#dancing clan main story

[alien-s0da]

The Leader, Deputy, and Medicine Cat of Dancing Clan!!

[seravphs]

Act One, Chapter One: half agony, half hope

Knights are bound by duty and honor, but Gojo is more devoted to his princess than he ever was to his oaths.

Main Masterlist | AO3

wc — 10k

tags — royal au, knight gojo, princess reader, forbidden love, ballroom scene, dancing, court politics, blood, minor character death, period-typical misogyny, complicated relationships with fathers, secret meetings, flouting social etiquette by sneaking out to meet your childhood best friend who is also your loyal knight, title from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Next: the beginning of devotion (coming soon)

He was so still Shoko almost mistook him for a dead body. It was a common misunderstanding in her line of business, but not one she was usually startled by. As a poisoner, legally and officially a herbalist, the occasional corpse on her table wasn’t such an unexpected occurrence. A lord, on the other hand, was. 

Especially if it was him.   

Gojo Satoru wasn’t just a lord. He was the son of the former Hand of the King, the greatest swordsman in living history, and connected to the princess. There wasn’t a man alive who didn’t know the Gojo name. It was synonymous with the royal house itself as the clan that had produced scores of advisors to the king. In nearly every generation, the heir to the throne was accompanied by a Gojo, acting as a living sword and shield. 

But even with that storied history, this one was special. A young man who had risen to prominence during The Silent War, he returned home from hell as a knight unlike any other. The bards would adore him. They already did. 

Most generals earned their titles by leading campaigns. Gojo hadn’t needed one. He turned the tides of the war as a single man army. They had started calling him a grim reaper, a god of death. 

Shoko disliked him on principle, but she couldn’t kill a man like that. They’d have her head on a pike. She didn’t mind the idea of dying so much. What she did shrink from was the idea of dying painfully. 

The princess was known for abstaining from most decisions involving the crown despite being in line to inherit it, but Shoko somehow doubted that she would remain so passive if her favorite knight was murdered. Thankfully, Gojo let out a soft breath to show her that he did remain among the living. 

“I thought you died,” she remarked. 

“Sorry to disappoint you.” 

She said something else, but Gojo wasn’t listening anymore. He was floating through a shapeless world again, chasing that moment. It slipped away from him despite his redoubled attempts to capture it. He remembered the tang of iron in his mouth. Blood spraying in the air, a mist that he could smell and taste. The leather grip of his sword in his hands, slippery with sweat. 

He was trying to win back enlightenment, briefly attained and lost again just as quickly on the battlefield. A feeling of deep and solid peace had settled over him as he hacked through bodies, as if that was what he was meant to do. It should’ve concerned him. He already confused the ever thinning boundary between man and monster. That bloodshed brought him such euphoric tranquility could only mean it was growing worse, but he hated things he couldn’t understand. 

He needed to experience it again. Just one more time, so he could make sense of it. The smell of blood. Wading through the dead and the dying, thigh deep in gore - it was no use. Frustrated, he let it go. 

There was something soothing about the cracks in the ceiling. He stared up at it, letting his breaths come as shallowly as they had while he had been immersed in his meditative state. Shoko’s basement was chilly and dark, but it was necessary for the illegal autopsies she performed at his request. Those, and the poisons she crafted for him, were its primary purpose. It was only a stroke of luck that these qualities were also helpful for his attempts to recover his short-lived state of grace. 

He was tempted to try again, but not today. There was someone too precious to keep waiting if he delayed any longer. He wouldn’t impose upon her the way he often imposed on the elder lords who tried to remind him of his place by pulling rank. While they deserved his spite, she didn’t. 

Even Shoko was surprised by his sudden desire for punctuality. “You’re not going to stay?”

“I have a princess to rescue,” he said. “Dragons to slay, things of that nature.” 

Shoko scoffed. “You are the dragon they have to save princesses from.”

Well, Gojo thought as he hurried down the corridor, she wasn’t wrong. He was sure others agreed with her. He didn’t waste his time with children’s tales anymore, but he remembered his mother’s voice whispering to him in the dark, curled around him in his bed. A dragon was a tool to lock princesses away. His presence deterred anyone from coming too near to his princess, so by that definition, he was most certainly a dragon. 

Gojo found that he was a little proud of himself for that. Thinking of his mother had made him nostalgic. He thought she might be proud too, that he had taken such good care of the princess she herself had looked after. A dragon might trap, but it also guarded and hoarded. He had polished his princess like a treasure, lavishing her with attention until she had become a gem. 

She was beautiful. 

He was a soldier, so he had long since rid himself of the ability to lose his breath, but if he still could, he would’ve choked at the sight of her when he broke past the doors. She was seated so that the eye of anyone who entered the ballroom would be drawn to her first, but he would’ve found her regardless. He had promised. 

Wherever you were, he would always find you. 

It’s difficult to hide, being as tall as he is, but Gojo managed. He didn’t want you to see him coming. Already, he has to bite his lip to fight down his smile as he draws closer and closer. A few more steps, a detour to duck behind some random noble, and he’s in front of you. 

“May I?” You don’t have a chance to speak before he’s already dragging a chair closer. 

The smile on your face doesn’t match the harsh delivery of your words. “The next time you leave me alone with these miserable fools, I’ll order you to fall on your sword.”

Gojo laughs, unfazed. “Good choice. You’re too pretty to get your hands dirty. Although, you are a bit more murderous than expected for a princess.” 

“You try putting up with Naoya’s simpering gibberish for an hour.”

“I don’t have to.” He slips into the chair beside you, avoiding you neatly when you try to trip him. “Watch your feet, my lady. People like me don’t have to put up with Naoya.” 

People like you shouldn’t have to, either. You’re both higher ranking than he is, a princess and a lord each, yet Gojo’s the only one who gets to escape his painful-to-witness affections. 

It’s only natural. A royal dowry comes attached to you. Any eligible man would have to be an idiot not to fight for your hand, but really, they’re vying for a chance at kingship. You can’t go one day without someone reminding you that you’re a physical embodiment of the crown, something to want and own. 

Gojo pours himself water with a heavy hand, bypassing the wine. Watching him sip at it, you realize you’ve actually never seen him drink.

“Come now,” he says, a little softer. “Don’t look so desolate. What will I do if everyone sees you pouting? You’ll ruin my reputation.”  

“You don’t have a reputation to ruin.” 

“Don’t underestimate the things I’d do for the smallest sign of joy from you. Shall I procure one right now to destroy for your amusement?” 

You know he wants you to smile, but you can’t. Even if Gojo can usually pry laughter from you with the ease of a trained jester, this time, your sadness weighs over you like a heavy wool cloak. It’s your birthday, but it’s not a happy occasion. Every passing year tightens the noose around your neck. 

You’re a princess, and that means your life was arranged for you before you breathed your first breath. There’s nothing you can do about it. You’ve never had a choice. 

“Don’t,” he whispers. 

“Don’t what?” 

“Don’t make that face,” he says. “I’d marry you. If it came down to it, I’d take care of you.” 

His words nearly cause you to spill your drink all over your finely embroidered dress. If it set in, it would never come out. He grasps your hand just as the cup begins to tip, saving you. 

“Did you mistake your water for wine?” It’s a genuine question from you. 

He waves his goblet around carelessly. You’re worried he might be actually drunk, but you smell no alcohol on him. He couldn’t get inebriated from just a sip, anyway. Whatever wild whims have overtaken him tonight are entirely of his own design. 

“Better me than Naoya, no? I’d keep you safe.” He cracks a crooked smile in your direction, like you’re sharing a secret. “Admit it. I’d be a good husband. If I were around, you’d be untouchable.” 

He’s telling the truth. If Gojo Satoru was your husband, no one would dare anything with you, but you chase the idea from your mind as quickly as Gojo plants it. You’re your father’s daughter, raised on his practicality. You don’t waste time on pipe dreams. Better the hideous truth than a lie costumed in beauty - the bite of thorns was infinitely preferable to the impermanent fantasy of petals. 

Instead of answering him, you push your plate in his direction. You don’t even have to ask. Gojo dutifully takes your knife and fork in hand to cut up your meat. “Not even going to consider it, princess? I’m hurt. That was a serious offer, you know.” 

“You’re insufferable. Be quiet and eat.” 

Gojo’s mother used to say that the more adamantly someone denied something, the closer to the truth it likely was. You can only hope Gojo doesn’t remember, because she was right. The reason you won’t give him even an inch on the topic of marriage is because a proposal from him is the only thing you want but can’t have. 

Predictably, he ignores you. He’s never known when to quit. With so little that can genuinely stand in his way, Gojo has difficulty understanding the concept of a limitation. You’re both spoiled in that sense, noble children who had never been told no. 

“Think about it,” he says casually. “We’d be invincible. What other house could stand before our union?”

“I said- hello, father.” 

“A little early to be calling- oh, hello, Your Majesty. You look well tonight. Is that a new ring?” 

Your father cuffs Gojo around the ears. “Brat.” 

He’s in a good mood, then. 

“My little girl,” he says to you. “How pretty you look. I’m surprised no one has stolen you away from me yet.” 

You’re not so little anymore, but you forgive him. It’s just the two of you, ever since the queen died. He’s the reason you are what you are, as cultivated as a rose in a greenhouse. The climate that nurtured you is one carefully tailored by his own hand. 

“Not for lack of trying,” Gojo says brightly. 

“Boy,” your father calls him, despite the fact that Gojo isn’t a boy either. A deep sigh escapes his lungs. He looks truly sorrowful for a moment. “You look just like your mother.” 

Gojo’s smile freezes on his face. It’s true, he does. Through him, the king’s former hand lives again, but you know Gojo doesn’t want to be seen as an extension of her, even if he misses her more than anything. 

You’re familiar with the way your father knows exactly what to say to make you feel small again. The king is someone who exudes power. His uncanny ability to pick out what you’re most sensitive to and exploit it makes even the most proud of noblemen revert to children in his presence, as if they’ve been scolded by a nanny for stealing tarts from the kitchen. It’s strange that you feel the need to protect Gojo, the strongest person you know, from that. 

He reaches out and pats Gojo’s cheek now that he’s reduced him to silence. “Enjoy the night, my dear child.” 

When he leaves, Gojo slumps back in his chair with a tick in his jaw. Even if the king is your father, he can’t help himself. “Nasty old man,” he mutters. 

You pinch his thigh beneath the table. “Smile and look pretty.”

“Ugh, who is it now?”

“Lord Zenin and his son haven’t gotten their fill of tormenting me.” 

“Hm,” Gojo says. “I wonder.” 

“If you have a plan to avoid them, hurry. They’re nearly here.” 

“I don’t know,” he teases. “I don’t think you’d like it very much.”

“Yes, well, I don’t like conversation with Sir Zenin very much either.” 

He grabs your hand. “Then you’ll forgive me for anything that happens tonight?” 

“Anything is questionable, but do as you please.” 

He tugs you from your seat, pulling you through the crowd of people. Caught in his wake, you float past faces familiar and unfamiliar until the patriarch of House Zenin and his infernal spawn fade behind you. 

When you turn to face him again, he’s dipped into a bow. His smile is sweet, boyish. It’s as if you’re children again, and he’s stolen you from your lessons to waltz in an empty ballroom, motes of dust that you’ve stirred up floating in the sunbeams. 

He extends his hand, a sapphire burning on one finger. A dragon curls around the silver band of the ring, a nod to his heritage. Though the Gojos are a powerful and ancient house, in this moment, Gojo looks young, foolish, and all the better for it. 

“May I have this dance, my lady?” 

You giggle, wishing you had a fan to pretend to hide behind. You’re playing pretend again, acting as if you’re characters from a storybook.

“I’d be delighted to, my lord.” 

The music swells. Gojo takes your hand and presses a kiss to your bare knuckles. His lips are soft against your skin, temptation incarnate. In his grasp, your fingers tremble slightly, torn between wanting to seize him and wanting to run away. 

You’re terrified by how much you want him. 

If you let him in for one second, you can imagine how easy it would be to never stop. He’s every one of your desires and hopes made manifest, tied up in a single person. Although it’s impossible, you still feel the heat of him. The warmth of his lips linger on you, a stolen moment before he sweeps you up in his arms.

This is how you remember he’s a boy no longer. The breadth of his shoulders is wide. He’s lost the roundness of youth, his face growing angular and cunning. There’s solid muscle underneath your hands as he pulls you with him, his feet beating a steady rhythm that you have to fight to keep up with. 

He’s doing it on purpose, you know, testing how much you still retained all of those years of tutoring. You’re determined to show him they weren’t for naught. 

When you catch your breath and master the music once more, gliding with him rather than being tugged along, he smiles like he always expected you to. He’s been like this since you were young, dangling challenges in front of you that he’s equally as excited to see you pass as fail. 

The music slows. All around you, the frantic steps melt into slow swaying. You’re feeling brave tonight, so you step closer. You allow the arm curled more tightly around your waist, the tender look in his eyes. When you steal a glance around, no one is watching the two of you, but how far can you go before you lose it all? 

“Don’t talk to Naoya again,” he murmurs against your skin. It tickles, and you squirm until he presses so close it petrifies you. “I don’t like the rumors around him.”

“What rumors?”

“Bad ones. He tumbles girls and leaves them with nothing. Hurts them, takes whatever he wants, and ruins their lives. I don’t trust him, and especially not with you.” His hand smoothes over a stray ruffle on your petticoat, the gesture impossibly loving. “Never with you, princess.” 

You shudder at the way he says princess, feeling cut open, exposed. What has gotten into him tonight? You don’t understand. It feels like drowning, your brain always three steps behind, struggling to break the waves of your confusion. 

You know you’re weak. It’s your name that protects you, the threat of your father and the royal house behind you. Alone, you’re a lamb to slaughter. You’ve been spoiled your whole life, leaving you naive and helpless. 

Gojo is someone you trust implicitly. He’s always protected you. You’ve relied on him for as long as you’ve been alive, but perhaps that’s conditioned you to feel comfortable putting your hand into the mouth of the beast. Even at the chance of exposing how poorly you’ve been trained for the court’s schemes, you don’t hold back when you’re with him. He makes you feel at ease to speak freely without fearing how much you’ll reveal of your own vulnerabilities. 

“I can’t,” you tell him honestly. “House Zenin is one of the Three Great Houses. I can’t refuse Naoya without good reason.” 

“Then marry me,” he says softly. “Marry me and be done with all of this. They don’t deserve you, anyway. They won’t treat you like I will.” 

You close your eyes, feeling the telltale hotness of incoming tears burn behind your eyelids. Why did he do this to you? He was so gentle it hurt, even though you knew he was capable of terrible things. Somehow that made it worse, the knowledge that he was choosing to be kind. 

“You should go,” you say instead. 

Marriage between you and Gojo would never happen. Forget your father. An alliance between the strongest house and the royal house? It would be akin to tyranny. There would be blood in the streets before any of the other nobles would allow it. It’s better not to dream about impossible desires. 

Thorns, not petals, you remind yourself. You can suffer the truth. 

“Why?” He says. “I want to stay with you. I want to be good to you.” 

“This isn’t something to joke about, Satoru.” He looks like he’d rather you have slapped him. “Never talk to me about this again. Find someone else to dance with.” 

There. Your brain snags on something to distract you. You’ve been dancing with him for too long. It’ll reflect poorly on your reputation to give an unmarried man so much of your attention. 

“Pick another partner,” you urge him. 

His brow creases. Stubbornly, he holds onto you even tighter. “Don’t want to.” 

“You have to. Everyone will whisper. I’m surprised they aren’t already.”

“Then let them,” he pleads. “It doesn’t mean anything to me.” 

Regretfully, you pull away. Darkness clouds his beautiful face. It’s unnatural. When you remember him, he’s always smiling. The instances when he directs a genuine frown at you are few and far between, but you’ve already made your decision. 

Gojo stalks off in search of a new partner. Somehow, even though you were the one who forced him to leave, your heart stings to watch his back fade into the distance. If you didn’t want him to go, you shouldn’t have said anything. This is what you hoped for. Still, it’s painful. 

You want to find somewhere to rest after your spat, drained from a rare argument with him, but nowhere is secluded enough for you to let your guard down. Suddenly, you feel a wave of hatred for your stupid, glittering palace and the stupid, glittering fools infesting it. You just fought with your best friend and you’re tired, but you still have to keep up appearances. 

Somewhere nearby, Gojo is spinning another girl, her skirts flaring out around them. You wish you could press your palms to your eyes, letting the pressure relieve your headache, but you’ve shown enough weakness tonight. Instead, you tilt your head back and breathe, trying to appear calm and in control. 

It’s a good thing you restrained yourself, because Naoya is the one that finds you. His shoes are the first thing you see, black leather with steel accents. Steel, not silver, because he wants it to hurt when he kicks. 

You know. You’ve heard the stories. 

