#but i had to okay

[crowleyanthonys]

[bitchlingwitchling]

Sonnet de Vries

Thy tender features speak to me,

Like flowers do to soft spring rain,

Thy gentleness could make me sing,

So that my love I can explain.

Thy magic flows into my veins,

And runs along this heart of mine,

A captive am I to thy spell,

And still no doubt is in the line,

"I love you" my heart sings to thee,

And will so for eternity.

[doctorho]

Behind these words

Hello!!!! and surprise!!! this idea has been brewing in my mind for a While, and i FINALLY got to it!!

so, here it is: the fic i promised to write about this letter series by @buttermynutter (aka my take on what happens behind all those lovely letters. a little glimpse into the world we didn't see before!) i'm going to write something for all the letters, here's the first one <3 where we get some background, and start our story!

Viktor x gender neutral reader, 1.5k words, no warnings (well, talk about crimes and imprisonment, but that's it)

here is the first letter that this chapter is based on, check it out!

A letter from the Assistant to the Dean of Piltover Academy is not what you’re expecting. 

Honestly, after the week you’d been having, you would have been less surprised about a summons to court. Or, you know, straight to jail. 

The way the justice system of Zaun worked was complicated, corrupted, and well above your comprehension. As far as you were concerned, it was something that just happened to people – the wrong person hears about you, doesn’t like you or whatever it is you’re doing, and into Stillwater you go. 

Though you suppose they wouldn’t have sent a letter if they wanted you there. 

No, odds are they would have just showed up and dragged you in. 

You’d been a little too close to seeing exactly how that happened only a few days ago, and you still weren’t exactly sure how you’d gotten out of that. One of those someone important says something to someone else important type of deals, you supposed. 

Which…might explain why you’re suddenly getting letters from Piltover Academy now. 

In the span of the last week, you’d lost your job, damn near all your possessions, and been accused of a crime. Which…was stupid, and inconvenient, and debatable at best, for the record. But the accusation itself was enough to send your whole life spiraling into uncertain chaos, instead of the familiar, predictable chaos that life in Zaun typically was. 

You’d lost your job. You’d lost  almost everything you owned. Everything you built. Everything you spent years building. 

So, in other words, you lost your future. 

And you hadn’t even been doing any actual crimes. Or, well, it wasn’t exactly legal either, but that was only on a technicality, because the people that made the rules also happened to be the same people who wanted to keep their profits rolling and their workers poor enough to be desperate. 

And, you know. Is it really wrong to break the law if it’s to help people?

See, you’d been one of those workers, poor and desperate, your whole life. You had managed to land a factory job early, with quick fingers and the ability to sit still and solve problems all day. You were lucky that way.

No job in Zaun was safe, but yours wasn’t the worst out there, not by a mile. And it actually paid you enough to…get by. So even though it was a bit dangerous and, for the most part, kind of miserable and sort of boring, it was the thing that kept you, you know, fed. Made sure you had a roof over your head.  

So losing that job felt like having the floor be pulled out from under your feet. 

Of course, after that led to you being accused of your alleged crimes, not having a job magically became the smallest of your problems.

See – okay. Ironically, the job you had lost? The job you had gotten way-too-young by pure luck and practically just by throwing things at a wall and hoping something sticks?

Manufacturing air filtration systems for Piltover. 

It was just one of the many factories in Zaun, nothing special. It didn’t differ in any way from all the other jobs where people spent their days building thousands of identical parts every day. It was a job, and that was the point. It didn’t matter what you made, because you’d never get to see it finished anyway. You’d never get to see one in action past the testing station. And even if you did, you’d never get to own one. 

Except that when you spend that long manufacturing parts from something, you inevitably learn how to make them. That’s what they want, right? That you get good. You get fast, you get efficient, you make more parts in less time. You make more money for whoever it is that’s cashing in the cheques. 

And when you make thousands and thousands and thousands of something, day in and day out, for years – 

It gets boring. 

