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beyondspaceandstars · 1 year

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Treacherous (18)

Relationship: Druig x Reader Warnings: fluff, depictions of anxiety Summary: Soulmate!AU - Soulmate tattoos are incredibly rare but you’ve never felt really proud to have one. Everyone else around you gushed over it while you found the whole thing ominous and a little inconvenient. Truthfully, you were never really convinced you’d find your other half… That is until a random camping trip leads you to a quaint village run by a dark and brooding man who just so happens to be your soulmate. Stuck in the forest with nothing else to lose, you agree to join his world, his little village, and see if there’s actually love behind the markings. A/N: I promise one day it will not be a whole month in-between uploads :) also this fic has over 50k words, that's so cool

‘Treacherous’ Masterlist | Main Masterlist

To say a person’s world can change overnight was ridiculous but also very possible. You had experienced it once — granted, it was an afternoon and all you did was walk into a forest, but a change was certainly what occurred.

You now faced it again as you watched the direct messages and likes and emails pour in. It was like your ex’s presence was the earthquake that started the avalanche.

Saying your forum post was gaining traction would be the understatement of the century. Somehow, screenshots of it ended up on some anonymous social media account, where it gained its initial attention, then the news sites swooped in, and now it felt like all virtual eyes were on your life. Although, no one exactly knew it was you. You thanked whatever higher being was out there that you had opted to keep your post as anonymous as possible. Even your email was a random string of phrases, giving you the opportunity to completely walk away.

Still, for the privacy you kept in real life, there was no doubt an absolutely deranged series of events seemed to have materialized in the dead of night. You held your suspicions on how it came to be — you didn’t take your ex’s cordialness at face value — but getting lost in the sudden chaos wasn’t something that you were actually going to allow yourself to do. And maybe you’d do that eventually but for now, even as you watched the notifications tick up, you couldn’t help thinking about the words you swore you heard in the silence of your bedroom.

It was nothing like you had felt before. Before, you had felt the bond, the connection, pulsing in the absence of one another. Druig was there and not there. That was different. This… These were words, a clear sentence, projected in your mind. You hadn’t felt much like it before. The closest you could recall anything like that was when Druig had been in your mind, in control. But even then it was a different sensation. You had no explanation for it but you knew what you had heard.

Between that phenomenon and the one exploding on your computer screen, you found yourself in a tricky position. You weren’t sure what you were doing anymore. Nor did you know what the point was. Your newfound notoriety should’ve felt liberating — people were listening — but the longer you sat with yourself, it just felt like the road was fading out.

Throwing a personal pity party had become second nature. You sighed and closed the soulmate forums, your emails, messages, everything, and opened a new browser tab. You clicked through until you got to the other things your regularly browsed nowadays: the news.

It was, admittedly, a random habit you picked up, but ever since you had found yourself much more secluded in your bedroom than you had been in the forest but with a window to the world, you took to reading news articles.

But your heart didn’t let you ignore the fact that wasn’t the only reason. You remembered what Druig told you he was setting off to do and surely the presence or actions of cosmic beings would garner a few headlines. Typically, you would immediately click over to the World section, mainly due to the fact you didn’t know where Druig actually was, but your cursor didn’t even get that far this time. A certain Breaking News article caught your attention.

What you read sounded straight out of a fantasy novel and you’d almost write it off as a hoax had you not seen the weirdness this planet could produce. A giant gold statue turned up on a volcanic island, half emerged, like it was trying to break out of the surface. You clicked on the headline and skimmed the story but there wasn’t much information to go on. The literally larger-than-life structure wasn’t there one second and now it was a permanent fixture on the Earth.

You scrolled through the comments and found others were just as confused as to what was going on in this remote area. Was it an art structure? An elaborate prank? Aliens? Superheroes?

You clicked over to the photos cycling through the gallery embedded in the article You had read a lot of news in your day, especially recently, but nothing had caught you as this did. Some rumored sightings of cryptids and reports of UFOs in the area had drawn you in as well but there was something specific about this. You couldn’t quite put your finger on it but you almost felt kin to it.

This wasn’t… There was no way… Was this the danger he had seemed so determined about?

In robotic fashion, you felt yourself begin to scratch at your tattoo. That had been happening more and more lately, especially after you heard those three little words in the night.

No, this couldn’t mean anything, right? What were the odds of you coming across this? It was all aligning too perfectly like the pieces of life were drifting into place.

Although hadn’t it worked like that on your little camping trip? Hadn’t some force pulled you right to him?

Maybe you were just being dramatic. Maybe you were turning into one of those girls who wanted to find a sign in everything. You tried to find the courage to consider other possibilities. This was just another weird occurrence in a world full of weirdness. This was some otherworldly race making an attack on the planet. This was… This was…

You sighed. This was something. It could be the something. Your tattoo and the newfound bond, as much as you didn’t want to admit it, rarely lead you astray.

But if this had been the life-threatening danger then did it mean he would be coming back? You scrolled back to the top of the article. It was published just over twenty hours ago. Almost a full day since the news had picked up on it but it could’ve been there much longer. You didn’t know what that meant, and something in you didn’t like it one bit.

You had to step away from all of this. You just knew you had to. Something in your gut was stirring.

You gathered an ounce of courage you had been hunting for what felt like forever and slammed your laptop shut. The urge to walk away, to storm off from what lay in front of you, was itching in your brain. It was an eerily familiar feeling but you couldn’t turn it off.

How did you get here? How the hell did it get to this?

Part of you wanted to leave. You didn’t know where that part of you came from but it was creeping into your heart like a hungry snake. Where you would go wasn’t of concern. You just knew you had been cooped up here for far too long. The place you dreamed of some nights seemingly long ago now felt dreadful.

You pushed away from your desk and threw on one of the coats you found laying in the corner of your room. You grabbed your wallet and flipped through the cash inside. It was only a couple of bucks but could get you…maybe a cup of coffee. Yeah, a cup of coffee. That sounded good to you. That sounded like a nice treat and a way to get out of the stuffiness hovering in your room.

But upon exiting your space, you came face to face with your parents. They were cooped up in the kitchen, huddled over their own laptops, looking at something you couldn’t make out. Their heads lifted in sync when you entered the room.

Your mother eyed your coat. "Is everything okay?"

Fair enough question, you figured. It had been a hot minute since you even looked presentable enough to venture out of the apartment. You had a couple of job interviews here and there but you were sure there was a different sense in the air.

"I’m heading out for a bit," you explained. "I… I just want a coffee." Right? That was all? Your head said coffee. The money in your hands said coffee. But your heart and soul were confused.

"Coffee?" Your father repeated. You nodded.

"Coffee. From the shop down the street. Nothing crazy, I promise."

You could tell they almost didn’t believe you. Almost like they could understand something was off. You wished you had never even looked at that damn article. You couldn’t stop thinking about him. Of course, he ran across your mind every now and then but your feelings now weren’t like that. It was all so insistent, demanding, a pulse pounding through your brain.

"Well, alright," your mother agreed. "Have…fun."

You nearly laughed at her forced words but you instead took the chance to make your exit.

Feeling the fresh sun on your face and hearing the hustle and bustle of the city in the afternoon was a welcoming but shocking attack on your senses. Everything was always so muffled in the apartment way above civilization it was almost surprising whenever you left. Such a rough comparison to your time in the village.

You joined the flow of people walking on the sidewalk with familiar ease. The coffee shop wasn’t far enough to hail a cab but still a noticeable walk on foot. This was the city, though, and you felt like you could walk to the ends of the world here.

It was easy to fall in step with everyone else. Navigating your way through the city was muscle memory. You kept your head down and your pace strong. Blending in felt magnificent most of the time. The attention you had brought upon yourself, some accidental and some knowingly, melted away for a moment.

You continued marching along almost oblivious of the world until your little bubble was forced to pop just under a block away from the apartment.

You hadn’t noticed the person in front of you had stopped walking until you foolishly crashed into their hard back. You gasped, surprised, and immediately started spewing out apologies. However, the person didn’t seem to hear you. In fact, they weren’t reacting at all — they were a complete statue.

At first, you thought maybe something ahead of you on the sidewalk had seriously caught their attention, but then you noticed from the corner of your eye there was another person frozen mid-step.

"What the…" You were in awe at this perplexing sight. You whipped your head around to find everyone around you was standing there, completely still, staring ahead.

And… Oh. Their eyes. Your stomach did a million somersaults. That shade of gold was seared into your memory.

But how could that be? Did he have the power to mentally encapsulate an entire citywide population? You might’ve underestimated your soulmate.

You stared at the stranger who had been walking behind you as you stood in the middle of the motionless, silent city. You didn’t know where the person had been going to, what they had planned for the day, but their entire world — maybe the entire world (Could he do that?) — halted.

Softly, from the opposite direction, came the sound of footsteps. They cut through the heavy stillness with determination. You didn’t have to turn around to know who it could possibly be.

You let out a humorless laugh as your heart threatened to pound out of your chest. "You know, you could’ve just tried to call," you muttered. "I’m sure my number is somewhere online."

That rough, accented voice replied with such ease. "Do I seem like the type to ever use a phone?"

The village didn’t have phones but surely someone in his group had a phone. But, truthfully, he really didn’t seem like the type to hold much interest in such things. Maybe you could show him, you thought. He was in your world now.

You sighed as you shoved your hands into your jacket pockets and turned around to face your soulmate. Long lost, finally returned soulmate.

When your eyes met, it was like more than just the people around you had stopped. In the depths of your bones, of your soul, you felt an unmistakable calmness. It was all so much stronger than you had felt upon your initial meeting. Time and distance were not too kind to soulmates, you realized, but boy were you rewarded when reunited.

Getting beyond your initial shock, you finally had the chance to really see Druig for the first time in what felt like ages. (Bit dramatic, you knew, but time was a funny thing.) The first thing you noted was the visible exhaustion written all over him. He seemed different yet the same in ways you didn’t know how to describe. The other thing that couldn’t help but catch your eye was his clothing. The village attire you last remembered him in was replaced by a modern-looking fit. He could blend in pretty much anywhere now which almost made you laugh.

"So, the world isn’t ending?" You asked to cut the tension that floated like a thin sheet of ice between you two.

Druig chuckled. "That’s what you want to talk about right now?" He slowly stepped toward you, somehow both confident and hesitant at the same time. He truly was an enigma you were gifted with figuring out.

You glanced at the still-frozen strangers of the city. "Maybe we should talk after you let all these poor people continue on with their day."

"You didn’t like my grand gesture?" He asked with a smirk playing on his lips. "I figured soulmates do this kind of thing."

You couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up in you. "This seems a little bit extreme even for a grand gesture."

Druig shrugged. "I needed to get my lady’s attention."

"Mission accomplished."

"Fair enough," he replied. With some concentration and a flick of his wrist, the city was resurrected. It was a little jarring at first, especially when the people who had been walking behind you practically plowed into you, but Druig was right there to catch and steady you. His touch was the electric current your life had recently been missing. Suddenly, everything seemed possible again with him around. It was stunning what a little mark on your wrist could conjure up.

"There’s a good diner up the street we could sit and chat at if you’d like," you said after you two successfully stepped out of the way of the sidewalk traffic.

He didn’t ponder the question very long, almost like he was ready to follow you off anywhere. "I’d love that."

It felt so natural walking beside him as you wove in and out of the fast-paced people also off on their own missions, in their own worlds. Druig, though, looked very neutral on the situation at hand. He didn’t seem eager to be surrounded by people, a very alarming contrast to the village, but he also didn’t seem disgusted by it. If anything, he looked curious, but you knew his way with humans was unique. And it certainly wasn’t like he hadn’t expressed his opinions on populous cities with you before.

"I guess you were meant to find me in New York," you commented, trying to keep the heavenly mood but also teasing him a bit. You’d made the remark during one of your very first conversations. You never thought you’d be past that lonely, chaotic stage.

Druig playfully rolled his eye snap nudged you with his shoulder. "You might be the only one I’d willingly venture into this extraordinary landscape for."

It was hard to diminish the fluttering in your stomach. You were enjoying this so much. Not too long ago, standing side-by-side with such eager might’ve felt like a fever dream. But the cookie had crumbled in the most interesting of ways.

"I missed you, too," you softly admitted. Part of you wanted to tell him that you had heard him so clearly that night in your mind, while the other part just begged to let down some iron guard.

At first, you weren’t sure Druig had heard or even understood you. He didn’t reply right away and instead continued walking. You grew a bit nervous, ridiculously fearing you had revealed too much (this was him, after all), but all was steadied as you felt his hand reach for you. His fingers brushed against your thigh. You took your hand out of your pocket and let your fingers intertwine.