“Abandoned by Satoru, my lady?” You hate the way it sounds coming out of his mouth. Gojo makes it sound so intimate, like it’s for you and him only. Naoya’s version is a bastardization, much like the man himself. 

You’re too tired to deal with him, and yet, you’ll have to. House Zenin is important to your father and thus, important to you, especially when you inevitably replace him. “What are you insinuating about your princess, Sir Zenin?”

You use the proper address, the way he should’ve spoken about Gojo. They’re not close enough for him to be calling the other man by his first name. 

“Nothing, nothing,” he says. “Don’t get defensive now.”

You want to tell one of the knights stationed around the hall to drag him away. Instead, you smile and let him prattle on. Court politics. If you ever want to prove to your father you deserve everything you’ve been born into, you have to play the game. No matter how terrible some of the players are. 

“Since you graced Satoru with one, I hope you wouldn’t mind another dance.” 

Turning him down isn’t an option, but when you see that everyone’s watching, you realize even more how much it really isn’t an option. He probably arranged it that way too. Demonspawn. You’d curse his house if you could, instead, you offer him your hand, cringing internally when he tries kissing it. 

You can’t help but compare the two. Gojo did it better. 

Like any son of a high born house, Naoya’s a good dancer. It’s the one compliment you’re willing to grace him with, as everything else about him, especially his personality, is hideous. His hand is solid against your upper back, the other leading you as you spin around the room. It makes you want to scrub yourself clean, even under the layers of clothes. 

You’re doing this for your house. Your throne. This is nothing. None of your mantras diminish your desire to shove Naoya’s head in the cake waiting at the banquet table. 

“I’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” he tells you. 

“Forwardness is unbecoming in a man,” you say with a smile, as if he’s telling you the sweetest nothings. “What would my father say?”

“Don’t play coy, princess. We both know how this ends.” 

“Please excuse me,” you say as soon as the song ends. One is enough. “I find myself rather dizzy.” 

Naoya’s lips whiten with anger. He tries to grab your wrist, but someone steps between you. “Watch your hands with Her Royal Highness, Zenin. I won’t tolerate your disrespect.” 

Naoya’s eyes flash, but the interloper is sweeping you away already. His hands hover above your dress, never actually touching, as he guides you in the opposite direction. 

“Sir Getou, what are you doing?” 

Getou looks down on you in amusement once you’re a safe distance away. “Satoru sent me to rescue you, of course. I didn’t think he was serious when he said you would get into trouble without him.”

“Trouble finds me,” you reply archly. 

“Yes, yes,” he placates, sparking annoyance even though he just saved you from Naoya. “Are you tired of dancing yet, or do you have room for one more? I’m hoping to make an impression on potential wives by dancing with the princess.”

You’re smart enough to know that one more is rarely truly one more, but Getou did save you from Naoya. Besides, if you’re busy with him, no one else can ask for your hand. 

“I suppose I can spare you a dance.” 

Like Gojo, Getou is an adept dancer. He is, after all, a trained court noble, and the sons of House Getou are unusually predisposed to the arts in any case. If the Gojos are known for their strength, the Getous are known for their crafts. 

Getou doesn’t flinch from your unwavering gaze. If anything, he seems to find it amusing, although in the way one would find a puppy amusing. Gently, he leads you around the ballroom. 

“Stay alert, my lady. Someone’s watching you,” Getou warns. 

You follow his gaze to Gojo. There’s a beautiful woman in his arms that takes you no time at all to place, so infamous is her notoriety. Yuki of House Tsukumo is second only to Gojo in her blatant disrespect for everything the elders held dear. 

They make a striking couple. Everywhere they go, heads turn to watch them pass. Her gold to his silver, her lion to his dragon - it would be a powerful match. They would be perfect for each other, if only because no one would be able to challenge each other like they could. 

Excellent dancers each, together they become an instrument for the music to shine through. Getou is gentle with you, each movement as delicate as lilies floating across the surface of a pond. In contrast, Gojo and Yuki dance like they’re fighting, each trying to gain an advantage over the other. They’re magnetic, drawing every eye in the room to watch them. 

Everyone else may be entranced by the pair of them, but the pair itself seems disinterested in the crowd around them. Yuki’s eyes are closed but Gojo-

Gojo’s looking at you. Your cheeks heat with his attention. His stare is intense, eyes half-lidded. Every move is prowling, almost predatory. His eyes remain fixated on your face as he and Yuki move in a complicated, sinuous series of circles. There’s something impossibly filthy about his gaze. It borders on indecency, combined with the way he barely seems to be paying attention to dancing, giving you all of his focus instead.

“We can’t let them steal all the attention,” Getou says. He really is Gojo’s brother-in-arms. “Let’s give them a show.” 

You’ve never been trained in statecraft, but you’ve been given the very finest of tutors in the elegant manners of the court. A show, as Getou puts it, is more than within your capabilities. You close your senses to the rest of the world, focusing on the shift of your skirts and Getou’s quiet voice as your steps weave intricate patterns across the floor. 

He’s a naturally friendly man. It’s easy to talk to him, whispering between each peak in the music. Although he’s friends with Gojo, your social circles rarely overlap enough for you to spend much time in Getou’s company. You’re almost surprised by how much you enjoy it. 

“I think it’s time to change partners,” calls a familiar voice.

As Getou takes the hands of Lady Yuki, her eyes still closed as she sways, someone takes his place. Gojo’s hand slides from where Getou’s were placed appropriately on your upper back down to your hip. You drag them back up, ignoring his pout. He’ll be your last dance of the night. 

“Should I be worried about being replaced?” He murmurs. 

“It was only one turn,” you tell him. 

“And I never want to do it again,” he says. “The other girls don’t dance like you do.” 

He’s an unrepentant liar. You might have been tutored by the best dancers your father could find, but at this level, first and second place might as well be interchangeable. He’s only saying it so you know that he wanted to come back to you, despite the fact that you forced him away. 

Gojo’s a contradiction wrapped inside a paradox, at once sadistic and merciful. No one’s capable of making you feel as much as he does. Without the guidance of formal tutors to give you the education of a prince, you have no idea how to navigate the dangerous world of alliances and betrayals, war and peace. Once, you clumsily blundered through diplomacy, watching your father’s disappointment grow by the hour. You’ve since learned that complete silence is preferable to gaucheness. At least that is something your education as a princess has taught you. 

But Gojo knew you before you grew into the woman you are now. He still remembers how to pull smiles and tears from you, how to push you to the brink of exasperation and coax you into brilliant happiness. He has a key to all the gates you’ve erected. No matter what you do, he always slips past your defenses. 

If you keep letting him do as he pleases, you’ll be the only one who loses. Gojo is a man. If he’s rumored to be attached to the princess, it’ll elevate his reputation. He’s already the best swordsman in the entire kingdom. Being thought of as a profligate would only make them worship him more. People love a little hint of degeneracy to their heroes - not too much to make them immoral, but enough to make them attainable. 

A princess is not a hero. You’re not someone to attain, you’re someone to obtain. When people look at you, they only see the crown. If you’re thought of as a ruined woman, it would prevent you from finding a husband. It would destabilize the entire kingdom. 

It hurts to realize that you’re that selfish. Gojo would’ve chosen you over anything, but you’re letting something as empty as reputation displace him. 

Not that it’s exactly a choice. Your life has been forfeit since you were born. You don’t belong to yourself, but to the royal house. As the only child of the king, you can’t allow yourself any mistakes, not when even the barest twitch of your fingers is scrutinized. 

When Gojo offers to escort you back to your chambers at the end of the night, you swallow down the desire to agree. His eyes are hopeful, mirroring your own expression. It could be like back then, when you were children, running through the halls of the grand palace without a care in the world. Except you know you can never return to the halcyon days of your childhood, before your mother died, before his mother disappeared, before everything went wrong. You try not to let the disappointment on his face bother you when you allow the knight your father sent to bring you back to your rooms instead. 

You attribute the strange feeling you get in the morning to the leftover melancholy of last night. Sunlight trickles across your face lazily, not enough to raise you from your bed but just bright enough to remind you that morning was here. 

You’ve never slept long enough for the sun to warm your face while you were still entangled in your sheets before. The window faces your bed at such an awkward angle that the sun has to be high in the sky before it can light across your pillows. 

Usually a maid wakes you by now if you aren’t up already. Where were they? 

A gentle knock at the door only makes you more apprehensive. It can’t be Utahime. You know the sound of her steps. The pacing is stilted, awkward, as if whoever was behind the door was nervous. 

“Hello?”

“Oh, princess!” Definitely nervous. Not a voice you can recognize. A new maid, perhaps? But why would they-

The door bursts open. You scream as a cloaked figure lunges at you. She throws herself on top of you, trying to pin you to the bed so she can run you through with the knife she has raised in her left hand. 

She’s crying. “You weren’t supposed to be awake!”

Crying and angry. Fluffy white down bursts into the air, obscuring your vision as she stabs a pillow so brutally it vomits its contents. She’s not very good, which explains her terror. Unfortunately, you aren’t very good either, and you’re pinned underneath her. Thrashing doesn’t work - at the very least, she’s stronger than you, if badly trained. 

When she finally immobilizes you, she has a growing bruise over her arm from a terrible punch you had thrown, trying to mimic the way Gojo does it. Keeping your thumb outside your fist was all you remembered, and it went wide. You barely managed to hit her, and it came with a cost. She snags your wrist and pins it down. 

The knife plunges towards you. It’s rusty, which terrifies you almost as much as the implement itself. If by some miracle you survived, you’d be at risk of infection. 

Blue eyes flash before you. In this moment, an inch away from death, you wish you had gotten to say goodbye to him. Fear robs you of rationality. You don’t know anything but that you want to see him one more time and feel the warmth of his embrace. 

“Princess, it’s okay. I’m here.” 

You crack an eye open. The girl is no longer visible. The only person leaning over you now has white hair and the characteristic Gojo eyes, impossible to fake. You decide you must’ve died already. This is heaven, where your wishes have been granted. 

Gojo pulls you up. His hands are warm and solid. Vaguely, you realize that you’re trembling with the same nonchalant distance that you would use to catalog the color of the pillows. 

“You’re not dead yet.”

“Did I say that out loud?”

He chuckles. His thumb is rubbing soothing circles into your palm. “No, I could just tell by the look in your eyes.” 

“The girl…”

“Dead.” 

You scramble to the edge of your bed and peek over. Sure enough, she’s lying in a pool of her own blood. Her throat has been cut so surely her head is nearly separated from her body. 

You gag. 

“Wait,” Gojo says. He kneels to tear off her cloak and holds it in front of you. “Here, princess.”

You don’t want to give in to your queasiness, especially not when he himself is so stoic, so you shake your head. More insistently, he pushes it towards you. 

“It’s only natural,” he soothes. “I’m used to this. You’ve never seen a dead body before.”

“Just come here,” you say weakly. “No, actually. I’ll come to you.” 

“Give me a second,” he says, dropping to his knees. Under the bed, he retrieves your silk slippers. He slips them onto your feet gently, standing when he’s finished with his task. 

Obligingly, he waits as you gingerly step over the girl. When your slipper threatens to dip into the red stain spreading across your floor, he simply grabs you underneath the armpits and lifts you over it. 

Even though it’s a horrific scene, you can’t look away. Her face is frozen in a still mask. Bile fills your stomach. Gojo gently turns your head in another direction with two fingers, the touch delicate. “Don’t look.” 

“I think I’m going to be sick.” 

“I told you not to restrain yourself,” he says disapprovingly.

“You’re not- you’re-“ You can’t figure out the right way to finish your sentence. “Does it really get that easy?” 

His laugh is short and brutal. “Easy? I didn’t even think about it. All I know how to do is kill. I don’t mind it, for you.” 

You shake your head. There’s nothing to say, with a body between you and blood pooling around both your shoes, but still, your heart aches. You had known him when he was a boy. It would always be hard to see him with calluses where once his hands had been chubby and soft. 

He chucks you under the chin, the gesture fleetingly affectionate. “Don’t be so despondent, princess. I’m glad to do it. That’s what knights are for.” 

Knights and maids, all meant to lay down their life or other lives for you at your convenience. Utahime was too loyal to have let an assassin into your chambers by choice. Your breath catches. It concerns him that you’re teetering into upset again, just when he’s calmed you down. 

“Satoru, is Iori-“ The thought is too horrible. You can’t finish it. 

“She’s not dead,” he says. 

Noticeably, he doesn’t say that she’s alright. 

Utahime will be scarred forever. They found her slumped at the bottom of the stairs, her body dumped unceremoniously after they stole her from outside your bedroom. A massive gash opened her right cheek up, crossing just slightly over her nose bridge. 

You almost can’t bear to look at her. Not because her scar makes her hideous - far from it. Utahime will always be beautiful to you. The scar is only a reminder of how you’ve failed her. 

You’re a princess without any power.  All you can do is fuss over her after the fact, unable to change the past. 

“Princess,” she hisses, jerking away from you for the third time in as many minutes. “You must stop! I’m your lady-in-waiting, not the other way around.” 

“You got hurt for me,” you say, hands balled helplessly at your side. You refuse to touch her more aggressively, for fear of aggravating her wound. The bandages wrapped around her cheek are an ever present reminder of how much she’s sacrificed for you. So are the whispers. The looks. She holds her head high, acting as if it doesn’t bother her. 

“I was glad to do it. I didn’t want to be shipped off to some far away baron anyway. Be grateful,” she cracks a smile you don’t feel. “I certainly am. At least I could still join the church, if anything.” 

Why do the people around you insist on destroying themselves for your benefit? 

“You don’t need a baron.” Loyally, you vow, “I’ll take care of you for the rest of your life.”

“Be careful, my lady. Some would take that as a marriage proposal, and then I’d have twice as many death threats.”

��I’d protect you.”

“You, princess? I doubt that,” Gojo calls. 

You’ve been watching the knights move in and out of the arena from your vantage point on the royal balcony, but very few of them have dared to address you, much less speak to you so casually. They’re all too focused on the tourney you’re set to watch this afternoon. Only he would be so familiar with you and so unconcerned about the sparring, knowing his chances. 

Utahime lets out an aggressive sigh with no regard as to whether or not Gojo could hear her. In fact, she’d probably prefer it if he had overheard. Gojo, for his part, ignores the chance to antagonize her for once in his life in order to focus on you.  

“You know, my lady, I’ve heard an interesting rumor going around.” 

You walk to the edge of the balcony and peer over the railing. Utahime gasps in fear and grabs onto your petticoats, afraid that you’ll tip over the fencing. “Go on, Sir Gojo,” you say. 

“If a fair damsel grants a knight her favor, he’ll fight ten times as well. Twenty, even. And all the more so if it’s the princess, who everyone knows is the fairest in the land.”

Unwillingly, a smile twitches to life upon your lips. “Is that so?”

“Won’t you grant your most loyal knight a token of your affection?”

“Don’t,” Utahime gripes. “What has he done to deserve it?”

A scrap of pale blue fabric flutters in the light breeze, reminiscent of doves. Gojo catches the ribbon you’ve loosed from your hair, his fist enclosed in armor. He brings it to his lips for a chaste kiss he can’t place upon you. The entire time, his eyes are on yours, searching. 

“I’ll win this whole thing,” he says. “I’ll defeat every knight here for you.” 

The trumpets blow, calling the contestants. He’ll be wanted. Utahime shakes you lightly as he leaves your sight. “Get yourself together,” she says sternly. 

“But mama, I love him!” You joke. 

Her frown can’t last in the face of your teasing smile. She fixes the lace on your sleeve and collar, though they’re hardly ruffled. She can’t help herself. It’s her second nature to dote on you. 

“Ah, my princess,” she sighs. “You worry me.” 

You poke her uninjured cheek, trying to get her to smile. “It’s not me. You worry too much.”

Another voice cuts in. “I feel the same way sometimes, my dear Lady Utahime, but I trust no one more than you. Her mother left her to your capable hands, after all.” 

Your father has arrived. Utahime smiles as the king kisses her cheek, but you can’t. You know he means it lightheartedly, but it galls you all the more that he says it so blithely. When your mother fell ill, Utahime had been the one who took charge of looking after you. 

Not your father. 

Not your only living parent, the man who was supposed to feel all the closer to you for your loss. Instead, he pushed you away. 

You knew you weren’t being fair. 

The king had been wracked with grief over the passing of his beloved wife. Along with his other royal duties, he couldn’t possibly have been expected to watch over an infant as well. You know better than anyone the toll the crown takes on a man. Stewardship of this land asks a heavy price. It’s not an easy role. 

No, you can’t blame your father for choosing the country. It’s his duty, as it is yours.

You only wish it hadn’t been Utahime’s burden to carry instead. She was just a few years older, a child still when she had raised another child. In many ways, she had been a mother to you. Only now that you’ve grown older than she had been back then do you understand how much responsibility she had accepted at such a young age. 

Your father turns to you. “Are you enjoying the tournament?”

“It’s barely started. Only the squires have been jousting. We haven’t seen any of the real knights yet.” 

