#my purposes do not have to be your purposes nor do they require your approval

[scrapsovereign]

Surprise!! I turned it in to a prequel! Because what’s more fun than suffering?

I Think He Knows - Chapter 2

Link to Story on AO3:

Summary: You're able to enjoy a little bit more time with Astarion before the long arm of the law calls him back to the courthouse.

(POV female Reader x Magistrate Astarion/almost 4k words of very NSFW, straight up filth underneath the cut)

Soft, worn linens greet your backside as you are cast unceremoniously onto the bed by Astarion.

He watches you with hungry approval when he drops you, delighting in how every delicious, soft part of you jiggles.

“In order to punish you properly, I’ll require a confession of the events that led up to the moment I arrived home,” he intones dispassionately above you. You find your legs squeezing together again with his words that flow like spun silk…nevermind the fact that he was just between them.

“Once I have determined the true nature of your transgressions, we can administer your punishment- which should be equal to the crime, of course. When that has been squared away, we can negotiate your release. But, I must warn you, darling…” the cool indifference of his voice has an edge that you recognize and it makes your center clench in anticipation.

You’re not the only one who's still aroused. You catch a brief glimpse of how his hard cock twitches as he speaks, aching to be buried inside you again.

“...I won’t go easy on you,” the low growl that is matched by an equally villainous look makes you whimper and your over-eager sex spasm.

Nor do you want him to. Hells, if this is what coming home early and getting caught masturbating in your husband’s shirt gets you, you make a mental note to misbehave more often.

Leaning over to cage you between his arms, he looks over the pretty flush of your cheeks, swollen and soft lips begging to be kissed, firm buds of your pert nipples he wants to snatch between his teeth and lavish with his tongue. He is momentarily lost, seeing himself reflected in pupils blown out so wide they hide the band of gorgeous irises he’d composed a dozen improvised sonnets to over the years.

You are lost as well, so enraptured by his reverence of you that when he dives to claim your lips it startles you a bit.

It’s not one of the sweet, romantic kisses you’ve received from him- the kind that make you melt and sigh against him in bliss.

No, the urgent way he explores your mouth is that of a man starved for you- the only way to temporarily sate his bottomless appetite is allowing him to feast upon your body and consume you in entirety.

And gods above, you’ll let him.

Oh, he loves how much you eagerly fight back against him and match his pace, letting you know with an erotic groan.

It would have continued too, if your damned hands hadn’t reached down to stroke the twitching, velvety hardness of his length. Your fingers have just begun to trace up the bottom of his shaft when he huffs a curse into your open mouth. You yelp in surprise when he pulls away and pushes you back down to the bed.

The spell broken, he rises, sitting back on his knees above you to look down upon you with villainous intent.

“My naughty little love,” he rumbles above you with a disapproving click of his tongue. “I fear if you cannot keep your hands to yourself, then I will have to physically restrain you. Are we clear?”

“Yes,” you state with an affirming nod, a devilish twinkle in your eyes.

You’re lying.

You decided as soon as he brought up the idea of restraining you that you want this, and you’re going to cause problems on purpose.

“Good. Now, my sweet. Walk me through what happened this morning. And please, spare no detail,” he drawls, eyes fixated on the point in between your legs that is once again, completely soaked.

“We didn’t have that much further to go, and decided to just push through the evening and get in early this morning,”

“I stopped on the way home to grab some things from the market that are in the icebox…but…” You trail off as if you’re forgetting something. You aren’t, you’ve done this before. It’s one of your favorite ways to mess with him. He’ll repeat the word you’re going to say as a follow-up to prompt you to say more.

“But…?” He questions, as predicted.

“Well now that you mention it,” you scoot yourself down so you can take a lecherous handful of his shapely rear with both your greedy open palms. Your hands are caught with his firm grip and you make contact with the sheets again with a soft ‘oof’.

He’s pinning your arms over your head with his own, his gorgeous body stretched out over yours. Cool, damp silver curls brush against your forehead, a sharp contrast to the hot, pink intrusion of his erection that has landed in between your legs against your moist slit.

“I’m going to get the rope out of the bedside table. I want you to stay here, just like this, my darling,” he murmurs, making the barest of contact with your full lips.

“And I don’t want you to move,” he gasps, undulating so that his length moves up against your damp core, dragging the head of his cock against your swollen clit.

“A single…” he repeats the motion, and you trust your hips up to meet him, huffing out a curse at how good he feels to rut against.

“…muscle.”

He’s released you, and you whine at the loss of the incredible sensation of his teasing. You slump against the bed as he searches for the fine silk cord, listening to him rummage through drawers he insisted on re-organizing a month ago.

“When I said don’t move a muscle, I meant every word, love.”

Oh. So that’s how he wants to do this today.

Must’ve been a really long week.

You arch your back, lifting your hips slightly, holding the pose for him while he continues to shuffle around your things. He does locate and set down a familiar glass bottle, your eyebrows lifting at the noise. Your heart races and the spot between your legs absolutely throbs at the idea of activities that would require the grease bottle.

“Ah ha! Here we are,” he exclaims as you hear him shut the four wooden drawers he has opened.

“Was it in the bottom drawer on the far side?” You ask sweetly, staring up at the ceiling with a grin. He hums, decidedly ignoring you as he ties your hands gently together with the silken ropes. You feel him slip his fingers through and pinch the tip of the finger to check for circulation just like you taught him, shimmying the release end of the quick release knot he’s tied into your hands.

He circles the bed again and you begin to set your hips down when he clears his throat, looking down at you with tranquil disapproval. You raise your hips up again, feeling your muscles begin to shake with the strain as you hold yourself up for him.

“Well? You arrived home? Continue,” he orders, tracing his manicured nails up the outside of your trembling thighs.

“I admit, I left my pack, my dirty boots, and my dirty armor all in the foyer. I was going to come back and deal with it before you got home, I just ended up getting …distracted,” you gasp out. You whimper as the traces of his nails migrate to your inner thighs, quivering as if you had just been tossed in an ice-crusted lake in the dead of winter.

“Distracted how, love?”

“I came upstairs, took a nap, and had the wildest, horniest dream about you. I was going to clean up and get in the bath, and then I noticed your shirt. I put it on. Gods, Astarion, it smelled just like you were standing right next to me…I don’t know what came over me, it drove me mad. I wanted you so, so badly right then,” you whimper as he increases the pressure of the drag of his nails up the tops of your legs, pausing around the crest of your hips.

“Hmm,” he splays his hands out on your pelvis, feeling you vibrate as you hold position for him. His neutral expression gives nothing away but his eyes are on your center again, watching a small rivulet of clear slick drip down and pool on the sheets below.

“You have to understand…I missed you so much while I was away, and we shared a room so it’s not like l could touch myself for any relief, and that damned message you sent me a few days ago still had me worked up,” you thrust your hips upwards and gasp your words out when he moves his hands down, resting both thumbs on the side of your clit.

“You weren’t alone for that?” He gasps in feigned shock, the bastard. If only he could have seen you murmuring equally obscene things back to him under your breath while you frantically searched for a hidden corner, a private booth, an empty cellar…

He moves his hands out of the way of your attempts to move the pads of his fingers to your sensitive flesh.

“My beautiful wife, surrounded by handsome, swarthy adventurers, the subject of unspeakably deviant sending spells from her husband. You poor dear! No wonder you’re in such a state,” He pouts, running his hands up towards your breasts.

You stop your movements when you process what he’s said. One, gross, they’re your coworkers. Two, just…why? Sleeping with one of them would be like spoiling your meal with street meat from a market vendor stall when you have Faerun’s finest steak dinner waiting for you at home.

“Astarion, I would never dream of taking anyone else to my bed, no matter how aroused I am from your teasing and torturing while I’m away. It just makes me crave you more, hence how you found me- three fingers deep,” you state matter-of-factly to him, your muscles steadying their trembling.

“Relax.”

Your sweaty body drops to lay boneless against the bed at his command, luxuriating in the softness beneath your cramping muscles.

“Three fingers deep, she says! I was going to have you provide a demonstration for me of your…activities that lead to the conclusion you had almost arrived at but seeing as how you can’t be trusted...”

“You have me rather intrigued about this dream of yours. It wasn’t one of… those, was it?” He quirks up an eyebrow as he climbs on to the bed, lounging on an elbow next to you.

Your own eyebrows knit together and you feel something in the pit of your stomach hit the bottom as you question yourself. Shit, it did kinda have that feeling to it, now that you think of it.

These dreams of yours were both a blessing and a curse. They had initially drawn you to the path of a healer as a child. You would scandalize your upper class peers by how they would accurately and inconveniently predict pregnancies, tell you which adventurer wouldn’t make it back, and had even introduced you to Astarion before you had crossed paths.

You dreamt of your first kiss in the pouring rain months before meeting him.

When you were introduced, you had a full on vision of your wedding, exactly as it happened years later in the moment when he kissed your hand.

You bite your lip and look up at him out of the corner of your vision. The ones you’d had lately were nightmares, and you hadn’t told him about the one you had while you were out this week where he was attacked after leaving work late one night. They’d been getting more frequent, more violent, permeating you with a feeling of dread that sat heavily on your chest.

“It was so crazy I don’t think it could ever be real. Promise you won’t laugh. You were…a vampire.”

“Hah! I mean,” he huffs out a laugh, then slaps his free hand over his mouth to silence himself and gain his composure. “Please, darling, continue.”

“You ass,” You hiss out, wriggling next to him. You could tug on the rope end, free yourself, and smack him on the arm, but you’re enjoying this far too much.

Besides, you still haven’t found out why he brought out the grease.

“We were out in a forest. You came out without your shirt on, said some cheesy lines, and then you kissed me… I got on my knees and pleasured you with my…” Your jaw goes slack and your mouth waters as he starts to stroke himself languidly.

“What? It’s quite salacious, how could you not expect me to touch myself?” The filthy moan that follows his commentary makes you clench and wonder how soaked the sheets have to be underneath you.

“I…I pleasured you with my mouth, and then right before you came you backed me against a tree and I came twice while you licked and fingered me.”

“Mmm, I see. Like this?” In one motion, he fastens his mouth over your clit, sucking, licking, devouring you.

“Oh gods, yes- just like that! You put my legs around your waist and had me there, and I came again, but I still wanted more- ahh!”

Two fingers slip easily in your welcoming, slippery heat. He pumps them inside of you briskly while he hooks his fingers up toward the front of your walls, rubbing the digits against a spongy surface that makes you temporarily see stars. You cry out and arch your lower back against the bed, and begin eagerly bucking your hips up to ride against his hand.

It feels so good, you’re clenching harder around his fingers, you’re so close, just a few more seconds, yes …

He stills his fingers inside you.

“And what did you want, love?” He asks innocently with lips covered in the sheen of your arousal.

“I wanted more, deeper, I wanted you to fill me, I wanted to feel every inch of you. I said some stupid thing to catch you off guard and I pushed you down and landed on top-ahh!” He pushes three fingers into you now, setting a sensually slower pace.

“That can’t be all that happened…'' The sound of his hedonistic goading makes you clench again, this time around his fingers. This man and his voice! He could read you something as dry as a court report and make you climax from that alone- and you suspect he knows it, too.

Astarion bites his lower lip, a wicked glint in his eye as he watches you resume fucking yourself on his hand. The tension that builds inside of you is intense as he massages the spot deeper with more pressure, setting a pace you can intentionally move your hips with.

“Oh, no, it didn’t end there. You rolled me over-! Yes, touch me just like that, that feels so good…and then you lifted my hips up, pressed my legs down, and then you bit me,” you rasp out, immediately groaning in frustration when he stops. Again.

“Did I?” He looks down at you, his face twisted in perverse fascination.

“You did,” you whimper out as he pulls his fingers from you.

He makes a show of licking the viscous fluids for you off his hands like he had spilled a jar of honey upside down over them, groaning in pleasure as he laps up the fluids of arousal. It would be ridiculous for anyone else to see, but you’d be damned if this isn’t the most erotic thing you’ve seen this week. You gasp out as your core clenches at the very sight of him.

“By the Gods, my love- if your blood tastes as good to ‘vampire me’ as your juices do, the magnificent bastard would never be left wanting. But maybe you want that- sharp fangs piercing your neck, feeling your life slip away. You liked it, didn’t you?”

“It hurt a little bit, but the pleasure was unlike anything I could imagine. I came again when you drank from me, you did as well,” you admit, your pretty face flushed in shame. You’d never been what the younger adventurers referred to crudely as a “monsterfucker”, but there was something about your love with that predatory look in his eyes and pointy teeth that awakened something feral in you.

“I’m not surprised I’m such a generous lover, even in your subconscious. However, who ever knew my sweet, blue-blooded, black-sheep healer was such a degenerate?” His negging makes you bark out a laugh.

“You did, darling,” you reply, imitating his signature coquettish expression and flirtatious tone.

“Well. I certainly understand your motivation, now. I think I’ve heard enough to properly sentence you,” he is all business now as he announces this to you, getting to his knees.

“Oh?”

“Mmm hmm. Turn around, get on your knees, and bend over for me, pet.”

He doesn’t have to ask you twice.

You feel his erection press up against your entrance as he leans over you, pressing a single kiss to your earlobe that sends a chill down your spine.

“I’m going to spank you. One for leaving a mess downstairs, one for napping while you’re filthy in our clean sheets, and then three more for thinking you could pretend to lie to me. I want you to count down and keep track. Start… now. ”

He sits up and you feel the sharp smack of his palm against your backside.

“One…”

A second strike, this one harder than the first, hits the same exact spot. The vibration from your buttocks jiggling makes you bite your lip, you can feel it travel straight to your aching center.

“Two…ahh!”

Your other cheek is assaulted now, and you flinch, your hips jutting back to meet his twitching, painfully hard cock.

“Three, ohhhh yes, Astarion,” you moan wantonly, trying to gain purchase on the head that presses to your folds with your hips.

Two strikes land on that same cheek.

“Four! Five!”

The sting is soothed by the reassuring warmth of the hands that linger on your backside.

You swear you can feel a trail of your slippery arousal drip down the inside of your thigh.

“That’s my good girl. You took your punishment so well. Would you like your release?” You catch a slight tremble in the cant of his words, practiced hands shaking ever-so-slightly under the strain of his ravenous desire for you.

“Please, oh Gods yes, please,” you feel the tip of him tease your folds, the head of his shaft tapping the exposed, slick pearl of your clit as he throbs up against you.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this worked up, my bloodthirsty counterpart must have excited you terribly,” his husky, breathy observation betrays him now. You know that tone of voice. It’s obvious he wants to be inside you, to feel you fall apart around him, to fill you again with his salty essence.

“Astarion, please, I need you inside me, please fuck me, let me cum on your cock-“ your desperate, almost incoherent babbling is interrupted by another loud crack. You moan loudly, unable to hold back any pretense that you feel anything short of utter bliss. It should sting, and you know from the pressure that it’ll leave a mark.

“Six?”

You crane your head to look back at him inquisitively. Not that you don’t mind extra punishment, but isn’t this more than he intended?

Not by the look in his eyes.

He’s never “seen you that worked up”? Can he see himself in the mirror right now?

You barely recognize the man behind you, eyes burning bright with dark desire, almost shimmering with sweat in the mid-day rays of sun that stream in through curtained windows in your bedroom.

All at once, he sheathes himself inside you, pulls your body up with his hand at your throat, and yanks your head aside to murmur sinful words at your pulse.

“Yes, darling. Six. For the mess you’re about to make cumming on the sheets.”

