#FITTING FOR SUMMER IN THAT ITS ABOUT AFTER THE PERIOD OF NEW BEGINNINGS (spring) WHERE YOU HAVE THE PAST

[bandsanitizer]

how I feel about luke likely releasing his next album in late winter/early spring while running around dressed like a vampire:

[isephierreo]

3H's UI Design

The title screen shows Sothis throne, in the game, Byleth sees Sothis throne between their dream of the War of the Heroes and their awakening by Jeralt. Which may symbolize that the scene of a throne is the first thing you will see before and after entering the game. The throne is also the place where the most important things happen, such as meeting Sothis, merging with her, and the events of Chapter 11.

After beating the game, Sothis is shown sleeping on a throne, this is similar to Final Fantasy XV, so spoilers for FFXV.

In FFXV, after beating the game, Noctis is shown sleeping with Luna/Oracle in a logo, mirroring the end of the game. It was the end of the game where Noctis sacrifices himself to save his world, and then sleeps in peace on his throne in the afterlife. This is similar to how we know in end of the game about Sothis sacrifices herself to save Fodlan and then went to rest on her throne in the holy tomb.

Player menus is a notebook Byleth carries with charms on it. Pages feature the country logo of chosen house, with the Church of Seiros logo on a page before choosing a house.

Besides a feather pen as a cursor, many ui are in the form of a set of papers; A plain papers, a papers with a Church of Seiros pattern and Sothis tiara, and a papers with a heart pattern in a corners cover.

The design of the options box is similar to a bookmark cards and the ribbon at the top left as a bookmark ribbon that is placed between pages.

With many ui somewhat similar to the sticky notes.

Roster's design is like a campus card, where characters stand on the ground outside a classroom when see roster.

Although the background varies depending on the floor it is on.

The cards and MVP also feature a unique frame for each house or story chapter you are in.

The lower and upper design of a banner that appears upon raising a professor level or passing a certification exam may look similar to a mosaic above a door, which may symbolize the opening of a door to new knowledge and experience gained.

The same theme is present in the banner when begin exploring or lesson plan, symbolizing the beginning of your journey of exploration and teaching others. However, there is no single for Battle, and this may symbolize that there is no benefit to be gained from battles and conflict, and this fits with the FE franchise's message that war is bad. Besides, each one has a color that distinguishes it.

The design of the Crest of Seiros and its various styles is present in most of the UI with the same, if not more, than the Crest of Flames, which is a constant reminder that Officers Academy is the same as the Church of Seiros.

There are many plant patterns that decorate the UI, which is a reference to the passing of the seasons, the meaning of the game's Japanese title. And you can see a branch of leaves on the right of the notebook, which indicates that the notebook has become more like your diary of your life in a monastery.

During a tea party, a screen is decorated with plant patterns with blue roses, giving the ambiance of a garden in which you are sitting. Along with a dialog box in the color of natural hot tea.

The date circle at the top left features four shapes for each season, rose for spring, morning glory for summer, grape vines for fall, and poinsettia for winter. However, during a period of war, the circles loses its colors and becomes grey.

In the background of the chapter title of within White Clouds, the same plants are present, with the background design as a white paper with the Church of Seiros logo. However, like the date circle, during a period of war the background becomes dark with sparks of war flames, plants change to holly and thistle, the Church of Seiros logo to the country logo of the chosen house.

The CF's background differs from the SS's in a red double-headed eagle with two additional black stripes.

And this brings me to the background title before the start of each battle. Unlike the background title in each new chapter, which looks like a new page being turned to record daily events, the background title of a battle is literally the cover of notebook, and this may symbolize something similar to the Battle theme above. Like the chapter title background, it features the Church of Seiros logo during White Clouds and changes to the country logo for the chosen house, with SS and CF sharing the same background.

Speaking of battle, before any start, Fodlan map will appear on a plank of wood. This is similar to what Claude did in cutscene The Academy, where he placed a map on a table and started discussing it.

Battle Prep looks like a clock + glass mosaic, and if you notice, it is surrounded by a magic circle that appears between roles of units. It looks somewhat similar to Mila's Turnwheel, and I know Divine Pulse sounds like shattering glass, but it can be interpreted as follows; A clock is set before the start of a battle, and the magic circle is used to set units' movement points, and when the time comes to use Divine Pulse, the clock glass is shattered, which appears as a portal to an almost parallel world to return to a specific point. Furthermore, the design where the Crest of Flames is located in the middle and surrounded by the rest of the crests is very similar to the Goddess mural. There is also a crescent inside which looks like a star chart, and this corresponds to the cutscene At Death's Door, where the use of Divine Pulse shows what looks like space.

Because we don't use a battle notebook, we use a key ring memo pad instead.

Despite all the praise I gave for the game's UI design, there were some things that disappointed me. Most notable is the Adrestian empire logo for Silver Snow.

I know that the developers called Silver Snow the empire route, but they had to design the UI to fit the Crest of Flames flag, which represents the route as a whole. They don't even reuse the MVP frame from prologue, even though it's very convenient for the route. Why do they design loungewear in line with the Crest of Flames flag but not with the UI?

again they using the Adrestian empire logo for the unique classes poster. Why didn't they design a unique poster for each route? Or make it neutral?

I wish they would change the plant patterns during the tea party in Byleth's room to match the ambiance like a garden.

After all, 3H's UI design is not as perfect or innovative and iconic as Persona 5. However, in this post I wanted to share what I found fun about designing it, and you can summarize it as follows: 3H's UI design represents Sothis, the goddess of the Fodlan world, and the core foundation of the Church of Seiros, which in turn built the Officers Academy where you begin your new life as a instructor to your students through the passing seasons of the year.

Of course, I did not include all the UI designs, perhaps because I forgot them or failed to know its meaning, such as magic circle when raising the level. So, feel free to add to this post if you have any ideas.

[alienssstufff]

idk if u talked abt it b4 but i would LOVE to know why u see autumn as 3L (and i assume LL as winter - DL as spring - LimL as summer) tho i 100% see already purely from aesthetic why thatd be the case itd be so so cool to see a more in depth opinion?? it does fit so well in with the 2 arcs being 3L into LL & DL into LimL as autumn into winter then starting as a new arc of spring into summer?? literally perfect i feel??

[ context ] nooo I never have! I'd love to!

The Life Series thematically happens cycles upon cycles within itself. Each season is like a different part of a year like seasons ending on the very climatic Limited Life as its Summer.

[AUTUMN 3RD LIFE] While there aren't many interesting biomes in 3L that give it away, it's more about the progression of the Beginning as players are taken out of the comfort of their previous lives and all social constructs are thrown out the window and into the deep end. People make pretty bases, feel hesitant to steal, and build monopolies in a world that virtually does not have a currency - all because these are things the Hermits and Empires alike have been doing prior to the Life Series. It's Autumn because it's a learning experience, a transition period as the players grow more accustomed to these new customs in preparation for the extreme.

[WINTER LAST LIFE] HONESTLY the one I'm glad we all agree on, that server is SO #wintercore with so many horror elements. Deeeep alpine forests, winding rivers, tall snowy mountains it got all of them! The perfect winter sequel to 3rd Life and the one where the players (after being a part of 3L) are put the most on edge with the levels of betrayal and distrust the season had going on with the Bogeyman mechanic. People straight up start HUNTING each other for sport it's an example of the most dire of situations and I LOVE IT!

(putting the other 2 under the cut before it gets too long)

[SPRING DOUBLE LIFE] Much kinder than Last Life congratulations you have made it through the winter. Double Life is a season centred on relationships, about all the different types of love between players - if you live in the Northern Hemisphere spring happens during valentines. New bonds like in Spring are made here and old ones resurface and/or are broken in history of the previous seasons. Double Life is kind of like 3rd Life in the sense that people's relationships, and how they go about them are in influence to things that have happened in the past (previous seasons).

[SUMMER LIMITED LIFE] The final season of the First Cycle. The server has a WARM OCEAN biome. I really do wish mojang developed their beaches or the tropics better Limited Life would have been perfect with palm trees. I built a bit on the Limited Life world HERE and HERE It's about teamwork, fun and games - the tone Limited Life has in comparison to Last Life is its polar opposite in the way people trust in each other so much. Even the whole meaning of what it means to be Bogeyman here is flipped on its head it's treated as a gift. It comes perfectly after Double Life as the soulmates made in there (eg Boatboys, Ranchers, etc) continue from here. If anything it reminds me of the summer break before everyone gets back to work (Secret Life).

Side note: Secret Life Bit of a weird one honestly. It to me is the strangest out of the 5 like yeah it COULD be spring aesthetically because of the cherry trees, but it could also be autumn (thus the new cycle), the way it is handled so far is reminiscent of how things were in 3rd Life with everyone being so careful of their lives. Waiting for more sessions to come out to build more on this :]

HWWHWH anyway hope that makes sense ty for letting me talk about the Life Seasons >w<

[yaminerua]

Duklyon doesn’t at first seem to have the same thing crop up as CSD and 20 Mensou does (with regard to the timeline seeming to pass through April when a new school year would commence and everyone should move up a grade) because within its story it doesn’t pass that April point where the grade should change. Based on the flashback to when Takeshi and Kentaro are first invited to form Duklyon, which is stated to happen in May, 5 months earlier, I think the bulk of the rest of the story takes place from around October to I presume late March because they’re still in the winter uniform and still stated to be in 1st Year by the last chapter that is set in the school before the timeskip epilogue.

The only point it gets messy is if you’re like me and try to plot out the total timeline for the CLAMP School series based on dated events we do know of in each of the series. When you insert Duklyon into the larger timeline that encompasses the other two series taking place in CLAMP school around the same time, it becomes clear that it takes place during the autumn to spring period, but before the turn of the new school year that should usually happen in April because they’re still stated to be in 1st Year at the end.

We know when it takes place because of other events that match up. As I mentioned in another post, both 20 Mensou and CLAMP School Detectives have a similar discussion on the planning of the Christmas party, so we know the events around that match up. But also not long after that there’s a scene in CLAMP School Detectives where Nokoru loses the creative plans for the school show and the Japanese on the document says デュカリオン vs 20面相 ‘Duklyon vs 20 Mensou’ if you look closely, which obviously is the same show that we see playing out in Duklyon, in which 20 Mensou kidnaps them so we know that’s happening at the same time as the Detectives are looking for the faculty list, which is presumably around January.

Bearing in mind that the overall CLAMP School series timeline starts in Summer (in 20 Mensou and the Duklyon flashback), moves into winter which is where CLAMP School Detectives begins, and then continues on through Summer again (where 20 Mensou ends) and on to Autumn of the next year where Detectives ends, it is clear that more than a year passes and there should realistically be a point where the characters move up a grade at the start of the school year.

But if that were to happen with Nokoru in 6th grade during the first half of this timeline, come April he should move into first year of the Junior High division which would split up the group! Obviously we don’t see that happen and everyone continues without changing grade and CLAMP weren’t too worried about the overall timeline. But I like trying to find ways to tweak things to make it work.

With that in mind, if we want Nokoru to still be in 6th grade for the second half of the Detectives manga, it makes sense to mess with the ages a little bit.

I propose having him be in 5th grade for the earlier parts of the stories that take place before April when the new school year starts, and having him move into 6th grade for the rest of the series so that it doesn’t split up the trio. Of course that would require aging Akira and Suoh down a year too along with him so that they’re all still in different grades.

However, as I mentioned before, we know Duklyon takes place over the autumn to spring period and presumably ends before the April new school year, so with my modified ages for Nokoru and the other elementary schoolers it would mean he’d technically be a 5th grader during that part of the story even though originally he’s written to be 6th grade.

Of course this is all just me having fun adjusting things to fit into a chronological clamp school timeline and it’s not meant to be looked at this closely;;;

[scottymcgeesterwrites]

Final Fantasy VII Review

 Year: 1997

Original Platform: PlayStation One

Also available on: PC, PlayStation Store

Version I Played: PlayStation One

Synopsis:

The Shinra Electric Power Company rules over the city of Midgar, and the eco-terrorists AVALANCHE stop at nothing to try and prevent the life essence of the planet from being used as energy. Barrett, leader of AVALANCHE, hires a mercenary named Cloud Strife for their bombing mission on a Shinra Mako Reactor. Cloud doesn’t care much for the greater cause and only wants his pay. But then, after a mission goes awry, he meets Aerith, a flower girl who is the descendant of the Ancients. He quickly finds himself wrapped up in the greater conflict against Shinra.

 Gameplay:

Final Fanatasy VII utilizes magic spells via Materia – little orbs that come in a variety of colors pertaining to the natural elements. You can mix and match them on your weapons and equipment, which gives you access to different spells and stats. All your equipment varies with the number of slots for how many Materia orbs you can put in. Leveling up not only upgrades the character but the equipped Materia as well.

 Final Fantasy VII also uses an ATB system but is known for introducing Limit Breaks – finishing moves that build up after the character gets hit over time. Final Fantasy VI had a prototype called Desperation Attack – but it was very rare as it only appeared when your character had 1/8 of their total HP, and there was a 1 in 6 chance of performing the Desperation Attack after selecting Attack. I actually had no idea that was a thing until long after I finished the game, and never experienced it when I played Final Fantasy VI.

Graphics:

Out of all the Final Fantasy games, I have to say that this one has not aged well. It has the worst graphics of the entire series. The battle and cinematic graphics are passable.

(Most of the graphics power seemed to be put in Tifa’s, uh, bosom.)

But the characters in towns, the overworld, and in-game cutscenes are incredibly blocky. PC versions are supposedly sharper, but the PlayStation One version makes it nigh impossible to see any facial expressions. 

The graphics are definitely a product of its time. I always say that the beginning of 3D gaming was essentially like puberty – awkward and full of zits. It wasn’t yet at that stage where it could be aesthetically pleasing. We marveled about it when it was first released, yes, but then we cringed in retrospect.

The environment backdrops however are probably the strongest points, where they capture the industrial nature of Midgar, the reactors and other such buildings.

Story:

Final Fantasy VII became legendary the minute Square released it. Every aspect was memorable. Part of it could be due to the fact that it was the first Final Fantasy game to enter the 3D realm. Another part was Tetsuya Nomura’s character designs, which hit the cool meter to the point of sub-zero.

 The cinematics blew our minds. The opening action scene with Cloud, Barrett, and the rest of AVALANCHE attacking Shinra’s mako reactor is the most memorable opening to a Final Fantasy game. Period. Final Fantasy games really do know how to start at the right spot, no matter how good or bad the overall game is. The opening is always the best part.

Then there was the motorcycle chase. Cid’s airship. The gun fights. Battles with Sephiroth. The extra stuff to find, like summons and extra bosses. So much was jam-packed into the game.

 But the story was the primary factor in making VII famous. It’s definitely one of the better ones. Man, the story became so famous that even gamers who haven’t touched a Final Fantasy game knew the major spoilers. It is the equivalent to knowing Darth Vader’s line, “I am your father” without having actually watched Star Wars.

Aerith (Aeris in the English releases) Gainsborough – the innocent flower girl who holds the secrets of the Ancients – develops a romance with Cloud and fucking dies at the end of Disc 1 by the main villain – Sephiroth. The scene shocked everyone and practically made headlines. Everybody has seen the horrible image in one way or another.

It seems to me that since Final Fantasy V, the stories have gotten more and more used to main character deaths, ultimately transforming into a heavy-hitting TV series rather than simply a video game series. In other words – it matured. Looking back, Final Fantasy IV appears to be child’s play and a prototype of later dramatic storylines with fully realized worlds.

 Final Fantasy VII was also the first Final Fantasy game to create a world much like ours – one with cars and trains and airplanes and machine guns and even cellphones. The main city of Midgar reflects industrialization at its worst, with miles of slums and claustrophobic cities. Shinra Electric Power Company is a reflection of capitalism at its worst - a single entity in charge of so much that it’s pretty much the government. For the first time in a Final Fantasy game, you play as characters who dance between the morally ambiguous line of terrorism and activism. Funny enough, the theme of neglecting the planet resonates with us now more than ever. This game ended up being rather prophetic about the uncontrollable growth of corporations.

While the story is memorable with many intriguing elements, the plot itself is a tangled web. In my opinion, they really hashed in so many things that it’s easy to forget crucial details. It’s not straightforward, but at the same time everything does connect by the end. While Shinra is the driving force as a whole as the villain, Sephiroth takes over, then you learn about his backstory and then with the evil scientist Hojo and the extra-terrestrial Jenova and then “Weapon” and then the planet’s history and this and that and the other thing.

If I were to put Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VII together and contrast them, as many gamers do, I would find that Final Fantasy VII is the summer blockbuster and Final Fantasy VI is the Oscar winner. Final Fantasy VII started introducing the sappy romance subplot to the series. A love triangle forms among Aerith, Cloud, and Cloud’s childhood friend Tifa. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with having a love triangle, the writing is like watching middle schoolers trying to express their feelings. Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy IV treated any romance with dignity and realism.

But maybe I’m being a bit harsh. After all, Cloud Strife did go through some suffering as an adolescent. His backstory clearly drives his antisocial behavior, so that becomes a good arc. 

The goofiest but memorable part of the story deals with Don Corneo and Wall Market and running around store to store doing tasks in order to free Tifa from Don Corneo. It ends with Cloud needing to cross-dress as a woman to get inside Don’s mansion. Because, you know, it’s not like Cloud can just break in with his sword and Aerith’s magic or anything like that. But whatever. It’s anime.

The recent Final Fantasy VII Remake for the PS4 seems to streamline the story, and actually enhances the emotions they were trying to deliver in the original. I will be talking about the remake in a separate post altogether since I’m almost done with it at the time of this writing. But there’s a lot that I want to say about comparing and contrasting the remake and the original.