#druig x reader #druig x human!reader #druig fanfiction #druig x female reader #druig x y/n #druig fic #druig fluff #eternals fanfiction #eternals fic #eternals x reader #marvel fanfiction #marvel fic #mcu fanfiction #mcu fic #soulmate au #writing*

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givelifetoaworld · 8 months

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i don’t wanna rb this post but i wanna say that everything this person said is valid and mostly true. the frustration and anger is justified and it sucks to have a website you love crumble and fall apart.

but i feel like talking about something that has been echoed by former staff members here - that this attitude is going to make it so you are never going to survive on another social media site.

we need a reality check here that like… websites and companies do not have morals. capitalism completely and absolutely controls all decisions made by a website, company, etc. to operate. since automatic is a tech company and tumblr is only a part of their product line, they have a very, very, very capitalist structure of what success and profit mean. we may all hold the belief that a website doesn’t need to be profitable, that a website just needs to be stable and reliable - but that is just a little bit too idealistic.

burn me at the stake, but tumblr live was not a bad idea. it could have been really fun and cool, but the problem was that we all quickly found out that tumblr live would require your data that tumblr has never required before. and so, it failed, because the userbase of this site tends to be more data cautious than facebook users. and i can promise you that a lot the staff working on this site probably knew that, but i’d like to see any of you on here pitch a major change or to insist a complement that you were just paid to work on for months is a complete failure to a CEO. see what happens to your income and livelihood.

transphobic moderation? yeah, that is a problem, and it sucks. but it has been acknowledged, and while some odd things have happened, a lot of the time it’s just shitty error and algorithms. which also happens on other websites daily. and yeah i’ve seen some staff members say some condescending and rude shit too, but damn, they are not some holy public figures, they are just some guy doing a job and y’all were harassing them and still harass them.

if any company or any website actually took into consideration user feedback, the internet would look like a different place. it might look something like it did 15 years ago. twitter may have not sold to elon musk. youtube wouldn’t do what it’s doing with ad blockers and content. reddit wouldn’t have fought back when users protested a couple months back. i could keep going! tumblr is not an exception to this and as someone who has been on this site for over a decade, i am not owed UI changes that i prefer. it’s a tech product and all tech products are inherently linked to and change only according to what might be appealing to capitalism.

and like… you can bitch and laugh about 600 people just trying to work and do their jobs to keep something like tumblr running far past it’s lifespan, but you need to understand that the vast majority of them weren’t “decision makers”. they were tasked with changes and plans created by someone who probably only knew of tumblr’s functionality rather than the culture of it (remember that Tumblr Is Gonna Be The Next PDF thing lol) and we’re expected to perform those tasks. you cannot just go “but i don’t like that/the users won’t like that so i won’t” when you’re told to do a task at a job, man. again especially not at a tech company. it won’t go over well for you and if you think the world works like that then well idk.

i knew all the way back in 2018 that tumblr wasn’t going to be around forever - a site doesn’t just lose over 50% of the userbase and bounces back to a state that even slightly resembles that peak of use. but they tried, and some things have been corny and some things have been just downright dumb, but you have to admit this site has been pretty creatively interactive even when it’s been “cringe” or ad based. there’s a reason you’re still here. there’s a reason you’re having these bittersweet and upset reactions to a staff you claimed to despise being reassigned, even though so many people have wanted them to “go away”. did you actually want them to go away, or did you just want them to appease to exactly what you wanted? you gotta be careful what you wish for man.

#i thought i’d be on twitter forever but i left #i thought i’d be on tumblr forever and i’ll probably stick around until the lights go out

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galactic-pirates · 7 months

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1, 14 and 21 for the ask game, please!

1) what are 3 things you’d say shaped you into who you are?

I am unfortunately an honest person so this might be a bit of an over share I don’t know. I’m not very good at judging so I apologise in advance. I’m going to put it under a cut as it’s quite personal.

- being undiagnosed autistic for 26 years. This is probably by far the biggest slice of the ‘what shaped me’ pie. I was me - I am me - and I have never known different and so I thought life was just like this. That I couldn’t cope, that I was weird and always unwanted, all my failures I assumed that they were mine - that I was just wrong and bad and I learned to deeply hate myself. I broke. I have had 3 mental breakdowns and got worse each time. I now have a reason for why I struggle but I have these learned patterns of behaviour that I can’t shake. The self-loathing is in my bones, the depression and anxiety are intense. It’s not like that for all autistics but because I didn’t know. Yeah :/ it’s a real problem and I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know how to let go, as I have never let go of anything in my life. I am stuck just getting worse and worse :(

- mum was my grandparents carer. I debated whether to put this in black and white. Mum doesn’t know my tumblr but I would hate for her to think I blamed her for anything. Absolutely not. Mum did the best she could, she always did the right thing, I support her totally. But it would be incorrect to say there were no consequences. I was a child and though mum insists it wasn’t true, I felt that my grandparents came first. On times I felt resentful like about Christmas plans or something, I then felt immediate shame and guilt about how I had thought it wasn’t fair, as it wasn’t about me. I do feel it has taught me to always put everyone else’s wishes above my own and to feel a lot of guilt about being any kind of burden, or even just existing in a space because surely I must be trouble.

- being on disability. A lot of self-loathing does come from this, that I am not contributing to society. But there’s also a hefty dose of fear. I am not in control of my situation. At any time the rules could change on me. I’m afraid of everything constantly. I mean fear is the singular constant in my life. But disability is definite constant low level anxiety, forever in the back of my mind. It never leaves me. I hate it. If I could get a job and leave it behind I would.

14) what’s something you’ve always wanted to do but maybe been to scared to do?

Go places. I’m virtually agoraphobic. I have panic attacks in the local supermarket. That’s the first thing that comes to mind. There’s a couple of science museums in London which look so cool, or there’s the Lego House.

But I think my real answer is to write professionally. True I mostly talk about novels and I did an attempt at indie publishing, but that was short-lived and I suppose I want to feel good enough. I didn’t give it a fair enough shake back then to tell if the market would eventually approve of me or not. However I have shied away from even trying since. I don’t expect they would have paid much but I have seen openings for staff writers a handful of times on sites I read everyday like WoWHead or BrickFanatics. I have contemplated sending in an application but haven’t dared. Honestly I’m not sure if I am more scared of rejection or success. I know rejection is a hell of a lot more likely obviously but I was just too afraid of the possibility of any kind of response.

21) are you a spiritual person?

Not really no. Death is something that terrifies me. Not for me but for losing mum. Sometimes I wish I did have some kind of faith. The closest thing to comfort I have in that sphere is the second law of thermodynamics, that energy can neither be created or destroyed. Yes I am quoting from an Agents of Shield episode but the sentiment really stuck with me. That everything that is, used to be something else, and will be something else again.

Thanks for the ask ❤️ sorry that I got a bit heavy there but hey you asked the questions.

#i answer things

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emily-mooon · 8 months

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I honestly hope that this hellsite doesn’t kick the bucket anytime soon.

Like for the first time in a long while, I have found my people and space where I can just be me with other people outside of close irl friends and my family. In school I longed to find someone who shared the exact same amount of passion for the things I loved and I found it here. I chose to come here because all other social media sites felt like a god damn shitshow in regards to drama and all other stuff. I don’t feel like tons of eyes are watching me and judging me for things way out of my control.

Also as an intermediate artist I’ve found that Tumblr isn’t as nasty as other sites. Like on tiktok, you’ll have random people giving unwanted criticism and then bully you for your art style and call it “art lore” when it’s not up to their standards. This hellsite had its era of making fun of young artists. Yeah there might still be some hate but I rarely see it. I was so nervous after posting my first piece of fanart to the internet and seeing all the support and love for something I made, made me really happy cause I’ve always been shy about my work and sharing it with other people and seeing love and support means so much to me.

Also I would hate to lose all my moots. You are all so important to me no matter how little we talked. I won’t know where else to find you as this is the only site I’m on. Despite how parasocial our relationships are, you are all my kindred spirits. The same sentiment applies to all my followers. You are all amazing and I parasocially love you and think you’re cool.

If this site does go down like Titanic, I fully intend on going down with it. I’m not getting on that life boat. I will be with the fish, lost to time and only a faint memory to those who know me.

I had hoped that this site would still be here when I hit forty but I guess not. I guess I’ll be 18-19 when I last walk the halls of this god forsaken place that has helped me feel less alone in what I love and cherish. If any staff see this, reconsider please cause I don’t want this ship to sink. I want it to sail the seven seas for eternity.

#I’m going to be honest with you and say that while writing this I got emotional #I don’t talk a whole lot about myself here (only briefly) but this place is special to me #I’ve only been here for like six months but this place has had a positive impact on my life and I’ll be forever grateful for it #also the historian in me doesnt want to see all the posts art fanfiction playlists moodboards and all other creative mediums disappear #I don’t want them to be gone forever #anyways I’m going to go and read some angst fics of my blorbos to help me feel better cause I just made myself sad #emily talks (no seriously she’s talking about things unrelated to her blorbos)

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robotgirlservos · 1 year

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Alright, so

I have had a few questions from other sites and dms and stuff and I think yall need one of these

healing lessons with Titch!

Covered in the next few minutes or so will be a few basics on healing. Even if you aren’t a green eye and don’t have healing powers, this should still be useful so that you know the limits of your green eyed friends.

Just like any other eye color, green eyes see the world with a different “tint”, ours reveals the “healthiness” of a living creature.

If someone has an injury, the injured part will lose its healthiness tint, some injuries are severe enough that the healthiness tint is drained from a larger area than the injury covers.

Bodies can recover on their own, even adapting to the loss of major body parts. We will come back to this in just a bit.

First, we need to understand violet tint, which highlights the shape of a beings soul. Most of the time, a persons violet tint matches their body with only minor deviation.

The most common exception to this is people who have lost fingers or maybe a limb, and while green tint may show that they’re in fine health, violet tint will reveal the parts that are missing. Some people and animals are just fine even if they are missing some of the parts most members of their same species would typically have. They will also be missing that part in their violet tint. Some people are just built different and we gotta respect that.

A few times, I’ve met people who had waaay different violet tints compared to how their bodies looked. Some were as minor as gender differences, and one guy I met had the soul of a dragon!

All of these also can be healed, but it takes quite a bit of skill and power to get right, and it could be dangerous to the patient if done wrong.

Something less fun we should all be aware of was how some things can hurt you without leaving a visible mark to anyone but a violet eye. Things like being heartbreak and harassment actually literally crush the soul and too much can permanently harm or even outright kill someone with no physical (healable) injury. Fortunately souls can regrow over time, just be sure to stay safe. If you need any help you can always come to me.

On a slightly more positive note, even if someone has died from a physical wound, a quick enough healer may be able to bring them back if set to work immediately. The soul sometiems sticks around for up to a few minutes after the body can no longer support it.

Generally, 3 minutes is the accepted timeframe for being able to bring someone back, but certain factors can raise or lower the time. Cooling the body way down or having a loved one present drastically increases how long the soul will stick around for. It’s never a guarantee, though.

Some things are just out of everyone’s control.

...

Alright! Now for your burning questions about eye transplants!

First off, even without his eyes, this guy can still use his orange eye powers, though he cant see anything, so he can’t really see anything in an orange tint.

Next, we’ve given him green eyes, and with his green eyes he can see! in green tint! However, he is still an orange eye at heart and can’t use any green eye powers, but he can still use his orange eye powers

Finally, after a while (or if someone just healed him) the green in his eyes fades and is replaced with regular orange tint

Eye color change is never permanent.

The closest I could think of is when someones soul got totally crushed, but their body just continued on as a husk. Then something else came and took over it.

Anyway, hope this clears things up! I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have

#robo beeps #oc: Titch #worlds' origin #I need a proper art tag

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snapdrake · 2 years

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General Art Tips :)

I kinda went off on twitter about this but figured I’d put all my thoughts into one post, and on a site OFF twitter lmao. I know some people ain’t there anymore.

Anyways! Some thoughts from a long time artist, aimed at newer artists or anyone struggling with motivation. A lot of this has to do with brushes, which I don’t?? See touched on too much I guess????

Obviously this is aimed at digital artists. That’s all I know, I’m afraid!

I am most familiar with CSP but really, all of this is true for other programs too!

-Find a brush you vibe with. Find MANY brushes you vibe with!

When your brushes feel better, and by extension, drawing feels better, you’re more likely to do it.

I know it sounds a bit silly to say that brushes feel different from one another when they’re all controlled by the same pen on the same screen, but trust me.

Play with every brush in the program you’re using. Draw out some scribbles. Increase the brush size, scribble a bit, decrease the size, scribble some more. if it has blending properties, grab another color and scribble on that scribble and see how they blend. If you’re still liking it, doodle out a cat or a leaf or a little bug with a knife or.. you get it. You’ll get a feel for a brush as you use it, and you can tell if you like it. If you don’t like it? Move on to the next one!

This is true for every stage of drawing! You found a brush you like to sketch with? Great! Sketch something so you can play around with lining brushes! The worst that can happen is you get half way in and don’t like how the lines look or feel. You can delete the layer and start over with a brush you like better. You’re getting practice with lining!

As you’re just playing around with brushes, you’re ALSO practicing drawing. Cool, huh? :3

-Ask other artists for their brushes/brush settings.

This one is obviously on a case by case basis, and you should be respectful of what an artist has said beforehand, and their response after you ask. Some artists aren’t comfortable sharing for one reason or another, and those boundaries should be respected.

There are just as many of us that are more than happy to help, though! Some make their own brushes are are happy to share, or sell their brushes publicly already. Some of us (like myself) have bought our brushes off personal sites or sites like gumroad and would be happy to point you in that direction towards what we personally use and can recommend.

-Grab cheap, or even better, FREE brushes when they show up!