And when you get older, it gets annoying. Sure, you’d seen the unfairness when you were young, too, but now that you’re older? It was burning inside you, begging to be let out. You could see it so clearly; how you were spending your life making these, these shiny machines for the people up in Piltover, people who probably would never even spare a thought your way, and you and everyone around you were slowly choking. Being poisoned, because none of you could afford to own the things you were making. 

Ironic, indeed. 

It was infuriating.

The worst part wasn’t even that you were making them and not getting any for yourself.

The worst part was that you weren’t even allowed to take the parts that were discarded.

Trash, you weren’t even allowed to take the trash. You had to throw away perfectly good parts, because the people up in Piltover couldn’t have scratches in their paint jobs or dents in their metal, could they, no. Every time someone made the smallest mistake, the parts had to be thrown out, even though all of you knew that you could build something working out of them. 

And people were choking. 

People were dying. 

So, fine. Maybe you did fish a few components out of the trash before going home. But not to steal them – to make your own. 

The thing is, when you spend that long building something, you learn how it works. 

No, you didn’t steal their parts, even though that’s what they accused you of.

You simply copied the basic principle. How to clean air. You took the idea, and you tweaked it with what you had. What you could do. What you could get your hands on.

And you shared your prototypes and your ideas, in the quiet of the night, with the people close to you. Because they deserved to breathe, and if you knew how to make that happen – if you were spending your life building these things for other people – couldn’t you just as well help someone else along the way?

Sure. Yes, you could have handled things…better. You could have been more secretive. You could have, in retrospect, not used your home as a lab. You could have pretended you didn’t know anything. 

But by the time you were very publicly fired and all your possessions were confiscated, that seemed a bit pointless. 

The last few days had been an unreal blur, going from a stagnant life to this whole mess, losing everything, being kept in a jail cell not knowing what was going to happen – 

And then this. 

A letter from the Assistant to the Dean of Piltover Academy. Viktor. 

You’re not sure if that’s common practice, signing something this important with your first name. You hadn’t really ever been to a school like that, but at work no-one had used their first names – hell, you didn’t even use last names, everyone just had numbers, and the higher-ups had titles. 

There was something tempting, something incredibly human in the idea that maybe this was how things worked in Piltover. Maybe Viktor, the Assistant to the Dean, was just Viktor. Maybe you’d get to just be a person, too, instead of a number on a list, a cog in a machine.

It’s a careful, quiet, fragile sort of hope, but you can’t keep it from taking root in your chest.

When you read the letter, you half don’t even trust its contents. You keep waiting to wake up, find out this was just a dream, or worse, find that you're awake but that the letter was actually meant for someone else and not you. Have all this newborn hope be suffocated.

But you keep looking at the letter, and it keeps having your name on it, and you continue being exactly as awake as you've been all day.

It is real.

You’d never even been up there, nevertheless been invited. 

You didn’t know much about how things in Piltover worked, but you were under the impression that the Academy was…important. 

One of the shiny places that had never been a part of your world. One of the places  you’d never thought you’d get to touch.

Except. Except now, you weren’t just invited, you were accepted into the Academy. You hadn’t even applied, and you were accepted. 

A part of you kept thinking it must be a mistake, or even worse, a trap of some sort, even though that didn’t really make sense. 

The letter had your name on it. 

And something – or someone – had gotten you out of your path to Stillwater. 

And now you were being asked to attend the Academy.

That was something you never thought you would do – could do – but now that the opportunity was offered? You didn’t even need to consider it.

Your life in Zaun had gone up in flames, and you were more than ready to leave all of it behind.

You didn’t have a job, you didn’t have a future, you didn’t really even have a home anymore now that everything in your lab had been taken. 

And this felt like an offer at a fresh start. A new life. A way out.

So you pack what little you had left, and you leave, holding the letter tightly, like a lifeline.

Tags: @writingmysanity

[captainredfields]

Hey Chris, did you ever dress up for Halloween? What was your favourite costume?

there's that one time i dressed up as thor.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The math just adds up!