“Those squires will become knights themselves one day. Watch carefully, and you may discover a treasure worth keeping.”

As he speaks, you finally find someone worth watching, as if your father only had to say it to cause it to happen. A boy with rosy hair lunges towards his opponent. He disarms him and forces him to the ground - only to offer him his hand in exchange.  

The other squire hesitates. Doubt crosses his face. Finally, he accepts the proffered hand like someone expecting an attack at any minute, but all the other boy does is pull him to his feet and dust him off. He’s more honorable than most of the knights of the realm you know, too focused on humiliating their opponents to flaunt their own glory. 

Your father doesn’t notice your distraction. He’s still speaking. You bring yourself back to the conversation just in time to hear him say, “Sukuna, the King of the Curses.”

“Sorry?” You laugh. 

“It’s no laughing matter, I’m afraid,” your father says gravely. “He’s the ruler of the Western Kingdom, the land where the sun never sets. Perhaps he’s grown tired of his arid land and seeks gentler climes, for his invasions have earned him the title ‘King of Curses’.” 

Utahime’s lip curls in disgust. “King of Cruelty is more like it. I’ve heard of what he’s done to his prisoners. That man has no honor.”

“None,” your father agrees, “and yet it is necessary not to antagonize him. We are small if prosperous. We can’t afford it.”

Utahime looks as if she wants to speak, but she holds her tongue. She’s always been good at navigating the court. Trained under her, you wait as well. Taking your cues from her is something you’ve done since you were a child.

“Yes,” your father says, his eyes distant. He’s ruminating over something he won’t share. “He can’t be provoked. The representative he sent us for this tourney must be carefully attended to.” 

That representative, Uraume, doesn’t fight like any knight you know. Their sword is wider than most of those found in your country, and half as tall as a man. Precision is lost in favor of brutality. They wreak havoc with the brutality of a butcher, tearing through the ranks of your best and strongest. Of course, he’s not the only strong fighter. There are other knights to watch as well. 

“That Lady Tsukumo is doing quite well for a woman,” your father notes in surprise. “What prodigious talent. I don’t think her house has produced a fighter like that in years.”

“She’s better than half your knights,” you remind him. “Lady Tsukumo already defeated most of her bracket.” 

“Yes, yes,” your father laughs. “You know I don’t mean it like that. I’m simply admiring her.” 

As the day progresses, clear victors emerge in each division of the tournament. Uraume is one of them. Gojo is another. 

They placed him against Getou for his penultimate match, knowing the crowd would go wild for a contest between not only two of the best knights of the realm, but sworn brothers. Although Getou is better than most, Gojo is more of a natural disaster than a real, human adversary. At the end of their round, Getou smiles even as Gojo brings him to his knees. 

The next round is even more hotly anticipated than Getou and Gojo’s. 

Gojo strides into the center of the arena with the classic arrogance he’s known for. He delights in riling the crowd up. They cheer louder and louder on each circuit he laps around the arena on his silver stallion, pale as moonlight. By the last, they’re nearly delirious with passion for him. 

Uraume has no such pretenses. They’re a cold creature, as frigid as they come. 

It matters not. Gojo beats them so easily that it can only be described as disrespectful. He rides past Uraume and thrusts the hilt of his sword into their stomach with such force they fall off their horse. Gojo dismounts casually. He hadn’t even used his blade. He flips Uraume onto their back with a boot and steps onto their breastplate, pinning them in place. His sword hovers underneath their chin, a whisper away from death. “Yield,” he says pleasantly. 

You, remembering your fathers speech about Sukuna’s chosen representative from that morning, glance to the side. He’s smiling as gently as ever. Underneath his cloak, where only you and Utahime can see, his hands clenched so tightly his knuckles have turned white. 

After the match, you recognize one of the men rushing Uraume off to be one of your father’s most trusted advisors. He must be doing damage control, but then again, when is he not when Gojo’s around? 

Your father stands, as composed as if he had never been upset in the first place. You envy that self-control. You’ve always aspired to your father. In your eyes, he was the perfect ruler - perhaps because he was the one who taught you what a ruler should be. 

Gojo waits in the center of the arena. He’s beautiful as always, as fierce as an avenging angel. There’s a fine sweat beading at his temples in a way that makes you want to wipe it off with your handkerchief, but you abstain, knowing thousands are watching. 

Gojo has no such scruples. 

When it’s time for him to be awarded his laurel crown, he kneels - not to your father, but to you. A gasp rises from the crowd. You stifle your own shock. Here, where every sign of weakness is clearly visible and easily taken advantage of, you can’t reveal that this wasn’t planned. The royal family’s control over its retainers must appear immaculate - even if Gojo had always been uncontrollable. 

Wordlessly, your father passes you the laurel. You know something is brewing. He can only tolerate Gojo’s outlandish behavior so many times. But this isn’t the place to worry about your father’s incumbent wrath, so you take over the duties of honoring the victor. It’s easy. You’ve seen your father do it enough times to be able to replicate it in your sleep. 

Gojo rises from his knees, a hungry smile on his face. “I told you I’d win.” 

“That you did,” you reply noncommittally, trying to figure out how you’re going to discreetly get him out of the arena without your father attempting to try him for treason. 

He frowns. Knowing him and the type of maneuvers he’s likely to pull, you put a respectable amount of distance between the two of you as you mark his brow in gold paint. 

When you grasp his hand to lift his arm into the air, he presses something into your palm. Years of sharing secrets and playing pretend at espionage have trained you not to flinch. When you lower your enjoined hands, you slip the shred of paper he’s passed you into your pocket. 

People are cheering. You notice with warmth that he looks heroic, like he’s stepped right out of an old legend. Your father doesn’t seem to agree. 

Arguments between the two of you used to be few and far between, but lately it seems like you can’t do anything right. You’d forgotten what it was like to retreat to your parents’ bedroom for a scolding. It hadn’t happened since you were a child, yet here you were again, studying the fabric of the draperies to avoid eye contact with your father, just like you had when you were younger. 

“He wasn’t trying to be disrespectful,” you start. But that’s not true, and you know it. So you try again. “He wasn’t trying to cause problems. He cares about the kingdom, father. He was just trying to show off his - our - strength.” 

“Gojo is a liability.” How easily your father casts him off, marks him as defective. He’s always been like that - clinical in his appraisal. You lacked that precise, indifferent ruthlessness. You’ve tried. 

“He’s a good man, a good knight. House Gojo has always been loyal to us, father. Remember his mother? Remember Sorashi? She wouldn’t want you to treat her son like this.”

Your father flinches. First comes sorrow, then, anger. “Don’t speak to me about Sorashi.”

“You can’t just pretend like they never existed! Sorashi, my mother-“

“Child, you are testing my patience dangerously.” 

You fall silent, hating yourself for it. Always a child. Never someone worth listening to. 

“You don’t understand anything,” he says more gently. 

“I don’t understand anything because you won’t tell me anything!” 

“You’re a princess,” he snarls. “You’re not supposed to know anything!”

You reel back, stunned. You had always been afraid that this was how your father truly felt. 

“You have no sons, so it’s me or no one else.” Disgust fills you at the fear in your own voice. Weak. Pathetic. After all these years, the lessons your father gave you still haven’t sunk in. Perhaps he’s right, and you’re not fit for the throne after all. You’re still begging for what you want instead of demanding it like it’s what you deserve. A prince wouldn’t act like this, but you’re not a prince - only a girl who was never taught how to rule. 

He throws up his hands in exasperation. “I didn’t say anything about sons. See, you’re too young and inexperienced. This is why I won’t let you in yet. You’re not ready to rule.”

“But I will?”

He gives you a wan smile. He’s tired. Guilt seeps through you. These days, all you do is fight. You miss the times when it felt like you had worked together. At the end of all of it, you love your father. You hate that it’s been like this. 

“All in time, my child. I love you, I really do. But you’re not ready.” 

Mutiny curls under your tongue. You’re not ready because he waited too long, hoping for a male heir until your mother died. By then, it was too late for you to catch up on years of lessons you should’ve had. Regardless of what he says, you know how he feels. You were never the one he wanted but-

He’s still your father. When he reaches out to stroke your cheek, a peace offering, you close your eyes against his hand and don’t give voice to your treasonous thoughts. It’s nothing to suffer the humiliation of your status for a while longer. You have all the time in the world to earn your place. 

Your father is right, in the end. You can be patient. 

Back in the privacy of your room, you unfurl Gojo’s note. Gojo’s mother had him trained in elegant cursive that he uses for formal documents and letters. In his messages to you, it degenerates into chicken scratch. It’s a lucky coincidence that it’s all but unreadable to anyone else, making it a code only you can decipher. 

The gardens at midnight. - S. 

Only a place and a time. Is he trying to tempt fate? 

You indulge in the idea of not going, especially since things are already tense with your father. All the way up until the hour you need to leave, you let yourself believe it’s not happening. It’s too risky. People are already suspicious of you as it is. The minute passes, and if you go now, you’ll be late, so you won’t. 

You grab your shawl with a huff of annoyance. You’re going. You were always going to go, from the very moment you got the note. 

You aren’t used to sneaking through hallways you usually glide through. There are several close calls as you make your way closer and closer to the gardens. Multiple times, you’re forced to make a run for the nearest door or drape to hide behind. 

You’re barely two feet away when you’re finally caught. A hand slaps over your mouth before you can scream as someone tugs you into a dark corridor. You kick and lash out, forgetting everything Gojo has taught you in favor of blind violence. 

“Shh,” comes a voice in your ear. “It’s just me.” 

You bite him. 

He hisses and pulls back, shaking out his hand. “What’s wrong with you?” 

“Why would you do that? You scared me!” 

“You’re not careful enough, princess. Did you even notice the maid coming up the left hallway?”

Admittedly, you hadn’t. It’s lucky that he was there to save you. 

Gojo has always been there to protect you. The tension bleeds from your body. You sigh and lean into him. You can’t help it. 

He laughs. “Are you that happy to see me?” 

“If you don’t be quiet, I’ll show you exactly how happy I am.” 

“Come on,” he tugs you out towards the gardens. It’s dangerous, but you follow him anyway. Being with Gojo is so threatening not despite his strength, but because of it. You rely on him too easily, trusting him to see you safely through any peril. His very presence is the promise of security. It makes it too easy to relax when he’s with you. 

You expect him to tell you why he called you here, but he remains silent when he tugs you down on the bench next to him. “Satoru?” 

“Here,” he says, opening his hands. A single crushed violet sits on his palm. You raise it to your eye. It’s all the more fragrant because it has been mangled, the delicate petals bruised to release the scent into the air. 

Gojo’s mouth lifts in a smile. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t realize.” 

“You really know how to win a girl’s heart,” you tease. 

“Hopefully I know how to win over her father’s too.”

You freeze. 

“If not marriage, then knighthood. Let me be yours, in whatever way I can have you.” 

“You have me,” you tell him. “You always have.”

You don’t know how to answer such devotion. Besides the obvious political ramifications of being wedded to Gojo when your marriage is meant to be a bargaining chip used for the sake of your kingdom, you don’t want it. Not like this. 

Gojo has been your dedicated shield for so long, the two of you have forgotten a life where he wouldn’t give up everything to protect you. He’d do anything for you - even that which he should hold sacred for himself. His very body is littered with scars that he’s received on your behalf. How much more can you take from him? 

Does Gojo really want to marry you or does he want to protect you? Will he play the part of the devoted servant for the rest of his life? 

“You don’t have to…” You realize you don’t know how to say it. Or that you don’t want to. Selfishly, a part of you can’t bear to release him from the oath he gave you when you were children, though he couldn’t have known. Neither of you could have understood what it meant for him to kneel at your feet and swear his life to you. It had all been in good fun, the way children understand things. “I don’t want you to- Oh, Satoru. You don’t owe me anything. You’ve done enough for me.” 

For a second, your imagination plays tricks on you. The cobalt of his eyes kindles into a terrifying flame, like the lightning in the town he hails from. It’s as if the draconic blood his ancestors claimed still lives within him. 

He continues as if he hadn’t heard you. “I’m going to ask your father tomorrow. I want to be your dedicated knight; I won’t wait any longer. I’ve waited enough.” 

His pushiness feeds your annoyance. You cling to it, preferring it to the dreadful hopelessness inside of you. The right thing is not always the easy thing. Gojo deserves his freedom after wasting his youth on keeping you safe, yet letting him go feels as difficult as willingly driving a nail through your hand. You want to cling to him forever, reassured by his strength. 

“Don’t,” you say, trying to sound firm. 

“At the ceremony,” he says determinedly. “When he gives me captainship in the army. He’ll have to say yes if I ask him then.” 

“Satoru, please-” Your voice wobbles embarrassingly, and you have to pause. Silently, you beg your tears not to fall. The way he disarms you is humiliating. You turn away, but Gojo understands. Years of watching after you has taught him a lot. He bandaged the scrapes that you refused to cry over and avenged your honor after you pretended your pride hadn't been hurt. He can see right through you. “Please don’t.” 

You see the frustration on his face. He’s not a man used to holding himself back, and yet he does. 

“It’s alright,” he says. “We can wait.” 

It’s just another number to add to the tally of favors you owe him. “It’s not that I don’t want you to be my guard,” you say in a small voice. “I just-” 

“I know. Though I do think the king will ask me anyway, so this is all pointless.” He looks away. “I just wanted you to- Nevermind.” 

“Really?” Doubt colors your voice. 

“I’m the strongest. Who else would your father ask to protect you but me?” 

“He doesn’t like you,” you point out. “No, he does, but it’s a very begrudging like. I don’t get it.” 

It makes you smile, thinking about the way your father can’t stand Gojo but won’t allow anyone else to speak poorly of him. He’s still a Gojo after all, no matter how much trouble he causes your father, and your father loves Gojos. The royal house has always held their house dear. They had been close for decades. Always, they were something to the other, no matter what form that something took. 

“There you are,” Gojo murmurs. His fingers trace the arc of your mouth. “So pretty.” 

You glare at him through tears. “And whose fault is it that I cried?” 

“Your father’s?” 

You scoff. “You see? This is why he doesn’t like you.” 

Gojo looks at you seriously. “I’ll get down on both knees and beg him for it if I have to.” 

“Don’t do that,” you gasp. 

“I don’t care,” he says. “You’re what’s most important to me. More than pride, more than honor.” 

You look at the crushed violet in your hand. 

Who else but Gojo? 

He breaks you down so easily. You press the flower back into his palm. “I know you’ll do what’s right.” 

His eyes soften. He leans closer. 

“Gojo,” comes a voice. “What are you doing in the gardens this late at night?” 

You stiffen. The owner of the voice is drawing closer. 

“Do you trust me?” Gojo asks, as cool and collected as ever. 

You nod, fearing your voice will give you away. He cups your face in his hands and ever so delicately presses a light kiss to your cheek, tilting his head towards you. Does it look like a real kiss from afar? Did he mean it to? 

“Stop,” he tells the man behind you. “Don’t come any closer. You’ll scare her.” 

“A new plaything?” Asks Yaga. “I’m not so scary, am I?” 

Gojo notices you tremble harder as the voice registers. Lord Commander Yaga is close to the King. As the captain of the kingsguard, he could ruin everything.

Gojo lifts a hand to the back of your head and presses it gently towards his shoulder, obscuring your face. He pulls you towards him, arranging your legs around his waist. A soothing hand traces a warm path up and down your back. It calms you as much as it shames you. You’ve never been this close to any man, not even him, and now you’re cuddling only for the sake of protecting your secrets. 

“The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard is a terrifying man, or so I’ve heard,” he says casually, as if the two of you aren’t trapped in an extremely compromising position. As if your father wouldn’t demand his head on a pike if Yaga realized who it was. 

“Just escort her to her room when you’re done,” Yaga says gruffly. “I don’t need to tell you to be a gentleman, do I?” 

“No, sir,” Gojo says cheerfully. 

That night, you breathe a sigh of relief. Yaga gave no sign he recognized you. He acted as if he normally would upon encountering any soldier of his on a late night escapade, profoundly disinterested and deeply desirous to get away. Only in the morning do you begin to doubt your deception. 

[friendly-stardust]

If you had the chance to change something about the dance of the dragons (TV show or book), what would it be? For example, how a character dies, which team a house is on,or an entire character personally. How would you change it to make the story better, in your opinion?♥️🖤💙💚

Thanks for the ask anon and sorry that it took me this long to reply. This is a tricky one and this can be long.