Occasionally, people will reblog/retweet brushes they’ve found on the clip asset store or have put up themselves on aforementioned sites. They’re usually only a few bucks at most, and very often free with the original creator leaving it open to what the person wants to pay. It’s a very risk free way to pick up brushes to play with! At worst, you don’t click with it and you can delete the brush.

You can obviously also go browsing through these resources yourself for brushes and brush packs that look interesting to you!

-Just because something is labeled a sketch/lining/painting brush, doesn’t mean you have to use it that way.

This one is a bit sneaky, so don’t tell anyone, but you can use any brush however it feels best to you. No one will get mad. No one will get mad at you if you use the same one brush for every single stage of a drawing, even.

If that hard edged lining brush feels great to sketch with? Do it! If the soft edge on your lines that that shading brush offers makes you happy? That’s what art is about.

-Have multiple brushes of any one kind.

This one is a very loose suggestion, and just one that works for me, so don’t worry about it too much, but I figured I’d include it anyways!

Sometimes, a brush just... Feels Off some days and nothing you draw comes out well. Sometimes, a solution is switching to another brush. That can be hard if you haven’t taken the time beforehand to find a couple extra brushes, and you’ll just... lose motivation to draw entirely, and that sucks.

I currently have three sketching brushes and swap between them freely depending on how I’m feeling, and how they feel to me!

*The exception to this is if you’re a commission artist, doing commissions. Your customers are expecting a quality and style from you, so do your best to give them what they’re paying for. If you can’t work with brushes you have before, talk to them! Most people won’t really notice much of a change and are there for your overall style anyways, but it’s most polite to be transparent that something will be different than assume it will be fine. It really is better to ask permission than forgiveness, turns out.

-Use the tools at your disposal!

This is referring to both in-program tools and art tools in general! CSP has a built in 3D model program that you can use to help with posing. It exists to help you. Stabilizers on brushes aren’t cheating, symmetry rulers aren’t cheating. If it exists in the program, use it.

Out of program? Use references. Use pictures of real people, of real animals, of real cities and plants and water and clothes and crystals and and and

If you don’t know how to draw it, look it up.

There are tutorials on how to paint digitally, and how to do 3D modeling.

You can teach yourself... just about anything. The tools are there, and they’re there to help you. Don’t be afraid to use them.

-Practice, and have fun!

I know this one is kinda hard sometimes, but art really is supposed to be fun.

Draw the things you love. Draw your ocs, and your favorite cartoon characters, and things for your friends. Watch them light up. Draw the things kid you never could. Draw things to make them happy. Draw things to make you happy.

If you’re unhappy with something in your style, it means: A) You’re good enough to see that something’s wrong, and B) You do have the ability to fix it. You have resources at your disposal to improve. You have time to improve. You just have to let yourself, you know?

Don’t give up on this. It’s so worth it, I promise.

#art #long post lmao #idk what to even tag this as #i just really care about art and want people to succeed you know

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iamchaos1234 · 5 months

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HELLO LONELY TRAVELER IT IS I. THE ASK DEMON.

I HEARD YOU ARE WANTING FOR AN ASK....

here thy be.

#1: Do you have any fun headcanons about the childhoods of the Bishops? Anything Heket or Leshy in particular??

#2: Do you have any fanfiction recommendations? TOH, COTL, whatever! I rather need some new ones lmao

#3: hypothetically. hypothetically can you draw a narinder and lamb role swap that'd be so cool

#4: What's the best way to get out of a contract with the SnapCube Devil From Da Bible? That one, from the Shadow dub specifically. Time sensitive question

#5: Good Mobile games? Any fun websites or apps you use? PC games?

#6: RANT SLOT: GO ON A TANGENT!! SAY WHATEVER!! GO GO GO!!

Why hello there ask demon!

1: Well I think Shamura had very strong oldest sibling energy, makes sense. They taught the others much of what they know about the crowns, as well as teaching them how to run their cults. Kallamar was that one kid sanitizing their hands constantly. As a kid, little Kallamar didn't have control of his powers enough, and he was naturally prone to getting sick. He was (and still is) a big scaredy cat and was always nervous about everything (again still is lol). Kallamar was also a HUGE tattler. Narinder was always getting into trouble, creating problems Shamura often had to fix. Unlike the others, whose powers gradually grew, he had all of his right from the start, resulting in a Lil chaos cat >:3 Heket as a child was much more tame and much less violent, though she was still a ravenous little frog. She had a little garden that she really loved, but Leshy would consistently ruin it. Speak of the devil, Leshy being the youngest he always got what he wanted. He matured the slowest and loved to participate in chaos alongside Nari. (I spent too much time on this question lol >-<)

2: Not really any I can think of, though I can recommend some art blogs! Some of my personal favorites for cult of the lamb are The Red Crown Cafe, Crownsandbishops, and Thefourspouses. As for the owl house, some blogs I recommend are turquoisespace35 and savzo.

3: Hypothetically. Hypothetically I could. Maybe I will >:3 stay tuned

4: I honestly have no idea :/

5: Good mobile games? Some I like are Dragon City and Cats and Soup, both kinda collection games I guess. Fun websites, I strongly recommend WorldOfJadeMountain (wings of fire rp site) or any of its counterparts, really great roleplay sites and I really enjoy them ^^ don't really know any other websites I use very often except tumblr lol

6: PERFECT ima rant about my ela teacher since she is driving me crazy! So last quarter I turned in an assignment but she ended up losing it. She counted it as missing. When I explained I definitely turned it in she said to just redo it. So I did. And she still counted it as late!!! Like how is that my fault!? Then I commented on it and she said 'doesn't matter, I didn't get it in time' so I respond with 'well it takes time to redo assignments disorganized teachers lose!' After that she sat me next to people I hate, group me with literally my bullies, then proceed to take random points off my assignments. One assignment I got a 17/20 on. It included highlighting something, but my highlights didn't go through. She said to resubmit the fixed version. So I do. AND SHE COUNTS IT AS LATE. It was turned in on time! I fixed that one thing and resubmitted it after the due date and now it has late credit taken off it! I commented on it five times, no response. I don't want to ask about it during class because she always yells at me. Am I the asshole here? It just seems very childish for a comment like that to hate on me like this

Thanks for the ask!

#Chaos answers

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thegravityblog · 1 year

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My alter ego: This is what I hate. Idk what happens some nights, I am like “Why?”. Cheer up boy, sleep. She never lost sleep for you. And whatever she did was just an act. It was all fake. You’re just around the corner one step away. A couple of steps more and you’re there. You’ve already started feeling a sense of relief, don’t destroy it. Fuck her! She doesn’t deserve a soul like you. What the fuck in this world do you think, a woman who in her delusional world thinks she’s strong and a girl boss but when the times were really tough, got somebody to fill the void and just escaped? You think this person deserves to be in your late night thoughts? Cmon dude. Now you being deluded. Some people are fabulous actors, it was just an act. Now sleep, you have things to tackle. Who will take care of the employees, the product, the market, the clients and the associates? The whole fucking company? You put fires off everyday. Its normal, the difference is here you are completely being human. You’re doing absolutely fine. That bitch never deserved you, she was a mistake. You would had recovered by now, but she knowingly chose to fuck you for her own happiness. Her own stupid ass self centeredness. She could had ended things peacefully, but how would she feel better about herself if she couldn’t break you and confuse you? Keep you as a low-hanging fruit? But you won. You’re still around and you have achieved more than her in lesser time. And you’re rocking. There are so many more beautiful woman out there, what are her standards? You deserve someone who is internally beautiful, but not some fake ass girl boss. Girl bosses are accountable for their shit, your own elder sister is an example. That’s what a girl boss is. She owns her stuff and is not afraid to take responsibility. That’s the truth you needed to hear. Cool? I am surprised with all that cash in the bank you still think about a worthless fake human being! Sleep my boy. Winners don’t lose sleep for losers. Reserve this mental space for something meaningful. That chick took seconds to slip into someone’s bed, what makes her a strong woman? 0 self control when things were wrong. And did she win? Leaving you? Have you seen who is she with? Is he even a man? And the lifestyle? Cmon dude, you should treat yourself a single malt next evening that she left you for a loser. Just because someone is always with a person doesn’t mean that person is a man of values. If he was, really, do you think they would had been coupling on a porn site? That’s there side hustle. So you think this man, who also takes the easy route to get rich is a man of values? High value men aren’t fiddling on a chicks tail and following her orders. They make her life better in an unimaginable way. They move their lady to do better in conventional ways. A proper side hustle, in reality that guy is just being her pimp. How much of a reality check do you need more? Which civilized guy would record videos of her girl and post them online for money? Is that a gentleman’s definition? That guy is allowing thousands of guys to jerk off seeing her girls ass. Is this enough for tonight? Reality check. Don’t be them. Don’t be deluded. Being in solitude needs courage which you have been showing, these people are weak. Ask them to be alone for just a month and they’ll get mad, because in reality they can’t be with themselves. They don’t have the time to reflect on who they are! just don’t waste time on thinking why. Why is because she is this way. Not a gentleman’s possession but a pimps public property. Sorry, online pimp sounds accurate.

Yep, my alter ego is right. Sorry dude. 😂🥲

*These convo’s are very interesting between me and my alter ego*

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privatecloudco · 2 years

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Picking the Right Data Center for Your Company

Assuming that you have at any point experienced a horrendous occasion at your business that made you lose every one of the information put away on your PC, then you know the benefit of utilizing a server farm for your reinforcement stockpiling needs. A data centres is an offsite area that stores your electronic information both unique and repetitive, perhaps your server and, surprisingly, your correspondence frameworks. While this doesn't necessarily in all cases must be off site, having an offsite office is a certain fire method for guaranteeing that your frameworks are secured on the off chance that something happens to your business environment.

You have two choices with regards to utilizing a server farm. You, right off the bat, can possess and work your own server farm or you can decide to rethink your server farm to an organization that spends significant time in something like this. There are various advantages to both choice that incorporate financial plan, control, and that's only the tip of the iceberg. Nonetheless, there are a few things that may be no longer any of your concern while settling on this decision, principally on the grounds that having your own information framework can be costly.

At the point when you have a server farm, you really want a different space that is environment controlled. Servers and reinforcement frameworks run hot and they should be in ecological circumstances that permit them to remain cool over the course of the day. Most private companies that have their own information framework convert a huge storeroom or a little office for this reason. In any case, it requires a free cooling framework or a convenient cooling framework to guarantee that nothing becomes overheated or harmed.

Bigger organizations frequently devoted an entire floor to their server farm or they have a totally different office for this reason. As you can envision, this option is extravagant and can cost countless dollars to set up, in addition to the extra cost of keeping staff available to deal with the server farm also.

This leaves reevaluating this work. You can do this one of two different ways. Right off the bat, you can make your own server farm however utilize a self employed entity to oversee it for you. This individual would just come out one time each week or in crises, which you would need to pay extra for. The other choice is to utilize an expert organization and pay them a level expense to deal with your server farm frameworks. Over the long haul this can turn out to be very costly yet might be more reasonable on the off chance that you can bear the cost of paying a lot straightforward and wouldn't fret somebody beyond your organization having control of your frameworks.

For more details, visit us :

Hosted Server

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#data centres #colocation #Hosted Server

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paradisetemporarilymisplaced · 3 years

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So I was being a basic bitch the other day and listening to my true crime podcasts when it occurred to me just how suspicious Nile’s “death” would look to everyone not in the Guard, leading me to a train of thought that, 2200 words later, absolutely got away from me but I can’t let go so I’m inflicting it on all of you!

To set the stage, we know the movie takes place over approximately a week. Here’s what happens to Nile from the military’s point of view:

She dies is very seriously injured

She heals without a scratch

Just before she’s supposed to be shipped out to Germany, she vanishes, leaving two men concussed (and presumably reporting being knocked out by a woman with short hair wearing civilian clothes)

She goes AWOL for several days

They get word from the CIA that she is to be reported killed in action (details unclear)

So, at the beginning of this very weird week, the USMC has to tell Nile’s family of her death critical injury. What her family was told depends on how long she was dead – a Google search tells me that family will be notified in person within 8 hours of a soldier’s death, but we don’t know how long her first death lasted. For an injury, however, they’d get a phone call to notify them and the unit would arrange for them to visit as soon as the soldier is transferred out of a combat zone. Like I remember when I was in high school, a guy from my church who was a Marine was really seriously injured in a helicopter crash in Iraq and from what I could tell, his parents were told immediately and were flown out to Germany to see him, so it stands to reason that Nile’s family would have been informed relatively quickly after her throat was slashed, one way or another.

And then, she goes AWOL. Her family would be notified while the USMC tried to figure out where she went, not least because the military would want to know if she’s contacted them. (And it’s possible that her family may have been on the way to Germany to see her since we know that’s where she was supposed to go!) So for several days:

Nile’s mom and brother have no idea where she is

They know she was seriously injured and most certainly should not have been moving around on her own

They can’t get a hold of her

The military can’t tell them anything

And the next thing they know for sure is that she was “killed in action.” After being injured and vanishing into thin air. And they presumably cannot produce her body or any concrete evidence of her death. In any case, something sketchy is going on, so they’re like. SMELLS LIKE A MILITARY COVERUP.

