#it seems like what he became to be was a product of the clans and also the influence/entitlement he gains from raggedstar

[warriors-ideas]

An AU where Yellowfang confides in Lizardstripe about her pregnancy, who is in a similar situation of not wanting children. Despite never having a very good relationship before, the two end up forming a closer relationship and are able to raise their kits with the support of each other.

[mxtxfanatic]

Fandom Gripe #22: I wish the novel fandom would stop ascribing to Jiang Cheng things that he did not do (at least not alone) to make his character seem like some outstanding model citizen who pulled himself up by his bootstraps instead of the rotten product of wealth and nepotism that he is.

No, Jiang Cheng did not rebuild Lotus Pier on his own. In fact, Lotus Pier didn't need to be rebuilt at all because it was never destroyed. Wen Chao was using it as his supervision office, which is why Wang Lingjiao showed up in the first place:

Wang LingJiao spoke in a tender voice, “Young Master Wen, congratulations for moving into Lotus Pier.” Wen Chao, “What Lotus Pier? Change the name. Bring down any door carved with the nine-petaled lotus crest and replace them with those with the QishanWen Sect’s sun crest! JiaoJiao, come dance for me your best song!”

—Chapt. 59: Poisons, exr

If anything, any "rebuilding" that was done happened after Wei Wuxian defected, as Jiang Cheng remade Lotus Pier to be more extravagant than it originally was:

It was perhaps because too many places had been renewed. The training field was two times larger. Each new building seemed to be taller than the previous, adorned with curving roof decor. It seemed grander than before and had more splendor. But, compared to the Lotus Pier of his memories, it had changed too much. Wei WuXian felt a sense of loss from deep within. He didn’t know whether the old buildings from the past were blocked behind these impressive new buildings or if they were torn down already.

—Chapt. 85: Loyalty, exr

No, Jiang Cheng did not recruit new disciples on his own. He was recruiting on his own during the war for the 3 months that Wei Wuxian had been trapped in the Burial Mounds, as per Wang Lingjiao's musings:

...leaving only Jiang Cheng, who was younger than even Lan XiChen and was still a child born yesterday, who had nobody in his hands but still dared call himself sect leader, holding up the banner of rebellion as he recruited new disciples.

—Chapt. 60: Poisons, exr

But after Wei Wuxian returned, Wei Wuxian had a large hand in disciple recruitment, specifically because of the interest his ghost path garnered amongst cultivators at banquets where they were recruiting, such as the Phoenix Mountain Hunt:

One of the sect leaders spoke in a sour tone, “This time, Lotus Pier is really the center of the show. Almost all of the spirits and corpses were summoned to the YunmengJiang Sect’s grounds. There’d definitely be a number of cultivators interested in them.” ... Someone sneered, “Huh? Interested in them? I don’t think so. To put it simply, they’re interested in Wei WuXian, aren’t they? Didn’t the YunmengJiang Sect grow in fame during the Sunshot Campaign only because of Wei WuXian?”

—Chapt. 70: Departure, exr

Despite the above quote being gossip from jealous cultivators, we know this to be true because after Wei Wuxian defects, cultivators begin to flock to the Burial Mounds to ask to be his disciples, still:

After he found himself in the limelight during a few night-hunts, there really were quite a few people who came for him, hoping that they could be accepted by the ‘patriarch’ and become one of his disciples. The mountains that used to be so deserted suddenly became crowded. None of the fierce corpses Wei WuXian set up on patrol down the mountain would attack on their own. At most, they’d send the person flying and roar their throats out. Nobody got hurt, and so more and more people gathered down Burial Mound.

—Chapt. 75: Distance, exr

No, Jiang Cheng did not raise Jin Ling on his own. First off, Jin Ling is the heir to the Jin Clan, so him being raised wholly by Jiang Cheng would make absolutely no sense. Which is why nowhere does the novel say this happens; Jin Ling spends his time split between Lanling and Lotus Pier:

When Jin Ling was young, he was brought up by two sects. He lived at the LanlingJin Sect’s Jinlin Tower half the time, and the YunmengJiang Sect’s Lotus Pier the other half, so he should be carrying belongings from both sects.

—Chapt. 38: Grasses, exr

(However—and this is just my conjecture—I doubt the overtly homophobic and sexist Jiang Cheng would personally go about changing the diapers of a child who only knew him to be merciless and cold:

From the beginning of his memory until now, Jin Ling had never seen such a look on Jiang Cheng’s face before. This uncle of his who led the prominent YunmengJiang Sect ever since a young age had always been cold and dark. When he spoke, he was willing to neither show mercy nor do good.

—Chapt. 23: Malice, exr

Rich people have servants for a reason.)

No, Jiang Cheng does not spend his time helping the people of Yunmeng. He really does spend a good deal of his time fobbing off his duty to the people (not unusual for a large sect) in favor of hunting down and torturing people (very unusual, the reason why his citizens prefer to pray to gods) who either had the surname Wen or that he suspected of either being possessed by Wei Wuxian because they remind him of the latter, which extends to people who use his inventions:

Jiang Cheng spoke grimly, “Break his legs? Haven’t I told you? If you see this sort of evil and crooked practice, kill the cultivator and feed him to your dogs!”

—Chapt. 7: Arrogance, exr

Zidian definitely wouldn’t deceive [Jiang Cheng] or make a mistake, so he quickly calmed himself and thought, this doesn’t mean anything. I should first find an excuse to take him back and use every possible method to get information out of him. It’s impossible for him to not confess anything or give himself away. I’ve done things like this in the past anyways. After thinking it through, he made a gesture. The disciples understood his intention and came over.

—Chapt. 10: Arrogance, exr

The owner, “Young Masters, you’re not from Yunping City so you don’t know. The Jiang Sect is responsible for all of us along the Yunmeng area. The Sect Leader’s got quite a bad temper. It’s almost frightening. His subordinate’s said so a long time ago. Only one sect is in charge of such a large area. Each day, there are almost a hundred cases of small ghosts or other creatures pulling pranks on the living and all that. If every single small thing had to be dealt with immediately, would there be enough time and energy? Those that don’t kill anyone aren’t malign spirits, and we’re not supposed to disturb them with trivial matters that aren’t malign spirits.” She complained, “What is this supposed to mean? Wouldn’t it be too late if we waited until somebody’s died to find them?!” ... The owner continued, “On top of that, Lotus Pier is truly a scary place. How would anyone dare go there again?” Wei WuXian moved his gaze from Lan WangJi’s calm face with a short pause of surprise, “Lotus Pier is scary? How could Lotus Pier be scary? You’ve been there?” The owner, “I haven’t been there myself, but I know someone who went because his house was being badly haunted. But it was all bad luck. That Sect Leader Jiang was cracking a glowing whip right on the training field. The victim’s flesh and blood flew as high as his screams! A servant secretly informed him that the sect leader caught the wrong person again, that he hadn’t been in a great mood, and that he definitely shouldn’t be irritated in any way. He was so scared that he dropped off the gifts he brought and fled at once. He never dared visit again.” Wei WuXian had long since heard of how Jiang Cheng had been searching for cultivators of the ghost path who seemed like they seized another’s body, taking all of them into Lotus Pier to be tortured and questioned. The owner’s friend probably just happened to have ran into him when he was letting off steam. It wasn’t hard to imagine how hideous Jiang Cheng would’ve looked, so no wonder a normal person would make a run for it. ... The owner, “No, no. It was his misfortune. The person’s surname was Wen, and that Sect Leader Jiang’s archenemy happened to have the surname of Wen as well. He’s hating on everyone in this world whose surname is Wen. Whenever he sees one, he’d grind his teeth in hatred, wanting to skin them alive. How could he give a single friendly look to...”

—Chapt. 92: Longing, exr

The time he isn't spending hunting down people to torture, he uses to trail after Jin Ling on nighthunts to make sure nothing happens to him.

Wei WuXian, “Huh? Jiang Cheng? How did you run into him while night-hunting?” Lan SiZhui, “We invited Young Master Jin to join our night- hunt last time, so...” Wei WuXian immediately understood. One could even guess that while Lan SiZhui led the group in the night-hunt, Wen Ning naturally wouldn’t be idle either. He must’ve followed them in the dark to protect them, so that he could provide assistance when they encounter danger during the night-hunt. Jiang Cheng must’ve been sneaking behind Jin Ling as well, scared something would happen to him again.

—Chapt. 116: Banquet Extra, exr

Any other "single jiujiu!jc who don't need no man!" fanon I'm missing?

[lostcauses-noregrets]

if Levi activated his Ackerman powers in the underground, then what was all that in no regrets when Levi looked like he was seeing god or some shit after Erwin gave him that speech? Like he already activated the Ackerman powers?

I’m glad you brought this up Anon, because we had a long discussion about this when we recorded the @youhearbiggirls podcast the other night.  The podcast will be out just as soon as @momtaku has finished editing it, so look out for that. 

Frustratingly, there has been endless confusion about the relationship between the Akermans extraordinary powers and their devotion to their chosen person, the so-called Ackerbond.  The Ackermans power stems from their clan’s unique ability to harness the power of the Titans in human form. This is the “by-product of Titan science” business that Zeke mentions in chapter 93. This power typically activates when their survival instincts are triggered but it seems that not all Ackermans have their power awaken. It’s not clear whether Kuchel and Mikasa’s father had Ackerpowers for example.  The Ackerbond is related to the Ackermans superpowers but is something quite different. Isayama explains this in the Answers book which was published in 2016, the same week as chapter 84, Midnight Sun, and goes a long way to explaining the Ackermans relationships to their significant other. 

—In the battle to overthrow the monarchy, in the relationship between Erwin and Levi too, subtle changes begin to appear! Isayama With the heroes of American comics, conflicts dealing with the situation “with great power, comes great responsibility” have been depicted. In Levi’s case, if he had no power, he would probably have been an ordinary person with no responsibilities but, as a consequence of having power, that he became a person excessively burdened with responsibility. Kenny talked about “everyone… was a slave to something…”, when he put the question to Levi “what is yours!?”, Levi himself too perceived it. That he himself too was a slave in regard to his own strength. The sense of duty that “I must become a hero”. …the same thing can be said of Mikasa too but…, for the Ackerman family, in the service of their master, there are many people who are able to manifest their power to its maximum. —Eh!? (surprise) About that, isn’t this information that hasn’t been talked about in the original story!! Certainly for Mikasa it’s Eren, for Kenny it’s Uri that is the lord/master-like existence… Isayama In Levi’s case, it’s Erwin. As the existence who surpasses him, he has acknowledged Erwin or how should I put it. That is the Ackerman lineage or rather, the instinctive part probably.

[Translation by @tsuki-no-ura]

This is the relationship that Eren mischaracterises as Ackermans being a slave to their instincts, which Zeke debunks in chapter 130.  Ackermans are free to choose who to follow and whether to devote their power to them. 

Part of the Ackerpower / Ackerbond confusion seems to arise from the fact that Mikasa’s Ackerpowers awaken at the exact moment she meets her liege, so the two things happen simultaneously.  This isn’t the case for Kenny and Levi, who have already come into their power long before they meet Uri and Erwin. Some fans are also unaware of the existence of the Answers book, or doubt its veracity, which is weird because it comes directly from Isayama and is an official Kodansha publication.  Admittedly, Answers has never been published in English, though it has been published in German, and it’s widely available in translation.  @fuku-shuu, @ningen-suki and @yusenki all translated Answers when it was first published and @tsuki-no-ura has translated parts of it more recently and written several commentaries on the text.  

In Levi’s case, most fans assumed that his Ackerpowers had awakened before he met Erwin, as this would explain his skill with the 3DMG and his extraordinary fighting ability, we just didn’t know when.  Bad Boy confirms this.  The reason that Levi decides to follow Erwin is because he realises that he is fighting for a higher purpose; something that Levi himself doesn’t fully understand. Basically Erwin gives Levi a cause to fight for, enabling him to “manifest his power to the maximum”.  This is the revelation that we see at the end of the ACWNR manga, and which is made explicit in the visual novel, but is sadly missing from the anime.  

What a man—Levi thought to himself.  When he'd gotten caught in the underground, he'd felt humiliated. He had thought that Erwin was brimming with an air of superiority as he looked down at his catch—but now, Levi knew that he'd been mistaken. That kind of quarrel about superiority or inferiority had never concerned Erwin even in the slightest. He was, after all, fighting a more important war against the titans—no, perhaps, it was against something even bigger than that. Fixing his sight on that something, he'd carried on fighting, trying his hardest to defeat it. Levi thought—he'd been obsessed only with his pride, limiting his horizons only to that, and had then lost important friends as a result—with his current self, he definitely had no chance at winning against this man. If that's the case— "All right… It looks like you have something that I lack. Until I know what that 'something' is, I'll go with you." Having made his choice, Levi stood up. And then, catching up to Erwin, he began to trod through the heavy rain that obscured everything before them— Towards the hope surely left somewhere in this broken world, he began to walk.

