40 cakes and that's terrible, and a whole ass musical... that this might be the silliest thing i've ever heard. Not just "let's give superman's boss an alien chef/butler/best friend to do shenanigans" but deciding to crowbar that into THIS story, AND get beaten up by the racists. You can use alien's a a metaphor for what immigrnats go through, Superman is an excellent example of this as is the Martian Manhunter and as this story's adaptation proves, you can absolutely do it in the same story with a real minority group if you do it with grace and tact. Having perry white's comedy relief sidekick who I assume looks exactly like this

Is the opposite of that. Unsuprisingly Gene Leun Yang did not adapt this beloved and treasured character.

Incensed that his beloved comic relief was ruffled, Perry vows to increase the bounty to 5000, which is a hundred thousand and some change in modern dollarbucks to keep perspective.

Matt decides to go back to his old tried and true.. he's gonna tar and feather em. Clark ends up being the only one who gives a fuck, with everyone else assuming the klan would NEVER attack a high powered businessman to make a point that their just all talk cowards. This... is a message I love as Lois and the Police are both HORRIBLY wrong. What they fail to realize, and what Clark picks up on.. .is the power of belief. Many bigots either participate because it's easy or because of money, something we'll see more of soon.. but Matt TRULY believes in the Klan. He's a white nationalist through and through and will "Cleanse" this nation if it costs him everything. IT's the kind of fire modern right wingers play with: They talked about how the 2020 election was rigged, how it was fake, how they should overturn it... and then tried to wash their hands when it lead to a violent insurrection they definitely helped cause. It keeps happening because humans just can't belivie someone would REALLY pull the trigger... and someone doing so keeps getting people killed again and again and again in mass shooting after mass shooting. I"m just.. so tired of it. Yes they would. They absolutely would and i'm as frustrated as clark hearing so many people assume violence won't happen.

But happen it does as Jimmy and Perry are kidnapped to be tarred and feathered. To Perry's credit he tells the klan to go fuck themselves and refuses to take back the bounty or stop and demands they pull of the mask and face him like a man. They don't because the bulk of them are cowards and Matt, while a monster, is not stupid. Jimmy.. is scared out of his mind but also refuses to back down, only admitting his fear in private when the Klan need to go get more tar.

Something that's fantastic about this arc... is how powerless superman is. He CAN solve things in seconds: when the klan actually fight him at any point it's a one sided fight and the catharsis of having a pure hearted, good man with the powers of a god easily swatting facist racist monsters left and right is orgasmic. But for a lot of the story Superman can't swoop in... for realistic reasons. He combs the county but they have Perry and Jimmy hidden, he has x-ray vision but he dosen't have the time to cover every inch of metropolis and it's surroundings. He has no idea where the Klan meets, where to find them, and thus they have the upper hand.

It's Clark Kent who can do something. He goes with his original plan: publicly appeal to the boy who sent it to get him to confess with a morning edition of the planet, something Lois agrees to before she peaces out of the story. It still feels a bit wrong to publicly shame a child who fears for his life, but I get it: Perry and Jimmy have been missing for days, he has no other options and the two soon find themselves in deadly danger: after they try escaping, they only manage to pull matt's hood off.... so he can't let the live to the shock of his fellow Klansmen. I do wish the show didn't treat this as an easy thing for superman to do, that risking this child's life was something he struggled with.. but superman was a bit more detached in those days.

Yeah I went easy on him in the Krypto review and that.. was a mistake. SECONDS after saying she wouldn't be alone... he's like "No that'd make MY life harder, to the orphanage you go!" So I completely buy he'd risk a child's life because "it's the right thing" versus modern clark who'd ONLY do it if there was NO other way and exaust every other option first. "I mean I can't ask every boy in town". Your superman. Yes you can. Clark just.. refuses to use superman to rally the children to find this boy or something less public that puts Chuck in direct danger.

And it does. Chuck sweats it out iwth guilt but his mom enoruages him to come forward.. well the boy but given how his mom is not being at all subtle with her speech and how she reacts with fear with Matt suddenly comes home, I get the implication she knows.. but knows she can't say it and knows matt would come after them if she just packed up and left.

That fear is sadly justified. The stories biggest strength is once again in it's realism: Matt Riggs is just as much a realistic portrayal of a zealous bigot as it is a potrayal of a domestic abuser whose family is trapped with him due to economic reasons. Keep in mind this was 1946, 18 years before the first women's shelter would open in the US. The Riggs have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide and Matt is on the surface a well respected member of the health department. No one suspects him of being what he is so there really is no escape. The way everyone acts around matt gives me the vibes of someone who at the very least is verbally abusive and likely has hit both his sister in law and nephew. The fact matt is blunt, saying "if the klan knew they sure would be watching that boy and sure would tar and feather him" the fact he has no qualms about harming his nephew or scarring the boy into not doing the right thing... it says a lot. Matt is chilling in that he exists: there are many matt riggs out there and many people who WANT to escape their bigoted families but can't. Imagine if Chuck was LBGTQ+... would Matt even bother with veild threats? Would Chuck still be alive if he were queer? It's only the heat it'd bring that keeps Chuck alive.. and only for so long.

So Chuck understandably is trapped. The right thing to do is tell someone.. but he can't and we never find out if Matt's warning is real or not. Given how the rest of the Clan is shown to be not nearly as loyal to the cause, he could be bluffing.. but to a child that dosen't matter.

Thankfully Clark does figure out that Chuck has probably been silenced.. and where he likely came from, as they mentioned the unity house team meaning the boy is likely one of the players. He explains this to.. some random copy boy that sounds like a stork. Why this couldn't of been tommy and saved us an episode or been lois I don't know. He has the copyboy interview players, tapping his pen if their voice dosen't match. It's a sequence that goes on a bit long, but works due to the tension: We know Jimmy and Perry are not far from the grave, Chuck is trapped and every second counts. We know who their looking for .. and that he's not there and that every second they don't know he's not there is a second they don't have to waste gone.

Thankfully Mugs, the assitant coach and Jimmy's friend who was in the story earlier but not releviant till now, points out Chuck is missing.. and Clark easily pieces the rest together and heads to chuck's house.

Chuck clams up at first... not willing to say anything and just wanting to be left alone. Clark eventually gets the truth out of him.. and the promise that Superman can protect him. Why once again Clark didn't just go as superman in the first place I have no clue. He's beaten up domestic abusers before.

But it works and him showing up gives Chuck the confidence to unmask his uncle and Superman takes the boy flying to find matt's secret lair. The Klan has departed from there by now, and is digging Jimmy and Perry's graves. Thankfully superman finds them and smashes the Klan before they can do anything, capturing many. He's understandably disturbed to find that Matt.. has escaped. While they've captured the Klan and gotten many red handed with Jimmy and Perry's testimony to put them away, Matt persists.

Chuck is put somewhere safe the next day as Jimmy prepares for the game and once again the police ignore the obvioust hreat of Matt returning. Surely after all this he woudln't keep going.. forgetting he just attempted murder on a big newspaper editor and his child sidekick and beat his comic relief into the floor.

Matt is not having a great time though and in a great sequence he meets with the head of the firey cross.. who berates matt for making things so public. It's a sequence so well done that it's the only one taken almost word for word and hardly altered at all for smashes the klan.

That last part is part of Smashes the Klan's own additoins to it but everything else is beat for beat and it's a great scene as it shows both just how much Matt believes in it... and exposes the Klan for what it and many hate groups like it are: a pyramid scheme. This is something I didn't know reading Smashes the Klan the first time but the Klan at the time REALLY was a racist pyramid scheme, set up more to get money than actually do hate crimes. For those at top Hate is just good money. It's a song as old as time and still true today: As Trump puts people in camps and flails desperately to become a dictator on day whatever we're up to, he still hocks nfts, gold, merch and other scams. Former Infowars owner and paranoid asscrack Alex Jones hocks god knows how much overpriced bullshit. The Daily Wire tried getting into the movie business. While some of the far right are ride or dies for this bullshit.. a lot just want money, power and whatever they can scam. The bulk just want to ride the outrage train to the bank and don't care how many people get hurt, how many lives are ruined.. as long as they get paid.

Naturally grand scorpion man plans to murder Matt as a loose end, but Matt instead murders the fucker because that's what happens when you tell the unhinged monster you helped create the cause is bullshit: they won't believe you, they won't back down and they WILL NOT stop.

Riggs finds no allies though: He goes from Klansman to Klansman and they all reject him, throw him out. The serial makes sure it's clear it's not morals, it's not a realization of what they've done: it's fear. Their being hunted as long as they keep their mouths shut and do nothing, their fine. The cause was good racist fun when it was just bullying a child, kidnapping people, bullying the powerful.. but now there's actual consequences they run. While the Matt Riggs of the world are the most dangerous their thankfully not the most common and the police were PARTIALLY right: the klan did mostly back down out of fear... what they got wrong was assuming EVERYONE is a coward who once their not behind a hood or a keyboard, will back the fuck down. The mask of anonminity was all they had a separation that let them do whatever they wanted. And now it's over their all afraid.

Matt however.. has lost it. Whatever thin scrap of sanity he had is gone. He wants to kill jimmy, perry.. and chuck. His own nephew is expendable and he believes if they all die no one can rat on him. He's spiraled down down and his voice actor does a fantastic job portraying his madness. His plan is nonsensical, has no chance of working but it must work. The cause MUST survive.

So he goes to his house and we get easily the most chilling cliffhanger of the serial: him sneaking into Chuck's bedroom murder in his eyes. Fortunately, Chuck isn't here, he's at Jimmys. Unfortuantely his mom is and while she refuses to tell, he figures it out and her protesting too much gives it away and he ties her up.

He ropes another klansman whose less willing but trapped with this monster to go to the house but seeing i'ts too guarded gets a better idea: they'll all be at the game tomorrow, with Chuck back on the team, so he'll just snipe all three in quick succession. Surely no one will catch him. Especially not superman.

So the game comes, the finals with chuck replacing tommy which feels wrong and the officer once again refusing to believe matt would do anything

So Matt gets to the roof of the stadium and plans to snipe them. It's chilling in how prescident this is.. a man with a rifle killing people en masse for darring to belive diffrent than him. Or trying to anyway. It's tense as hell.. but thankfully Matt is so obsessed with getting three perfect shots off at once so he can quickly flee he gives time.. and Clark eventually notices the glint of his rifle and in an awesome scene catches each speeding bullet as their fired before confronting riggs.

The day is saved, the championship continues.. and superman has smashed the Klan. Their may be more like them but he'll face them. We end on everyone getting golden baseballs .. but chuck has jimmy refuse his as he wants to give it to tommy. I do like that Chuck feels guilt, that he realizes he screwed up and shouldn't be here.. but that the story forgives him. He fucked up.. but he's more than risked himself to make up for it and perry already had an extra made just in case. They all go to see tommy and our story ends.

POCO DIED BACK ON THE WAY TO HIS HOME PLANET

Superman and the Klan of the Firey Cross is excellent. It's a bit padded in places and if you listen to the ads your bound for a bad timne. There are about 80 of them for Kellogs pep, all the same add copy. It's like 30 youtube sponsorship bits in a row it's a lot. I'm glad that breakfast cereal burning in hell where it belongs.

While I've had my issues, the objectification of tommy lee, the padding to fill out episode and the random alien sidekick. ... i'ts still a fine tale about standing up to bigotry, that really gets WHY bigots exist how they operate and the diffrent kinds from the grifters to those who will drop it the second it's a danger to their livelyhood to the true frothing mad believers. It holds up shockingly well and the goofy bits don't detract from the narrative. It's a strong, chilling tale of hate and standing up against it. It completely deserved the adaptation it got, a comic that takes all the good that was here.. and gives it depth, heart , and character arcs galore and next week we'll see it all as Superman smashes the klan. For this week expect the death of superman tommorow and thanks for reading. If you liked this article follow for more and subscribe to my substack or patreon to help me keep the lights ona nd get exclusvie reviews from substack. Next month starts an exclusive retropsective of the oblongs for paid subscribers and continues the critic retrospective for free ones. Don't miss it

[fictionadventurer]

Quick Sunrise on the Reaping Reactions:

It's hilarious that the very first thing Suzanne Collins does in her newest bestselling novel is to teach her teenage audience how to run an illegal still.

This is the funniest Hunger Games book. Yes, I know how it ends. Doesn't change the fact that this is full of hilarious lines and situations.