House of the Dragon is a complete mess and a mediocrity of a show on every level, except for the acting. The writing is at an abysmal level, and I am convinced that it only got the interest and the rating it got thanks to the fact that it is under GoT's umbrella. And the fact that the showrunners/writers decided to be ungrateful and to insult the very show thanks to which their shitty fanfiction is even relevant, tells me everything I need to know about the arrogance and the ignorance existing behind this travesty of a show. The showrunners/writers seem to have completely misunderstood the themes of The Dance dealing mainly with class stratification, the corruptible nature of power, the consequences of blind ambition, and the pitfalls of unchecked privilege, reducing it all to a dumbed-down and pandering fanfiction in which tokenism, outdated and bigoted caricatures, and banal depiction of sexual assault are used casually as tropes, while pretending to write a 'feminist' or a 'progressive’ show. So, for House of the Dragon, EVERYTHING is to be changed.

Rhaenyra should have never been written as the main protagonist: From Episode one, we already have a failure in our hand with the writing as the showrunners decided to solely use Rhaenyra as our main protagonist in a show that is supposed to depict a severe and ineluctable succession crisis at the top of the Kingdom, resulting in the splintering and in the factionalism of the ruling family. Because, at the heart of this story, this IS the main thematic of the Dance - the civil war that will be tearing the ruling family at the head of the Realm apart and, consequently, the Realm itself apart (except for Dorne which was not yet part of the Seven Kingdom). We should have had different POVs to illustrate the deep divide that have been festering within the Targaryen clan itself and POVs from some of the closest families around them helping them rule. So, if it was me writing this, the POVs would have been: • Alicent - for the Hightowers POV, to see things through her lends and because of the important role she will have as a Queen in the future and as the head of one of the factions. • Rhaenyra - She will be the heir, one of the main claimants to the throne, and the head of the other main faction. • Daemon - self-explanatory. Playing his own partition/having his own ambition and need to be in power. • Corlys - to have a POV for the Velaryons and to highlight their side of the story and their narrative as a clan close to power. I would have made the Velaryons more politically savvy and Corlys primarily working with the sole perspective of preserving and consolidating the Velaryons' place of power/closeness to the Throne. As a whole, the Velaryons and Corlys' allegiance will clearly and only be for the Velaryon's name and clan. I would also use that POV to illustrate the Velaryons tinge of resentment towards Viserys and towards the dismissive way House Targaryen have treated them since Aemon's death. • Criston - POV of a lower-class man of Dornish descent getting into the heart of power and having to navigates its difficulties with his set of believes and morals, and how being in the middle of all this impacts his decisions and his ambition for the ascension of House Cole to a more prominent social status.

Using Season 1 as a set-up Season and not rush with catastrophic and mismanaged times skips: Season one should have really been a set-up season, taking the time to really put the foundations into place, while having enough belief in the story to give it the time needed to develop naturally. I believe that it is important to pose the base that the fracture in the clan Targaryen and with the Velaryons have been created since Aemon Targaryen's death which, according to me, is truly the start of this whole succession crisis. The Dance is just the poorly managed resultant of the whole process, seeping through several generations of resentment and hatred for one another. This will also completely negate all the stupid arguments I have seen online of 'if Viserys had married Laena, all this will not have happened'. This is because the show writers have failed the only-show fans who have no clues that the Velaryons have already threatened war during the whole Rhaenys vs Viserys ordeal. It would also emphasise the reason why it was important for Viserys to not shun the Velaryons and to keep a close alliance with them and would explain the reason why Vaemond became that adamant and not too keen on letting Rhaenyra's bastard usurp their ancestral throne. If only the Velaryons were taken seriously by the writers and not solely used as tokens and brownie points to prop-up Saint Rhaenyra?

Being aware of tokenism, bigotry and of anachronistic representations: This show seems to have been written by people who appear completely oblivious to how careful they should have been with how to manage negative stereotypes.

Avoiding Tokenism: From a standpoint of a Black woman like myself, the way the Velaryons were written was quite insulting. The showrunners/writers seem completely oblivious to how bad it looked to have the only House cast as Black being completely subservient, usurped and abused by their white-coded Targaryen counterparts, with no protest from most of them. The only one of them who protested – Vaemond - was villainised by the narrative and was made to say a misogynistic slur to justify his murder in open court. Murder which has no further consequence in the narrative. These showrunners/writers seem to not understand the racial implications that this casting choice creates in this world and seem completely ignorant to how to organically integrate that change into the narration and how to prevent stereotyping those race-swapped characters, so to not reduce the Velaryons to mere tokens. As a result, the writing made the Velaryons act like complete idiots devoid of any sense of pragmatism, strategic mindset, or political intellect, in a world that literally demands those characteristics of the people playing the game of throne. And the way Rhaenyra’s relationship to them was written also reeks of racist undertones. Overall, the way the Velaryons were written just demonstrates the ignorance and the shallowness we have behind this show and highlights the fact that the race-swapping was only made for aesthetic purposes and for some veneer of visual racial diversity.

And the best example to illustrate that vile treatments of the Velaryons is the way Laena and her daughters were written - not that Laenor or Corlys or Vaemond were spared either - but the treatment inflicted onto those female characters, now made WoC, represent better the showrunners/writer’s deep misogynoir, to which I am sure, they are completely oblivious. Laena's role and arc in the source material was completely butchered and diminished, by rewriting and reducing a feminine, beloved and desired (in her marriage to Daemon) woman - seduced and brazenly wanted by Daemon as his wife in F&B - into some teenager seducing the grown man Daemon, all while he only had eyes for the White girl Rhaenyra, actively feeding into the stereotypes about girls of colour growing up faster, having to be needy and desperate for men attention, and having to seek out male attention to be noticed. I mean, as if Laena was not beautiful enough for a man to notice her without her having to throw herself at him? But it doesn't stop there. They managed to erase her relationship with Rhaenyra, reducing it all to some repulsive scenario of pitting two women against each other for a man, the complete opposite of what happened in the source material, in addition of making Laena the ‘other woman’, the lesser desired one, and the unwanted wife, in her relationship with Daemon. And let not forget the trauma-porn inflicted on her WoC body in that violent and traumatic death, which is a complete bastardisation of an invented only-show concept of “a woman dying a dragon rider death” - whatever that means. Apparently, once Laena became mixed-race in the show, she became some thirsty, miserable, completely isolated woman, willing to go along with only being good enough as a second choice to her white husband, and dies violently by suicide instead of the beloved and cherished woman full of strength and humanity we have in her white woman depiction from F&B. The same abhorrent treatment was inflicted onto Baela and Rhaena, both written as some wallpapers and empty headed mute dolls with no layered personalities and no real wants of their owns, just willing to go along with anything, even to their own detriment (this includes Rhaenyra’s bastards sons taking precedent over them for Driftmark), as long as it favors and bolsters the causes and the ambition of Rhaenyra - the woman their father married just few weeks after their mother's funeral.

Avoiding Bigoted depictions:

a) Some of the tokenism arguments can also be applied to the showrunners/writers’ decision to depict Ser Criston Cole as a brown man of Dornish descent, which already comes with its own in-world racial undertones, while being very hell-bent on portraying his character as an emotional, thuggish, and resentment-driven character, who got his positions as hand-me-downs from two white women, instead of the intelligent, calculated man, always in control of his emotions, and above all, driven by ambition, and who got to the highest position of knighthood in Westeros by the merits of his own competence, as he was described as in his White-coded version in F&B. This illustrates once more the showrunners/writers’ incapability of understanding the tokenistic nature of their racial representation. Also, maybe unaware, and oblivious to their own bigotry on display in what they were implying here, the showrunners/writers went with the problematic trope of the savage, misogynist, and violent brown man for this character. And the fact that they decided to deliberately frame this brown man as some misogynist and vindictive man, unreasonable and unjustified in his anger towards his sexual predator when he is the victim of sexual assault in that “Rhaenyra’s sexual empowerment” episode, just disgusts me. As if his feelings and the shame he felt from the whole ordeal the next day, as a person, was to be dismissed or worst, mocked. The optics of the showrunners narratively dismissing his trauma while they have decided to change his race in the show, just highlights once more the racist undertone we have in the writing of some of the characters in this show. It also illustrates how out of touch the people behind this show are when it comes to representing power and racial dynamisms in a sensible way.

b) Larys Strong is the first disabled character we see on screen with his clubfoot and someone in the writing room though that it was a great idea to then transform him into some deviant sexual predator who gets off by fetishizing FEET. You cannot make this up! The showrunners/writers also butchered his character by making him the confirmed and sole murderer of his father and brother, when in the books, 3 other characters, Corlys, Viserys and Daemon, were also plausible culprits for that crime - but they are all Team Black so better whitewash them all and put it all on the disabled and only Team Green character that was also under suspicions for this murder. And all to see Alicent’s feet, ladies, and gentlemen! Instead of the enigmatic, calculated, and ambitious character we have depicted in F&B, the showrunners/writers made Larys Strong into some outdated caricature and despicable representation of a disabled character, embodiment of all of the devious and negative traits, by equating being disabled with being devious in morality and mentally. It is just a vile way to represent disabled characters, quite akin to the way they were viewed in medieval times as bearer of bad intentions/evilness, which also confirms the ableism and the hollow activism we have behind the scenes of this show.

Avoiding anachronistic representations:

a) Equating Alicent to a 'Woman for Trump' - a misogynist and reductive slur used within a very 21st century USA political discourse - while portraying a woman supposed to be within a setting mirroring medieval Europe, just shows the lack of culture, and of historical knowledge we have in this writers’ room.

b) Anachronistic girl boss characterisation: Rhaenys is written as a vessel to peddle nonsensical 21st century notions of White feminism, a hollow wannabe and anachronistic girl boss, spouting anachronistic speeches, while the show completely removed any agencies from most female characters, and took strong female characters from the original story and turned them into some victims of situations, none of their own doing of course, who constantly cry and are afraid of making any decisions, all while most of their negative traits are given to the male characters, absolute monsters and responsible for all woes that afflict the female characters. Also, Rhaenyra is whitewashed into some girl boss and some absurd notion of a ‘modern politician’ - modern in which historical period, no one knows – who spouts drivels like ‘when I am queen, I will make a new order’, to brazenly pander to Daenerys’ fanbase, when both women are nothing alike, except for the fact that both are Targaryen women.

4. Follow the source material and not thematically rewrite the Dance:

No Aegon I prophecy or dream. Maintain the Targaryens as the ruthless colonialists they are instead of trying to justify their reason to brutally colonise a whole continent. As a person from the African continent, this is not the kind of rhetoric I would like to see peddle, justifying colonisation in the name of some superior purpose.

No white stag apparition coming to anoint our Saint Disneyesque Girlboss Rhaenyra to rule. This is insulting to the intellect of people who want to see complex storytelling.

Completely rewrite the dreadful Episode 9 and make it as close as possible to the book’s depiction of the Green Council.

No Girlboss moment for Rhaenys, murdering hundreds of peasants and ruining Aegon’s coronation.

Erasing that bullshit about Alicent confusing Viserys last words and make the Green reason to crown Aegon and Helaena based on tradition and precedents, as in F&B, and not based on some feeble concept such as the King’s word. We are not in an Absolute Monarchy here, but the uncultured idiots we have behind this show don’t even know the difference.

Not erasing fat women representation with Rhaenyra and Helaena when you claim to be such ‘feminist’ and ‘inclusive’ show. Where is the inclusion of different female body shapes? Or are they not worthy of representation? Instead, we have one of your showrunners (the incompetent Sara Hess) using fatphobic language to make it seem like it is weird for a woman’s body to evolve after several pregnancies.

Showing women on the Green side (Alicent or Helaena) going through their pregnancies and giving birth.

Not erasing Helaena in her own coronation.

Not infantilising Helaena and making her a side character in some other characters story (Aegon, Jace).

Showing the Green kids with their dragons in Season 1. As it was portrayed in HotD, most casual viewers don’t realise that in real Targaryen fashion, those kids should have their dragons around them in most official displays (side eyeing the whole dragon pit debacle here).

Where is Sunfyre and a clear view of Dreamfyre?

Making Vhagar roar when Aemond eye was slashed.

Making one of the adult correct Baela’s and Rhaena’s wrong assumption that Aemond stole Vhagar. Why did the incompetent showrunners/writers even insinuate that foolishness in the first place without having one of the adults rectify the Dragon lore? We all know that it was to paint Aemond as the villain in this situation.

Making it more evident that Rhaenyra meant torture when she said, ‘sharply questioned’.

Why was Daeron and Maelor absent?

Not making the Dragon/owner bond murkier with that shitty and useless singing session from Daemon in Episode 10, when it is canon that one rider cannot have 2 dragons at the same time to ride. Surely Daemon, as verse into Valyrian lore as they proclaim him to be, should be aware of that. This is just confusing the casual viewers.

Using Mushroom's accounts for both the Greens and the Blacks – if I am using them at all.

Not erasing Mysaria’s miscarriage as it is part of her characterisation.

Not claiming to wanting to make a 50/50 adaptation when BTS the showrunner Ryan Condal is using gobbledygook such as ‘they made Aegon usurps his sister Rhaenyra’s throne’, when, by all Westerosi tradition and precedents, Aegon could not usurp what is already lawfully his as the first-born son of the King.

For the book version of the Dance, I don’t have much to change to be honest:

I would have significantly toned down the Daemon’s fest.

I would have made the Velaryon more neutral or playing both sides, with a strategic splitting of the House to support both sides.

I would have made some of the Houses change team, like for example, making the Royces in the Vale side with the Greens, splitting the allegiances in the Vale, to better illustrate how profoundly divided the whole Realm becomes with the war of succession.

The Redwynes (which I would have made the maternal side of Alicent) and most of the Reach would have sided with the Greens.

I would have betrothed Daeron to one of the other powerful Houses in the Reach.

No Wolf Hour.

No army pulled out of nowhere in the Riverlands after Aemond reduces them to crisp. Instead, some part of the Vale army would make the bulk of it.

Finally, no Jaehaera death. That was just petty and quite stupid writing from GRRM with no logical justification as to why she needed to die. No need for the “most sexy 6 years old” to ever exist in the story.

Jaehaera and Aegon III will have their children, who mostly have no real impact on the Targaryen line anyways, apart from Daena the Defiant who gave birth to House Blackfyre.

[ouroboros-hideout]

Russian Girl

Alyona "Aon" Petrova 02/???

I am just a simple Russian girl I've got vodka in my blood So I dance with brown bears And my soul is torn apart

First look at corpo!Aon. Damn. It's so weird. But I like it. Not sure about the hair yet, and finding clothes is pain. But it's something.

Mayor wall of text and brainrot (and probably spelling mistakes) under the cut. Enter at your own risk.

I think I only talked about this AU in a Wip Whenever 200 years ago. So the core to it is basically that Aon never left Moscow to join a clan of Nomads and was more or less forced to stay and start her career at SovOil as an engineer.

She later meets Kurt through some "lucky" circumstances and leaves with him to America to work for Militech, fights in Unification War at his side and takes part in the creating Dogtown (what a delulu AU).

So far so good. I really like this "What if" -scenario a lot, but still had some difficulties with it which, I think, I know have solved.

Thanks to Ves and Olly for the insane Vlad Brainrot lately. Even if he's a sick bastard and I am still not sure why you want your precious OCs to suffer so much, but we don't shame anyone in this circus.

First thing that was a major stomache ache for me is the fact that Aon never got her "happy found family"-moments with the Nomads what is a huge part of her character developement in the main story. I know I shouldn't bother so much, since it's an AU. But I feel sorry for her, that I leave her in this golden cage.

Second thing I wasn't sure about is how she and Vlad would interact in this AU, since they would become "colleagues". They work in different departments, but they already knew each other so it would be weird, if they wouldn't have some touch points.

How to solve the issue with Aon beeing lonely in the Corpo-World: I had an idea for a person for a tiny little role in my main story for quite some time now but she always felt kind of "out of place" or "forced into the story". She (doesn't have a name yet. Just vague and blurry pictures in my head) is a Nomad in another clan as Aon, and both families have a rivalry going on. So they wouldn't have so much touch points because of bad blood. But she actually knew Aon's real father and would give her some major hints of what happened to him, after Aon's mom took her away into the big city as a lil baby girl. So I thought: why not bring her into the corpo AU. The how and why they meet shouldn't be to hard to figure out and I like the thought that Aon can get her "Nomad-Experience" through her and the stories she would tell. The feeling of freedom through a friend (or more ;) )

How to solve Vlads and Aons relationship: I decided they are something like medium-close friends. They are both huge loners, don't have many or any friends within the corporation or in general so they bonded over their loneliness. Vlad of course tried to rizz on her for quite some time, but she is resistent to his "charm". Still a very complicated dynamic. They can rely on each other, even if she is 80% of the time annoyed about anything he says or does, but it's still better than having no one around. Let's call it grumpy friends. I don't know how to put it better. And she kinda feels sorry for him, because she knows, that in his fucked up little head and heart is actually something human left, but he is unable to "get it out". For him she plays an even bigger role, besides having a normal social contact, because she knows about his little "accidents" and bodies, that need to be hidden afterwards.

I could go on with my blabbering about all of this for a lot longer but I think it's enough words for this post and I already start to lose the context and my head goes all over the place. Brainrot stronk! AHU!