In a surprise to probably no one, there is a well-documented legacy of mysterious US military deaths, particularly of women of color (TW for sexual assault in these links). The cases of LaVena Johnson and Vanessa Guillenin particular have made national news because of their families’ persistence in seeking justice. Likewise, Nile is a Black woman, and her mom and brother are most certainly hypercognizant of (a) state violence against Black people and (b) these high-profile cases of suspicious military deaths. So her family are seriously side-eyeing the situation, knowing that (a) the military has a serious incentive (and a documented history) of covering up things that make them look bad and (b) nothing about Nile’s disappearance and supposed death are adding up.

And Andy’s right. Nile does come from warriors. And you know who else does? Her brother.

Don’t get me wrong. Nile’s mom would absolutely not back down. She’d know something was up and want to get to the bottom of it. But based on what I know about Gen X parents (mine), they’re not the most technologically savvy. Like they can use the internet, but they didn’t grow up with it the way we young millennials and Gen Z did. So Nile’s brother takes the lead. And what do zillennials do best?

Social media.

Nile’s brother starts going hard on any site he can, trying to get the word out to see if anyone knows what happened to his sister. He starts a Reddit thread. He starts a Facebook group. He reaches out to the media and true crime bloggers and podcasters à la Sarah Turney, getting loud and being a general nuisance in hopes of getting some answers. He gets his friends and Nile’s friends involved. Maybe eventually Dizzy, Jay, and others from Nile’s unit hear about it and reach out, telling him what they saw and how weird it all was. He’s drumming up interest, and soon “Nile Freeman” becomes a household name (at least among the true crime fans).

Copley is, of course, trying his best, but at this point there is just so much that it’s impossible for him to scrub everything. Sure, he can erase new footage of Nile and the Guard, but what can he do about Reddit threads and podcast episodes that are speculating something weird has happened? Maybe he could hack the sites and shut those things down, but honestly, that’s the last thing he’d want to do, because that only adds weight to the theory that Nile’s disappearance is a military coverup. So eventually he has to tell Andy what’s going on.

Andy, obviously, does not take the news well. However, she is also completely computer illiterate, because that’s Booker’s job and he’s the only one who ever bothered to learn what the internet is in any meaningful way. (She probably calls Booker for advice, and for the record, I think Booker would have no qualms about shutting down conspiracy threads, tinhats be damned, but Copley is too concerned about the consequences. He’s ex-CIA for crying out loud, he knows how it’ll look if they scrub every mention of Nile’s name from the internet.) Maybe she confers with Joe and Nicky but, let’s be honest, they’d be equally unhelpful. So at this point, she knows they have to bring in Nile.

But the thing about Nile is that she, too, knows how to use the internet (duh). Aside from her being a young millennial/digital native, we know from the cave scene where she’s giving Booker suggestions on how to track Copley that she clearly is even more computer savvy than the average person. And for that reason she almost definitely took over the day-to-day tech stuff after Booker’s exile. So I think it would be foolish to expect her to be unaware of what’s happening. She’s not contacting her family or posting on the message boards or anything, but she knows what’s up. So Copley and the team probably sit her down to “break the news,” but we know the girl does not have a poker face (see: literally shooting herself in the foot and not being able to play it cool whatsoever) and cracks immediately, telling them she’s seen everything about her case – she’s not interacting with any of it, she certainly didn’t instigate anything, but she knows. (And she is so goddamn proud of her brother.)

At this point, I’d like to pause and consider Nile’s role in the overall narrative of this movie. She’s set up as a foil to Andy, obviously, but she’s also a foil to Booker. Booker, who, like Andy, is a serious pessimist, but who, unlike Andy, still has very fresh memories and trauma associated with being the new kid, which have destroyed him. In his mind (and Andy’s), if Nile communicates with her family, she’ll become just like him in a century or two – bitter, alone, and stuck with her grief and memories of watching her family die and knowing they died resenting her. It’s a small sample size, but this is the only experience they have to go off of.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

There’s been a lot of discussion of TOG being a fundamentally queer movie – a group of people brought together because of something inherent about themselves that is different, that must be hidden, that causes others to hate, fear, and reject them. Booker’s backstory is the archetypal traumatic “coming out” story – his family learns who he is, hate him for it, and attempt to cast him out of their lives. He’s stuck with his trauma, his pain, his loss, and it consumes him.

But what if Nile’s family would be the opposite? What if her “coming out” to them as immortal is met with acceptance, love, celebration? What if her family is just overjoyed to have her back, and they don’t care what the circumstances are? I'm reminded of this incredible post from @shitty-old-guard-deaths a while back, where Nile’s mother hits Booker with a frying pan because “my baby let me believe she was dead for FIVE YEARS based on your bad advice???” (which may or may not have inspired this whole tangent). Nile takes the advice of someone who did the same thing she wants to do because she doesn’t want to risk her family’s rejection. She wants the good memories with her family and is afraid that showing them her true self will bring her unbearable pain, forever replacing those memories. But, with high risk comes high reward.

Anyway. Nile and the team are trying to come up with a plan for how to handle this whole thing, but she’s not really participating because she’s too afraid to hope. Until finally, quickly, so she doesn’t lose her nerve, she suggests she reach out to them, knowing that, realistically, that’s the only solution before things snowball even further out of control. The team is shocked, but realize that she has a point. They decide that Copley should actually be the first point of contact, posing as a US government official to talk with them and test the waters.

So Copley goes to Nile’s family’s house to talk with her mom and brother. They’re probably distrustful and apprehensive, but nonetheless secretly ecstatic that their work has paid off. They talk and review all of the information that they’ve collected, including testimonials from the people on Nile’s base and recent sightings (along with photos) of Nile (with the same three people) over the last few years that people have sent them but they haven’t posted publicly. At this point, Copley’s like, yeah this is about to blow up, we gotta put our cards on the table. He convinces them to come with him to some safe house/black site/whatever he can get that is technologically impenetrable (I’m picturing them in like, an interrogation room at a police station kind of deal), takes their phones, locks the doors, and brings in Nile.

What follows is the most delightful reunion scene of all time, bringing Joe, Nicky, and even Andy to tears as they watch and listen from outside the room. With Copley’s help, Nile tells her mom and brother about her immortality and what’s been going on since she died (within reason, of course), and they are thrilled. They don’t understand why (because no one does) but they don’t question it and they see it as a gift from God – she’s been resurrected, she will live, and she has a purpose. Her mother and brother are so happy to see her again and are willing to agree with pretty much anything to stay in her life as long as they can.

So. They set up some complicated agreement (they bring in the other three for support/intimidation as needed) setting the terms of their relationship. They swear Nile’s family to secrecy, maybe bringing up the lab to show how high the stakes are, and they readily agree. They come up with some cover story for Nile’s brother to share on the message boards (maybe that the government has opened an investigation but because it’s an open case he has to shut it all down? Tells people to direct their tips somewhere else? Something to that effect). There’s still speculation, of course, but without Nile’s brother at the helm providing the energy, the hype dies down as news stories are wont to do without any movement. And Nile’s family goes to work for the team. The experience has taught them that Copley can’t possibly do everything himself, especially when it comes to social media, so Nile’s brother takes the lead on the day-to-day tracking/social media while Copley and her mom focus on finding jobs and scrubbing their traces afterward.

So there you have it: Nile gets to integrate her biological family into her found family and spend the rest of their lives with them as it should be, Copley gets some badly needed help managing the reality of social media, the team finally has a positive narrative surrounding outsiders Knowing About Them AND about interacting with people from their previous life, and the audience gets the happy ending to this very lovely and very queer story to counteract the pain associated with Booker’s family.

Plus, you know, I’m a sucker for both a good government conspiracy theory and for Nile getting every good thing she deserves.

#the old guard #tog #tog fanfiction #tog meta #immortal family #nile freeman #mine #damn look at me contributing to a fandom! that’s new #pls reblog if you like this my self esteem could really use it #I just love nile so much and I’m being the nile-centric content I want to see in the world #it is just genuinely nuts to think abt how this situation would be perceived by anyone outside the narrative #she just mysteriously heals from a fatal injury and then VANISHES!!! this should be national fuckin news #also I do think there’s a major hole in the story when you think abt social media #like the only time it’s even hinted at is right at the very beginning when Andy erases that girl’s selfie #and the concept of fuckin Reddit is not even brought up despite Copley’s stalker board being analog Reddit #there’s just a lot of places one could go with this which is very much what we got here #1k

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lazyevaluationranch · 3 years

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On a post about the Blue Haired Girlfriend's quixotic citrus breeding experiments, @voidingintotheshout asked:

I mean, if you wanted a hearty citrus relative, why didn’t you just grow Osage Orange? They can grow as far north as Michigan which is surely further north than anyone could reasonably expect to grow a citrus tree. They’re not edible but then hearty orange isn’t either. Osage Orange are so cool and such a interesting historical plant from the Shelterbelt era of American agriculture. Apparently they do smell like citrus.

This is part three of three. Part one. Part two.

Now you've done it! It's time for A Very Brief (But Also Insufficiently Brief) History of Twentieth Century Hardy Citrus Cultivation! Growing citrus trees this far north is kind of nuts, it's true, but I promise you it is not even close to the weirdest things people have done to grow citrus in places where the citrus doesn't think it should grow.

A note: This post will written using the Swingle citrus taxonomy system, including things that are definitely wrong. The citrus taxonomic tree looks like that one box of orphaned computer cords I keep moving with me to new houses "in case I need them" except some sort of adorable five-dimensional kitten has entertained herself with them and some of the resulting knots are not technically possible in our space-time continuum.

The powers that be gave us citrus because nothing pleases them like seeing a geneticist cry.

1. The Migrant Trees

The Soviet Union wanted lemons for tea, and they wanted to be independent enough not to have to trade with anyone else to get them, which meant they wanted to grow their own citrus. That part of the world is not a great place to grow plants that die when the temperature goes below zero, but at the foundation of the Soviet Union, there were citrus orchards in the warmest part of Georgia, along the Black Sea. Specifically, there was about, uh, one and a half square kilometers of somewhat implausible citrus orchard.

Hang on, it is about to get way less plausible.

This is the great citrus migration: any tree that did well in one spot, they'd try planting its seeds a few kilometres further north, or a few kilometres further east. Prizes were offered for breeding hardier citrus. Slowly the orchards spread, but they were extremely weird orchards.

It's usually a few degrees warmer at ground level than up in the air, and there's way less wind. So as the trees grew, they were bent over and tied along the ground. Some of them had the central trunk run in a straight line along the ground, with branches spreading out from it like the leaves of a fern, like an espaliered tree on its side. Others were starfish shaped, with the central trunk looped down until it ended up next to the base, and the branches sprawling out along the ground from the centre like starfish legs. The citrus trees were no taller than particularly vigorous strawberry plants, but they survived the winters, and you could throw a blanket over them to help them stay warm.

None of that helped if the ground froze solid, so they needed Underground Citrus. You'd dig a ditch, down below the lowest area where the ground froze, and you'd plant flat Starfish Trees or Flat Frond Trees running along the bottom of it, too deep to freeze. In winter, you'd just cover the ditch with boards any time the temperature was expected to go below freezing - citrus would tolerate the lack of light, but not the cold. Mandarins (Citrus reticulata) seemed to do best, so that’s most of what was grown.

It is a nearly unimaginable amount of work to grow citrus this way, along the bottoms of pits and trenches. We are experimentally trying to grow a Soviet-developed mandarin breed of unknown parentage, Shirokolistvennyi, but we will definitely not be putting in that level of effort.

2. The Mixed Up Trees

There are a couple species of citrus that tolerate cold well, but taste awful. A lot of effort has gone into crossbreeding them with more edible citrus. The results are ... mixed.

The Ichang Papeda (Citrus cavaleriei) generally survives temperatures down to -18 degrees C. It is stoic and calm and has mastered emptiness. Unfortunately, it has mastered emptiness too well. The fruit smells like lemons, with maybe a hint of rose, but there's nothing to eat here. It has a rind and seeds. No juice, no flesh.

(Photo by Michael Saalfield)

The Ichang Papeda is the parent or grandparent to several delicious, extremely sour Asian citrus types. Yuzu/yuja smells like grapefruit and clean wet stones from the bottom of a fast-flowing stream. Sudachi smells like grapefruit and leaves with dew on them. (I haven't met kabosu or any other papeda hybrids personally, but they are numerous.) They're all too sour to eat plain, unless you really need to turn your face inside out for some reason, but make for excellent flavouring.

(We have a yuzu tree and a sudachi tree and they're surviving, but no fruit yet.)

Trifoliate orange (Poncirus trifoliata) can survive temperatures down to -30 degrees C. This may be partly because, uniquely amoung citrus, they can drop leaves in autumn or winter and regrow them in spring, like a maple tree. They also produce an internal antifreeze. They are angry, twisted, thorny little plants that yell swears when you walk past them. They make a great hedge. The fruit is furry, smells like flowers and pine trees and taste like burnt, bitter plastic. It may or may not be possible to breed the horrible taste completely out of trifoliate oranges without losing cold-hardiness, if it's due to their antifreeze chemicals. Here’s Stabby:

(Photo by Rob Hille)

Even the least terrible trifoliate crossbreeds are bitter enough to qualify as “acquired tastes.” There are recipes for trifoliate marmalade: put a dozen trifoliate oranges, a kilogram of sugar, and a kilogram of pebbles in a pot, cook until it gels, then sieve out the oranges and eat the pebbles.