Suddenly, he is enthusiastically thrusting into you with abandon, battering that spot within you where his fingers were during the re-telling of your dream. You feel him stutter briefly underneath you as you shatter around him only after a few snaps of his hips, your vision going white, your ears ringing, your body going slack in an arch against his chest.

He doesn’t stop. He reaches down to your clit, strumming you with his fingers like a lute, your body singing to him in response with your cries and sobs of pleasure. You feel yourself tighten, the tension building again as he rasps a single command directed at your ears.

“Again.”

You feel his teeth sink into your neck as he bites you.

Your brain short-circuits, your knees give out, and you feel a stream of fluid expel itself forcefully from you as you climax again.

The bite is short lived- he shouts your name with his own release, the sound muffled as he is sucking a bruise on your neck. His thrusts slow down, guiding you both through the aftershocks of your orgasms. You both collapse on to the bed and turn to face each other, meeting halfway in a breathy, passionate kiss.

“I love you so much- what is it?” You make a face of surprise from his snarl at the end of his post-coital love confession- must be a sending spell from Dorian, his page. You see panic in his suddenly clear eyes as they focus on the gently set aside black silk robes.

“We adjourned for the weekend already, sentencing is at the beginning of the next tenday,” He sits up, clearly irritated that whatever boundary he had set is being ignored. You watch him groan and pinch the bridge of his nose.

He’s definitely talking to Dorian.

“Alright then. I had… plans this afternoon, but give me an hour and I’ll be back at the office.”

Astarion falls back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, hands clutching at the silver curls of his hair.

“Hells. I feel terrible, darling. I really wanted to lavish all of my attention on you this afternoon and well into the evening, but as you can see-” you lean over and shush his ranting with a single kiss to his temple.

“You have plenty of time to make it up to me, my love. Plenty of time,” you reassure him- and yourself. You don’t quite believe your words to him.

A deep, gnawing clench in your gut tells you something is wrong.

Terribly wrong.

Against your better judgment, you choose to ignore it.

You prop a pillow underneath you as you adoringly watch him rush through readying himself to return to the courthouse, standing up to fix his cravat and a stray curl that has flopped in his face. He grasps your jaw gently, kissing you with the same intensity that he had earlier when he arrived home.

“I shall not keep you waiting too much longer, my love. I promise.”

He disappears down the hallway, his silk robes floating behind him.

You shuffle through your wardrobe, finding a purple silk robe to wrap around yourself from Kara-Tur that you had purchased from a vendor in Elturel a few years ago.

Making your way downstairs, you unpack your gear, setting your things in their proper place until you can clean them.

Stretching upwards, your feet take you to the kitchen, your arms pulling sugar, flour, spices, leavening powder, butter, and eggs all on to the counter.

“Ignis,” You shoot a firebolt at the wood fire oven that begins to crackle and pop, and you begin work on Dorian’s favorite cookie recipe.

An evil sounding laugh floats out from you and fills the kitchen as you whisk the butter and sugar together.

The sending spell requires a verbal component, and one can’t cast spells to summon your husband back on the weekend at a moment’s notice when their mouth is full of sweets, can they?

[prof-peach]

Hi,

I'm making a dnd campaign with a pokemon module of 5e and wanted to use a bit edited version of Dotaku Island, Prof. Peach and the crew cause I like your headcannons and work nice with my idea of the inner workings of the Pokemon world.

Is it okay to use them?

It's a campaign with friends and we're not making any profit from it, but still wanted to ask cause now more than ever artist consent is important (even when nothing about this is goong online so normally people woukdn't ask, but I also wanted to say I've been a huge fan of your work for a long time so two birds with one stone ig).

Either way, thanks for showing your work to us here on tumblr and hope this ask isn't too weird :)

Haha sure go for it, I’m chill with non-profit use, and if you ever do post junk let me know so I can snoop.

Fun notes for anyone who may be inclined to do this: THESE DO NOT NEED TO BE USED NOR FOLLOWED, PICK AND CHOOSE IF YOU PREFER.

North is off limits, no exceptions. Being caught there will get you removed from the island on the first ship back to your original region. You will struggle to return here if found in the north. Patrols line the fences to make sure no one goes in, night and day.

Players will take damage if they try to touch peach in any way. Treat her as a high level monk/Druid, who 1000% will throw hands with u and your Pokemon given a good reason. Cold and distant to approach, pawns players off to other staff at any given opportunity. A hermit who will humour you if you can appeal to her better nature, or great desire to fight things. You may lose but it’s the trying that counts.

Wisdom saves (DC28) with Val if you try to touch her. Not only will you gain force damage if you succeed (half damage) or fail (full damage) to lay hands on her, but you’ll see horrifying illusions for a minute relating to loved ones. Frightened condition until a long rest, compelling you not to approach further. I cannot stress this enough. Penalise players for trying to touch her, peach will bluntly warn you once, after that you’re on your own.

Grey regularly hands out handy snacks that may help heal or buff teams. He is warm and open, a good person to approach for hints and tips. Notably found in his labs or out running errands, he’s always kind and gentle, unless that is you threaten his home or his loved ones in a severe way. He is scarier than peach when he’s pushed too hard.

Plenty of staff roam around to offer aid or information, ranging from gardeners, cleaners, shop staff, and specialist keepers who maintain the visitors sections.

A groomers, cafe, food stands, daycare, small fairground with rides and games, a hotel, lighthouse, port, greenhouses and of course multiple lab and practical spaces exist, amongst other interesting buildings.

The resident ranger can offer assistance but she is known to stay quite busy, and so getting her attention may prove difficult if it’s a trivial issue.

Adoption zones are the only approved areas to catch Pokemon, and even then it’s a process that requires a test and paperwork, so everyone involved is able to provide adequate care to the mons in question, and so they know any pre existing conditions.

The islands purpose is recovery, so human needs come in second. The Pokemon will always come first, a fact some visitors may have issue with. The staff will not care and continue to do their job without concern for this.

Year round events make the island busy and people are welcomed to join in with whatever’s going on, be it chilli cooking contests, fairs, pageants, board rental for the sweet ocean waves, or watching a migration pass by. There’s always something to do!

This is all optional, just have fun with it, and I hope your players enjoy! If they ask about it, redirect them to the blog so they can dive on into the content.

[wendynoire]

Hello~ i noticed you were writing stuff for the harry pottah fandom and i was wondering if you could do platonic Fred, George and hermione one shot (im a sucker for platonic affection). Maybe like halfway through the second year umbridge yells at her or smth and they comfort her later on? I love your writing thank you!

I'm a little confused what you mean about "Second Year" with Umbridge being the bad guy, as she came in during Harry's (and thus Hermione's) 5th year (with Fred and George being in 7th year). I'm going to do it as a 5th year story due to asking for Umbridge. Thank you for the request!! (and I'm glad that you like my writing 💙)

Hermione curled up in a small room she had found behind a blank painting, its occupant presumably elsewhere. What it could have been used for she had no idea, though it was certainly good for her purposes right now.

It was certainly not the Room of Requirement, they were using it enough for the DA meetings she couldn't end up there by mistake.

The room was barren, with a window she was able to look out of from her perch on the one table in the room. The sun was still up, and she could hear people enjoying themselves despite the new rules Umbridge was making as though trying to kill all of their spirits.

It made her feel worse, as she pulled her feet closer to herself, out of the light spilling into the tiny room.

A sniff filled the quiet of the room as she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.

She didn't want to be with Ron or Harry right now, even though she knew they were better people than the ones from her primary school, but she was still uncomfortable crying in front of people. And then there was how Harry was struggling to deal with his own things this year, and didn't need her to put her own issues on him. He needed her to be strong and help him deal with Umbridge.

And with Ron, she didn't know how she felt. He was good at comforting her and Harry, surprisingly so, but something about that made her want to hide what he could help her with. She didn't want to become useless to the pair.

Besides, it felt dumb that she was so upset about things that were so petty.

She wasn't even being forced to write lines in her own blood that effectively blamed her for a recent trauma she went through, even if she did think it would be easier if Harry could just keep his mouth closed.

She had stayed behind after Umbridge's 'lesson' today, having a question about the textbook. She didn't get an answer to her question; Umbridge instead taking her as insulting the textbook rather than the genuine question that it was.

Hermione had been yelled at for at least 15 minutes for her disrespect of a Ministry approved textbook that she more than many of her peers should take every word to heart. That as a muggleborn she was lucky to be able to attend Hogwarts, and should spend her time memorising the textbooks rather than questioning her teachers.

Nevermind that Hermione had memorised every one of her textbooks every year by the end of the first term. Nevermind that she wasn't questioning Umbridge's qualifications as a teacher, or even really the author. She simply hadn't understood what was written.

As if to make matters worse, Snape had already spilt her potion all over her, forcing her to go tot he Hospital Wing and arrive to Umbridge's lesson late. And that was after taking point from her and berating her for helping Neville when she actually hadn't.

Hermione laughed bitterly at herself as another tear fell down her face.

Compared to her friends she was weak.

Neither Harry nor Ron would cry when they were yelled at or told off. The two goofed off so often it was like they enjoyed the teachers' disapproval, and while Harry would complain about his punishment, he still didn't hold himself in.

Maybe she was just tired.

She was never popular, and no matter how hard she tried she often found teachers would look at her with disdain.

She had always been a minority, and she was tired of what she got for it. She was black, so she must be loud even though she didn't talk. She was trans, so she must be trying to sneak into women's spaces even though she rarely entered them. She's muggleborn so she must both be bad at magic and more stupid than her peers, despite her having the best grades and spending so much of her time trying to find out more of the world she had entered at 11.

"So it turns out that if we use copper then the colour stays for longer."

Hermione flinched as she heard a familiar voice approaching where she was hiding. Maybe they were going to walk past this room, she hadn't known it existed before today, even looking at the map she hadn't seen it.

Of course, as her luck was going today that didn't happen, the portrait door opening, letting light enter the room from the other side to the window.

The crack of golden candlelight from the hall illuminated from the table to just above her left eye; her brown eye showing the usually merged colours in all their glory.

"That makes sense- Hermione?" George sounded like Ron would when he saw her.

She hadn't had time to dry her eyes.

Hermione tried to do so without it being obvious as she clambered off the table.

"Hey," From the distance Hermione guessed it was Fred this time as her back was to them, though the door closed. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Hermione's voice was a little shaky as she tried to calm herself down. She hoped she could either come up with a lie about why her eyes were red, or that they would have returned to normal by the time she turned around. "I'm fine."

The twins stood there, looking her up and down for a moment as she turned around, looking more serious than she was used to seeing them.

"This is where we make our prank items," She thought that was George, the two of them pulling tools out of who knows where.

"Feel free to stay and tell us what happened." The other, presumably Fred, was setting up their equipment, which Hermione had to admit looked very complicated.

Neither twin looked at Hermione since they started setting up, though she found a chair behind her, getting a nod from one of them. She had lost track of which was which in the small room.

Initially she just sat and watched them; it was some impressive spell and potion work. The would discuss what could improve certain features, or reduce others, but they would do so quietly.

From the way they usually acted it wouldn't be surprising to think the two of them shared a mind, but watching them work together their individual skill sets shone through.

Fred was good at potions, bringing in what they had learnt from the village close to the Burrow and Arthur to change and improve the potions. He would occasionally turn to Hermione, his mouth open as though he wanted to ask her something before he shook his head, turning back to the potion.

George, on the other hand, was focusing on the spell work and how they would promote the items. While they were making them he was going through long checklists Hermione was sure he had made himself. Anything that didn't match up to the list was discarded, and sometimes he would jot down more for the list with the muggle pencil he kept above his ear.

"I got yelled at by Umbridge for asking about the textbook." Hermione finally spoke, looking down at her shoes rather than up at the twins.

The school robes didn't have any rules for the shoes, people running around in trainers, pumps, and almost any style of shoe. Hermione was wearing black shoes with a golden buckle to fasten them. The soles were thick so she could keep up with the growth spurts of Ron and Harry.

"She said I shouldn't insult her, the Ministry, or the author of the book by making it sound like they didn't know what they're talking about." Hermione pointed her foot, rotating her toe against the floor idly.

"Can I ask what the question was?" George asked, his eyes still on the list, though they weren't moving.

"I didn't understand the section on anti-magic. I tried looking in the library, but I couldn't find anything on it." Hermione's voice was quiet, feeling ashamed; she was the one in their little group of 3 who had all of the answers. She had even memorised every detail about Quidditch in first year when Harry had joined.

"Ah," Fred nodded, adding some kind of powder to the cauldron.

"Yeah, there's a reason for all that." George sighed, turning to face into the room, still not looking at Hermione, leaning on the desk. "It's not exactly real. It was an old theory someone came up with, but it's not possible. It's based on the idea that squibs had their magic stolen and muggleborns stole their magic so magic can be turned on and off. It got removed from anything even slightly academic before even Charlie went to Hogwarts, and it was always above Hogwarts level."

"Yeah, it's complete bs. You won't be tested on it in your OWLs, so don't bother giving it too much head space. Umbit-" Fred paused, eyes flicking over to Hermione. "Umbridge probably responded like that because she knows it makes no sense."

".. Thanks." Hermione mumbled, a smile sneaking out before she remembered the second half of the yelling. "She also said that I'm lucky to be here as a muggleborn, and I should just memorise everything I'm told and not question anything."

There was silence as the twins looked at each other.

"Well fuck that." They said in union, George approaching Hermione.

"I'm sure you know as well as everyone else that you are the smartest witch of your age. You earned your place here more than many purebloods ever will, and you know so much about magic and the magical world. Your worth doesn't depend on other members of your family having magic." George had Hermione's hands held gently in his, crouched down and looking up into her face.

"Hermione," Fred joined, removing the cauldron from the heat. "You have better grades than even Percy ever got. I've even overheard Slytherins admitting you're the best in the year." Fred stayed back, not wanting to overwhelm Hermione.

"And besides, being pureblood or halfblood doesn't mean that you automatically know all about, or anything about, the magical world." George added, squeezing her hands."

Hermione nodded, smiling slightly, taking a hand back to brush hair out of her face and wipe her eyes.

"Thanks," Hermione mumbled, coughing and standing up, smiling at the twins. "I should get going."

Hermione slipped through the door, looking better than she was when the twins had entered.

"So... Dragon?"

"Hmm.. And let's also destroy those decrees."

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Have you ever read anything about Anglish? It's basically an Anglo-Saxon version of modern English, with all foreign loan words from Latin, Greek, Norman etc removed.

I read it, and immediately thought of your Lord of the Rings stories. Your characters reflect on language quite a lot, and you strike me as someone who aims to use 'authentic' words, especially with respect to Rohan. For example, you refer to the gathering of the nobles as a witan, because the former is from Old English, so is far more fitting than a Latin-origin word such as council.

Can you imagine, how interesting (and how stressful) it would be to write a whole Rohan-based fic in Anglish instead of English? Purely for academic / historic / language nerd shits and giggles, if nothing else...

I've read a little about Anglish! and I've noodled around on the wikipedia for it a bit. I mean, it's an entertaining thing to play with, outside the fact that no language has ever existed without external influences. It's not a thing (also the xenophobic history of "language purism" is not great, to say the least. I know Jennings, who coined the term, was a humorist but the history of the idea of Anglish is long and has some questionable ideas in its past).

But yeah, for my stories I tried to use words that would best reflect that institutions or things the characters were talking about. I think I was less going for "authentic" words than seeking the words that best fit the item being discussed.

For Witan, sure I could have used "council," but when we say council or king's council that conjures a specific idea in the modern reader's mind. We have specific associations with it and Witans served a purpose outside of what we think of a king's council. It was more than that, in Anglo-Saxon England, both in pre and post-Christian times. Assembly could work, but that implies more of a parliamentary or public-rule than was the case. Witans were also the space where specific legal issues had to be resolved, rather than through other legal channels.