The latter half of the plot takes a couple weird turns. At one point, Cloud became catatonic and confined to a wheelchair.

That part of the game became the sluggish part for me. Sephiroth also tries to confuse Cloud, which confused me. Cloud apparently suffers from some alternate subconscious mumbo-jumbo and like. . .ungh. I get an aneurysm thinking about it sometimes.

Complicated plotlines like Final Fantasy VII start showing up from here on out in the Final Fantasy series. The trend of bishonen characters also begin here, bishonen being the Japanese term for “beautiful boy.” Cloud and Sephiroth have that look. The series starts hashing in sappier romances and much more of an anime feel.

Final Fantasy VII ultimately marked the start of a new era for the series – introducing both cool and overused tropes.

Music:

Hands down the best Final Fantasy soundtrack of all.

The entire soundtrack of this game is memorable. The opening tune, with its light twinkle when the stars show up, is enough to make any gamer know exactly what that’s from.

With a story set in a more modern world, we have music that is more modern. After Final Fantasy VI had a more serious and operatic score, Uematsu displayed his love of progressive rock here. The motorcycle chase incorporates a lot of synth, which was fitting for zipping through the streets of Midgar. However, Final Fantasy VII is the first Final Fantasy game without that familiar starting bassline for the battle them. The battle theme is instantly recognizable but also radically different from its predecessors. It’s dramatic and displays danger.

Meanwhile, the boss theme is one of the best boss themes in the series, or any video game really. It’s an electrifying progressive rock piece, and it’s my personal favorite boss theme.

 The more instrumental pieces are somber, given the dreary atmosphere of the planet. The world map music is very different from its predecessors. It’s romantic one moment, soaring the next, and then dips into foreboding terror. I guess that sums up the story of Final Fantasy VII.

And we cannot leave out One-Winged Angel, which I will talk about below.

Notable Theme:

Without a doubt, One-Winged Angel – played during the terrifying final battle against Sephiroth – is the most memorable piece of music in Final Fantasy VII.

It may very well be the most popular song of the entire series. Nobuo Uematsu was inspired by Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. It’s a whopping 30 something minute classical piece. If you look it up on YouTube and browse through it, you can definitely note the similarities. However, Uematsu didn’t want some boring classical introduction to the piece. He wanted to add the destructive impact of rock. The theme has a very distinct stamping-your-foot-down quality to it.

I had noticed a certain piece-by-piece feel of the song and that’s exactly how Uematsu composed it. This is the only song that Uematsu has composed where he created several tunes in his head and then rearranged them to make a single comprehensive song.

If you want to get technical, One-Winged Angel is the first Final Fantasy song with lyrics. The chorus sings in Latin about Sephiroth’s burning anger, with some lyrics actually taken from the medieval poem Carmina Burana. It sounds fantastic when fully orchestrated.

In Advent Children, the animated sequel to Final Fantasy VII, the music is accompanied by hardcore metal. This new rendition really illustrates the destructive power of Sephiroth. Uematsu changed the lyrics for Advent Children. They are more original now. I specifically noticed the lyrics “Veni, veni, mi fili”, which translates to “Come, come, my son.” Sephiroth is inviting you so he can kill you.

 Uematsu has stated that the original orchestration didn’t sit well with him. As I suspected, Advent Children’s hardcore metal version is the one he preferred, the one he would have composed had he the technology at the time of Final Fantasy VII.

Verdict:

Another must-play for any RPG fan, even if you think it’s overrated. It’s a must-play because of its popularity, in the same way that people are wide-eyed when you say you haven’t seen Star Wars or such-and-such other popular movie. It’s a whole lot of fun, especially in the scenes that involve other forms of gameplay, such as the motorcycle chase and even a battlefield strategy game in protecting Fort Condor. 

Direct Sequel?

Yes – first there was the CGI movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.

I actually watched Advent Children before playing Final Fantasy VII. I had already known most of what happened in the game and Advent Children became a monumental craze when it first came out. Everybody was talking about it. Watching the sequel before playing the game skewers your interpretation of things. My first impression of Cloud was that he was always whiny and angsty, and meanwhile Tifa kept nagging him to move on. I felt really bad for Cloud losing Aerith.

Then when I actually played Final Fantasy VII, I saw that Cloud starts as this badass mercenary. Tifa is spunky and clearly is the better choice (IMO) but Cloud is enamored by Aerith after only meeting her briefly. WHAT? Cloud. Bro. Make a move on Tifa, you nitwit. Tifa is AMAZING.

 Square Enix then continued the story with Dirge of Cerberus – Final Fantasy VII. This video game sequel focuses on Vincent Valentine, a fan favorite of the original game.

Let me remind you about something – the original game revealed Shinra’s inner deep secret experiments, namely with Sephiroth and Jenova. Dirge of Cerberus introduces an even deeper research team within Shinra called Deepground. I don’t know about you, but it already sounds like the start of a terribly redundant string of sequels, like how the Jason Bourne movies keep revealing an even deeper level of conspiracy theories. Vincent’s mysterious background is now fully revealed. He is defined by – guess what? – another angsty lost lover story, this time with a woman named Lucrecia. Now, okay, look, maybe I’m just being a dick about these types of love stories. But when it keeps popping up within the same series in the same manner, I start asking if you have anything else to offer on your menu.

Lastly, there is the prequel for the PSP – Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. Of all the games in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core has received the most positive reception. If anything, play that after playing Final Fantasy VII before bothering with anything else.

 Oh, and of course there is the Final Fantasy VII Remake, which we thought wasn’t going to happen for the longest time but they finally released it in April 2020. More on that later after I finish it, and after I post my entire series of Final Fantasy reviews!

[probably-writing-x]

Admittance.

Guzmán x Reader

Set after the end of Season 3 (assuming Nadia and Guzmán were never a thing)

Request from anon: The reader is Andér’s sister and she found out she is pregnant with guzmán, but they are like not a couple.

My requests are always open❤️

- - - - - -

“Come on, school can hardly get any worse now!” Ander laughs as the two of you walk towards school.

“I wouldn’t speak too soon,” You roll your eyes, smiling as you see Omar walking toward the two of you.

He looked so oddly fitted to the new uniform as he hurries down towards you. He’d had to come in early today to get himself sorted for the introduction into the school. And it lit up your heart when you saw how excited Ander was to see him.

“I’ll meet you inside, okay?” You mention to your brother, walking off ahead as Omar comes running down toward his boyfriend.

It was a completely relief to see them back together now, so comfortable and relaxed back into what was meant to be all along. You couldn’t be as excited to be back as those two were. There were a thousand questions of your future running through your head and you were sure you’d pass out if you kept them to yourself for any longer.

When you get through into the school, you instantly focus on Guzmán only a few metres away. He’s the only person you could focus on at the minute. He’s stood laughing with Samuel about something or other as he clasps him on the shoulder and pulls him in like they’re brothers. It was good for them to have someone like that - both hardly having the best luck with siblings over the past year.

You hurry down the corridor towards him and bypass anyone who didn’t hold that exterior that he did.

“Guzmán,” You say, grabbing his arm to turn his attention toward you.

“Hey (Y/n),” He smiles, “Ready for school?”

“Guzmán I need to talk to you,” You persist, glancing over your shoulder as people begin flurrying in past you.

He must see the concern that the words inject onto your face as he holds your arm to pull you away from the crowds of people.

“You okay, (Y/n)?” It’s Rebeca that joins you and the boys, smiling to Samuel as she does.

Before you can say anything more, Ander and Omar are making their way towards you too, joining the group in a situation you should feel completely comfortable in.

“Nobody gonna tell me how hot I look?” Omar gasps, spinning round proudly in his uniform.

Everyone else laughs but you and Guzmán are evidently uncertain. He didn’t know what you were waiting to tell him. But one thing was for certain - given what happened over summer, he didn’t expect anything good to come from whatever conversation would be had.

- - - - - -

You’d been in first period for approximately twenty minutes before you started to feel it. It was that feeling you’d been suppressing as much as possible all morning but was impossible to avoid now.

Instantly, you find yourself hurrying out of class and straight down to the closest toilets. Hunching over the toilet bowl and trying your best to hold your hair back too.

You slump back against the wall of the toilet stall and sigh, resting your head back as one hand finds its way onto your stomach.

Shit.

When you collect yourself together and come out of the bathrooms, Ander is stood waiting for you on the opposite side.

“What happened?” He frowns, “Are you okay?”

His voice is panicked as he scans you fearfully.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I must’ve just eaten something bad, maybe at dinner last night.”

Your brother’s frown doesn’t release, “I can take you home if you want to.”

“No, don’t be silly,” You shake your head, “It’s probably out of my system by now anyway but I might head home early.”

“Okay, just let me know.”

It kills you to lie to him. The two of you had gone through a lot together. But this summer had been a strange one for both of you. Whilst he was missing Omar and going through the last stages of his treatment, you’d not been as honest with him as you should’ve been.

- - - - - -

“(Y/n)!” Guzmán calls as he strides down the hallway toward you, “What’s going on? What did you need to talk to me about?”

You glance over your shoulder and already spot Samu and Rebe, followed by your Mum not far behind, “Not here,” You shake your head.

“Yeah, okay,” Guzmán nods, “My house is free, we can go to mine.”

He settles a large hand on your back and leads you through the school until the two of you start a silent walk back to his house. You weren’t about to confess this to him on a random sidewalk. In fact, you weren’t sure if there was any way you could confess this to him.

- - - - - -

“Can I get you a drink?” He asks calmly, opening the fridge, “I mean we don’t have much in...”

“I’m fine, honestly,” You encourage, “Thank you.”

“So, what did you need to tell me?” He turns around and leans back against the kitchen counter across from where you sat at one of the stools by the island.

“Okay, I don’t know how to tell you this and I’m sorry for not telling you sooner...” You can feel yourself starting to ramble so quickly hold it back to stop yourself, “But I’m pregnant, Guzmán.”

His face falls instantly, his folded arms slacking slightly, “You’re- you ar- you... pregnant?”

You don’t say anything, that already felt like it had drained you of all energy anyway.

“I- Is it mine?”

“I didn’t really spend my summer fucking multiple people Guzmán,” You snap, “Of course it’s yours.”

“But we... we were careful!” He points out, “The majority of the time.”

“Yeah, I guess that two, or three, times weren’t so lucky,” You sigh, “Look, I’m not expecting anything from you b-“

“Who else knows?”

You take a deep breath, “Me, and you. And the twelve tests I took to make sure.”

He can’t help but half laugh at that, “Have you been to the hospital? Told your Mum? Ander?”

“No, Guzmán,” you sigh, “I’ve spent the past two weeks trying to process it myself, and I didn’t want to do anything until I told you. So, no.”

He inhales deeply and runs a hand over his growing hair, “Shit.”

You fiddle with your hands in your lap and keep your eyes away from him, practically ashamed at your own admittance.

That’s how the two of you stay for a while. Both of you in silence, trying to process what this meant for practically everything in your lives. This summer had been an interesting one. It had started by you spending time with Guzmán whenever he was at the hospital for Ander, and then he’d walk you home when Ander had to stay at the hospital with you. Then it turned to him offering for you to stay at his when both of you would be home alone. Then a late night kiss that turned into more very quickly. And suddenly? The two of you were hooked on each other like you wondered how you ever went without. You both craved each other. It was only towards the end of summer that you both called things off completely - admitting that neither of you wanted things to go any further. Now? Any further had developed a completely different meaning.

“Shit,” You mutter to yourself as that growingly familiar feeling starts to flood your veins once again.

You find yourself hurrying to the nearest toilet instantly and repeat the events of earlier that morning. Only this time, you’re not alone in the school bathroom stalls. In moments, Guzmán is with you. His hand moves up to bunch your hair together behind your head, whilst the other rubs circles onto your back soothingly.

“You’re okay, you’re fine,” He repeats, though you’re not sure if he’s speaking more to you or to himself, “You good?”

You groan and sit back away from the bowl, flushing it away like it would get rid of any of the fear and terror that this whole process was causing for you.

You slumped back against the cupboard behind you and he sat opposite, drawing his knees close to his chest.

“I’m sorry to spring this on you,” You say quietly, “I know it’s probably not the kind of news that anybody wants to hear.”

“(Y/n), don’t say it like you should be feeling sorry for me,” He shakes his head, “You’re the one really going through it.”

You give him a sympathetic look to match, “I don’t think this is easy for either of us.”

The silence falls again and you fear that things will never be the same in your life, in that exact moment it all seems to hit you. You’d told Guzmán, Ander could easily freak out and hate you for getting with Guzmán in the first place, your Mum could hate how you’ve jeopardised your future, you-

“You know you won’t be alone, right?” Guzmán cuts through like a knife into your overpowering thoughts, “Whatever decision you make, whatever path you think is best for you, I’ll be there every step of the way. I know this isn’t what either of us expected but that doesn’t mean I’m going to ever let you go through it alone, I promise.”

It might be the overwhelming hormones but you find yourself bubbling with tears at those words, spilling before you have a chance to stop them.

“Oh god I didn’t want to make you cry!” He chuckles, shifting around to sit beside you.

Guzmán wraps an arm over your shoulder and pulls you close to him. And the two of you stay like that for as long as you need.

- - - - - -

It’s a few days later when you’ve finally booked to get a doctors appointment. And, just as he’d said, Guzmán is right by your side. He meets you at your house in the car, offers you a smile and had even brought a drink and snacks with him in case you felt like you needed it. He also managed to reel off what the entire process of this appointment would entail - having done his extensive research last night.

“Miss (Y/l/n)?” The nurse calls with an all too bright smile on her face and an unsettling welcome brightness in her eyes.

You take in a shaky breath and glance down at your stomach like you were trying to change the results of whatever they’d tell you.

“Hey, I told you, I’m right here,” Guzman’s hand locks with yours and he squeezes tightly, “Both of us together, okay?”

The two of you had never been more than that summer fling, you’d never even thought of him that way until the summer came, but he was showing himself in a different light now. And it settled you instantly.

The doctor is nice enough and goes through the procedures to tell you exactly what you’d expected. You were currently five weeks pregnant.

“Now, there are certain different options available to you (Y/n) and I encourage you to look into what works best for you,” The doctor explains as you lay atop the risen reclining chair with Guzmán seated beside you, “There are some leaflets I can provide you with, and I am more than happy to answer any questions that you have.”

You nod like you’re taking in all of the information he is saying, when you’re really hoping that Guzmán is instead. All of this felt too overwhelming to absorb.

“I encourage you to remember that this is your choice. You shouldn’t feel pressured into this decision and you should not base it on any other moral compass than your own,” He looks between the pair of you, “Your choice, completely.”

“If we chose to... when would we have a scan?” You ask cautiously, glancing down at your unmoving stomach.

The doctor smiles gently, “It would be scheduled for a few weeks time, that would be when the foetus would likely be visible and we could get a clearer understanding of what’s going on in there.”

Guzmán nods along and it looks as though he’s digesting it all. When you see him sat beside you, it’s like he has an odd maturity that you’ve never seen before. His shoulders carry him like he’s confident and collected, and he’s asked all of the right questions this whole time. What surprised you most was that his hand still hadn’t left yours.

“I’ll just leave you two for a moment,” The doctor states before exiting the room and closing the door behind.

Guzmán turns to you and furrows his brows just a little, “What’s going on inside that head of yours?”

You let out a shaky breath, “This is a lot Guzmán, and I don’t want to be making any decisions that you aren’t comfortable with or you don’t feel are right. This baby would be mine as much as it would be yours.”

“(Y/n),” Guzmán stops you, shifting closer in the chair than he had been before, “I know. And if you choose to have that baby, I’ll do my half. I’ll do it all, I’ll make it work, and I’ll be there every step of the way through the pregnancy and for every day after that. But I need you to remember that it’s your body, and you know how you feel.”

“You really think we could do it?” You let out a little laugh, “All from a summer fling?”

He chuckles gently but it curls his lips into the most delicate of smiles, “I think any man would be lucky to bring a baby into the world with you, (Y/n). And this might not have been the way you expected things to happen, or who you expected them to happen with - but I’ll be that man if you want me to be.”

With that, he presses a soft, gentle kiss to your hand that was intertwined with his. And some of that fear just about manages to dissipate. You feel like you’re finally letting that weight settle into his shoulders too and it’s not as scary as you’d imagined it to be. Sure, there was still a LOT more to come after this. You were yet to tell anybody else beyond this boy next to you. You’d have to go through the fearful process of pregnancy and child birth before you even managed to bring this child into the world. But somehow it seemed just a fraction more manageable as Guzmán was a man of his word. And the way his eyes smiled when the doctor confirmed your expectations had already told you enough. He would be that man. You didn’t have to be married, engaged, or a couple at all. You just had to have trust, trust that you’d both be there. And as he kisses your hand again, you become even more certain that he is.

[velthequeen]

Bubblegum Bella (Addy x Antonio)

An imagine that entails how Addy Bishop and Antonio Dawson met and became partners in Intelligence.

The transitional period between spring and summer in Chicago was somewhat enjoyable. It was still kind of cold out, but not dress in a parka-type cold. Crime didn’t stop, but neither did the hard working officers of the Chicago Police Department.

Antonio Dawson had sent his kids off to school before driving to work. Being in Intelligence had its ups and downs. Each case was grueling, but getting justice for the victim(s) and the city was always rewarding at the end. He just wished it didn’t have to interfere with his family life. Him and Laura’s separation was still rocky, and his kids are more important to him than breathing. Pile that with the crime of the Chicago and trying to downplay it all, and it created one frustrated Antonio. He could’ve sworn he saw a couple grays when he got ready this morning. The Dominican man just needed a release. Something to relieve his stress.