We are growing a trifoliate orange / minneola orange hybrid. And, of course, someday our own trifoliate hybrids. The Blue Haired Girlfriend planted 200 trifoliate oranges a couple years ago. There are fewer now, but the survivors have lived through two winters of snow and frost, and they might have somehow gotten more stabby. We're going to breed them, to each other or to less angry fruit, try and make something new and good from them.

I've limited this post to twentieth century hardy citrus breeding, but I have to give a shoutout to somatic hybridization, a decidedly twenty first century technique, where you take a cell from each of two different plants, remove their cell walls, put them next to eachother, and shock them with electricity until they merge into a single cell whose nucleus contains all genes from both plants. Then the new plant is like, "Wow, I guess these are all my genes? It seems like a lot, haha, but it's not like somebody made me from dismembered body parts and electricity, that is not how science works. Anyway I guess it's time to do some plant stuff now."

3. The Mutant Trees

In the 1950s, people started using radiation to randomly scramble the genes of plants. You'd irradiate seeds enough to change the genes somehow, and then you'd have to plant them to see what had happened. Maybe it was people horrified by the atomic bomb desperately wanting to find some life-supporting use for atomic fission, maybe it was government-supported cold war "atom bombs are good actually, look how many we have, USSR" propaganda. Probably both.

This time period also saw serious plans for Orion, a spaceship with a huge metal plate for a butt, intended to be propelled by exploding atomic bombs under it, which I am not actually making up.

Thousands of people in Europe and the US signed up to receive seeds with random mutations in the mail, plant them, and report back on what they heck they grew into and if it had any useful weirdness. (The gamma radiation used to mutate the seeds did not make them radioactive themselves - the seeds were completely safe.) There were also more formal and carefully controlled university research programs in China, Japan, and the US, where plants where grown in a circular research garden with a coverable radiation source at the centre, so that the farther you got from the centre, the less radiation the plants got. Radiation breeding is less popular than it used to be, but Japan still has a very productive citrus radiation breeding program.

The most popular radiation-bred citrus is the "Rio Red" grapefruit and its offspring, which has a much deeper red than non-mutant red grapefruit.

There aren't many radiation-developed citrus breeds noted for cold-hardiness - with radiation you get whatever you get - but there are a few, and I want one just because I think they're neat, a monument to that lovely human vision that looks at terrible weapons and somehow sees glossy-leaved trees with bright fruit.

4. The Monster Trees

Citrus are usually grown via grafting. That is, you plant a seed from a fast-growing sturdy breed, you let it grow roots and all that, and then you cut the top off and replace it with a branch from a more delicious breed. The two citruses grow together, and you end up with a tree that's disease and cold resistant in the roots, below the graft, but makes tasty fruit above the graft.

Occasionally, this process goes Wrong.

The first recorded instance is the tree called Bizarria, discovered in 1640. Someone attempted to graft a sour orange branch onto a citron. But instead of a clean line between sour orange branches and citron roots, the graft was damaged somehow, and the two different species of cells got tangled and mixed through the whole tree. It has branches that produce citron fruit. It has branches that produce sour orange fruit. And it has branches that produce, uh ... these:

(Photo by Labrina)

Most graft chimeras are made accidentally, when the graft site is damaged. Trifoliate orange is often used as rootstock, so there are many reported chimeras involving trifoliate orange and a nicer fruit. The mixed-up cells can be arranged a lot of ways, but it's possible to have the outside layer of the tree be trifoliate orange, and the core of the tree be the other citrus (periclinal chimera). This means you could theoretically get a tree with frostproof trifoliate leaves and branches, but fruit that doesn’t taste like burnt plastic rolled in quinine.

This lucky monstrosity has, in fact, reportedly happened. Twice. There is the Prague Citsuma, discovered in a greenhouse in Prague and suspected to have been created by a Soviet breeding program. And then there is the Hormish, discovered in China and thought to have been made by frostbite messing up the clean lines of the graft. The Blue Haired Girlfriend has managed to track down budwood from the Prague Citsuma - I’m so excited! - so we'll see how the fierce thorny monster tree with a heart of gold, or at least heartwood of gold, does for us.

5. Conclusion

Humans have been trying to grow citrus trees where they don't belong for nearly two thousand years, at least since the Jewish Diaspora and people trying to grow holy etrog trees - trunks gnarled as barnacle stones and the whole tree scented like the best dream you can't remember - in Europe. Maybe longer.

The Blue Haired Girlfriend's citrus-breeding schemes aren't going to singlehandedly transform Canada into a net citrus exporter. But history shows us: it might be possible to have a little gleaming sweetness from the stony ground here, with the ravens and the fir trees and the auroras. A sweetness we made ourselves, that exists nowhere else.

Or maybe we'll just have a bunch of weird inedible fruit. I don't know, but it's worth finding out, worth weaving together leaf and thorn and stone and the light of our hands as the years unwind. Worth it to have a quixotic project we can expect to spend decades on together, hands and hearts. This is how home is made, sometimes, with a balcony full of angry thorny little trees that shout swears at passerby.

#part three of three #so much doesn't fit in this post #fog gardening #how lemons started the mafia #etrogs in diaspora #citropsis and the african citrus species #we are still discovering new citrus species in oceania!#who knows what we'll make?#and one day we'll scoop up hydrocarbons from Titan's stormy seas and polymerize them and make huge bubble greenhouses filled with citrus #small children will fling squishy citrus at their siblings by the coiled light of Jupiter #which is as it should be #thank you voidingintotheshout for an excuse for all sorts of ranting

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babycharmander · 3 years

Text

If you think you have never stolen artwork, read this post.

So, art theft. If you've been a follower of mine, you've heard my barely-coherent rants about this before, but I thought it might be more productive to make a more coherent post on the subject.

If you're wondering about the title of the post here, it's because I feel like a lot of people aren't really grasping what exactly art theft is, and a LOT of people, even well-meaning ones, do it without even realizing it.

"But wait," you say. "I would never STEAL from an artist!! I never claim it as my own!" And that's all fine and good, but you're missing something here.

To start things off, what IS art theft? (It's not what deviantART said it was several years back, I'll tell you that much. *cough*)

We all know what art is, so let's talk about theft. Dictionary.com defines "theft" as "the act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny." Okay, makes sense, but what about that other word there, stealing? Dictionary.com defines "steal" as "to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force."

From those definitions, we can go on to define art theft as, specifically, "taking art without permission or right." In the context of art, that typically involves reposting it (not reblogging--reblogging is different) or using it for other things.

And there, my friends, is the issue.

If something is taken or used without permission, it is stolen. Permission is the important thing here--if an artist says "oh yeah, you can go ahead and use this!" then it's not stolen. You have their permission. But if you DON'T have that, then it IS stolen. It IS theft.

"But I'm not claiming it as my own!" you say. But you don't have to claim it as your own--the act of taking it in and of itself is an act of theft.

"But I said 'credit to the artist!'" The "credit" thing is a whole other conversation, but here's the short of it: The entire point of credit is to direct people to the source of something. If you are not directly linking to where you got the art from, you are not giving credit. "Credit to the artist" is not actually credit of any kind whatsoever. (Also, Google and Pinterest are not sources.)

"But I DID link back to the artist!" Okay, now this is where it may get confusing, because you may think you're covered because you actually did give credit. Here's the problem: if you reposted it or used it without permission, regardless of whether you gave credit or not, it's still stealing.

I'm bolding this because it's a point that a lot of people get tripped up on. Let me explain it this way: If you went into your neighbor's house and took something of theirs without their permission, but you told people "oh yeah, I got this from [neighbor]'s house!" that that would still, of course, be stealing, and it's no different for art.

Another thing is that even when you credit, people don't always check the source. Very recently I found a case where someone had reposted a piece of artwork of mine to Pinterest that was deliberately made to look like it came from the source material (it wasn't meant to confuse anyone, though--the description of my original post made it very clear that it was fanart). The person who reposted had linked back to my original post. The problem? The comments had people asking if this was official, where it happened in the source material, etc. Despite the fact that the source was right there, no one thought to look at it.

Even if you link back to the source, if you did it without the artist's permission, it's still stealing, and still causes problems for us artists.

"But I just posted it to my Pinterest--" DO NOT DO THIS. DO NOT POST AN ARTIST'S WORK TO PINTEREST IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THEIR EXPLICIT PERMISSION TO DO SO.

"But this artist friend of mine says they're okay if I post their work to my Pinterest so long as I link back to them!" Good for your friend! But the fact that your friend is okay with it doesn't mean that all artists are okay with it. For me, personally, I am very not okay with my work being posted to Pinterest, and say as much on my art blog description and posts (which people tend to ignore).

The problem with Pinterest--and reposting art in general--is that we artists don't know when it happens unless we're told, or unless we find it ourselves. It causes us to lose control of our art. And because of this, our art can spiral further out of our control, because when our works get posted to Pinterest or other similar websites, people who have no grasp whatsoever on how art works will just take it as "free art" and then use it for whatever they want.

That's how a piece I spent 20+ hours on was used as a poster for a paid event, without my permission, and without any payment or credit to me.

If an artist has said nothing about Pinterest (or other similar image sharing sites), your default should be to assume that they don't want their artwork posted there.

"Well I didn't repost someone's art, but I did use it for my avatar/RPing icon/video/fic cover/photo edit--" That's still stealing. If you're using it without their permission for any reason, that is stealing. Not to mention, the artist may not be cool with what you're using their art for anyway. (Looking at you, people who use platonic art in your shipping videos.)

“I MEANT to ask them for permission, but I forgot!” This can ONLY happen if you used the artwork BEFORE you asked for permission. You can resolve this by asking for permission BEFORE you use it, rather than assuming the answer will be “yes” and using it before asking.

"But it took me a really long time to make that icon/video/cover/edit!!" How long do you think it took the original artist to draw their piece? It doesn't matter how much work you put into modifying someone else's art--if you're doing it without their permission, you're still stealing.

"But I couldn't find the original artist! I tried to find them, I really did, but I couldn't. Is it okay to use their art then?" No, because you still don't have permission, and by reposting it anyway, you’re continuing to make the artwork spiral out of their control.

"What if I found the artist, but they speak a different language from mine? I can't ask them for permission, so is it okay if I repost their art anyway?" NO!! DO NOT DO THIS!! If there is a language barrier, use Google translate or find someone to translate for you and get a hold of the artist that way to ask them for their permission. The language barrier is NEVER an excuse to steal artwork. There are plenty of non-English-speaking artists who have taken ALL OF THEIR ARTWORK OFFLINE because the art theft was completely out of control. (And this isn't just exclusive to English-speakers stealing art from people who don't speak their language. It happens artists who don't speak English stealing art from English-speakers, too, but as this post is written in English it doesn't do much good for me to rant about this here.) If you can’t ask their permission, do not use it!!

"But what about reblogging?! Isn't that the same as reposting?? Should we not reblog art at all then?" No, reblogging (or retweeting) is not the same as reposting. If you reblog art, you keep all the information that we attached to the art, including our blog name and the description attached to the art. Reblogging/retweeting actually helps us artists A LOT, so as long as you're reblogging from the original artist (and not someone who's reposting their art), by all means, reblog our art!

"What if I just want to share someone else's artwork on Discord or show it to a friend?" This one's a bit different and is not actually as problematic. If you want to share our work on Discord or whatever, just link directly to where we posted it. Please don't post the art itself, unless you're doing it alongside a link because Discord won't show a preview or something.

"What about a forum or a site like Reddit?" This one's a bit different, since due to the way Reddit functions, if you LINK to the art, you have to go directly to the artist's original page to view it. (At least, that’s what it’s like the last time I was active there.) In a way it's roughly the same as with Discord--be sure you're linking directly to the actual post rather than just uploading the art on its own--but I would also ask the artist if they're okay with it, because they may be a member of the subreddit or forum and want to post it themselves, or they might not want their work shared to specific communities. (Some communities have a function where a bot will repost the artwork to Imgur, and some artists don't want that done with their art.)

"What if I'm saving it to my computer/phone to look at later, or making it into my desktop/phone wallpaper?" IMO this is fine, since your computer/phone files aren't public, and neither is your wallpaper. It's only a problem when you post it to public places without our permission.

"What if it's art I commissioned?" Well... like... in that case, it's art you paid for, so unless the artist you commissioned laid out very specific terms for you, you should be good to use that art. Like, at most, the artist may ask you to credit them somewhere in your blog description if they drew your icon or something, or credit them in a fic description if you commissioned a fic illustration from them, or something to that effect. It's really something you should have already worked out with the artist beforehand, but for the most part you should probably be fine to use art you paid for however you like.

"What about art I requested?" This is a bit different from commissioned work. Just because the art was drawn at your request doesn't mean it's explicitly yours (unless it's like, a drawing of your original character or something). Some artists take requests more as suggestions, so the art they draw in response to a suggestion or request is still theirs. Treat this as you would any other artwork and ask the artist for permission first before you do anything with the artwork you requested from them.

“What about NFTs?” ... Okay this one I can’t really go over too much because I barely understand it in the first place, but NFTs are BAD for artists and are a form of art theft. Do not turn people’s art into NFTs. This is a crappy thing to do. (If you want more information on this one, you’ll have to look it up yourself. It’s a form of cryptocurrency and it’s confusing.)