[ACWNR visual novel, White Flower Translations.]

Of course the alternative answer to all this is that reacting like you've seen god is a perfectly natural reaction to Erwin giving you a motivational speech 😂

Hope this answers your question Anon, I’ve answered loads of other asks about the Ackermans over the years, which you can find in my Ackermans and Ackerbond tags, and I also have an Ackermans Master Post, which includes every canon reference to the Ackerman clan, their power and their relationship to their masters. Actually, now I come to think about it, I'm going to have to update that master post to include the new information from Bad Boy!

[karniss-bg3]

what are your thoughts on why was kar'niss turned into a drider? your theories are so god tier, and i want to cry over my babie a little bit 💔

also how do you look at the possibility of turning him back into a drow?

Greetings!

This is a bit of a loaded question to be sure. I’ve mulled over Kar’niss’ origins for months and unfortunately the clues offered in-game aren’t substantial enough to form a solid through line. At best I can offer speculation based on drow lore alongside what information we do have and go from there. As you can imagine, none of the outcomes are good.

1) The Gambler’s Debt

A bit ago I dug into the meaning of Kar’niss’ name. With the help of an astute Anon, we managed to piece together that his name means “productive gambler”. Drow names can change throughout their life and I believe Kar’niss changed his name, either by choice or by force, after his transformation. It makes me curious what his birth name was but that’s another drop into the unknown bucket.

In this theory I believe Kar’niss wagered something valuable and lost it, or he bet on the wrong person to trust and was subsequently backstabbed. Drow societies are notorious for underhanded behavior as it’s a necessary evil in order to survive the harsh environments. If it was an item he lost it would’ve had to be something of high value and/or it belonged to someone notable in drow society. We know Minthara is part of house Baenre, the most notable clan in Menzoberranzan. She is also familiar with Kar’niss to some degree which leads me to believe they have history, especially as she seems sympathetic to his condition. Perhaps he took something from a member of house Baenre or was even a servant/slave to one of its members. I highly doubt he was related to anyone in the Baenre clan as I’d like to believe Minthara would’ve mentioned that at some stage.

Regardless of the chosen method, Kar’niss did the equivalent of “fuck around and find out” and was ultimately caught. As punishment he was turned into a drider and exiled to the outskirts of drow society.

2) Loyalty is Skin Deep

The next running theory is that Kar’niss is a Szarkai, otherwise known as an albino drow. If that is true then that would’ve gained him extra attention he likely didn’t want. Either by women coveting his unusual appearance or men who saw him as competition. The more likely outcome is that he would’ve been tasked in infiltrating the surface as he could pass for an elf without much trouble. He acted as a spy for his given house, Mistress or organization and was tasked to filter information back.

Perhaps time on the surface altered his perception. He was likely treated better by his peers and even accepted to some degree, even if that acceptance was based on deception. Maybe he fell in love with a surface dweller or simply became close with those he called friends. He could’ve either decided to abandon his post and opted to live with those on the surface, or his true identity could’ve been discovered by those he came to care for and he was ousted.

Following the tree of outcomes, these are the possible branches:

-His secret is discovered by his surface friends who turn their back on him for the deception. Kar’niss is either exiled or nearly killed in the process of escaping. For his failure in the mission he is turned into a drider.

-He is found out by his surface friends but is instead accepted by them. Other spies learn of Kar’niss’ alliance, reports back to Lolth, and eventually Kar’niss is kidnapped and brought back to the Underdark for his punishment. Instead of killing him they turn him into a drider knowing his new appearance would horrify his former companions and thus isolate him once more. Ashamed by his form, Kar’niss becomes a recluse and never sees his old allies again.

-In an attempt to deny his growing bond with the surface dwellers and in a bid to get in good with Lolth, Kar’niss opts to betray his new friends. He leads them into a trap where they are ambushed by drow scouts and killed. Kar’niss is a witness to the massacre and sees the betrayal in their eyes as the life leaves them. Consumed by guilt, Kar’niss begins to crack at the seams mentally over time. He starts to hear their voices, sees their visage from the corner of his eye, haunted by the terrible crime he committed. Eventually he comes to snap entirely, turning on fellow drow in violent outbursts and accusatory tirades. He may even severely injure or kill another drow which is what leads to him being transformed. This only worsens his fragile mental state and the “ghosts” continue to follow him everywhere he goes. The delusions are amplified once he reaches the shadow lands. To him, the shadows are the phantoms of his fallen former friends, stalking his every waking moment to remind him what he has done. It is why he is so thoroughly terrified of them and lashes out anytime someone foolishly tempts fate.

3) Love Lies Bleeding

This is more of a personal headcanon I began to write sometime ago but never finished. Essentially, Kar’niss is a slave to a cruel and overbearing mistress named Kyrzhal. She abuses, torments and mocks him at every opportunity. At some point she brings home a new male drow pet, Xaros, and parades him around in front of Kar’niss, intentionally seeking to disturb him so he no longer feels safe in his position. Kar’niss despises this man and wants him gone as he sees him as a dire threat.

To his surprise, the new addition is not only helpful but is nice to Kar’niss. He helps treat Kar’niss’ wounds after their mistress beats him, cares for him, shows him affection in a way he’s not accustomed to. Over time Kar’niss begins to trust him and even finds he feels something a little more than he anticipated. After this trust is gained, Xaros convinces Kar’niss to run away with him and escape the Underdark. At first Kar’niss is vehemently against the idea, still loyal to Kyrzhal despite the abuse. It takes time but Xaros eventually convinces Kar’niss to defect, and the two make a plan to flee.

The day comes and they take their shot. They leave the manor when Kyrzhal is gone and make a break for one of the exits out of the Underdark. Before they can reach salvation they both hear a familiar voice call out behind them. It is Kyrzhal with a hunting party of female drow. She knew about the betrayal all along. Xaros retreat from Kar’niss’ side to go to Kyrzhal as it is revealed he was working alongside her the entire time. It was a game for her amusement and both drow men were the pawns. It would be Xaros who’d gain a reward while Kar’niss was to suffer punishment.

Heartbroken and betrayed, Kar’niss is taken away, beaten for two weeks, mutilated and verbally abused. Once Kyrzhal became bored of that she opted to turn him over to Lolth who then warped him into a drider on Kyrzhal’s request.

“Death is an easy out for that one. It is my desire that he live on in the form that suits him the best. I warned him that someday I’d remove his manhood and this is the most inventive way of doing so. I hope he’ll remember this moment the next time he thinks to turn his back on his superiors.”

And he would remember, forever and always. He’ll never betray his Majesty, no matter the cost.

***

Those are just a few backstory ideas and of course all of them are sad as hell. I’ll forever be a sour apple that I can’t recruit the poor bastard and show him some love. But at least I can do so in my head!

As for him turning back into a drow, I’m all for it. I’ve written a fanfic where he does exactly that here. The most viable option we know of is the wish spell, which is rare and hard to come by but would be a cool option thematically. In the end though I’d want Kar’niss to make the choice. If he prefers to remain a drider I’d be happy with that but I’d still love him as much as a drow. One thing I do believe is that, whether drider or drow, his mental state will never fully recover. He’s been through too much and suffered immensely and that has long term effects. Still, with the right amount of care and attention he could have a happy life moving forward.

Thanks for the ask!

[the-owl-tree]

I feel like bluestar’s prophecy is one of the few warrior books that seems to dully acknowledge that the situation the main character is in is primarily a product of their terrible society, probably because they were writing it with the knowledge of Bluestar’s declining mental health in the og books in mind. The other one is Pinestar, who makes objectively correct comments about the fact his society sucks shit and dips. Good

Not sure how intentional it was, considering the book was written around the Po3 era but I think it definitely helps that it's giving us a look into Bluestar and how she became the leader she is. Honestly....the first half of TPB sets up that Clan war and borders help no one, that pride isn't worth the starvation of others. Bluestar values Clans other than her own so she sends cats to retrieve WindClan, she values justice and fairness so she gives Yellowfang a home, she values life so she spares Brokenstar.

I think BP really sets up why she thinks this, how she sees the brutality of war at a young child (and is subsequently forced to just get over it), she makes lasting friendships within her Clan and others, she sees how outsiders are also harmed, and it molds how she thinks! So man, it really hits when she thinks she's won, that she's stopped Thistleclaw's brutality from harming those she loved...and is forced to confront that what he stood for has carried on. There's definitely some issues but I really do enjoy it as a book.

[lightaflametoburnmethrough]

A Study of Love Analysis #5: The Strongest Emotion

“if love was a color, what would it be?”

I kept asking myself variations of this question since ch 68 came out. In fact, maybe I’ve always been asking ever since ch 66.

If love were a shape, what form would it take? When you want to express love without words, how would you do so?

It was chapter 66, the beginning of volume 14, that started filling in those answers. 

1) Love as creation

Prior to vol 14, we entered Clockland… but what we saw wasn’t anything that was native to that world. The Clear Cards that came to life, they are just guests invited into this country. They are not original characters of the story itself because they are magic born from another person (Sakura) who isn’t the author of “Alice in Clockland”.

So who is the author? It’s Kaito, of course.

It can only be him. Momo confirmed it herself when she asked him, as far back as ch 31 (vol 7), “will this story have a happy ending?” and she confirmed it again in ch 60 with the line “The story that you prepared for the two Alices, Sakura and Akiho”.”

“Alice in Clockland” is a story created by Kaito. And therefore, the world within it is created by him, too.

Moreover, it is a reflection of himself. A statement of his feelings for Akiho in the most beautiful, poetic way.

First of all, he made Akiho the most important person in Clockland. Its sovereign, the Red Queen.

Among all the white roses in the garden we see later, Akiho is noticeably the only one addressed with the title of “Red”.

The sole red rose among all the white roses. The only one.

Next, the first thing we see upon “officially” entering Clockland is the Queen’s magnificent castle.

This castle, unlike the Cards, is a product of Clockland. And since it’s a part of Clockland, the world Kaito has given to Akiho, then the castle is also his gift to her. To show how highly he regards her in his eyes.

Following that, it’s the walk through that rose garden, which is described by Alice (Sakura) as “a place that seems to hold a very important feeling to someone.”

Because this rose garden draws from Kaito’s very memories of the place where he used to have conversations with Lilie as a child. Lilie, the first person who ever approached and treated him like a human being instead of a tool to be used by magicians.

But more than that, it was the place where he and Akiho first met. The day that he took her away from her toxic clan and gave her a new life where she could be happy started here. The place where their journey began, where their story began.

And that’s when you realize “Alice in Clockland” is a story about them, about Akiho and Kaito. Not a fictional Alice and definitely not Sakura, who only came into its most recent chapters when Akiho arrived in Japan and they became friends.

The book that has been titled as such is a magical one guarded by Momo. Kaito is Momo’s contractor and therefore, the current and true owner of the White Book. The White Book has been “lent” to Akiho, who has named it “Alice in Clockland” because she wished it so.

The book also records all the events of the owner(s’) life…so it stands to reason that its contents revolve around the time Akiho and Kaito spent with each other, of the memories they share together.

With Alice’s (Sakura’s) entrance into Clockland, the world adapts to include her memories as well since Kaito has assigned the role of heroine to her…but even this addition doesn’t nullify the significance of the sceneries the Red Queen (Akiho) takes Alice through.

The botanical garden where Akiho originally took Kaito for an outing (ch 53) before he wound back time to avoid a confrontation with Sakura and Syaoran. The fact that this garden shows up as another important place, more specifically called a “place of memories” with the three “characters” present there. It means it holds a great significance to Kaito, too.

Just like the rose garden from before.

Because it is a place he shared moments with Akiho, even if she doesn’t recall it because of the rewind.

Remember. After their midnight stroll in ch 48, Akiho told Sakura the very next day (ch 49) that Kaito remembered everything about their time traveling together. 

“Even down to the smallest things that anyone would easily forget, he remembers them. Every single one.”

Because for Kaito, his greatest treasure is the time he was able to spend by Akiho’s side. Nothing means more to him than her. Nothing is of greater value than every second they are together.

So even if Akiho has no recollection of the day they went to the botanical garden, he does and it stays within his heart as something immeasurably precious.

Thus, it manifests in the world that reflects that heart. In Clockland.

Finally, the gondola through the library.

This is a scenery that reflects Akiho more than the other two because she is the one who loves books the most. They were her only friends before Kaito came along, before she made new ones in Japan, so naturally they occupy a very important place in her heart.

It explains why the shelves are so tall and expansive and goes on as far as their eyes could see. This library is much bigger and grander than all the places Alice (Sakura) has been led through before.

Did Kaito create this as well? For Akiho because he knows how much books mean to her? Or was this picture influenced by Akiho herself?

It’s never explicitly confirmed…but when the Red Queen went on to explain that books were “records” of many things and Alice (Sakura) asked what her favorite book was, she replied “the book I love most is Alice in Clockland.”