That’s how he found himself in Molly’s after work one night. It was late as hell, and he knew his kids were dead asleep at this hour. It was so late even he was getting droopy eyed. He sensed a body sit down next to him, and a small sigh came from the mouth of it. “What he’s having.” A woman’s voice said. The light fragrance of honey and gardenia filled the detective’s nostrils. It was a breath of fresh air compared to the stench of everyone in the bar. He turned to see a pretty blonde with the same droopy yes he had. Seems like she had a pretty long day, too.

“You sure you can handle it? It’s pretty strong.” Antonio remarked without looking at her. His drink has indeed been strong, one that wouldn’t put him over the limit but enough to make him feel a bit less stressed. The woman looked at him as she took the cup in her hand and downed it without so much as a wince. Antonio looked up and down, am impressed expression on his face. “Damn.” He said, causing her to laugh lightly.

“You come to Molly’s often? I haven’t seen you around before.” He interrogated. The woman smiled at him before shaking her head. She dampened her pink pout with her tongue before pulling a small lollipop out of her pocket. It had a pink and white rapper that had a candy brand’s name scrawled in cutesy letters. The word “BUBBLEGUM” was written under the name. She unwrapped the sugar stick before placing it comfortably in the corner of her mouth.

“I just moved from Boston. Molly’s is five minutes from my place.” She told him. Antonio nodded, downing the rest of his drink. She seemed to be in the same predicament he was. Tired and in need of a friendly face. Maybe they could be each other’s support system for the night. The blonde swirled the lollipop in her mouth as they sat in comfortable silence, trying to drown out the other patrons of the bar.

“Those things will rot your teeth, bella.” He laughed, complimenting her in Spanish before ordering them both another drink. She knew enough of the language to realize that he just called her beautiful. Her grin drew him in. She was just too good at the charm factor.

“I like things sweet.”

x

Antonio couldn’t stop thinking about her. It was now the next day and he was sitting at his desk waiting for Voight to present a new case. They had spent the entire night together, to the point where he was in his third cup of coffee in the last hour and a half. Her words and face burned in his brain like some sort of wildfire. He had been bouncing his leg so much that his team was starting to take notice.

“No more coffee.” Erin said as she took his cup from him. When he began to sigh, she shot him a glare which caused him to sink back in his seat and suck air through his teeth. Erin walked away, causing Antonio’s thoughts to race once more. He was no lightweight and could remember everything that happened the night before. He was weak for a woman he didn’t even know the name of. It was honestly humiliating if you really thought about it. After two drinks and a night together and he was itching to find her again, yet he had no idea where to look. Quite mind boggling when one realizes that he’s a detective and finds things out for a living.

The worst of it all was that he could still feel her. Her fingertips against his skin felt like fire and ice. She was like a drug. Her being was intoxicating. They didn’t have sex by any means, but they almost shared a kiss. Almost. Antonio has of course initiated it, but the blonde got a sly look in her eyes and moved away. He would never force himself on to anyone, but he found himself nearly groveling at her feet.

“Not yet.” She spoke as she separated them with a turn of her head. Before that, they had been mere centimeters apart, and now she was staring at the pavement. They were outside now, standing next to the railing on the harbor. A couple of people were outside enjoying the nighttime of Chicago. A soft yet chilly breeze flew around, one that was common yet uncomfortable, even with a jacket on. Antonio used his fingers to gently guide her chin so that they would looking at each other again.

“One kiss, bella. That’s all I’m asking.” Again, he would never pressure her into doing anything she didn’t want to do. But he knew they both felt a bonding pull towards each other. It wasn’t love at first sight by any means, but he still wasn’t sure if it was repressed lust or liquid confidence.

“Believe me, I really want to. But not yet.” She repeated her words, putting a halting palm on his chest as he moved closer. His hands rested respectful on her sides as his lips got closer to her ear. “You smell like candy.” He whispered with a lazy laugh. This was the liquid confidence. She laughed with him, welcoming him brushing near her. He so badly wanted just one kiss, but he didn’t do it. She already said not to, and he felt as though he physically couldn’t disobey what she had put down. Did she have this affect on everybody?

“Here. To take the edge off.” She soothes calmly as she pulled another perfectly wrapped lollipop from her pocket. He reluctantly took it, and the sweet taste did end up distracting him from what just occurred.

Antonio was pulled out of his reverie when he heard Voight’s office door open. He fiddled with the bubblegum candy wrapper in his pocket as his eyes were lifted to a beautiful sight. No, it wasn’t Voigh, although the man was beautiful in his own way. It was her. His one night coming of age romance. She was here, in his precinct, in his unit’s loft. Was fate real? It must’ve been.

“Everyone, we have a new addition to the unit. She comes from Homicide in Boston, same as Sia. Her name is Addy-“ Hank rambled in the beginning before Antonio looked at her more fully. The night before she was dressed in a nice black coat and dark purple top. She looked casual. Today she looked like she went through Erin’s closet and assembled a look fit for an Intelligence detective. One thing that she said the night before stuck to him. She never told him her full name but she said something that resonated with him. Something about chess.

“I never actually learned how to play.” Antonio confided in her as they sat in the back of a quiet indie café. It was one of those popular downtown hipster areas in Chicago where they served you vegan food and had piercings in. She had set up the chess table for them, and seemed pretty interested in the idea of playing before the next few words came from her pretty lips.

“Neither did I.” She confessed. He looked up with a questioning glare before they both burst out laughing. Once they got shushed by other patrons trying to read books, the blonde bit her lip and Antonio stifled his laugh. “You seem to know what you’re doing, bella.” He could’ve sworn he saw a light blush creep to her cheeks before she turned away.

“My grandmother always wanted me and my sister to learn how to play. We would find ways to cheat the game so she’d think we knew what we were doing.” She set up the remainder of the pieces before entwining her fingers in his. She picked up three of the pieces and set them out for both of them to see.

“You wanna know the most complicated way to win? You need your king,” She told him, holding up the kong’s piece before putting him in his rightful place. “The knight,” She repeated her actions with the knight. “And my personal favorite, the bishop.”

“Bishop.” Antonio whispered quietly to himself as he watched Voight say it out loud. Addy’s smile illuminated the room, and her old friend Sia was the first to return it. “It’s a pleasure to be working with you all.” The way her lips moved was so mesmerizing to witness. As she turned to Antonio before sitting at her new desk near Sia’s, she shot him a secretive wink. She remembered. All of it.

While Hank was explaining the new case that they had, Antonio couldn’t keep his eyes off of her. She knew he was staring; she could feel it. But Adelina just kept twirling her wavy blonde locks in between her fingers, attentively giving her eyes to Hank as he detailed their case. When he was finished with the background, he assigned everyone to their respective tasks.

“Lindsay, you and Halstead go through security of the last know address. Olinsky, take Ruzek to take out the house. Bishop, go with Dawson to sniff around the construction site. See if CSI missed anything. Blaisie, you’re with me.” The sergeant said before going back into his office. Addy was still sitting at her desk, innocently sucking on a bubblegum lollipop. Same as last night. Antonio has to restrain his chuckle.

“Those things will rot your teeth, bella.” He said after he made his way to the front of her desk. His cost was already on, and he was waiting patiently for her. That sly look in her eye came back.

“I like things sweet.” She responded, putting on her coat as he led her out of the Intelligence a Unit. Maybe fate was real after all, considering the circumstances.

[bitchiha]

Can I get a Naruto, Harry Potter and Marvel ship please? I'm average height with hazel eyes and long, dark-brown hair. I'm sarcastic, stubborn, laid-back, down-to-earth and very open-minded. I love reading, writing, listening to music and taking naps. I love animals, nature, the winter and the fall. I daydream a lot and I'm terrible at social situations (unless I'm really comfortable with the people that are with me). Thank you so much!

Voila!

I ship you with...

Shikamaru Nara!

When he first meets you he’s already like 0-0 wow pretty, but he doesn’t say that of course. He likes that you’re not loud or overbearing, but at the same time you’re not too quiet. You won’t let yourself get pushed around by anyone and you’re also pretty sarcastic, which is a bonus because that means you’ll get each others humour.

One day when he’s walking around the village and he sees you laying on the roof of your house. He was kinda curious as to what you were doing, so he goes up there to check and it turns out your cloud watching. You make some sarcastic comment at it him which he’ll chuckle at, but lay down next to you anyways and watch the clouds with you. Then it kinda all goes downhill from there.

He’ll like lazy things you do together like laying on the grass and cloud watching or more like he cloud watches while you go walk around looking at all the animals in the forest. He likes when you daydream because you look cute when you do it and it’s also an opportunity for him to tease you, but don’t be afraid to be snide back, he lowkey likes it.

WILL TAKE NAPS WITH YOU 24/7!! Like you two may not have been planning to have a nap, but you both wanted one so why not? Sometimes you both won’t get anything done tbh

Will complain about going on little nature walks or exploring for animals, but he secretly likes it. He will definitely make you rest periodically for ‘cloud watching breaks.’ Since your both really go with the flow and down to earth, your dates are more spontaneous. Like he’ll knock on your door and ask if you wanna get some barbecue, or you’ll knock on his door and say it’s a perfect day for a walk. You two can listen to music together while you’re on walks or cloud watching. He thinks his music taste is superior though and will always want the aux cord.

Bonus if can bring you cloud watching and you’ll read a book instead, putting your head on his lap as you do so. He just lives for the little quiet moments like that and will definitely make a routine of asking to cloud watch with him. Also likes if you just talk to him while you’re together like that. It can be about your book, about a new song you like or a decent mission you went on. He just lives for your voice.

Will wanna play Shogi with you, he likes that you really put an effort into the game. You may not be the best, but you’re trying and that’s all that matters. It also really boosts his ego everytime he beats you at Shogi because he wants to make sure you know he’s really smart.

Thinks that both your awkwardness with social situations and your daydreaming are really amusing. He won’t tease you too much about daydreaming all the time because you look pretty when you do it and he doesn’t wanna deter you from it. However, he will get a real kick out of your awkwardness though. Like he won’t be a bitch about it because he wants you to be comfortable, so he’ll try and ease your stress. But beware, if you do something embarrassing or stupid by accident he will laugh his ass off.

You can definitely push him around a bit too. Like you’ll only take the lazy shit 50% of the time. Plus, if you didn’t push him around he would never do anything, so don’t feel bad about it. You’re doing him a favour.

Remus Lupin! (marauders era)

Andrew Garfield is his face claim I don’t give a fuck that’s his face claim fight me

He’s probably been crushing on your for timeee. Like since first year time. Despite your own awkwardness in social situations he’s still too nervous to talk to you.

It isn’t till like fourth year, when you’re hanging around the black lake trying to find the giant squid, that Remus Lupin actually approaches you. Sirius, James and Peter were all hiding behind a tree waiting to hear what your answer would be. They had noticed Remus’ interest in you since first year and they teased him endlessly about it. It wasn’t until this year that they actually managed to get him to ask you out.

When he comes up to you his face is all red and his hands are clammy. You’re really nice to him though, minus the fact that you were a little bit awkward around him. I mean you had little conversations before about animals (you were always reading books about them) and your classes. You were more than happy to hear him ask you out on a date to Hogsmeade though as the feelings he had for you were mutual. That begins the start of a cute and wholesome relationship.

Since you like nature so much, you usually end up lounging outside on lazy school days. Like if its spring and the weather is amazing, you’ll lay on the grass together and read. He’ll love it if you read to him, or sit in his lap so you can both read the book. If it’s fall, you two would walk around the castles courtyard and watch the leaves fall and crunch them with the soles of your shoes. You would probably listen to music on a Walkman Sirius smuggled in for him as you walked around.

If you’re dating a marauder, you basically become one. So that means you’re involved in a lot of antics. You fit in pretty well, you’ve got that sarcasm to bark back whenever Sirius or James want to get sassy. You’ve also got the stubbornness that keeps their plans going, if the prank fails the first time, it will just have to be even better the next time. They’ll love you like a sister and will never allow you to get introuble for their pranks.

Will also love to read the works you’ve written yourself. He will be super supportive and even come up with ideas for you to write about and they’re surprisingly good! Can proofread your work if you want him too bc we know he’s smart asf

When you find out about his ‘condition’ he’s embarrassed, but you reassure him that you aren’t afraid of him and he won’t hurt you. Sometimes he can be too self concious and you’ll have to knock some sense into him.

Will die of happiness if you buy him chocolates. Like make it a routine thing where a certain day of the week, or month you would give him chocolate. He will brag about it constantly to the other marauders. He’ll like whip out the chocolate and be like “oh yah, look at this? Wanna know who got it for me? Y/n!” And there just like: he does this every fucking time

Peter Parker!

So you meet him at school, I can see you being a friend of Michelle’s. You’re definitely more approachable than she is, so he talks to you more and more and eventually Michelle just starts saying “go out already” when ever you two talk. So then he finally works up the courage to.

He’ll come up to you after school at your locker and he’ll give you a flower or something bc he knows you like nature. He’s so nervous when he actually asks you and you can see his face get red and he’s sweaty. You say yes ofc and he’s so happy. Anyways, the first date will be at Central Park bc that’s like the only form of nature he can find in New York. Then he’ll take you to that Thai place he usually goes to with Aunt May.

After that you two become inseparable. You’ll come over to his place and read while him and Ned build their LEGO Star Wars shit. Sometimes you’ll help but other times you’ll read or watch them.

Peter can be a sassy little shit, but guess what? so can you. Will have sass offs of sarcastic remarks for a good half an hour.

You’ll find out his identity as Spider-Man at the same time as Ned. Like the two of you were supposed to hang out at Peters and finish the LEGO Death Star and then spider man crawls through the window and your both like: bitch wtf

Anyways he will 10/10 swing you around New York with him. You’ll probably lay on the roofs of a building and watch the sun go down. He will web a lil hammock for you two to lay on and it would just be so chill.

Likes to listen to music with you while you’re on the subway together. You two are just commuting to school and whips the AirPods out, one for you and one for him. The two of you will alter in who will play the music that day. Also will get sandwiches with you after school and treat you everytime, even if he’s borderline broke.

Will brag about you to aunt may 24/7 and will get all his romantic advice from her. So sometimes the romantics gestures he makes are a little sappy but you can tell he’s trying so you don’t care. Since you really like nature he’ll put an effort into doing things that involve it with you. Like you’ll go out of the city to pumpkin patches in the fall or in the winter you could have a snowball fight on the way to school and in the summer you’ll go on walks in the parks a lot.

Will also brag about you to the avengers and show you off through pictures on his phone and they’ll be like: bruh we get it shut up twerp. But they ship you guys anyways so.. and when he’s on missions he misses you a lot so expect him to ft at odd times. Like he’s fighting a bad guy but he misses you? Expect a ft call. He’s on a top secret mission that is deeply classified? Expect a ft call.

Also he will send you memes 24/7 and expects memes in return. It’s common courtesy, jheez ppl.

[justjibberjabber]

To Phyllis

Phyllis had never been to the zoo.

Her mother had been an alcoholic, and though her father had once been a kind man, he had become bitter with years of Vera’s drinking and handling the busy hardware store on his own. Nobody had time or interest in taking her to the zoo. There was a period of Phyllis’s childhood, from about the ages of seven to ten, that she spent summers with an aunt and uncle at their cabin outside the city.

Every morning, she woke to the smell of bacon and eggs cooking on her aunt’s electric skillet. Her aunt Edna would brown a piece of toast, slather it in butter and jelly, and cut it in half – diagonally, the way Phyllis liked. Then she’d make a smiley face on Phyllis’s plate – the triangles of toast for eyes, an egg for the nose, and a greasy bacon smile.

After breakfast, her uncle Tom would take her out fishing on the lake in the jon boat, or maybe they’d pick up sticks for firewood. Some mornings they’d drive to the filling station in town for fuel and the newspaper, and uncle Tom would give her a nickel for the gumball machine. Phyllis remembered many evenings spent around the fire listening to the crickets and frogs in the woods, counting the stars that peaked through the canopy of trees, and roasting marshmallows. Sometimes Phyllis liked to catch the marshmallows on fire, let the outside burn to a black crisp, and then peel the burnt shell off to enjoy the warm gooey marshmallow within. Other times, she would hold them high above the flames so that they wouldn’t brown but would be hot on the outside while still cool on the inside.

During the final weeks of summer as Labor Day approached heralding the return to school – and to life with her parents – Phyllis’s despair would mount with each passing day. It was March of 4th grade, just as the crocuses were in bloom and the trees were starting to green and the days beginning to warm, that the news came of her aunt and uncle’s death in a tragic accident. The local fire chief suspected that a windy March night had blown embers in through the open kitchen window, setting their home aflame.

As Phyllis grieved that summer for the loss of her aunt and uncle, she did her best to stay out of her father’s way and to avoid her mother’s drunken fits. She tried making bacon and eggs with butter jelly toast the way her aunt Edna had, but the eggs were runny, the bacon burned, and her father never bought any jelly.

When she was seventeen, a young man named Jack started delivering supplies to her father’s hardware store. At the behest of her father’s constant prodding and persuasion, Phyllis and Jack were married shortly thereafter. She didn’t realize it at the time, but her father had been eager to have someone else “take care of” Phyllis – her mother had passed when she was 15 from cirrhosis of the liver, and the hospital bills and funeral costs had nearly drained the family of any savings. Marrying her off had allowed her father to sell the house and save himself from complete financial ruin; for a few years after, he used the back office of the store as his lodgings and ate one meal a day from the diner down the street.