[snailonsaturn]

that chimera ain't right

[edwardbonnets]

how to ask the demon you've been smitten over for 6000 years to dance: an angel's guide

bonus:

[artkaninchenbau]

Crocodile finds a strange stray cat an 11-year old Nico Robin (AU where they met 13 years earlier. Robin's been on the run from the World Government for 3 years. Crocodile's 27 and has not set up base in Alabasta yet)

It seems like I have become possessed. By some sort of demon.

Bonus:

[chloeseyeliner]

WHY, TUMBLR, why, WHY, WHY⁉️

no, i wasn't traumatised by a sexually explicit video of some porn bot in the tags i follow for the third time, no, i wasn't-

[elexuscal]

Danny Phantom, The Show:

geeky kid gets super powers from his parents' weird inventions! now he has to fight a rogue gallery of ghosts... but uh-oh! he still has to keep his grades up, deal with his embarrassing parents, and navigate girl troubles! rap theme song!

Danny Phantom, the Fandom, After 19 Years of Fermentation:

a child dies. but not quite. the inherent tension between life and death. the obsession of the dead for faded remnants of the living. warped green shadows on the walls of a dark laboratory. having to hide your true nature from those who should be your greatest allies. the fear of the monster you could become if you let yourself. being a ghost as a metaphor for the trans experience. a cold breath on the back of your neck in the dead of the night. rap theme song!

[inkskinned]

please i love you i'm begging you bring back suspension of disbelief bring back trusting the audience like. i cannot handle any more dialogue that sounds like a legal document. "hello, i am here to talk to you about the incident from a few minutes ago, because i feel you might be unwell, and i am invested in your personal wellbeing." "thank you, i am unwell because the incident was hurtful to me due to my childhood, which was bad." I CANT!!!!

do you know how many people are mad that authors use "growled" as a word for "said"? it's just poetics! they do not literally mean "growled," it's just a common replacement for "said with force but in a low tone." it's normal! do you hear me!! help me i love you please let me out of here!!!

[hansoeii]

dear ed, I love everything about you.

[dillyt]

Great news for uninsured adults in the USA who want a COVID-19 booster! It now appears that ALL CVS locations are now active participants in the Bridge Access Program. The Bridge Access Program gives out free Covid-19 vaccinations to 18+ adults who otherwise can't afford one, so if you have a CVS near you, please go get one! For others who don't have a CVS near them, please go to vaccines.gov, click on "Find Covid-19 vaccines", fill out which vaccines you prefer (you can mix different vaccines if you have to so i reccomend just marking all of them for the age groups you need), and when the next page loads mark the "Bridge Access Program Participant" option to see only locations that are Bridge Access Program participants. Hopefully, other places that aren't CVS will start participating soon, so just check back every so often to see if there are any updates. The CDC Bridge Access Program website also has more details on what locations will be participating, but only CVS is appearing as an active participant on the vaccines.gov location finder at the moment.

[lexintothenex]

aroace flag but it's colorpicked from this image of tintin :)

[notbecauseofvictories]

I don't know how strictly accurate this is, but one of the things I find shocking about watching historical dramas is how many people there are around all the time---according to Madame de... (1953) a well-off French household in the Belle Epoque maintains a workforce of at least 3, and the glittering opera has staff just to open doors. According to Shogun (2024) you can expect a deep bench just to mind your household, and again, people who exist to open doors.

Could people....not open doors in the past? Were doors tricky, before the standardization of hinges? Because otherwise, the wealthy used to pay a whole bunch of people to do it for them in multiple contexts, and I find myself baffled.

[blanketforcas]

DJ: [...] and then Ty and I were- became, like, inseparable at the very beginning. Like, just immediately. And over the last 10 years our relationship evolved to what it is today. And now we're getting married. It's just so crazy. That this person who was just my friend, now I think about all the time. And he sends me the best messages and he supports me and loves me unconditionally in the right way, cause I would never abuse that [...]