“If you don’t want your art stolen you shouldn’t post it in the first place.” This is fascinating logic. Try applying it to something else and see how it holds up. “If you don’t want your merchandise stolen, you shouldn’t open a booth.” “If you don’t want to get poisoned you shouldn’t eat food.” “If you don’t want to get punched in the face, don’t walk outside.” Yes. Flawless logic. Truly.

"Why do you care so much, anyway?! I'm sharing your art because I like it! That's a compliment! Shouldn't you be happy?" Well, we're certainly glad you like our art, but the problem is... as I've said before, reposting our art causes us to lose our control over it. When we lose control of our art, that damages our livelihood. As I said before, other people have made money off of my artwork. As well, some artists lose jobs because when their potential employers check out their portfolio, they may find artwork that's been reposted everywhere online, so they cannot hire the artist because they believe they may have stolen the artwork in their own portfolio.

Your reposting an image you thought was cute to Facebook or Pinterest could cost an artist their job. Think about that.

So, tl;dr, keep this in mind: you need the artist's permission to repost or use their artwork. If you do not have it, it is stealing, even if you credit the artist.

I know this post is really harsh in places, but this is such an important thing for all artists, and there's so many misconceptions about art theft online. And I feel like one of the biggest problems is that when some people see posts on art theft, they ignore them, because they think they've never done it or would never do it, so that's why I worded this post the way I did. I'm not trying to hurt anyone--I just want people to understand what art theft is, how it affects us artists, and how you can avoid it. Thank you for reading.

#long post #psa #drawing #art theft

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shreddedparchment · 3 years

Text

A Wife for Thor Pt.22

Obstacle

04/08/2021

Pairing: King!Thor x Reader Word Count: 5,413

Warnings: angst, jealousy, marital problems, pregnancy, allusions to cheating (no actual infidelity), fluff, smug Loki

A/N: It took me SO long to get this chapter down. I wrote literally like a few sentence a day for a bit and then finally got some good chunks out. This has been a tough week but this chapter makes it all worth it! I hope y’all think so too. A lot of good stuff happens in this chapter, as in stuff that I really like. If you happen to reblog, thanks so much for helping me spread my work!

Please DO NOT repost my stories on any other sites or blogs.

REBLOGS are always welcome!

The shuffle around the palace as Loki escorts you through the front gate is overwhelming.

It’s safe to say that judging by your reception when you’d shown up in Heimdall’s tower located on the far side of the city, the Asgardians are happy to see you.

Armod is also happy to see you and you rush to get into your car before you can get swarmed by eager Asgardians.

Loki joins you in the back seat and lets Armod gush over his happiness at seeing you back home and healthy. And pregnant! More than anything, the people are happy to see the swell of your belly.

Many of the women are crying as you step out of the car at the palace gate, the men cheering enthusiastically.

Some of the children have found flower petals to throw into the air and it rains white, pink, and yellow blossoms.

It's the small waving hand of a little girl with ebony floor length braids that tugs too hard on your heartstrings and you give in to your impulse.

“Armod, stop the car, I’d like to greet the people,” you ask, swayed further by the eager faces of the young girl's siblings who flank her..

As much as being Queen had come unexpectedly and as much work as it's been, loving the Asgardians has never been a challenge and you've missed your people.

Their kindness has always been the best part of your day.

Armod gives Loki a quick look but stops the car just as the palace gates are opening.

He pulls over to the side, putting it in park before hurrying out to open the door for you.

“Are you sure?” Loki checks, reaching over to place his hand over yours on the seat.

“Of course. I owe them this. I’ve been gone for so long.”

“If you’d rather go in, we can find an excuse.”

“Loki,” you laugh once. “Is something wrong? Is there a reason I shouldn’t get out of the car?”

“Not at all,” he assures you. “I just don’t want you to force yourself. I know this pregnancy hasn’t exactly been easy on you.”

“I’m okay. And I’m sure they wanna see the proof that they have an heir coming. Really, Loki, I don't mind.”

Loki sighs, but gets out quickly to move around and take Armod’s place and offer you his arm.

Taking it, you pull yourself out, and after a long moment to steady yourself on your feet, you turn to face your people.

A large number of Valkyries suddenly pour from the open palace gateway and you wait as they line themselves in front of the gathering crowd. A simple border of control to keep you safe.

The people don’t seem threatened by the guard either and they continue to cheer until you raise your hand and call them to silence.

It only takes a few seconds for the noise to die, leaving only the ambient sounds of the city, wind, and the shuffling feet as more Asgardians and visiting humans gather.

“Hello,” you begin, voice a little shaky from nerves. “I’m...I-I’d like to start by first apologizing for disappearing. And then for being gone so long.”

The people watch and listen attentively, hanging on your every word. As your hands drop down to your belly to stroke it anxiously out of habit, their eyes are drawn to it and they seem to rattle with excitement again.

Looking down at your tummy, you contemplate the little one inside and the kicks he gave you earlier in the day.

He's really in there.

“It’s been a long journey to do what’s been expected of me. Difficult, actually. Giving you and Thor what we’ve all been hoping for is a privilege though. It's important that you all know that.

"However, I'm not as strong as all of you. I'm not as resilient. As soon as I knew that I was expecting the future prince or princess of New Asgard, I knew that I had to take precautions. I had to stop thinking like your Queen and just for a while, think like a mom. I told Thor that I wanted to take some time away from my duties as Queen if only to make sure that my pregnancy would take. In order to ensure the health of this baby.

“Im so very sorry if I caused any of you any worry or pain by disappearing. That was never my intention and it makes me...I can only say that I'm sorry. I hope that you all can understand why I left. The The thing is I’m happy to say that my efforts weren't wasted, clearly."

There's a rumble of gentle laughter that flows through the crowd and breaks the slightly somber mood your speech is causing. You give them a smile and they smile back.

"And while that does make me very happy, it has not been easy to carry this baby. I have been sick and weak but after some rest I'm now feeling stronger than ever. With the constant and careful care provided by Doctors Wilson and Alric, I’m finally able to resume my duties as Queen with the knowledge that this baby is strong and healthy and my body can take the strain of bringing him-or her into this world.

“I’m so happy to be back among my people, my home. You all are my family and it fills me with such joy to know that I have made you all proud.”

The people cheer, more and more gathering along the street so that it’s now clogged and impassable. Others have taken to peeking out of windows from the surrounding buildings or finding balconies and roofs to stand on to get a better look at you.

Their excitement changes to trepidation at the look on your face as you realize that now is the perfect time to address what happened yesterday.

They’re so attuned to your mood that they quiet down again and wait nervously for you to speak.

"On a more serious note, I know that many of you must have been shocked by the lies spewed onto the pages of the Watch. And I'd like to be as clear as I possibly can about my absence from the palace.

"I only left because of the concern I had for our future prince or princess. There was absolutely no other reason for my absence in our great city. While it is true that something did happen between Thor, Jane, and myself--well, I will only say that now I know that His Majesty the King of Asgard is wholly devoted to me and our family, just as he has been from the moment he accepted me as his wife.

"Not that I ever doubted it," you lie. No one needs to know how bad things are and it is true that now you know Thor is devoted to you.

So, it's not completely a lie.

"As a people," you continue. "We'll need to be vigilant about the people we choose to trust to come into our homes. We will be more cautious now, and as a woman…"

You swallow hard, thinking about the words itching on the tip of your tongue to tumble forward and make your heart clear. Maybe it's not right to say it? Maybe it isn't the queenly thing to do?

You don't care.

"As a wife and a soon-to-be mother, I will say that Doctor Jane Foster is not welcome in my home. She has proven to be unworthy of the trust we placed in her and while her expertise is an invaluable commodity that I am sad to lose, I would rather have the second best than risk the stability of my family."

To your surprise, there are a flutter of approving nods and smiles, wives and husband's looking scandalized by the confirmation that something went down but clearly it was Thor that had Jane kicked out. A few cheers come but they quiet down quickly.

"My love for His Majesty is unwavering. As is his for me. No marriage can be without it's struggles but Thor and I are as united as we have ever been. Both in love, devotion, to each other and you, our people. Together we will strive to protect this kingdom to the best of our abilities and with this child, I hope we can begin to lay down proper roots for us so that everyone on Earth will know that New Asgard is here to stay."

The crowd cheers. It's deafening and your hands are trembling so terribly even clenched into fists they shake.

"LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!" someone shouts and the others fall into the chant as it's picked up by what sounds like everyone in the crowd.

A cool hand presses against the center of your back and you lean towards him as he whispers in your ear.

"That was beautifully done, Y/N," Loki admires. "Now come along. You need your rest."

You cradle your bump and the crowd cheers louder as you wave while Loki leads you back into the car.

As it pulls away from the curb, the Valkyrie turn to follow behind you. Faces full of stern pride. Their gleaming armor shining bright in the late afternoon sun.

The large wooden and steel reinforced gates of the palace close with a thundering clatter and you lean back, heart suddenly clenching painfully. Your stomach turns and you feel like you might throw up.

You shut your eyes and open the window allowing the cooling air to help drive your nausea away.

"Y/N? You alright?" Loki checks, putting his hand on your arm.

"I'm fine," you assure him, unwilling to open your eyes.

"Are you sure? Only, you're looking a little green."

That doesn't actually happen does it? Do people look green when they're gonna throw up?

You assume he's exaggerating, but as the last bit of the swirl in your belly passes, you look at him with fearful eyes.

"I'm nervous," you admit.

"To see Thor?"

"Mm," you nod.

"He's missed you. He will probably try and hug you. Might even kiss you."

"I don't know if I can handle that, Loki."

"You'll have to. The guards around the palace are sworn to secrecy about anything that happens in here, but with the amount of information that magazine was able to get we're pretty sure there's a mole amongst our number."

You look away from him, frowning because the last thing you want is to hug and kiss Thor.

Well, that is, you really want to do those things. Which is why you shouldn't. Not until you can be around him with some kind of rational thought and control over your feelings.

You need to get a grip and come to terms with the reality of your situation before you can let yourself love hum.

You have to protect yourself.

It turns out that you have nothing to worry about.

Estrid who had come before you with your things is there to greet you. A few others of the palace staff come to see you and you're welcome back with fondness.

Because you know you have to play the part, you look for him.

"His Majesty had a sudden summons from the Lady Sif and the Warriors Three, my Queen. He apologizes for missing your arrival but he's had the small dining room filled with all of your favorites.

"When you are finished with dinner, he has asked that you wait for him in his study."

Estrid's tone tells you she's wary for you. She wants to make sure you're okay.

The disappointment you feel gives you away not only to yourself, but everyone there to see your face fall as you caress your belly.

"A blessing in disguise?" Loki suggests in your ear for just you, but the smile on his lips says he knows better.

"He'll be back before it gets too late, Your Majesty," Estrid assures you, trying to soothe your sadness. "He promised. There’s nothing more he wants than to see you."