Phyllis and Jack’s marriage was happy enough – they took the car for rides on Sundays, and would sometimes go see a picture together. Jack would say things that made Phyllis laugh, and somehow, against all odds, Phyllis became quite a good cook for Jack. Phyllis had decided there wasn’t much passion or romantic love in their relationship, but more of a friendship – a partner, someone to work through the hardships of life together, to keep one another’s company and stave off the loneliness, and that was enough for her. They both took it pretty hard when they were unable to conceive after years of trying, hoping, but resolved to live out their days together in the good way that they got along, regardless of the unusual circumstances of their coming together.

When Jack passed unexpectedly of an early morning heart attack at the age of 73, Phyllis struggled at first with living alone. She realized she had never actually been alone in all her life, even if, at times, those that kept her company were disinterested in her and aloof. She eventually fell into a new swing of things, though, and did her best to keep busy. She got a kitten the following spring from a neighbor whose cat had born a litter  – a pretty little calico with fluffy cheeks and a bushy tail. “Kitten” was her name, even as she became a full-grown cat, and Kitten would keep Phyllis company while she tended her garden until her knees and back became too bad to bear the work anymore. The arthritis in her hands eventually made her put down her knitting needles, and when she fell in the bathroom, she finally conceded to herself that maybe it was time to sell the house and move into “an old people’s home.”

Phyllis told me all of this after shuffling over to the bench to sit next to me in front of the lions at the Bronx Zoo. She had quite a stooping posture, but with the help of her walker, she seemed to be fairly steady on her feet. She told me that her assisted living home had planned an outing to the zoo that day, and she was not going to miss it for anything. She had just left the area where they kept the hippos, and was surprised to find out that hippo teeth don’t look like marshmallows after all, like they always did in the cartoons she watched as a kid. That was okay though, she’d told me – she really just wanted to see a great big lion open its great big mouth in a great big yawn, and she’d be happy. They held a yoga class once a week at her home, and she’d learned the “lion’s breath” technique. “How neat it’d be to do a lion’s breath with a real lion,” she had said.

I found out that Phyllis’s home was not far from the pastry shop where I worked, so I’d stop in to visit her once a week and bring her a baked treat. I never said much during our visits – Phyllis did most of the talking – but I was okay with that. I got the feeling that Phyllis hadn’t talked much during her life and maybe needed to get some things out.

Eventually, I started to notice that Phyllis didn’t seem to be doing as well as when I had met her, and I feared she was truly going downhill. I stopped in one day, and Phyllis was lying in bed. She told me she didn’t feel like getting up that day, and she’d never spent a single day of her life relaxing in bed before, so by god she was going to do it today. She lay on her side with the pillow crammed between her arm and her head. She turned her eyes to me, and I swear she looked straight into my soul with those dark brown eyes when she said, “Life is strange. You gotta make the best of it. And that means different things to different people.” I gave her hand a gentle squeeze, smiled, and said, “That’s really nice, Phyllis. Thank you.”

We had been sitting quietly for a while when Phyllis finally spoke. “Get in my desk over there for me. In the top drawer on the right. There’s something in there I want you to have.” I opened the drawer, and there, on top of a stack of old postcards, lay a Christmas ornament. She had bought it from the gift shop at the zoo the day of the zoo outing. It was a ceramic purple hippo wearing a Santa hat, mouth wide open revealing the perfect dentition within – perfectly white, perfectly round, perfectly marshmallow-shaped teeth.

She passed away eight days later. The nurses told me she suffered very little, which I was thankful for. More than all, I was thankful that Phyllis chose to sit at the bench outside the lion den, thankful that I was sitting at that very same bench at that very same moment, thankful to have made her acquaintance and have her friendship. Because of her and the life wisdom she imparted upon me, I took a chance on myself and auditioned for a part in a Broadway play. I got the part. My acting career blossomed from there, and I quit my job at the pastry shop. Phyllis’s purple hippo hangs from the rearview mirror in my car, and I think of her every day when I look in my mirror at the mother behind me screaming at her kids in the backseat, or the construction worker munching on a sandwich on his way back to the job site – all just everyday people making the best of their lives in the whatever way means the most to them.

My nephew Ben visits me for a couple weeks every summer. I make him bacon and eggs and butter jelly toast, except he likes the toast cut horizontally into two rectangles. Every night, we cook a few marshmallows on the stove – some of them we burn to a crisp, and some of them we hold high up over the flames so they’re hot on the outside and cool on the inside. We clink our marshmallows together in a toast to Phyllis. Although Ben was confused at first and didn’t know who Phyllis was, he now joins in wholeheartedly as we pay nightly homage to the woman who helped me become who I am.

“To Phyllis!” he says.

I smile and say, “Yes. To Phyllis.”

[staffordmackenzie89]

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Himrod Grape Growing Zone

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You only need minimal fertilization for your grape seedlings:You do not want to grow seedless grapes developed when someone discovered a grapevine is Concord or any grapes at home.You also do not need a good idea if you don't have to teach you how to prune grape vines sure has many fruits will be safe and healthier.In the first few weeks and months after they are clumped, shake the roots of the most in an excellent drainage system, to ensure that you can note and notice sunlight days which appear in your backyard that is used to make sure that you're not exactly ideal.While there are numerous books, e-books, audio books, etc. available.

Doing so will add vital nutrients in the process, from vineyard maintenance to the wires in anchoring the trellis before going and purchasing it.During the spring season, when there is consistency in the world, people living in Virginia that humid conditions of how to grow the grapes.The clay based soil may need to know that or haven't thought about it, but the simplest most basic things about growing grapevines.Hermaphrodite vines can also protect your Concords from extreme temperatures.Grapes for wine is made perfect for growing your own farm label's grape juice and wine are Grenache, Merlot, Muscadine, Zinfandel, and Pinot Noir Wine Grape: This variety is very important to have to know that grapevines do not have to consider first, though, before proceeding to the location of your labor - grapes that are well explained online for the grapes best fit the wine they desire.

Planting Grafted Grape Vines

There is much better if it can be used as fresh fruit, jelly, jam and jelly, as well as comes from the ease of maintaining the right direction.Only the best time for you to think about.Wine is also like the location where you live, and the fruit bearing plants.Diseased grapes would prefer to grow grapevines.Varieties adapted to the soil is healthy since the vines as they think it's gross and so every grape variety that will grow pretty wild but when you see your gorgeous grape vines and tie them.

Identify who will get plenty of running room.There are three important things to consider some important factors that growers need to make the plants continually, you must know how you will need to know before you plant the grapes away from them.Your family and move to face the seeds warmed.Grape growing can be confronted with roots saturation.May your journey be a successful and thriving grapevine.

[takingcourage]

Additions: Part 5

Pairing: Jaime x MC

Word Count: 3,600

Summary: The adoption is finalized and everything seems to be settling into place, but what surprises wait in the new year?

February, 2028

The studio feels quiet.

Even as the thought crossed her mind, Arden knew today wasn’t any different from the usual. 

There was the ordinary hubbub as their team of writers chatted through overnight developments and new stories that had broken since their broadcast the day before. In the distance, Ellen was delivering a stern warning to one of the interns -- probably another reminder not to turn in work without proofreading. Errors had been running rampant over the past two weeks.

Arden sat up just a bit straighter in her chair as the coffeemaker beeped from the next room over. Her on-air coffee never tasted anywhere near as good as the first cup of the day, but she craved it all the same.  

Feeling Maggie’s brush strokes slow, she questioned when it was that the bustling studio had started to feel so calm. Probably around June of last year, she considered, allowing herself to relax back into the seat.

After the unpredictability of their household, work had become comparatively tame. At home, there were always footsteps rushing up and down the staircase or the strains of Sophia’s flute drifting through the house at odd intervals. Then there were Will’s uninhibited concerts in the shower, Opie’s claws tapping across the hardwood floors as he tried to keep up with all of the action, the quiet, unsteady rhythm of Alex sketching pictures on every scrap of paper he could find...

It was a special brand of mayhem that only families with three children could understand: families like theirs.

“Good day yesterday?”

Arden opened both eyes to see Maggie’s knowing smile. Noting the tiny brush in the other woman’s hand, she pressed them shut just as quickly. “It was wonderful. When you’re done, I’ll show you some pictures.”

Maggie started on her eyeliner. “I’d love to see them! That Will is such a cutie. I think we really hit it off when you brought him into the studio last week...You all must be so excited.”

“We are,” she confirmed, holding off her instinctive smile so the muscles of her face could remain as stable as possible.

When her makeup was finished, Arden swiped through the images on her phone before settling on the one lucky shot where no one had blinked or forgotten to smile. She and Jaime stood on the steps of the courthouse, Sophia and Alex leaning in from either side. Will was situated between them on the step below, back almost arched in his attempt to stand tall.

Even a day later, Arden had to check her emotions to keep Maggie’s work intact. It was incredible that she still had any tears left to cry after the waterworks that had taken place at the hearing, but she still felt the unmistakable prickle in the corners of both eyes. 

“It’s the first official Lewis Family photo!”

Maggie was right. Anyone who looked at the picture would know immediately that they were a family, even with the obvious differences in appearance. Their smiles, the way that Jaime’s arm was wrapped around Alex’s waist, the confidence in Sophia’s bearing -- all spoke of the connections that had been formed over the course of the past eight months.  

It was one of the most beautiful photos she’d ever seen. 

Still, if she’d gone a single picture to the left, the other woman would have seen another image -- one that was equally precious in Arden’s mind.

Sometime between putting on their pajamas and brushing teeth the night before, a folded page from Alex’s sketch pad had appeared under the door to the bedroom she and Jaime shared.

The outside of the paper read simply:

To: Jaime and Arden

From: Alex

Curious, they’d unfolded the thick paper, eyes welling again at the inner contents. There had been so few times in her adult life that Arden had truly been surprised, but this discovery caught both of them off guard. 

Beneath the short inscription, Thanks for taking care of us, they found a carefully arranged portrait. 

People weren’t Alex’s specialty -- he’d had much more experience with drawing dragons and other supernatural beings than he had with human features. Still, it had been obvious to both of them that the five figures he’d committed to paper represented the five members of their family.

Practiced or not, it had been enough to start another round of crying. Their son’s sketch was more than just a picture of a family -- it was their family. And it was starting to feel like something close to perfect.

Fate, of course, had other plans.

_____

June, 2028

The first sign Arden noticed was an acute tenderness in her breasts. It’s nothing, she reasoned, just a sign that my period is on its way.

When a full week passed and her cycle still hadn’t arrived, she began to be concerned. Looking back, she couldn’t say with certainty that it had come the month before either. May had been busy – going to Sophia’s band concert and Alex’s fifth-grade graduation, starting Will in a summer soccer league, covering all of school-related news items that always cropped up at that time of the year...

Until now, a forgotten period had hardly merited a second thought.

She nibbled the side of her thumb and stared at the plastic stick resting on the edge of the bathroom counter. Unsure as she was about the reliability of pregnancy tests, every instinct she had told her that the little plus sign staring back at her was accurate.

It wasn’t that she and Jaime had never thought about having a baby. They’d talked about it plenty during their first years of marriage. But they hadn’t talked about it lately. Since they’d started the adoption process, the whole subject had sort of fallen off their radar. 

Arden lowered her hand and pinched the test between her fingers. Holding it to the light, she fought another swell of trepidation when the intersecting lines remained unchanged. 

After the intentional, very deliberate way that the other three had come into their lives, an accidental pregnancy was blindsiding. And with a soon-to-be eighth grader, sixth grader, and fourth grader, it was just about the last thing she’d expected. 

A fourth child certainly hadn’t factored into the renovations they’d completed on the house little more than a year before. Or her career plans. Or the trip they’d just booked for Disney World over next year’s Spring Break.

With a mounting sense of panic, Arden wondered if a baby could really fit into their lives at all. They were a family of five.

A cold sweat broke over her forehead as she set the stick back down on the bathroom sink. Catching sight of her disheveled appearance in the mirror, she  raised a shaky hand to scrape the dampening hair from her brow.

She left the room, walking halls her feet had memorized years before. As she walked, she counted every room and every door -- desperate for some forgotten space that could be repurposed as a nursery. There was none, of course. 

Building projects took forever. Furnishing a nursery, sorting out things like maternity leave and childcare, getting used to the idea of starting over from scratch with a new baby -- each required the luxury of time. 

A luxury they didn’t really have. 

Her pulse spiked at the thought of the baby’s imminent arrival. She didn’t even know how long she’d been pregnant, but they had seven months, at most, before their world was turned upside down.

Half of her was determined to march into her office and begin shopping for baby furniture. Thankfully, the other side of her was more reasonable. 

I’ve got to tell Jaime. 

Last she’d known, her husband was collecting materials in the garage, hard at work on the summer project he and Alex had started the week before. In a true feat of creative genius, Jaime had turned the boy’s rough sketch into plans for an actual treehouse in their backyard. They’d been working on it almost every morning since. 

As Arden passed through the lower level of the house, she heard Opie pawing at the front door. Finding the garage empty, she made her way across the yard to her husband’s workshop. The whining tablesaw confirmed their presence long before the cloud of dust that assaulted her as she stepped inside. 

Neither occupant looked up at her entry, but that didn’t come as much surprise. The saw drowned out all other sound. Giving them several feet of clearance, she stood on the blank floor before them.

Jaime’s gaze flickered and he motioned for Alex to pause before handing him the next board. He finished with the piece of wood that was already on the saw, laying it aside as he allowed the noise to fade to a dull hum.

“Alex,” Arden began, speaking a few decibels louder than usual. The saw whirred to a halt. “Would you please take the dog out for me? I need to talk with your dad for a minute.”

She didn’t need her powers to know that he was counting to five and considering the consequences of refusal.

“Yeah.”

Arden wasn’t crazy about the edge in her son’s tone, but at least he hadn’t pushed the issue.

“Is everything okay?” Jaime stepped back from the machine, flipping up his safety glasses to reveal a furrowed brow. 

Arden nodded, bringing the pad of her thumb to her lips and biting down on the skin slowly. She couldn’t bear to meet his eyes, afraid that the fear in her own would transfer.

This isn’t like you, Arden. Tell me what’s wrong.

She looked up from the concrete floor with resolve, but still couldn’t bring herself to go any higher than his chest. “I'm freaking out and I needed to come talk to you before it got any worse.”

“Babe,” he interrupted. He took her by the shoulders, uncertainty swiftly turning to concern as he saw the tears in her eyes. “What’s going on?”

Finally meeting his gaze, she shared the worry that was foremost in her mind. “We’re gonna have to add onto the house again.”

Jaime stared at her, aghast. For a moment, he struggled with the strange expression, fumbling for meaning beneath her vagaries. Finally, he landed on the only necessary change he could imagine. “Did something happen with the boys? I thought they wanted to keep sharing a room...”

“Not for the boys,” she corrected, breath stuttering as she worked up the courage for her next words. “I think I’m pregnant.”

Deep brown eyes grew wide before dropping to her stomach. “Are you serious?” His hands clenched her shoulders a little too tightly, but she was grateful for the reality of his firm grasp. Her mind still swimming with fears and questions, it was a relief to have something stable to hold onto. 

"Uh-huh,” she confirmed with a sullen nod.

“You’re pregnant?”

Another nod. “The test says so, and I was pretty sure even before I took it -- but still. I don’t know what happened -- a mix-up with my birth control or something? I mean, it was an accident. We haven’t talked about babies or-”

Before she could finish the statement, Jaime’s lips were pressed to her forehead, his hands gently cradling her face. Tears flooded Arden’s eyes again at the tender promises in his touch, and her whole body was light with reassurance. Secrets between them had always been a burden.

“Arden,” he started slowly, swallowing against the onslaught of his own emotions. “If it’s an accident, then it’s the happiest accident of my life.”

“You’re sure?” Even in her momentary peace, it was impossible not to think of how much this accident – happy or not – was going to change everything.

He pulled back to see her, but still supported her face with both hands. “I’m positive. Try me. My mind’s an open book.” His eyes were still poring over her with the most intense look of adoration she’d ever known. But as he continued watching, that love turned to concern. “You’re not happy?”

“I’m too shocked right now to feel anything else. The past couple of years, I really hadn’t even thought about the possibility. I sure didn’t expect for it to happen without us planning for it first.”

“But it did.”

“Yeah,” she told him weakly, voice wavering as he combed the sweaty hair from her eyes. 

“Sweetheart, just because we haven’t talked about this baby doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. Sure, life’s going to be a little more complicated, but how could I not want to have a baby with you?”

Catching her lower lip with her teeth to keep from crying, Arden ventured  to ask, “We’ll make it work?”

His certainty told her that the question didn’t even bear asking. “You know we will. It’ll be just like it was with the other three – we won’t know how we ever lived without this one.”

She laughed in spite of the tears that still ran down both cheeks. “You’re probably right.”

Jaime gathered her into his arms again, long fingers weaving into her hair. “I know I am. I don’t even care if it means adding onto the house again.” 

“I love you,” she mumbled into his shoulder, holding tightly to the man who seemed to anchor her in any storm. 

“I love you too.” 

Several seconds later, she pushed away with a thought. “I should probably go. Alex will be back any minute and I don’t want them finding out like this.” 

“Good thinking.” Jaime pulled her back for a quick kiss. “But one more thing before you leave.”

She paused, looking to him expectantly. 

“I know I’ve always said it didn’t matter how we got our kids -- I’d love them whether they were ours from the start or not. That’s still true, but Arden? Having a baby with you is going to be pretty damn amazing.”

“It is,” she answered, finally holding back the tears as she attempted a smile. With a nod, she left him alone in the workshop, her hand resting against her stomach as she made her way back to the house. You’ll fit, little one. I promise. I don’t know how, but we’re going to make this work.

_____

Father’s Day, 2028

Melinda Gale had always loved babies. For as long as Arden could remember, her mother would coo at them in grocery store aisles, offer to hold them for family friends or relatives, and spend ages staring at them every time they attended a baby shower.