Great, you made it to the end. Here's something silly for your endurance.

[notwarriorswiki]

Main Story - Into the Wild #3

The world was spinning.

Attempting to push himself back to his paws, Rusty could only wince as a dull pain persisted in his back. Cool air brushed against his neck, causing his fur to rise and his skin to tingle. He craned his neck back and forth, feeling the fur brush against the groove of his chin. He softly exhaled, blinking back the blurriness to focus on the item before him.

His collar.

Snapped in two, loose, brittle thread jutted out from the breaking point. The bell that always jingled in his ears with every small movement was now a short distance away, alone and hanging from nothing. The sunlight caught its golden shell, allowing it to glisten in the sunlight.

Rusty stared at it, green eyes unable to look away. He lifted his paw, as if he might reach to gingerly scoop it back up. However, the golden light would fade, the sun's rays shifting.

He looked up. A cloud loomed overhead, passing by a portion of the sun. The glitter of his bell faded, and instead the sun's rays danced to rest on Rusty himself.

His fur felt warm, his neck especially. The soft intermingling scents came with a faint breeze, tickling his chin as a smile spread across his face. His green eyes shifted to instead look up, his gaze expectantly fixing upon the blue gray she-cat that had invited him here.

She stood powerful and stern, blue eyes betraying none of her thoughts. And yet as Rusty purred proudly, he couldn't help but notice the smallest twitch of her whiskers.

“The newcomer has lost his Twoleg collar in a battle for his honor," Bluestar called. "StarClan has spoken its approval—this cat has been released from the hold of his Twoleg owners, and is free to join ThunderClan as an apprentice.”

A swell of excitement filled him. Rusty basked in the sunlight's warm glow, his ginger fur radiant under its eyes. He waited for Bluestar to come down and congratulate him, but the she-cat remained perched atop the Highrock.

"You look like a brand of fire in this sunlight..." she murmured, causing Rusty's ears to prick. Her eyes flashed briefly, as if her words had more meaning for her than he knew.

“From this day forward, until he has earned his warrior name, this apprentice will be called Firepaw, in honor of his flame-colored coat.”

The gazes of the clan were fixed upon him, Rusty's fur prickling with full awareness of their presence.

Smudge could never be a clan cat. Not like me.

Instead he basked in their attention. He raised his head proudly, turning to gaze once more upon the collar. The cloud's cover was fading, and sunlight once more rested on the bell. But this time he didn't admire its beauty.

Firepaw trotted over and stopped just before the mangled scraps he once wore. With a quick turn, he kicked dust and grass over his collar as though burying his dirt.

Longtail growled, turning to saunter away.

"Not so fast," Bluestar spoke.

The clan cats looked back at their leader, uncertain what she would say next. Firepaw straightened up, ears pricked and attentive.

"This young cat will need a mentor." Bluestar looked to Longtail. "And I think you'll do just fine."

Firepaw and Longtail both froze.

"What?!"

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

What you have read here is a sample of a Warrior Cats Rewrite, using a concept that I have been contemplating for awhile now. This concept seeks to combine both an art and writing medium, using Tumblr's post and tagging system to tell a Main Story, episodic series that does not rely on Chapters. This also opens up opportunities for Side Stories about the various characters in the clan, which while not required, will provide insight into some of their behaviors, as well as allow viewers to get to know them.

This concept is not unique, rather there are many Warrior Cats blogs who use a format like this. I'm unsure if it has been used for a rewrite, as well as with the branching pathways I have in mind, but I find it is a more viable way for me to share the Power of Twelve Rewrite with people after the Ao3 Series died out.

The question is if you enjoyed it. Do you like this concept? Are you interested in it? Would you follow Power of Twelve with this concept? I'm curious to get people's thoughts, as well as other things that could be implemented. There's also the question of if you don't like this, and I want to hear that too!

Either way, thanks for reading, and I hope this post was a fun read!

[raccoonfallsharder]

do you think Rocket could've used more "tech genius" moments in the movies? For someone supposedly smarter than Stark, it's not actually really shown..

love your fics btw AAAH

yayyyy! i love asks of any variety and it’s been a while since i’ve gotten one so thank you for this! ♡ unfortunately that means you’re getting a novel ( ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)*.ﾟ I’d love to hear YOUR thoughts if you wanna share! and also thank you for saying something so nice about my fics. im so glad you’ve enjoyed them!

and i'm turning this into

headcanon 18 ˚₊‧✶

a standard disclaimer: i am highly biased in the fact that i am like “every scene should have 100% more rocket, even scenes that are already rocket”

but i think two things are going on here

the first is that i think as a general audience, we read tony’s genius more easily than rocket’s (and yes this is a cultural indictment). tony spends a long time making a pretty iron suit with his bruce-wayne-money and some cool weird holographic touchscreens in a shiny lab, and people pick up on that more easily than rocket scavenging parts from the milano to make a bunch of bombs and a moon-killing firearm in five minutes (tantamount to less than a second of actual screen time) because it’s quick and grimy and he just keeps them in a dirty box. audiences are classist ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and im making this assertion because we do it all the time with real-life geniuses too

this relates to my second point which is that i think that “tech genius moments” probably don’t play well with a general audience when there are “too many” of them, and that in the main trilogy the writers relied on a lot of narrative cues that the audience was meant to pick up (but didn’t, or didn’t in quite the same way that they did with tony because again — pretty shiny lab vs dirty box) & we’re supposed to use those to attribute intuitive technological, strategic, and piloting genius to rocket

let’s break it down! (because im up early && work doesn’t start for another hour)

in volume one, when rocket breaks everyone out of the Kyln im pretty sure we’re meant to read that as a sequence establishing him as the tech & strategic mastermind of the group. i think that is meant to be confirmed in the sequence where in like five minutes he’s salvaged a ton of parts from the milano to make his box-o-bombs & the hadron enforcer, which is the weapon that makes the end of volume one possible, having been used to knock out ronan initially and to break the stone from the cosmi-rod or universal weapon or whatever. (keep in mind he repaired the hadron enforcer within moments of crashing the warbird into the dark aster, crashing the aster into a planet, losing his best friend, getting tossed around by the cosmi-rod, AND having only the resources available to him on a crash-site/battlefield. i do wish we’d gotten more of THIS sequence but like i guess we had to make time to watch chris pratt dance. whatever; i guess i get it from a cinematic standpoint — a classic “it was your story all along but the studio wanted us to focus on starlord” situation)

in volume two, every tech advancement the team has is directly or indirectly credited to rocket. the aero rigs being the main one, i think? but there’s also the mines in the berhert forests with the yondu clan, a conflict where one lil guy almost beat a hoarde of ravagers all by his lonesome due to his strategic genius (and i suspect still would have if not for the unexpected addition of nebula). we also have the dialogue with quill where he asserts that he’s a piloting genius. and rocket’s genius is once again the main reason they win the fight — his ability to create the battery-bomb in like twenty seconds or less.

in volume three, we see him invent gravity boots, we’re meant to attribute the creation of the bowie and presumably the entire speaker system threading knowhere to him (im not sure but possibly also the ocular cannon and some other other knowhere shit??). he’s responsible for all nebula’s upgrades (⸝⸝o̴̶̷᷄‸o̴̶̷̥᷅⸝⸝) which are FANCY. and even though he’s just a babby, we see him solving complex equations, resolving problems the high evolutionary struggled with, crafting a key out of stolen odds-and-ends, and piloting a spacecraft he’s probably never even seen before.. additionally the gravity boots circle back around and are key in his overcoming the high evolutionary (through a combo of tech skill & strategic genius)

i think, narratively speaking, this is a solid amount of “genius establishment” with the time we had, imo. if we made the movies longer to add in more genius moments, i would not complain, though!

THAT SAID. look infinity war and endgame treated our boy so badly. SO badly. i feel certain that given five minutes in Nidavellir he could’ve figured out another way to get that forge up and running. I think we see rocket with the science bros working on the gauntlet (a dynamic i would quite have enjoyed more if) and working on… maybe he’s prepping the benatar for the time heist? I can’t remember, but it’s when he gives stark the classic “you’re only a genius on earth” line. but iw/endgame didn’t give a fuck about the guardians (i get it, i get it, it was the send-off for the og avengers, whatever) so it’s a lot of weak shit and i do wish we had more things establishing him as the true brains of that outfit lol

ANYWAY that’s all my thoughts!! thanks for this really fun ask!!!

[chemicallywrit]

Happy Audio Drama Sunday! What a week! Let's talk about audio drama!

⏰ Nine To Midnight has its own feed now, which I appreciate, as a listener to many of the involved pods, because I didn't get like six iterations of the show in my feed. I did have to go seek it out though, but I'm so glad I did. These stories!!! These STORIES. The second episode in particular stuck out, just banger after banger. Also, what's up David Ault! Always fun to watch David Ault flex.

😈 Dungeons and Daddies this week was on the short side, but woof. I. Love. The Stamplers. I love them. I love you Ron Stampler and Terry Jr. Stampler and Scary Terri Marlowe Stampler. They are ridiculous and excellent. Honestly though, their wonderful energy was just the prelude to the truly heartbreaking Close clan. These boys are so deep in denial they ought to be worried about the bends. Yikes. I'm really looking forward to watching them try to save hell and make up for lost time.

⚡️ Electromancy! Of COURSE it's all happening at the dance. What kind of school story would this be if everything wasn't going to go down at the dance? Like with all fantasy about young people, I love the mixture of extremely high stakes (colonialism and revolution) and extremely low stakes (but what am I going to WEAR). I can't wait for part two. @electromancypodcast

👟 Keep It Steady!!! New episode of Keep It Steady! Our teenage burnout is faced with the mortifying ordeal of having real friends who love him, which is a wild thing for a teen to have to accept when he has zero self esteem. And then on top of everything, he gets concussed! My boy! @keepitsteadypod

⚖️ The Adventure Zone Imbalance has appeared on the feed, which is a relief to me, a person who hates listening to things on youtube. And Davenport is there! My main man! If y'all need to know anything about me, it's that I love Davenport. I missed these guys so much.

🚀 Travelling Light is a new show from @monstrousproductions, and I am THRILLED. I love a travelogue, I love a character with ties to religion, I love a warm scifi show, I love a recipe. I know from their tumblr that the writer and narrator of this show is Quaker, which is a tradition I'm not very familiar with, so I'm interested to see how that perspective influences this story. It's just so NICE.

👻 I started listening to Magenta Presents this week, in an effort to listen to everything Lindsay Sharman has ever done, and this is spooky. Beth Eyre is always a treat to listen to, and Lucy Roslyn, whose work I am not familiar with, is also a fantastic actor. They have great chemistry. I love a true ghost story, and I love a protagonist who feels like she's slowly losing her mind. @longcatmedia

🪓 I've finally arrived at the bit of Woe.Begone where other actors are showing up, and surprise! It's David Ault again! He's everywhere! I haven't interacted with fans of this show, so I had no idea, and apparently fans hate his character. To be fair, I did too, but now David's here doing the voice, and it's so much WORSE. Well done, David.

🍕 I finished s1 of Gastronaut and started s2, and I find myself enamored with this guy, coming from a place of relative privilege, tearing his preconceptions apart with a fork and a knife. The writing is lush, the story is fascinating, and it really hits the spot for me of "moody thoughtful nonfiction." I love it so much. I can't believe there are only two seasons. How dare they. (I trust them though.)

🧛🏻‍♀️ Re: Dracula is done, and we have announced Carmilla! My role in Carmilla will be less than it was for Drac, but I'm still very excited to get in on making this story. It's going to be amazing.

🧟‍♂️ The Dead's second episode has appeared, and I am continually impressed with the people I work with. What a death scene from Marquis Moore! What good acting from Brandon Nguyen! They are a joy to direct.

As for me, I'm about to start getting Inn Between ready to post! Are you hype? I'm hype. If you like what I do and want to give me a hand, please check out my ko-fi!

See you next week!

[fierrochase-falafel]

MDZS, CQL and the passage of time

MDZS novel and CQL spoilers ahead!

There's this thing where despite The Untamed / CQL having Wei Wuxian be dead for 16 years instead of 13, everything is meant to feel so much rawer and closer in time than the novel I feel. For a start, naturally having 30 episodes straight of flashback sequencing before depicting an immediate reconcilation between Wangxian really imprints those flashbacks much closer in your mind than Wei Wuxian's actual ressurrection, which happened in episode 1.

Furthermore, there are also these other flashbacks when Wei Wuxian sees something reminiscent of his past, different instrumentals played initially in the flashbacks coming back again to remind you of the themes those instrumentals represent. One of the most distinct examples I remember is in episode 2, when CQL Wei Wuxian sees a vision of Wen Qing introducing Dafan Mountain as the place where her branch of the Wen clan lives in CQL and then remembers the dancing fairy statue. This never happened in the novel- partially because, in CQL, Wei Wuxian was introduced to characters and locations / concepts WAY before he found out about them in the novel (eg.- YiCheng characters, Meng Yao, Dafan Mountain, demonic cultivation in the form of the Yin Iron). By entrenching these places and characters so far back into Wei Wuxian's past- all the way back to his Gusu days, in fact- they feel much more central in the overall plot and connected to the modern storylines involving rediscovering them. Wei Wuxian isn't being thrown into a new world at all, it's the same world with all the loose ends to be tied up. This does force him to remember the past more to deal with the present, and also links the show together in a way that would engage people who have come to watch a put-together story (this sort of strong cohesion I think is less required in novels than in a series because of the way the story needs to flow from 1 episode to the next to be coherent). In the novel, Wei Wuxian's own past storyline has a much slimmer connection to the current events- the obvious kicker being Jin Guangyao in CQL was the main reason Wei Wuxian was villainised and it all comes together in the end, but novel Jin Guangyao just accelerated the process of Wei Wuxian becoming the scapegoat and made this very clear. He didn't know Wei Wuxian would kill Jin Zixuan, he said; even though Jin Guangyao's not the most trustworthy character, how on earth could he have predicted that Wei Wuxian would lose control if he wasn't there to influence him like in CQL?

However, there are even more flashback scenes like the one in episode 35, where Wei Wuxian flashes back to Nie Huiasang being excited about fans and then compliments modern-day Nie Huiasang's fan. Scenes like these cannot be explained by the changed plot because Nie Huiasang and Wei Wuxian being friends at 15 in the Cloud Recesses is canon in all versions of MDZS. Personally, seeing this scene, the strongest effect I can garner from it is nostalgia for simpler times, for people he used to be close with. Memories are flooding CQL Wei Wuxian the minute he's alive again. Contrast this exact scene with MDZS, where Wei Wuxian zones out for a good while after Nie Huiasang leaves- no words of companionship or nostalgia or anything.

Novel Wei Wuxian rarely remembers any of his past life in detail unless he fully means to, actively giving himself reminiscing time, or in a life-or-death situation. The 3 flashback sequences in the novel begin:

when Wei Wuxian decides very specifically to muse over his past with Lan Wangji,

when Wei Wuxian gets stabbed and has to be taken away from Golden Carp Tower,

when everyone turns on him in the Burial Mounds with the same words and having the same intent they did at Nightless City (to harm him, to besiege him).

I think novel Wei Wuxian has spent 13 years in the afterlife getting used to wallowing over his memories, and then consequently repressing and ignoring memories from his past life because they were all associated with pain and bitterness and so much guilt (traumatic, even, but I can't say much from a perspective of trauma because I neither have trauma nor am qualified to know enough about it). Nobody cared for him anymore in his eyes, and he DID lose control, fully feeling himself lose control and accidentally cause the deaths of people he genuinely cared about. The worst-case scenario that he had to contend with actually happening and being, to some degree, his fault. With 13 years to exist as a ghost, I think he had so much time in which he would've had to contend with his choices and death that he fully removed himself from his old life as much as possible, leading to his modern-day gap in memories. You feel the effect of his years dealing with his emotions about this whole mess.

In contrast, CQL Wei Wuxian feels like he is experiencing everything raw when he comes back into the world, like he hasn't been practicing repression to the point of memory loss. Maybe he wasn't conscious during his years as dead? He's introduced with Mo Xuanyu calling to him in his brain during the sacrificial ritual, I think, and is getting told he IS Mo Xuanyu and he is...a tad confused. And then disappointed, but I mean given what Yiling Laozu Wei Wuxian had come to expect after the fiascos that ended his life, he probably wouldn't be too surprised or confused anyways. My theory is that CQL Wei Wuxian likely was unconscious when he was dead whereas MDZS Wei Wuxian was not.

This doesn't seem...important. However it does change who Wei Wuxian is and why he does the things that he does upon reincarnation. Novel Wei Wuxian taking every opportunity to drape himself over Lan Wangji with the purpose of pushing him away makes a lot of sense for a guy who's convinced the worst thing he could do to someone is get too close to/with them; he goes ahead with making a ruckus and trying to make Lan Wangji uncomfortable- without shame (because that's gotta erode away after being dead and reviled for 13 years) and without considering the possibility that Lan Wangji might want to help. Why would he consider that? He doesn't see himself worthy of help or believe anyone would help him, and he's internalised that for years on years.