This book is drawn in such broad strokes and bold colors. The Capitol excesses, the characters, the cruelty--it's very in-your-face, sometimes over-the-top. And I mean that in a good way. It feels Dickensian. It feels like Flannery O'Connor's "the world is deaf so you have to shout."

This book reminded me that Collins is very good with characters. So many vivid personalities.

I especially love that she features a girl who has weaponized the power of being a gigantic brat.

The four tributes thing was cool in that it gave a sense of teamliness right away, and continued with the other tributes.

I know it's a dark situation, but I can't stop laughing over "That thing is not sleeping in my room."

I could have done without the shower scenes. Yes, teenage boys act like that. I don't need to see it.

There were so many cameos and origin stories, but I think most of them worked okay. Like, it's convenient that the Victors are people we know, but since this is where Haymitch meets them it makes sense that they show up.

(We did not need an explanation of where "sweetheart" came from as a nickname).

I liked seeing all the cameos from the previous generation. I think I'm a bit in love with Katniss' father.

Snow was surprisingly effective as well. It seems weird that he's doling out his backstory so freely here when he's so cryptic in the main trilogy, but I get that this is a sequel to his story, so I can go with it.

I should not be laughing at the tragic end of the romance, but I kind of am. It's so over-the-top, and such an easily avoidable situation. And not in a tragic-flaw kind of way, but in a "you should have enough common sense to follow basic hygiene requirements" way.

I do love the way "The Raven" was used as a refrain/backing track to the last chapter. (Though it might have been more affecting if the poem weren't so singsong).

A much, much better prequel than The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I even liked it better than Catching Fire (largely because Haymitch knows what's going on.)

One thing I will say in Catching Fire's favor: Katniss may have been in the dark about the actual plot, but at least we were spared scenes of a morally-gray mentor discussing philosophy with her.

(Though those scenes worked much better in this book than in the other prequel. Plutarch makes a much better morally-gray mentor.)

I've found that this book makes Catching Fire work much better. Especially the scenes between Haymitch and Mrs. Everdeen (which didn't really register on previous reads.) Everything lines up really well with the details we got there.

[talestoenlighten]

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[senualothbrok]

Progress

Gif by @dolceaspidenera

Summary: When you start your studies at Blackstaff Academy, you expect a battle with your demons. But the last thing you expect is to fall in love.

A slow burn, Professor Dekarios x OC journey through mental illness and recovery.

Word count: 10.6k

Trigger warnings: Mental illness, eating disorder, childhood trauma. Please practise self-care.

Disclaimers: Non-18+, angst (with a happy ending), slow burn, hurt/comfort, mental illness and recovery.

AO3 link

The sequel to this fic is Promise

This is progress, you think.

It is your first day at Blackstaff Academy, and you are standing in the entrance hall. Your body rattles with each shallow breath. Your robe hangs off you, limp and heavy. But you have made it. You are here.

You step into the bustling corridor. You can tell immediately that you are older than most of the other apprentices. Many of them look like fresh faced teenagers, giggling and buoyant. Despite the gruelling nights of failed spells and tear-stained scrolls, you cannot make up for all the time you have lost. Your mother never fails to remind you of this, and you will never forget it. It will be at Blackstaff as it has always been. You will remain apart, a stranger. Alone.

Yet, something inside you flickers. And as you step inside the lecture hall, you know: this is progress.

No one seems to notice as you find a seat at the back of the room. You are well-practised, flitting through overlooked corners. It is second nature, to loiter in the shadows while others claim the light. It brings you comfort to remain hidden.

It is the first time you lay eyes on him. Gale Dekarios, Professor of Illusory Magic. The pride of Blackstaff. Once Chosen of Mystra, who defied her order for sacrifice. Former archwizard, who fought alongside the hero of Baldur’s Gate. The stories of him reached even you in your confinement. From the legends, you expect a giant, towering with glory, bubbling with power and mastery. And though he is undeniably handsome, you are surprised at how otherwise unremarkable he seems.

He is robed in a muted violet, his arms clasped behind his back. He stoops ever so slightly, making him look shorter than his average height. Grey threads through his dark and tousled hair. Faint wrinkles frame his brown eyes. And when he speaks, he does not narrow spiteful eyes which demand obedience. He does not dole out proverbs that drip in arrogance. Instead, his words are the passionate dance of an artist in love with his creation. His gestures are lithe and tender, his smiles warm and earnest. Poetry peppers his wit.

He is not like any of the wizards your mother has brought home. He is not what you thought he would be.

Two flaxen-haired girls near you whisper and blush. You see the effect that he has on your peers, and part of you longs to feel something so light, so trivial. You cannot remember the last time you felt such a stirring. And later that day, you notice their envious glares when you are told that Professor Dekarios will also be your personal tutor. You learn that he will be responsible for your well-being during your time at Blackstaff.

You instantly feel a pang of pity for him.

But you brush it away. After all, you are making progress.

-----

It is bitterly cold on the day of your first meeting. He invites you into his office, which envelopes you in its warmth. You are backfooted by the way he beams as you take the seat he offers you, by how enthusiastically he passes you a tray of homemade cookies. You politely decline as always, despite  your anxiety that it will offend him. You mother’s warnings and curses still ring in your head every time you choose not to eat or drink as others do. So you are grateful when he shows no hint of annoyance or judgment.

But why would he? He does not know you. To him, you are a normal, healthy apprentice, full of hope and promise. He has no reason to suspect otherwise.

He falls into his chair with a sigh. You look at him across his cluttered desk. It takes a moment to remember that this man is the renowned Gale of Waterdeep. Seeing him up close, you are surprised by his age. It is not that you were expecting an ancient like Elminster of Shadowdale. But you had thought a man of his accomplishments would be much older than you. Instead, there could scarcely be a decade between you.

Then again, the years have not been kind to you. Without your glamour, you could probably be mistaken for his peer.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”

Away from the crowd and the lecture hall, his voice is softer, his tone lower. You do not think you have ever seen such a genuine smile from a wizard. It is not difficult for you to return it.

“The pleasure is all mine, Professor. I’m honoured.”

He waves his hand – whether from irritation or awkwardness, you cannot tell.

“There’s no need for all that. The honour is in fact mine.” His gaze is wide and bright. “I fought to have you on my personal tutor list. I was blown away by your application. It’s not every day that an applicant can coherently and wittily refer to Halaster, Elminster, and Calliope in one breath. Nor was I expecting such an eloquent treatise on the beauty of the Weave and the primacy of creativity and imagination in illusory magic.”

You feel unmoored. Your application had been a risk. In a fit of desperate rebellion, you had done away with everything that your mother had insisted on including. All those puffed up platitudes about power, potential, pride – none of that had been yours. In a mad bid for freedom, you had felt a frenzy to show Blackstaff who you truly were, for better or worse.  

Your mother was, predictably, furious when she found out. You could not avoid her ire, even when you shut yourself up in your room. You had almost wished you were back at the House of Healing, where she could not burst into you whenever she wanted, for whatever she wanted.

When you were accepted into Blackstaff, your mother spared no time in impressing on you that it was the strings she pulled that had granted you entrance. Your application was paltry, and it was only by her efforts that you had succeeded. You did wonder at this, given her tenuous connections as a distinctly mediocre wizard, her brittle and fading charms. But she persisted, as always, in taking credit for the things that you toiled for. It wore you down, after all these years.

Now, you turn his words over, searching for the hidden blade in them. You wait for the pulling of the rug, the customary insult. But they do not come.

“Your demonstration, too. Truly remarkable.”

You had not realised that he was there, when you conjured a canopy of stars above the examiners. The illusion had collapsed moments too soon. It was a failure. You seethed and ripped at yourself for weeks. You were expecting rejection, and then the tide of punishment that inevitably followed. But instead, you are here, powerless in the face of his praise.

He sees your confusion as you struggle for a response. But he misunderstands its nature.

“I was hiding at the back of the room,” he explains. “It isn’t generally conducive to applicants’ nerves, to have me there with the other examiners.”

He grimaces, as if his fame and reputation pain him.

“I digress. My point is, I think you have an artist’s hand and a poet’s mind, fundamentals in excelling at illusion. And I, for one, am extremely excited to see you progress.”

Sincerity is not unfamiliar to you. Brutally honest lashings about your deficiencies are the backbone of your existence. But the kindness and sincerity in his eyes are so alien that you must battle to regain your centre. He does not move his eyes from you.

“Thank you,” you manage. “Truly, Professor. I’ll do everything I can to make sure I’m worthy of your high regard.”

He tilts his head. He pauses, as if weighing his words carefully.

“Your mother has sent word to me,” he begins. “She’s been at pains to assure me that your time out of education doesn’t in any way detract from your aptitude. That you’re deeply penitent about your failures.”

You almost flinch. You did not realise your mother had spoken to him. You are suddenly seized by panic. What has she told him? What does he know about your past? Does he know about the Darkness?

“She says you’re eager to rid yourself of all shortcomings, and will do anything to fulfil your as yet wasted potential. She says that’s why you’re at Blackstaff.”

A frown creases his brow. His voice hardens.

“In return, I’ve been at pains to assure her that your aptitude is not in question. Your continued resilience in the face of considerable adversity only adds to your exceptional nature.”

He holds your gaze with a candour that suspends your breaths. For an instant, you feel seen, and it terrifies you.

“I’ve been extremely forthright with her. Any more references to penitence and past failures will be promptly rebuffed.”

His brown eyes are firm and gentle at the same time. You have no words, no actions that can capture the singularity of what he has done. You wonder how many times he has accomplished something that no one else has, then spoken of it as though it were nothing. How many times he has extended himself to help a stranger for whom no one else would have cared.

You want to thank him, but you do not know how.

“I’m sure my mother didn’t like that,” you say instead.

He chuckles. “I think the esteemed Professor Dekarios has gone down a notch or two in her estimations. But alas, I’ll survive.”

You share a moment of laughter. It lights a candle deep inside you.

“If I can do it, you definitely can.”

-----

You are accustomed to casting a glamour over yourself when you are in public places. You had started doing it at your mother’s insistence, and continued as you could not bear her shame. Eventually, the tentacles of that shame closed so completely over your heart that you could scarcely look in the mirror without it. It felt impossible to see yourself and keep breathing.

But at Blackstaff, you are surrounded by adept wizards, the cream of the crop. They will be instantly attuned to your glamour. They will see through to your core. It seems a futile waste of energies you could be better applying to your studies, which are your only focus now. And your mother is not around to berate you for failing to maintain the illusion. So you drop the disguise.

It is so hard, but then so easy. You let your dishevelled waves fall freely over your unpainted face. You rub at your kohl-free eyes with reckless abandon. You pick at your chapped, bare lips. You try not to poke and prod at the flesh hidden under your loose robes.

Freedom flutters in your heart, and you cherish it, though you know it is fleeting.

You finish your breakfasts, most of your lunches. You do not skip your dinners. You keep your mirrors uncovered. You only glance, never look. You try and keep your mind occupied when you are not in classes or studying. You promise yourself that one day, if it is in your power, you will pay back the debt that your mother lords over you. She has paid for your studies at Blackstaff, but you are determined to repay her with interest.

So you take a job at as assistant at Serpentil Books and Folios. Despite the jaw-dropping price of the treasures within, your income is meagre. The owner, Mr Serpentil, is gruff and cantankerous. It takes some convincing for him to take you on, but he seems reassured by your credentials as an apprentice at Blackstaff. The shop is dusty and dim, and you must squeeze through overflowing shelves and tight corners to sort through the books, scrolls, maps and other curios that you have never seen before. You can bury yourself in them when there are no customers. Amidst the centuries of knowledge, you are so hidden as to be nothing. It is perfect.

One rainy weekend, you are sorting through tomes at the back of the shop when you hear a voice you recognise. You peek out around the corner of the bookshelf. Your eyes meet a green feline gaze and a shudder of grey wings flecked with gold. A windswept and familiar face follows, eyebrows raised.

You realise that this is the first time he has seen you unglamoured. You wait for confusion, discomfort, displeasure. But there is only joy.

“Aurora,” he exclaims. “What a pleasant surprise!”

“Professor.” You step out, patting the dust off your robe. The thick swirls assault your nose and you sneeze.

“Bless you,” comes a matronly drawl.