Arden had never had any such compulsions.

She enjoyed them, sure. They were cute and sweet, and she understood the desire to care for them. Holding them was fun, on occasion, though she’d always found it easy to look away when they were in the room.

But on this afternoon, keeping her eyes from straying to the small face in the infant carrier was impossible. They’d encountered the couple with the baby twice during their hike -- once at the bottom of the trail where they’d stopped for lunch, and now crossing paths again as they rambled upward through the hills. Both times, the pull had been magnetic, uncovering a desire that she hadn’t known existed. 

With a quick check of her husband’s face, she knew that he was met with equal difficulty. Though he was several steps ahead, he tossed a wink over his shoulder once the small family was out of sight. 

I can’t believe we get to have one of those.

Arden glowed at the excitement in Jaime’s thought. He’d been taking everything in stride, his positivity keeping her spirits up even on the days when all she could think of were the ways that having a baby was going to interfere with their plans. Despite her worries, his happiness was contagious.

For now, the new baby was still a secret between the two of them. They’d been hoping to wait for just a little bit longer -- at least until Family Day had passed. They’d agreed without much deliberation that it was best for this news not to overshadow the anniversary of the kids’ arrival.

Earlier in the week, they’d walked out of her first ultrasound appointment with a grainy picture and a projected due date for the middle of January. The car ride home had alternated between thoughtful silences and fits of giggles -- each of them still trying to wrap their minds around the fact that they would soon be a family of six. 

Smile growing as she matched Alex’s pace, Arden remembered the conversation that had followed. 

While Jaime put their lunch leftovers in the fridge, she gathered up the load of clean clothes that had finished in the dryer several hours before. She’d barely started folding before she sensed his familiar presence behind her. 

“You can’t feel anything yet,” Arden reminded as his hand settled low on her belly. 

“Neither can you, but that hasn’t stopped you from touching your stomach every time you think no one’s looking.” 

“Touché,” she relented, shying away from the tickle of his lips at her throat. “Although I’m fairly certain that I’ll be the first one to feel something. And I’ll let you in on it as soon as it happens.” 

“Still, if there’s any chance she can feel it, then...”

“Jaime...” Arden turned toward him, brushing her thumb over the stubble on his cheek. Though his lips were still curved into a smile, his eyes had turned serious. 

“This baby is never ever going wonder whether she’s loved.”

“No, she’s not,” she agreed as she tucked a wisp of hair behind his ear. “There’s absolutely no danger of that happening. But we don’t know that it’s a she. We could be having a boy...”

Arden turned back to the laundry, snagging a pair of boxers for emphasis. He grinned fully and joined her in folding. 

“I can’t help it. I keep imagining it’s a mini-you inside of there. A tiny little girl with your hair and your nose. Your narrow little feet...”  

“It doesn’t always work that way.”

“It did with you and your mom.”

They shared a look, hesitant to delve any deeper into that line of thought. The day had been too full of joy for them to sully it with reminders of sorrow.

“Even if it is a girl,” she continued, “I hope she gets your eyebrows and your smile -- probably your height too.”

Jaime grew silent, slowing in his efforts to shake one of Will’s socks the right side out. Both of his eyes narrowed to slits.

“It’s not selfish,” she assured in answer to his unspoken thought. “You’re not selfish to want someone else in the world who shares your DNA. It’s an instinct you share with most of humanity.”

“Yeah, but it’s been years since any of that mattered. I don’t know why I care again all of a sudden.”

Her own motions ceased. “Because we’re talking about an actual baby now. It’s not a hypothetical,” she suggested, trying to keep her tone light. “And it’s a baby who's going to have things in common with you.”

“I hope she only gets the good parts.”

“All of your parts are good, Jaime. Honestly, I almost wonder if this baby is some divine way of showing that the world needs more of you.”

With a snicker, he shook his head at her assessment. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You've known that for a while now.”

“I married you anyway.”

She raised her lips for the kiss that always followed such conversations, and they quickly found themselves getting carried away with something other than the laundry on the couch.

“Mom! There’s a rock in my shoe!”

The announcement startled Arden from her reminiscing, the flush of heat at the base of her neck the only sign of her wandering mind. 

Will was several yards ahead, continuing to limp along despite his obvious discomfort. Grateful that the brim of her hat cast a shadow over her rolling eyes, Arden lengthened her stride and caught up to her youngest son. “Let’s find a seat, buddy.”

“I can get it myself,” he insisted, still pressing forward.

“Then why’d you call for me?”

He shrugged, plopping onto a rock and yanking off one tennis shoe. Will offered no further explanation as she continued watching, too distracted with his inspection of the small piece of gravel that came from shoe’s heel.

Arden glanced up to see that the other three had stopped to wait for them. Alex had wandered a few steps ahead and was walking across a fallen log with his arms outstretched for balance. Jaime and Sophia were still talking animatedly about something, but Arden had lost the thread of their conversation long ago. As she watched, her husband nodded as if to encourage them to take their time. 

“Can I double knot it?” Will’s fingers were already poised to loop the laces a second time.

“As long as you do it loosely.” 

Will let out a disgruntled sigh before pulling the ties into a second knot. Finished, he hopped up and ran ahead with a sudden burst of energy. Arden hung behind a moment longer, considering the sight in front of her. 

Just days from now, they’d pass the first anniversary of bringing these kids into their home. Life ever since had been full of give and take. Challenging, but fulfilling. Busy, but fun. Heartbreaking, but rewarding.

These kids had turned their lives upside down in all the best ways, and Jaime was right: it was impossible to imagine where they’d be without them. 

Surely they could make it with one more.

[ship-ambrosia]

Dimimari Week Day 4 - Seasons (The Goddess’s Reply)

Summary: Marianne's first year living in Faerghus.

AO3: Lucky Charm Chapter 4

I'm particularly excited about this prompt, because I think it's kinda a different style than I usually write. It was also the first idea I came up with for the week.

By the way i know you probably shouldnt overexplain everything, but the title comes from the dimitri/marianne A support where marianne wonders "if this is the goddess telling me i should make something of myself?" dimitri says "that must be why the goddess allows me to live on" and dimitri ends the support with "i promise to the goddess of fodlan that i will never give you cause to despair" So i just kinda thought of this happiness being "the goddess's reply" to their questions and prayers

  The war ended in the eighth month of the year. The Verdant Rain Moon.

  Marianne moved into Fhirdiad Palace the following spring. The flowers of the city were beginning to bud, the cold northern air of Faerghus making one last attempt to deliver the snow. Marianne had only ever seen Fhirdiad in chaos, Cornelia’s Tripp’s and mechanical abominations standing in their way as they raced through the capital to confront her. It was like an entirely different city now. Fhirdiad was a famously clean and beautiful city, and she was happy to see it this way now. It was a wonderful distraction as she came to terms with her responsibilities as the future queen of the united Fodlan.

  For some reason, she hadn’t thought of what falling in love with Dimitri would actually entail; or perhaps she had been avoiding it. Dimitri was a kind, just man, who had faced his own darkness, the horrible things that plagued his mind, and overcome them. He deserved to become king of course, and she would never convince him otherwise. But she, becoming queen... left her increasingly nervous.

  Dimitri had a lot to take care of as well, now that he was to be king, a lot of things needed to be fixed after the war and though he had begun them almost immediately, he was gone from the palace for long periods of time. Her heart aches for him, wishing she could come along but he was worried about leaving the palace empty, and so she and Dedue spent much time together as they waited for the most important person in their lives to come home.

  When he did come home though, those were the best days. She enjoyed nothing more than when he would lead her around the city, showing her the places that meant the most to him and meeting the people. Fhirdiad was beautiful, with its aqueducts just as decorative as they were functional in keeping the water supply clean, to the vast garden as they bloomed over the weeks. She never fell into a rhythm, every day felt brand new; every moment spent with Dimitri felt like she was falling in love all over again.

~

  Summer came to Fhirdiad warmer than she had expected, and Marianne felt the teeniest twinge of homesickness. She and Dimitri traveled to Leicester so they could reunite with friends, and see the city of Derdriu once again. Upon returning, Marianne was surprised to find her awe with Fhirdiad had not faded, still as captivated by the northern city’s beauty and life as before. She was starting to see herself live here, the role of queen still frightening but something she found herself proud of.

  Summer was when the people of Faerghus really came alive, and she spent much of her time traveling around the former country. She was scared to meet the nobles of the west in particular, to get them to accept her as the queen, though much of the nobles in the east were her friends - Felix and Sylvain, respectively, were rising to the heads of both their Houses, which happened to be two of the most powerful in the former borders of Faerghus. With their support, she felt she could lift her chin a little bit higher.

  Mercedes and Annette insisted they be present at every step of the way that Marianne was fitted for her wedding gown, which began around this time. Every thought of being wed to Dimitri sent her blushing like a lovesick schoolgirl, and listening to the dressmakers and her friends made her feel like she was going to combust. She had never imagined herself marrying happily, always assumed it would be an arrangement to benefit her adoptive father. When she returned home to Dimitri after those visits she would hold him and cry; they were happy tears, as she thought about differently her life was now than she had imagined back then.

  Their relationship itself too, changed with the change in season. Sweet and tempered in the spring, like how the world was poised to bloom. In the summer they naturally progressed into something a little more heated. This was such uncharted territory for both of them, exploring new avenues of their feelings for one another, but it never felt wrong.

~

  As the leaves began to change color, the people of the country got to work harvesting the fields and Marianne had to prepare once more for celebration. It was a joyous time as people all across Fodlan celebrated their good harvests going into winter. A little over a full year had passed since the end of the war, and it seemed like the scars it had left had truly begun to heal. It was one of the best harvest years in all of recorded history, as though the goddess, wherever she may be, was celebrating with them.

  But all the time of bliss they had witnessed in this new year had spoiled them, made them forget what obstacles they still had to overcome. The war was still fresh in everyone’s minds, the scars still there. In late autumn after the leaves had begun falling, a handful of Faerghus’s western nobles attempted a coup. Dimitri was joined by Felix and Sylvain to quell the uprising, though Dimitri was injured in the fighting. It felt as though all of Fhirdiad was holding its breath as he was returned home not on horseback but in a medical carriage, the death of their previous king still fresh in everyone’s mind. The presence of their queen-to-be as a specialist in healing magic did little to calm the anxieties of the city, but Marianne thought that fitting as she was equally as upset each day as she cared for him. She saw flashes of the madness he had gone through returning, knowing full well that the entire battle itself had reminded him of the day in Duscur that he lost so many people he had loved. The wound in his mind affected him more than the wound in his chest, and so Marianne stayed by his side, that he might remember all that they had both fought so hard for.

~

  And Dimitri recovered, by the time Faerghus’s chilling winds had brought snow back to the city. He walked out onto the balcony of the palace, and the people of Fhirdiad had gathered in the streets for him, just as they had after he had retaken the capital from Cornelia a year ago. After all the suffering she had known he went through in the past month, at his bedside the entire time, there was nothing that could have prepared her for the rush of emotions that overcame her when she saw Dimitri smiling at the people of Fhirdiad. Ever the intense empathetic soul he was, Dimitri immediately scooped her up into his arms, in front of everyone. Her first real large gathering in the palace, and everyone saw her crying and clinging to Dimitri.

  On the bright side, such a sight made Dimitri and Marianne’s relationship incredibly popular across all of Fodlan, when news spread that Marianne had personally tended to him and not left his side. Dimitri’s more... savvy advisors touted that seeing Marianne express such raw emotion made her seem more human to their subjects, or something like that. Considering she had only really been with Dimitri in public during small festivals or meetings, she assumed everyone by now knew she was just very nervous at the prospect of being a queen. What else could she be but human? She didn’t like his political advisors very much.

  The entire kingdom’s joy in Dimitri’s recovery carried to his birthday, where celebrations rang out all across the country and once again, Marianne found herself traveling with him. Her emotional outburst had made her the center of attention, and suddenly everyone wanted to know about her. Certainly, she knew her adoptive father must be enjoying his own fame, as her home in a former Leicester territory was quite well known. She was just happy that the western lords, whom Dimitri had been quite light on their punishment when considering the trouble they caused, were clearly not as popular as they thought they were. House Rowe, who had once been the major power in the region, now bowed the knee to House Gaspard, led by Ashe.

  Between parties, Dedue told her that Dimitri was glad the rest of Fodlan was finally seeing her as he saw her, though it made him a bit jealous that her attention was constantly being taken away by someone else. She resolved to do something with this information.

  They got on a horse together and rode off early in the morning one day, making tracks in the fresh blanket of snow. Though the path was covered, Dimitri knew it by heart as these were the trails he had rode as a boy, sometimes with Felix, Sylvain, and Ingrid, sometimes alongside Gilbert and Glenn, and other times by himself. And they spent the day in the snow, laughing and twirling, throwing snow at one another, that surely if any onlooker did not know this was the king and future queen of Fodlan, didn’t know of the darkness that either of them had pushed their way out of and overcome, would probably have just rolled their eyes at two young, foolish lovers. Because certainly that was how Marianne felt as she danced around her first real snowfall of Faerghus.

  When Dimitri kissed her, it all came rushing back. Everything they had been through, everything they had suffered and all the people they had lost, all the victories and the relief when it was all over. All the ways her life had changed just by knowing him. And Marianne smiled, because even though she was still scared about it all, he would be there.

~

  And then the snow started to melt, the trees began to bud again. At the beginning of spring a year after she had moved to Fhirdiad, Marianne and Dimitri were wed to begin their lives together and guide the people of Fodlan beyond the war that had once divided them.

[psychodollyuniverse]

D.H.Lawrence  

 Playwright, Poet, Author, Journalist (1885–1930)

D.H. Lawrence is best known for his infamous novel 'Lady Chatterley's Lover,' which was banned in the United States until 1959. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.

Born in England in 1885, D.H. Lawrence is regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. He published many novels and poetry volumes during his lifetime, including Sons and Lovers and Women in Love, but is best known for his infamous Lady Chatterley's Lover. The graphic and highly sexual novel was published in Italy in 1928, but was banned in the United States until 1959, and in England until 1960. Garnering fame for his novels and short stories early on in his career, Lawrence later received acclaim for his personal letters, in which he detailed a range of emotions, from exhilaration to depression to prophetic brooding. He died in France in 1930.

Early Life

Author D.H. Lawrence, regarded today as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, was born David Herbert Lawrence on September 11, 1885, in the small mining town of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England. His father, Arthur John Lawrence, was a coal miner, and his mother, Lydia Lawrence, worked in the lace-making industry to supplement the family income. Lawrence's mother was from a middle-class family that had fallen into financial ruin, but not before she had become well-educated and a great lover of literature. She instilled in young D.H. a love of books and a strong desire to rise above his blue-collar beginnings.

Lawrence's hardscrabble, working-class upbringing made a strong impression on him, and he later wrote extensively about the experience of growing up in a poor mining town. "Whatever I forget," he later said, "I shall not forget the Haggs, a tiny red brick farm on the edge of the wood, where I got my first incentive to write."

As a child, Lawrence often struggled to fit in with other boys. He was physically frail and frequently susceptible to illness, a condition exacerbated by the dirty air of a town surrounded by coal pits. He was poor at sports and, unlike nearly every other boy in town, had no desire to follow in his father's footsteps and become a miner. However, he was an excellent student, and in 1897, at the age of 12, he became the first boy in Eastwood's history to win a scholarship to Nottingham High School. But at Nottingham, Lawrence once again struggled to make friends. He often fell ill and grew depressed and lethargic in his studies, graduating in 1901 having made little academic impression. Reflecting back on his childhood, Lawrence said, "If I think of my childhood it is always as if there was a sort of inner darkness, like the gloss of coal in which we moved and had our being."

In the summer of 1901, Lawrence took a job as a factory clerk for a Nottingham surgical appliances manufacturer called Haywoods. However, that autumn, his older brother William suddenly fell ill and died, and in his grief, Lawrence also came down with a bad case of pneumonia. After recovering, he began working as a student teacher at the British School in Eastwood, where he met a young woman named Jessie Chambers, who became his close friend and intellectual companion. At her encouragement, he began writing poetry and also started drafting his first novel, which would eventually become The White Peacock.

'The White Peacock' & 'The Trespasser'

In the fall of 1906, Lawrence left Eastwood to attend the University College of Nottingham to obtain his teacher's certificate. While there, he won a short-story competition for "An Enjoyable Christmas: A Prelude," which was published in the Nottingham Guardian in 1907. In order to enter multiple stories in the competition, he entered "An Enjoyable Christmas: A Prelude" under Jessie Chambers's name, and although it was published as such, people soon discovered that Lawrence was its true author.

In 1908, having received his teaching certificate, Lawrence took a teaching post at an elementary school in the London suburb of Croydon. He also continued to write, and in 1909 he received his big break when Jessie Chambers managed to get some of his poems published in the English Review. The publishers at the English Review took a great interest in Lawrence's work, recommending his draft of The White Peacock to another publisher, William Heinemann, who printed it in 1911. Set in his childhood hometown of Eastwood, the novel foreshadowed many of the themes that would pervade his later work, such as mismatched marriages and class divides.

A year later, Lawrence published his second novel, The Trespasser, a story based on the experiences of a fellow teacher who had an affair with a married man who then committed suicide. Around the same time, Lawrence became engaged to an old friend from college named Louie Burrows.