“Alice in Clockland”...the story Kaito gave to Akiho. The story about their life together, their time together.

Which leads us to…

2) Love as the constant

Even though the two girls have their roles to play upon entering Clockland, and thus the memories of their true selves were subdued, something in them is always inclining them to remember who they are.

But there is a difference between Akiho and Sakura. 

Sakura is closely being monitored by Kaito to make sure that she doesn’t remember who she is as that will cause her to stray off the path he needs “Alice” to take to fulfill this story (aka his plan to save Akiho).

However, for Akiho, there is none of that pressure that Sakura feels when she’s on the edge of recalling something. 

When Alice (Sakura) asks her if she’s the Red Queen, Akiho responds that she doesn’t know…but what she does know, what she does remember is that there is someone very special to her.

Someone so special that she can’t forget them, even in another world where she has assumed another identity.

Akiho doesn’t remember her own name or who she herself  is…but she remembers “Alice in Clockland”. She remembers this special person (特別 な ひと).

The manner in which Akiho lifts her veil aside so effortlessly... there is multiple symbolism at play here.

She isn’t in pain nor does she wince like Sakura does the closer she gets back to her true self. Why is that?

Because even in Clockland, even though she’s been made the Red Queen by Kaito, he absolutely refuses to change what fundamentally makes Akiho who she is.

He is soft on Akiho in the way he isn’t towards anyone else because he doesn’t have a love for anyone else like he does for her.

All the important aspects of Akiho, he chose to leave them relatively untouched by his magic. Akiho’s fondness for books, her memory of “Alice in Clockland”  ...and unknowingly to Kaito, the greatest love she has only for him.

It is like Akiho is brushing aside the dust of his spell on her as she lifts the veil. The veil that obscured her sight isn't the least bit heavy against her hand. It is lifted without resistance, without difficulty.

Because Kaito made it so. He made it so that this world, this Clockland, can never force or hurt Akiho in any way.

Clockland is a world where Akiho is the most important person. This world embraces and protects her from any harm. 

Even when Sakura was told that this world will move as she wished, it won’t go against the creator’s (Kaito’s) law that nothing in it is allowed to defy Akiho. Not his desperation to save her, not even the veil (his magic) covering her face.

Because if she wishes for something, he can’t ever go against her either. He loves her too much to do that.

And that’s how Akiho gradually but surely remembers. How everything becomes more and more clear in her eyes.

Because she never forgot what is important to her in the first place. She’s always had it, she never lost it. She could never lose it because

“I am me because of this person. This person who is like no other in the world. This person who gave me the most precious feeling that I won’t ever forget. This precious feeling is me, the most important part of me.”

“I am Akiho because I had Kaito-san by my side. I am Akiho because he was always there for me. I am Akiho because I love Yuna D. Kaito.”

It’s because Akiho could see this clearly, because she could see her love for Kaito clearly, that she had no trouble seeing Sakura for who she truly is, too.

“I remembered because of my love for him…and so, I remember you, too. You are also someone dear to me, dear to Akiho. You’re not me. You’re not really Alice either. You’re my wonderful friend, Sakura-san.”

That is the extent of Akiho and Kaito’s unbreakable connection to each other, of how deeply they affect one another.

“Alice in Clockland” is the crystallization of Kaito’s love for Akiho. 

And she reciprocates by cherishing this gift he has given her.  She is telling him “I love you, too. This story you’ve written for me is my greatest treasure because YOU gave it to me. It’s the bond we share, the most important part of me that I won’t ever let go.”

A love that won’t waver and stands against all the currents and storms that hit them. Love that is a constant and won’t ever diminish, not even in the face of magic.

Finally,

3) Love as a formidable force

Now that Sakura has regained her memory and Syaoran has arrived on the scene, Kaito faces the final obstacles to the completion of this story. His plan to save Akiho.

However, Kaito is not bothered by the undoing of his disguise nor is he in any way deterred by this interference standing in his way.

He remains determined, perhaps even a deadly sort of calm in spite of his time running out. Even with his life more than halfway depleted because of too many rewinds.

He isn’t afraid of those trying to defy him because he will definitely use everything in his power to defy them back. Defy Syaoran a way to take them out of the book just like he defied the Association and Akiho’s clan attempts to retrieve Akiho as the artifact.

Kaito will not lose to these two precisely because his love is no less than theirs. It is his deep love for Akiho, his strongest desire to save Akiho, that he withstood even his own weaknesses. 

The painful loneliness he’s always felt since he was a child.

The crushing guilt of accidentally dooming Akiho to her fate.

The fear of dying and leaving the one he loves most forever.

All those things are trifles before what’s most important to him.

The salvation of Akiho’s soul. The preservation of her life and her happiness.

True love has no labels. It knows no borders that can’t be overcome. It is not defined by gender, age, race, what a person has or doesn’t have, what a person deserves or doesn’t.

Therefore, it is also incorrect to say this is about good vs evil because it isn’t. There’s not even a good vs evil here because this love being presented is one that stands ABOVE basic concepts such as good and evil.

This isn’t about who’s right or who’s wrong.

This is about fighting to not lose what’s important.

This is about saving the lives of people struggling to survive.

Kaito won’t give in to the bitter end. Even if he were to break into a million pieces, he will see this plan through.

And it’s a given that Syaoran won’t succeed in taking the girls out of Clockland. Not before Sakura does what Kaito needs her to do anyway and that’s to save Akiho.

The cover of a book won’t close before the story is done telling its tale. There won’t be a curtain call before the play is finished.

Because that’s how a story is properly done. It ends with an ending. A happy ending.

And because Kaito is the person who wishes for that happy ending more than anyone, he will get what he wants. He will fight harder than everyone there, down to his very last breath, all for the sake of seeing Akiho live to see the next day.

And Akiho also won’t settle for just that either. She won’t allow anything to take Kaito, her greatest happiness, away from her. 

She may not possess magic like the rest of them do…but they are all standing in her world. Clockland, the world given to her by Kaito. The world that belongs to her is at her command.

Akiho has a love as strong as any of theirs. A love that allowed her to be the first one, between her and Sakura, to break the spell of a magician with the rank of D despite not having any powers herself. An unyielding and unwavering love that even Yuna D. Kaito is no match for.

If Akiho, the Queen of Clockland, the actual main character of “Alice in Clockland” does not wish for a tragedy, then it WILL NOT happen.

Why?

Because love is a miracle. Love is the strongest magic in the world.

[themidnightguardian]

Day 11: Sloppy Bandages--Tobirama (ft. Team 7)

Senju Tobirama & Team 7 | AU: Tobirama time-travels as the result of a sealing experiment and encounters genin Team 7 after the Wave Mission gone wrong | Content Warnings: discussions of injury and pain, brief mentions of blood, waking up from unconsciousness, self experimentation

Whumptober Masterlist

---

The first thing Tobirama thought upon waking was that Touka really was going to kill him this time. Or maybe even Mito. He could already imagine their worried, disappointed faces.

It’s not good for you to be running these tests without backup, Touka had said.

And then Mito’s frowning, Experimental seals in particular are dangerous to do on your own.

But he’d brushed them off. He’d always done the testing on himself, had always done it alone. Back before Konoha, nobody had seemed to notice or mind so much. No one else in the Senju clan had cared much for jutsu creation unless it was to make use of the final product, and few people had wanted to be around Tobirama then anyway. It was easy to hide the injuries, the evidence of his misfires, the residual side-effects of imperfect healing jutsus.

He'd thought that by now he had enough experience to know what was a relatively safe experiment and what wasn’t.

Apparently not.

All he could remember was that he’d been trying to adjust the hiraishin’s range. He’d made a few adjustments to the seal and calculated that—in a worst case scenario—he either wouldn’t travel anywhere at all, or it would just take him to the nearest seal-mark.

Again, apparently not, given that the last thing he remembered was activating the seal and then everything going black. And now he was awake, looking up at the ceiling…of a cave? It was hard to tell. His eyesight had never been great, and now that he was trying to focus on something, he became aware of the pounding in his head, the ache of his entire body.

He also became aware of the muttering.

“He’s awake. I saw him move, ‘ttebayo.”

“Sakura, don’t. Stay back.”

“But I need to change his bandages—”

“He could hurt you. We can’t…with sensei like he is, we can’t afford to—”

“Shut up, teme. Sensei’s fine.”

“Besides, he’s the Nidaime.”

“He just looks like him. The Nidaime’s dead.”

“Not yet, he isn’t.”

There was a small shuffle, a heavy sigh, and then an Uchiha face appeared in Tobirama’s line of sight.

Izuna, he thought immediately, tensing, because the boy was the spitting image of his old enemy. But he was just that—a boy. A child. Maybe as young as ten. Certainly not much older than that, at least. Izuna hadn’t been a child in a long time; this wasn’t him.

Then who is it? Obviously an Uchiha, but Tobirama knew all the active duty Uchiha in the village, even the young ones.

“Sakura is going to look at your bandages,” the Uchiha boy said, and though his expression was bland, there was something wary and on-edge in the set of his mouth. “If you try to attack, I will slit your throat. I don’t give a damn if you were the Nidaime Hokage.”

Nidaime Hokage? His curiosity was piqued, but that was a question for another time. When the child was feeling less threatened. Instead, Tobirama nodded ever so slightly, a motion the Uchiha boy repeated, and then there was pink.

Pink hair. On a shinobi. Huh.

Sakura, presumably, and she was just as young as the boy, maybe even younger. It was hard to tell between the impractical hair and the wide green eyes. She was careful, though, and efficient, unwrapping the bandages patched around his torso. They came away red.

Fuck.

“What’s my current condition?” he asked, trying to keep his voice gentle. These were just children, and they were obviously trying to help, but he needed to know how critical it was.

The Uchiha boy scowled—maybe that was his default expression—but Sakura answered immediately, even though her voice shook, “You appeared in a flash of light just outside the cave about 16 hours ago. Lac-lacerations across your t-torso, but not too deep. Cracked ribs. I don’t-I don’t think there’s any internal bleeding, but I’m not sure. I’m not a tr-trained medic yet.”

Not unlike some of his earliest tests with the hiraishin, then. That probably meant that his adjusted seal wasn’t stabilized properly, which meant he was on the right track. It’s functional, at least, he thought. But if he’d been out 16 hours and surrounded by children he didn’t recognize though they wore the Konoha hitai-ate, too, that was certainly concerning.

“What treatment have you administered?” he asked.

“All wounds have been cleaned. It...it was a lot of blood, so I stitched up your abdominal wounds, covered with a poultice to prevent infection, and wrapped them.”

That was…surprisingly good for a child field-medic of little training. The stitching was probably rough, and he’d undoubtedly scar, but it could have been a lot worse.

“The poultice?”

A third child, blond with blue eyes and strange little whisker marks on his cheeks, scrambled up to his side, holding out a small jar. “Yarrow, chamomile, calendula, and tea-tree oil.”

“You made this?”

The three children glanced at each other, before Sakura tipped her head at the blond and said, “Naruto did.”

What smart, resourceful children. So few nin were able to provide adequate field medicine—it had been one of the Senju clan’s strengths, but only because of Hashirama’s mokuton and Tobirama’s experiments—so it was good to see these children well-prepared. They’d had a good teacher, obviously, which begged the question: where was their teacher now?

They were Konoha shinobi, but they were too young to be out on their own. They had to be a genin team, but if that was the case, then their sensei should have been with them.

“You did a good job. All of you,” he said, and watched as some of the tension eased from their shoulders. “Thank you for keeping me alive.”

He didn’t think that of all things would be the thing to set them off, but the Uchiha boy’s face crumpled, Naruto’s eyes squeezed shut as he ducked his head, and Sakura burst into tears.

(Tobirama wouldn’t get the whole story until later. After he’d seen their sensei laid out on a bedroll beside him, alive but barely, having been stabbed clean through the shoulder so viciously he’d nearly lost an arm. After he’d regained enough chakra to offer some healing, and after he’d had to subdue the injured Hatake man and reassure him a dozen times over that he wasn’t going to hurt the kids.

Then he’d hear about the Wave Mission. The kids’ first mission out of the village. The lying bridge-builder who’d all but led them to certain death. The missing nin—A-rank—who had come out of nowhere, too strong and too fast. The Hatake’s chakra reserves failing him. The kids trying their best but not able to keep their client alive. Escaping to live another day only because their enemy couldn’t be bothered to kill them.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Tobirama would think, angry. Konoha was supposed to make things safer. In the shinobi world, there were no guarantees, of course, but something like this should have never happened.

But that would come later.) Now, however, Tobirama did his best to comfort them. They had taken care of him, after all. He would take care of them in turn.

[thesoulesscollection]

10 and 13, and F!

Thank you for the questions again. I did Honey for this cause she's my own developed Oc at the moment. Hopefully, I'll try to put in more effort into the other Ocs I do have. 

10) What lie do they most frequently remember telling? Does it haunt them?