CQL Wei Wuxian though, he faints on Dafan Mountain due to the weight of his memories- he's confronted with so much of the past so fast and his response is to faint. Barely any ruckus at all. When Lan Wangji finds out who he is, they have a calm conversation about it, where novel Wei Wuxian is like "oh frick he called me Wei Ying" and pretends nothing happened. CQL Wei Wuxian is a lot more open, and I think part of that is because he woke up from his death and was given the support he needed in his previous life within a couple of days. He didn't feel the years go by, have to deal with the consequences of the things he did alone (and in CQL 60% of them weren't even his own actions), so he didn't build himself the same kind of emotional fortress novel Wei Wuxian did.

CQL Wei Wuxian is jaded, true, but not the kind of jaded that comes with floating around in the afterlife for over a decade. It's easier for him to get back into this world and solve a little murder mystery together with Lan Wangji- they fall into step with each other perfectly- while novel Wei Wuxian is still getting his footing. Thus, CQL Wangxian's relationship doesn't evolve the way book Wangxian's do in Wei Wuxian's new life, and Wei Wuxian's reason to be back in this new life is far more about getting back that which he lost (Lan Wangji, a claim to justice) as opposed to gaining something else, something new and all the more important for it (a newfound relationship with Lan Wangji). Novel Wei Wuxian being so out of sync with the new world around him, in both memories and relationships, means that he has so much more room to grow in his present life as he can stop being haunted by the past. I'm not saying this is better than CQL, that's really up to what you like in your media, but this puts Wei Wuxian in a very different position in MDZS than in CQL, and also fundamentally changes their purposes and outlook on their new lives. Whether the focus of his character development takes place in the past or in the present. Whether it's about tying up the loose ends of the past, or chucking out the tapestry of the past to weave a new future.

[romchat]

My Journey to You Ep. 12 visuals: Love in blue

Ok, I'm not really a color theory girlie, BUT when a character suddenly changes up their outfits that's something I like to pay attention to. Gong Shangjue has always been portrayed in somber black and suddenly he's dressed in blue for his little lantern date with his assassin fiancée who also happens to frequently dress in blue?

Oh, it's so on, production design team.

But first, let's take a moment to relive this banger of a scene.

The sexual tension between these two makes me absolutely feral. This slow burn is what enemies-to-lovers should always aspire to.

...

...

...

...

...

...

Well, shit. I saw that jaw clench, Shangjue. Sorry, can't offer any substantive commentary. Still recovering.

Moving on...

Something I didn't really notice until this episode was how blue-toned Shangjue and Qian's scenes are in comparison to Gong Ziyu and Yun Weishan's scenes.

It's reflected in the costumes, with Ziyu and Weishan often wearing warmer colors with more exuberant gold embroidery and trimmings. It's reflected in the lighting with their scenes more reliant on the warmth of ambient lighting while Shangjue and Qian's are often shot with cooler natural light. It's also present in the set design, with Shangjue and Qian's scenes (especially those shot together) consistently involving or happening by water, which reminds me of the Chinese poem:

Drops of water can break through stone [if given long enough].

In other words, "soft" strategies can eventually make headway in difficult challenges—in this case, Qian's clever use of care to crack through Shangjue's personal defenses. And probably vice versa in the future.

Also, note how both scenes above start with the camera panning and tilting up from the blue of the water before focusing on the two characters. The camera crew for My Journey to You use a surprising amount of movement in their shots so I'm going to pay more attention to how they introduce and conclude scenes from here on out.

Of course, Shangjue's new blue outfit (and the warm blue of the pond landscape) is immediately noticeable given how starkly monochromatic and cold most of their scenes have been up until this point. Wearing the same color is a costume representation of their growing closeness. This dinner date is yet another unexpected peace offering from Shangjue, possibly his response to Qian's earlier question of "Isn't it good to be cared about?" (And correct me if I'm wrong but I think it's also the first time he actually gives Qian something rather than a few insights into his psyche. He and Ziyu have very different love languages lol)

But from the loaded dialogue it's clear that neither are overcome by the unnamed growing attraction between them, and I expect the blue that visually represents their relationship to return to a cooler tone by the next episode. They're still playing cat-and-mouse with each other, just with sexier vibes.

(Side note: Ryan Cheng is so good here. The way he relaxes and tenses his body, the smooth transition between microexpressions as the two characters dance between interrogation and half-truths. Ah, to be hot and talented. Can't relate.)

Finally--and I'm pretty sure I'm reaching but it's my tumblr so why the hell not--I want to talk about Gong Yuanzhi's costuming. Something I immediately noticed about Yuanzhi's character is how his closet is probably the most diverse of the main cast. Unlike other characters who tend to wear variations of the same fabrics, his outfits use different textures and colors. He wears a lot of black like his beloved cousin but also blues, silvers, whites, and now in Episode 12 green. I wonder if his lack of commitment to one color story is an indication of how his alliance with Shangjue will shift in the future, especially if Shangjue ever allows his attraction to Qian to cloud his judgment about either Yuanzhi's loyalty or what is in the best interest of the Gong clan.

Episode 12 definitely felt like a transitional episode that is meant to drop clues and kickstart a bunch of plot threads so I'm excited to see how those threads converge or diverge from these color stories if at all.

[bonefall]

I think the most pertinent, fundamental question to ask at this point is: How canon do we want to make the 1981 musical Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber to Better Bones? Since you've done so fantastically well at fleshing out alternate but no-less-viable systems of belief, that door has been left wiiiide open. Stripped of the zany dance numbers and stage actors in copious makeup, you can't deny that the underlying Jellicle cat religion / Heavyside Layer wouldn't be out of place. Don't lie to us. Don't you dare.

We don't know when the musical takes place, but as for where, the Jellicle Cats and their religion are centralized in a junkyard somewhere in London. Depending on how far their area of influence extends, there could be a few cats in a sect or two of BloodClan who practice the faith of a land to the south, or otherwise believe in the existence of the Heavyside Layer. Or say, the junkyard is done away with in the late 90's and a diaspora of Jellicle Cats spreads across the land. Their descendants hope one day to make the pilgrimage for one last ball, and are invariably seen as Rather Offputting by everyone. (In-story it'd all amount to rare sequiturs from a nameless extra or two which increase in probability the further one heads south.)

Hey bonefall hey, do you think Skyclan has a word for this? It'd be a corruption of the English "dear little [cats], of which "Jellicle" is a romanization. How would you say Jellicle with Clanmew pronunciation?

You can't run from this forever.

Stripped of the zany musical numbers and stage actors in copious makeup??? What are you, Tom Hooper?!

If you're going to put the Jellicles in the BB Universe, you fucking BETTER be taking inspiration from the cancelled 1997 Steven Spielberg animated musical adaptation which places the cats in postwar London sometime circa 1945 and implied that the cats had heavily cultural emphasis on song, dance, and performance

Which btw would place Grizabella's Jellicle Ball pretty firmly in the Code Era of my adaptation (built around the canonical tidbit that Turtle Tail was hit by a Ford Model T meaning the Dawn Era was pre-war).

It would be before the main Warrior cast is born (Except Holly due to infamous Time Travel Shenanigans)-- but Jellicles, after all, were there when the Sphinx was built, so it's safe to assume they'd still be around in the future as a cultural group.

Really the biggest barrier is that they live in bloodbourne London. Too far southeast to communicate with Clan cats or even BloodClan, who are northwest. Park Cats are from further south, but no further south than Gloucestershire at most.

So, serious answer, they can absolutely be canon in this universe, or at the very least they can be slotted in easily. I built a brand new religion system exactly to accommodate the existence of multiple cultural groups and honor the afterlives of each.

In fact, Jellicles fit perfectly into it.

They have a heaven (Heavyside Layer) but no hell, exactly the way that a "vanilla" type religion can form on its own. Really there's just one question-- what's their leader power?

Old Deuteronomy...

Is said to have lived many lives in succession (possible continual reincarnation?)

May choose the next cat to ascend to the Heavyside Layer (immediate patronification?)

But at the same time, there are some cats who seem to display magical powers, akin to the Sister's power distribution system. Mr. Mistoffelees is one, able to perform simple magical tricks. As far as I remember, there are two.

Conjuration (Ability to change the location of an object in space)

Levitation

These both seem like versions of the same power, really. It makes sense, too, that culturally they would value agility to the point of veneration. It ties into dancing, avoiding cars and dogs, stealing things.

In any case though-- you begin to lose these sorts of abilities the further you go from a group, without some kind of token. The Sisters are the example I've written so far; Tree needs some kind of item in order to see ghosts when he's not near the rest of the Sisters. The Jellicles are also a pretty proud group, I can't see them making these "tokens" for any old wanderer.

So maybe there's just a few of them, and Macavity has one stolen?

hmmmm... Maybe those reincarnations have to do with who's supposed to Hold The Token, and Old Doot has basically been one of them for eons. Maybe Mistoffelees was the most recent reincarnation from the Jellicle Ball?

Anyway TL;DR yeah Jellicle cats can exist in Better Bones, they're just too far away to interact with Clan cats.

Clanmew pronunciation of Jellicle = "Shewakl"

[mundanemoongirl]

Iris

Honestly, I constantly forget Iris exists but I was just writing a chapter with her and remembered she’s one of my favorite OCs.

Iris is a lady so she has a lot of power in the social system, but she’s very far down the line of succession. Unlike Daron, who is supposed to be the perfect image of a lady, Iris is very mischievous. She’s also lowkey a pirate, but we don’t learn that until much later.

Iris has one of my favorite designs, partially because she looks similar to me, but I also had a lot of fun with her look. She has dark brown skin and waist-length twists. She has orange eyes and red runes tattoed up her arms and across her chest.

Iris’ clan is very important to her character. The Arsonite Clan is the only clan that originated outside the mainland, so they have a different culture than the other clans. The Aquatic Clan stole their land, which started a war between all of the clans. After the war, the Arsonites were left with no land, money, or allies, and their language was on the cusp of death because they had to assimilate. Iris is very involved in her culture. She’s fluent in Arsonean and is experienced in their traditional dance.

The Arsonite Clan being left with nothing is how they ended up as pirates. They sink human ships despite the fact that humans and witches are not supposed to interact at all, and keep the spoils. When their betrayal is discovered, Iris shows absolutely no remorse. She stands by what they did to survive (as she should). I honestly want to write a spin-off of Iris’ pirate adventures when I’m done with the main story.

Iris has had a lot of development since the first draft. I didn’t know how to characterize her mischievousness, so she ended up coming off as tone-deaf and kind of annoying. In my second draft, there’s more of a balance between her causing chaos and her tenderness. I think it’s perfectly summarized when Daron asks her for a favor and Iris asks what Daron will do in return. Daron knows that Iris would help unconditionally and just wanted to stir the pot.

Fun fact: Iris was originally named Aralea after a classmate I had in second grade. Upon further thought, I realized that was too similar to Ariella—Aria’s full name—so I changed it to Iris, a goddess a learned about at a Ramses exhibit.

Spiritwalker taglist: @the-golden-comet @pixies-love-envy

[imagines-to-quench-thirst]

Victor Creed Materlist

Disclaimer: stories are fictitious and should not be taken literally, the behavior is entirely imaginative and the content may be inappropriate

Updated & repaired: 16/07/2023 (if a story won't load or something else, please message me and let me know)

MAIN MASTERLIST

Fluff🌺  Angst 🌩️ Smut❤️‍🔥

5/7 STORIES:

5 Times In Time ❤️‍🔥🌺 

5 Little Things That Mean Love 🌺

5 Types Of Kisses 🌺

MY HEADCANONS W/ OTHER CHARACTERS:

Speak In Flowers 🌺 Flowers speak their own words and show their actions. And your man loves to speak it out loud.

Visiting Your Hometown 🌺 how would your boy act when you drag him along to your hometown

Helping You To Accept Your Stretch Marks 🌺your boy helps you accept your beautiful stretch marks as they are...pure perfection

Explaining To Your Man Kdramas🌺I (V) wrote small drabbles that paired my favorite men and dramas that I absolutely love

Dating A Tattoo Artist 🌺 being a tattoo artist and your boyfriend being part of it

When Tough Times Occur 🌺Life itself can be a pain and with its obstacles, it can seem impossible to overcome it but that’s what makes us stronger as people.

Someone Rubs You The Wrong Way With... 🌺 how would your man protect you when someone doesn’t mind your business

Having A Shower ❤️‍🔥having a shower with your man sounds like heaven right?!

One Thing He Loves About You (Physically Or Mentally)🌺 the title spoils the ending a bit

No Nut November ❤️‍🔥in the glory of No Nut November, you make a bet with your liver saying if they fail you cuff them and use them to your liking but if you lose they get to fulfil one of their fantasies. And you are keen on it to make them lose, by any means.

ASKS:

Dance The Night Away 🌺how would look if Victor's or Logan's S/O was younger and loved to dance

Remind Me That I Am Old 🌺a headcanon that would describe Logan's or Victor's S/O that liked to poke fun at them for being well...old

Cabin Fever❤️‍🔥Victor Creed lives in the woods. Reader after taking a walk in the woods gets lead into Victor's cabin and becomes his pet of sorts. He teaches the reader his rules for living with him and the reader breaks them.

Vacation Surprise🌺 requested by: @creedslove Y/n and Victor are on their long-overdue vacation and as they walk on the beach a group of happily married folks plants a confidence seed in Victor to ask Y/n the question of a lifetime.

Scratching🌺 headcanon well about, scratching

The Truth About The Titanic🌺requested by: @creedslove a message that could change a historic moment with Victor playing his part

PMS Pain 🌺 requested by: @creedslove small period pain drabble

Secret Admirer 🌺(teacher!reader) requested by: @creedslove For a while, Y/n has a secret admirer but she can't put a finger on who could it be.

No Boyfriend Here🌩️(sister!reader) Victor turns into a mindless machine making the biggest mistake of his life

Save Me, Neighbour 🌺I was wondering if you could write something for victor where he finds himself worried about his neighbour. They both live in a secluded area and catch a car driving by a lot at night

Speedy Recovery Help 🌺 Victor is there to give you a hand when you feel sick

Stressed Student 🌺 can I request Duncan Vizla, the Joker, Victor Creed and what would they do if they see their s/o down because they're stressed due exams?

DIFFERENT AUs

You Owe Me Dinner(Mobster!AU) date with the most fearsome leader of the Saber clan

DRABBLES FROM MY🧠

Tending To Victor’s Wounds 🌺Y/n plays nurse for Victor

Living Without You Is Like Living Without Air 🌺Victor received a call from the hospital regarding Y/n

NSFW Alphabet❤️‍🔥

Fluff Alphabet 🌺

Giving Victor Head While He’s On The Phone With Logan❤️‍🔥

Victor Creed Not Believing He Is In Love🌺

Dating Victor Creed And Being A Dancer 🌺

The Only Thing You’ll Be Wearing Is The Perfume ❤️‍🔥Victor likes to sniff his girl

Lovely 🌩️ Victor learns to grieve

Helping hand ❤️‍🔥Victor likes to help

Dance Partner 🌺in my opinion the cutest one shot i have written, absolutely love it-Victor invites you to dance

Get In Already 🌩️a small fight between victor and Y/n

It’s Alright 🌺Y/n has nightmares and wants to cuddle with Victor

Don’t Cry 🌺Y/n hides from everyone for one specific reason

Save Me 🌺🌩️Stryker kidnapped Y/n

Loving You Is A Wish Come True 🌺Victor tries to decorate the Christmas Tree. Keyword: Try.