You struggle to hide your excitement. This must be Tara the tressym, Professor Dekarios’ companion. Just the other day, you had overheard the second-year apprentices gossiping about her in the corridor. She had been summoned by the Professor when he was but a child. Once, she swiped a snoozing student so hard that she had a scar on her chin for weeks.

He follows your gaze, smiling softly.

“Aurora, may I introduce you to the inimitable, the one and only, Tara. My oldest friend and most faithful companion. I’m sure you’ll have heard some rumours about her. Rest assured that not all of them are true.”

Tara smirks.

Since you were a child, you have dreamed of meeting a tressym. You have never dared, nor had the requisite skill, to summon one on your own. But you are so overjoyed to meet one today that you worry whether your enthusiasm is maybe a little disturbing. You temper yourself.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Tara.”

“And Tara, this is Aurora. As her name suggests, she’s a shining light amongst my current cohort of apprentices.”

Praise, so casually given. Devoid of malice, free of conditions. You shift awkwardly.  Tara looks you up and down with large, appraising eyes. They are not without warmth.

“It’s lovely to meet you, dear. Do you work in this fine establishment?”

You nod. “I do, when I’m not studying.”

“That’s quite the commitment,” he remarks. “Quite the schedule you’ve set for yourself.”

You detect a hint of concern in his voice. You deflect.

“I just love knowledge so much, I can’t get enough of it.”

He clasps his hands together. “A woman after my own heart.”

As you speak, Tara’s gaze flickers back and forth. You can almost hear the wheels of her mind turning. If it were not an unforgivable intrusion to read her thoughts, you would do so.

“But can I help you with something?” you ask. “Is there something I can help you find?”

“Ah, yes!”

Tara sighs, long and loud, as he retrieves a leaf of parchment from the folds of his robe. He holds it out to you. You squint at a list of twelve, maybe fifteen, esoteric book titles. You marvel silently at the range of his interests – from first edition magical tomes and philosophical treatises to ancient recipe books. Your heart stirs to see a number of sonnet anthologies that you recognise.

“This is quite the list, Professor. Your collection must be a sight to behold.”

He seems to glow with your admiration. “I appreciate that you may not have all of these, but whatever you can find, I’ll take.”

“And any discount you could offer would also be appreciated,” Tara adds.

“Tara!” He spins towards her.

Tara twitches. “Mr Dekarios, man cannot live on books alone. Some of these works are ridiculously overpriced, and this establishment is not known for being kind to one’s purse. I will not allow you to go without bread for a book again, despite your nattering.”

He huffs, embarrassment flushing on his face. He flashes you an apologetic smile. Laughter ripples through you. It comes so naturally. You wonder why that is.

“I’ll do the best I can, Tara. I think there are a few buttons I can press with Mr Serpentil.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Tara chirps.

You turn and make your way to the poetry section. Behind you, you can hear them bickering in hushed tones.

“I have a good feeling about that one,” Tara declares.

You busy yourself with the list, but the flame within you burns a little brighter than before.

-----

You rarely spend your meetings with him discussing your studies. With the exception of the initial divination classes, you have no issues. And between lectures, assignments, demonstrations and your work at the bookshop, you barely have time for the Darkness to take hold. For the first time in years, you sleep deeply and without interruptions.

You have never had a friend. There was never a time or a place. Rarely was there anyone around you who was not a doctor or a nurse, hired help or your mother. Occasionally, there might be a suitor of hers, an ex-husband, a victim. And even at the odd times that you found yourself among peers, you could never let your guard down. You could never show anyone who you were underneath the glamour, the silent shroud. The threat was always too great.

So you do not know how friendship feels, but you wonder whether it feels something like this.

You speak to him without fear. He does not mock or dismiss you. Each time you speak, he is not simply waiting for you to finish. He does not store your words up like arrows to throw back at you later. He listens, and he remembers what you say, even when you forget. You laugh, sometimes with him, other times at him. You do not need to force the smiles which bloom on your face when he is near.

It does not hurt when he gives you guidance and instruction, even when it is firm and comprehensive. There is no punishment shackled to it. The gifts of his wisdom and knowledge come lightly, without the burden of conditions and demands. There is no disgust in his eyes when you tell him where you fall short and what you lack. When he speaks of his passions and you speak of yours, there is a river that flows between you. You can float in it, and you do not drown.

But he is your teacher, not your friend. It is his job to speak to you, to feign patience with your mediocre company. He is paid to take an interest in your pitiful life, so he can mould it into something worthy. You remind yourself of this each time your meetings go on longer than your allotted hour. When you start to share books and discuss them over unscheduled chats in his office. When he appears at the shop increasingly often without a list, browsing the shelves with recommendations and tenuously related anecdotes. When he stays until closing time, and walks back to Blackstaff with you, always matching his pace to yours. You remind yourself again and again.

He Is your professor, and you are his student. He does not know you, not truly. And he is a mystery to you. You are not equals, and never will be. And perhaps it is better this way. No one who saw the full measure of you would have the stomach to remain. Your life is a testament to this fact.

Yet there are times when you wonder. You had been certain that what you had with him was not exceptional. That it must be the same for the other apprentices.

“What’s he like as a personal tutor?”

Sitting in the lecture hall, an auburn-haired apprentice is gossiping with a freckled boy in the row in front of you.

“Professor Dekarios?” The boy wrinkles his nose. “He’s a bore. All he wants to do is talk at length about the syllabus, and all the amazing things I can learn if I focus on the ample opportunities at this illustrious institution. Snore.”

The girl snickers. “Not half as interesting and smooth as he looks, then.” She tuts. “I was expecting some spice and drama. The man lay with a goddess and bested a Netherbrain, and all that he wants to talk about is the curriculum? Disappointing.”

There is a gulf that soon forms between the man you see and the man the other apprentices talk about. And you cannot help but notice how his gaze darts towards yours across the lecture hall with a shared, secret knowledge. Each time a student shows up late, and he thanks them profusely for taking precious time out of their schedule to join him. Each time he begs a pupil to share the pearls of wisdom they are chattering about to their neighbour instead of following the thread of his lecture. You have to stifle a snort each time he delivers his most severe warning of all.

“The orb within me could level this entire city if it detonates. If I hear another one of you say they ‘just haven’t had time’ to practice this week’s spells, I have a very real concern about Waterdeep’s safety.”

Professor Dekarios would no more put an innocent in danger than your mother would embrace you in a genuine outpouring of affection. It is absurd, but the other apprentices fall silent each time he makes this threat. It is a source of endless amusement for you, and you can tell from the glint in his eye that it is for him too.

-----

You are sitting cross-legged, taking stock of all the tomes on the lower bookshelves. Tara is licking at her paw languidly beside you. Behind you, he is surveying the section on histories, making the occasional remark to himself. Mr Serpentil has gone for a meeting, so you can chat freely without repercussions.

“What did you think of Felaar Tanil?” he asks abruptly.

His invitation is a welcome interruption. You have been scribbling long and arduous author names in the half-darkness for hours. You turn to face him.

“I liked his work. Very heroic, very rousing. I think I prefer love poetry, though.”

“You’re a romantic.” He titters.

“I suppose.” You consider a moment, twirling your quill. “It’s hard for me to imagine something that I’ve never experienced. So it fascinates me. Without poetry, love would be a complete and utter mystery to me.”

He arches an eyebrow. “You’ve never been in love?”

A few months ago, you would have been unnerved by such a question. The intimacy of it. The directness. But with him, it does not feel like an intrusion, only a natural topic of conversation. You shake your head.

“Well, certainly not the kind of love that the poets speak of.”

What you know of love is confined to a boy who had insisted you take on the likeness of a different girl every time you touched, and a man who had baulked in the morning when your glamour slipped. A pointless and painful endeavour. Poetry is more than sufficient.

“I have no frame of reference…” You run the feathers of the quill over your cheek. “But I always imagined true love to be something like channelling the Weave. That sense of being fully seen, completely known, held in your lover’s embrace. Souls touching, flowing into each other as one.”

He is staring at you with an intensity that gives you pause.

“What? Have I said something foolish?”

To your relief, he laughs. His soft gaze drifts over your face.

“No, Aurora. I just never thought I would hear that sentiment from the lips of another.” He scratches at his chin. “That, too, is what I once thought love was.”

Tara hums. She has been so quiet you thought she had fallen asleep.

“Mr Dekarios knows full well that there’s a difference between the love of a mortal and the love of a goddess, Weave or no.” Her face is stern, but her voice is tender. “To be loved for who you are and not the magic you command becomes a tad more complicated when the Weave is involved.”

He is frowning now, lost in thought. You are not sure you understand what has passed between them, but it is not your place to ask. You turn back to the parchment and tomes.

“Aurora,” Tara asks after a while. “When do you finish at Blackstaff?”

A strange change of subject, but you answer nonetheless.

“In a year and a half. Assuming I pass my exams.”

Tara grizzles.

“Is there any chance you could complete your studies sooner?”

“Tara!” His voice is sharp, flustered.

Tara ignores him.

“Only that Mr Dekarios is quite-”

He is a flurry at the corner of your vision.  His hand darts out to drag Tara away into a corner. There is a clamber of claws and wings, a cacophony of meows and muffled hissing. When they return, he is pink-cheeked, Tara smug but silent. You want to know what she would have said, but it is as though the conversation never happened.

You do not see Tara at the bookshop again.

-----

One afternoon, you stop by his office to return a book on Githyanki psionics. The door is ajar, and you nudge it open. He is sitting at his desk with his face buried in his hands, breathing heavily.

“Professor? Are you well?”

He looks up, and you are struck by the exhaustion in his sunken features. When his eyes meet yours, his face lifts and brightens. You tell yourself it is a trick of the light.

“All the better for your visit.” He runs his hands through his hair. “Come in, please. Close the door behind you, if you would.”

You enter with uncertain steps. You place the book on his desk. He nods in acknowledgment.

“Have a seat, Aurora.”

You lower yourself into your usual seat opposite him. You are troubled by the shadows on his brow. For the first time, you have a desire to be closer.

“Is something the matter, Professor?”

His smile is so weary. “Nothing new. Which makes it all the more taxing.”

You know that truth better than most. And perhaps you are not quite friends, but you reach out to him anyway. You feel a cord tethering you to him that you find hard to break.

“A problem shared is a problem halved,” you offer.

His eyes glisten like the earth after rain as he regards you.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve shared my troubles with anyone but Tara.” 

His words are heavy with longing and loss. You realise, all of a sudden, that he is lonely. You recognise the devastating weight of that emptiness. It is the air you breathe.

You do not need to tell him. You do not know how, but you can tell he senses it.

“It wears you down,” he starts. “In the morning, the pupils demand to know how you could have betrayed Mystra. Not once, but twice. Mad for power, they say, fanatical with ambition. Then in the afternoon, they question your weakness. You could have seized the power and become a god. You gave all of that up for this? What a waste. What a disappointment.”

He has never told you directly about his dealings with Mystra or the defeat of the Absolute. But you know enough from the legends, the rumours, Volo’s second-rate autobiography. You have heard enough to imagine the burden of being Mystra’s Chosen, the trappings of a compulsion to seek ever greater heights. You know the anguish of being discarded like a used lover, and being mocked for giving up an ambition that would destroy you.

“It’s never enough.”

Those three broken words. Your anthem.

You do not stop to think about whether it is improper. All you can think of is the quivering of his voice as he bares his soul to you. It is a mirror from which you do not look away. You can endure your own suffering. But for someone like him to carry the same load – you cannot bear it.

In your confinement, what you had most wanted was a hand to hold. That is the yearning you remember now, as you take hold of his hand across the desk.

“You aren’t like them.”

His fingers tremble under yours. You cannot read the expression on his face.

“They’ll never understand. They’ll never understand what was done to you, what you lost. Your goodness. Your kindness. The depth of your sacrifice. They’re not capable of it.”

Your words are as jumbled as your thoughts, but they flow out of you like the tide breaking against the shore.

“You’re not like the other wizards. You’re…singular. There’s no one like you. There never will be.”

His gaze is a whirlpool. You are aware of his slender fingers interlacing with yours. You do not know what to do with the burning in your chest, the heat that travels up your neck. You jerk your hand back, your breath catching. Your legs straighten of their own accord. They carry you to the door without warning.

“Aurora…”

He is standing. There is panic in his voice, frozen in his face.

You look away. You cannot process what has just happened. You have no frame of reference for it.