Trying to pin down the exact nature of witans is hard, historically, as we have little extant evidence of the details of their workings. They seemed rather fluid and could be shaped by the king/local ruler to suit the needs of that specific moment. From bearing witness to land grants to collectively determining new laws to judging on legal cases, and even deciding who was to be king (during the Heptarchy), among other things.

Council has a more static, structured association, and a more court-based one rather than a liminal, fluid thing that could happen yes, in Edoras, but also elsehwere in Rohan, as required.

So when Grima is overseeing the Witan has law-speaker, he could be doing any number of activities and the role he would have played would have shifted depending on the needs of that time.

It's all very nebulous while, at the same time, providing structure and a specific sort of court-of-law/notary/witness system (vitally important in a proto-literate world where the spoken word was king).

So yeah, my thought is that given the size of Rohan, there would be more fluid assemblies to deal with legal issues, among other things, and those would be called by the local leaders/the king and the "master of ceremonies" of sorts would be the law-speaker, or whoever was subbing in on that role. These assemblies would be yearly or biannual and would need to be flexible and reactive to fit the needs of the people or the situation. Council nor assembly serve that purpose. Witan does.

--

Anyway, all this to say, it would be hilarious and insanity inducing to try and write a Rohan fic in Anglish. Grima would approve, though, of this exercise simply from a wordplay perpective. (Tolkien, though, would likely think it all bunk. )

Add in the creative spelling of times past and we're good to go. ;)

[aethelredism]

appetite

"I've found my appetite after all." A continuation of the knife scene in 3x05.

rated m

for @aadmelioraa, who loves knives 🔪💜

read it on ao3 if you wish

As Aethelred turns a corner, he nearly collides headfirst with Steapa. 

“God above, man,” he says irritably, “watch where you’re going!”

“Can’t see through walls, can I?” Steapa asks in amiable, unbothered tones before lumbering away.

Aethelred grits his teeth. There are far, far too many West Saxons underfoot. At least in his rooms he can be sure of some peace and quiet.

But as soon as he opens the door to the private apartments, he sees that an evening devoid of West Saxon company is not to be, for his lady wife is sitting at table, twirling a knife in her hand. 

He stops in his tracks. He had expected Aethelflaed to sup with her insufferable brother and father, not with him.

“It was cold, so I lit a fire,” she says pleasantly. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“We have servants to light fires,” he reminds her, barely containing his disgust at this breach in decorum. 

She gives him a small, unfeeling smile, and then points to the seat opposite her with her knife. “Come. Sit.”

Suddenly, he understands. This is not to be a dinner; this is to be an interrogation, one that will not be interrupted by servants tending to the fire or whisking away dishes. 

His wife has been surprising him all over the place. It is almost endearing. 

Almost.

“I do not have an appetite,” he says, refusing to play this game; even so, he cannot simply walk out of this room when he entered with such purpose, so he ambles awkwardly towards the coffer to the side. 

Aethelflaed slams the point of her blade into the table, keeping her eyes trained on him. It unnerves him more than he cares to admit, and despite his better judgment, he turns his back on her when he reaches the coffer, pretending to sift through the rolls of parchment as though looking for something.

“When will you return to Wincelcumb?” he asks in his most conversational tone. 

“Oh, I have no plans to return,” she says sweetly. “I have assigned my guard to Uhtred, and will remain here to go with my husband and the men of Mercia into battle. May I say,” she continues, her voice pitching into that high tone she often takes before she assaults him with accusations, “you did not appear… concerned, nor surprised, lord, at Haesten’s attempt to kill your wife?”

It is only the knowledge that her knife is buried in the table and not gripped in her hand that gives him the boldness to contort his face into an expression of exaggerated terror, gasping like a mummer in a farce, before he drops the act and looks at her with boredom. “Does my reaction now meet with your approval?”

He can clearly see that his reaction does not meet with her approval, and perhaps she is even now thinking of prising her knife out of the table and lodging it firmly in his skull; but, ever the diplomat, his wife forces a smile and says, “It does. Thank you.”

He forces a smile of his own as he comes towards the table, his eyes quickly skimming the place setting opposite Aethelflaed’s. Just as he hoped, there is a spoon on one side of the plate and a knife on the other. “My dear,” he begins, “I assure you that I will not rest until I find the truth of what happened, and those responsible shall pay with their lives.”

Naturally, this is not enough to satisfy his wife. There is little, in his experience, that can. “Haesten, for one, is directly responsible for the attack. Why do you not seek to punish him?”

“Because I’m required here,” he explains as if to a child.

She gives him a cold smile. “My father, too, will seek retribution and justice, I am sure.”

He slides the table knife from its place. “Should he live that long,” he agrees. He gives her a wide smile. “I pray that he does.” He slams his knife into the table beside hers, the dishes clattering as the wood shudders beneath them. Aethelflaed squirms in her seat, her cold disdain slipping away as he leans down to her eye level. “I’ve found my appetite after all,” he says cheerfully.

She regards him from behind a mask made of stone, her eyes giving away nothing as he straightens up; as soon as he makes to turn away, however, he sees a flash of movement from the corner of his eye. He reacts instinctively, pulling up his knife from the table at the same instant that she does, holding his knife to her throat just as she holds hers to his. 

They stare at each other for a long moment, and then he grins despite himself. “Trying to kill me, my dear?”

“The thought had crossed my mind,” she says icily. “As the thought of killing me has, no doubt, crossed yours.”

“Now, why would I want to kill you?” he asks sweetly.

“Perhaps you have been listening to poor counsel.”

He keeps the grin on his face, but something pricks at his conscience. What does she know? “It would be poor counsel indeed that would urge me to kill my beloved wife,” he says smoothly. “You are very dear to me. You lead my men into battle, you light fires as diligently as any servant, you give me exceedingly fair children–” He hisses as she presses her knife against his neck, so close he can feel the sharpness of the blade.

“Perhaps that is why you want to kill me,” she whispers. “I have–what is it you said? Diminished you?”

Aethelred clenches his jaw. His wife has grown overbold. He reaches up and grabs a fistful of her hair, pulling her head back so that her neck is taut against the sharp edge of his knife. “You little–”

She cuts him off by digging the point of her blade into the hollow where his neck meets his jaw, pressing until he feels a warm trickle down his neck. If he was not afraid of deepening the cut, his mouth would fall open in shock. 

“What was that?” she asks innocently. “I’m a little…what?”

He doesn’t know if it’s the blood running down his neck, or the knife still pressed against his flesh, or the way she’s smirking up at him, or some blend of all three, but he feels a sudden shift as his blood moves south. Aethelflaed feels it, too; he can tell by the way her smirk broadens, her head tilting into his hand, offering more of her pale throat up to his blade. 

His knife is still at her throat when he surges forward to kiss her.

Aethelflaed laughs into his kiss, the point of her knife trailing down his neck and resting just above his chest. She bites down on his lip at the same moment her knife slides down, ripping his tunic and the shirt beneath down to his waist. He hisses, both from the teeth in his lip and his suddenly bared chest, and she laughs again. When he pulls back, there is blood on her lips, and despite the rending of his tunic, his skin feels suddenly too hot, too tight. 

He leans down to lick his blood from her lips, untangling his hand from her hair so he can half-cut, half-tear her clothes down the middle as she did his.

“No,” she growls, pressing the tip of her blade against his breeches as a warning.

It only excites him beyond reason, and he smirks as he parts her torn clothes to grasp one breast. “Yes.”

She opens her mouth to argue, but he brings his knife up to her breast, pressing the cool flat of the blade to her warm skin until it prickles. Her mouth stays open, whatever she was about to say lost for a long moment. He watches as her pupils contract, her eyes darkening with a desire she cannot conceal. 

When the metal warms and she makes a halfhearted effort to speak again, he lifts the flat of the blade, drawing the point in a feather-light motion down to the rosy tip of her breast and circling. 

“Stop that,” she whispers with absolutely no vehemence whatsoever.

“Mm, I don’t think I will,” he says thoughtfully. “Unless…you’re going to make me?”

He hopes she does, and he is not disappointed. The pressure against his cock disappears, and a moment later, he feels a stinging arc over his pectoral. He recoils, hissing in pain, but Aethelflaed follows him, lowering her head to lick up the blood. He grabs her hair again, holding his knife to her throat, and she does the same to him, smirking up at him with bloodstained lips.

He’s stretched so full he aches. He’s never seen this side to his wife before. He doesn’t know what she’s going to do next, and he desperately wants to find out.

He backs her roughly against the table, lowering a hand to sweep aside the dishes. They cut and tear savagely at each other’s breeches, mangling them beyond repair, desperate to be free of the last of their trappings before she clambers onto the table, seizing a handful of his hair to pull him against her. 

He slides into her so easily it dazes him. He closes his eyes, pressing his forehead against hers, but when he feels the sharp point of her blade against his neck, his eyes open, meeting her dark-eyed stare.

“Look at me,” she commands, wrapping her legs around his hips and drawing him deeper into her. He wonders if she will really use her blade on him or if this is all a game meant to excite and nothing more. The not knowing arouses him so much that he spills before he means to, his hips grinding with far too little delicacy for a man with a knife at his throat. 

In the moment following, her knife still poised at his throat, his heart pounds in fear.

And then she uses the hand in his hair to push him down to his knees, bringing his face level with her cunt. “You said you had an appetite.”

[open-species-catalog]

Blog Information

Hello! Welcome to Open Species Catalog! This blog's purpose is to catalog and spread awareness of newer and lesser known original open species created by artists everywhere!

Please read this introduction post before asking any questions.

All information is below the cut!

[Last update: May 1st, 2024].

Questions you may have:

What is an open species?

-WikiFur's definition of open species is as follows: "Open species are species anyone can make, although some may require you to follow guideline(s) to be considered one."

This differs from closed species, which require permission from the species owner or payment to the species owner to create one.

Are semi-open species allowed?

-It depends. If someone needs direct permission* from you or a purchase** of some kind is required to make an OC of your species, your species does not qualify for this blog. *Permission to create an OC is not the same as design approval. If your species is very specific and requires design approval for it to follow your species' guidelines, then it can still qualify as long as the OC is free to create.

**Selling bases or adoptables for your own species DOES NOT count for this rule. This rule only applies to species that require a purchase to make an original character of the species.

Can I tag this blog to help boost my species?

-Yes! We will gladly boost your species!

Does my species have to be furry?

-Nope! They can be any kind of species you'd like! Humanoid, robot, object head, furry, etc.!

What kind of species will you not promote?

-We will refuse to promote any of the following: 1. Culturally insensitive/appropriative species. 2. Species that are solely NSFW focused. If your species is meant only or primarily for NSFW art/media, we will not promote it. 3. Closed species and semi-closed species. Semi-open is generally okay depending on the rules you implement. 4. Any species that promotes or encourages real world violence, hatred, bigotry, or exploitation.

This list is not extensive and may be updated in the future.

Do you have a Do Not Interact?

-No, but we will gladly block any kind of bigot or anyone promoting real instances of heinous acts such as pedophilia/zoophilia/incest/etc., sexual assault, hate crimes, anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments (this includes TE//RFs and transmisogynists obviously), antisemitism, Islamophobia, sexism, racism, etc.

NOTE: Please DO NOT ask us to make or share callout posts regarding any creators we spotlight. If there is definitive proof of someone we've promoted being genuinely harmful, we will refuse to promote them going forward. However, we do not support harassment campaigns, poorly made callouts, or witch hunts.

Also: If you have personal beef with a creator, air out our grievances on your own blog. This is not a place to vent about how much you hate someone.

Keep in mind that we do NOT do extensive background checks on anyone we promote, nor do we know about every single community drama or "problematic" person in the open species community. We want our space to be as drama free as possible, and we will NEVER knowingly promote problematic people/species.

RULES:

Your species MUST be open or semi-open to qualify.

DO NOT ping us continuously! If we haven't reblogged your post, it's because we're either busy or your species does not meet our requirements. Please wait at least 4 days before contacting us regarding your post.

Art, OC, and species theft are FORBIDDEN. If you are caught intentionally stealing from anyone, you will be blocked.

No AI "art" nor N/F/Ts! Period!

Please do not give anyone constructive criticism without their permission.

Hate, bullying, or harassment of any kind is NOT allowed.

Don't ask us to promote a species on someone behalf unless you have explicit permission from that person to do so.

Please DO NOT accuse anyone of species theft without explicit proof. There are A Lot of open species out there, so it's inevitable that someone is going to make a species similar to yours.

While not a requirement, it's very helpful if you have a Carrd, website, or document with species lore and information.

Please make sure you have put some effort into your species before pitching them. While we probably won't outright refuse to promote your species, it would be best for everyone if you made sure your species has some work put into it.

Tag Navigation:

Organization tags: -#open species -#furry -#scaly -#anthro -#feral -#semi-feral -#taur -#multiple forms -#humanoid -#mech -#robot -#alien -#cyborg

Post type tags: -#open species info -#adopts -#OCs -#blog update -#species update

Content warning tags: -#eyestrain -#flashing -#gore -#trypophobia -#scopophobia -#suggestive -#blood -#spiders -#insects -#bugs -#alcohol -#drugs

If you would like something added to our tags lists, feel free to ask!

[noneuclideanwhimsy]

I wrote a thing

It was well known among Space Worms that they had to return the Wormlings they had given away to trusted caretakers back to the White Void about every "month", or how long it takes the closest planet around the Wormlings' star to go around once. Kuria wasn't the biggest fan of this rule, mostly because it also required her to return to the White Void herself and deal with at least a few people who did not approve of their lifestyle. Hence why she was so happy to have Gammen back after they were done.

They nuzzled their head against their child's, a happy chirp emanating from wherever their voice came from.

"Gammen! So, how was your first meeting? Was it fun? Did you learn lots?"

Gammen wrapped himself around his mother.

"I did! There were so many other people…do they all share a star with me?"

"They sure do! The Matron Worm creates new Wormlings in a big ol batch once they find the perfect star!"

Gammen was awestruck.

"Really? Oh, the Matron Worm was the really big person, right? We met them, they were really kind!"

"They always are."

They both headed back out into the universe they had been exploring prior to Gammen's meeting.

"Mama? Can I ask you something?"

"I dunno, can you?"

"Yes?"

Kuria laughed a bit, gently bumping Gammen's body with hers.

"Just teasing you. What do you want to know?"

"Do you have a job like the other Worms?"

Kuria stopped, and thought about how to answer.

"Exploring the universe is my job!"

"No, I mean like a job like the other Worms have, watching over people."

Kuria felt herself shake just a bit.

"I do that with you and your mom already, silly."

"No! Like the other Worms! Some of the older ones told me that it was our purpose to have jobs and watch over people! Do you do that?"

Kuria now felt very upset. They had tried to avoid talking about that with Space Worms their own age, and now they had sent her own child after them? She tried to keep her voice steady and her body calm.

"No, Gammy, I don't have a job like that."

"Why not?"

They sighed.

"Let's…find a place to land, OK?"

Gammen now felt very nervous, and Kuria could tell.

"Alright…did I make you upset?"

"A little, but I know you didn't know it would make ,e upset nor did you mean to make me upset. I'm not mad."

"Ok…"

They both found a rocky, chalky surfaced moon to rest on and talk. Kuria shifted forms into something more humanoid, she couldn't bear to be Worm-like now. Gammon copied her, and she pulled them close.

"So, you want to know why I don't have a job like my star-mates?"