Celebrating New Year with Victor Creed🌺

It’s Cold, You Should Take My Jacket 🌺Victor being the gentleman that he is he offers his jacket during the cold wintertime

First Date 🌺🌺the fearsome Sabertooth has a first proper date

Spending Christmas with Victor🌺

Victor Spending X-Mas With Y/n’s Family🌺

Kissing Victor Creed Under The Mistletoe🌺

Victor, Meet My Sister🌺

Dinner? 🌺Victor, Y/n, Wade, and Wolverine have dinner together

Come back to bed... 🌺

Story About The Sabertooth🌩️

Victor Creed taking care of you when you have your period🌺

Being A Model And Dating Victor Creed🌺

Wedding Date 🌺

His Dog Tags🌺

Date By The Shore🌺

Now I’m Someone Else Baby~ 🌩️Sabertooth make the worst mistake of his life

Victor’s Jokes🌺

It Wasn't Enough 🌩️Victor sees Y/n with another man after their breakup

I'm Waiting... ❤️‍🔥

Caught In The ‘Action’ ❤️‍🔥Wade interrupts

Victor’s Nicknames For You🌺

Being In A Relationship With Victor Creed🌺

A Grey Hair?! 🌺Y/n finds on Victor a grey hair and old man jokes ensue

Victor Meeting Your Mother🌺

Asgardian Mead By The Shore 🌺Y/n stands up for her Victor

Logan Finding Out Victor Has A Girlfriend🌺

Mornings With Victor Creed🌺

🕉️Yoga with Victor🕉️🌺

Drinking Coffee With Victor Creed☕🌺

How Would Victor Creed Kiss🌺❤️‍🔥

Defenceless 🌺

MULTI-PART STORIES

Cold Truth (PART 1 OF 2) 🌩️Y/n hurts to see Victor move on with another woman

You Didn’t Grieve (PART 2 OF 2) 🌩️🌺Y/n decided to visit Victor on her final visit to discuss his emotionless emotion

PICTURE IMAGINES

Victor Creed Pushing You Against The Wall, Kissing You Drunkenly🌺❤️‍🔥

Traveling To Istanbul With Victor And Showing Him The Culture🌺

Decorating The Christmas Tree With Victor🌺

Passing in Victor’s Arms🌩️

OTHER LIEV SCHRIBER CHARACTERS(Ray Donovan):

Someone I Can’t Hold Anymore (PART 1 OF 2)🌩️🌺

I Let Go Of You A Long Time Ago (PART 2 OF 2)🌩️🌺

[glittergelpensherlock]

How I would rewrite the new installation of Descendants:

Rise of Red wasn't terrible so no hate, but this is something I’ve been planing since the first movie came out. This series has been a favorite of mine for ages and this is how I imagined the series continuing.

MCs:

Princess Ace and Prince Jack Hearts: twins, daughter and son of the queen of hearts, have one older sister Rose, and three little siblings, Scarlett, Rex and Queenie (also twins)

Prince Edmund of Andalasia : son of Edward and Nancy from Enchanted, has a little sister Danielle, he gives fairy tale princess low key

Princess Bernadette of the Clan DunBroch: daughter of Merida

Other characters:

Adrien Bonfamille: grandson of Madame Adelaide Bonfamille, owner of Marie and her kittens: Collette, Baptiste and Pierre, he's gonna be the main side character

Ryder Fitzherbert: son of Rapunzel and Eugene

Ginny: daughter of Giselle and Robert

Winter White: daughter of snow white

son of Hans

hatter kid

something from Sofia the first, that show is kinda a banger

Robin hood kid maybe?

Villans:

Rose Hearts

Scarlett Hearts

Winter White

son of Hans (or Frollo?)

Recurring Characters:

magic mirror

the witch from brave

Evie and Doug (love them)

the white rabbit

blue caterpillar

Costuming:

for each costume, I would incorporate key elements from the stories of each characters parents, as well as allowing for personal style

the fits will NOT just be the main colors of their parents, though they will have the main color pallets, they will not be confined to two or three colors

i would experiment with patterns and fabrics to fit the style of each character

obviously the fits are kind of out of this world, but the cool aesthetics will not just be for the vks, but for the auradon kids as well

Story line:

wonderland people will actually be crazy, very 2010 alice core, I really just like the insane vibes

I would like to bring in the magic used in Brave, I think that could be very interesting for a story line

wonderland chaos could be spread

I would also love to explore the magic of snow white and the evil queen

the ONLY active love story would be between Bernadette and Jack, I feel like I just want one and their my ocs

magic mirror playing a major role

maybe a slight hint of romance between Adrien and hatters kid, left for the audience to determine, not in your face but there?

jabberwocky moment!!!

someone has to get turned into a bear

semi book accurate isle exploration

Music:

definitely quirky and dark when pertaining to wonderland, creepy and catchy

song birds for Edmund and Winter

bagpipes!!

sentimental songs not just for one character!

mirror song for sure

hearts kids harmony sing off

so many dance battles (I love choreo)

rotten to the core (wonderland version) (idk why they don't bring this song back more often its the og)

definitely a song about going crazy

lighthearted whimsical but with dark lyrics for spell casting via Winter

hans/or frollo kid rap verse? (harry in wmn core)

need a song when someone gets a makeover, idk who yet but Adrien has to sing it

Lmk what y'all think and what else I should add. Might make this a series if I feel like going deeper into the lore of my head canons and such. :)

[worstvideogamesong-poll]

Worst Video Game Song Tournament Masterpost

The tournament has begun! We are currently in round 4, and each poll will be open for a week. I will also be reblogging each poll 12 hours after it is posted so that people in different time zones are able to see them more easily. If you don't want to see these reblogs, block the tag #12th hour reblog. There will be a total of 8 polls in this round. 4 polls will be posted a day for a total of 2 days.

When you vote, I would recommend listening to as much as you can of each song before voting, but how you choose is up to you. Remember to be civil in the tags and replies! Some posts will have propaganda included with the songs, but feel free to add more propaganda in the tags and replies, or send it to me in the ask box and I'll try to share it as soon as I can!

View the bracket, make predictions and more on Challonge here

View the spreadsheet of submissions here

View the original introduction post here

Read the FAQ here

Listen to the full playlist on YouTube here

Full list of polls under the cut:

Round 1

Match 1 - Lavender Town (Pokémon Red/Blue) vs. Vs. Odd Yo-Kai (Yo-Kai Watch)

Match 2 - K.K. Synth (Animal Crossing New Leaf) vs. Bad Feeling (Mad Rat Dead)

Match 3 - This is Where You Are Caucasian Destination Boy (Project Sekai: Colorful Stage! feat. Hatsune Miku) vs. Morpho Knight (Kirby and the Forgotten Land)

Match 4 - Track 6 (The Ring: Terror's Realm) vs. Fallen Down (Undertale)

Match 5 - Rodeo Time! (Yo-Kai Watch 3) vs. The Fade (Dragon Age Origins)

Match 6 - Rivers in the Desert (mito Remix) (Persona 5 Dancing in Starlight) vs. Birthday Cake (Jet Set Radio Future)

Match 7 - Let's Start the Killing Game (Danganronpa v3: Killing Harmony) vs. You've Got to Eat Your Vegetables! (Commander Keen 4)

Match 8 - Venus (Doom Troopers Sega Genesis) vs. GB Hunter Theme (GB Hunter)

Match 9 - Know What I Mean? (Mario Party 2) vs. Boss Theme 1 (Sonic Superstars)

Match 10 - Area 4, 8, & 13 (Santa Claus Saves the Earth GBA) vs. The Yoshi Clan (Yoshi's New Island)

Match 11 - Bomb Rush Blush (Remix) - Splatoon 2 vs. Mansion Basement (Resident Evil Director's Cut)

Match 12 - Monkeys (Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships) vs. Vacation Music 1 (The Sims 1)

Match 13 - Hazy Lane (Yo-Kai Watch 3) vs. Central City (Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood)

Match 14 - Mumble Blues (Armed and Delirious (Dementia)) vs. Crazy Bus Title Screen (Crazy Bus)

Match 15 - Striptease (Persona 4) vs. Professor Birch's Laboratory (Pokémon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire)

Match 16 - Oppression (Cave Story) vs. Spookwave (Undertale)

Match 17 - Nocturne (Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood) vs. Ancient Chozo Ruins (Metroid II: Return of Samus)

Match 18 - Diggity Dog (WWF No Mercy N64) vs. YZAP (Yo-Kai Watch 3)

Match 19 - Versus (Sonic Eraser) vs. Neo-Opportunist (Mad Rat Dead)

Match 20 - 50m (Donkey Kong '94) vs. Black Tar (Xenoblade Chronicles X)

Match 21 - Shadow World (DE DE MOUSE Remix) (Persona 4 Dancing All Night) vs. Mushroom Road (Tales of the Abyss)

Match 22 - Fest Zest (Splatoon 2) vs. Survival Instincts Kicking In (Bravely Default II)

Match 23 - Drawbridge Dilemma (WarioWare: Get it Together!) vs. Fight Theme 1 (Omikron: The Nomad Soul)

Match 24 - Thrifty Megamart (Pokémon Sun/Moon) vs. Metal Gear MS DOS Soundtrack (Metal Gear MS DOS)

Match 25 - NLA (Night) (Xenoblade Chronicles X) vs. Spooktune (Undertale)

Match 26 - Namco Arcade 80's Retro Medley (Super Smash Bros. for Wii U) vs. I Love Beijing Tiananmen (Hong Kong 97)

Match 27 - Stage Theme (1942) vs Red-Green-Yellow-Yellow (Mother 3)

Match 28 - Din's Power (Harp) (The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword) vs. Wildfire (Honkai: Star Rail)

Match 29 - Midna's Lament (Remix) (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate) vs. Tired of Life (Lady of Beestmeel Bro)

Match 30 - Holy Orders? (Guilty Gear XX) vs. Burning Men's Soul (Persona Trinity Soul)

Match 31 - Built to Scale (Rhythm Heaven Fever) vs. Main Theme (Beverly Hills Cop)

Match 32 - Just Leave Me Alone (OMORI) vs. Denegul (Lagoon)

Match 33 - Now or Never! (Remix) (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate) vs. Crown Dungeon (The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages)

Match 34 - Heart and Soul (Cutscene) (Sonic Frontiers) vs. Dungeon Man (EarthBound)

Match 35 - Resetti's Theme (Animal Crossing: Wild World) vs. Rise & Shine, Ursine! (Danganronpa v3: Killing Harmony)

Match 36 - Belly Flop (Splatoon 3) vs. Lemon Jelly (The Sims 2)

Match 37 - mmm yess put the tree on my pizza (Pizza Tower) vs. The Moving Gigantic Ship (Tales of Xillia)

Match 38 - Comin' at ya, My girl (Yakuza 5) vs. Track 7 (Frozen Fruits)

Match 39 - Battle (Field) (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild) vs. Title Theme (The Adventures of Rad Gravity)

Match 40 - Emphasis on Scat (BattleBlock Theater) vs. Shipwreckin' (Splatoon 2)

Match 41 - Tem Shop (Undertale) vs. Character Select (Marvel vs. Capcom 2)

Match 42 - Title Screen (Tagin' Dragon) vs. Path of Pain (Hollow Knight)

Match 43 - What's Your Name? (San Fransisco Rush) vs. Pathetic House (Undertale)

Match 44 - Mine: Zew (The Void/Tension) vs. Chocobo Theme (Final Fantasy 2)

Match 45 - Versus Giegue (EarthBound Beginnings) vs. Dragon's Den (Pokémon Gold/Silver)

Match 46 - Great Bay Temple (The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask) vs. Sagat's Theme (Street Fighter 1)

Match 47 - Chocobo Theme (Final Fantasy X-2) vs. Honeylune Ridge (Super Mario Odyssey)

Match 48 - Close in the Distance (Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker) vs. Shrimp Shuffle (Rhythm Heaven Fever)

Match 49 - Desert (Super Mario Bros.) (Super Mario Maker 2) vs. National Anthem (Double Dribble Arcade)

Match 50 - Dubble Bath (DIY Remix) (Splatoon 2) vs. Fun House (Spider-Man the Animated Series)

Match 51 - Options (Sonic Spinball) vs. Welcome to Mario Cars 2 (Mario Cars 2)

Match 52 - Twilit Battle (The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess) vs. Confusion (Digimon World 3)

Match 53 - 25m (Donkey Kong) vs. Buying Goods at Palmira (Evergrace)

Match 54 - Crazy Shuffle Theme (Action 52) vs. Joke's End (Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga)

Match 55 - Treasure Caves (Wild Woody) vs. Long Elevator (Undertale)

Match 56 - Conspiracy (わるだくみ) (Muv Luv) vs. Opening (Sonic Blast 3D 5)

Match 57 - Digital Roots (Deltarune Chapter 2) vs. Lying in the Darkness (Tales of Graces)

Match 58 - Victory Road (Pokémon HeartGold/SoulSilver) vs. Title Music (Manic Miner)

Match 59 - Donut Plains (Super Mario Kart) vs. Nightclub (Sabotaged) (Payday 3)

Match 60 - Credtrap (Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill) vs. Cole Train Rap (Gears of War)

Match 61 - Tragic Prince (Castlevania: Symphony of the Night) vs. Theme of Stardust (Yakuza 2)

Match 62 - Vital (Fornite) vs. Title Screen (Ballz 3D)

Match 63 - Emblem Engage! (Fire Emblem: Engage) vs. Sub-Tree Area (Kirby Super Star)

Match 64 - Maximum Power (After Burner (Amiga)) vs. Imp's Song (DOOM)

Round 2

Match 1 - Lavender Town (Pokémon Red/Blue) vs. K.K. Synth (Animal Crossing: New Leaf)

Match 2 - This is Where You Are Caucasian Destination Boy (Project Sekai: Colorful Stage! feat. Hatsune Miku) vs. Track 6 (The Ring: Terror's Realm)

Match 3 - The Fade (Dragon Age: Origins) vs. Birthday Cake (Jet Set Radio Future)

Match 4 - You've Got to Eat Your Vegetables! (Commander Keen 4) vs. GB Hunter Theme (GB Hunter)

Match 5 - Know What I Mean? (Mario Party 2) vs. The Yoshi Clan (Yoshi's New Island)

Match 6 - Mansion Basement (Resident Evil Director's Cut) vs. Vacation Music 1 (The Sims 1)

Match 7 - Central City (Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood) vs. Title Screen (Crazy Bus)

Match 8 - Striptease (Persona 4) vs. Spookwave (Undertale)

Match 9 - Nocturne (Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood) vs. Diggity Dog (WWF No Mercy (N64))

Match 10 - Versus (Sonic Eraser) vs. 50m (Donkey Kong)

Match 11 - Shadow World (DE DE MOUSE Remix) (Persona 4 Dancing All Night) vs. Survival Instincts Kicking In (Bravely Default II)

Match 12 - Fight Theme 1 (Omikron: The Nomad Soul) vs. Metal Gear MS DOS Soundtrack (Metal Gear MS DOS)

Match 13 - NLA (Night) (Xenoblade Chronicles X) vs. I Love Beijing Tiananmen (Hong Kong 97)

Match 14 - Stage Theme (1942) vs. Din's Power (Harp) (The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword)

Match 15 - Tired of Life (Lady of Beestmeel Bro) vs. Holy Orders? (Guilty Gear XX)

Match 16 - Main Theme (Beverly Hills Cop (PC)) vs. Denegul (Lagoon(SNES))

Match 17 - Crown Dungeon (The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages) vs. Dungeon Man (EarthBound)

Match 18 - Resetti's Theme (Animal Crossing: Wild World) vs. Belly Flop (Splatoon 3)

Match 19 - The Moving Gigantic Ship (Tales of Xillia) vs. Track 7 (Frozen Fruits)

Match 20 - Title Theme (The Adventures of Rad Gravity) vs. Emphasis on Scat (BattleBlock Theater)

Match 21 - Character Select (Marvel vs. Capcom 2) vs. Title Screen (Tagin' Dragon (NES))

Match 22 - What's Your Name? (San Fransisco Rush) vs. Mine: Zew (The Void/Tension)

Match 23 - Versus Giegue (EarthBound Beginnings) vs. Sagat's Theme (Street Fighter 1)

Match 24 - Chocobo Theme (Final Fantasy X-2) vs. Shrimp Shuffle (Rhythm Heaven Fever)

Match 25 - National Anthem (Double Dribble Arcade) vs. Fun House (Spider-Man: The Animated Series)

Match 26 - Welcome to Mario Cars 2 (Mario Cars 2) vs. Confusion (Digimon World 3)

Match 27 - Buying Goods at Palmira (Evergrace) vs. Crazy Shuffle Theme (Action 52)

Match 28 - Treasure Caves (Wild Woody) vs. Opening (Sonic 3D Blast 5)

Match 29 - Lying in the Darkness (Tales of Graces) vs. Title Music (Manic Miner)

Match 30 - Nightclub (Sabotaged) (Payday 3) vs. Credtrap (Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill)

Match 31 - Theme of Stardust (Yakuza 2) vs. Title Screen (Ballz 3D(SNES))

Match 32 - Emblem Engage! (Fire Emblem: Engage) vs. Imp's Song (DOOM)

Round 3

[avalonianrising]

I return cause I crave lore to read

On the opposite end of the spectrum, who are your softest and safest dragons to be around? The ones who kinda just adopt you as their own for however long you're with them? The ones who've got the best vibes, and kinda lull people to sleep just by the safe and calm feel that's around them?

I AIM TO PLEASE, THIS IS GIVING MY BRAIN A WORKOUT. :D

And that's absolutely Raylai, Alchaeon, and Liana from the Clan in the Mists. They are possibly the kindest, most welcoming folks you could hope to meet in the clan--Alchaeon's legit the one-man welcoming crew! He always has this weird way of knowing when you're coming--if you ask, he will absolutely lie to your face (in a good way, a silly way, I promise!!) and gives a different excuse every time!