“I’ll see you later, Professor,” you murmur as you leave.

-----

“Have you never felt the lure of power?” he asks.

You are reflecting together on Elminster’s musings about Karsus’ folly. He is in a sombre mood today, plagued by something that you cannot see. Over steepled fingers, he stares into a mass of scrolls on his desk.

Since your last encounter, he has avoided looking you in the eye. There is a strain between you now, like a coiled band tightening. You cannot understand what has happened. You cannot lose what you have. So you force yourself not to think of it. You pretend it never was.

“Not truly,” you admit.

He seems disappointed by your answer. You do not wish to mislead him. It is not quite the whole truth. You decide you can show him this part of yourself now. After what he has told you, it is safe.

“My father left us when I was a child. He took my brother with him. They were necromancers. I think my father dabbled in divination too. My mother was furious when they left. Not because she loved them, or cared about our family, but because she missed out. All of that power at their fingertips. All the things they could do. Instead she was left with me, an ugly duckling stuck in her own dreams, with no assets except a penchant for illusion. Imagine her disappointment. What a burden to bear.”

A burst of laughter overtakes you. It is perversely funny, to think about your life this way.

“Still, I wouldn’t change it. I’ve had enough power-obsessed tyrants for a lifetime. The story’s always the same. People never change. Wizards certainly don’t. I never wanted to be like them, and I never will. Even if I spend the rest of my life conjuring fickle, beautiful illusions that no one sees. Even if I’m a failure, a husk of wasted potential. Even if I’m never enough.”

You do not tell him about the one thing you would change. You would be rid of the Darkness and its clutches. You would be free. A vain hope.

“Aurora.”

He is watching you now. There is no more fear and tautness. He does not turn away when you return his gaze. It holds you, deep and full. There is a heat in it which stokes the flame inside you. You cannot ignore it. You do not know how you will ever ignore it again.

“Would you believe me if I told you you’re extraordinary, just the way you are?”

You would not. But a fire is blazing through you. It aches to say yes to him. For him.

You smile. “I can try, Professor.”

“Please.” He takes a shaky breath. “Call me Gale.”

-----

It begins as it always does. Missed breakfasts. Half-eaten dinners. Coverings on mirrors, and sleepless nights. You fight the shadows as they come. You resist the urge to restore your glamour. You take your meals in the dining hall. And for a while, you think you are making progress.

There are times now when you sit with him in silence. You look at each other across his desk, or between dusty bookshelves, and the feeling that swells inside you has no equal. It is sharp and wet and red, and when you look away, it is like a rending. An absence.

But you are terrified. You are distressed by the thoughts that take you unawares. The bristles on his jawline. The dark dip of his cupid’s bow. The stray strands of brown hair that fall over his eyes as they float over your mouth. The tingling of his fingers intertwined with yours. You flee, but the thoughts haunt you, bringing others in their trail.

When you were with him before, you did not dwell on the hoarse timbre of your voice. You did not worry over the wrongness that permeates every part of your body. You were not paralysed by the things you could not prove to him. You did not stand before him cowed by the ways in which you fall short.

It had been different with him. But now, everything has changed.

The shadows loom over you, and you struggle to outpace them. You arrive late to his class for the second time. You try to be discreet, lurking at the back of the lecture hall, but he catches your eye regardless. He does not make his usual terse announcement disguised as a jest, and you do not know why you warrant special treatment.

When the class is over, she approaches him with a question. You recognise her from your divination class. She is immaculate, outspoken, often called on for demonstrations. A natural talent. Her golden hair is set in elaborate braids which accentuate her high cheekbones. She bites her lip, widening her sapphire eyes as she listens to him. He is grinning, laughing, and you watch her throw back her shoulders in a confident display of the masterpiece that is her supple form.

You leave the lecture hall.

You cannot rise from bed on the morning of your next meeting. It is the first day at Blackstaff that you take no meals. You stare and stare into the mirror, pressing your fingernails into your soft cheeks, the bulge of your arms, your misshapen thighs. You lie on the floor, seeking out the points of your bones through your rubbery skin, crying when you cannot feel them.

But you persist. You must. You rise the next day. You go through the motions of your routine. You cannot miss another class or another meeting with him. But you miss breakfast. You are trapped between the mirror and the door, harrowed by your own reflection. You are desperate, tormented. You must leave the room. But you cannot as you are. You are a travesty.

So you do what needs to be done. You cast your glamour.

------

“Aurora?”

You stare at him.

“Are you alright?”

You are walking back to Blackstaff from the bookshop. He is holding the crook of your arm. As you come to yourself, you feel the firm grasp of his fingers. You register concern in his eyes.

“Do you need to sit down?”

You are not sure. There is a throb in your head as the spots in your vision recede. You struggle to hold onto the images before you.

“What happened?”

He frowns. “We were walking along and you stumbled.”

It has begun, you think.

“Did I faint?”

“You looked like you were about to.”

You nod. You move your arm away from his touch. He steps back reluctantly.

“I’m alright, Professor.”

You cannot bring yourself to call him Gale. It would be an admission. A miscalculation. Something lurches in his gaze. You cannot identify it.

“You don’t look well. And recently, you haven’t been yourself.”

You shake your head. You muster your most reassuring tone.

“I’m just tired. There’s no need to worry.”

“Aurora.”

There is earnestness in his every look, kindness in his every word. It hurts you. You look down at your feet.

“Over the past weeks, I’ve noticed something wrong. I’ve not wanted to raise it-”

The walls of dread spring up within you. Your reply is well-practised.

“I apologise for the slippage in my attendance, but I assure you-”

“I’m not talking about that.”

There is an urgency in his voice. Something in the twist of his features tells you that he knows. You must end this conversation now, before it is too late. But his next question winds you.

“Why have you recast your glamour?”

You cannot speak. You knew he would have noticed, but you had not expected him to mention it. Shame and terror chokes you.

He has drawn closer. He searches your face.

“Did you think you needed to? Do you believe you need to hide yourself?”

You turn away. “Please, Professor-”  

“You don’t need it.”

You need him to stop.

“Please-”

“You’re beautiful, just the way you are.”

Something wrenches inside you. You cannot bear the tenderness in his gaze, the hidden things which he cannot see. You cannot manage a polite goodbye. You retreat.

-----

You cannot face him after this. You struggle to face anyone. It is a small mercy that the semester draws to a close.

You can feel the Darkness in your pores now. The shadows wrap around you like a cloak. It is only a matter of time before you are no more.

You have been at Blackstaff for a year. A year of progress. A year without a word from your mother. A year of not-quite-friendship with a man who has no equal. Soon, she will descend on you with her lashes of scorn and I-told-you-so’s. Soon, you will be back where you started, and it will be like none of this ever happened. Like his footsteps never graced the ruins of your life. You are mourning already.

When the end of year ball comes, your confinement has all but begun. You leave your room only for your shifts at the bookshop. It takes almost all of your energy to maintain your glamour and a semblance of composure. You yearn for more than mouthfuls of fruit and water, more than disturbed fits of sleep. But that yearning is fading as the Darkness sinks its tendrils into you.

You wind through the thrumming crowds celebrating in the courtyard. The apprentices are draped in their finery, with drinks in hand and delirious grins. It is early evening and the ball will soon be underway. You see the girl from your divination class, blonde curls bouncing, arrayed in a form-fitting gown of emerald splendour. You are a stooped scarecrow amidst a rainbow of frills, lace, velvet, and silk. You hide your face as you pick up the pace, already breathless.

Mr Serpentil had frowned when you offered to work on the night of the legendary Blackstaff ball. But when you assured him there would be no tomfoolery, he did not push further. Annual inventory and stock take is not a task for the light hearted, and he would rather be at the Yawning Portal than coated in dust and cobwebs.

It is a struggle to climb ladders and catalogue tomes, scrolls and maps, with only a sputtering candle to light your way. A few times, you almost fall, or you must wait, doubled over, for a dizzy spell to pass. But you cannot bear the sights and sounds of frolicking apprentices basking in their beauty, enjoying a freedom that you would be deluded to dream of. So you flee from Blackstaff to the darkness of the bookshop, where all that surrounds you is the scent of book dust and a solitude that has no significance.

You are alone, and soon, you will be no more.

You are vaguely aware of the passing of time; two hours, and then three. You ward off the false promise of sleep. Then there is a tapping. You ignore it at first. It is a figment of your longing, a mirage formed by your hope. But it becomes a rattling, then a knocking. You step out from behind the bookshelves. Your breath hitches when you open the door.

He stands before you. His earth-brown eyes burn with a warmth that spreads from your core to the tips of your fingers. In the dimness, he glows in purple velvet, his hair falling around his face like vines. His chest heaves, his lips part. His fingers ripple like waves.

“Professor,” you say. It is almost a whisper.

For a while, you simply stare at each other. You let yourself linger on every line, every dip and curve. You breathe in the scent of sandalwood and scrolls that swirls around him whenever he is near. You must learn it all now, before you lose it all later.

“Why…” You struggle for words. “The ball…”

He is shaking ever so slightly.

“I needed to see you.”

He opens his mouth, closes it. His hands flutter. He looks away and back at you. He starts and stops. You have never seen him in such a state. There is pain, desperation. Need. You are afraid.

He sees it immediately.

“I’m sorry.” He shakes his head, backing away. “This was… foolish. Inappropriate. I should never have…” He grimaces. “This was a mistake, Aurora. I’m sorry. I’ll leave you in peace.”

He turns. His gait is jolting, laboured. He is receding from you into the night.

Maybe it is because you want to feel something that is not hunger and fear. Or maybe there is still an ember inside you that will not be snuffed out. A flame that he ignited, that you do not wish to die.

“Gale,” you call out.

His name rolls off your tongue like it is a secret part of yourself. Your hand reaches for his.

“Don’t go.”

When he turns back to face you, the cloud has lifted from his features. A smile has broken on his lips. You have never seen anything so beautiful before.

-----

“It’s very dark in here.”

With a flick of his wrist, he conjures four floating orbs that hover around you. You are embarrassed that you have not done this, but it would be beyond your limited energies. You do not want to admit this to him.

You gesture towards a small nook you have carved out amongst a clutter of books and scrolls.

“This is a very poor alternative to the Blackstaff ball.”

He chuckles. “Not to me. I’d rather be sandwiched between these bookshelves than between drunk apprentices bragging about cantrips you can use in the bedroom.”

You raise your eyebrows. “The conversation I have to offer is much less scintillating, I’m afraid.”

Your fingers are still prickling where the two of you have touched. An ache grows within you is from the closeness of him. You struggle to break his gaze when his eyes meet yours.

“I beg to differ,” he rasps.

You clear a space on the floor for him. He lowers himself beside you with a groan, rubbing at his knees and his back. It is so strange to see the famed Professor Dekarios in a dust-streaked doublet, cramped and cross legged on a bookshop floor. Yet to have him here beside you tonight feels as familiar as a memory.

“I think I might need to do more stretches if we’re to keep meeting like this.”

You laugh. It radiates in his eyes.

There are many things that lie unspoken between you. But tonight, they are like a canopy of stars. They are there, and you need not cling to them, nor hide from their reach. You lean your head back against a bookshelf. You want to remember this moment, when you have nothing left.

“I haven’t been very good company lately.”

You are not sure if it is an apology or a confession. He tilts his head.  

“Not so. I would take your company over any other. Every day. Any time.”

The back of his hand flickers against yours from where they rest, side by side. He clears his throat.

“Sometimes, I forget that you’re…”

He trails off. You recognise the look in his eyes as something like hunger, but not the type that defines the order of your days. It is a starvation of sorts, searching for release as his gaze flits across your burning cheeks, the quivering of your lips. You can hear the drum of your heart beat, chasing his laboured breaths.

Your eyelids flutter. You feel faint, but it is not what you are used to. It is like you are drunk, drifting towards each other in a stupor. You feel the caress of his nose against yours, the ghost of his breath on your mouth. His forehead presses against yours, his hair tingles on your skin. You draw together and apart, struggling against the tide.

“Can’t,” he murmurs.

You wrench away. You are panting, lost. You are not sure if your glamour is still in place. You press your hand to your mouth, your stomach lurching as you stand.

He stands with you, bereft, frenzied. And as you stare at him in silence, you wonder how you will survive the Darkness when you have bathed in his light.