Gammen nodded eagerly.

"Well, I decided when I was a bit younger then you that I didn't want that kind of life. I wanted to travel, I wanted to see everything…and having a job, no matter what it was, would restrict that. I would be tied to a single timeline. I would want to retire on the spot! Imagine sitting through loop after loop, always the same, watching everything play out in the same order over and over with maybe different people if you're lucky. I didn't want that."

Kuria looked out to the stars.

"So I just…didn't get a job like everyone else did. I decided to strike out on my own. I have never regretted it, not one second of my life."

Gammen hummed a bit, like they were thinking.

"Something on your mind?"

"Well…you like to travel right? And Mom doesn't. So why…why did you pick her?"

Kuria let out a laugh at this, a loud whooping one that would have carried across an ocean.

"Gammy, I did not just choose your mother. It took a lot of time and realization before we even tried having a relationship. I remember the first time we met I had just stumbled across the Care Center and she was showing me around, and I was just in awe about how different it all was but how much it felt like our White Void. That's the reason whenever I read something I read it in your mother's voice, she was so good at explaining things. I left, but something made me come back over and over. I just had to see her again. It's not that she made my life complete…my life was just made better by knowing she existed.

As for her not liking traveling? That was an important discussion we had at first. You see…we both were so willing to give up everything we were for each other. I know it sounds silly, but I swear that if your mother told me to drop everything and stay with her and never travel again I would do it, and traveling is the one thing that gives me meaning so you can just tell I adore her. You know, she ever tried to explore with me. She didn't like it at all, but I knew that she felt the same about me. She would give up what gave her meaning just for me."

Kuria held Gammen close.

"Then I realized I couldn't be alone in this universe, I needed someone to learn with me and that I could teach all I know, someone to care for. Can you guess who that is?"

"Me?"

They pressed their forehead against Gammen's.

"That's right. You make my life so much better, so does your mother. I would do anything for the two of you, anything at all."

Gammen snuggled up to their mother.

"Mama? Will I…will I ever have someone I would give up everything for? That kind of person sounds really important…"

"I have no doubt you will. Just remember to not force it. It will come to you unexpectedly, and it will just hit you."

"Did that happen with you? It just hit you?"

"Oh, it sure did. I remember floating through the void, just relaxing when I felt a sort of…clenching. It hurt a bit but then I could only thing about one thing: If I had to go the rest of my existence without seeing your mother smile, it would rip me to shreds. That's when I knew."

Gammen looked very uneasy.

"What if I don't find someone I love like that?"

"Then you just have to love yourself that much, but that is a bit of a requirement before you can really feel so,etching towards someone else."

"OK…Will I have to marry the person, like you did mother?"

"Goodness no! No, no, no, you see, it's just…I feel the same way about your mother asI do about you, right? You can feel things like that towards anyone! With me and your mother, it's love, the romantic kind, but any kind of love can make you feel like that. Don't worry if you don't find a partner, just worry about meeting people. You'll find a trusted friend, a child you care about, a rival, or maybe a lover, it won't matter as long as you have that real, true feeling in you. You'll know it when you feel it."

"Alright, that sounds good!"

"Less worried now?"

"A lot…thank you, mama."

"Of course, Gammy! Anything you need, you ask me."

She held Gammen close, rocking them both back and forth. This is the kind of thing that made her life worthwhile, moments like these where she can just feel. She still felt a little upset at being called out by something her child picked up, but she also loved Gammen to death and that overtook everything.

"I love you, Gammy."

"I love you too, mama!"

-

Ga-men did eventually find out what Kuria had explained, twice over. The first time was at an orphanage, the second time was in a destroyed city on a planet other then Earth.

He loved Tommy from the first second the boy walked up to him to hand him a drawing. Ga-men had volunteered to read to the children there, he found himself just drawn to the young ones and their energy and life. He was just about to leave when a young boy, his face freckled and his hair in a bit of a wild mop around his head tugged on his sleeve.

"Mis..Mister Ga-men? I drew you a picture!"

"How kind of you, little one."

The picture was of Ga-men reading in the same artstyle all children have at that age. Ga-men's heart melted.

"Thank you so much…Tommy, was your name? You liked The Gruffalo the best, and you like dogs? Have I got all that correct?"

Tommy was amazed. Ga-men knew this information about all the children, he prided himself on his perception, but to see someone so happy he remembered them filled him with pure joy.

"Yeah! That-That's all right!"

Ga-men found himself making a small happy chirp as his fingers tapped on his briefcase. He wanted to scream out his happiness, but he kept it under reins.

"Wonderful! Well, I will see you next week Mister Tommy, and I will ensure to read a book I think you would like."

"OK! Bye Mister Ga-men!"

Ga-men began the adoption process for Tommy the next day.

Of course, the second one was far more…tragic, but he recognized the feeling in himself instantly. He was moving through a city that had just been under seige by something he feared very much: A Bright, the only predator a Space Worm had to fear, one that could pursue them to their own reality. He was only there because he was curious. He planned to get out as soon as there was any sign of danger - he was a father at this point, after all - but once he saw the figure, he couldn't.

It was a small child of the world he was on, huddled up and crying alone. He knew at once that the child was not what it seemed, but only in the species sense. They were still a scared child. He went down on one knee a few meters away from them.

"Hello, little one."

The child raised their head, and sniffled.

"H-hi…"

Ga-men smiled gently.

"You sought refuge in there, didn't you? I don't blame you. Did…was this you?"

He didn't accuse the child, it was just a gentle question. They wiped their eyes with their hand before they spoke.

"Only a little…there was something bad happening, and I got scared…I didn't mean to hurt anyone…"

"I know you didn't. You're just a child, a scared child who's all alone. You panicked; No one can begrudge you for trying to keep yourself safe and alive."

"You aren't mad?"

Ga-men shook his head. He was feeling the same thrill he got when he got the picture from Tommy, and knew in an instant that he needed to protect this young one, no matter what species they were. Not even if he was rasing the one thing he feared.

"Please, come here. I can take you somewhere safe, somewhere I can help you understand what you need and why you do things. I will not hurt you."

The child hesitantly got up and stepped towards him, eventually going into Ga-men's arms.

"There we go…do you have a name?"

"Passport Guardian…"

"Ah, yes, Brights have titles. I a, quite curious how you picked up that vocabulary…"

The Passport Guardian sniffled.

"The body…I think its name was Benrey. I heard someone yelling it after I got inside."

"What would you like me to call you then?"

"Uhh…Benrey, I guess. It would be nice to the body."

"Benrey it is. Let's get you home."

He wasn't overly strong, but Benrey was quite light so he could easily pick them up and bear them away.

He later told his mama the circumstances around the adoption of his two children. She smiled.

"I knew you would find them eventually."

AAAAaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Holy sparkles YOUR WRITING IS ALWAYS SO INCREDIBLE I-

[the-hem]

"The Tuner and the Instrument." From the Chandogya Upanishad, the Exploration of the Mysteries of the Priesthood.

2 This prana and that sun are the same. This is warm and that is warm. This they call svara (what goes out) and that, pratyasvara (what returns). Therefore one should meditate on the Udgitha as this and that.

3 One should meditate on the Udgitha as the vyana (orgasm). That which one breathes out is the prana and that which one breathes in is the apana (the anus marketplace). That which is the junction of the prana and the apana is the Vyana.

This vyana is speech. Therefore when one utters speech one stops the prana and the apana.

4 That which is speech is the Rik (the invocation). Therefore when a man utters a Rik he neither breathes out nor breathes in. That which is the Rik is the Saman. Therefore when a man sings a Saman, he neither breathes out nor breathes in. That which is the Saman is the Udgitha. Therefore when a man sings the Udgitha he neither breathes out nor breathes in.

Svara is a musical note, Pratyasvara is its echo. The sun emanates light, what it reflects from into the eye is the object of perception. The sun and the object of illumination are available in the mind due to Prana. The same with the wind, the musical instrument, and its resonance. If the instrument is stopped up, the resonance does not speak.

This is just another way of demonstrating how the unfiltered Light of Life is required for all Life Experiences.

How one chooses to tune the instrument or filter the light affects the emotional resonance of one's behavior and thus the chains of effects in the world itself. The Chandogya Upanishad asks us to consider our impact on this on others.

Ex. You: “I think I could listen to the sound of the clarinet all night.”

ME: “Yeah? Well I’m a French horn player and I don’t think it could sound better if you put it up your ass and farted through it.”

Some might say I did not send a significant amount of Udgitha into the universe with my comment, no matter how sincerely I might have said it. So should I lie and say I love the clarinet when I don’t?

Should I tell a white lie and say “Well that’s fabulous for you!”

Or should I just stop the mind and check out and say something dull like. “Awesome.”

What I should probably do is say “What’s your favorite composition for the clarinet that makes you love it so?”

As clergy we must do all of this at once and then speak in tune with the Self and the situation. We don’t have to like or approve, lie or exaggerate, but we can share the experience of love and hate with someone in an authentic way and build a connection that might lead to something grander in the relationship. Especially for the benefit of the people that are depending on us to tell them their presence on the earth, in this lifetime, has value and purpose.

This last element is the essence of Udgitha and is the job of the Udgatri.

Now Apana means “foundation” or “reservoir”. The Reservoir of Udgitha is the Power of Speech. Apana is also the "reservoir" for orgasm the way hunger is a reservoir for food.

How we communicate between the appetite and the marketplace for all that can satisfy it determines the level of anticipation and celebration that will take place when that which one finds appetizing is "invoked".

Rik as in the Rik Veda, means “Invocation " and "Praises". The Rishi’s comment on breathing and not breathing means “all praise is inherent within the Illumined Mind to deliver Udgitha to Creation.”

What if you just really can’t bring yourself to toggle between your likes, dislikes, biases, a crappy or distracted mood and you just let someone have it (or ignore them?) instead of being present? This happens and then comes selfish anger. Selfish anger is not within the providence of the priest.

While invoking the object of desire about which one is speaking to oneself through the respiration of the mind-breath, the Udgatri must be able to recover balance, called Saman, an inherent stillness present in the Light of Awareness which does not come and go and ends all sin by tuning out the anger that is harbored by the world.

[ramadhanseries]

தமிழில்

JUZ 26 - LESSONS

➖SURAH AL-AHQAF

Allah SWT created this world, sent the messengers (AS), revealed the Books for our guidance and informed us that there would be a Day of Judgment to reward or punish us - all this tells us that there is a purpose of our life. We were created to worship Him and submit to His commands.

-How can man call upon on an idol created by his own hands that neither hears nor responds? How can people call on to the dead saints to help them when they cannot help themselves?

-Qur'an warns the unjust and gives glad tidings to the Muhsineen (those who do things with excellence)

-He who dies upon, "Laa ilaaha illaa Allahu," is among the successful ones. He will have no grief or fear.

A mother has more rights than a father because of the pain she goes due to pregnancy and the sacrifices she makes in raising a child

-Du'a for the Parents (46:15)

رَبِّ أَوْزِعْنِي أَنْ أَشْكُرَ نِعْمَتَكَ الَّتِي أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيَّ وَعَلَى وَالِدَيَّ وَأَنْ أَعْمَلَ صَالِحًا تَرْضَاهُ

إِنِّي تُبْتُ إِلَيْكَ وَإِنِّي مِنَ الْمُسْلِمِينَ وَأَصْلِحْ لِي فِي ذُرِّيَّتِي

"My Lord, enable me to be grateful for Your favor which you have bestowed upon me and upon my parents and to work righteousness of which you will approve and make righteous for me my offspring. Indeed, I have repented to you, and indeed, I am of the Muslims." (46:15)

Spend on your parents (especially your mother). Set a monthly or bi-annual allowance for them. Buy them gifts. Give them money so that they can buy things for themselves of their own choice. Take charge of their medical expenditures. Take them for the doctor visits.

If they have passed away then use the same money to give away in sadaqah on their behalf. If your children are misbehaving with you, then turn your focus on your parents. Serve them, perhaps Allah SWT will make your children listen to you.

Everyone's rank in the Hereafter will be according to their deeds

-The Jinns heard the Qur'an once and understood it. It did not take them weeks, months or years to learn that when the Qur'an is being recited then one should listen to it attentively. They immediately believed in it and went forth to spread its message to other Jinns. And what about us? What is our attitude towards the Qur'an?

➖SURAH MUHAMMAD

-The one who does a lot of good deeds but does not believe then all his deeds are wasted. The one who believes and also does a lot of good deeds, if he had any sins they will be forgiven. Value your emaan.

-The dwellers of Jannah will know their homes better than their homes of the world

➖THINGS THAT HELP BUILD A HOME IN JANNAH

▪️Offering 12 Sunnah prayers daily

▪️Building a mosque

▪️Visiting the sick

▪️Reciting dua when entering a marketplace

▪️Doing Shukr in calamity

▪️Joining the rews (saff) in congregational prayers

-Help Allah's Deen and you will get steadfastness in Deen. Take out time from your routine to volunteer for Deen.

-Some people are so Dunya oriented that are living like animals, focused on just two things: food and desires. Is this the purpose of our life?

Eat as much is required to survive - do not make it the main focus of your life

A man's desires stop him from living by the Qur'an

➖RIVERS OF JANNAH (SEE 47:15)

Rivers of unaltered water.

Rivers of milk the taste of which never changes.

ماءٍ غَيْرِ آمين

أَنْهَارُ مِن لَّبَنٍ لَّمْ يَتَغَير طعمه

Rivers of wine for those who drink.

أَنْهَارُ مِنْ عَمْرٍ لَذَّةٍ لِلنَّارِينَ

Rivers of purified honey.

أَنْهَارُ مِنْ عَسَلٍ مُصفى

- One person attends a gathering of knowledge but when he leaves it, he asks others about what was said. He does not listen or understands anything because he is overtaken by his desires. Another person attends the gathering seeking guidance, he is attentive and sincere, Allah SWT increases him in guidance and gives him righteousness.

"Do they not reflect upon the Qur'an, or are there locks upon [their] hearts?" (47:24)

➖WHAT IS TADABBUR?

• When you recite the Qur'an do not rush through it

• Slow down and reflect on the Ayaat

• Seek refuge in Allah SWT against the punishments mentioned in the Qur'an

• Ask Him to make you from those whom He loves

• If you recite the Qur'an daily but do not understand what it says, ask Him to ayah and every open up your heart for its Tadabbur.

Do not waste your deeds by doing things that displease Allah SWT.

➖SURAH AL-FATH

The real success is the success of the Hereafter

THREE RESPONSIBILITIES of The PROPHET (SALALLAHU 'ALAYHI WA SALLAM)

1. To be a witness

2. To give glad tidings

3. To warn

➖THREE THINGS EXPECTED FROM US

• Believing in Allah SWT and the Messenger (salAllahu 'alayhi wa sallam)

• Honoring and respecting the Messenger (salAllahu 'alayhi wa sallam)

• Remembering Allah SWT in the morning and in the evening

➖QUALITIES OF THE SAHABAH (RA) (SEE 48:29)

• Forceful against the disbelievers

• Merciful for the believers

• Bowing and prostrating in prayer

Seeking bounty from Allah SWT) and His pleasure. Marks on their faces from the trace of prostration

➖SURAH AL-HUJURAT

-Do not put yourself before Rasoolullah (salAllahu 'alayhi wa sallam), in action, in thoughts, in speech. When hearing a Hadith or learning about a Sunnah do not say, "My opinion is this," or "I like to do this (the opposite of what is being said)."

-Do not raise your voice above a teacher or any elder. Show respect to someone more knowledgeable than you. It is not boldness to argue. Show mercy to those younger than you.