Answer: Honey is a good liar with an equally perfected poker face and feels little remorse over what she tells people. Whether they're close to her or not, if they get hurt or killed in the end by what she says or does, it means little to her. 

The only lies that does 'haunt' her is the one she often told Terrence, someone she once considered a genuine friend even if now she had some harsh gripes and a horribly toxic relationship with. Only because it didn't exactly go in the way she favored. 

Such a lie is telling Terry how everyone was against him, that she and her products are the only ones there to help, and that he'll be way better off as the clan's leader then as the right hand. She knew better that he would be god awful, but she thought she could puppet him from the shadows in the form of 'helping' out. Unfortunately, it became more difficult than it was worth and she dutifully threw him out to the dogs after shredding his reputation further. 

13) What color do they think they look best in? Do they actually look best in that color?

Answer: Light pastel colors, sometimes in the color of pinks and browns or in that gives out homely undertones are her favorite cause it puts up a good facade for people to believe in. She wants people who she does interact with to take her as a sweet, kind hearted woman, a motherly figure that wouldn't dare hurt a fly except it's quite the opposite for her

Honey takes great effort and pride in how she looks. Her looks do take her far in her career and she knows it, using it to her advantage all the time. 

F) What do you feel when you think of your OC (pride, excitement, frustration, etc)?

Answer: I feel great pride and excitement in making her since I never expected her to get far or that people would enjoy her so much. As well, I do have a slight anxious worry that I make her too 'evil' with no gold qualities which may turn some people off or that I'm being a bit unoriginal with her, y'know. Though again I'm forever fortunate and grateful that you'll seem to take a nice liking for her despite so. 

[thebibliomancer]

I saw a fanon once that urGoh and skekGra planning an opera and a puppet show for when Gelfling showed up happened because they were left alone with each other, a lot of free time, and a bunch of drugs. A simple lore dump became a big production because they kept embellishing it.

I think the same might be true of the whole quest they set up.

All Dark Crystal content is dubiously canonical to all other Dark Crystal content but for fun I’m going to consider Age of Resistance, the Age of Resistance comic, and the River Horse RPG.

First, the Dual Glaive. The show argues, through Brea at the end that the Crystal Shard was the most important part of it. Fire Skype and draining essence are well and good but the essential bit is that Gelfling have the Shard so they can heal the Crystal.

The Fire Skype was very useful for gathering everyone. Although, it’s not the best communication option considering the Skeksis easily broke into the call.

(Since every fire tapped into the call, I wonder if the Firelings in Mithra received the signal in their hair and had no idea what it meant.)

The essence draining is… a mixed message? Since draining was one of the big moral event horizons the Skeksis were doing? And urGoh and skekGra invented it before skekTek ever did? Weird thing for them to add on.

(Maybe the Shard did that on its own, to try to balance things after the Skeksis were taking so much out of the energy cycle of Thra. But the Glaive drained the essence of the chimeric Ascendency in the AoR comic and you can’t say that the Arathim were destabilizing the world in the same way. It just seems like it was designed to steal essence way before anyone else had the idea.)

Anyway, the sword made a good symbol to rally around but it’s not a great loss that it broke since the Shard was the important thing.

Maybe the Dual Glaive was created when urGoh and skekGra worried that Gelfling wouldn’t be sufficiently impressed by the missing piece of the heart of Thra.

Thus, the two of them trek down to the inside of the planet to make a cool magic sword that’s sure to impress anyone.

So, a cool quest to find a cool sword to unite the Gelfling clans and deliver the Shard they need to heal the Crystal and end Skeksis rule and hopefully get the Mystics and Skeksis reunited so urGoh and skekGra can have a forever hug existentially.

But how to get the sword to the Gelfling. Can’t just hand it to them. The Gelfling still think the Skeksis have their best interests at heart. Giving them a magical super weapon and telling them “please overthrow society” isn’t going to have ideal results.

Can’t keep it at the Circle of the Suns. The Castle Skeksis were content to leave skekGra alone even knowing about the Dual Glaive because it was inconvenient to get out to them. But if they had the Glaive with them, maybe they’d make the effort.

But where else is inconvenient for the Skeksis to go? The Caves of Grot! And it happens a good buddy lives down there!

So urGoh and skekGra hide the Dual Glaive in the caves and trust it to urLii to keep an eye on.

Except they also put it behind a booby trap laden obstacle course and you must have at least one friend to get the prize. Also, urLii is a troll who might require bribes to guide anyone to the Glaive.

This part of the quest gets massively simplified after Ordon uses the Dual Glaive in the comic. One half he hides at Stone-in-the-Wood, the other he gives to Maudra Argot to take care of. And she’s much more helpful than urLii as a keeper.

(Apparently this update never got back to urGoh and skekGra since they live in the middle of nowhere. They seem to think the Glaive was still entirely in the cool obstacle course they made in the Caves of Grot)

But okay. Pretty straightforward (after Ordon updates the latter half). Talk to urGoh and skekGra, they point you to the Caves of Grot, you ask around and talk to Maudra Argot, she gives you her half and points you toward the other half at Stone-in-the-Wood.

How do you know to speak to urGoh and skekGra in the first place if they live in the middle of nowhere?

Well, they set up a helpful Lore dump to point Gelfling in the right direction!

If said Gelfling gets suspicious on their own that Skeksis are exploiting the Gelfling, manifests a mysterious symbol, asks the Sifa about it, asks a less jerky Sifa about it, gets a hint to follow a moth, finds a secret chamber under the All-Maudra’s throne (how and when did the comic relief duo set that up?), solves a puzzle by refusing to solve the puzzle on moral grounds after having an epiphany mid-puzzle solving about their own prejudices, and meets Lore! Who will guide them to urGoh and skekGra and even escort them there!

See, I get the sense that urGoh and skekGra started embellishing the quest line too, out of boredom and too much free time, when it took too long for anyone to follow it to them.

And the RPG implies that maybe they worried about how esoteric this all was and created more constructs like Lore and sent them out into the world to point Gelfling the right way in case they never find the secret throne chamber. The RPG book says the two don’t even remember how many Lores they made, because of all the berries, no doubt.

(I like to think that in the post movie era someone is going to stumble on one of those long lost Lore siblings and get incredibly confused by the message)

So it all adds up to an incredibly complicated questline that would made the Redwall founders sit up and take notes.

It’s a good thing urGoh and skekGra got way into puppetry because imagine how much more they could have embellished the quest side of things. Did I mention that you couldn’t get the Dual Glaive in Ordon’s day unless you brought a friend and learned a lesson about not being able to do everything by yourself?

[caspersgraveyard]

okay so i just finished all three seasons of nine realms and... i have some thoughts

(this will have spoilers so continue reading at your own risk)

contrary to most people i didn't hate hidden world. was it my favourite? no. but do i vehemently hate it? also no.

nine realms essentially flies blatantly in the face of the premise of hidden world, which is that until the world became ready, dragons would continue to hide. we even see the Haddocks kind of checking in on Toothless et al at the end.

it would then stand to reason that at least the Haddock clan if not the other core riders (or even Berkians as a whole) would continue monitoring this situation and in 1300 freaking years would have, at some point, decided it might be okay for them to come out of hiding and, you know, actually feel the damn wind again.

at least we have some measure of proof about the Haddocks continuing to check in on the dragons through all the stuff they've discovered with and without the strike class symbol on it.

anyway, that was my problem with the premise.

other Thoughts™️ i had (both good and bad):

i didn't like the character art but i knew that going in thanks to the trailer; i just watched it because httyd

thunder's design puts me off and i also really hate his name

feathers' design is wonderful and needs no changes

i hate eugene with everything in me and i don't care that he's on his way to a semi redemption i will continue to hate him for the rest of time

he's like snotlout but without any of the qualities that made snotlout good/redeemable

a criticism that nine realms shares with rtte et al is that perspective seems to be a matter of convenience

it's a little hard to get a handle on how big/small dragons are when their depiction keeps changing

communicative ability between dragons and humans also seems to consistently be a point of convenience across httyd products

i thought it was kind of cool to see which dragons continued to evolve (like the skrill descendant) and which ones didn't (like grockles or monstrous nightmares)

love the fact that the ickle little terrible terrors seem to be at the peak of their evolution

i also liked seeing new dragons and theorising about possible ancestors and how that one might have come into being

the naming of dragon species in this show felt lazy

not only the actual names, but there was no naming process, no back and forth, no "this is what we're gonna call it", nothing - someone just came up with a name and everyone rolled with it as if everyone already knew that that was what those dragons are called

i quite liked most of the new dragon designs though

how do we still have razorwhip-like dragons if there are no more wingmaidens?? wouldn't they have gone extinct?

(before someone says that they might be real, we just haven't seen them yet - if they saw other humans walking around, they would have definitely at least been hinted at)

i don't understand why these different realms broke out in the first place? we saw gronckles, monstrous nightmares, nadders, and more living together in the wild multiple times but now they seem to have separated?

why were the gronckles eating the quaken eggs?? they're meant to be living in symbiotic harmony

if Toothless and the light fury were the leaders of the hidden world at the end of that movie, how come Thunder is now suddenly displaced? would it not have made sense for their family to have continued leading?

speaking of their family though, if there were no other furies, does that mean they're all incest babies?

and how come there doesn't seem to be a leading tribe anymore? everything down there is just like the wild, and not like we left it

(actually that might make sense; like things returning to the wild after over a millennia)

i did not like the saddles

how come we don't see that much vegetation in any realm?

alex is my absoluteeee favourite

i miss the intense soundtracks

i feel like it might have "cheapened" the memory if they used first flight, but i also think i would have really loved seeing it used again

eugene's dragon, webmaster, is disgusting i'm sorry

buzzsaw really really really annoys me and i can't wait to see him be eaten

i liked the fault ripper arc, esp the heightened link between Tom and Hiccup that that brought out

i hated s1 and 2 Jun but s3!Jun can stay

it's kind of amusing to know that the shield they found is obviously gronckle iron but there's no way these guys would ever be able to discover that

i was reallyyyyy hoping for a lil "thank you for nothing, you useless reptile" when Jun had her first ride atop Thunder

all in all, i know i've spent most of this trashing on the show, but i still liked it on the whole. i probably wouldn't actively recommend it like i do rtte/rob/dob, but i will be watching the new season for sure.

(although if i'm being honest i think i just really really love httyd and dragons in general and so am predisposed to liking anything set in the universe and anything that shows this kind of a human-dragon relationship. sidenote: if anyone has recs for similar stuff please gimme.)

[realjoearts]

A Little Introductory Context to TWODAD

okay so before i post all of the wolf art i should give some context as to what exactly i was doing with all this wolf art and what my intentions were with it all. this is going to be a long post so buckle up folks!

so basically they’re all part of an old project of mine called “The World Of Dawn And Dusk” (abbreviated to simply TWODAD) that i was extremely invested in during my early high school years (2018/2019). the origins of such a project lie in my obsession with warrior cats and wolves as this was about the time i got stuck into roleplaying on roblox and also on instagram (warrior cats specifically i only ever roleplayed wolves on wolves’ life). the original four characters that the story was initially based around were from a specific roleplay i had where i played as the main character, while roleplaying something just clicked in my head and i was like “wow i could make a story out of this”… then i dedicated my several years to the idea. since i created it all of the characters became unrecognisable from their original roleplay counterparts. also during this time i added in factors from outside of my little story realm such as my other interests at the: hamilton, dear evan hansen and undertale (with even more hyper specific references to the unfinished undertale fan project “Undertale The Narrator's Musical” by Echoflower Productions”). i’d go onto do several revisions of TWODAD which retconned some old stuff, had me trying to make the priorly mentioned references not as noticeably inspired and then later a revision which took them from being wolves to a race of elves who lived alongside physical personifications of their souls that came in the form of wolves which do everything alongside their elf and upon death the wolf absorbs the life essence of the elf and the two become one again as the wolf returns to run with the spirits of the past.

the story centred around a prophecy of two children being born who were destined to either save the world or let it be destroyed by an unspoken force. these children are born to the Light clan/pack (originally known as Hikari Pack because of course i had to make it japanese to sound more cool) and were named Dawn Pup and Dusk Pup, who happen to be the namesake of the story, by parents who were unaware their children were part of this prophecy. also as a side note i wrote the prologue to this so many times and it always just felt like the latter half of the Into The Wild prologue where Bluestar and Spottedleaf receive the prophecy that fire alone can save their clan. anyway the children begin to grow up but not before a demon possess Dawn and makes her almost kill her brother while he’s sleeping. this causes Dusk to gain a large scar across his side and onto his stomach and not to long after this attack he mysteriously vanishes into the night leaving Dawn an only child who isn’t actually an only child because she has a currently irrelevant older sister named Willow Lock who also mysteriously vanished into the forest as a child and was never seen again (weird how that happens lol). anyway Dawn is completely unaware of the demon living inside of her but the pack healer, Tulip Fur, is and thus convinces the pack’s leader, Silver Heart, to allow her to train Dawn as a healer for the pack. this request is approved despite the clan already having two healers anyway. Dawn isn’t the only healer in training either as there’s a strange child about the same age as her who’s began training under the other healer, Ripple Dock. as it turns out there’s more to the prophecy than it seems as on the very same night a loner gave birth to another child who plays a very important role in what’s to come and this kid’s name is Mud Pup (originally called Zira and that’s what he appears under in art). he’s only recently joined the pack as he was born as an outsider and was captured in Hikari hunting grounds. they only kept him because he was asking some very hyper specific questions about the camp layout and asking for wolves that had been dead for several decades at that point. turns out he’s been having prophetic like dreams of the clan’s past as he lives through the body of an old Hikari warrior named Colt Foot while also mentioning he’s seen things about the future of the clan also. that’s probably enough to make them let you stick around and it just so happened Ripple Dock has a position open for a prophetic apprentice. despite Tulip Fur and Ripple Dock hating each others guts Dawn and Mud hit it off and become best friends quick. basically skipping the whole events of the first story the pair save many lives during a snow storm and whiteout and they receive their full names (should be noted even with receiving their new names they’re still in training). those names being Dawn Fire and Mud Foot. if you’re wondering where Dusk is he’s in a cave somewhere doing loner stuff.

there is like so much more lore to this than what i’ve explained here and i’ll do other posts (probably not as long as this one) explaining stuff to do with the wolf art as it will most likely be needed. this is only scratching the surface i didn’t even explain their religion or the ancient packs of the land or even get into my favourite character White Eyes.