-----

You refuse to see him at first. The nurse tells you each time he visits. He comes the day after your admission, then twice a week, at the times of your allotted meetings. He leaves books and letters. He passes messages via your doctor. But you cannot bring yourself to face him. Not after everything that has passed.

You cannot understand why he persists. ‘Because it is his job,’ the Darkness replies. ‘Because if you fail, it reflects badly on him.’ So, in a lucid moment, you ask the nurse to send a message back to Blackstaff. They can send you the materials. You will study. You will not fall behind.

It is futile, and you know it. The Darkness consumes you whole. Nothing but bones remains.

“You should see him,” the nurse says after three weeks.

You know Nurse Mona well. She has been at the House of Healing since you were a teenager. You have seen more of her than your father and brother combined. Life is a series of facts for her, with no room for ambiguity.

“It’s clear he cares deeply about you.”

You bury your face into your pillow. “That’s the problem.”

She takes you by the shoulders. She can be gruff, and you flinch as she turns you to face her. Tears are gathering in your eyes.

“I don’t want him to see me like this.”

She shakes her head, sighing.

“He already knows you’re here, and he keeps coming back. Why don’t you give him a chance?” 

-----

You sit in the visiting room. It is cold and colourless, but it cannot temper the warmth of his bronzed skin and searching eyes. Across the table, he looks out of place. You feel ashamed to have brought him to such a void.

Gone is your glamour and your billowing robe, the walls behind which you have hidden. You battle against the feeling of your tunic and skirt laying snug against your skin. It is necessary, they say, to accept your form. You struggle to meet his eyes, not to cover your unglamoured face. You know its every bloated blemish, and the knowledge is an agony. You stand before the mirror with Nurse Mona every morning, sobbing at what stares back at you. You sit with her at every meal, tearing yourself apart.

They tell you this is progress. But you do not believe them.

“You don’t need to come here, Professor,” you begin. “You have better things to do.”

You do not know why your voice comes out strained and harsh. You do not wish to sound ungrateful.

“I’m sorry.” You look down at your hands. “I didn’t want it to come to this.”

He makes a strangled sound. There is anguish in his eyes when he looks at you. You cannot bear it. Not the pity. Not the burden of your suffering. You cannot inflict this on a man you hold so dear.

“Please.” You stand. “You don’t need to visit.”

His eyes widen. You had missed them so desperately – their brightness, their gentleness. You look away.

“Aurora-”

The promises spill out of you instinctively. Anything to get him away from this place, away from you.

“I’ll get back to my assignments as quickly as I can, and I’ll come back as soon as-”

“Listen to me-”

“-I can get cleared by the doctors-”

“Aurora-”

“-and I should be back in time for exams-”

“I don’t care about all that!”

You flinch. You have never heard him raise his voice. He stands unsteadily and crosses over to you.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

His voice is a broken plea. Part of you yearns to reach out to him, to give him the shattered pieces of your heart. But that part of you is smothered in the Darkness. You do not know whether it will survive.

“There’s a lot about me that you don’t know.”

He lays a hand on your arm. “I know you well enough to-”

You pull away. “You don’t.”

You gesture around you, to your face, your belly.

“This is me. Damaged beyond repair. Worthless. Wasted potential.”

He is shaking his head furiously. You scoff.

“You’ve known me for scarcely a year in my three decades of sorry existence. Years upon years of this and much worse than this. And you think just because we shared of a moment of…” You grimace. “You think that because of that moment, you know me?”

You turn away from him.

“This is all I am. It’s all I’ve ever been.”

You expect him to remain silent, leave the room and never return. That is what you had hoped for. It is what you know. No one has ever seen you as you are and chosen to remain.

But he does not.

“This isn’t who you are.”

His certainty stirs an ember within you. You stare at him.

“At times when you can’t see it, I’ll be there to remind you.”

Your chest heaves. You cannot understand the miracle of this man and why he is here with you in the Darkness. All at once, you remember how it felt to be warmed by his flame.

He looks down, then back up.

“What’s between us…”

He inhales sharply.

“The…affection… that lies between us. Is it genuine? Have I misunderstood…”

Doubt quivers in his voice. You had thought it was clear, that you had failed to hide it. Suddenly, you realise that he, too, has been afraid. You cannot allow it.

“Gale,” you breathe. “You are singular. To me, you’re…”

You cannot find the words. But you do not need to. His eyes glimmer. He takes your hand. Slowly, gently, he presses it to his heart.

“Then do your worst. You can hurl insults at me. You can shout and scream curses to drive me away. You can refuse to see me when I visit, ignore my letters and messages. Do what you will. But I’m not going anywhere.”

Hot tears cloud your vision. When he takes you in his arms, you do not fight it. You do not worry over whether your frame is too soft or too hard under his touch. You do not think of your messy waves as he nestles his nose into your hair. You lean into his chest and weep.

-----

When she comes, he and Tara are already with you. As usual, she appears in your room without warning. All the better to backfoot and humiliate you.

Her hair is more red than auburn this time, her lips plumper, her cheekbones more jagged. You had forgotten how obscene her cleavage was, set against her petite frame. She leans over to plant air kisses around your ears, shrinking from touch, as though it still disgusts her.

You brace yourself. It is not difficult to maintain your composure with her, even when she twists the knife. Decades of practice and conditioning have prepared you for little more than this.

When you glance at him and Tara, though, you can see that they are not so inclined.

“Professor Dekarios.” She holds her hand out to him. “It’s lovely to meet you in person at last, after our lengthy and… lively… correspondence.”

His handshake is brisk, his jaw clenched.

“I must say, I’m very surprised to see you here. I’d heard rumours about your devotion to your studies and teaching, but this goes well beyond the demands of the job, surely.”

She arches an eyebrow, scanning the room.

“The nurses tell me that you often keep my daughter company as she…convalesces.” She narrows her eyes. “My daughter isn’t a rare talent who needs a special kind of nurturing. Neither are her…charms… so remarkable as to warrant special attention. Unless…”

She purses her mauve lips as she examines him from head to toe.

“I suppose when you’re accustomed to five course banquets, you might sometimes enjoy a nibble from a market stall.”

He bristles.

“Don’t worry, Professor.” Her teeth flash. “I can be very discreet.”

She lays a red-nailed hand on his arm. He jerks away.

“Madam.” His voice is so low it is almost a growl. “If you’re insinuating that there’s anything improper going on between me and your daughter-”

Her laughter is like nails on a chalk board.

“Oh? Am I to believe that you’re here with my errant daughter for her fine company alone?”

“Mother.” You stare at her. “Please give it a rest. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

She smirks. “Darling, to say the pot is calling the kettle black doesn’t even come close. Just look at yourself.” Her powdered face twists. “I should have known you’d disgrace yourself again. I don’t know why I bother.”

His brow darkens. Tara’s wings twitch.

“Your daughter is kind, wise, and intelligent.” His fingertips spark. “She’s exceptional in her resilience, magical aptitude, and good character. If she hadn’t been systematically poisoned by the rhetoric of those far inferior to her, she wouldn’t be facing these obstacles.”

It takes a moment for your mother to register what has been said. She is visibly shaken. She is not used to being challenged, much less on the subject of your welfare. No one has ever cared enough. A vein pulses on her temple.

“Are you suggesting that I-”

He keeps his voice level. “I’m not suggesting, Madam. I’m observing.”

Her alabaster cheeks turn crimson. A part of you is terrified at the onslaught that is coming. You fight the instinct to hide from her rage.

“How dare you-”

Tara’s wings dart out like shields as she hisses. Your mother gasps.

“Gods! You vile creature. I’ll file a complaint. I’ll destroy you, you cast off-”

His eyes glint with a sideways smile.

“Feel free to do your worst, Madam. I’ve faced down much more formidable foes than your good self and lived to tell the tale.”

She seethes. “I’m taking Aurora out of Blackstaff immediately.”

“Aurora is an adult, who can choose whether or not she wants to continue at Blackstaff. And I believe she has no intention of dropping out.”

He glances at you.

You shake your head. “I do not.”

“Then I’ll stop paying –“

“Her fees are already paid up, I’m afraid.” He shrugs.

She is shouting now. “You ungrateful-“

“That’s quite enough, Madam,” Tara drawls. “There’s no need to disgrace yourself any more than you already have. You can either leave quietly with your dignity intact, or I’ll summon a nurse to escort you off these delightful premises. Failing that, I could summon a portal to drop you in the middle of nowhere. Which would you prefer?”

After your mother has left, you gaze at him across the room. You are not entirely sure what he is bickering with Tara about. His face is flushed as he laughs at her. When he meets your eyes, a burst of lightning blazes through you. It takes all your strength not to bound over, take his face in your hands and kiss him.

-----

You had always fought the Darkness alone. You never wondered how it would be to do so with someone at your side. Not an observer, pointing out your failures at every turn, but a friend. A companion.

It is not easier, but it is different. When the Darkness comes, you have a hand to hold, and someone to hold out a flame. Someone who sees who you are and does not look away.

You miss months of classes, but he brings you notes and study plans. When you are able, he gives you lessons and demonstrations. It is impossible at first. So much of your mind has been consumed, so much of your energy lost. But together you wait until you are ready. When your feet are back on solid ground, and you can roam beyond the reflection that you see in the mirror. And when you can channel the Weave again, it is like recovering a lost part of your soul.

You are too far behind to reach the goals that you set for yourself when you first started at Blackstaff. It would be folly to expect top marks in your exams. It will be a challenge enough to pass them. He tells you this, again and again. It is still a battle to accept that this is enough, but it is a fight that you feel you may win. You are beginning to think those goals were never yours, anyway.

When you withdraw from him, or push him away, he waits. You are baffled by how he waits, even when your fear subsumes your hope. You learn from Tara that he has amassed a collection of books about the Darkness which he has digested from cover to cover. He has sought out the leading healers and medics to discuss how to overcome it. Sometimes, when you think of all this, you cry.

There are limits to his understanding.  He is an avid cook, a passionate gourmand. He aches to share this with you. That he cannot causes him unspoken sorrow. In the later stages, when meals become easier, he brings you homemade treats. He has good intentions, but they lead to disastrous results. You promise him that you will try, and you will keep trying. That is more than enough for him.

You often sit in silence, looking at each other. A bond like yours does not need words to express it. You have a frame of reference to understand that now.

-----

“Oh.”

Your blurred vision is clearing. You lift your head.

“Did I fall asleep?”

You are curled up in an armchair. He sits facing you, smiling as you wake.

“Gods, I’m so sorry,” you yawn.

He chuckles. “There’s no need for apologies. I’m well aware of the effect my ramblings have on people.” 

“No.” You straighten. “I’m so sorry, Gale. My sleep at the moment, it’s-”

“There’s no need.” He watches as you rub the mist from your eyes. “Besides, it’s quite marvellous, watching you sleep.”

“Gods.” You cover your face with your hands. “What did I do? Did I say something?”

He titters. “You did no such thing.”

You groan.

“You truly didn’t. You just slept peacefully. A wonderful, beautiful sight.”

You shift, fussing at the creases on your skirt.

“You see beauty in strange places.”

He tilts his head. “I see beauty where it’s brightest.”

It is not an easy subject for you. You know he senses it. Perhaps he feels that you are ready. You are not sure if you are.

“I think you believe that beauty is an alignment of facial features and limbs. A collection of aesthetically pleasing curves and angles. That’s what most people mistake beauty to be.”

You frown. “What is it, if not that?”

He leans forward. Passion surges in his every word.

“An alignment of the soul,” he breathes. “A fullness of character. Virtue. Goodness. Heart. No one who witnesses true beauty can live on unchanged.”

You sit quietly for a long while. He holds you with his gaze, gentle, boundless.

“I think I’ve seen it,” you say at last.

He brushes away the tear that slides down your cheek. “As have I.”

----

It is your last day at Blackstaff.

You are sitting in the courtyard, watching the wind whistling through the trees. You have just received your results. Never before have you received such a scattering of marks, some almost acceptable, others dangerously low. But you have done it. You have passed all of your exams.  

Your highest mark is in Illusion. Perhaps that is predictable, given your interest and his assistance. Yet it still gives you joy, pure and true. It is a labour of love, with its own reward. But that is not the only reason why you feel so proud.

You close your eyes and listen to the fragile rhythm of your heart. You have made it. You are still here.

“I wondered where you were.”