-When an information reaches you, verify it before you forward, share or act on it, lest you harm someone

-Make settlement between two believers who are fighting with each other. Bonds made on Deen are stronger than blood relations. Do not let disagreements escalate to a level where religion is affected.

-No one should make fun of others, we do not know their status with Allah SWT. They might be in disobedience of Allah SWT right now but perhaps Allah SWT will change their hearts in the future and they will become better than you. Or perhaps, because of YOUR making fun of them, you will slip and indulge in the same disobedience that they are in.

Do not call anyone with offensive nicknames. Do not call someone nerdy, fat or skinny.

Do not comment on someone's physical features. Did they create themselves?

Do not call other hypocrites, corrupt, poor or whatever. Do not talk about people. Remember Allah SWT.

Do not taunt others. If others taunt you, do not respond.

-Do not look for faults in others. Hide others' shortcomings, so that Allah SWT may conceal your shortcomings.

- Avoid negative assumption

Do not spy (Why are you curious about others?) Do not backbite (Would you like to eat the flesh of your dead brother?)

Busy yourself in good deeds so that you do not have free time to comment on others, spy on them or backbite about them.

-Allah SWT has created us from different races or ethnicity only for recognition/identification purposes not to oppress or make fun of each other.

➖DEFINITION OF A BELIEVER

"The believers are only the ones who have believed in Allah and His Messenger and then doubt not but strive with their properties and their lives in the cause of Allah. It is these who are the truthful." (49:15)

-If good deeds are done for the sake of Allah SWT, you won't advertise them. Hide them.

➖SURAH QAF

-When we backbite, spy, ridicule, taunt and insult each other whether verbally or in our hearts, we should remember these Ayaat: "And We have already created man and knew what his seul whispers to him, and We are closer to him than [his] jugular vein. When the two receivers receive, seated on the right and on the left.

A person should be conscious of the presence of Allah SWT and the angels with him, 24/7,

- Paradise will be brought closer to every Awaab (the one who keeps returning to Allah SWT in remembrance and after committing sins) and every Hafeez (the one who keeps his promises, protects his eyes from seeing haram, his ears from hearing haram, his heart from thinking haram, his tongue from speaking haram)

-Do Tasbeeh of Allah SWT 24/7, when you are hurt and when you are joyful

- Advise people with the Qur'an

➖SURAH ADH-DHARIYAT

Accepting what their Lord has given them. Indeed, they were before that doers of good. /Muhsin They used to sleep but little of the night, Pray Tahajjud And in the hours before dawn they would ask forgiveness, And from their properties was the right of the [needy] petitioner and the deprived. Give Zakat/Sadaqah

(50:16-19)

JUZ 26 - பாடங்கள்

சூரா அல்-அஹ்காஃப்

அல்லாஹ் SWT இந்த உலகத்தைப் படைத்தான், தூதர்களை (AS) அனுப்பினான், நம் வழிகாட்டுதலுக்காக புத்தகங்களை வெளிப்படுத்தினான், மேலும் நமக்கு வெகுமதி அளிக்க அல்லது தண்டிக்க ஒரு தீர்ப்பு நாள் இருக்கும் என்று எங்களுக்குத் தெரிவித்தான் - இவை அனைத்தும் நம் வாழ்க்கையின் நோக்கம் இருப்பதைக் கூறுகின்றன. அவரை வணங்குவதற்கும் அவருடைய கட்டளைகளுக்கு அடிபணிவதற்கும் ��ாம் படைக்கப்பட்டோம்.

- கேட்கவோ பதிலளிக்கவோ முடியாத தனது கைகளால் உருவாக்கப்பட்ட சிலையை மனிதன் எவ்வாறு அழைக்க முடியும்? தங்களுக்குத் தாங்களே உதவி செய்ய முடியாத நிலையில், இறந்த புனிதர்களை எவ்வாறு மக்கள் உதவிக்கு அழைக்க முடியும்?

-குர்ஆன் அநியாயக்காரர்களை எச்சரிக்கிறது மற்றும் முஹ்ஸினீன்களுக்கு (சிறப்பாக செயல்களைச் செய்பவர்களுக்கு) நற்செய்தி கூறுகிறது

"லா இலாஹ இல்லல்லாஹு" என்று மரணித்தவர் வெற்றி பெற்றவர்களில் ஒருவர். அவருக்கு துக்கமோ பயமோ இருக்காது.

ஒரு தாய்க்கு தந்தையை விட அதிக உரிமைகள் உள்ளன, ஏனெனில் அவள் கர்ப்பத்தின் வலி மற்றும் குழந்தையை வளர்ப்பதில் அவள் செய்யும் தியாகம்

-பெற்றோருக்கான துஆ (46:15)

رَبِّ أَوْزِعْنِي أَنْ أَشْكُرَ نِعْمَتَكَ الَّتِي أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيَّ وَعَلَى وَالَأَيَّ وَعَلَى وَالِدَيَّ

إِنِّي تُبْتُ إِلَيْكَ وَإِنِّي مِنَ الْمُسْلِمِينَ وَأَصْلِحْ لِي فِي ذُرِّيَّتِي

"என் இறைவா, நீ எனக்கும் என் பெற்றோர் மீதும் செய்த உனது கருணைக்கு நன்றியுள்ளவனாக இருப்பதற்கும், என் சந்ததியினரை நீ அங்கீகரித்து, எனக்கு நன்னெறியாக்கிக் கொள்வதற்குமான நற்செயல்களைச் செய்வதற்கும் எனக்கு உதவுவாயாக. உண்மையில், நான் உன்னிடம் வருந்தினேன். நான் முஸ்லீம்களை சேர்ந்தவன்." (46:15)

உங்கள் பெற்றோருக்கு (குறிப்பாக உங்கள் தாய்) செலவு செய்யுங்கள். அவர்களுக்கு மாதாந்திர அல்லது இரு வருடக் கொடுப்பனவை அமைக்கவும். அவர்களுக்கு பரிசுகளை வாங்கவும். அவர்களுக்குப் பணம் கொடுங்கள், அதனால் அவர்கள் தங்கள் விருப்பப்படி பொருட்களை வாங்க முடியும். அவர்களின் மருத்துவ செலவுகளை பொறுப்பேற்கவும். மருத்துவர் வருகைக்கு அவர்களை அழைத்துச் செல்லுங்கள்.

அவர்கள் இறந்துவிட்டால், அதே பணத்தை அவர்கள் சார்பாக சதகாவில் கொடுக்க பயன்படுத்தவும். உங்கள் பிள்ளைகள் உங்களிடம் தவறாக நடந்து கொண்டால், உங்கள் கவனத்தை உங்கள் பெற்றோர் மீது திருப்புங்கள். அவர்களுக்கு சேவை செய்யுங்கள், ஒருவேளை அல்லாஹ் SWT உங்கள் குழந்தைகளை உங்கள் பேச்சைக் கேட்க வைப்பான்.

மறுமையில் ஒவ்வொருவரின் பதவியும் அவரவர் செயல்களுக்கு ஏற்ப அமையும்

-ஜின்கள் குர்ஆனை ஒரு முறை கேட்டு புரிந்து கொண்டார்கள். குர்ஆன் ஓதப்படும் போது அதைக் கவனமாகக் கேட்க வேண்டும் என்பதை அறிந்து கொள்வதற்கு அவர்களுக்கு வாரங்கள், மாதங்கள் அல்லது வருடங்கள் தேவைப்படவில்லை. அவர்கள் உடனடியாக அதை நம்பி மற்ற ஜின்களுக்கு அதன் செய்தியைப் பரப்பச் சென்றனர். மற்றும் எங்களைப் பற்றி என்ன? குர்ஆனைப் பற்றிய நமது அணுகுமுறை என்ன?

சூரா முஹம்மது

-அதிகமான நற்செயல்களைச் செய்தாலும் நம்பிக்கை கொள்ளாதவர், அவருடைய செயல்கள் அனைத்தும் வீணாகிவிடும். நம்பிக்கை வைத்து நிறைய நற்செயல்களைச் செய்பவர், அவருக்கு ஏதேனும் பாவங்கள் இருந்தால் அவை மன்னிக்கப்படும். உங்கள் எமானுக்கு மதிப்பு கொடுங்கள்.

ஜன்னாவில் வசிப்பவர்கள் உலகிலுள்ள தங்கள் வீடுகளை விட தங்கள் வீடுகளை நன்கு அறிவார்கள்

➖ஜன்னாவில் ஒரு வீட்டைக் கட்ட உதவும் விஷயங்கள்

▪️தினமும் 12 சுன்னத் தொழுகைகளை வழங்குதல்

▪️மசூதி கட்டுதல்

▪️நோயாளிகளைப் பார்வையிடுதல்

▪️சந்தைக்குள் நுழையும் போது துஆ ஓதுதல்

▪️பேரழிவில் சுக்ர் செய்வது

▪️ஜமாஅத் தொழுகைகளில் ரீவ்களில் (saff) இணைதல்

-அல்லாஹ்வின் தீனுக்கு உதவுங்கள், நீங்கள் தீனில் உறுதியைப் பெறுவீர்கள். டீனுக்கு தன்னார்வத் தொண்டு செய்ய உங்கள் வழக்கத்திலிருந்து நேரத்தை ஒதுக்குங்கள்.

சில மனிதர்கள் மிகவும் துன்யா நோக்குநிலை கொண்டவர்கள், விலங்குகளைப் போல வாழ்கிறார்கள், உணவு மற்றும் ஆசைகள் என்ற இரண்டு விஷயங்களில் மட்டுமே கவனம் செலுத்துகிறார்கள். இதுதான் நம் வாழ்வின் நோக்கமா?

உயிர்வாழ்வதற்கு தேவையான அளவு உண்ணுங்கள் - அதை உங்கள் வாழ்க்கையின் முக்கிய மையமாக மாற்றாதீர்கள்

ஒரு மனிதனின் ஆசைகள் அவனை குர்ஆனின்படி வாழவிடாமல் தடுக்கிறது

➖ஜன்னா நதிகள் (பார்க்க 47:15)

மாறாத நீர் ஆறுகள்.

பால் நதிகளின் சுவை மாறாது.

ماءٍ غَيْرِ آمين

أَنْهَارُ مِن لَّبَنٍ لَّمْ يَتَغَير طعمه

குடிப்பவர்களுக்கு மது ஆறுகள்.

أَنْهَارُ مِنْ عَمْرٍ لَذَّةٍ لِلنَّارِينَ

சுத்திகரிக்கப்பட்ட தேன் ஆறுகள்.

أَنْهَارُ مِنْ عَسَلٍ مُصفى

- ஒரு நபர் அறிவு சேகரிப்பில் கலந்து கொள்கிறார், ஆனால் அவர் அதை விட்டு வெளியேறும்போது, ​​அவர் என்ன சொன்னார்கள் என்று மற்றவர்களிடம் கேட்பார். அவர் தனது ஆசைகளால் முந்தியதால் அவர் எதையும் கேட்கவில்லை அல்லது புரிந்து கொள்ளவில்லை. மற்றொரு நபர் வழிகாட்டுதலைத் தேடும் கூட்டத்தில் கலந்துகொள்கிறார், அவர் கவனமுள்ளவர் மற்றும் நேர்மையானவர், அல்லா SWT அவருக்கு வழிகாட்டுதலை அதிகப்படுத்துகிறார் மற்றும் அவருக்கு நீதியை வழங்குகிறார்.

"அவர்கள் குர்ஆனைப் பற்றி சிந்திக்கவில்லையா? அல்லது [அவர்களின்] இதயங்களுக்குப் பூட்டுகள் உள்ளனவா?" (47:24)

➖தடப்பூர் என்றால் என்ன?

• நீங்கள் குர்ஆனை ஓதும்போது அவசரப்படாதீர்கள்

• வேகத்தைக் குறைத்து, ஆயத்தைப் பற்றி சிந்தியுங்கள்

• குர்ஆனில் கூறப்பட்டுள்ள தண்டனைகளுக்கு எதிராக அல்லாஹ்விடம் பாதுகாப்பு தேடுங்கள்

• அவர் நேசிப்பவர்களிடமிருந்து உங்களை உருவாக்கும்படி அவரிடம் கேளுங்கள்

• நீங்கள் தினமும் குர்ஆனை ஓதிக் கொண்டிருந்தாலும், அது என்ன சொல்கிறது என்று புரியவில்லை என்றால், அவரிடம் ஐயாவிடம் கேளுங்கள், மேலும் ஒவ்வொருவரும் அதன் தடபுருக்காக உங்கள் இதயத்தைத் திறக்கவும்.

அல்லாஹ்வுக்குப் பிடிக்காத செயல்களைச் செய்து உங்கள் செயல்களை வீணாக்காதீர்கள்.

➖சூரா அல்-ஃபாத்

மறுமையின் வெற்றியே உண்மையான வெற்றி

நபி (ஸல்) அவர்களின் மூன்று பொறுப்புகள்

1. சாட்சியாக இருத்தல்

2. மகிழ்ச்சியான செய்திகளை வழங்க

3. எச்சரிக்க

எங்களிடமிருந்து எதிர்பார்க்கப்படும் மூன்று விஷயங்கள்

• அல்லாஹ் SWT மற்றும் தூதர் (ஸல்) மீது நம்பிக்கை

• தூதர் (ஸல்) அவர்களை மதிப்பதும், மதிப்பதும்

• காலையிலும் மாலையிலும் அல்லாஹ்வை நினைவு கூர்தல்

சஹாபா (ரஹ்) அவர்களின் குணங்கள் (பார்க்க 48:29)

• காஃபிர்களுக்கு எதிராக பலவந்தமாக

• விசுவாசிகளுக்கு இரக்கமுள்ளவர்

• தொழுகையில் குனிந்து வணங்குதல்

அல்லாஹ்விடமிருந்து அருளையும், அவனது மகிழ்ச்சியையும் தேடுதல். அவர்களின் முகத்தில் சிரம் பணிந்த தடயங்கள்

➖சூரா அல்-ஹுஜுராத்

-செயலிலும், எண்ணங்களிலும், பேச்சிலும், ரசூலுல்லாஹ் (ஸல்) அவர்களுக்கு முன் உங்களை நிறுத்தாதீர்கள். ஒரு ஹதீஸைக் கேட்கும்போது அல்லது ஒரு சுன்னாவைப் பற்றி அறியும்போது, ​​"என் கருத்து இதுதான்" அல்லது "நான் இதைச் செய்ய விரும்புகிறேன் (சொல்லப்படுவதற்கு எதிர்மாறாக)" என்று கூறாதீர்கள்.

-உங்கள் குரலை ஒரு ஆசிரியர் அல்லது எந்த பெரியவர் மீதும் உயர்த்தாதீர்கள். உங்களை விட அறிவுள்ள ஒருவருக்கு மரியாதை காட்டுங்கள். வாதிடுவது தைரியம் அல்ல. உங்களை விட இளையவர்களிடம் கருணை காட்டுங்கள்.

-ஒரு தகவல் உங்���ளை வந்தடைந்தால், நீங்கள் ஒருவருக்கு தீங்கு விளைவிக்காதபடி, அதை முன்னனுப்புவதற்கு முன், பகிர்வதற்கு அல்லது செயல்படுவதற்கு முன் அதைச் சரிபார்க்கவும்.

-ஒருவருக்கொருவர் சண்டையிட்டுக் கொண்டிருக்கும் இரண்டு விசுவாசிகளுக்கு இடையே சமரசம் செய்து கொள்ளுங்கள். தீன் மீது ஏற்படுத்தப்படும் பந்தங்கள் இரத்த உறவுகளை விட வலிமையானவை. மதம் பாதிக்கப்படும் அளவுக்கு கருத்து வேறுபாடுகள் வளர விடாதீர்கள்.