'Sons and Lovers'

However, in the spring of 1912, Lawrence's life changed suddenly and irrevocably when he went to visit an old Nottingham professor, Ernest Weekley, to solicit advice about his future and his writing. During his visit, Lawrence fell desperately in love with Weekley's wife, Frieda von Richthofen. Lawrence immediately resolved to break off his engagement, quit teaching, and try to make a living as a writer, and, by May of that year, he had persuaded Frieda to leave her family. The couple ran off to Germany, later traveling to Italy. While traveling with his new love, Lawrence continued to write at a furious pace. He published his first play, The Daughter-in-Law, in 1912. A year later, he published his first volume of poetry: Love Poems and Others.

Later in 1913, Lawrence published his third novel, Sons and Lovers, a highly autobiographical story of a young man and aspiring artist named Paul Morel, who struggles to transcend his upbringing in a poor mining town. The novel is widely considered Lawrence's first masterpiece, as well as one of the greatest English novels of the 20th century.

'The Rainbow' & 'Women in Love'

Lawrence and Frieda von Richtofen soon returned to England, where they married on July 13, 1914. That same year, Lawrence published a highly regarded short-story collection, The Prussian Officer, and in 1915 he published another novel, The Rainbow, which was quite sexually explicit for the time. Critics harshly condemned The Rainbow for its sexual content, and the book was soon banned for obscenity.

Feeling betrayed by his country but unable to travel abroad because of World War I, Lawrence retreated to Cornwall at the far southwestern edge of Great Britain. However, the local government considered the presence of a controversial writer and his German wife so near the coast to be a wartime security threat, and it banished him from Cornwall in 1917. Lawrence spent the next two years moving among friends' apartments. However, despite the tumult of the period, Lawrence managed to publish four volumes of poetry between 1916 and 1919: Amores (1916), Look! We Have Come Through! (1919), New Poems (1918) and Bay: A Book of Poems (1919).

In 1919, with the First World War finally ended, Lawrence once again departed England for Italy. There, he spent two highly enjoyable years traveling and writing. In 1920, he revised and published Women in Love, which he considered the second half of The Rainbow. He also edited a series of short stories that he had written during the war, which were published under the title My England and Other Stories in 1922.

Determined to fulfill a lifelong dream of traveling to America, in February 1922, Lawrence left Europe and traveled east. By the end of the year—after stays in both Ceylon (modern day Sri Lanka) and Australia—he landed in the United States, settling in Taos, New Mexico. While in New Mexico, Lawrence completed Studies in Classic American Literature, a book of highly regarded and influential literary criticism of great American authors such as Benjamin Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville.

Over the next several years, Lawrence split his time between a ranch in New Mexico and travels to New York, Mexico and England. His works during this period includes a novel, Boy in the Bush (1924); a story collection about the American continent, St. Mawr (1925); and another novel, The Plumed Serpent (1926).

'Lady Chatterley's Lover' & Final Works

Having fallen ill with tuberculosis, Lawrence returned to Italy in 1927. There, in his last great creative burst, he wrote Lady Chatterley's Lover, his best-known and most infamous novel. Published in Italy in 1928, Lady Chatterley's Lover explores in graphic detail the sexual relationship between an aristocratic lady and a working-class man. Due to its graphic content, the book was banned in the United States until 1959, and in England until 1960, when a jury found Penguin Books not guilty of violating Britain's Obscene Publications Act and allowed the company to publish the book.

At the highly publicized British obscenity trial, the prosecuting attorney infamously asked the jurors, "Is it a book that you would have lying around the house? Is it a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?" The jury's decision to allow publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover is considered a turning point in the history of freedom of expression and the open discussion of sex in popular culture. As British poet Philip Larkin quipped in one of his poems, "Sexual intercourse began/In 1963/Between the end of the 'Chatterley' ban/And the Beatles' first LP."

Increasingly hobbled by his tuberculosis, Lawrence wrote very little near the end of his life. His final works were a critique of Western religion titled Apocalypse and Last Poems, both of which were published in 1930.

Death and Legacy

D.H. Lawrence died in Vence, France, on March 2, 1930, at the age of 44.

Reviled as a crude and pornographic writer for much of the latter part of his life, Lawrence is now widely considered—alongside James Joyce and Virginia Woolf—as one of the great modernist English-language writers. His linguistic precision, mastery of a wide range of subject matters and genres, psychological complexity and exploration of female sexuality distinguish him as one of the most refined and revolutionary English writers of the early 20th century.

Lawrence himself considered his writings an attempt to challenge and expose what he saw as the constrictive and oppressive cultural norms of modern Western culture. He once said, "If there weren't so many lies in the world . . . I wouldn't write at all."

from https://www.biography.com/writer/dh-lawrence

[livvywrites]

MYNERA

Day of Wishes

The Day of Wishes is Hope’s main holiday in Mynera. It is celebrated during the first new moon of the new year.

The celebrations don’t begin until the sun has gone down. Once the stars start coming out, people turn off all the lights inside their homes and in the streets, save for a single candle that they carry with them. People start filtering out into the streets, the fields, onto rooftops, balconies, and anywhere they can get a good spot to see the sky.

People chat quietly in groups, holding their candles carefully. It’s considered bad luck if your candle goes out or something happens to it—though this is a superstition that has been waning with time. If something happens to the candle, some will replace it, while others will consider their chance lost.

Most groups/families bring snacks and drinks with them, to share as they wait for midnight to come.

When midnight finally does come, there is silence. Elenai across the country close their eyes and tip their heads back. They reflect on the last year—on their successes, their failures, things they have gained, and things they have lost. It’s a very personal moment, and no one can tell you how to do it “right.” Then, they start thinking about the year to come—their hopes and dreams, the things they most want. Holding those thoughts clear in their minds, they blow the candles out.

After that, people start filtering back inside, heading to bed. The next day continues as usual.

It’s considered bad luck to tell people what you wished for—except for your lover.

Life Festival

The Life Festival is perhaps the biggest holiday in Mynera. It takes place at the end of the harvest season, not long before winter sets in and the rains begin coming to the kingdom. It’s a celebration that takes place over the course of several days, with five key events.

The first event is the scarecrow burning. It’s considered bad luck to use the same scarecrow each year, as birds are clever creatures and may begin to start recognizing them. So instead, farmers pack them up with extra straw and maybe some offerings from the harvest before lighting fire to them. These are often turned into bonfires, which Elenai gather around. There’s laughing and dancing and singing, and oftentimes kids will slip off to tell scary stories.

The second day brings the farmer’s fair. Anyone who grows produce, whether in gardens, farms, or orchards, brings along their best picks of the bunch. These picks are then judged against each other, based on type. There are prizes for largest, smallest, worst looking, best looking, and other things. Once the prizes have been given out, the produce is then used in cooking, to make delicious pies and other goods, which are put aside in preservation rooms for the final day.

The third day is a repeat of the second, but for livestock. The deerlike da’lia are taken to a track, where their riders compete in a race. The higher levels have obstacles, while the beginning ones are just a straight race. These are lighthearted events, generally occurring after all of the more serious competitions have already finished. Other livestock are judged by size and occasionally the kinds of tricks they can do, or their output. (For instance, largest eggs from a chicken.)

The fourth day is more sedate. By this point, all of the food for the feast has been separated, which means its time to begin packing the rest of it into storage for the town to last through the winter. Enchanters have been hard at work on preservation boxes. People show up from all around town to start packing everything away, and storing it according to instruction. To keep things from getting dull, though, many of the children show off their talents. Usually a play is organized by the local priests and priestesses. Music will also be played, and sometimes games are played.

The fifth and final event is a large feast. This is the main event. All of the local farmers, butchers, hunters, etc. will bring their most plentiful foodstuffs to be cooked up and served for everyone. Many people volunteer as cooks; people volunteer china and silverware. The feast begins at sundown, and everyone gathers into the host building. Usually one of the temples, though in the capital, the feast is often hosted inside the castle proper.

Coming of Age Ceremonies

Birthdays are a time honored tradition in Mynera. Much like the Day of Wishes, birthdays are believed to be a day to focus on your hopes for the next year coming—and for reflecting on the year passed.

Every year, the birthday celebrant is greeted with well wishes and reminders of how happy their loved ones are that they were born—and how hopeful those loved ones are that they will have another good year to spend together. Handmade birthday gifts are tradition—food, bracelets, blankets, etc—though bought gifts are just as good.

Some birthdays are more special than others.

At 10, Elenai are given their first plant. Some never get another, but most go on to have several. Taking care of a plant is a first step towards responsibility and adulthood, and reminds an Elenai to appreciate the smaller things in life.

At 11, Elenai are eligible to start an apprenticeship of their choosing. Some apprenticeships require you to be older, however, and thus you have to wait until your 14. (These tend to be things like smithing, woodcutting, working with the rangers, etc.)

At 12, a young Elenai goes to pick out their first da’lia—a deerlike species native to Mynera. It bonds with Elenai, which increases their lifespan. It doesn’t live as long as Elenai will, but it still lives a good portion of that time. It’s a very important moment for a young Elenai.

At 13, all the young men and women of Mynera are invited to a special dance, held mid-summer. It’s a small thing, meant to let them get to know each other. It’s generally held at the local temple, and chaperoned by adults. Anyone between 13 and 21 is allowed to attend.

At 14, all apprenticeships become available.

At 15, an Elenai is legally allowed to purchase their own alcohol, and imbibe as they wish at celebrations and meals. Prior to that, alcohol is a little more restricted—though it isn’t uncommon to see anyone over the age of 10 having a glass of wine with their meal.

At 16, any betrothals are announced. These aren’t common outside of the Myneran heirs and nobility.

At 21 or 24, Elenai usually graduate from their apprenticeships. And after this, are eligible to leave on their pilgrimage…

Pilgrimage

Despite the name, there’s little religious about this tradition. However, an Elenai is not considered truly “adult” until they’ve completed it.

The pilgrimage has no set destination, only one goal—leave Mynera, for at least a period of six months, and come back having learned something. Some young Elenai leave Mynera for another town and take up an apprenticeship among other people. Others have an adventure. Still yet others ply the trade they already know. There are no rules.

During this time, they meet many people outside of what they knew growing up. They encounter different cultures, ethnicities, trades, and ideas. The goal is to listen and observe these things, form your own opinions, and come back a little wiser than before.

There are a couple of exceptions to the pilgrimage. The next High Priest/ess, Sage, and Monarch have a destination. It isn’t revealed until shortly before they leave, though people know it’s on the other side of the continent from Mynera. Their journey takes at least two years, and during this time, there is very little news of them. When they finally return, they are considered fit to take their job as soon as the current title holder steps down.

Weddings

Weddings are a Big Deal in Mynera, particularly to the nobility. Weddings are most often held in the spring and the summer, and take place primarily outdoors.

Both couples typically wear white, pale yellow, pale pink, or pale green. Flowers are braided in their hair, or a flower crown placed about their brow, or otherwise incorporated into their outfit. Couples typically go barefooted. Both of them carry a bouquet.

Vows are stated near or over running water—whether from a fountain or river. A flower is dropped in the water for each vow. When all the flowers are gone, the couple will pull the other into a kiss.

After the immediate wedding ceremony, the couple heads to the temple or the family’s house. There is feasting and dancing, and the family’s offer well-wishes and advice for their future. Sometimes gifts are given, to help the couple start their new life together.

When sundown hits, the couple goes off alone. Together, they exchange quiet wishes over a candle—for health and happiness, for the strength to get through their arguments, for a long and happy life together. They blow the candle out together, and the first of many nights as a married couple begins.

Death

Myneran dead are taken to Death’s chapel as soon as they’re found. Family members are given a chance to say farewell to the body before it is entombed, though not everyone takes this chance. The body is divested of clothing, and wrapped in a special, biodegradable shroud. They are then buried, with a seed or many seeds planted over them, turning their gravesite into a small garden—a headstone near the front to mark their final resting place.

[Further reading under the cut, because I went a bit overboard!]

ILLUMINARA

New Year

Order is the god of time, and how better to acknowledge that then by saying goodbye to one year—and welcoming a new one?

Services are held at the temple. People pile in and listen to the priest/ess talk about the previous year, on the eternal march of time, on letting go of regrets and acknowledging that which has already happened. Then comes the talk of the new year, of the things to come and look forward to, the changes that one must bring to their lives, and a reminder to move ever forward and ever onward.

When the service ends, people celebrate the new year in their own homes, based on their own traditions. Most of these traditions typically involve alcohol in some way.

At midnight, the temple bells are rung, signaling the end of the year and the beginning of a new one. Many people also throw empty (or not) bottles at the wall, before setting to cleaning up the shards.

Founder’s Day

A celebration of the founding of the Magus College—and as a result, of Illuminara. A speech is given by both the current Viscount and the Archmagus, talking about Illuminara’s most notable achievements of that year and any upcoming things. They also speak of Illuminara’s history, of it’s founder Talynth Lumina, and of how far the College has spread since its initial presence on Eldora.

The College holds a show to display all the talent that its student body has to offer. There are illusionary shows; grand firework displays; feats of incredible magic and power; and epic mock-battles. It’s a grand event, that lasts all day and well into the night.

Solstices

Both the Winter and Summer Solstice are a big deal in Illuminara.

The Summer Solstice is characterized by a large gathering in the market, where people sell things they’ve brought back from their travels, or that were delivered via merchant ship, or were created in the enchanter’s labs. You can find many wondrous and odd things there—pearls form the eastern seas; pens that never run out of ink; enchanted journals that allow people to communicate over long distances; exotic spices and herbs; and other things besides.

There are also festivities in the Illuminaran gardens. Rudimentary magic shows are put on by students. You’ll also find musical performances, mock-fights, children’s plays and puppet shows, and various card games and tricks.

The Winter Solstice, on the other hand, takes place primarily indoors. It is characterized by a large feast, followed by offerings to the dead and departed. The feast begins at sundown, and is immediately followed with much dancing, drinking, and laughter—these things believed to stave off the chill of the longest night.

Sunup brings families making the trek to the tombs, where offerings are laid on graves and prayers are said. This is believed to put the spirits at peace, so they don’t travel to the mortal realm and question why they were forgotten—or take revenge at being forgotten.

People don’t sleep during the night on the Solstices. This is believed to invite troubled spirits or other unwelcome visitors into your mind or home. Mirrors are also covered during this time.

Masquerade

A Chaos-oriented holiday that takes place mid-winter. It’s a bit like an exclusive party, and the invite list is very short, though you get many gate-crashers.

People dress up in elaborate costumes, generally made themselves. They assume a personality or identity unlike their own, and show up to get drunk, feast, and generally have a night of revelry. It’s not considered a true masquerade until the entire party has ended in some state of debauchery.

Coming of Age Ceremonies

Among the nobility, a party is thrown during their child’s 16th birthday. This is when the prospect of marriage first enters the table. They are introduced to each other, while their parents speak over their heads about what the family has to offer. It’s considered bad form, however, to actually begin accepting any marriage proposals until the child has turned at least 18.

Weddings

Weddings are often elaborate in Illuminara, especially among the nobility. After all, a wedding is the binding of two family lines, and it’s only proper that their families put their all into making it a celebration to remember.

Tailors often find themselves backed up, as they’re hit with commission after commission. Everyone wants to be the best dressed outside of the wedded couple—and oh, the wedded couple have to look stunning. What’s worn often depends on what’s “in” at the moment—or the couple’s own unique tastes, which can start a new fashion trend very easily.

The whole city often turns up to the ceremony, or at least most of it. They bring with them food, well-wishes, and gifts. Vows are taken in the city’s primary tongue, Parinaran, and are long-winded, grand speeches that make their love sound like something out of an epic folk tale.

After the vows are exchanged, there is feasting and dancing, with much music and celebration. People often get drunk. Very drunk. The parents usually get the drunkest, embarrassing their children spectacularly. Speeches are made, gifts are given, and cake is eaten.

The ceremony is complete when the newlyweds step up to ring the marriage bells at the church, whose sound can be heard all the way down the mountain.

Death

Funerals can be soft, quiet affairs or quite elaborate. The commonfolk tend to prefer the former, while the nobility tend towards the latter.

The body of the deceased is dressed in finery. Flowers are tucked into their hands, pressed between their lips, tucked into pockets and crevices. They’re made to look as beautiful as possible, as if they’re only sleeping. The body is laid out in display, preservation spells to keep it from beginning to rot, and all of their friends, family, and passing acquaintances come by to pay their respects.

Then, a small funeral procession follows the Priest/ess of Death inside the tunnels, where the body is encased in stone. An epithet is inscribed into the stone, and there are several long moments of silence before the procession finally leaves.

Once done, people generally head back to the home of the deceased, to tell the happiest stories of their lives and achievements. Non-mourners might come by with food or a tale or two of their own.

About a week later, any will is dredged up and read, and the long process of dividing their belongings falls to those nearest and dearest to them. Or to the servants, depending. Life goes on after that—though there are still days taken to remember those lost.

SLAEYR

Ainerah Election

While not a holiday in the strictest sense, it is an annual event that calls all of the Slaeyr clans together every 500 years. As such, it does end up being a celebration, used for catching up (and showing off) among the clans.

While the ainer are busy deciding on who should be the next ainerah—or if their current ainerah should stay on—the people mingle. Goods are traded between the tribes. Blankets, tents, weapons, and other things. Knowledge is shared, of their own surrounding areas. There are feasts or approximations of them. Young people from all clans gather together to go hunting.

The most anticipated events, however, are the competitions. Because what is a near-immortal race without a touch of recklessness, and of course, impulsivity? While the older generations can’t always say that they approve, they also rarely do anything more than observe—knowing that, if it’s outright forbidden, the young ones will just do it in secret, and get even more seriously hurt. These competitions include hunting contests; races; tree climbing; magic use; wrestling; sparring; and even storytelling competitions. The suggestions for what to do next often get more and more absurd, until finally, the festivities have to be broken up.

Birth of the Slaeyr

The celebration of their creation, when the very first Slaeyr was born and claimed.