"I know," you smile at her, then the others before you head for the dining room, your stomach grumbling in anticipation of the foods you know are waiting.

~~~~~~~~~~

Waiting is torture. You keep trying to read your book but your attention is pulled back to the door of Thor’s study every few seconds.

You groan, dropping the book onto the desk before throwing your head back with scrunched up eyes.

How is it possible to be desperate to see someone while also dreading it?

It feels like you'll die if you don't lay eyes on Thor but also like it'll tear you to shreds if you do. There's no winning here.

You gasp as the door opens and get to your feet in the same breath.

Thor's body is rising and falling heavily with his own labored breathing. He'd been running.

To get to you? No. You can't be swayed.

"I'm here."

His declaration is soft but heavy with meaning. More than just him announcing his arrival.

"Oh, aren't you a vision," he gushes.

"Hi," you whisper, only because you can't catch your breath.

He's wearing jeans, a plain black t-shirt stretched across his bulging chest. He's even more massive than you remember. Three months away has deprived you so fully that suddenly being in his presence leaves you hungry for him.

You want him so much.

"I've missed you, desperately," he confesses. "May I greet you properly?"

You frown, so undecided.

"Or not," Thor relents. "Forgive me, I just got caught up in the moment."

Why is this so hard?

You want to feel him.

"You can greet our baby properly," you give in.

A big part of you needs to feel him and this is the only way you can give in and feel like you're still doing your best to hold strong in your resolve to get some distance.

Thor’s eye lights up and quickly finds the swell of your tummy with recognition.

"Really?"

"I will never keep you from our baby, Thor. Even if I'm not ready for things to go back to normal between us just yet."

Thor takes a half step towards you and watches you carefully for any indication that you're not comfortable with his proximity.

You sigh, head tilted to the left slightly before you hold out your hand to him, beckoning him closer.

In three long strides Thor takes your hand and stops when he's only a foot away.

"Here," you gasp.

Your heart is in overdrive. Thor’s touch is doing things to your body. There's an initial rush of butterflies in your stomach and quickly you pull Thor’s hands to the spots where your baby is kicking in response.

Thor’s body freezes. He goes rigid. He even stops breathing.

For a moment you begin to worry that maybe you've broken him, until he suddenly drops to his knees.

He swallows hard, eyes pooling as he stares at the swell of your stomach as the baby continues to kick.

“They’re really in there,” he’s so choked up about it that his voice cracks around the words.

As he speaks, the baby kicks more.

Thor laughs but then leans in to kiss your stomach over the fabric of your dress.

“We really made her,” Thor gushes.

“Her?”

He looks up at you, confused for a second before he smiles wide, “Or him. It doesn’t matter. What matters is our baby is coming.”

Your heart swells, and you’re so happy that you could float away like a hot air balloon with the warmth flooding your limbs.

This is the moment you’d dreamt of. This is the moment that had been stolen from you by Jane and her lies. This is the moment that you and Thor had both been yearning for.

He’s so caught up in it, floating through the glow of this perfect moment that he presses his lips to your tummy again two more times before he’s rising, his hand hooked behind your neck as he meets your lips as he gets to his feet.

You’re so unprepared for it, so utterly lost in this sweet exchange between him and your baby that your lips pucker on their own.

He opens his eye and yours, already open, stare into his. He looks slightly shocked to find himself kissing you but he doesn’t stop.

Instead, his expression shifts into a pained look of desire. He pulls back, his hand dropping to grip your bicep.

“I would say that I’m sorry but I have been wanting to kiss you since the moment I left you three months ago.”

You say nothing, watching him, listening. You’re searching your soul to see if this is okay with you because it feels okay. Despite the sirens blaring in your mind about the restrictions you’d set for yourself when you’d decided to come back home, your body is telling you it needs this. Your heart is painfully aching at Thor’s touch.

You’ve missed it. You’ve missed him.

“Is this alright? I can go.”

The idea of him going now feels like the end of the world. Rationally, you know that isn’t an appropriate response to his offering to leave you be, especially when you know you asked him for space for specific reasons.

“No,” your hands grip the sides of his t-shirt tightly, holding him in place without any actual strength since compared to him, you’re as mighty as a little mouse.

You refuse to look up at him, despite the crumbling of your resolve.

“No, don’t go.”

It’s an almost involuntary shy response to your diminishing shame at losing all control after his touch. After one kiss. You should be disappointed in yourself. And part of you is. However, that part of you grows increasingly small as Thor gently takes hold of your chin and guides your gaze up until you can meet his.

“I’m sorry, cherub. I will try and be worthy of you again.”

“I know,” you admit, knowing how sorry he’s been from the moment he realized that he’d done something that hurt you badly. “I know you are.”

“Can I kiss you, cherub?”

His voice is so deep, so alluring and coaxing that you drop your gaze again, fixing it on his collarbone before slowly you nod.

His arm winds its way around your waist and he pulls you to him before dipping down and catching your lips with his again.

He pulls away after a second because the swell of your belly gets in the way, but he laughs and looks down at it.

The pleasant sound of his happiness gives you too much joy.

As you begin to smile, Thor reaches down to press one hand to the side of your stomach while he pulls you against him again and kisses you this time with more fervor.

The longer he has his lips pressed to yours, the more enthusiastic he gets until finally you’re breathless and you pull back but instead of pulling away, you wrap your arms around him and fist the back of his t-shirt,

You bury your face against his wide chest and Thor brings his hands back up to caress the sides of your face, his lips kissing the top of your head.

“I know I may not have a right to say this, but thank you for coming home. Thank you for coming back to me. I thought I’d lost you."

His arms grow a little tighter, his heart is in an absolute stampede.

You turn your head sideways so that you can listen to his heartbeat.

"This is what I'd wanted," you whimper, starting to be overcome with the emotion of being reunited with Thor and things falling into place more easily. "This is how I'd wanted us to share this moment."

Thor sighs heavily, giving you one more squeeze before he pushes you back a little so that he can look at you.

“I’m so sorry that I robbed you of that. I was a fool,” he nods, his eye intense as he stares into yours with wordless declarations piercing into you.

The memory of your speech with the people when you arrived pops into your head and now with Thor’s arms around you it all feels a little like an overreaction. The past three months feels like a distant nightmare.

Or does this feel like a dream?

“Thor,” you begin but Thor’s lips are on you again, drowning out your words.

“Oh, to hear you say my name,” he declares and kisses you again.

Your mouth opens for him and you absolutely melt against his chest as he nearly dips you in passion.

He pulls back again, “Is this real?”

He kisses you.

“You feel so good in my arms.”

He kisses you.

“Your skin is so…” but then he hums and kisses you.

He dips down and with his arms tight around your waist but also careful with the swell of your stomach, he lifts you so that you’re level with his eye.

“I love you, so much, my cherub. Thank you, thank you for coming home. Thank you.”

“I’m sorry I stayed away,” you sigh. “I need to be strong without you, Thor. I was hurt but I never stopped loving you.”

His face goes through shame, understanding, and then elation.

In a burst of subdued anger and aggression for what he put you through, you reach up and grab his shoulder. You dig your fingers in against the taut muscle then reach up to pull one of his ears.

You’re clearly not hurting him but he allows you to move his head, understanding the need to express your anger even if you’re not doing any damage.

“Never do that to me again,” you growl. “Never say that you’ll leave me. Why would you say that? Even in passing? You were so damn sure.”

“No, Y/N, I wasn’t. The moment I saw you, I knew that I could never leave you. I’m sorry. I could never even think those thoughts again.”

“You better not, or I won’t come back next time. I’ll disappear and you’ll never see me again.”

Thor takes your threat for what it is. A promise. Truth.

He shakes his head as he leans forward to press his forehead to yours, shutting his eye.

“I swear,” he begins. “On my life.”

He keeps you there, hovering over the ground with your heads together for a few minutes before he slowly lowers you to the ground. You realize it’s because he wants to stroke your belly and you take a slight step back so that he can.

He smiles, happy. It reminds you of the look your people had when you’d arrived only a hundred times as possessive and joyful.

Again, your speech intrudes on your reunion and this time, you won’t let him distract you.

“Thor,” you coax, placing your hands over his where they rest on the sides of your stomach.

“Yes, my cherub?”

He’s excessive in the affection he puts in his voice but you know that he must be floating on cloud nine after what you both went through when you made him leave you at your house.

“I-I did something and I’m not sure if it was right of me to do it,” you watch his brow wrinkle and for a split second you almost lose yourself in the beauty of his face.

Has he always been this handsome?

“When I got back I kinda made a speech? Everyone was so happy to see me and to see me carrying our heir and I wanted to apologize to them for leaving and for making them worry. I wanted to share in their excitement for the baby and with that stupid tabloid having come out yesterday-”

“Right, the article,” there’s guilt in his voice despite there being no truth to the rumors it printed.

“I wanted to put their minds at ease and I...I did confirm that something happened with Jane but not what they were thinking.”

Thor’s expression hardens just a tad and he pulls backs towards a large armchair. He grabs your hand though and pulls you along with him until he can sit and then carefully attempts to offer you his lap, unsure if you’ll sit.

You do, because you’re tired and because you’re not eager to be away from him again. Now that you’re touching him, you’re not in a hurry to change that again.

“What did you say exactly?”

Swallowing hard, you lick your lips nervously, “Um...I told them the truth. Not exactly the truth, but enough of it that they’ll understand that Jane isn’t welcome here. I said that the only reason I left is for my health and the health of the baby, which is true. I didn’t want them to worry about us because even if we didn’t reconcile, I want us to be united for them at least.

“But I don’t trust Jane, Thor. Not after what she did. Not after how she treated me when you weren’t looking, and the people need to know that I will protect them from anyone, no matter who they are to you or me.”

Thor’s face grows pained as you speak, his arm wrapping around your waist as his other hand caresses the side of your stomach. You’re starting to realize that it’s going to be hard to get his hands off it, but that doesn’t seem like a terrible problem.

“I wish you had told me that she’d been rude to you,” Thor sighs, taking his hand off of his stomach to stroke your cheek. “If I had known-”

“She wasn’t rude to me Thor, she dismissed me. I wasn’t even worth acknowledging to her and now I know it’s because she was jealous and wanted you back because what? She saw what we had together and suddenly it was good enough for her?

“I was in her way. That’s all I was. Even if in the end she couldn’t go through with it whether it was because she felt guilty for doing this to us or for lying or for having second thoughts and knowing that she doesn’t want to be Queen or a mom, she’s a bad person to me. And I have every right to protect myself, my baby, and our marriage from her. She’s not welcome here Thor. I never want to see her again. Ever.”

He’s cradling you now, holding you close because the intensity with which you're telling him that Jane is not welcome in your home is transferring to him.

“And if you’d known, you wouldn’t have done anything, Thor. You’d probably have talked to her and asked her what was going on and she would have lied to you and you would have believed her.”

He doesn’t deny it. He does look like it hurts him to know that you know though. That’s enough for you.

“I think it took her lying and doing this to us to make you see what she’s capable of.”

Thor shuts his eye, resting his head against your chest as he wraps his arms around you again.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you are, Thor. But you weren’t the one who lied. I mean, you didn’t tell me what was happening, but you weren’t the reason that this happened. If Jane hadn’t lied-”

“But she did,” Thor says, his deep voice anguished. “And I failed to honor my vows. You are my Queen and I should have come to you the moment she told me she was pregnant.”

You both fall into silence as you reach over to stroke his bicep. His skin is so soft. Touching it gives you comfort in a way you weren’t aware you needed. The more you touch it the more you need to feel it.

A finger stroking his skin turns into two, then four, then your entire hand is running up under the sleeve of his t-shirt.

With the way his hand curls around your thigh, you know that both your bodies are responding to your touch. Both of you are heated but instead of giving into that because you aren’t ready for that yet, you lay your head on his shoulder and curl in closer to his chest.

Thor sighs heavily, wrapping you up in his arms as he cradles you close.

“Now we know better,” you whisper.

“Now I know what losing you will do to me,” Thor agrees. “I’ve missed you so much, cherub.”

You don’t respond. You’re too choked up to say anything without your voice cracking so both of you stay like that for a while.

The cocoon of Thor’s arms is toasty and from the exhaustion you’re feeling plus all of the emotions that have drained you, your eyes are heavy and difficult to keep open.

“What about you?”

Thor’s chest rumbles with a chuckle.

“We can talk more tomorrow, cherub. Sleep.”

“I’m not sleepy,” you lie.

“Very well, then. What about me?”

“You’re sleepy?” you look up at him, full of concern.

He chuckles again, “No, cherub. What were you asking?”

“Oh! I just wanted to know if you’re okay. What Jane did to you can’t have been easy. Despite what she did to us as a couple, she said she was pregnant. You’ve been wanting a baby for so long and she dangled that in front of you like the rat that she is. And then she wasn’t even pregnant?”

Thor’s arms constrict around you as he pulls you up towards him to kiss you.

It’s slow and full of emotion.

“Even after all of that, you’re still worried about me?”

“It took time,” you admit. “Once I wasn’t so angry and I thought about what Jane really did. I hate the idea that your heart broke over her lies. I can’t believe she ever loved you if she was willing to make you feel that way.”

Thor just stares at you, searching your eyes before he rubs his nose gently against your own. When he speaks, his voice is so low, so deep, an intimate whisper. It burrows into your chest and settles right there underneath your ribs and makes you breathless with missing him and desire.

“That’s why you’re my Queen, Y/N. And she is not.”

You’re not sure if it’s an Asgardian ability or if maybe it’s something specific to Thor, but he has a way of making you swoon.

“I missed you so much,” he confesses again, that whisper sinful. “Did you not miss me?”

You nod because you can’t speak. There’s a lump in your throat made of both sadness and want.

“Was your bed as frigid as mine was in your absence? Did you miss my breath on your neck as I did yours? Or the steady beat of your heart when you pressed your breast to my back as you held me while I slept?”

Fuck, he’s making this so impossible.

“I hate you so much,” you counter, but his lips stretch into a small knowing smile as you take a tight hold of the neck of his shirt and pull him up to meet your lips.

He exhales heavily into you, tasting you, relishing in every pulsating touch as both your hearts ache and yearn almost in disbelief as if both of you can’t believe that these wants, these needs are finally being met.

As he pulls back to tilt his head the other way, he takes hold of the sides of your face again, his lips grazing yours, “I love you.”

Before you can reply or yank him back into that torturous yet blissful kiss, a voice at the doorway clears their throat.

“Well, that was fast, what happened to keeping him at a distance?”