[momomuses]

Studying with them

various genshin characters x reader

how it feels like to study with them!

characters: ayaka, ayato and childe

ayaka: a productive study session. You had accepted Ayaka's (rather shy) invitation to study at the Kamisato estate. Initially, you were slightly uneasy. Compared to you, Ayaka had outstanding grades. It was almost as if you were undeserving of studying in her presence. Yet, your concerns were unwarranted. Ayaka had a knack for putting people at ease! She would patiently break down any text that you were unfamiliar with. Would chuckle and chide you lightly if you were unable to get into the "studying mood". Seeing her books riddled with annotations and notes made you realise just how much effort she puts into studying, which motivated you! The session would end with a tea break. If you are lucky, you might even get to try Ayaka's sakura mochi!

ayato: a productive study session???? The first thing you noticed about Ayato's room was the amount of books he had. Books were on the shelves, his table, and even on the floor. Yet despite the number of books, the room wasn't disorderly. His futon was neatly made, almost as if it had not been slept on. You silently thank the archons that the study session didn't take place in your own bedroom.

"My apologies, the room may appear a little disorganised", Ayato apologised softly. You shook your head.

The study session was pretty silent, with Ayato swiftly becoming engrossed in his notes. You did the same too, afraid to disturb him. After one or two hours, you finally looked up from your work, satisfied with the essay that you had been working on. You turned to Ayato, Ayato's eyes were closed, his head supported by his palm. He was... sleeping? Despite what you felt was an uncomfortable position, Ayato's expression was a relaxed and peaceful one. Well, juggling clan duties, student council duties and academics must be pretty tiring, you thought.

You silently tiptoed towards his futon and obtained a blanket. Gently, you draped the blanket over Ayato's sleeping form, careful to not disrupt his slumber. The man looked like he had not slept for a few days.

Ayato would later wake up to find a bottle of milk tea and a note on the table. The note read:

Thank you for having me here, see you back in school!

PS: please remember to sleep more!

Ayato smiled, a smile light but genuine.

childe: the study session took place in a cafe in a park. It was going well at first, both of you were revising for the upcoming Math test. Childe had some troubles with the concept, so you had to teach him. Surprisingly, he was pretty attentive as you explained trigonometry to him. Unfortunately, your luck ran out as Childe became more interested window's grand scenery of people walking by the cafe.

"Comradeeeee, let's stop studying pleaseee??" Childe had started to whine. What a child indeed. "Don't you want to complete the revision for this chapter?" He shook his head, pouting. It seems like any further attempts of coaxing him to study would be in vain. With a sigh, you closed the textbook, conceding to Childe's whims. That seemed to bring the light back to Childe's eyes.

Both of you would end up in the playground, playing games of tag with the children there. How did the study session end up like that? Ask Childe!

I wrote this while procrastinating from school... I shouldn't but it's okay! For those who are in school or even those who are working: all the best for your tests and projects! Please take rests when needed and don't stress too much!

- Momo

[roger-that-cap]

wildest dreams

witch!wanda x reincarnated!reader 

summary: wanda had walked around the earth for centuries with no magic and hardly any soul left after losing her soulmate. she thought that her lover would never return and that the only reunion they would have would be in the afterlife, but a run-in with bucky changes everything after he insists that he met the long gone y/n at a fountain in the park. 

yet another au by me... 

word count: around 6.5k?

imma tag one person bc she gets upset when she isn’t tagged- and idk if anyone else would actually be interested?

@teenwonder

also this picture is not mine, and the dividers are by @firefly-graphics !!

without further ado, it’s almost 6 in the morning but i give you this!!

She held you tight, fingers digging into your skin as she trembled above you. The rose bushes were rustling in the wind next to you both, the sweet smell of the flowers contrasting with the moment. You were halfway gone already, eyes far off but trying to swim back to the surface, wanting to look at her one last time before the inevitable happened. 

  “S…” you tried to say, but she hushed you immediately, tears falling down on your face and mixing with your own. You shook her head at her as hard as you could, begging for her to let you continue. “Say you’ll remember me,” you ground out, fingers tightening around her hand. 

  “What?” Wanda asked, voice already thick with grief as she tried to decide whether or not it was better to keep the knife lodged between your ribs inside of you.

“When I come back-” you cut yourself off by coughing up blood, and Wanda didn’t even wince when it splattered on her cheek. “Back for you, promise that you’ll remember me.” 

 “Darling,” Wanda whispered back, her voice cracking as she bent over and rested her head on your stomach for a moment, hiding her sob. She could feel her magic tingling inside of her; under her skin, in her bones, dancing on her fingertips. “I wish I knew- I wish I just knew how-”

  “Please.” You said, a desperate look in your eyes as you halted her words, already knowing what Wanda wanted. But natural magic was nothing to mess with. She sobbed again with her lips pressed together, no sound escaping her. You squeezed her hand tighter as the sun started on its routine descent, basking the two of you in an orange glow that you would have stopped to admire in any other moment in time. But Wanda would grow to hate that shade of orange with every breath in her. “Please.” It would always remind her of the sound of your begging, voice reaching for something that she couldn’t see. 

Maybe it was the desperation in your voice, or the way that she just knew that you were well within your last moments, because she looked up at you one last time. “Of course I’ll remember you, darling. I couldn’t even dream of forgetting you.” There was a wheezing sound that came from your chest as you cracked a bloody smile, and then you gave one last squeeze before you looked away from her, your soul settling in the afterlife. 

  Wanda Maximoff would never forget it. Suddenly, her previously  irrational fear of losing her magic became real, but that feeling didn’t even come close to the one she got when you grew lifeless in her arms. 

Ever since you knew what a normal person was supposed to be like, you had identified that you, in fact, were not the normal person that you were probably supposed to be. Normal people didn’t daydream to the point where it felt like their bodies weren’t in the present anymore. Normal people didn’t have birthmarks under their ribs that aced and burned. Normal people didn’t feel out of touch with their world, like they weren’t even meant to be in the century they were in. Normal people didn’t feel like they were searching for something tirelessly, something just under their noses. And normal people surely didn’t dream of the same set of hands, same pair of eyes, or the same voice over and over again, a new setting every time, but always the same, faceless person. You either drew the same faceless person or rose bushes, and every sketch book you ever had was full of them. 

At first, you were sure that you were going insane. Every time you closed your eyes, you would see a flash of reddish brown hair, or the same set of eyes, or the same pair of pale hands. You kept seeing this person without ever seeing a face for nights at a time before you went to see a therapist, who just ended up telling you that worrying about it was only going to make it worse, whatever it even was. But eventually, you learned to get used to it. 

Acceptance turned into expectancy. You went to sleep knowing that there was going to be a pair of hands accompanied by the same slender fingers as always before you, sometimes intertwined with your own. You knew that there was going to be a set of eyes on you, watching you intently with no ace to go with them. You knew that you would hear whispers of the same voice, speaking so clearly in a language you didn’t even come close to understanding, and soon, you were craving to see and hear those things. And wanting to see them led to something that you never told your therapist; drawings. 

You drew nearly every day under the sky, trying to find different park benches to see the sun rise and set at different angles for inspiration. You loved the sky, moon and stars alike, but there was something special about sunrises and sunsets. Sunrises and sets both meant new beginnings to you, out with the old and in with the new, and each rise and fall filled you with a strange feeling of nostalgia. You were watching the sunset on a park bench by yourself, a sketchbook sitting on your lap as you held an idle pencil, still thinking about the way you wanted to draw the hands. The birthmark between your ribs started to tingle, letting you know that it was about to burn again. That damn birthmark. You dropped the pencil and scratched at it, trying to beat the annoying feeling at its own game. You cursed the mark, but your eyes didn’t leave the sky, and you noticed your heart swelling in your chest, faint despair in the pits of it, churning around like the middle of the deep sea. 

 You shook your head and put your pencil in your hand again, brain not even having to work hard at all to see the features of the faceless person who was in your every dream. 

Even before she ever met you, Wanda didn’t sleep well. She would toss and turn for at least an hour before she finally found some temporary, flimsy form of peace. Her sleep was always light and she hardly ever had dreams, which was customary for a woman like her at the time- an un-blossomed witch. 

It was hard for her to remember the time where she didn’t have magic, but that time certainly existed. It lasted nearly thirty years. She never aged a day past twenty one, time moving past her without a care in the world. She was stuck right there, no magic except for the little bit in her bones that was keeping her young. And then she met you. 

You were the person that kicked her magic into gear. You were her kindred soul, her other half and the power to her magic. Meeting you had flung her right into the world of magic and spells, things that she only watched others do, but even as she was introduced to an entirely different world, she could remember only really wanting you. Her heart and soul called to you far louder and stronger than spells called to her eager mind. When she met you, it all fell into place. It was an easy love, one that was never going to be disputed or questioned, and loved it. She was prepared to move heaven, earth, and the gods for you, if she had to. Your arrival into her life had caused her to finally blossom. 

But now, she had bloomed and flourished and wilted all the same, and she was just waiting to decompose. 

“Have hope,” was all that Bucky, a warlock who had been tortured enough in his own way, would tell her. “Have hope that something good will come to you, and it will.” 

She never had the heart to tell him that good things hardly came to those who waited. He himself was a product of waiting, and it had served him well. Before he met his other half, he was taken by a rival clan and experimented on with spells that were so far past illegal that they made the casual witch shudder. Eventually, he was broken out and the rival clan was defeated, but he returned to them as an empty shell of a man. But then, Steve came, and then the man was nothing but a ball of light. His magic grew to be strong and so did Steve’s, and together they became known as some of the strongest practitioners of magic in the world. 

 But what did Wanda have to hope for when you were gone? What did she have to wake up for and smile at when she knew that she had buried you hundreds of years ago? It wasn’t even about the magic. She couldn’t care less about the way she felt the energy leave her- and it was dramatic- leaving in a singular burst of light the second you left. She only knew that you were gone, and that was the only thing that mattered, and it seemed to be the only thing that she even really felt. 

Well, she did feel one other thing. Exhaustion. Exhaustion caused by the lack of you by her side. And exhaustion was exactly why she assumed that she was hallucinating when she felt a small tug at her heart, in a part of her brain that had been dormant for years and years. She shook her head and tried to take her thoughts away from you and the nagging feeling in her gut. 

“Oh, no…” you exclaimed, voice tapering out into a whine as you watched the ruined paper sink deeper and deeper into the fountain, a fist clenching at your side in disappointment when you realized how many hours were lost, just like that, and then even tighter when you realized that part of you wasn’t even truly upset about the time spent on the ruined art. You were mostly upset that you lost the only vision of the hands that you had during the daytime. 

You were on your knees, sleeves still all the way down as you reached into the water frantically, causing the paper to move even further away. You weren’t even worried about your sketchbook that had fallen open onto the pavement, more focused on the rapidly deteriorating piece of paper. You hardly even noticed the man who knocked into you talking, trying his hardest to make the situation better. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, is there anything I can do?” 

“I mean,” you breathed out, taking the nearly disintegrated paper from the water and grimacing. When you realized that the man was fumbling to say something from behind you, celery apprehensive over the fact that you were upset, you took a short breath and turned around, giving him a small smile. He had dark brown hair that was cut short and crystal blue eyes that were striking, but you knew that they held thousands of stories by looking just once.  He was holding your sketchbook, and by the way he was gripping it tightly, you could tell that he had flipped through it for a second. “It’s just a drawing. I guess I can make another one.” 