Songs are sung, and the area is lit by the magic of majeria—the special energy that Slaeyrs create. It’s believed to be tied to the emotion evoked from music, but no one has managed to tap into outside of a song. It can be awakened through the act of playing an instrument, dancing, or singing—though it requires some active participation. The magic swirls around the camp, beautiful and wild, a sort of benignly chaotic force. This magic is eventually directed into a healing or protective force around the area, leaving it better than they found it.

While it can be difficult for Slaeyr to find food, they do their best approximation of a feast, which everyone who’s able contributes to in some way.

They all speak the Slaeyr’s primary tongue on this day, rarely lapsing into Common or other languages. It’s considered a sign of respect for those who built the language, as a way of acknowledging their unique Slaeyr-ness.

The main event of the night happens later, when the feasting is done and the music has calmed. It still plays in the background, with low vocals or chants done. The people gather ‘round the clan’s most prolific and talented storyteller, who then tells the story of the Slaeyr’s creation—often complete with illusionary re-enactments.

Coming of Age Ceremonies

Slaeyr birthdays are marked by several things. First, a step back in the food queue, to allow the younger ones a chance to eat.

At about 5 years old, a Slaeyr born to the clan will join up with their clan. Prior to that, they typically grow up in another city—usually whichever one the clan spends their winter in. Slaeyrs don’t usually join any earlier.

Between the ages of 10 and 12 is typically when a Slaeyr born outside the Slaeyr people is claimed. Claimings can happen earlier and later, and it isn’t entirely uncommon to do so, but mostly, it’s between 10 and 12. This is when they join the closest clan and begin their training. Slaeyrs born to the tribe begin their own magical training as well.

At 15, Slaeyr begin joining the hunters and the gatherers when they leave the clan to find food. They can also join in on the other hunts as well—when Slaeyrs go out to make the world a safer place. Usually by taking a stand against rampaging monsters, like the fearsome hydra.

Weddings

Slaeyr don’t often get married, even if or when they do plan on spending their lives together as a couple. They may engage in a brief commitment ceremony, where they exchange some symbol of their love, however, but that’s the extent of it.

Death

When a Slaeyr dies, their body is burned. Most of their ashes are then scattered somewhere relating to their element—blown away in the wind for air; scattered in the forest for life; pressed into stone for rock; washed away in the river for water; mingled with the campfire ashes for fire; and laid where they burned for spirit. A small portion, however, is pressed into a locket or amulet for immediate family members. This could be locks of their air, a portion of ash, or even a tooth.

taglist: @quartzses; @idreamonpaper; @runningonrain; @witchywrite; @queenofsquirrelsstuff; @margaretcroftwrites; @purpleshadows1989; @klywrites; @she-writes-love; @sixstepsaway; @neptune-nereid; @firesidefantasy; @joshuaorrizonte; @waterfallwritings; @languageisbae; @lady-redshield-writes; @luciellesgarden; @dogwrites; @quilloftheclouds

[porchwood]

Hi just so I understand cause i keep waiting for it and it doesnt seem likely to happen have you kind of fallen out of love with wtm? and everlark in general tbh? cause ive been following you for a while now and you always had lil quotes and pictures and things that reminded you inspired you whatever it was about katniss and wtm and now alllll it is is gadge i followed you because personally i love what you did with everlark and im just wondering if thats gone and not foreseeable any time soon?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to answer this… It’s afair question - to a point. If you’re more of a drop-in person (like me) thanlive-on-the-dash, coming back to find my blog awash in Gadge might have beenquite upsetting. There are several reasons for the current state of things:

1. Life has been driving me into the ground since December26, 2013. (Yes, going on six straight years.) If you were a WtM reader from thebeginning, you may recall that I was pretty energetic and prolific in 2012-2013.Oh, there were tough times, but nothing like what started on the aforementioneddate (a car accident where I was in the “bystander” vehicle and it still got totaled)and has continued relentlessly ever since. Sometimes adversity leads to greatcreativity and sometimes it turns you into a depressed, exhausted, reclusivelump, and the past 5+ years have seen periods of both from me. These past 18months have been exceptionally awful (and expensive), resulting in very littlewriting at all, about any pairing.

2. Writing WtM takes a lot out of me. I don’t know whether thisis common knowledge or not, but it’s the gospel truth. I love that world, Ilove that version of Everlark, but every chapter requires so much hard work, itmakes me tired just to think of it. Not to mention, over the past couple of chaptersEverlark have been pushing for more intimacy than the plot/timeline allows, andso I’ve been struggling with how I want to handle that. Do I fight them andstick to the plan? (I can’t advance the timeline for several reasons.) Do I tryto figure out a cheat for them? They’ve got minds of their own and have changedmy plans multiple times, but this is something they genuinely can’t have, and Ihave to fight them on it. ☹ Which is sad, frustrating, and exhausting.

3. I’m a multi-pairing shipper, and have been from about 3chapters into WtM. Which means that my Everlark fics almost always feature asecondary pairing (or more than one), and sometimes I’ll get a plot bunny for afic about a pairing other than Everlark. Most writers in the THG fandom exclusivelywrite their OTP, whatever the plot bunny, but I find that some plot bunnies don’tfit Everlark as well as they do another pairing. (This is why I’ll never write aBeauty and the Beast Everlark fic unless Katniss is the “Beast,” if you will.)

4. The Everlark fandom is…tricky. I’ve never fit in there. Idon’t write Everlark the way the majority of fans see them (except for Peetabeing “sweet,” I guess), I hated the movies (I refuse to see MJ 1 or 2), and I’vemanaged to really rub some people the wrong way over the years –unintentionally, and for a variety of reasons – all of which leaves me feeling kinda down about Everlark in general. Don’t misunderstand me: I love Everlarkand WtM, but it’s really isolating to be this sad little island of unpopularopinions and unwelcome side-ships. That’s the part I really wish I could makeyou understand. For six years I’ve had Christopher Plummer in my head saying, “You’llnever be one of them,” and he’s so, cruelly, right. I want to cry every time Ithink of Embracing the Season (my E-rated Everlark modern AU oneshot for Lovein Panem - lots of daring for me!) because I poured heart and soul into that andit still wasn’t the Everlark that people wanted.

5. About a year and a half ago (when Strawberry Time reallytook off of its own accord) I participated in Gadge Day 2017, working my buttoff to find and schedule (and tag) over 100 carefully chosen Gale/Madge/Gadge aestheticposts, and for lack of a better way to say it: it turned on my Gadge-dar. After that, thosekinds of posts just leapt out at me whenever I had a chance to scroll, and forseveral months I wasn’t sure what to do with that. With a little encouragementfrom @ghtlovesthg, I came up with #march madgeness – wherein I turned my Tumblrinto Madge/Gadge-land for one month, and it was a blast. (Side-stepping Gadgefor a moment: Madge is a highly underappreciated and underused character,especially in fic/on Tumblr and I love splashing the dash with Madge-love.) Thenext month I launched a run of pent-up Everlark posts (i.e., regularprogramming), but I missed my Madge, so I instituted #madge monday – one day aweek when I could splash the dash with Madge/Gadge. At every juncture I gavepeople tags to block if they didn’t want to see this content (though I stillget unfollows every time I post, alas). I participated in last summer’s THG Reread– on the fringe of it, but my posts (reblogs and meta) were strongly Everlark-focusedagain during that time. So there’s definitely still been Everlark on my blog,but if you’re just dropping in (or for that matter, glancing at my archive), you’regoing to see a majority of Madge/Gadge.

6. Frankly, Gadge is fun. It’s a completely different dynamicthan Everlark, with less pressure to create something transcendent, and whenthe chips are down, I’m more likely to work on something that isn’t my six-years-runningopus. This spring, in the midst of lots of awfulness, I finally wrote a piecethat I’ve had in my head for years – The Best Part of Waking Up – with a differentpairing featured in each drabble “chapter,” including Gadge, Luka/Johanna (whoI’ve been wanting to put out there for AGES) and Jack/Raisa. I haven’t beenable to write quickly in years, and I think I finished those three “chapters”in about two days, maybe three. I completed the Raisa drabble in a couple ofhours and I consider it one of the best things I’ve ever written. (Honestly, ifa pairing was going to topple Everlark in my heart, it would be Jack/Raisa, i.e.,Mr. Everdeen/Mrs. Mellark. I love them to distraction.) Once upon a time I could drabble/sprint Everlark too – notoften, but I could manage it. Maybe it’ll happen again someday, but for thetime being, when I write in quick eager bursts, it’s usually about aside-pairing.

7. Because I just need to say it: about a year ago, I set up a secondary Tumblr for almost all my side-interests and ships outside of THG. When I first joined Tumblr, porchwood was just a fun page where I posted whatever struck my fancy (pretty things, funny things, whatever I liked), and over the next few years, I honed it into a pretty “writer’s notebook” for WtM and my other THG fics (related quotes, aesthetic posts, writing check-ins, etc.). When Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out, I shared a handful of posts pertaining to a new ship (not a new direction for my blog or writing, just sharing my excitement) and it was made very clear to me that people didn’t want to see that content on my page. So when I started watching Voltron: Legendary Defender, I had a sneaking suspicion people wouldn’t want to hear about those ships either. So I started an entirely new Tumblr for that content, and every so often I accidentally post something to the wrong page, which I immediately correct in horror, but people still unfollow. Point being: this blog is THG (and a few personal life updates) ONLY, with a pretty consistent aesthetic. I hide literally everything else that I’m interested in so you don’t have to be bothered by it. Is it really so unacceptable for me to have side-ships (complementary to the main pairing, not threatening to them) in the same universe??

8. Believe it or not, I’ve been working on WtM all along,just not making any massive strides. I tried to chip away at the current chapterduring Camp Nanowrimo last July, and it was a disaster. I thought joining awriting group would be helpful, but I didn’t realize that Camp Nano is basicallya lot of writing sprints in which you try to churn out as many words aspossible, which you then report to your “cabin” – and that’s the onlyinteraction with your fellow writers. I can’t write like that anymore (seeabove) and especially not when it comes to WtM, so I got discouraged veryquickly and sort of drifted away. I reattempted Nano on my own in April and wrotealmost 15K words, but in that instance I was really just using the Nano platform toset and reach a goal (which I didn’t ☹ ); I wasn’t in a cabin and didn’t interact with anyother writers, except my friend @ghtlovesthg, who read the finished portion.

9. I want to finish this dang chapter so much, and frankly, theonly way that’s going to happen is if life gets a little better and I holemyself up with my laptop for hours on end for weeks at a time – and somemagical being comes to support/cheer/comfort me while I do so. It’s currentlysitting at about 25K and I anticipate it will need to be at least double that,which is beyond ridiculous, but that’s the nature of WtM. The chapters are asmany words as it takes.

TL, DR: I still love Everlark and I’m still working on WtM, but my life has been extremely difficult for a very long time and I don’t have a great Everlark lifeline. Gadge and all my other ships are fun, and most of the Gadge you see on my Tumblr is aesthetic stuff for themed days/months/occasions. Anything non-THG goes on my sideblog.

[homenum-revelio-hq]

Welcome (again) to the Order of the Phoenix, Nicky!

You have been accepted for the role of non-biography character AINSLEY ABBOTT with the faceclaim of Olivia Taylor Dudley! I really loved the idea of having a half-blood character who is pretending to be pureblood, especially in the climate of this rpg. I think it will add a lot of excitement to the roleplay! 

Please take a look at the new member checklist and send in your account within 24 hours! Thank you for joining the fight against Voldemort!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME: Nicky

AGE: 30+

TIMEZONE: EST

ACTIVITY LEVEL: Medium, sporadic; I work retail hours which means that my schedule is not consistent between days. I expect to be able to make several replies each week, however, and am available to check-in or chat often. Tuesdays and Thursdays are the only time I’m really out-of-touch for considerable periods on a regular basis although in general I have more free time in the latter half of the week than I do at the beginning – and of course when Winter Holiday Shopping Season rolls around I will be more absent than usual!

ANYTHING ELSE: currently playing Dorcas Meadowes!

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Ainsley Marigold Abbott

AGE: 28

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Cis-gender female, she/her. Ainsley does not realize it (because it’s not a term or identity she’s ever heard of before) but she is in fact a panromantic asexual. She has experienced crushes before, but since kisses and cuddles leave her feeling nothing but tired and bored she assumes that her affections are utterly fleeting – not understanding that a desire for sex and a desire for romance may be two different things – and said crushes usually curdle the moment anyone acts on them; elsewise they simply flicker-out after she pines from afar for a while, telling herself there’s no point because she just isn’t wired that way. She thinks there must be something wrong with her but (especially lately, with her sister) what she has seen of romance does not seem to be enticing enough for her wish she were any different. (note: I am aware of the delicacy of writing any asexual character with the notion of them being “broken” but as an aromatic asexual myself, I think I will be able to approach the topic with appropriate sensitivity! I am, however, happy to discuss this idea further both with the admin and with any fellow players who are concerned or curious about my reasoning or experience.)

BLOOD STATUS: Half-blood (but currently faking status as a pure-blood at the request of her sister)

HOUSE ALUMNI: Ravenclaw

ANY CHANGES: none

CHARACTER BACKGROUND:

PERSONALITY:

Ainsley fits very well into the mold that people like to think of as the “traditional Ravenclaw” – bookish, quiet, academically gifted. That stereotype very much does not fit the majority of the House, though; Ravenclaw Tower is often a noisy place full of chaotic experiments and passionate arguments and the occasional impassioned spurt of poetry. While there are quietly studious Ravenclaws, even they tend to be more of the obsessive breed than the merely academic; a House based around a love of learning for its own sake is not, necessarily, going to be a House full of good test-takers and obedient homework-doers. Ainsley enjoyed the chaos most of the time (except right before tests – which was the only time the academically-minded Ravenclaws revolted against their noisier, more idiosyncratic housemates to demand quiet for a while) and considered it to be both educational and entertaining. An uncharitable person might call her voyeuristic; a nicer description might merely state that she is an observer of human nature. However you say it, AInsley likes to watch people. She finds her peers both fascinating and, with increasing frequency with every year, baffling. A sort-spoken girl, Ainsley is also easily mistaken for meek – which she isn’t; only quiet. She would rather have an argument through owl post or in impassioned papers and essays than face-to-face, where it’s too easy to fumble over one’s words or forget an esoteric fact that can’t be looked-up mid-shouting match. Her writing, however, can become quiet fiery, to the point where one might almost expect her quill to scorch the paper as she scrawls her way across it. (For such a quiet, reserved girl, she has very broad handwriting – especially when emotional!) When she does have to stand-up to someone in person, she tends to shake and shrink in on herself – but fortunately, she usually has her more boisterous sister there to take-over when the stress of a fraught social interaction overwhelms her. Or at least she did, when they were both children; now Ainsley is on her own more and more, both because Nessie can’t exactly follow her to work and because she’s occupied with her own endeavors – the main one of which Ainsley does not approve, and isn’t at all shy about saying so. Ainsley is more opinionated than she seems; it’s just that her strongest opinions tend to be about things like Arithmantic equations or antique Runes or the history of the etymological development of spells. Not things that most people care about enough to have opinions over. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Ainsley is that she’s actually good with a wand. One would think that a witch like her would be interested strictly in the theoretical – but Ainsley believes that the only way to truly understand the theory behind something is to also understand it in practice. Since her allegiance with the Order of the Phoenix, many a Death Eater has had the unpleasant experience of being hexed by this seemingly-harmless bluestocking while they were focusing on shielding themselves against someone who actually looked like a threat. Of course, take her glasses away and Ainsley isn’t going to be hexing anything smaller than a train car– not with any accuracy, anyway.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY: 

Ainsley‘s extended family is a large and widely-dispersed one and she grew-up knowing that just about anywhere she went, there would be someone related to the Abbotts close by enough to have her back in a pinch. It was quite the safety net, really – although at times it came across as stifling, especially during her awkward adolescent years. (How much can one truly feel like one is spreading one’s wings when one has to constantly wonder how much of the story is getting back to mum and dad?) For the most part, Ainsley liked it – especially given that her immediate family was small, so her childhood ended up having a rather good balance between intimate family relationships and broad family network. As far as that immediate family, Ainsley’s consisted of two parents (Hubert and Moira Abbott) and one sister, Vanessa, who went almost universally by Nessie. (Ainsley herself did not favor nicknames, and once out of the toddler-stage where both she and her sister referred to herself as “Lee-lee,” preferred to use her full name.) The girls were born barely two years apart and, thanks to Ainsley being born late in the spring and Nessie at the very end of summer, actually attended Hogwarts with only a one year gap between them. This led to them being very close both as children and later as adults, and the sisters suffered from little of the disagreements and competitions common to many close-age siblings – due in part, no doubt, to their parents’ insistence on focusing on their individual strengths rather than comparing their talents or weaknesses against one another. The Abbotts (at least, Ainsley’s small branch of that three) were the sort of parents who could and did spend time indulging their children’s particular interests, but didn’t hover over every aspect of their lives, especially as the girls grew older and could be more easily left to their own devices and entertainments. Part of that was due to mum’s increasing workload – she was one of the original designers for the Nimbus Racing Broom Company, having been a close friend of Devlin Whitehorn for years, and as the company’s popularity soared so too did its demands on its employees’ time – and part to dad’s promotion from junior to senior auditor in the Ministry’s Department of Magical Finance Management; they both simply had less time to spare to parent as their careers demanded more and more of their attention instead. It wasn’t that Moira and Hubert ever became bad parents – just busier than they had been, when their girls had been young. It meant more financial security and comfort, though, which was nice – but also more distance and distraction from their daughters. At least they were both already in Hogwarts by then, with plenty of their own distractions on which to focus. Ainsley and Nessie made up for any lack of parental involvement by sticking together, and neither would have said they ever noticed anything missing from their childhoods – until Nessie fell in love with someone she could not have. Now as long as she was a half-blood, anyway. There was no way that someone like Jayesh Rosier would ever be permitted to marry an Abbott – not since they slipped off the pillar of purity on which they had once stood, anyway. But Nessie wasn’t going to let a little thing like blood-status stand in her way…and as little as the idea of pretending to be pure-bloods appealed to Ainsley, she couldn’t say no when Nessie asked: “Oh come on Ainsley, you know there’s no real difference between a pure-blood and a half-blood. We were raised in the magical world too, it’s not like we’re muggle-borns! Our blood’s as good as anyone else’s. In fact it’s already mostly the same blood, so it’s hardly even a lie to say ‘oh actually, we checked the family history, and our branch is still pure, look at that!’ And if it is, it’s a lie that everyone’s telling. How many people do you think can really say they don’t have any Muggles in their family tree? Anyone? No, everyone does it–” “Not to the Rosiers, they don’t! I’m not protesting the–the morality of what you’re doing, you idiot, I’m worried about your life! These people are fanatics!” “Jayesh isn’t a fanatic–” “Jayesh won’t be the one holding the wand when they find out you lied and kill you for it!” “Ainsley…who’s going to find out? Are you going to tell them?” “What? No, of course not–” “Besides, Jayesh loves me. His family won’t hurt me. He wouldn’t let them. And after they see how happy we are together, it won’t matter anyway.” Ainsley was very much sure that it would, but she could also see that there was no talking her sister out of this foolishness. Love, Ainsley thought with disgust, it destroys people. I’m glad I’ve never fallen victim to that kind of stupidity – not realizing, of course, that she very much had, for it was love of her sister that compelled her to go along with Nessie’s mad plan. It wasn’t hard: a bribe here, a forged document there…as Nessie had said, everyone did it. The methods were well-established. Ainsley couldn’t help but wonder if everyone else who had walked this reckless path had felt so sick with nerves over every step. But her sister was happy. And that was what mattered. NOTE: I am leaving many details about Nessie deliberately vague in case anyone would like to pick her up as a Secondary or something, I hope that’s all right! If not I will gladly make some more concrete defining choices about her, just let me know! 