-யாரும் மற்றவர்களை கேலி செய்யக்கூடாது, அவர்களின் நிலை அல்லாஹ்விடம் நமக்கு தெரியாது. அவர்கள் இப்போது அல்லாஹ்வுக்குக் கீழ்ப்படியாமல் இருக்கலாம், ஆனால் எதிர்காலத்தில் அல்லாஹ் அவர்களின் இதயங்களை மாற்றி, அவர்கள் உங்களை விட சிறந்தவர்களாக மாறுவார்கள். அல்லது ஒருவேளை, நீங்கள் அவர்களை கேலி செய்வதால், அவர்கள் இருக்கும் அதே கீழ்ப்படியாமையில் நீங்கள் நழுவி ஈடுபடுவீர்கள்.

யாரையும் புண்படுத்தும் புனைப்பெயர்களால் அழைக்க வேண்டாம். ஒருவரை முட்டாள், கொழுப்பு அல்லது ஒல்லியானவர் என்று அழைக்காதீர்கள்.

ஒருவரின் உடல் அம்சங்களைப் பற்றி கருத்து தெரிவிக்க வேண்டாம். அவர்கள் தங்களை உருவாக்கினார்களா?

மற்ற நயவஞ்சகர்கள், ஊழல்வாதிகள், ஏழைகள் அல்லது வேறு எதையும் அழைக்காதீர்கள். மக்களைப் பற்றி பேசாதே. அல்லாஹ்வை நினைவுகூருங்கள் SWT.

மற்றவர்களை கேலி செய்யாதீர்கள். மற்றவர்கள் உங்களை கேலி செய்தால், பதிலளிக்க வேண்டாம்.

- பிறருடைய குறைகளைத் தேடாதே. மற்றவர்களின் குறைகளை மறை, அதனால் அல்லாஹ் உங்கள் குறைகளை மறைக்கலாம்.

- எதிர்மறை அனுமானத்தைத் தவிர்க்கவும்

உளவு பார்க்காதே (நீங்கள் ஏன் மற்றவர்களைப் பற்றி ஆர்வமாக இருக்கிறீர்கள்?) முதுகில் பேசாதீர்கள் (உங்கள் இறந்த சகோதரனின் சதையை நீங்கள் சாப்பிட விரும்புகிறீர்களா?)

மற்றவர்களைப் பற்றி கருத்து தெரிவிப்பதற்கும், அவர்களை உளவு பார்ப்பதற்கும் அல்லது அவர்களைப் பற்றிப் பேசுவதற்கும் உங்களுக்கு இலவச நேரம் கிடைக்காமல், நல்ல செயல்களில் மும்முரமாக இருங்கள்.

-அல்லாஹ் SWT எங்களை வெவ்வேறு இனங்கள் அல்லது இனங்களிலிருந்து உருவாக்கியது அங்கீகாரம்/அடையாளம் நோக்கங்களுக்காக மட்டுமே ஒருவரையொருவர் ஒடுக்கவோ அல்லது கேலி செய்யவோ அல்ல.

➖ஒரு விசுவாசியின் வரையறை

"அல்லாஹ்வையும் அவனுடைய தூதரையும் நம்பி, பின்னர் சந்தேகப்படாமல், தங்கள் சொத்துக்களையும், உயிரையும் கொண்டு அல்லாஹ்வின் பாதையில் போராடுபவர்கள்தான் நம்பிக்கையாளர்கள். அவர்கள்தான் உண்மையாளர்கள்." (49:15)

-அல்லாஹ்வுக்காக நல்ல செயல்கள் செய்யப்பட்டால், அவற்றை விளம்பரப்படுத்த மாட்டீர்கள். அவற்றை மறை.

➖சூரா காஃப்

- நாம் ஒருவரையொருவர் வாய்மொழியாகவோ அல்லது நம் இதயத்திலோ பேசும்போது, ​​உளவு பார்க்கும்போது, ​​ஏளனம் செய்யும்போது, ​​பழிவாங்கும் போது, ​​​​இந்த அயாத்களை நாம் நினைவில் கொள்ள வேண்டும்: "மேலும் நாம் ஏற்கனவே மனிதனைப் படைத்தோம், அவனுடைய செவி அவருக்கு என்ன கிசுகிசுக்கிறது என்பதை நாங்கள் அறிந்திருக்கிறோம், மேலும் நாங்கள் அவரை விட நெருக்கமாக இருக்கிறோம். [அவரது] கழுத்து நரம்பு, இரண்டு ரிசீவர்களைப் பெறும்போது, ​​வலது மற்றும் இடதுபுறத்தில் அமர்ந்திருக்கும்.

24/7, அல்லாஹ்வின் பிரசன்னம் மற்றும் அவருடன் இருக்கும் தேவதூதர்கள் இருப்பதை ஒருவர் உணர்ந்து கொள்ள வேண்டும்.

- ஒவ்வொரு அவாபிற்கும் (அல்லாஹ்வை நினைவு கூர்ந்து பாவங்களைச் செய்தபின் திரும்பி வருபவர்) மற்றும் ஒவ்வொரு ஹபீஸுக்கும் (வாக்குறுதிகளைக் கடைப்பிடிப்பவர், தனது கண்களை ஹராமைப் பார்க்காமல், காதுகள் ஹராமைக் கேட்காமல் பாதுகாக்கும்) சொர்க்கம் நெருக்கமாகக் கொண்டுவரப்படும். இதயம் ஹராம், அவரது நாக்கு ஹராம் பேசுவது)

நீங்கள் காயப்படும்போதும் மகிழ்ச்சியாக இருக்கும்போதும் 24/7 அல்லாஹ்வின் தஸ்பீஹ் செய்யுங்கள்

- குர்ஆன் மூலம் மக்களுக்கு அறிவுரை கூறுங்கள்

➖சூரா அத்-தாரியத்

அவர்களின் இறைவன் அவர்களுக்கு வழங்கியதை ஏற்றுக்கொள்வது. நிச்சயமாக அவர்கள் அதற்கு முன் நன்மை செய்பவர்களாகவே இருந்தார்கள். /முஹ்சின் அவர்கள் இரவில் சிறிது நேரம் உறங்குவார்கள், தஹஜ்ஜத் தொழுங்கள் மற்றும் விடியலுக்கு முந்தைய மணிநேரங்களில் அவர்கள் மன்னிப்பு கேட்பார்கள், மேலும் அவர்களின் சொத்துக்களில் இருந்து [ஏழை] மனுதாரர் மற்றும் தாழ்த்தப்பட்டவர்களின் உரிமை இருந்தது. ஜகாத்/சதகா கொடுங்கள்

(50:16-19)

[bigskydreaming]

TFW you realize you relate more to a fave character than you ever actually consciously realized, lmao. 

So I was just having a remote therapy session, and we were focusing on just some mental pain management techniques since my stupid metabolism makes most pain meds largely useless and my head has been waging all out warfare on me for the past week and a half, lololol. And we were delving into one of my personal fave rants, which is the fact that so many people - including vaunted medical professionals - just fundamentally don’t seem to get that having a high pain tolerance does not mean you don’t like, FEEL pain unless its really a lot or intense. Its just that you’re hard-wired/trained/geared via stuff like an abusive childhood, lol, to not SHOW or DISPLAY any visible or audible pain cues unless the pain reaches a certain high threshold where its impossible to hold them back.

But particularly over the past four or five years, with my ongoing medical shit, its super obnoxious trying to get your doctors to display a sense of urgency about your condition because they’re just fundamentally not grasping the degree of chronic pain you’re dealing with every day, since, y’know....I can literally be sitting there in the doctor’s chair and conversationally talking about the fact that no, I definitely am currently feeling like, an eight or nine out of ten on the pain scale, please don’t be confused by the fact that I’m literally LOLing as I describe this to you rather than gasping and moaning in a more obvious indication of it. 

Its like, I’m not TRYING to undersell it or anything, its just, when you grow up since the time you’re like five or six years old, knowing damn well that the only appropriate response to someone asking ‘oh am I hurting you’ that won’t earn you MORE pain is a completely casual or cavalier sounding ‘nope, I’m fine, all good here, no problems.’......like, at a certain point in your development, that becomes pretty hard-wired in, like, you can’t shake it just because you consciously WANT to. (Though it is one of the things I’m trying to unlearn and ‘rewire’ in therapy now, via EMDR techniques aimed at like, literally reprogramming my nervous system and how I react to various stimuli. Its.....slow progress, lmao, but I mean there is some progress so its all good).

But point being, when you’re a physically abused kid and your physical abuser doesn’t want to believe or accept that they’re hurting you, and so they tended to just get angrier and MORE dangerous if they thought you were indicating or even just ‘implying’ that they were in fact hurting you.....you get pretty damn good at not showing even the slightest hint of pain or distress unless its literally a level you’ve never experienced before and thus have no practical experience in hiding or distracting yourself from.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t FEEL every bit of it. It doesn’t mean you’ve found a magical off-switch that means you can just mind-over-body yourself from acknowledging or being aware that you are in fact in a shit ton of pain. You just.....have learned the importance of masking it, and found ways to do that by necessity.

Except, even much later in life when you are in a safe place or more control of your situations or surroundings, there’s no easy way to just....stop putting that mask on by default, the second you’re experiencing any type of pain. And so even when dealing with medical professionals, too many of them just don’t GET that their vaunted ‘tell me how much pain you’re in from one to ten’ scale isn’t really the be-all and end-all of pain measurement, because its subjective and arbitrary as HELLLLLLLLL.....and one of the defining parameters for what that pain scale looks like and feels like for YOU, is....your personal history with pain and how you’re ‘comfortable’ displaying evidence of it. (And I know there’s a ton of people and even groups of people who can relate to this for entirely different reasons, I just can only speak to my own of course). 

But its definitely frustrating and invalidating as hell to be in more pain than many people ever experience in their lives, and TRYING to convey that as openly and honestly as you can.....and literally being able to SEE the doubt and dismissal in doctors’ eyes, because all they’re seeing is the visual cues you’re putting out there and which they equate to ‘can’t possibly be in THAT much pain, not if he’s acting this casual about it’.....

And so the frustrating irony is that you end up dismissed as like, a pain ‘lightweight’ who is complaining about an apparent degree of pain that’s barely anything in their ‘professional’ estimation. And thus they’re disinclined to take your requests for heavier or more effective pain medication seriously, or not impressed by your attempts to imbue a greater sense of urgency in their approach to your treatment plan or procedures, etc......when in reality, the only reason you’re showing those cues of not being in that much pain is because you’re MORE used to and familiar with even extremely high degrees of pain than anything a lot of them are accustomed to.

Its invalidating as hell, being treated as though you have no idea what you’re talking about when you say “I am actually in a shit ton of active, ongoing pain, hey thanks, can we maybe do something about this,” when actually, the disconnect comes from you having MORE experience with MORE pain than some of them can even fathom. You just....also have more experience with reasons not to SHOW that pain, if its at all avoidable to any degree whatsoever.

THAT’S what high pain tolerance actually means, and the sheer volume of medical professionals who just flat out don’t get this, or worse, just don’t care or are too proud to reassess their viewpoints on this matter if that carries the implication they don’t actually know as much as they think they do......god, it grates.

(Once, when I was around twenty-three or twenty-four I think, I got caught up in the periphery of a bar fight that resulted in me getting a shard of glass embedded in the back of my forearm. Still have a pretty sizable scar from it. And it absolutely hurt like fuck, but I was conscious as paramedics arrived on scene and when going to the hospital to have it removed and stitched up, and like......kinda cracking jokes about it the whole time because I was uncomfortable as hell and didn’t really know what else to do or how to react, y’know? I mean, I had a few inches of glasses jutting out from the top of my forearm, lol, what the hell are you supposed to do or say about that? There’s not really a protocol, lmao. Problem was, they took one look at me sitting there with this spear of glass sticking out of my arm and making dumb jokes about it like it was no big deal......and they decided this meant I was in shock and kept trying to treat me accordingly. And it was just like.....useless, because lol no I wasn’t in shock, I had none of the physical symptoms of being in shock and benefited from none of their assumptions that I was.....I was just a dude with a shard of glass in his arm that hurt like fuck and I really wanted it out as soon as possible, and I was in full awareness of what had happened and everything I was feeling, I just didn’t know how to convey this in a way that they would believe, because I couldn’t come up with anything to say or do other than laugh about how fucking surreal the whole situation was.)

Anyway, so circling back to the point, or as much of one as I ever have, so today I was just learning and practicing various mental pain management/coping techniques with my therapist and discussing my issues with doctors and the High Pain Tolerance Quandary. Basically like, I would really truly like to know or learn how to display the ‘expected’ physical and visual/audio cues for being a person who is experiencing a ‘4′ on the pain scale, versus a person who is experiencing a ‘7′ or a ‘10′.....so they can stop fucking treating me like I’m only at a 4 when I’m actually at an 8 or 9, just because I look and sound like a person who really is only at a 4 no matter what they actually CLAIM to be feeling.

Course, easier said than done.

But yeah, so as she was coaching me through various techniques and surveying what I was doing with my body and facial expressions and cues, etc, she pointed out something that I had literally never noticed about myself before, even though once she DID point it out I could recognize that its something I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember, well back before I was ten and no doubt stemming from smack dab in the midst of the worst of my childhood abuse.

So, y’know on Teen Wolf, how Scott and Liam and various others are at times shown digging their claws into their palms and drawing blood to ground themselves with the pain? (And ironically, how I was just talking the other week about photo doubling for a similar such scene with gashes in the character’s palms, lmfao). Well, obviously I don’t have claws, and part of why I’d never really paid much attention to when I was doing it is because even my therapist wasn’t comfortable classifying it as a kind of self-harm or anywhere near punitive enough to carry that kind of weight or associations.....

But like, I’ve always kept my fingernails fairly trimmed but not completely. Like, just enough of an edge to them that at times, particularly when I’m in physical pain or distress already, I’ll just like....dig my fingernails into the pad of other fingertips, and use that little familiar spike of pain to not ground myself but rather distract myself from whatever else I was feeling. Like, she wasn’t comfortable calling it a self-punitive technique because as we got into it, it was clear I was never doing it to CAUSE myself pain....rather, its something I only do when I’m already in pain, usually far more pain than anything that brings up.....but by deliberately doing that and creating a focal awareness around it, even just a largely subconscious one......I’ve apparently long been using that to hook my attention up to a very specific, very manageable sensation/focal point of pain that lets me and my ADHD brain relegate whatever other pain I’m feeling (even if its much much worse) to the back of my mind for at least a little while, as I distract myself by focusing on this more obvious and consciously directed bit of lesser pain. 

And a big part of why I probably never noticed I was doing this, we eventually concluded, is because as a kid I probably came up with it as a kind of survival technique specifically BECAUSE it was something I could do to distract myself/manage my pain covertly, without drawing my abuser’s attention to what I was doing either. And by extension, without the fact that I was doing it at all 'betraying’ that I was in pain or trying to manage or cope with painful sensations in the first place. A lot of other pain management techniques, like even just deep, deliberate breaths, tend to be a lot more obvious and noticeable, and thus would have been counter-productive for my specific purposes. No matter how much they helped me manage whatever physical pain I was feeling, they would have at the same time inevitably drawn attention to the fact that I was trying to do that at all in the first place....and thus only invite more pain. 