His mate Raylai and daughter Liana will probably immediately swat at him, but will also be swarming to take your hands in theirs in greeting. They hope you've had a safe journey! Are you hungry? Tired? They'll set you up with everything you need, WHATEVER you need, for a comfortable stay there.

Their lair is very different than what some folks are used too obviously, but they think you'll be quite nicely surprised if you decide to stay in the main clan. Giant cave or not, it is extremely beautiful and very well kept. The dedication these Nature dragons have to their home is unwavering, and you'll definitely be able to tell by how harmonious everything is!

Every single night, they all gather around a bonfire at the back entrance of the cave to sing, dance, tell stories, talk, whatever you like! And their voices light the night sky just as brightly as the stars. The other members of the Clan in the Mists never get tired of it, even the rowdier members. <3 They are so, so loved.

[hazbinextgeneration]

Demon Bride Ch24 Interluding P3

(DISCLAIMERS AND IMPORTANT INFO!!!: EVERYONE in this story is in their early 20s-30s! This story will contain mentions of past abuse and death! I'll be keeping it as SFW. Some backstories have been slightly altered for this particular story, and some characters cannonically dead or harmed is alive and well. I own nothing.

Credit to @flanelltees​ for the designs I based the demons off to look more demon-like with tails and pointed ears.

This story will be sfw, but there will be some blood, implied death, fighting, some gore mentioned, and a few other things that will be made aware by warnings. Pay attention to warnings at the top of any chapters just under the summery please.)

Once in the mountain villages it was a custom that once a year on the night of the new year's first moon, an unlucky young lady would be selected and left for the demons to become one of the unlucky few who married such a husband. In exchange for this offering the demons would protect the villages and leave the humans in peace. Until one day a powerful warrior drove the demons away freeing the humans of them. Now 2,000 years later, it's become a tradition that once a year, a new young lady would be picked and wait for her future husband to retrieve her from a shrine in the mountains. And now the lucky tradition would fall upon Y/n L/n. It would be her own turn to take on the tradition and not have to worry about demons. After all that part of the old tradition was just fake, made up by paranoid ancestors. Everyone knew demons didn't exist.

...Right

(WARNINGS!!!: Karaku IS his own warning. Possibly some innuendos.)

First Part Here:

Demon Bride Ch 1 Thus It Begins

(WARNINGS AND DISCLAIMERS!!! EVERYONE in this story is in their early 20s-30s! This story will contain mentions of past abuse and death! I'l

TUMBLR

Last Part Here:

Next Part Here:

(IMPORTANT QUESTION: Who should Y/n have her first official kiss with in the book? Your options are Douma, Gyutaro, Sekido, Urogi, Aizetsu, Karaku, Kokushibo, Kaigaku, Akaza, Kyogai, and Enmu. Whichever gets the most votes will be the one smooched. )

wind 

That's the main thing that rustled through the trees tonight dancing with it's friends the scary shadows of the abyss dancing across the large trees. Their large branches creaking in Encores for more shadow dancing, their leaves shifting in claps for the scary performance. It all made him squirm. Every sound made him squeal. Every sight made him cower. Every feeling made him go faster and faster. Why did he ever think it was a good idea to gather supplies around this time at night. Almost there however. He was almost home. Hurried footsteps accompanied by sobs and whimpers scuttled about. Home. He was almost home. Just a little more and he'd be safe. He was getting too old for this. It wasn't his fault. It wasn't his fault!! Closer and closer he went until he did get there. A giant wooden door to be in fact which creaked open upon pushing it and the warmth from within welcomed him into it's safety.

"Father." A squeal sounded from the sudden young child's voice he whirled around too. His son..HIS SON!! Oh how joyous and wonderful it was to see a face concerned for him. "You haven't returned for a few days. I was worried about you. I almost left to start searching."

"Good son. Kind son. *Sniff* All of you have been has been so good to me."

"You're our father. I won't let anyone harm you."

"*Sniffle* Wh-Where are your brothers, Zohakuten?"

"Sekido and Urogi are out looking for you, as Karaku and Aizetsu are looking for a lost child from the Spider Clan named Rui Master has interest in. I chose to stay behind I'm case you returned. It seems I made the correct call. Shall I tell them you are safely home?"

"*Sniff* Yes. Su-Su-Summon me your dear older brothers. I h-have found a gift for one of them?"

"Father?"

"I-I am an old man. It makes me so sad, so sad my sons will never find someone who feels the same way about me they do. But I have. Kind girl. Understanding girl. S-Summon them quickly." 

 The young boy's face looked all kinds of surprised in one minute,and at first he didn't respond but another sniffle sound made his face relax into that permanent scowl his youngest son always seemed to have. Instead his youngest came over to him, and he felt a stronger arm wrap around his shoulders and a firm hand grab his upper forearm.

"They'll be back before the sun arrives. Come sit." One strong but gentle pull was enough to get the sobbing mess moving towards an already lit fireplace, and made the mess sit down in a chair near there. "You had us all worried being gone for almost a week. What were you thinking running off without telling us?!"

A sob as trembling hands covered the mess's face. "Not my fault I go-go-got llllooooosssttt!!! *Hic*"

A groan followed by a sigh. "Well that's what happens when your eyesight isn't what it used to be! You're not a young man anymore, Father! You have to stop taking unnecessary risks all the time. That's why we made you retire last year! NOW DON'T DO THAT AGAIN!!"

A small wail followed by sobbing but there was a pained nod in the mess which made the young man nod.

"Good. You look thin. Wait here and I'll get you some food. Then you can get cleaned up."  He then left and returned a moment later with a bowl of some food and what looked like tissues both thrusted into the mess's hands. "Here. Clean yourself up and eat something. You'll feel better afterwards."

"*sniffle* Thank Y-You. How kind my sons are to me."

" Hmm." The tissues were used. The food was ate. And his interest was still peaked. "Now what's this nonsense about you trying to marry off one of the idiots? Don't tell me some woman has come knocking on our door hoping to marry into wealth now that we're important enough to gain attention?" A deep growl. "I HATE those women!! They make me rage when they act all sweet and then change once they catch sight of you!! The only other one who seems to hate it is Sekido!! Karaku and Urogi thinks it's all fun and games and wallow in the attention when women throw themselves at their feet! And Aizetsu rather run away and hide from them all instead of help!!!''

"No. No. This one is different." The mess's voice cleared now but there was still sniffles. "I asked her."

"Oh really? And you're sure she just didn't trick you into asking that? You're too delicate to know better, someone could've tricked you."

"*hic* A-Actually s-s-she denied it when I offered her first."

The young boy paused looking at him. "...HMPH!! It still could've been a trick! What could she have possibly done to gain your attention?"

"She saved me. Believed me. Said I-It wasn't m-m-my fault."

"She-...I-...W-What? I mean-...What did you get yourself into while you were out?!"

"She saved me from a monster child! He would've ended me if it wasn't for her, I'd be dead! She treated me with such kindness. *sniff*She was so kind."

"....UGH!!" Two hands facepalmed himself. "The things that happen around here are unbearable! Just go get yourself cleaned up and I'll get the idiots over here!"

"D-Don't be so harsh on them."

He ignored that last statement to just go gather the idiots (his older brothers) to alert them of the arrival of their father. They shouldn't be too far away and the wind outside will help carry the sounds over the hills and trees. Leaving the house and sniffling sounds behind,  the door opened back to the scary world outside and he gathered energy into his arms. Raising them up over his head...Before slamming them down.

BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM

The sounds of beats embarked on their own journey to the winds and dancing shadows joining in the symphony of sounds in the night. Surely anyone else who heard it would run from the frightening heartbeats from the mountain, however he was expecting a certain group of quadruplets to arrive answering the music he made. Minute after minute he sounded. Going on for longer and longer as time passed.

BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM

Over and over again and again the rythem played out. Calling. Calling. Calling.

BUM BUM BUM BUM B-

A hand froze inches away from a leather bound instrument. A centimeter from making another noise when he finally got a sense that he wasn't alone. 

"I've been at this for almost two hours, Sekido! You better have a good reason for keeping me waiting!"

He didn't even need to look to know someone was scowling at him. But the jingling of a deadly staff was enough to identify the newcomer. And of course the voice- "SHUT UP YOU BRAT!! YOU TRY STEERING A FLYING CHICKEN THROUGH THE WIND WITH THAT INFURIATING INSTRUMENT POUNDING IN YOUR DAM EARDRUMS!!"

"...You let Urogi carry you here? You must've been very worried about Father or being around them all has finally made you just as insane."

"Shut your dam mouth before you make me angry!!"

''That's not a long walk for you to achieve."

He could hear his brother sputter incoherent angry yells just as a gust of wind blew over them both and a second later there was a loud thud. Ah. He knew who that was too. "Urogi. Nice to see you join us."

There was a different voice who laughed despite Sekido's yelling. "HAHAHAHA!! Zoha! You should've seen the way Sekido landed when he told me to drop him!! He looked just like a ragdoll without any stuffing!"

"IT WAS YOUR FAULT!! YOU LET GO OF ME ON FUCKING PURPOSE AND YOU KNOW IT!!"

"Aw, Sekido.~ You're the oldest but you still act so immature.~" 

"I swear one day I'll rip your wings off!!"

He rolled his eyes by this point. His brothers were always fighting in some way, shape, or form. Gave him constant headaches. 

"ENOUGH!!  What did you even summon us back for, Zahakuten?! Did Father return or not?!"

"He did. However he has....strange news he wanted to tell all of you. Now where's the others?"

"Haha! 'Strange news' little brother? Sounds exciting! They should be along shortly considering I spotted Aizetsu from the air."

"That must mean Karaku's not too far behind either-" 

"Actually we are closer than you three think!" All heads turned to two other faces. One a smug grin, the other a worried frown. "Seeing all your faces again makes this day brighter!~ Especially all the leaves and sticks sticking to Sekidos hair. Was flying fun?"

"Shut up, Karaku! Did you find that brat or not?!"

"N-No. W-W-We followed the scent to a couple ponds not too far from here but the trail went cold. It makes me sad to displease the Master again."

"DAMMIT!! Ever since Urogi lost him months ago we've been stuck not being able to find him at all!!"

"Don't blame me! How was I supposed to know that the kid could shoot webs and blind me!?"

 B U M

A loud bang of a drum ended the bickering. "Silence all of you! We have all the time to find one sickly child who couldn't have gotten far! For now come inside and greet Father. He's expecting you."

With that he turned and just walked back into the building. It did not take long for him to be followed by four pairs of footsteps also opening and closing the door before he was pushed aside by two of his more upbeat brothers whom quickly hugged their father in greeting. He hated when they did that. Aizetsu was kinder and didn't hog barely any attention other than a quick greeting to their father before Sekido grunted. 

"Enough pleasantries. State what you want to tell us before we leave. I have to find a brat from the mountains!"

"*sniffle* Apologies. Apologies. I haven't been able to tell you yet." A thin, frail hand was held up. "I'm getting to old, too weary to keep you all much company for too very long. *Sniff* Which is why I have taken it upon myself to arrange a marriage to a suitable girl for you four."

Silence. STUNNED SHOCKED SILENCE. Karaku's face froze in a strained smile. Urogi's mouth hung right open. Aizetsu just....stood there awkwardly and silently stared. Sekido looked like someone just spat in his food. And Zohakuten? He wasn't too surprised now so he just reached up to close Urogi's mouth before Sekido broke the silence. 

"WHAT?!"

"F-Father, you can't be serious. Why?"

"You all have turned down the many families who made offers. I'm getting old and I wish to at least see one of my sons married. So I took matters into my own hands. You all brought this up on yourself. *sniff*"

"So you found four different women for us to marry?" Urogi didn't sound angry. Instead he hummed curiously. "Wow....Did you accept Douma's offer of sending over concubines then or are they orions you paid off the debts to in exchange for the marriages?" 

"Neither. She is a kind girl. Understanding girl. She'll be good for you all."

"Father said she saved him from the clutches of a small brat." Zohakuten rolled his eyes. "Most likely one of the forest people's brat, they aren't the most polite."

"So wait.. You said 'girl' as in the singular sense yes?," Aizetsu's blue eyes blinked. "So...Does that mean only one of us is getting married? W-Who?" He winced. "I hope not Sekido."

"AND WHAT'S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?!"

"Is she cute?~" Karaku cooed intrigued. "Is she a sweet pure thing?~ I bet she's just a little snack waiting to be devoured-"

"Karaku, that's disgusting! Don't talk about our future wife like that! N-Now who is going to be the one engaged exactly?"

Everyone shut up at that question and looked to their father who also paused. "Oh...I ..U-Um...I did not remember to be specific when she agreed to m-m-my proposal."

They continued to stare at him. "So..You didn't pick a specific one of us because you forgot to ask which one of us she'd rather marry?"

Their father winced. 

"OOOHHH!!!~ This sounds like such FUN!~ I call dibs if she's cute!~"

"Shut up all of you!!" Sekido looked back to their father. "What did this monstrous child look like?"

"*Sniff*..H-He was as pale as the moon with the most violent tendencies!!"

"THAT'S HIM!! THAT'S THE BRAT WE WERE LOOKING FOR!! WHERE DID THIS HAPPEN?!"

Their father cowered. "B-B-By the lakes!'

"LAKES?!"

"H-H-He must mean the ponds to the south of here. That's where we lost track of the scent."

"How long ago was this?!"

"Gah! A w-week! Maybe less!!"

"Then that's where we should go!!" Sekido instantly turned and began stomping off towards the exit.

"S-Sekido."

"WHAT?!"

"*sniffle* The g-girl who a-agreed to the marriage h-has the child."

*******************"*****************************************************************

"Mother. I don't want to go! I want to stay and listen to you reading me more stories!! It's not fair!"

You had expected Rui would throw a tantrum when Kyogai ordered he would be put back into Mayla's care starting today. He insisted in order to have him un-imprint on you, he had to start spending time away from you in order to be sure he wouldn't be too attached whenever it was decided what would be done with him. While you agreed it would be best since it would mean it would solve another one of your problems,you couldn't help but feel...Wrong about this whole thing. Especially when Rui clung to your kimono with a pout. 

"It's only for a little while." You gently tried to coax him.

"IT'S NOT FAIR!! WHY?!"

"Because Kyogai and I are grown ups and we need to talk about grown up business with each other. By ourselves. It won't be forever."

"Then I can just sit down in the corner and be quiet! I promise you won't even know I'm there!"

"Rui, I need some time to myself too. You can do whatever you want in the meantime." 

"I want you!! I want my mother!" You groaned. This was going to be difficult. "If it's because you two want to kiss I can wait until you're all done."

......Say what?

"R-Rui!! That's not- ..I mean we weren't- ... Kyogai wasn't trying to kiss me!?," You shouted red faced. 

"Then why do you want to be alone?!" Small hands grabbed your sleeve and a small tear formed on his eye lid. "P-Please don't leave me.. Please. I-I promise I'll be good this time. Just don't go."

'....."

Kyogai hummed and was just finishing a new transcript when the sliding door opened in behind him. "Ah. Y/n, right on time." He turned his head. " I have a new book...for..." He blinked seeing you standing there with Rui happily holding your hand and Nagi just behind you both. He narrowed his eyes. " I thought he was supposed to be with Mayla today."

"I decided otherwise. C'mon Rui."

Rui happily followed you as Kyogai groaned. "You're being too soft on him. He'll never get it if you keep coddling him."

"He's only ten years old. I think I can have him for a little longer." You happily let Rui sit down next to you. How ever Kyogai failed to notice exactly how close you all were. "You're just being too hard on him." Rui leaned more into your side as your arm instinctively placed around him. "Now about that new book-"

"And food!"

Kyogai groaned before holding a purple covered book over his shoulder. A moment later he felt a smaller hand take it from him. "Nagi, get them some food. I swear you're making a mistake. The child needs discipline not more-" He shut up when a warm mass suddenly pressed against him. ".... coddling."

Nagi's hands covered her mouth I'm shock as Kyogai slowly turned his head, and stared shocked as you leaned against his side instead of the wall where you usually sat at. Opening the book much to Rui's excitement.

"Oh hush now. You just need to loosen up more and be open to him. He's just ten years old. Now let's start with this Toad Prince story. Ok?"

"Yes!...But I Still need food."

"Hm...It feels like you're running another small fever again too. We'll get you all settled. Don't worry."

Kyogai quickly looked away from the figures leaning against him now red faced. Before clearing his throat and shakily picking his quill back up. Hed do his best to ignore that and continue working. ... Although it was very hard having a pretty woman literally leaning against yourself. The day went by pretty well and ended with you going to sleep, trying to insist Rui should sleep in his own room tonight, failing, and then just accepting that he would just sleep next to you tonight again. However things weren't going to remain quiet for long because deep in the middle of the night you were awoken by a shriek cutting through the air followed by the entirety of hell breaking loose. But that wasn't what had your blood running cold. Not the screams. Not the panicked footsteps. Not the hell beyond your room. No.

Rui was gone.