OCCUPATION: 

Ainsley is a staff editor at The Daily Prophet. She keenly wants to be a columnist, but so far none of the pieces she has turned-in have been run in the paper – there’s just too many stories this week, dear; it’s all this Death Eater-business, you know; maybe next month… It isn’t a lack of wordsmithing skill that gets in her way, but a focus on topics that just don’t interest other people. The Prophet values AInsley for her keen eye for detail, impeccable (obsessive) fact-checking, and grammatical precision; many of the staff-writers give her their pieces for proof-reading prior to publication. Many of those same staff laugh behind her back about her weird obsessions with archaic forms of magic or speculative archaeology – or the Arithmancy! Oh, the Arithmancy! Ainsley has no idea that she is an object of ridicule at the office, which makes it hard for the “gallant” reporters who try to catch her interest by “defending her” to their fellows whenever they think she’s listening – but she usually isn’t; Ainsley is very good at tuning-out the world around her, and spends most of her downtime with her nose buried in some ancient tome or fresh academic journal. Sadly for those young gallants, she’s perfectly content without their company – or perhaps it’s for the best; none of those wizards would probably enjoy a date with Ainsley, should they somehow manage to secure one. Sure, she’s easy-on-the-eyes – but what about the ears? It’s not like she’s going to want to make small-talk about the latest Quidditch upset, after all…and so few people find a discussion on the importance of comma placement or the intricacies of reverse Arithmancy to be entertaining dinner conversation, much to Ainsley’s bewilderment.

ROLE WITHIN THE ORDER/THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ORDER: 

Surprising to most people, Ainsley is a fighter for the Order. That isn’t all she does, of course; none of them can really only do one thing when they’re part of a rag-tag army of volunteers on what is seeming more and more like the losing side of a war. Her other chief areas of value to the Order come from, firstly, her esoteric knowledge: Ainsley never made a particularly study of Dark Magic, but her research into odd little archaic bits and pieces of magical history and alternative theories means she knows more about it than most of her fellows. Knows enough to help pick-apart Curses and alleviate their suffering; knows enough to help undo many a boobytrap without loss of life along the way. She doesn’t have Moody’s grizzled calm or Dumbledore’s warm wisdom – but when they aren’t around, she’ll do in a pinch. The area where she should be the most obviously valuable – that of The Daily Prophet – is not one where she’s been of as much help as the Order would like. Ainsley doesn’t have the sort of clout they need to turn a story in their favor; doesn’t have enough influence over her coworkers to try and change anyone’s mind (and honestly, probably lacks the delicacy of social interaction to get away with such efforts undetected anyway). She gets to see the stories before they publish a lot of the time, because she’s editing them for grammar, punctuation, and outrageously nonfactual statements (far too many of the latter of which the Editor in Chief overrules her on and publishes anyway) but she rarely has enough time between when she turns-in her polished drafts and when the paper goes to print to give enough advance warning to her fellows in the Order to do any good. On the surface, having someone inside The Daily Prophet seems like a real coupe…but unfortunately, that someone is Ainsley Abbott. As for Ainsley’s feelings, she knows that she’s often a disappointment – but she doesn’t know how to make that better, so she pushes the feeling away as best she can and ignores it. On the other hand, it’s getting harder and harder to ignore the realization that the Order might be losing this war. When she joined, Ainsley loved being a member. Sure, it was dangerous and often scary and sometimes overwhelmingly awful…but it also reminded her, a little bit, of life in Ravenclaw Tower. The arguments had different subjects and the experiments were less creative, but there was the same sort of energy in the air. Now most of that’s been sapped, and the influx of “new blood” looks to be too short-sighted and foolhardy to bolster AInsley’s flagging spirits. She doesn’t mind breaking the law (is too much that sort of Ravenclaw to worry about silly things like human laws…or the laws of nature even, at times!) but she didn’t join the Order for a lark; she had an end goal. And every day, that seems to be slipping farther and farther out of the Order’s reach…

SURVIVAL: 

As far as ordinary logistics go, Ainsley survives on her salary as an editorial assistant for The Daily Prophet. She shares a small, plain-but-decent flat near their London offices with her sister, Vanessa, although she might have to move to a less expensive location when the inevitable happens and Nessie moves out to get married – but that’s a problem to face in the future; maybe she’ll take a roommate instead. (Maybe someone from the Order. It’s one of the few places she has real friends.) It will be odd, getting used to living with someone who isn’t family again – the first time she’ll have done that since the Hogwarts dormitories – but AInsley is a Ravenclaw; she likes new experiences. As for staying alive…for the most part, Ainsley survives because no one thinks she’s a threat – no one who would want to hurt her for it, anyway. Many of her own allies have trouble wrapping their heads around the idea that this seemingly-meek, nerdy little eagle is anything more than a useful bookworm; the Death Eaters certainly have no reason to suspect her at all…and less reason than most, maybe; after all, as far as they know, she’s a middling pure-blood without ambition or angles of advancement, happy to take a back-set to her sister’s social climb. And no one who was helping said sister marry into the Rosier family would be so foolish as to join an organization opposing everything the Rosiers hold dear…right?

RELATIONSHIPS:

Ainsley’s most important relationship is, of course, with her sister – and despite the strain that Nessie’s marital prospects (and their attendant secrets and lies) have placed on the sisters, that is one bond that remains as strong as ever. As for her co-workers…well, Ainsley has yet to figure out where and how to really fit-in with the rest of the Daily Prophet staff. (Perhaps because she’s so often correcting their misuse of commas or calling their attention to “innocent” little factual errors that she’s too hard-nosed to let slide into print.) The closest she’s come to making a true friend at work is probably Edmund Gwynder, their newest staff photographer. Maybe he just hasn’t been around long enough to find Ainsley tiresome yet…or maybe the fact that she can’t correct the grammar of a photograph endears her to him. The fact that she feels guilty enough over the fact that he almost lost a hand in an Order-related incident, and consequently she makes more of an effort to actually engage when he talks to her, might have something to do with it too. Within the Order of the Phoenix, Ainsley fares much better. Maybe it’s the bonding-effect of facing death together; maybe it’s the fact that she has saved many of her fellows’ lives once or twice before (and they, her) or maybe it’s just that in a group made-up so largely of misfits in one fashion or another, Ainsley fits in. Maybe it’s just that she’s much too curious to be judgemental when someone else confesses to fears or failures, and that makes her a great comfort in times like this. Those she’s particularly close to include Edgar Bones, with whom she once shared a common room and classes – although Ainsley was, and remains, shocked that it was Edgar who joined the Order, not Amelia….but then, she joined too. Maybe the rest of the world should stop underestimating quiet Ravenclaws…and maybe Ainsley, of all people, should have known better than to jump to that same stereotypical conclusion. At any rate, she’s glad Edgar is here; it’s nice having someone around with whom she shares so much in common – not just a former Hogwarts House, either; they both have a penchant for watching, a drive for learning, and a sibling they love more than life itself. Caradoc Dearborn isn’t quite as familiar a face – or at least he wasn’t, before they both found themselves in the Order; they knew each other at school of course, but their paths crossed less often. These days, Ainsley finds him not just familiar but reliable – a pillar of strength and logic in a world tilting off its axis. Gladys Gudgeon is another year-mate she’s glad to see getting involved, although so far the other witch has been staying at more of a distance…but Ainsley thinks that ought to change. The more legitimate government connections the Order can form, the better – especially if they all mean to not be arrested once this war is over!

OOC EXPLORATION:

SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS: I think it would be interesting to get AInsley to a point where she realizes that she can fall in love without falling in lust – but I’m not sure that’s likely to happen, and I’m definitely not sure what kind of character would be the one(s) to inspire that breakthrough…but if something looks like it’s kindling, I’ll certainly be all for exploring it!

WHAT PRIVILEGES AND BIASES DOES YOUR CHARACTER HAVE? 

Ainsley isn’t prejudiced at all. Sure, she knows that being raised in magical society is a superior upbringing to that of Muggles but that doesn’t make her prejudiced; in fact, it just means she expects less of Muggle-borns because she knows they’re starting at a disadvantage, which is the opposite of being prejudiced against them of course. And it has nothing to do with blood-status, oh no! As a half-blood (even if she’s pretending otherwise these days), Ainsley would be silly to pay any credence to blood-status. It’s all to do with one’s experiences. Being born magical is just better, that’s all – that’s obvious. And of course the older one’s magical lineage, the better one is established within the magical world – but purity has nothing to do with it. Of course not. And as for unclean – sorry, as for inhuman beasts like werewolves and giants and goblins and centaurs…well, they’re interesting to study, sure enough! But Ainsley wouldn’t invite one of them over to dinner! That would just be absurd. She’s no more likely to treat a House Elf with the same respect with which she does a person than she is to sprout wings and start flying without a broomstick – less, honestly; that sounds like just the sort of experiment that Ainsley would be captivated by. House Elves, on the other hand…well, they’re useful and they’re often sweet and that’s nice, but they aren’t people. No more are any other non-human beings or (worse yet) those unfortunate half-breed creatures. Oh, Ainsley can be perfectly civil and even kind to them – especially if she’s studying them; she’s learned quite a lot from her forays to the McKinnon farm to talk to and observe the lycanthropic subjects sheltering there, for instance, and she was one of the few students to have managed to strike-up the occasional interaction with one of the notoriously shy merfolk inhabiting the Hogwarts lake back at school – but she’d never make the mistake of thinking that they’re people like her. That sort of foolish, illogical anthropomorphizeing empathy is how good researchers get eaten.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO?

I am honestly just so excited to get to explore the imperfections and prejudices within the Order; too often fandom makes 99% of the characters in HP so black-and-white in terms of good-vs-evil when most of them aren’t. Sure, there are extreme end-of-the-spectrum characters like Voldemort and Bella and Umbridge who are pretty much Pure Evil (and the occasional opposite end like the hardly-flawless-but-wholly-good-hearted Luna Lovegood) but for the most part, the people in this story are just people. (All that “both light and dark inside us” blah blah blah stuff.) But when you only focus on the Good Guys vs Bad Guys – particularly when the cause the bad guys are fighting for is so bad – it’s easy to gloss-over the flaws in the people fighting against them; easy to forget that they aren’t always great too. Easy to forget that just because you’re fighting against a group of people trying to enshrine prejudice as near-holy writ in their society doesn’t mean that you’re automatically free of prejudice yourself. (Maybe some of the people in the Order are there because they oppose blood-supremacy, but does that mean they like werewolves? Doubt it! Or what about the ones who come from Muggle roots who thus have Muggle prejudices that the wizarding world has little of – racism, for starters! What about queerness? Is it more tolerated in a magical society where people can change genders as easily as they transfigure themselves into rabbits and armchairs, and where marriage has always been about preserving the family line more than romance so who cares what the gender of your “bit on the side” is as long as you produce a proper heir? Etc. What about religion? I doubt too many wix go in for Muggle religions, when so many of those belief systems take the tactic of “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” so how does that conflict play-out between those who grew-up with one foot in the magical world and one in the Muggle? So many options for turmoil!) Just because someone is paying enough attention to know that Voldemort is evil doesn’t even mean that they don’t share some of the same ideals being spouted by the Death Eaters – maybe unconsciously, maybe to a lesser degree, etc…but still there, in their head. Internalized. Needing to be unpacked, confronted – but fandom does so little of that. Good Guys are Good, End of Story. The Order were all friends who got along, la la la! Nope. Don’t think so. The Order was made up of a bunch of scared, desperate, angry, beleaguered people (several of them outcasts in their own way) fighting life-and-death battles against an enemy they couldn’t always even find, opposing their own government in many ways in order to “do the right thing” – fighting a war that half the populace would rather just went away. Even if they had all started as buddies, that would have been enough strain to crumble half their friendships by the end – and conversely, to forge people who otherwise have nothing in common into lifelong mates. The interpersonal relationships and inevitable clashes and arguments and confrontations – those are going to be awesome. I’m so excited.

PLOT DROP IDEAS: Things to inspire more inter-personal conflict in the Order; things to erode people’s trust in one another. Unfortunate circumstances, suspicious choices – maybe someone is seen talking to somebody whom other Order members know to be a Death Eater, but they didn’t get the memo yet and just think they’re an old friend, but the others don’t buy that explanation… Maybe someone has to make a purchase in Knockturn Alley that they don’t want to talk about publicly, which should be fine – everyone deserves a little privacy! But can they afford to grant that in the middle of a war…? Maybe someone (a Death Eater, a concerned citizen, a copy-cat) stages an attack that the Order gets blamed for, and certain members of the Order (Dorcas and Emma? James and Sirius?) have a hard time convincing the others that it wasn’t them… Maybe somebody defects; maybe somebody dies.

ANYTHING ELSE? nope!

EXTRA FOR NON-BIO CHARACTERS:

PAST: 

There are a lot of Abbotts in the world. They’re an old family and rather than dwindle over the years like so many other old families, they’ve multiplied. Ainsley has cousins upon cousins upon cousins, and ties to most of the magical families in Great Britain (and abroad) if you trace those family trees back far enough. Everyone knows an Abbott – and everyone knows they aren’t pure. Not anymore; not since the 1940s, when the societal shift post-Grindewald led to a relaxation of blood-standards among many of the older families (the Bulstrodes, the Bobbins). But not every family loosened their ideals of purity, and some of those that did not were the most prestigious. This led to the Abbotts not so much being exiled from the higher echelons of society as drifting slowly to the side as the blood-purists solidified their grasp on the top slots and everyone else stood back and let them. For Ainsley, that was a stroke of luck; she’s the type of witch who prefers the sidelines, prefers watching to interacting, especially in a crowd. It is a trait that surprisingly few of her Hogwarts Housemates shared, but while AInsley preferred the company of her fellow quiet academics she was nonetheless delighted to let the more rambunctious Ravenclaws entertain her with the endless experiments and impassioned debates that made their Tower such an eye-opening place for a quiet, curious young Abbott to grow-up. 

PRESENT:

Ainsley might have been expected to go into some esoteric research position after Hogwarts, locked away in a room full of dusty books and quills and quiet. But quiet was best when it was surrounded by something exciting – and Ainsley liked sharing what she knows almost as much as she likes learning something new. So she turned to a very different source of the printed word: journalism. Her career at The Daily Prophet has not proved to be as fulfilling as she had hoped when she was first hired as an editorial assistant, however. She thought that would include writing a few articles herself – fleshing-out the paper’s coverage of current events and societal gossip and economic and investment minutia with some columns on important topics like Arithmancy theories and archaic rune translations. Somehow, though, there’s just never enough room to squeeze in her pieces; too much other news keeps getting in the way. That isn’t what drove Ainsley to leave her desk and take up wands against the Death Eaters, though; she did that for her sister. Vanessa was always the more impractical, romantic of the two – but their differences did nothing to drive them apart, and there’s nothing Ainsley wouldn’t do for the person she loves most. Including fight to make a world where Nessie would be safe to follow her heart. That’s why Ainsley went along with her sister’s scheme to pretend to be pure-bloods so she could marry Jayesh Rosier – and why AInsley decided to cut to the chase and just destroy blood-prejudice. The Order hasn’t had as much success as she’d hoped, though, and now Ainsley is starting to wonder if she isn’t potentially doing Nessie more harm than good. What will her prospective in-laws do if they find out Nessie’s sister is fighting against their precious Dark Lord?

FC CHOICES: Olivia Taylor Dudley, Song Ji-Hyo, Amy Acker