Merely digging my fingernails into my fingertip pads, not enough to draw blood or make me cry out or anything like that, but rather just to distract myself and deliberately focus me on a source of pain I could deal with and more easily handle, as well as being ‘low in intensity’ enough that focusing on it didn’t bring any other obvious visual or audio pain cues to the forefront.....that I could do without anyone noticing. And thus this is likely why it came to be my go-to move whenever I was in any kind of pain at all, as just a quick and easy way to wrap my head around my physical sensations and shift focus to something more easily dealt with or managed (even if it didn’t actually dismiss or get rid of whatever other pain I’m feeling entirely). And just the low-key nature of it in general likely being a big part of why it became such an unconscious instinct for me until now, something that barely even registered in my conscious mind as I built up/hard-wired instinctive responses that incorporated it without me having to consciously direct myself to do that.

I mean, its still obviously not an ideal response, especially when I’m long past being stuck in any kind of external situations or need to fall back on that and the covert nature of it. So now its another of those things to just be aware of and work on rewiring on an instinctive level, making it a priority for me to focus on consciously using more helpful and positive methods of pain management.

But it was just interesting to me to have it pointed out as something I’ve been doing all this time, let alone being as unaware of doing it as I’ve apparently been. And its not hard to draw obvious parallels to when characters in media I consume do similar things even if for not quite the same reasons or in quite the same ways. So now I’m just kinda contemplating that and wondering how much even just some degree of unconscious awareness that I do that might have made me more alert to when characters or other people do similar things. Made me more attuned to noticing or even fixating on moments when they do things like that, that I related to even on an entirely subconscious level.

*Shrugs* Anyway, that’s all, like, literally not going anywhere with this, was just unwinding and felt like mapping my way through that all contemplatively, because oh no, inexplicable strangeness, therapy puts me in particularly contemplative headspaces, whodathunkit, lmfao. *Shrugs* Just struck me as particularly interesting, so felt like sharing for anyone else who can relate/see similar parallels themselves.

Or just chalk it up to random anecdotal wtf-ery from your friendly (err, mostly. okay sometimes. FINE ideally, let’s go with that) neighborhood over-sharer. 

[maomao-words]

Here is another self-indulgent piece of writing!  (✿´‿`)

I binged Blue Lock’s manga in 3 days and I am now left with an empty void that I’m trying to fill by writing about my favorite characters in it.

On a side-note, I always seem to think of them as 18-19 years old. 

Contains few spoilers on some characters’ ranks after the Third Selection!

Being their Personal Manager at Blue Lock: (Itoshi Rin, Seishiro Nagi, Hyoma Chigiri)

Rin Itoshi:

Being assigned to the 1st ranker in all of Blue Lock immediately after your adaptability test barely shocked anyone. At this point in time where the whole existence of Blue Lock centered around Itoshi Rin, it was more than obvious that Rin would only receive the utmost care and the very best of the candidates as his manager.

Ranking first in the agonizingly harsh Entrance Exam and managing to out best all 600 other candidates from over the country, you were always the sole choice for Itoshi Rin’s personal manager.

You were already familiar with Rin’s character, preferences, weaknesses, strengths, diet and overall living style. You even had his body measurements down to the millimeter engraved in your brain. You thought yourself as perfectly ready to assist him in his endeavor, but reality soon proved you slightly wrong.

Meeting the genius called Itoshi Rin for the first time, you swore your blood ran cold within your veins the minute his eyes locked with yours. An oppressive aura, suffocating enough to send shivers down your back, surrounded you immediately the minute you stepped into his room. It took all of your willpower not to tremble in front of him.

Rin’s gaze did not move from yours for what seemed like an eternity, but noticing no visible signs of fear or submission on you, his lips slightly curved in a smirk and he finally stood up from his chair, discarding your test results on the table nearby.

“Not bad. She’ll do for now.”

Once you gained Rin’s initial approval, you started your mission as his closest aid. From the moment Rin opened his eyes to the minute he closed his door at night to sleep, you never left his side. You calculated his calories intake and planned his meals accordingly. You carefully reserved the training field and machines to Rin’s own wishes, making absolute sure they are available for Rin to use without any interruption or interference from other players. You planned, ran around, filled up water bottles and picked up emergency kits more quickly than you have ever did back in your own school’s competitive soccer club. You did that over and over again, to the point that you felt like dying. Until you finally broke down.

But being Itoshi Rin’s personal aid did not even offer you the privilege of breaking down in public. You waited until the day’s clamor and chaos was over. You meticulously prepared Rin’s lunch and reminded him to take the few tablets of vitamins afterwards before finally excusing yourself.

Rin raised a brow in faint confusion, as you have never willingly separated yourself from his side, even during meals. But the wound within your chest has finally festered to the point of no return, and you were unable to provide him with a convincing explanation before you gathered your papers and left.

The empty hallway located far from the center cafeteria soon echoed with your faint sobs. You gathered up your knees close to your chest and slowly rocked yourself in hopes of easing your pain. Weeks of harsh labor, zero communication with the outside world as well as the stress that came with handling all of Rin’s demanding responsibilities finally bled over.

You were not giving up. ‘Make no mistake,’ you whispered to yourself between sobs. You were just taking a much earned break before drying up your tears and returning to work.

But just as you began to feel frustrated at the tears still falling on your cheeks, you felt a heavy cloth fall on top of your head accompanied with an extremely familiar fragrance.

You jolted, hand coming up to clutch at Rin’s jacket before glancing up at the tall figure standing by your side. You opened your mouth but a round package slammed into your face next, leaving you to wince in pain.

“Eat that and let’s hurry back. I can’t find my black cleats.”

Rin’s voice echoed in the empty hall, forcing you to bring your attention to the melon bread he threw at you. Sounds of clothes rustling beside you made you look up again, only to find that Rin has sat down beside you, hand coming up to tug you closer to him.

Placing his palm on top of your eyes, Rin’s voice sounded as soft as ever as he whispered.

“Rest. I’m here.”

Seishiro Nagi:

As you stared down at your test results that have finally arrived after a long wait, you suddenly had the urge to cry out. 

Why him of all people?

Having extensively studied all of Blue Lock’s key players prior to passing the Entrance Exam as a manager, you were filled with admiration and respect to them and thus felt ready to be assigned to any of them. Any of them but Nagi Seishiro.

A beginning who did not even know the most basic of the basics on football yet somehow blessed enough to be labeled as a genius even among Blue Lock’s outstanding participants. That was Nagi Seichiro.

You abhorred geniuses. You abhorred how easily they reached their goals, how effortlessly they achieved their desires and how the entire world seemed to bow down in front of them. Becoming the personal manager of a hard working individual, like Isagi Yoichi for example, would have made you the happiest woman on the planet. To watch that individual sweat and toil, think and plan all of his minor actions in order to reach the pinnacle of his dreams through both talent and hard work and get to assist him in that process was the reason behind your entrance to Blue Lock.

So when the day where the eleven chosen managers entered the isolated towering building to meet the elite players ranking at the top of the whole project came, all you could taste was bitterness and rage in your mouth.

After Ego finished the basic introductions between managers and players, he gave the green light for you all to start performing your duties. As you began to collect your belongings that were delivered to you by the staff, you could see the tall figure of a young man approaching you from behind.

Without allowing Nagi the faintest chance to offer his help, you hoisted your luggage up with both hands and started walking towards the managers’’ sleeping quarters with only “I will be back shortly” thrown behind your back at the frozen Nagi.

A job was a job after all and you had no intention to slack off because of your personal dislikes. But you will be sure to maintain a professional distance from Blue Lock’s 6th ranker to avoid any unnecessary trouble.

Being Nagi’s personal manager was as hard as you have expected. Having to support a monster who does not cease to evolve with each passing day at a frightening pace would be considered had by anyone’s standards. But you were already aware of the heavy duties imposed on you from the start so you grinded your teeth and bared the pain. The only issue you seemed to have was, unsurprisingly, Nagi himself.

You have intended for your cold treatment the day you both met to be enough warning for the player. You wanted to perform your duties. Nothing less, nothing more. But Nagi seemed to have another idea on the relationship between you. 

He did not hinder your tasks nor act difficult on purpose to harm you, but he also made sure to greet you warmly each morning before plopping his large hand on top of your head and gently pat your hair for a few minutes before leaving.

He made sure to stick close to you during meal time, pushing off whatever he deemed not-tasty to your own plate, and innocently smiling when your try to scold him. He always shared his dessert with you, no matter how many times you tried to lie and tell him you disliked sweets. He constantly tried his best not to overburden you with questions on players and tactics and carefully chose the times where you were free enough to answer him.

In short, Nagi Seichiro was a weirdo. A weirdo you wanted to choke.

As the time went by, your perspective on Nagi was entirely transformed, despite yourself. You started to put extra care into his meals, go beyond what is required of you when it came to taking care of his training schedule and treatment and even sacrifice some of your free time in order to answer as much of his questions as you can.

One morning, as Nagi stepped in the room and smiled brightly at you, you found yourself moving in closer to him before raising your arms and catching him in a tight hug. Nagi almost stumbled in surprise, but managed to stable you both as he wrapped his hands behind your back. But before he could even utter a word, your mouth opened and a joyful, “Good morning Sei-chan!” came out.

Hyoma Chigiri:

“Are you sure you wish to be assigned to Chigiri?” Ego’s detached voice echoed in the almost empty hall, stopping you in your tracks. The results of the Blue Lock Entrance Exam for managers were just announced and the chosen eleven were asked to pack up and be ready to leave in a two-hours frame.

“You do realize that your rank actually qualifies you to become Itoshi’s Rin support, don’t you?” Ego’s fingers tapped on the table in a rhythmic manner, not stopping even as you glared at him.

“Yes, sir, I am well aware of that fact. But my decision will not change.” Your voice, calm and steady, caused Blue Lock’s host to grin, his raven locks falling to the side as he tilted his head to inspect you closely. “A calculative, rational and logical tactician as you, who managed to outrank all 600 other participants in a six hour long exam, is moved by mere personal emotions?”

It was hard for any regular person to detect the mockery dripping from each of Ego’s words and not feel their blood boiling within their veins. Only you slightly smirked at Ego, eyes curving in genuine mirth as you joyfully answered: “Yes! Is there any problem?”

All the struggles you have faced so far in order to reach this point were, after all, done for the sake of one person: Hyoma Chigiri. Specializing in medical treatment and athletic injuries as a manager was not a coincidence. You have long became aware of your intense desire to support Chigiri and aid him in his journey to achieve his dreams. No matter how many people laughed at you both, no matter how many criticized your choices and claimed you could do much, much better than an injured boy, playing on borrowed time, your resolve never shook.

As you finally locked eyes with Chigiri after your arrival at Blue Lock, you saw how his shoulders slightly trembled and his eyes widened, and your resolve was instantly renewed. Not many words were needed as you playfully extended your hand to shake Chigiri’s own. He was aware that you were there for him and that you will not change your mind no matter what he says or does.

Your duties at Blue Lock were slightly easier than your fellow managers simply due to the fact that you were already familiar with Chigiri’s routine. Needing no time to adjust, you dove head first into taking care of Chigiri, putting the well-being of his knee as your utmost priority. You tried your best not to bite your lips each time you bent down to take a look at the previously injured area, fully knowing that Chigiri has made his peace with the incident and was now focusing on moving on with no regrets.

Your favorite task to perform was, and still is, taking care of Chigiri’s silky hair. You were faced with his slightly damaged locks the day you arrived at Blue Lock’s building and Chigiri had to apologize a couple of times for ruining the hair you treasured the most. Ever since then, you returned to your usual task of picking hair products for him, drying and styling his hair depending on Chigiri’s schedule for the day. Braids were your go-to style but you also enjoyed changing things up, knowing that it made Chigiri happy each time you tried to come up with a new hairdo.

Now that you were finally reunited with your childhood friend and lover, you were ready to give it your all and see it all to its final end.

[seyaryminamoto]

Do you think canon Zuko has any understanding of the idea of duty? That he, especially given that he aspires to political power, should act like his status as Prince gives him certain responsibilities? That doing what's best for the for Fire Nation or the world might require him to do things which make him unhappy or uncomfortable or require him to make grave personal sacrifices? Does he even understand duty as a concept?

Oof. Complicated questions, thus, this sat in my inbox for a veeeery long time.

I honestly, seriously, genuinely... don't think Zuko truly understood, at any point in canon, what it really meant to be a leader. I know many of us (and I think you, too?) don't particularly like the comics, but in my opinion, The Promise did a surprisingly decent job at highlighting several problems left in the wake of the end of the war, and perhaps unintentionally, this is one of the problems: upon becoming Fire Lord, Zuko is remarkably erratic, unsure of his choices, even seeking advice from his FATHER, of all people, because he has no idea what he's doing.

In the most favorable possible view of Iroh, he taught Zuko to be a better person. I don't entirely adscribe to this belief, but fine, let's concede that he did, or else this answer would never end: not just because you're a good person, however, are you guaranteed to be a good leader. Zuko, as we both know, is far from the best person in the world, and he is prone to making impulsive, emotional mistakes that can cause harm and trouble, and typically, Zuko doesn't face the consequences of most his actions, or the narrative just pins the blame on someone else. When we see this sort of behavior in a real-life politician, the immediate reaction we would have is "this guy is awful at his job", and sadly, I find myself thinking that quite often when it comes to Zuko's canon tenure as Fire Lord.

So... what is Zuko's concept of duty? Going by his pursuit of Aang in the first two seasons, duty is a task given to him by someone whose approval he seeks (in this case, Ozai) and he must pull it off, no matter what, to gain said approval. By Book 3, this logic still applies fairly easily to how Zuko acts over Iroh: I've highlighted in the past that the main motivation for Zuko's redemption is Iroh, doing right by Iroh, making amends to Iroh, regretting how he treated Iroh. He points that out explicitly in Ember Island Players, he does it as well indirectly by bringing up Iroh first of all, when confronting Ozai: this is his main priority. Ergo... I'd honestly say it's safe to judge that this is what Zuko regards as duty, as what he has to do. Iroh wants him to be Fire Lord? That's exactly what he becomes. The difficulties and complications in this particular line of work are taken for granted, and so, we have an outcome that was remarkably well depicted in The Promise, despite that comic's many glaring flaws: Zuko gets swept back and forth, twisted left and right by all the pressures and responsibilities, because he has no idea what he's doing as Fire Lord, and no idea/experience in how to be a real leader.

As far as I can tell, the core of the matter is that nobody really seems to have taken Zuko all that seriously as future Fire Lord. Ozai, evidently, wasn't training Zuko to be his personal heir. Ozai himself is a questionable source of information regarding learning what it means to be Fire Lord, considering he, as well, wasn't raised to take that role, just as he didn't raise Zuko for it. Yet Iroh didn't exactly teach Zuko how to lead anyone either, as far as I can tell: his lessons were meant to be of a more personal nature, and even then, Zuko had lots of trouble accepting most of them. Iroh's firebending lessons to Zuko were typically stunted in the basics because he was hot-headed and rash about getting to the intense and interesting stuff...