You open your eyes. You had not heard or sensed his approach. He is a vision in deep blue, glowing in the sun. His robe swirls around him as he sits beside you on the bench.

“Canapes and cloying wizards aren’t really my cup of tea.”

He hums. “I don’t blame you. I did my rounds and made my escape as soon as I had the chance. I only hope no one comes searching for me. I’ve given a speech or two already.”

You chuckle. Birdsong caresses your ears. The smell of freshly cut grass and sandalwood fills your lungs. Your soul is full of light. In this moment, you are at peace.

He laces his finger through yours.

“I don’t think I need to say it, but I’m so very proud of you.”

You are smiling as you gaze at him. This man who has seen you as you are and does not find you wanting. This man who does not need magic to read your thoughts or feel your yearning. Your truest friend. The other part of your soul. The meaning of love.

“So what’s next for you? You’re free as a bird, the world’s your oyster, so on and so forth.”

His eyes dance, his hands are a flurry.

“Infinite possibilities,” you sigh. “The sky’s the limit.”

“Etcetera etcetera.”

“Well.” You pause. “I think…”

A stray leaf flies into his hair. You untangle it with your fingers and blow it back into the wind. He watches you, rapt, like you have made a miracle.

“I think I’d like to try one of your cookies.”

His laugh is a caress. “That can be arranged.”

You turn his hand over, tracing your thumb over the lines of his palm. His breathing stills for a while.

“Is there anything more you’d like to do with your newfound freedom?”

You bite your lip. You press his hand against your cheek, savouring its warmth.  

You do not need to tell him. He already knows. It blooms on his features, smouldering in his eyes. You have never felt more certain about anything. You are no longer afraid.

You do not care if anyone can see. You fall into him as he draws your face to his. When your lips meet, it is as though they have touched before. Your tongues find each other’s in a dizzying flurry of wet heat. You are lost in his sweetness and musk, the softness of his hands, the roughness of his beard. You melt into each other in a stupor of halting breaths.

“Move in with me,” he whispers.

You do not need to answer.

------------------------

Read the sequel: Promise

Author's note: If you've made it to the end of this fic, thank you so much for reading. I am so grateful, and I hope you enjoyed it and got something out of it. This is the first time I've felt so vulnerable posting a fic - I'm not sure if this story will mean anything to anyone out there, and I know it's a hard read. But I had to get it out, and I hope it gives you something. Please, if you can, leave me a comment, it would be so special to hear from you.

If you liked this fic, you can check out my other work here.

[musings-ofthe-unamused]

Blood Red Wine (Diluc x Reader, Kaeya x Reader)

A/N: I swear I'll make the sequels to these soon

Warnings: Blood, gore

Word Count: 3.1k

Ask Box: Open

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Angel's Share was a safe space for a lot of people. Adventurers, merchants, and knights all frequented here for a nice drink after a long day. You were one of those people. You worked at the General Goods shop. It wasn't tough work. In fact, it was rather dull. Your whole life was dull, filled with no adventures or fun. You let out a groan, resting your head on the cool wood of the counter. You could feel the warmth of alcohol coursing through your body. 

"It's so unfair!" You groaned once again. "Everyone's life is so exciting!"

A hand patted your back as a soothing voice filled your ears. "There, there."

"No!" You lifted your head, looking over at the man sitting next to you. "I want adventure! I'm tired of living in this stupid city!"

"And leave us behind? I'm hurt."

"Kaeya, stop teasing."

You pouted. "Yeah, listen to Diluc. Stop teasing."

Kaeya only sipped on his drink, stifling a laugh. Diluc sighed and started to clean the counter. It wasn't often you got drunk like this. But every once in a while, you wanted to complain about how boring your life seemed to be compared to everyone else in the world. Even the two brothers who always fought led interesting lives. Kaeya was a cavalry captain that got to travel whenever he wanted. Diluc owned Dawn Winery and met all sorts of interesting people. Though, you were sure both of them had something hidden that they wouldn't tell you about.

You knew they weren't bad people. You've known them for some time now. Kaeya was one of your best friends. Sure, he teased you a lot, but he actually kept you from spiraling into a fit of depression from how lackluster your life is. He made things fun . Diluc, on the other hand, was reliable. Reasonable. He was the logic and sometimes he doled out the harsh words that you needed to hear. They were like the perfect pair, really. What one lacked in the other excelled at. It didn’t seem like it to outsiders, but they got along pretty well. Their bantering words and insults usually held hidden meaning that you picked up on fairly early into meeting them.

You slid your empty glass forward. “More.”

“No,” Diluc grabbed the glass and started to clean it out. “I’m cutting you off. Unless you want water.”

“But I’m not even drunk!! Just a little tipsy, is all.”

“And I don’t want you drinking to the point of you getting drunk.”

“Come now, it was only one or two drinks. Would you like a sip of mine?” Kaeya leaned forward and slid his glass towards you.

“They don’t have a tolerance to alcohol like you do, you drunk.”

“It’s better than being a prude and not drinking at all.”

Diluc’s lip curled up in disdain. “If I wanted to make a fool of myself like you so often do, then I would drink it. But I don’t.”

“Ouch. Your words hurt, dear brother. You make it sound like I’m an alcoholic.”

“Are you not here every night?”

“Better than being alone.”

“I’m not alone.”

“You guys fight too much.” You stood up, swaying slightly as you did so. Your vision was wobbly and you blinked, shaking your head. “Oh, I think that drink was stronger than I thought.”

Kaeya stood immediately steadying you while Diluc leaned across the counter, reaching a hand out. It felt nice to have the two looking after you. “I wanna go home.”

“Kaeya?” Diluc said it more like a command, leaning back once he saw you were steady. 

“Of course. Let’s go, sweetheart.”

“ Kaeya . Don’t try anything.”

Kaeya only scoffed in response, as if offended Diluc would even think he would do something like that. You waved goodbye to Diluc as Kaeya wrapped his arm around you and walked you out of the tavern. It was already nighttime, the streets slowly emptying as people made their ways home. Diluc and Kaeya would both switch walking you home, sometimes both at the same time. They were overprotective at best. You didn’t know why, not that it concerned you. You were glad to have people at your side. If it was nighttime, they grew especially anxious. Even now, Kaeya’s face was relaxed, but his eyes flitted around as the two of you walked. You could never find out what had them looking around like that and never got a straight answer either. Mondstadt was relatively safe. So what had them so worried?

You were too tipsy to even care. You had gotten used to it at this point. Instead, you leaned against Kaeya, sighing as wrapped his arm even tighter around your shoulders. His cool body temperature felt nice against your hot skin. He was always cold. He said it never bothered him. It was nice in the summer and especially nice when you were drunk and overheated. It was always nice being around him.

“You doing ok, sweetheart?” His voice was soothing and sweet. “We’re almost to your place.”

“‘m just sleepy. Wanna get in bed.” Your words slurred together from both the alcohol and exhaustion.

He laughed, patting your head. Alright, alright.”

Once you arrived at your home, Kaeya made sure you got in safe. He tucked you into bed, set a glass of water by your bedside, and stayed with you until you fell asleep. The last thing you remember as you drift off is Kaeya smiling down at you.

***

The cellar in the tavern was dark and damp. It was the perfect conditions for the wine barrels lined against the wall and the shelf of expensive looking bottles. Diluc was naming out dates as you wrote down the information on the clipboard. You helped him out with inventory every now and then, especially when it was your day off and you didn’t want to be left alone. He insisted that Charles or Elzer could handle it, but you did so anyway. It was your own way of telling him you wanted to spend more time with him.

“That drunk bard needs to be cut off…” Diluc muttered, crossing his arms as he looked over all the barrels. “We’re down two bottles of wine imported from Inazuma. All because he went overboard.”

“I mean, don’t you want people to drink the expensive ones? More money, right?”

He shook his head. “More trouble, especially when it comes to him. He rarely even pays.”

“He seems like a fun guy,” I reply, following Diluc up the stairs. “But I guess I’ve never been around when he gets drunk.”

“Good.”

You set the clipboard down on the counter as Diluc starts preparing for the open of the tavern. He’s been working here more than normally. From what he and Kaeya have both said, he prefers to work back at Dawn Winery. But recently, he had opted for working at the bar. You joined him in cutting fruit for the drinks.

“No need to do that much. I can handle it.”

You shook your head, carefully cutting the fruit into slices. “You know I don’t mind. I like hanging out with you like this. It’s better than you seeing me drunk.”

“You already work a full time job-“

“That I hate. I’d rather be working with people I actually like. Like you.”

A comfortable silence fell over the both of you. Diluc’s shoulder brushed yours as he shined cups, making sure everything was pristine. When you were with him, you didn’t feel the need to talk. Just his presence was enough to fill you with a sense of calm and security. Even if he was annoyingly stern at times, it was how he showed he cared for you. You'd probably be a drunkard if it weren't for him. 

You wince, sighing as you accidentally cut your finger. "Oops."

"Did you cut yourself?" Diluc set down the glass and rag, immediately putting his attention on you. "Let me see."

"It's just a small cut."

Diluc leaned in, bringing your finger closer to his face to inspect it. His hands were warm, his eyes trained on the cut. You studied the way his red hair fell in front of his eyes, soft and slipping out of the hair tie. He clicked his tongue, looking up at you with a disapproving gaze. You were always clumsy and this was a common look you got whenever you accidentally hurt yourself. A bead of blood formed on the cut, slowly dripping down your finger. It slid onto Diluc's hand. He flinched, as if he just got burned.

"Oh, sorry! I'll go clean it off." You went to pull away, but he held onto your hand tightly.

"No. It's fine." He dragged you over to the sink. He was acting weird . You noticed his ears were tinged red and his breathing was slightly heavier than normal. He grabbed a small cloth, placing it over the cloth and holding it tightly. 

You blinked. "Uhm…you can let go now."

"What? Oh. Right." He seemed to shake himself out of whatever state he was in. "Be more careful next time."

His words were curt and he left to go to the backroom. You just stared, completely confused. There it was again. It was so odd , the way that Diluc or Kaeya would sometimes act out of the ordinary. You never found Diluc to be queasy when it came to blood, but he acted like it almost disgusted him. 

Just as quickly as it happened, he came back with a bandage and acted like nothing happened. You stayed silent as he placed it over your cut, sealing it tightly. Diluc patted your head and then went back to cleaning the glasses. It made you think that you were just being delusional. There was nothing wrong with them. 

***

There was definitely something wrong. You were sure the tavern would be open. It normally was. It was a Friday night and the night had barely begun. After you had gone home earlier, you realized you left behind your bag. You expected to see everyone drinking and celebrating the upcoming weekend. Yet the place was eerily silent. You took a couple of tentative steps inside. A feeling of dread washed over you. You shouldn't be here. You knew you shouldn't…and yet, you still called out for Diluc or Charles, your voice quiet and meek as if you've done something wrong.

When there was no response, you finally decided to check the backroom. The closer you got, the more that dread turned into pure fear. You could hear hushed voices. You recognized them instantly and you wish you hadn't. A deep metallic smell drifted from behind the closed door and towards your nose. Don't open the door. Your mind was practically screaming at you to stop. Whatever you would see behind it would change everything.

Morbid curiosity got a hold of you. Nausea hit you like a gust of wind as you opened the door. You almost thought you were having a nightmare. The sight in front of you was grotesque. Diluc and Kaeya stared at you in shock as they paused in whatever they were doing. On the table in front of them was a pitcher filled with a dark red liquid. Next to the pitcher was a pile of dead- you couldn't even make out what they were. It was just dead carcasses, their blood, guts, and viscera spilling out. You went pale.

"What are you doing here?!" Diluc hissed. His hands and cheek were smeared with blood. "The pub is closed tonight!"

Kaeya stepped around the table, moving toward you. "Are you alright? You look pale."

You took a step backwards. Then another. Your head was swimming as you tried to keep your composure. "Wh-What are you- why are you…I think I'm gonna be sick."

You turned to the side to throw up but found yourself fainting instead. All you could see was the pile of flesh and blood. You felt cold and hot at the same time as your vision went blurry. You could feel arms wrap around you, voices sounding like they are muted and far away.

 "Hey…hey, wake up." There was a pause. "Damn it, Diluc. Did you not say that you were closing for the day?"

"I wasn't exactly in the position to do so. It's your fault for forgetting to restock the blood supply."

"What do we do? We have to tell-"

"No, we can't."

"Then how else do you suggest we explain this situation?"