  His eyes widened. You saw his jaw slacken and his neck stretch out, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He blinked three times, and his parted lips trembled for a second before he slammed them shut. You cocked a brow at him, your sadness about losing the drawing being replaced by a weak feeling of uneasiness. “Sir?” 

  “Knew it.” His face was clear from any type of emotion as he watched yours, and when you opened your mouth to ask him if he was okay, a grin spread across his face. “I’m Bucky, what’s your name?” You furrowed your brows at him, asking what the hell had just occurred without saying a single word. “I’m sorry, you just looked really familiar.” 

 Just like that, you smiled. You knew that feeling, you felt like you got deja vu far too often to be normal. You hated when people made you feel strange for it, you always had, so you tried your best to ignore it with him. “You’re fine, don’t worry. I’m Y/N.” You extended your dry hand for him to shake it. He stared at it for a moment, and then with an eagerness that made you smile, he shook your hand. 

“‘I’m Bucky.” 

  For a moment, you could have sworn that you had done more tha just seen him before. Could have sworn that you had shaken his hand, met him before, been at the receiving end of his blinding yet somewhat shy smile. It flashed through you warm and bright, and you cleared your throat before pulling your hand away and realizing you had held it for too long. You cleared it again when you saw something flash in his eyes, a weak smile lifting on your lips.

“It’s not her.” 

Wanda was furious. She was insulted more than anything, really, angry that Bucky could even mistake the light of you for someone else. She knew that you would never grace the earth with your presence again, and she was so used to the fact that she was going to have to die before seeing you again. And for one of her closest friends to try to convince her that you were back? 

 “She would have already found me.” And Wanda believed that with her whole heart. You had asked her so long ago that you remember her, like she could ever forget. Your scent was so flowery that whenever she walked past a growing garden that she smelled you, your smile was so bright that she saw it in the way the rays of sun came down on the earth. She heard your laugh in the chirping of the birds every morning, and she saw your playfulness in the running waters of the stream by the cabin. She could never forget you, because everything was traced back to you. And you would never return without finding her. 

“I don’t think she even knows it yet, but she is looking for you.” Bucky insisted, stepping forward and receiving Wanda’s burning glare while Steve stepped to the side and let it happen. “I bumped into her and she dropped her sketchbook. I saw her drawings- she drew your eyes.” 

  Wanda’s heart skipped a beat. “What?” 

“She dropped the drawing of hands in the water, but I saw she had drawn eyes that looked just like yours, hair the same shade as yours, even drawn the necklace you used to wear. She draws roses, too. I swear to everything above, it’s her.” 

She could feel herself getting warm, the sort of emotions stirring inside of her that had the potential to turn into a singular weapon. The thought of a rose bush made her sick to her stomach. “It’s not her.” 

“You forget that I knew her, too,” Bucky stated, and Wanda’s desolation was replaced by some ancient feeling of possessiveness. “I could never forget her face, and that was it right there. That was her face, without a shadow of a doubt, And her voice-” 

Wanda’s face curled into a snarl. “Stop talking about her.”  

“Hey, Wanda, take a deep breath,” Steve cut in, ever the mediator, but Bucky was hardheaded. If he thought something needed to happen, he was the one to push for it to happen, and he needed her to see. 

 “She looks the same as she did the day she left.” Wanda let out a choked noise. For a second, all she could picture was her lover dying by the blooming rose bushes in the sunset, ruining two of the most beautiful things in life at once. The third (but first) was you, but not even your horrible death could taint Wanda’s memory of you. You would forever be the brightest and most beautiful thing to grace the earth. “I got her number, we’re meeting at a coffee shop a few blocks away.” 

“Leave her alone.” Wanda said through gritted teeth, tears welling up in her eyes. When she saw the brunet’s eyes widen and his mouth drop open, she spoke before he could get a word in. “Just stay away from her, Bucky.” 

All she could think about was your death. The way you choked on your own blood. The way you cried and looked up at her, but still managed to smile. And as she was consumed by rage and memories, the only other thought in her mind was that she was yours and you were here, and that she couldn’t save you then. But she was surely going to preserve your memory from Bucky’s mouth. 

  “I know you feel it coming back. You haven’t felt it in so long, but it’s warm, right? It’s powerful. You always were the strongest, and you’re not dormant any longer. Stop lying to yourself and depriving yourself of love, Wanda. You know Y/N-”

  She saw red. Red as red as the fires that burned in the magma underneath the ground, as red as embers in a fire. “You don’t get to say her name.” She saw so much red, so much hot anger that hardly covered her sadness, that she didn’t even see the way that she had her hand out red coming from her palm as she lifted Bucky right off of the wooden floor of their shared home. “You don’t get to talk about her.” There was a warbling noise in her ears, whispers that sounded like her name, getting louder and louder until she finally realized it was Steve trying to get her attention. 

  “Wanda.” 

Instantly, she dropped her arm and watched Bucky fall to the ground, landing in a crouched position. She watched him catch his breath on the ground. She opened her mouth to apologize, to say that she felt terrible and that she had no idea what happened, what took over her, but she was stopped by the brilliant smile that came onto Bucky’s face. 

  “You used magic.” He said, slowly and steadily, not a hint of hesitance or animosity in his eyes or voice. Instead, he seemed more proud than anything. “You can’t deny this now, Wanda.” 

She was hyperventilating, the pain in her chest intensifying as she tried without any results to get the right amount of air in her lungs. She felt her knees hit the ground before she knew that she did, her hands covering her face as she sobbed into herself. Her heart ached, tugging in so many different directions as her brain fought to rationalize what everything meant. She had used magic,  and that meant that you were back, in one way or another. She was in disbelief. She was in despair. She was in shock. 

“I know you do, I know you do,” It was Steve’s arms around her, and Steve’s voice in her ear, and she realized that she had been saying I miss her, I miss her, over and over again until the words jumbled. “We know you do, Wanda. We miss her too.” 

But he didn’t understand. He hadn’t lost Bucky since he had found him. He hadn’t walked the earth for centuries after losing the only thing that mattered to him as an empty shell of the person he used to be. He would never understand, but that wasn’t his fault. In fact, she prayed that he would never understand. 

“I’m sorry I approached you like that,” Bucky said, crouching down and hugging her just as Steve was, enclosing her into a hugging circle. They were coven, related by magic, and just being around them made her tears subside. “But you know that I would have never said anything like that unless I was one thousand percent sure. I would never do anything to hurt you, Wanda. All I want is for you to be happy. And I know that I found her.” 

And how could he want anything but the best for her? He knew her just as much as Steve did. Just as much as she probably knew herself. He and Steve were the ones who stormed the coven that took you from her by her side, and they were the ones that helped her send them to their graves. They supported her through thick and thin, through revenge and peace, and mostly, they loved you almost as much as she did. Why would Bucky lie? 

Wanda blinked, staring down at her hands in fear and wonder as her heart beat started to get away from her. Steve’s warm hand landed on her shoulder, and she flinched from the sudden touch after such a rush of power. 

“I think you should go with him, Wanda.” Her heavy breathing was all that filled the air for a moment. “Just take a look at her from outside so you can leave if he was wrong without anyone knowing, but you should at least try. I think Buck’s right.” 

Wanda’s breaths were still labored. Her hands trembled as she moved hair from her eyes, and her lip quivered before she found the strength to mutter a few words. “Will she- will she remember?” 

“I think she will,” Steve said softly. “But she’s probably just a human. It may take more than just seeing you for her to remember everything.” 

 Her eyes were wet with tears, and her heart was so big with warmth and need that she was scared that it would burst open at the seams. But she was even more terrified to lose the idea of you. Slowly and shakily, she nodded, her head bobbing up and down as she sealed her own fate. “I’ll go.” She saw Steve give her his fatherly and supportive smile, small yet full. “I’ll see her.” 

You didn’t know how you were gently swindled into giving Bucky your number. You knew that it was nothing but friendly, but he was so charming that you felt like you could never not know him. In fact, it felt like you already did know him. He said something about maybe commissioning an artwork of yours, and of course that excited you. You were going to meet him at a coffee shop, in a public place even though you weren’t the slightest bit afraid of him. But something felt different. 

 It started once you got into your car. You were driving to get to the shop when tingles came down your spine, and bumps raised on your arms, like someone was whispering against your skin. You started to feel warmth come and go in waves, brushing against your mind and then retreating again. You shook off all of the strong feelings as you turned your car off, parked in front of the coffee shop while the music from your speakers filled the silence, soft piano music that was perfect for the weather. 

  It was drizzling, the kind of weather that you liked to call a “lover’s drizzle” because of how often it was seen in romantic scenes. Scenes of confession, of reunion, of desperation between two lovers- more often than not, they had the mild rain to stand in. You turned the music down before shutting your car off and then stepping out, closing the door and locking it immediately before walking briskly to the entrance of the coffee shop with your recent drawings in hand. 

 Bucky wasn’t there when you arrived. In fact, hardly anyone was there besides the few employees, who smiled at you when you entered but otherwise fell back into conversation amongst themselves, which was fine with you. There was one beefy blonde man who was sitting with a laptop and a ball cap on. He glanced up for a moment and then took a double take, blinking hard at you with a star struck look on his face, and then he shot his gaze back down and went back to typing.

You sat down at a table for two, the only type of table that was there besides the long, awkward study tables that they had set up in the center of the room. You would much rather take the intimate setting of a two-seater than to sit in the middle of the shop, so you did just that. You flipped through your work, looking at it closely now that you had the time. He had mentioned something about possible portrait work for a friend of his, so you naturally brought most of the drawings that you had done with hands, arms, eyes, hair, nearly everything that was the closest to your heart. You rested your palm on top of them and watched your fingers trace the slender ones that you had drawn in what felt like by memory at the time, like you were just remembering the way an old friend’s hands used to look. You peeled that one back and looked into the eyes, the strangest and prettiest light green color that made your heart pound every time you looked at it. You took a deep breath in.

  “That’s gorgeous.” You jumped in your seat as the chair in front of you pulled out from under the table, and there was the charming brunet that you had met by the fountain, giving you the same welcoming smile that he first granted you. You smiled back without hesitation, your heart warming at the sight. “You sure can draw.” 

  “I try,” you joked, your grin nearly splitting your face. “Do you drink coffee?” 

“Nah,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “But I like tea, though.” You gave him a thoughtful look. 

“Are you into herbal healing?” 

You could have sworn that there was some sort of excitement in his eyes, but you weren’t sure enough by the time he opened his mouth again. “Yes, actually! What, does it look like I’m into it?” 

“No,” you answered, and it was true. Bucky was huge. He had the kind of build that intimidated other guys at the gym, the kind that made athletes jealous. He looked like the typical meathead, but he was sweeter than you could have imagined. But he looked nothing like a man who would be into herbal healing. “Just a guess.” 

“Pretty good guess,” he mused, and you grinned back. Your head was in the clouds of some strange deja vu when he asked you if you wanted something, and the entire exchange of whether or not you were going to pay was on the back burner as you sifted through your thoughts. By the time he came back, you noticed that you must have told him that you liked hot chocolate, and that he must have paid. You scolded him before he sat back down, waving you off. It was silent for a few moments as you looked out of the window, the rain still steadily working through the atmosphere. The cup was comfortingly warm. 

“Can I ask you something?” 

  With any other man, you would have immediately told him no, or at least have your guard up. But there was just something deep down, so buried that it was faint, but it was there, that told you that he was nowhere even close to being a threat. “Yes.”

 He nodded, taking a sip of his tea and then putting his cup down gently before giving you an intense look. “Who’s the girl?”  

You frowned. “What girl?” 

He raised a singular brow. “The one you draw.” 

Your breath hitched in your throat. You blinked twice, and then tilted your head to the side. “I don’t draw just one person,” you said slowly, the lie dragging its way out of your mouth and through your teeth. “They’re different people.” 

“Oh,” he said, but the smirk on his face told you that he knew you were lying to him and to yourself. You sipped your drink and something tugged at you, telling you to look out of the window and into the rain again, just one more time before you spilled your guts about seeing things- and then something caught your eye. A flash of a familiar reddish-brown. You turned your full body to look that way, and once you did, you nearly dropped your cup. 

  There was a woman staring back at you, eyes wide and full of so much emotion that the artist in you wanted to rush to make an unworthy attempt at capturing it. Her lips were parted in pure shock, but you were watching them tremble even from far away. She was getting slightly damp in the rain, but she stood there like it didn’t even matter, just locking eyes with you and sending your heart rate through the roof. When your eyes finally came back to hers after looking at her for what felt like the quickest eternity, you gasped. You knew those eyes. 

  If you weren’t so deep into gazing at the woman stuck behind the glass, you would have noticed the pleased and content look on Bucky’s face, and the look that he gave the big blond sitting with a ball cap on all by himself. You would have noticed the way that the blond man was turning his body towards your table, watching with the same amount of anticipation as Bucky was. You tried to understand why she looked so familiar, why she was scratching the part of your brain that always tried to convince you that you were much older than twenty something- and then it hit you. 