Loki’s voice pulls your gaze and you can feel your cheeks and neck burn at how easily it seems you’ve crumbled when finally face to face with Thor.

You frown at your brother-in-law, while Thor ignores his brother and leans up to press very non-chaste kisses to your neck, “I told you coming back was a bad idea.”

But Loki’s smile is blinding and with one chuckle he backs out of the room, shutting the door quietly as Thor turns you back to him so that he can get back to kissing you.

#king!thor x reader #thor x reader #arranged marriage au #royal au #a wife for thor #king!thor x reader fanfiction #king!thor x reader fanfic #king!thor x reader fic #king!thor x you #thor x reader fanfiction #thor x reader fanfic #thor x reader fic #thor x you #marvel fanfiction #marvel au #a wife for thor pt22

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dodo-begone · 3 years

Text

Scrambled Eggs

Pairing: yan!Ranboo x reader, Yan!Tommy x reader, Yan! tubbo x reader, Yan!Purpled x reader

Request: I raise you: Hnfnnnnnnnnnn more Yandere minors but this time you're with the eggpire already (not on purpose but you get the idea)

Word count: 3k

Warning: yandere, the egg, obsession, cult (egg), kidnapping, cursing

A/n: this is all platonic. Nothing romantic. also oop this went a lot longer than i thought it would- I got really into it. Also uploaded this and didn't proof read it. I know there's at least one mistake in there- sorry in advance.

Ranboo

When this poor lad finds out you’re currently in the Egg’s clutches, he was shocked. Oh my gosh, didn’t you love him? Did you actually love him? If you really loved him, you wouldn’t have let the Egg gain control of you. That’s how “the power of love” works. Right?

He’ll go to you, begging and doing his absolute best to reason with you. In all honesty, trying to reason with you was as productive as asking Santa Clause for that new ferrari model-

But that didn’t stop him. He was too far to properly think things through. Now why don’t you come home with him? It’s not safe for you. This “Egg” doesn’t actually care for you. He cares for you though- You end up chasing him off, saying that you were happier with the Egg than anytime you were with him. Oh how the Egg has brainwashed you. It’s so bad for you, can’t you see? He’ll go through the cycle of attempting to save you a few times before it becomes too much for him.

Eventually he just goes to Phil, ranting about how you were controlled by the Egg now and he was scared for your safety. Oh god Phil what can he do to save you? Phil please help him, give him some guidance- anything! And after Phil? Well, he’d pray to any deity that’d listen. Only asking them to save you from your current plight. You weren’t safe and he loved you so much, he can’t lose you too.

Phil tires of this cycle very quickly. It’s pathetic how much Ranboo is upset by your situation. But he’s your friend and he cares for you so much; you’re a constant in his life. How can he not love you? So he’ll just give in during one of Ranboo’s pleading stages, saying that he’ll help Ranboo rescue you- which makes Ranboo very pleased. If it was this easy to end this toxic cycle, he would’ve done it ages ago.

They plan your rescue for weeks, almost a few months. Everything had to be absolutely perfect; any flaw that could allow the Egg to repossess you needed to be resolved. As time passed, Ranboo grew more anxious. He kept visiting you during the planning process, just to keep an eye on you. Make sure you were safe.

When the plan was finally put into motion, his anxiety grew more. What if there was something that they miss? Something they didn’t account for? Phil had to remind Ranboo, multiple times, that you needed him. And he was here to save you. Ranboo couldn’t afford the time to hesitate, he had to take action. Plus if something went wrong, they always had Techno to fall back on. This got Ranboo back in the mindset, ready to save you again.

Something that was unavoidable was physical conflict. A fight started between the eggpire and the rescuers. It was rather rough and unfortunate that you got involved. You were fighting against them, rather fiercely as well. Leaving you mostly unharmed was nearly impossible when you were so determined to have their heads. But they managed. And they succeeded; they defeated/subdued the eggpire, you came out with only a few scratches and they got you away from the egg. All in a day’s work.

Once they got you “home” (specifically Phil’s house since it was far from the Egg and provided the most on-site protection), they started the recovery process. They had to restrain you to the bed, tying you up so no harm could come to you or them. Another unfortunate thing, but a necessity.

You were feral, thrashing around and snarling. Demanding that they release you. You had to get back to the Egg, the Egg needed you and you needed it. Though time passes with no change and you eventually tire, finally being subdued from exhaustion. Ranboo volunteers to keep an eye on you once you’re deemed “stable” (as in “not trying to actively leave”).

Phil is Reluctant to leave you in Ranboo’s care, but he was tired. The day had been long and rather draining. But Ranboo seemed so eager to help you, stay with you. So he, although reluctant to do so, leaves you in the care of Ranboo. They agreed to work in shifts before he left.

As he leaves, he gives you two a final look. Ranboo moves his chair closer to you, learning in and starts to talk to you. Honestly, Phil could care less about what conversation you two were having. He was only there to rescue you. There weren’t any ties between you two besides Ranboo, a common connection. All that mattered was you getting cured, out of the Egg’s clutches.

Tommy

This boy? When he’s told the Egg has you in its possession, he vehemently denies it. There’s absolutely no way it could’ve gotten you. I mean do they realize who they’re talking about? They’re talking about you- one of the strongest people on the smp!

Though a small part of him doubts that. Whispers that yes, you’re strong. But not strong enough to protect you from a danger like the Egg.

There’s absolutely no possibility that you were taken by the Egg. I mean come on, as mentioned above, you’re hella strong. You fought in so many wars and never fell for any of Dream’s lies. The last one is mostly why he believes the Egg doesn’t have you. If you can defy Dream’s manipulation, then the Egg should be no different. Right?

And so many people didn’t like him, so this had to be a joke. It was laughable, unbelievable. They thought they could get him so easily? Oh how wrong they were. Here, he can easily prove them wrong. Prove that it’s a prank. Mostly needs to prove it to himself though.

So when he walks around the smp, he keeps an eye out for you. He does it everywhere and eventually wanders to areas less frequented by him. That’s the level of “delusional” he’s at; you’re just hiding somewhere, far from him. This is a mean prank you’re pulling and very effective if the wanted product was a panicked Tommy.

Finally throws in the towel when he can’t find you anywhere after a week. He asked everyone on the smp for your location and got one of two answers; they either haven’t seen you or they saw you in the Badlands, near the Egg’s domain.

Now he wasn’t scared to go into the Badlands to look for you. Oh absolutely not! He was, in fact, absolutely terrified of the Egg. His reasoning for not going there boiled down to “the Egg doesn’t like him and wants him dead” and “there’s no way the egg got them”.

Enough time passes and he finally starts to accept the idea that the Egg may actually have you. When the thought pops up to look for you in the Badlands, he doesn’t question or fight it like before. Now accepting it with open arms, he heads to the Badlands. His worst fear will be laid to rest. You won’t be there.

Oh how wrong he was. When he gets closer to the Egg’s lair, he finally catches sight of you. It’d been weeks since he last saw you, and was ecstatic when he found you. A closer, more in depth look decimated any joy he had.

You were definitely a part of the eggpire with the signature red iris that obscured your natural eye color from the light. And it was also obvious that it was working you to death. Your body looked so much weaker than it ever had, besides grave injuries. Absolutely drained of all, fucking demented, lifeless were just a few things to describe your current state. It was so hard to look at. He knew he had to save you because the Egg was slowly killing you.

He executed the best plan he could conjure up in that little pea-brain of his; he’d “kidnap” you. A very simple plan, in all actuality. When the other eggpire members were away from you, he’d lure you away with just his presence. The Egg absolutely despised him, he was well aware of that. That’s why you were most likely chasing him, but he liked to believe you were coming with him willingly. Breaking from the Egg’s control.

Okay so he hadn’t planned on where he’d take you- BUT he did know you had to be taken far, far away. Far from the smp and especially the Egg. He’ll stop when he believes you’re too far from the Egg’s influence. A place you can finally rest and break free from the Egg. After that? Well it was obvious; he’d do everything in his fucking power to ensure that the Egg could never get ahold of, control or bother you again.

Tying you to the bedpost should be sufficient for now, right? Oh don’t worry about the long chain on it. It’s long enough for you to get into the bathroom and get business done. He’s a really considerate guy, huh? It’s only there to prevent you from running back to the Egg, he swears.

And look! You’re slowly becoming yourself again. It’s happening slowly, but Tommy can see the progress that’s already being made. And that makes him overjoyed.

Tubbo

The news of your disappearance couldn’t have come at a worse time. He had been told about one of the nukes being stolen and then the news that you were kidnapped right under his nose? Absolutely worse. All he felt was absolute rage and despair. First the nuke and now you? How could this get worse!

Finding out how you were taken can, apparently. Jack recounted how he last saw you with Bad. But it wasn’t like “oh they’re just chillin like homies”. No, it was about how Bad was carrying you to… somewhere. It was unclear where they went. Rather unfortunate how Jack had to deliver the news of two horrendous incidents at the same time.

Tubbo wanted to scold Jack for not stopping Bad, but he couldn’t. It wasn’t Jack’s fault. Well it was but wasn’t all at the same time. Telling Jack how he fucked up severely wouldn’t help the situation, and neither would yelling or any other destructive form of anger. Keeping his cool was his best option to solve the current crises.

He gets to work on solving both issues asap. Jack volunteers to find the missing nuke which left Tubbo to find you. Jack taking up the nuke issue was a blessing; he’d rather have Jack find the nuke than risk your safety.

Now since he’s left to look for you, he needs a plan to locate you. His best option? Getting help from the other residents, of course! They were more than happy to assist Tubbo. All of them get told the same story; the recount that Jack told Tubbo of the last appearance you made.

It isn’t long into the search before results were made. Puffy came back with your location. Your situation was less than favorable. Adding you being in the Badlands and so close to where the Egg laid, it was all clear. It appeared that you were under the Egg’s thumb. After all, if a friend calls out to you, a normal person wouldn’t just ignore them. And Puffy said she wasn’t too far away from you when she yelled for you. So something was obviously wrong.

Tubbo decides to give the Badlands a little visit. To give his own input on the situation, if you’d call it that. In all honesty, it was just to see you and see if the tales were true. Sadly, they were.

The next best thing would be to plan an escape for you. So the first attempt is him just trying to get you to leave on your own accord. And that plan was unsuccessful, which was less than surprising. Then he tries to physically drag you back. A hilarious sight, but another plan that was doomed to fail from the beginning. As a last resort, for that visit, he pulls out the puppy dog eyes and alligator tears. You were unfazed by his tactics. There go his immediate plans of freeing you.

Eventually you tire of his behavior and chase him away. You spare him some last words before you part ways though. “I don’t need to leave the Egg. I’m perfectly fine, so just leave me alone”.

That really made him upset, but he wasn’t going to give up on you just like that. No, you were his best friend. Best friends don’t give up on each other so easily. They stick with each other and get the other out of a nasty situation. And this was one nasty situation you got pulled into.

When he gets back, he relays all of the discoveries to the others. It was undeniable, unanimous; you had to be rescued. As they all talked it over, a smile grew on Tubbo’s face. Tubbo’s change in mood was dismissed easily; he was just excited to get his friend back. They weren’t half wrong with that.

Tubbo was more happy that it’d be easier to contain you. He could easily get you where he wanted you and keep you there under the pretense of “keeping you there for your safety”. And all he’d have to do is volunteer to care for you…

Purpled

Surprisingly, he meets you through the Egg. Well, properly meet you. Originally, he joined for the money. Some of the eggpire members were rather wealthy and paid handsomely for his services.

So to elaborate on how he “knew” you. He first found you when you first appeared on the smp. Being toured around by Dream. So logically he goes up to greet the new member. You want to make good impressions on people as soon as you can.

You two only exchange names before Dream starts to shoo Purpled off. Dream gives the excuse that you were his friend. Not Purpled’s. His. He didn’t know you well and this was his server, so he’d obviously give the best tour of it. Plus you two were also catching up on things you two had done.

Dream’s behavior peeved you. He was being rather rude to this stranger and rather irresponsible. If he was trying to seem good, he was doing a poor job of conveying that.

You argued with Dream to allow this other person to come along with y’all. The argument doesn’t last long before Dream finally shoots it down and pulls you away for the rest of the tour.

Purpled was awed, felt so loved. You argued back at Dream of all people, and just for him. To defend him and let you come along with him. God you must be an angel in disguise, a true treasure. People as gracious as you are hard to come by nowadays.

After that, he does his best to become your friend. He does all the research on you that he can and watches your behaviors. Noting what you like and what you do throughout the day. Just the normal stuff, ya’know.

Without you knowing it, you had become such a precious thing to him. You’d become his best friend. Yes you two didn’t talk often at all, but you two were still friends. After all, he knew everything about you. Your favorite color, your favorite place to hang out, which genre of books you like, what muffin you get at Niki’s bakery, how you like your tea and coffee. Just the normal stuff a best friend would need to know.

Also collected things of yours. Things you came in contact with. If you left them, that meant you didn’t want them. And if you didn’t want them anymore, then they were free for the taking. This was all obvious stuff.

Another surprising thing; he became too busy with the egg to even notice your disappearance. With how much he was around you, he would’ve noticed you go missing within seconds. Yet he wasn’t around to keep you safe, now was he? No he wasn’t. He was away collecting some of the dumbest things for the egg.

He was rather annoyed when he was told of the soon-to-be new member of the eggpire. Great, another egg freak he’d have to deal with. Right now, he could really use a pick-me-up. Visiting you wouldn’t hurt- apparently it can because he was almost immediately put to work after being told the news.

After prepping for the initiation process, he was more than peeved. It’d been weeks since he last saw you. It was some of the worst weeks of his life. All he needed right now was you- oh boy.

Well he wishes were granted because there you were, being inducted into the egg cult. Man he should’ve been a bit more careful on what he wished for, but whatever. You were here now. Once it’s all over, he goes to properly greet you as an eggpire member and tours you around. So since you like the egg and he likes the egg, you wanna keep talking?

Will do everything in his power to keep you under the Egg’s control. If anybody comes in hopes of rescuing you, they’d have to deal with Purpled first. They’d usually never get past him, defeated by his hand and sent away.

It was in “your” best interest to stay with the egg. Really it was his, but you believed it too.

Those egg-cult freaks kept preaching about how the Egg would give people anything they asked or craved. Now that you were here, Purpled supposed it was true. After all, you were what he wanted after all. He is best friend by his side forever. What else could he ask for?

507 notes · View notes