"Figure it out."

"You are so insufferable. This is why Father-"

" I'm insufferable? That's so rich coming from you, Kaeya."

A groan escapes your mouth as you finally come to. The rotten smell still made your stomach turn, but at least you were able to stay conscious. Kaeya had your head resting in his lap while Diluc kneeled next to him. You sat up, trying to scoot away. They were both still covered in blood.

Kaeya leaned forward. "Easy there-"

"What the fuck?!" Your eyes were focused on Kaeya's mouth. Two sharp canines jutted out in place of his normal teeth. "What the hell are you?!"

Diluc's eyes widen as he slaps his hand over Kaeya's mouth. "Calm down, alright? Let us explain."

You shake your head, your heart pounding in your chest as you try to move away from them. You could see Diluc's own teeth protruding from his lips. Suddenly, everything they ever did was flashing through your mind. Escorting you home at night, always being close enough to smell you, acting odd whenever you accidentally got a cut. You wanted to throw up. You wanted to run away. And yet, you just stared at them in disbelief.

"I'm waiting." You said, your voice hoarse and shaky. You tried not to let the fear show but you knew you were failing.

"To start-"

You held up  your hand. "Wait! N-not…I can't do it in front of the carcasses. And clean off the blood please ."

The two looked at each other and then nodded. You stood and went out to the main section of the tavern. You decided to pour yourself a drink. You automatically reached for the red wine, but froze. Not the right choice. Instead, you made yourself some sort of fruity concoction that would go down easy. After you were finished, you sat at the bar and waited for them to come back out. When they did, they looked as they normally did. Kaeya tried to remain cool and calm, giving you a soft smile as he sat next to you. Diluc took his normal spot behind the counter, leaning against it with his hands clasped together.

Diluc cleared his throat. "Alright. Well, to begin…" He trailed off. 

"We're vampires."

"Kaeya!!"

"How else do you want me to explain it?" Kaeya glared over at Diluc before turning his attention on you. He gave you that same lighthearted smile you were so used to seeing. 

You felt like your head was going to explode. You took a long sip of your drink. "So…What am I? Prey?"

Kaeya laughed. "Only if you want to be."

"Honestly," Diluc sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Have some tact. No, you're not our prey. We'd never bite you without your permission. Or any human, for that matter. We tend to stick to animal blood. It's safer."

You slowly nod. "So…I'm assuming Crepus was a vampire. But what about you, Kaeya?"

"Father thought it was best to turn me at a young age. Though, I practically begged to be turned. I thought it was the coolest thing." Kaeya laughed, as if the memory was fond to him. "The transition turned out to be unpleasant but it was necessary. Been living like this ever since."

"It was also a noisy transition. You couldn't stop screaming."

"You would scream too, if-"

"Can you guys stop fighting for one second?" You rubbed the bridge of your nose. This was insane. "I'm going home."

Kaeya placed his on your shoulder to keep you from leaving. You flinched, as if you just had been burned by his touch. He moved his hand away. The hurt was evident in his eyes. But what could you do? Just act like this was normal? That it was fine your two best friends have been lying to you your whole life? No, that wasn't fair. It wasn't right . 

You stand up without another word. You couldn't say anything else. You knew you shouldn't or you'd say something you might regret. Despite their secrets, you still didn't want to see them hurt. You needed time to process everything. If that meant cutting contact for a couple of days, so be it.

Kaeya's eyes widened. "W-wait! Don't go!"

"Stop." Diluc sighed, closing his eyes. "This is for the best. We all need a couple days to cool down. Just…trust them."

Trust. It almost made you want to laugh. If they wanted trust, they should've told you sooner. Or at least, eased you into it. It would've been better than seeing them covered in blood hunched over corpses like in a horror story. 

You make your way to the door, not bothering to look back. You can’t help but jump at every single noise on your walk home. Vampires. They’re vampires . The men who you’ve known and trusted for years. But because of that you couldn’t be completely angry. The fear in Diluc’s eyes that he tried to hide and Kaeya’s hurt expression twisted at your heart. 

You knew, deep down, that you will forgive them. It would take time to get used to this drastic change. You had a million questions that needed answering. And you also knew that they would never hurt you intentionally. They had always looked out for you and always protected you. They were just vampires and not humans. It’s fine.

"Just wait a bit." You told yourself, flopping down onto your bed. "Then you can go and figure things out."

  You just had to figure out who to talk to first. Kaeya was most obviously hurt. He hated getting into any type of conflict and would rather work it out immediately. You wouldn't be surprised if he soon came knocking at your door with a gift and the intention to stay all day. Diluc, on the other hand, was the type to let things fester. He wasn't outward with his emotions. If you've known him long enough it was easy to tell when he's trying to patch things up. You can imagine him fixing things in his own way through acts of service and sidelong glances.

This is a mess. You definitely needed to sleep on it. And sleep came easier than you thought. As you slowly closed your eyes, all you could see were the brothers, staring over you with sharp pointy teeth. Ridiculous.

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday the Scottish folk singer/songwriter Brian McNeill born on April 6th 1950 in Falkirk.

Brian was a founder member of the Battlefield Band, one of our finest Folk Groups. He also joined several other top Scottish Folk musicians including Dick Gaughan in Clan Alba.

Brian is a multi instrumentalist – chiefly fiddle, bouzouki, mandocello, guitars and concertina – and the importance of his songwriting has long been recognised with such songs as The Yew Tree, The Lads O' The Fair, The Snows of France and Holland, Strong Women Rule Us All With Their Tears, Any Mick'll Do and No Gods and Precious Few Heroes. Many of his songs have been performed and recorded by artists worldwide. He has been described as ‘Scotland’s most meaningful contemporary songwriter’.

​Brian’s audio visual shows, The Back O' The North Wind, about Scottish emigration to America, and the sequel, The Baltic Tae Byzantium, exploring the influence of the Scots in Europe, have won wide critical acclaim. His long connection with America's Lone Star State led to him being created an honorary Texan by the then Governor George W Bush. For six years Brian was Head of Scottish Music at the RSAMD, now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Brian is increasingly in demand for his production skills and his album credits include Davey Arthur, The Paul McKenna Band, Lorne MacDougall, Rua Macmillan, Eric Bogle and John Munro, Matt Tighe and Tad Sargent, The John Wright Band, Drones and Bellows and Missouri a cappella quartet The Wee Heavies.

As well as his musical talent Brian has also turned his hand to writing, he pens short stories, crime and mystery fiction involving his hero, busker Alex Fraser and his heroine, private sleuth Sammy Knox.

Brian is currently on the road with the The Feast of Fiddles 30th anniversary tour.

A song Brian wrote is one of my favourite modern folk songs

No Gods And Precious Few Heroes

I was listening to the news the other day Heard a fat politician who had the nerve to say He was proud to be Scottish, by the way With the glories of our past to remember "Here's tae us, wha's like us", listen to the cry No surrender to the truth and here's the reason why The power and the glory's just another bloody lie They use to keep us all in line

For there's no gods and there's precious few heroes But there's plenty on the dole in the land o the leal And it's time now to sweep the future clear Of the lies of a past that we know was never real

So farewell to the heather and the glen They cleared us off once and they'd do it all again For they still prefer sheep to thinking men Ah, but men who think like sheep are even better There's nothing much to choose between the old vain and the new They still don't give a damn for the likes of me and you Just mind you pay your rent to the factor when it's due And mind your bloody manners when you pay

For there's no gods and there's precious few heroes But there's plenty on the dole in the land o' the leal And it's time now to sweep the future clear Of the lies of a past that we know was never real

And tell me will we never hear the end Of puir bluidy Charlie at Culloden yet again? Though he ran like a rabbit down the glen Leavin better folk than him to be butchered Or are you sittin in your Council house, dreamin o'er your clan? Waiting for the Jacobites to come and free the land? Try going down the broo with your claymore in your hand And count all the Princes in the queue

For there's no gods and there's precious few heroes But there's plenty on the dole in the land o' the leal And it's time now to sweep the future clear Of the lies of a past that we know was never real

So don't talk to me of Scotland the Brave For if we don't fight soon there'll be nothing left to save Or would you rather stand and watch them dig your grave While you wait for the Tartan Messiah? He'll lead us to the Promised Land with laughter in his eye We'll all live on the oil and the whisky by and by Free heavy beer! Pie suppers in the sky Will we never have the sense to learn?

That there's no gods and there's precious few heroes But there's plenty on the dole in the land o' the leal And I'm damned sure that there's plenty live in fear Of the day we stand together with our shoulders at the wheel Aye, there's no Gods

[talenlee]

Story Pile: Manhunter

Before Clarice, before NBC, before Norton.

Before Mikkelson. Before Hopkins.

Before Grissom. Before Logan Roy.

Before the lambs, and before the Academy.

Content and Spoiler warning. This movie, Manhunter, is a movie about a serial killer who has violent sex with corpses and doesn’t really get less grisly from there. There’s nothing unexpected if you’ve looked at the box cover, but it really is like that. I will also talk about the plot of the movie, which will in course involve some information about whether or not some major characters die. The comparisons to the other version of this movie Red Dragon come up, and it’s kind of hard to compare them without talking about the way both end.

Manhunter is a 1986 movie directed and written by Michael Mann, who is, I understand, a person, based on the 1981 book Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, who I also understand is a person. This movie is the first adaptation of Red Dragon, which was then iterated on in 2002, featuring Edward Norton as the central character Will Graham, and the fan favourite Hannibal Lecter played by Anthony Hopkins, reprising his role from the award winning Silence of the Lambs (1991). This was then reprocessed further into the story of the TV series Hannibal in 2012, which took Will Graham from a central character with a single story arc involving Lector and instead kinda just ran around in circles for a few days of watch time.

But that’s just the sprawling leviathan that came after this movie, and most notably, a sprawl that explicitly is not like this movie. This movie has no continuity, no sequels, no prequels, and isn’t even the same story present in the book. This is what happens when someone takes a book and wants to adapt it to a movie, and makes deliberate choices about what the movie is or is not going to include and therefore, be about.

As for what’s in this movie, there’s a serial killer, called the Tooth Fairy (because he bites things), and an investigator called Will Graham who seems to be good at working out how people like the Tooth Fairy thinks. Recruiting Will means the FBI can recruit an old case of his, a Doctor Hannibal Lecktor (spelled differently, for legally distinct reasons), who it turns out is already enmeshed in this case through communication with the Tooth Fairy. Cat and mouse, Will puts together a puzzle, they uncover information from Lecktor, and we learn about the Tooth Fairy, mystery gets solved, people get hurt, conclusion at the end where Graham shoots the Tooth Fairy then goes home to recover and stop dealing with weirdo serial killers because how many of those can ever really intrude on one person’s life.

Right?

Right?

I’ve seen this story a few times. The most direct comparison is between the two movies, Manhunter and Red Dragon. Particularly, Red Dragon sticks closer to the book, where the Tooth Fairy fakes his death and comes to Will Graham’s house to hunt him, culminating in a tense standoff where Will has to insult and abuse his (step-)child, to get an opportunity to separate him from Dolarhyde and save everything. Will also gets further injured here, meaning twice he’s been maimed by serial killers, and the final notes of the story are doleful, helpless, and grim. Since that movie presents itself as a prequel to another movie, and therefore, in that narrative, Lector is going to be a persistent problem, the whole result is very doleful, very helpless, and has a sort of ‘behold, the tragic world of monsters we are presenting as realistic.’ In Manhunter, Will actually gets away okay, because the story doesn’t benefit from showing how a maimed monster man is actually probably something like an actual supernatural horror, and instead centers itself on the main character, that Will Graham guy and the story ideas set up in the start of the narrative.

There’s a sense of 1986’s material realities to this movie as well. The tapes whirr and grind, the buttons chunk and thonk, the spaces to store these machines are big, and the machines occupy most of it. There are numerous scenes where the TV screens Will is watching are made vast in the frame, one even where the TV he’s looking at – just its side – slowly gets panned in on in a way that makes it look like the screen is preparing to lunge forward and eat him. Dollarhyde’s height is emphasised by putting him in technical spaces that are cramped, like times he’ll walk through a doorway and almost touch the roof.