  You had been drawing this woman. And you had been thinking about her ever since you knew how to think. It was just the first time you were ever seeing the full picture. “I-” you muttered, eyes stuck on her and the way she looked like she was about to topple over from emotions. The words got stuck in your own throat as you weakly tried to get your mind to take you back to the conversation. “I- excuse me. I have to- I’ll be back- excuse me.” Your chair made a loud noise as you stood from the table in a haste, pushing the door open and walking towards the woman who was still standing on the sidewalk, dumbstruck. 

Before you even knew you were outside and into the rain, you were standing not even four steps away from the woman, who was now looking at you with an incomprehensible look on her face. You couldn’t even feel the rain on you. All you could feel was her gaze and the warmth that was settling in your stomach and chest, and the same intense familiarity that was hitting you when you looked at Bucky. But it was so much stronger. 

“I-” you frowned, taking a step closer and resisting the urge to reach out and touch her. “Do I know you? Have we met?” You had to have met. You had seen her in your sleep, in your daydreams, in your sketchbook. And still, you never could have imagined how beautiful she was. 

She was silent. 

“I know this is random and that I just bum rushed you, but, did we go to school together or something?” You were embarrassed. You had never begged someone to remember you before, but this woman was different. She hadn’t said a word to you, and you didn’t even know her name, but you were enraptured. You swore you knew her. You swore you saw her eyes glaze over for a second. 

“You really don’t remember, do you?” Her voice struck something familiar in your chest, something warm and comforting. It was so familiar, so far back in your memory that it felt like home. Her accent, her inflection, the way she spoke slowly yet deliberately. It was all there in your mind, but you just couldn’t figure out how you knew it so well. “You don’t remember who I am?” 

 That had you closing your mouth. You tilted your head to the side at what could have been a hostile question, but her tone made it sad. Did you forget a high school friend? “Oh, um, I know you from somewhere, but I can’t really-” 

 “Think.” The desperation in her voice made your knees shake. If she were anyone else, you would have told her to go away, but you couldn’t. You didn’t want her to go away. But you couldn’t quite place her either, even though your own heart was screaming at you to remember. 

  “I’m sorry,” you said, a hurt expression on your face. You braved yourself to leave, taking a deep breath and giving her a weak smile that embarrassed you even further. “This was weird of me. I’ll just-” 

 She was reaching for you. Time started to run slower as her pale arm extended towards you, long fingers that you had committed to memory and to paper a thousand times outstretched. Your mouth dropped open ever so slightly as you stood in place for a second, body still until you subconsciously leaned forward, your nerves buzzing under your skin. 

  For a second, the only thing you could do was look at the point where her skin touched yours. 

  You had seen magic before. You had seen it in movies and at theme parks and when miracles happened, but nothing ever like when her skin touched yours. You swore that the warmth that your body had been feeling kicked in even stronger, surrounding you in comfort. Her hand was wrapped around your arm, gentle yet begging, firm yet wishing all the same for something you couldn’t quite see yet. You looked up and into her eyes, the eyes you had drawn and seen so many times, and then you saw it. 

   You saw it in more than flashes. They were coming in at the speed of light, but somehow you were able to catch every moment and every feeling that came along. You heard her voice as clear as day, ringing with laughter. You saw the two of you attempting to skip stones. You saw her enchanting your stones behind your back to make you think you had actually done it. You saw her mouth brushing over your cheeks, your mouth, your forehead. You could feel her hands on you, holding you, protecting you, cherishing you all the same. You could remember the way that you felt when you saw her standing in traditional witch’s clothing, being inducted into her coven as a blossomed witch. You saw everything and nothing, and you remembered it all. 

Wanda. 

A strangled sound escaped your body, so feral that it scared you, but you didn’t care. You pulled her forward, your head clashing against her chest. You could feel her shaking, like she wanted nothing more than to hold you just as tightly, but she was hesitating. “Wanda,” you called out, hugging her tighter, and then, like something in the universe stretched too far and then snapped right back into place, she was returning the embrace. 

  “I thought I had lost you forever,” she said, her voice hollow yet so full, so expressive. “I lost you, darling.” 

  The memories were all there, like all it took was a touch, but you were still coping with the knowledge. You had been murdered. Murdered by witch hunters, way back when witches were known and feared. That had to have been hundreds of years ago, you knew it. But still, your focus was on Wanda. It always would be on Wanda, forever and always. Just like hers was on you. 

“You didn’t,” you managed to say, your own voice thick with emotion as you buried your face into her neck, finally feeling the texture of the hair that you tried so hard to get right. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere ever again.” 

“I’m sorry,” she said, suddenly sobbing in your arms. You had no idea how you weren’t being interrupted in the crowded streets, but when you took a look back inside of the cafe to see the men who you so clearly remembered as Steve and Bucky, you knew it had something to do with them and their fulfilled smiles. “I wasn’t able to save you. I let you die, and I’m so sorry, darling. I’m so sorry.” 

  Her words brought you back to the present. “Wanda, no. No, no, no.” You wanted to pull away and look at her face, but the second you started to, she held onto you even tighter. You leaned your head back onto her chest. “It wasn’t your fault. There was no way any of us could have known, and no way that you could have saved me. It was beyond us.” 

  “Nothing should have ever been beyond us.” She argued softly. “I’m so sorry.” 

“But it was,” you said. “And now it’s behind us. Don’t apologize, Wanda.” You wiggled around and got free enough to look up at her teary face. “I may not have recognized you, but now that I do, I can’t believe that I ever forgot you.”

   “A new life will do that to you.” 

“Is it really a new life if I remember everything?” You said softly, the rain long gone as you stood with each other, bodies nearly molded together with how close you were. 

  She pulled away to look down at you, her eyes and overall expression tense, and then there was a look that you recognized from a long time ago. It was a look of sweet desire. You closed the cap between the two of you, pressing your lips to hers in a way that proved that you were both two lost souls who had wandered their way back to their other halves. 

“It can be whatever you want it to be, darling.” Her lips brushed your again, soft and tender and eager for more touch. “As long as you let me be in it.” 

[multiversequeen2b]

My Overwatch boys that I think would date Black women

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1. Jesse McCree: Down home southern hospitality right here! He’s such a sweet heart🥰 Since he travels around, I feel like he would love him some chocolate (if you know what I’m say’n😜.) He is one of the chilliest characters in OW, he would be a gentleman and take care of you. Need new curl activator? He’s got you. Need a new bonnet? He’s got you. Anything you need, he’s got you covered. (He also looks like he’s the type to like thicc queens.)

2. Genji Shimada: To me, baby boy seems like the type to secretly listen to rap music, but would have to hide it from the clan. At first Hanzo would be confused, but would be his brother’s keeper👍🏾. Genji would help you braid your hair, perm it, or whatever else you need done. You guys would also have matching bonnets, because why not?😘

3. Hanzo Shimada: After leaving the clan and going on his own, I feel that he’s open minded from all his traveling and doing whatever he’s doing. He will be clueless about some things, but will secretly research stuff while you’re not looking. He would buy silk pillow cases and silk bonnets too, but he won’t tell you it’s from him. You already know. You would have to explain to him your hair routine and what products you use to take care of your hair.

4. Gabriel Reyes (Reaper): My dude looks like he would be cultured! Before he became Reaper, he would listen to 90’s rap like Tupac, Boys II Men, Bel Biv DeVoe and The Temptations. Catch him with his headphones on and singing “Poison” or one of MJ’s old songs, he’ll be vibe’n to the max. I think he would already be familiar with black female hair products, so no need to worry! You will be called If he sees you in the distance, you will hear “Aye Mommy!” followed by a whistle as he approaches.

5. Jack Morrison: Like Hanzo, he’ll be clueless until you teach him and he does some more research himself. He will literally pull a Steve Rogers, and have a book with the stuff you use and need written down in it. Then when he goes to buy it, he’ll check the book to make sure, before he buys it. He’ll buy at least 2 of each product and not regret it.

[kyuuppi]

Personal Duties

Pairing: Xiao x Reader (gn)

Contents: ...fluff ig?

Word Count: 2.8k

The morning had begun uneventfully, giving no hint to how strange of a day it would inevitably become.

You had risen with the sun, as usual, and taken the time to double check the contents of your inventory before leaving for Liyue harbor. On the way you stopped by Wanmin restaurant for a simple skewer, returning Chef Mao’s enthusiastic greetings as you indulged in the quick breakfast. He rattled on about a few new recipes he wanted to try, insisting that you would be the one to sample them before they became an official part of the menu, and his beloved daughter’s latest adventures in Springvale. Chef Mao was always rather talkative but he was kind and one of the first locals you had become friends with when you first arrived in Liyue.

You finish the meal quickly and thank him before continuing your short journey. As you walked through the open streets of the harbor you breathed in the freshness of the sea, salty and foreign but comforting in the way only a land as mysterious as Liyue could feel. Despite having only lived in the city for a few months, you feel at peace here, safely cradled between mountains tall enough to break through the clouds, dotted by qingxin flowers that seemed to sparkle in the evenings after a good rainfall. The first day you arrived in Liyue you were left speechless, awestruck by both the vastness of the natural valleys and mountain ranges as well as the crumbling ancient ruins scattered across the lands, telling of a time you had only read about as a child in your faded copy of Records of Jueyen. The locals immediately recognized you as an outsider but offered nothing but hospitality, providing useful advice or large discounts on some of their finest products. Thoroughly enamored, you had immediately decided you would stay in Liyue for as long as you could. That same night you had rented a modest room at the highly regarded Wangshu Inn, a decision that cascaded into several life-changing events, including the meeting of a certain long-term resident and fabled legend of the inn: adeptus Xiao.

Meeting and then even befriending Xiao could be described as nothing short of a miracle. Meeting him has been unexpected—an accident really—in which you foolishly ventured to the vacant top floor of the inn in the middle of the night and nearly fell to your death trying to lean over the railing for a better view. Xiao had, very reluctantly, saved your life in that moment, gripping your upper arm firmly the second you realized your weight was tipping forwards. When you looked back to meet his gaze he had advised you, quite harshly, not to be so careless before vanishing without another word.

Naturally, your interests were immediately piqued and you sought out more information about the mystery man on the top floor of Wangshu Inn who could conveniently blip in and out of existence.

Most of the locals provided minimal information aside from a few rumors and the story of a masked figure told by the owner of Second Life. Piecing together snippets of information from locals and a few of the tales you remember from books, you were able to conclude that the man who saved you was not a man at all and rather the revered conqueror of demons and vigilant yaksha, Xiao.

The most useful source of information, however, turned out to be Wangshu’s very own boss, Verr Goldet. While the woman was hesitant to reveal anything at first, she eventually opened up at your persistence to the point it almost felt as if she wanted you to make progress with the adeptus more than you did.

“Rumor has it he becomes a little more friendly when he is presented with a fresh helping of almond tofu,” she had suggested not so subtly one evening.

You had happily taken the hint, pestering Smiley Yanxiao to teach you how to make the delicate dish before taking said dish to the top balcony as an offering of thanks to Xiao.

Expectedly, Xiao did not appear at all that night but you were nothing if not persistent. You returned with a fresh plate of almond tofu every night that week until on the seventh day, as you were nearly dozing off while leaning on the rail, Xiao finally revealed himself to you, if only to ask if you were trying to make a repeat of your near death experience from last time. He claimed he wouldn’t save you a second time but the way his eyes sparkled when he finally received your plate of almond tofu made you think he was bluffing.

After that night, your relationship with the adeptus rapidly developed. You found yourself on the top floor of Wangshu Inn every night, Xiao obediently appearing a safe distance beside you even if he liked to pretend you didn’t exist or that your presence annoyed him. The fact he still showed up and, as evident by the occasional question he would ask in the midst of your chattering, actually listened , was enough for you. He did not share much about himself but you understood well enough that his life was not without significant hardship or suffering and, if nothing else, you liked to think you could at least offer a small distraction to the hardworking yaksha.

“Ad astra abyssosque! Welcome to the Adventurers' Guild,” Katheryne greets as you finally arrive at her desk.

You return your own greeting before discussing the details of the day’s commissions.

It would be an uneventful day, you quickly gather. Two of your assignments are merely deliveries: a mother near Dongsheng’s general good shop needs her daughter to take her medicine but the little girl refuses unless there is a fresh plate of almond tofu to eat it with and a letter addressed to Granny Chu in Gulli Plains that need to be delivered. The third assignment is a complaint about a particularly rowdy group of hilichurls close to the main road. Lastly, a small clan of treasure hoarders seem to have stolen one of Jifang’s most prized artifacts.

Reasoning to yourself that a day of boring commissions is likely better than a day of dangerous commissions, you set off.

You finish the first two assignments rather quickly, as expected. The little girl had excitedly complimented your almond tofu several times, swearing it to be the best thing she had ever eaten while her mother profusely thanked you for getting the girl to finally take her medicine. Likewise, Granny Chu had immediately brightened the second you handed her the small envelope, explaining it was a message from her grandchildren who seemed too busy with their own families to stay in contact very often. The elderly woman insisted you took a couple of ripe sunsettia as thanks for delivering the letter before you were once more setting off, prepared to face the rambunctious cluster of Hilichurls.

It is then that your uneventful day takes a turn.

While hiking through the marsh on the way, you quickly notice how disturbed the land looks, barren of the common lizards, loaches, and small mammals that usually occupy the lands, scurrying away the moment you step too close. Instead, patches of bare land break up the once lush and seamless grass, jagged cuts along the blades as if a strong force had ripped through them. Evidence of chipped cobblestone and patchy grass seem to only get worse as you approach your destination and a small part of you feels anxious, wondering if the camp of hilichurls will be much more powerful than you had expected. Subconsciously, you grip your claymore a little tighter as you walk, glancing around cautiously as if you could be ambushed at any moment.

Instead of a rowdy group of fearsome monsters, you are met with empty space when you reach the location Katheryne had described. The air is eerily quiet aside from the soft chirps of distant cricadas, not a hilichurl in sight as you slowly survey the area. You almost would have assumed you had misheard and went to the wrong place if it were not for the obvious evidence of a large group of hilichurls once residing there. Shoddily built wooden huts and tilted towers surround the open space, the structures seeming barely able to support themselves as half of them had been caved in or ripped apart as if by a tornado. Strewn across the ground near the unlit campfires lie various meats, vegetables, and wheat. A few water pots and cauldrons lay tipped over but still partially filled with water as if they were being used mere hours ago.

Someone had clearly exterminated this hilichurl camp before your arrival, not even bothering to rummage through the chests, undoubtedly filled with valuable treasures, sitting in the far corner of the camp.

You are far from the only adventurer in Liyue. There are others, many of which are stronger and more skilled than you, who are assigned similar and even more dangerous commissions, taking down hilichurl camps like this on the daily. However, Katheryne always keeps meticulous records of who the guild assigns to do what and, in your five years as an adventurer, mistakes made by the adventure guild are almost unheard of. Surely Katheryne didn’t assign you to a task someone else was already assigned to—but then, who would complete something as tedious as clearing a hilichurl camp without seeking the rewards the adventure guild offers, or even the unguarded chests around the camp?

None of it makes sense to you but the sun is already beginning to set and you still have an assignment to deal with treasure hoarders on the opposite side one the city. Reluctantly, you take advantage of the untouched chests and pick up anything of value you find among the wreckage of the camp, not a single hilichurl body in sight.

The oddity of your last commission is nearly forgotten by the time you reach the treasure hoarders’ hideout, chest slightly heaving and thighs burning from hours of hiking through the uneven terrain. Above you, the sky has already turned a deep lavender, a speckle of stars glittering above the mountain peaks. You lean against a large rock at the entrance of the valley, too tired to even consider the glittering tangerine of cor lapis peeking out between the rocks. It is in that moment, as you are catching your breath, that you catch the murmurs of male voices carried with the wind.

“Look—I think that’s them…!”

“A-are you sure? If we mess this up that m-masked man might come back and…”

You abruptly straighten up, brows furrowing at the words and fearful tone of the voices. Why did they sound so afraid? Was it because of this “masked man?” The only masked man you can think of is...

“Just hurry up and give it to them so we can get the hell out of here!”

You are startled into a fighting stance at the sound of footsteps coming towards you.

Finally, a small group of burly men round the corner of the large rock you were just resting against, all wearing the familiar variations of martial arts or farming clothing and masks synonymous with treasure hoarders in Liyue. To your surprise however, rather than angry or smug as the hoarders usually looked, the men before you all appear disheveled and wide eyed, some even visibly trembling as if they’d seen a ghost. All look at you with wide eyes, as if you personally had struck the fear of the archons within them. The largest man, who you presume to be their leader, steps forward and you take a cautious step back, raising your blade in defense.

“No, wait—we don’t want to fight you,” the man quickly says, causing you to furrow your brows in skepticism.

“H-here, this is all of it, we swear!”

You fumble when the man throws a large bag at you, nearly dropping your sword to catch it. The bag itself is unassuming, a brown and slightly stained burlap sack, but you can already guess the contents based on the weight and clunky shape. Glancing up you find the men all staring at you expectantly, seemingly awaiting your approval as if their life depended on it.

Cautiously, you open the bag, finding a single blue and silver goblet inside along with a few bird’s feathers and a silver cricket lined with jewels—Jifang’s stolen artifacts.

“Y-ya see? It’s all there! We learned our lesson—we promise we’ll never steal again,” one of the men stammers, the group already stepping back as if ready to bolt.

“Wait a second—” you try, stepping forward.

To your shock the men startle like wild animals, recoiling from you as if you’ll attack them at any moment.

“H-here, take these too,” one of the men in the back shouts, throwing down a bronze coin. You immediately recognize it as a treasure hoarder’s insignia—something a hoarder only gives up if they have been defeated in battle. And yet, soon all of the men are throwing their own down as well, letting them land around your feet like an offering before the men all turn heel and abruptly book it, running down hill as if an evil spirit were hot on their tails despite your calls.

Thoroughly baffled by the whole exchange you crouch down to pick up the tokens—that is when you realize the land looks familiar. The same patchiness and jagged cuts plague the grass here as it did the hilichurl camp you had seen earlier. In fact, the pattern felt familiar to something you had seen only a few times before: the aftermath of a particularly powerful anemo used by a particularly powerful masked “man”...

“Xiao!”

Your voice echoes slightly around the wooden hallway as you stumble your way to the top balcony, eager to confront the adeptus. Your chest is heaving as you attempt to catch your breath, having practically ran all the way to Wangshu Inn from Liyue harbor after hastily collecting your commission rewards.

The air is silent for a few moments, the only sound coming from your own harsh breaths before a calm, deep voice startles you from behind.

You whip around to face him.

“You’re so noisy, ” Xiao complains, arms crossed and expression mildly annoyed.

While the greeting would be hardly encouraging under any normal circumstance, you feel you have grown close enough to Xiao to understand his words hold no true malice—or perhaps you’re just really good at ignoring it.

“Xiao,” you repeat much more calmly than before. You eye him cautiously as you speak your next words, trying to gauge his reaction.

“What did you do today?”

His expression gives nothing away, remaining neutral and closed off—unreadable—as he replies monotonously.

“The work of the adepti is not something mortals could ever understand nor need to know.”

You resist the urge to roll your eyes at the typical, very Xiao-like response.

“Well did you happen to decimate any hilichurl camps in the Dihua Marsh? Or mentally scar any treasure hoarders around Jueyen Karst? The hilichurl camp I was supposed to take down was already gone when I got there and the treasure hoarders I talked to were acting really weird—there was also a lot of collateral damage. It almost felt like someone was sabotaging my commissions…”

Xiao’s expression promptly sours, seeming slightly offended by your unspoken accusation.

“I have no interest in the work of an adventurer, ” he spits out, the word itself seeming to leave a bad taste in his mouth, “I am dedicated to my adept duties, nothing more and nothing less.”

Xiao speaks in a way that leaves no room for protest and you finally give up with a small sigh, turning away from him to gaze over the view from the balcony instead. It was true—there would be no reason for Xiao to trouble himself with doing your dumb little daily commissions when he faces much larger, more powerful monsters on the daily. Moreover, why would Xiao target you specifically? As much as you like to think you’re special, you’re really just one of many humans and Xiao does not seem like the type to hold personal vendettas or enjoy watching people suffer. It was foolish to even think he had anything to do with what happened today, you mentally scold yourself.

Despite the summer season, a cool breeze rustles through your hair and clothing, encouraging your shoulders to release a tension you didn’t even realize you had. Your smile at the calmness of the night, oblivious to the watchful eye of the adeptus next to you.

His duty as an adeptus is to defend the people of Liyue but somehow along the way ensuring your protection has become a personal duty he takes very seriously.

[the-gay-prometheus]

*peer pressures you into talking about your old Warrior Cats universe* <3

Ok now that I've gotten not one but two requests to ramble about it I guess that means I legally have to. Beware, this is long af.

K so- it was going to be a whole thing. Like... four series, four extra books (two prequel books, two books for the finale), and probably a bunch of other short stories and spin-offs. Each of the series could be read separately, but each of them would relate to each other, all culminating in the finale where the stories would all intersect. Honestly it would've been best to read them all together, especially 3 and 4 since ~context~, but each was unique enough that it could be its own separate thing.

The first prequel was going to be the story of some prehistoric felines, with the main characters being an American Cheetah and an American Lion, and the first domestic cat who also happened to be kind of a god - her name was Bast, because I'm not creative. The lion character would be the one who would go on to be the first cat in cat hell (used the dark forest as a stand-in, but it was more of its own realm) because he was a conservative strong believer in maintaining felines as The tertiary species and was willing to do anything to achieve that. The cheetah became the first feline to receive nine lives after a failed attempt to cross the Bering Strait Crossing which was melting for the last time. Even though she was the main character of the book, her story was never really meant to be anything more than a sad story in the future Bast had imagined. She's got other significance too, but I won't go into it here lol.

The second was going to be about the backstory of the series (generally) overarching villain, Kindred, and his brother, Progeny - results of an experiment on just how far interspecies breeding could go in felines. The ~ghostly spirit~ of the lion from the first prequel saw this experiment as his chance to get back to his original plan, and essentially he got reincarnated as Kindred. Basically the idea for this would be to give context to who Kindred is and why he thinks the way he does and why he's able to do the things he does, as well as giving a lot of background about Progeny, who becomes important in series 4.

Then onto the series...

Series 1 was the one I put the absolute most thought into and had actually started writing. It was inspired by a place on my old college's campus that seemed like the perfect spot for four clans to reside. As much as I want to explain it, I think I would need a whole separate post for that. To be put most basically - the story is about confronting a lot of unspoken generational trauma. If I go any further than that I'll ramble about it for hours because I still have a lot of Feelings about the story and the characters.

Series 2 was the one I probably had the least concrete ideas for. It would take place somewhere in a mountainous area with a group of either two or three clans, and the main character was the product of a failed experiment in extreme linebreeding conducted by Kindred. He had some deformities and also had a severe memory problem, that would erase months worth of memories at a time. How he acted was entirely dependent on what memories he still had from before each memory lapse. This was probably the absolute most fucked up series, and it was going to have a lot of horror elements to it. There were no real protagonists, just a fucked up cat dealing with really fucked up situations and being manipulated by his fucked up sister who was manipulated by their fucked up parents who were manipulated by their fucked up mother and even more fucked up Kindred.

Series 3 might have been my favorite because it contained my favorite OC and also was like... super interesting. It follows the story of an ex-show cat who literally changed the course of history just by making one tiny decision that would have otherwise seemed inconsequential. In the future Starclan was given to follow, she would have no effect on the clans because she would stay a show cat and live her life as basically a celebrity in the show cat world. Instead, during a house fire that she was supposed to escape safely from, she leaves just a few seconds too late, singes off the fur from the tip of her tail, and the fur grows back ticked with white which makes her ineligible for showing. She ends up running away after being sent to live as a barn cat temporarily while her owners/breeders tried to find somewhere new to live, and this is where Starclan takes notice. In their future, Kindred was supposed to be the end of the clans, the end of cats in general to some degree. This cat, though, ends up killing him before that could happen. The unkillable cat was killed by a cat born in the most lavish of lifestyles. The series is basically how she comes to live in the clans in the area she's in (clans which were very different from typical warriors clans - i can explain in a different post lol), goes through hell in the name of proving herself, and dies a fuckin legend. Think Firestar, except way more badass and also way better because she was never meant to be a legend in the first place - she worked damn hard for what she got.

Series 4 would have followed the story of Progeny's daughter, Genesis, who was never meant to be born in the first place and who ends up being a half reincarnation of the cheetah from the first prequel story. After her father dies, she and her mother go wandering. Her mother dies of illness, and as a young kit she winds up being discovered by followers of the now-dead Kindred. She gets taken in by Kindred's cult, where she meets her cousin, Dynasty. The two are raised as sisters, and while Dynasty was originally supposed to be the one to take over as lead of the cult, Genesis ends up being favored. The two kind of have a massive falling out after Genesis realizes the cult is Not Good, and Genesis runs away where she changes her name and joins a clan and basically tries to ignore that she has any part to play in this whole storyline at all. Meanwhile Dynasty is discovering that she herself is part of a whole new prophecy.

The finale would have just been the closure of the storyline, with the cult continuing to gather members and clans from all over joining together to fight back along with a few other helpers, the third incarnation of the lion from the prequel, human beings are involved - it was A Lot. But it was also fun to think of because all of the main characters from the other series are involved in some way or another.