And on Dollarhyde, he’s what the story ostensibly wants him to be, really, in this piece. This is a psychological horror movie, not a slasher horror movie. This is about supposedly real people who could really exist, and not the cheap tricks of a maniac with a knife. Rather than spending a chunk of run time on what Dollarhyde believes, and why he believes it (because he is extremely mentally unwell, as hinted at by the fact he stalks and kills people), this movie is instead interested in showing him as a person. He’s a guy who sucks, and he sucks because he lets himself suck and fixates on the things he feels entitled to. There’s not some pantheonic justification, some dizzying fantasy in the back of his mind that gives his evil license.

He’s just a guy who sucks telling himself a story that it’s actually not because he sucks but because he’s the most special boy. And the story of the film handles that fairly well, I think. There’s no rapturous replication of the painting central to the mythos of Red Dragon. There’s a short montage of scenes of him building his relationship but throughout it all he’s shown to be selfish and sinister. He doesn’t crime wizard his way into a museum and eat a painting the size of his torso. When he lashes out at people over his paramour, it’s not presented as a just punishment on a creep that went too far, a cathartic titillation of enjoying being the serial killer’s cohort, but instead it’s just an arsehole lashing out at something benign.

It’s grounded, it’s closer, it’s more human and it doesn’t present these things as special. Everything is more mundane, more real, and more whole. Particularly, that Lekctor is just some guy who killed his patients in bad ways, and that he was mostly focusing on much younger women. Makes sense, given the doctor he was based on was a guy who most notably murdered his boyfriend, someone over whom he had power. It’s just… not a fantasy of the criminal. It’s fantastic for its cops – task forces moving smoothly and excellently and having the same two guys moving in all parts of it is pretty silly, but you know, it’s not an unpleasant fantasy in the context.

This movie was never going to be the thing that spawned a franchise. Look at what it did with Lecter. Even compared to his book counterpart, he was far less exoticised, less of the Americanised image of a European noble trapped in a world so terrible as to bind him alongside McDonalds and mini-marts. No, the Lecter of Manhunter is a Lecter that can exist; a violent, cruel, self-aggrandising arsehole, using the little bit of spark he has to fan a flame in himself to frame his cruelty as somehow something beyond what it always is. A violent, selfish, smug bully, as always, an arsehole, and rich and posh.

The Hannibal Lecter that comes after this is a steady enshrinement of what Americans love; he is a noble who will eat you, and the idea that someone with the layers of privilege he has is a monster is meant to be the juxtaposition that makes him terrible. It is the eternal need of the so-called sons of the revolution to find some king and present their necks to him. Everything after this point in the franchise is the ongoing yassification of the actual idealised fantasy of what America wants: the evil, contained and defeated, struggling against its bounds, but nonetheless safely and humanely controlled.

Fun when a movie makes everything that follows it worse, we don’t see that often.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[themculibrary]

Spring Masterlist 2

part one

adventure (ao3) - scaarletwiitch clint/natasha G, 881

Summary: Clint and Natasha wrap up a mission and go for a hike.

Dolphins and Inflatable Spiders (ao3) - Reshma (small_epiphanies) pepper/tony G, 1k

Summary: Her two boys could be at rock bottom or the top of the world but it doesn’t matter; the love they’d have for each other would never waver for a second.

It's Not Screeching, It's Screaming (ao3) - lozateazer, purrslink clint/phil G, 681

Summary: Spring time really isn't that much fun, because damn it Barton, some of us work you know.

Keep (ao3) - aimmyarrowshigh bucky/peter T, 1k

Summary: Keep. It transpires that when you have a hippocampus as fucked as Bucky Barnes', it takes more than a wizard to affect your memory. When it's all said and done, he remembers Peter Parker. They start to hang out a lot: two lonely guys who don't really have anything else tying them to this city anymore.

Making Friends In High Places (ao3) - Sophelia bucky/tony T, 12k

Summary: Howard Stark died childless, leaving behind a multi-billion dollar company and an extremely elaborate will doling out portions of his estate to bizarre causes. Luckily for the Avengers, this included giving them a place to stay in the top of Stark Tower.

Tony, like most Stark Industries employees, did his best to ignore the superheroes living above him. That was, until he met a metal-armed super soldier who for some reason keep wandering down from the upper floors.

Pancakes (ao3) - llocasprpiwesn logan/wade M, 1k

Summary: Wade made breakfast for Logan on a Spring morning.

Raspberry Ripples (ao3) - 17pansies rhodey/steve T, 200

Summary: Steve and Rhodey, a warm spring day, and a slowly melting raspberry ripple ice cream.

She thinks my tractor's sexy (ao3) - psychoroach clint/yelena/kate T, 1k

Summary: Yelena and Kate help Clint clean out the barn. Possibly could be considered a sequel to His Day in the Sun.

Spring Break At the Beach (ao3) - FemSanzo291 clint/phil T, 1k

Summary: Phil Coulson even after a year of dating Clint Barton couldn't believe that he would be going to spend spring break at the beach for free due to his boyfriend knowing the richest guy in school.

strawberries (ao3) - scaarletwiitch G, 612

Summary: Clint and Natasha investigate suspicious shipments in Japan and come home with six strawberries for Fury.

The sound and colors of Flowers (ao3) - 42donotpanic G, 2k

Summary: Matt and Clint are working together as the city warms up.

[sophsicle]

Narcissa q

Hi Soph!

I have a slightly random question - I absolutely ADORE the way you wrote Narcissa in Choices/HLAYK, and I’ve been wondering how she’s going! The last we saw of her in HLAYK, she was struggling with depression and alcoholism 🥺🥺 Where do you picture her being in her journey to recovery - is she doing better? Does she know about Drarry - and if so, how does she feel about it? Has Draco ever brought Harry with him when visiting her? And, rewinding the timeline a little, are you planning to include her in your upcoming Choices sequel at all? 👀👀

(Narcissa is going to be one of my main POV characters in the canon-compliant fic I’m planning and it’s largely your fabulous morally complicated characterisation of her that inspired me, so thank you for that too! 😆♥️♥️)

SO Actually, the last we hear of Narcissa in hlayk she's living in the country running a Snidget sanctuary. It's said in chapter 5 at brunch:

“Draco’s mum is part of the endangered species committee. So she’s taken to fostering Golden Snidgets, trying to help them repopulate.”

George nods his head, because he doesn’t trust himself to speak. Doesn’t trust himself not say that it’s always baffled him the way rich bigots are able to dole out all the compassion and love on animals they can’t ever show to human beings.

“I asked her if she’d let me play a game with one of them,” Malfoy goes on, charming the pan in front of him to deliver more eggs to his plate. “She wasn’t amused.”

BUT there's a bunch of time jumping in that fic so i get why that was easy to miss! She's doing well! has found a new purpose! is pretty happy all things considered. She does know about drarry and Draco has brought Harry to meet the Snidgets, Narcissa even let him name one :) She will be in the Choices sequel yes!!! I'm so glad to hear you're writing her POV in your fic! She's such an interesting to character to play around with and read!!!

[crimeboys]

loving aliveburs 2 : the sequel. really unfortunate that aliveburs is lost media though. (In all honesty, hope you're doling alright!!)

LOST MEDIA NAURR

and yes do not worry im doing fine now :]

[noddytheornithopod]

So my suspicions about Doleful turned out to be correct, right down to potential motives... and the climax of Process of Elimination was surprisingly emotional, with an extremely tragic villain and pushing for truth and ideal outcomes despite how cruel the world can be. 

Not sure how many of the details line up (I'm still trying to understand what happened with Renegade, also I wish we saw his final moments in the mega denouement), and IDK how I feel yet about how Techie's disability is used with the game's themes, but overall... quite moved.

Also I heard there's allegedly a prequel being planned, though honestly? I feel like there's a lot of sequel potential. Our gang of detectives vs the DA's corruption and cover ups, maybe even Doleful as like a Hannibal Lecter type.

[random-movie-ideas]

Green Lantern Cinematic Universe Pitch

Now that we have all the major Green Lantern allies and villains covered, here is my pitch for a Green Lantern series couched within the Cinematic Universe already set up for Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, incorporating most of the major players. We will start with:

GREEN LANTERN: This movie would take place in Phase One, just like Wonder Woman, and would establish early on the greater cosmic aspects of the world. This movie would feature Hal Jordan, with Atrocitus as the main villain, seeking after Abin Sur's ring, and would also feature Sinestro, Hal working out his corruption over the course of the movie. Arisia, Salaak, and Ch'p would all feature as part of Sinestro and Abin Sur's team.

GREEN LANTERN II: The sequel would focus on Star Sapphire as the villain, with Carol Ferris discovering the Zamaron's crystal in the first's post credits scene. This would also be an intense character drama between Carol and Hal. Guy Gardner would appear as Hal's new partner, and some of the more street-level villains would appear in this, with Hector Hammond creating minions from alien artifacts, including Tattooed Man, Dr. Polaris, and Sonar working for him. He would be a secondary villain, and he and his minions would serve as setups for Hal and Carol's conflicts, with Carol doling out harsher punishments on them instead of seeking justice as Hal is training to do.

GREEN LANTERN III: This one would see Sinestro returning from his banishment, having fully assembled a Sinestro Corps of his own. Members of the Sinestro Corps would include Amon Sur, Lyssa Drak, Karu-sil, and the Anti-Monitor, who Sinestro treats as his big silent muscle, but little hints would be spread throughout, directly setting up Crisis on Infinite Earths. Atrocitus and Star Sapphire would both come to act as allies by the end, helping to defeat the Sinestro Corps.

Also starting in Phase One, we will have a second trilogy that will also act as a Green Lantern-adjacent series:

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: This series would see J'onn J'onnz coming to Earth and getting stranded there, encountering John Stewart who agrees to help him. His presence on the planet would attract the attention of Green Lantern Katma Tui, as well as the Manhunters, hunting J'onn down to destroy him for what they interpret as invasion.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER II: Not sure if we'll keep the same titling, but it would be a sequel to this nonetheless. When the Justice League was formed to fight Zod and his Kryptonians, Hal and J'onn were both recruited, and Hal met John through this. John's actions to help earned him being offered a Green Lantern ring and joining the corps, working with and under Katma Tui. The sequel would involve J'onn out hunting Evil Star, and accidentally crossing into the Vega System, drawing the ire of Larfleeze. Seeing that John and J'onn are friends, Larfleeze declares war on the Green Lanterns. Saint Walker would also show up, healing John and J'onn from their wounds after that initial attack.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER III or WARWORLD: While on a mission, John and J'onn would find themselves attacked, and then wake up inside of Mongul's Warworld, trapped as combatants in his arena. Larfleeze would also be trapped there, as would Lobo and Big Barda. Katma and Saint would appear as the main duo trying to find and rescue the others.

Of course, as this is going on, we would also have that separate universe of animated movies based on the old Golden Age comics, including:

ALAN SCOTT: This would tell Alan Scott's origin, and feature Solomon Grundy as the main villain, restored to life by the energy of Scott's lantern.

Possible ALAN SCOTT 2: I'm still working out just how things are going to play out with this universe and its inhabitants once we reach Crisis on Infinite Earths, but if Alan gets a sequel, his villain will be Icicle.

Following Crisis on Infinite Earths, Hal would witness the destruction of Coast City and nearly everyone he cares about during the events of said movie, allowing Parallax to take control of him, leading us into:

KYLE RAYNER ORIGIN MOVIE: With the Green Lantern Corps nearly all wiped out, Ganthet would pass on the last ring to a young artist named Kyle, who would work with him and a mysterious girl named Jade, to fight and defeat Hal turned Parallax.

BLACKEST NIGHT: Not sure if this would be a two-parter or what, but, yeah, we'd witness William Hand become the first Black Lantern, raise an army of the dead, including Hal, and allow Nekron to break free, forcing all seven Corps to finally work together, and unleashing the power of the White Lantern in the end to defeat it, with Hal being restored to life as a result. I also imagine Alexander Nero would show up toward the beginning or something.

This movie would directly lead us into what I plan to be the grand finale of the Cinematic Universe, with the multiverse restored and Superboy-Prime getting his home back, so I'm sure Krona will play some part in that finale. Also, either in Blackest Night or the finale, we would see Kyle training Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz to be new Lanterns. After the finale, the Cinematic Universe would be done, but I would allow for more simple continuing adventures-style projects to be made if anyone wanted to (my allowance for that series I mentioned with new recruits all as members of the seven corps working together as a team).

And that's it! What do you think? Would you watch a series like this?

[talestoenlighten]

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