So: neither Ozai nor Iroh gave Zuko actual responsibilities. Ozai gave him a punishment Zuko was trying to endure however possible, a punishment he wanted to prove himself unworthy of by finding the Avatar and "regaining his honor". Then, Iroh punished Zuko as well by giving him the cold shoulder in Book 3, then he escaped and Zuko did everything he did, after betraying Ozai, to prove himself worthy of Iroh's kindness once again. It's not actual duty, the way it is in Azula's case: no doubt, Azula wants Ozai's approval too, but she has the madman's trust when it comes to finding her brother and uncle, to taking down the Avatar, and to conquering Ba Sing Se, as far as anyone can tell. I do doubt Ozai gave her all these missions at once, but he gave her the resources through which she pulled off ALL of them: she had the firebending procession, she had a ship, she had a train-tank, she had mounts... Zuko had a rundown ship that looked like a 1:10 scale version of every other ship in the harbor back in the very third episode: he was being punished. In contrast, Azula is entrusted with a mission, with LEADERSHIP, while Zuko has no visible, tangible, objective experience with the latter (consider how Azula steals the Dai Li's loyalty from under Long Feng: when did we see Zuko pulling off something like this? Even with Jet, Zuko was more of an associate to the Freedom Fighters, and Jet was still the leader).

I've always thought Zuko wasn't prepared to be Fire Lord, and the main reasons are the ones you indirectly point out through this ask: Zuko doesn't seem to treat the throne as a responsibility, but as his right. I won't get tired of pointing out that this was NOT Zuko's birthright, he was NOT born thinking he'd be Fire Lord: he was born to the second branch in the Fire Nation family. We literally SEE the day in which Lu Ten's death is revealed to him. According to somewhat official sources? He's ELEVEN in Zuko Alone's flashbacks. I, personally, think he looks a little younger than that, but I think that's the official wikia age, no idea where they got that info but that's what it says. Meaning...

Zuko, objectively, only had been crown prince for FIVE YEARS.

Zuko was NOT raised, not by his mother, not by his father, with the belief that the throne would one day be his (Ursa is gone before Ozai is crowned and Ozai clearly wanted Azula for the job rather than Zuko).

And yet, when you backtrack to the show? It seriously looks like that was the case. He clings to the throne in Books 1 and 2 as though he had no other purpose in life, as though this was everything that was promised to him (in contrast, Azula only ever indicates wanting the throne in Sozin's Comet: Part One). Even when he's an outlaw, discarded and cast out, he STILL talks about the throne, as though most his identity were built upon the notion that he must become Fire Lord: why? How come? Within five years, he's crafted his entire existence around being the heir to the throne? That's... a bit weird.

And a bit wishful, too. Which is why I commend that the comics show him struggling as Fire Lord, if anything they should've had him struggling MORE than that, because Zuko is simply NOT prepared for these responsibilities. He never gave any indication, any sign, of seeing it as such. He sees it as his right, his birthRIGHT. Why? Why more people don't ponder how utterly strange this behavior is, beats me. But it really does bother me that Zuko built his entire existence around being Fire Lord in a very similar way to how Korra built her own about being the Avatar. I have very little praise to give LOK in general, but the premise of Korra learning she was a person, a human, and not just the Avatar felt like the perfect parallel to Aang's story, where he was very much anchored in his humility and belief that he was just "one kid", and his rejection of his duties as the Avatar was meant to change gradually as he learned to accept himself as he was. Korra, however, never fully hit the mark with this subject, in my personal opinion... much as Zuko doesn't hit the mark either, since the show's only direct attempt to "deconstrue" Zuko's clinging to the throne happens in one dialogue, and his attachment to the idea is built up again, right afterwards:

Zuko: And then ... then you would come and take your rightful place on the throne? Iroh: No. Someone new must take the throne. An idealist with a pure heart and unquestionable honor. It has to be you, Prince Zuko. Zuko: Unquestionable honor? But I've made so many mistakes. Iroh: Yes, you have. You've struggled; you've suffered, but you have always followed your own path. You restored your own honor, and only you can restore the honor of the Fire Nation. Zuko: I'll try, Uncle.

And there we have it. The only point in the show (that I can remember) where Zuko seemed to not feel worthy of the throne and questioned he should be the one sitting on it (RIGHTFULLY!), buuuuuuuut he goes right back to wanting it, right afterwards, based on how this single exchange was enough for him to be 100% determined to take down his sister, merely a few lines later.

As for his willingness to make personal sacrifices... some might say he was outright willing to die for Katara in the finale -- though I'll point out he was trying to redirect the lightning anyway, didn't do it as well as he should have, but he wasn't exactly, consciously, trying to DIE for her... --, some might say that he left Mai behind in the FIre Nation, and that as well was a sacrifice... but was it? We don't see him missing her, or suffering about her fate, at any point in time after SHE sacrifices herself for him in the Boiling Rock (my biggest gripe over this particular canon couple is this, tbh). I feel like the show generally presents Zuko's situation as somewhat... self-sacrificial? Especially in Books 1 and 2, and yet that's really not the case: it isn't Zuko himself who makes the choice of traveling to find Aang, it's a punishment inflicted upon him.

This particular view upon his circumstances makes it so Zuko is never responsible for... well, any of his choices? It's always someone else's fault, therefore, whatever he suffers through, there's always someone he can (and usually does) resent for it. Therefore... I can't genuinely think of anything Zuko sacrificed in order to come as far as he did. He was forced to let go of things by his father, typically, by Zhao as well, maybe, but even then, it's not like we saw that he has a super healthy and happy relationship with, I don't know, Earth Kingdom people (his only meaningful positive EK bond was with Jin, which went nowhere and goes forgotten after a single mini episode)? The Palace staff? The commoners of the Fire Nation (they just treat him like a hero and he seems awkward and distant about it anyway, like he can really just do without their worship)? He doesn't have other friends beyond Azula's own friends... thus, he doesn't sacrifice anything that really matters. And in a sense, some people might say he doesn't have to sacrifice anything at all: he already went through so much strife and struggle that why would he need to sacrifice anything else? But the thing is... you DO have to learn to make such sacrifices if you're going to be a good king.

So often, people who devote themselves to their jobs have to consciously neglect their families, to name one thing: Zuko neglects Mai and she explodes at him for it in The Promise, then he just tries to get her back at all costs in Smoke & Shadow, with no thoughts given to the fact that maybe he isn't ready to juggle both a relationship and the throne, that maybe Mai could be happier with someone other than him, someone who can give her the attention and relationship she's looking for... THOSE are the sacrifices I'd be referring to, personally, sacrifices where his happiness and peace of mind have to be set aside for the sake of something much more important than himself, and I expect that's the kind of sacrifices you're referring to, too. I seriously don't think he's ready to make them, and with the comics as reference, there's seriously no evidence to suggest he's prepared to accept these burdens that come with the heavy mantle of leadership and ruling. I've never seen any signs of him being ready for it, myself. Maybe I need to reexamine the show and see if maybe I'm missing something... but I don't really think I am.

The worst part, for me, is that Zuko isn't even doing the bulk of the things he's doing in pursuit of genuine happiness: he's doing it over a sense of destiny. He never stops to reason with that destiny, to wonder if maybe he doesn't need to be Fire Lord, if maybe he could have a life beyond that role. Book 2 veeeery briefly suggests he MIGHT be on his way to questioning that destiny, but as I've said before, I don't see the sense in Zuko's big change of heart after the Appa incident considering we don't really understand what he's learned, other than how to be the perfect nephew for Iroh, apparently. Zuko never really is happy, as he says in the show: his happiest moments are with Mai and they're only like a 25% of his relationship with her, everything else is a mess (and his relationship with her isn't exactly the core of his character, either). So, the way I see it... Zuko is even worse off than it looks at first glance. He's out to fulfill a destiny he has never stopped to reason with, a destiny he's 100% sure is his, despite he has only been on that path, objectively, for five years? Despite he wasn't raised all along under the belief that this was what he was supposed to be? If given a chance to be genuinely happy, what on earth would he even do? A lot of the growth I gave him in Gladiator was based on that particular question: is the throne really what Zuko needs to be happy? It doesn't look like it, even in canon. If it's not... then it's not happiness he seeks, it's some sort of sense of assurance that he's doing the right thing, according to the figure of authority he follows at a set point in time: by Book 3, said authority is Iroh, and Iroh wants him on the throne. His motivation, as far as I can see it, is as simple as that.

Long story short... I don't think Zuko really has a strong grasp on many concepts that he absolutely should have reasoned with and worked out in order to become Fire Lord. In a sense, he's way too young for the role he's given, for the heavy burdens he has to deal with, and I'll NEVER see the sense in not having Iroh taking the throne (beyond how "poetic" the creators and writers found it to crown Zuko to finish his story, of course), at least for a short time, before Zuko can be ready. This is exactly why I wrote things that way in my oneshot where Azula takes Zuko's role, more or less: Iroh serves as regent while Azula prepares for taking the full role of Fire Lord when she's ready. I love her, she's awesome, I absolutely adore her character... but I don't think an Azula who was sidelined and sent on a long voyage with her uncle for YEARS could possibly be ready for the responsibilities of being Fire Lord right away.

Meanwhile? Iroh was given leadership of military missions enough times that he became a general in the Fire Nation forces. By all evidence, he was Fire Lord Azulon's pampered and spoiled son, whom he DID prepare for the duties of a Fire Lord for as long as Iroh was born: Iroh literally had fifty-ish years of preparation, as far as I can tell? How is he NOT the better suited person to take the throne, if just temporarily, while his nephew learns what it really means to rule by watching him, or by maybe learning leadership by managing smaller duties first, a specific town or city, and then putting his knowledge to good use by becoming Fire Lord properly?

Eh... because it wouldn't be an epic enough finale for the show, I suppose. That's the only answer I can find for this particular question.

So... yeah. That got long :'D but in short... I don't think Zuko has a strong grasp on responsibility and duty, let alone on the burdens inherent to these concepts. Yet more reasons why his character's arc can't hit all the marks it should, imo, to make it as great as the whole fandom is already convinced it is.

[coffee-in-veins]

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[the-hopeless-haze]

Oh, My Precious Whore

A/N: didn’t really think I’d ever be posting fic on here again… but I am tired and need a distraction so… have this as a treat

Pairing: Claire Underwood x f!reader, implied Duncan Shepherd x f!reader

CW: derogatory pet names, implied smut (will not occur in full until the next part)

Description: idk this is just pure filth bc there’s a severe lack of f!reader fic and… Robin Wright is hot af. Also had to throw in some Duncan in there bc I love Cody Fern

Maybe you should feel worse right now about what you’re doing, but you don’t.

You, at the very least, should feel scared. The Underwoods, or well, Underwood... she was a powerful woman and if you stepped a millimeter out of place your life was likely in danger. Or so they said. Your in-laws were wary of her, you know, but she was wary of them, too. You think. She’s a difficult woman to read.

The rumors concerning the crimes her late husband supposedly committed are lengthy and convoluted, but you suspect they hold some truth to them. Most rumors usually aren’t based totally in fiction. Her husband was truly a ruthless motherfucker. Claire... Claire doesn’t seem to be ruthless. Nor does she seem to be what you would describe as a motherfucker.

No, she’s a cold hearted bitch. A bitter, sociopathic cunt.

But you never wanted what was good for you.

Sometimes, you swear you love Duncan and you wish it was easier to convince yourself. He a good husband, all things considered. Perhaps a little too focused on work, but... he treats you well to make up for it. He is loyal to a fault, if anyone ever was. You met him through a friend, and though it makes you feel guilty you used him in a vain attempt to get closer to Annette.

But Annette didn’t swing your way, as she told you in not so many words. Or, rather, she said, “Just be a good pet and marry my son. You on his arm will do well for everyone all around. Your dalliances on the side are no one’s business as long as you keep them secret enough that not even Duncan finds out.”

So you agreed, and accepted his proposal you figured she no doubt hounded him into. It’s not so much that you don’t like men, you do, and Duncan is such an attractive man, and he’s a thorough lover... it’s just you suppose you have a preference for women. Older women. You used to joke in high school that you wanted to be a high-end escort for rich older women getting away from their CEO husbands for the weekend.

But your parents would have never approved of that plan. So you went to law school instead. Which was fine. You make decent money without Duncan, but with him you’re somewhat of a young, hot power couple. You’re not really interested in policy the way his family is - you just like ingratiating yourself amongst these people with influence. You get off on brushing shoulders with the powerful. Parties don’t mean much to you. Everyone is truly an evil son of a bitch, no matter what they say when the cameras are on. No one cares about progress, not unless it’s self-serving.

The first time you met Claire, you thought you might die. She barely gave Duncan a second glance but you? She stood and chatted with you about your latest case your firm had taken - how she knew about it among all the other things on her mind, you don’t know - but it was a pleasant conversation, all things considered. You know her and Annette used to be close. You wonder how much Claire does know about you.

You know you can’t trust her. At all.

But after that incident, Duncan grinned and shook his head. “Wouldn’t want to give credence to those rumors. She might have it out for you.”

“Rumors?” You asked, panicking already. Did he know?

“That Claire is a lesbian. It’s been floating around some circles, that that’s why she wasn’t truly upset at her husband’s death, that that’s why she’s pushing so hard for female rights. It’s interesting. It is the first time I met her, but having done so it wouldn’t entirely surprise me.”

You can tell. That woman probably isn’t a lesbian, or if she is, she’s very good at utilizing her charm to make it seem as though she’s not. If anything, you’d peg her as asexual. She uses sex as a weapon. Fair enough. You’ve seen even weaker women feel the need to use it.

You wonder if she’s ever had sex purely for herself and not for manipulation purposes.

You wonder if she could even do that. You reckon you don’t really care if you found out the hard way.

It’s a few weeks later that you receive a message stating the President required your audience. And you know you should tell Annette, or Duncan at the very least, but you don’t. You know you shouldn’t show up at all. But Annette said to keep your dalliances secret. So secret they will stay.

“How loyal are you to the Shepherds?” Claire asks when you arrive. Straight to the point. Good.

“As loyal as I have to appear,” you tell her.

Claire smiles a little. “Why did you marry Duncan? He doesn’t seem quite your type.”

“And what do you presume my type is?”

“Perhaps more feminine. Older.”

“Mm. And what is your type, Ms President?”

“Why did you marry him? Did Annette threaten to out you?” she repeats.

“Not in so many words,” you say.

“Hmm. Interesting. He has no idea, I presume?”

“Why did you call me here?” you ask, your anxiety getting the better of you.

“I need information on the Shepherds. And I believe I have something you’d want in return.”

Your head starts spinning, but no, spinning is an understatement. It’s fucking doing somersaults. You cannot believe what she’s proposing.

“You want to prostitute yourself to me for information?”

And Claire does the last thing you ever expected the bitch to do. She walks across the room and slaps you across the face. Hard enough to sting, but not as hard as you bet she could. You feel the cold metal of her wedding ring press against your cheek as she grabs your chin, her cold blue eyes piercing through to your soul. “Don’t you dare fucking accuse the president of the United States of debasement, and don’t ever assume you have the upper hand.”

“Claire—“

“Are we on first name basis, slut?” she asks, her hand slithering down to your throat. Holy shit, you think. This bitch might actually fucking kill me. You think you’d care more if this wasn’t possibly the hottest thing that ever happened to you. “I didn’t think so. Now. What are your loyalties? Who are you closest to?”

“Duncan, obviously. Annette lets her guard down around me because she likes that I think she’s hot, but she still doesn’t like me. Bill and I don’t get along.”

“Interesting. How much does Duncan know?”

“I know more than Duncan.”

“Really, now? Are you just saying that? Because if you don’t prove to be useful...”

“What? You’ll kill me?”

Claire laughs. “No, you’re much more fun to me alive. But tell me… do you know where Duncan came from?”

“I mean, I truly don’t know how Annette’s cunt could birth anything, given how much of a bitch she is, but…”

Claire smiles. “Yes. Much more fun alive. Duncan is not her child.”

“Well, that’s a relief I don’t have any chance of keeping the Shepherd bloodline alive,” you snicker. “Where did he come from, then?”

“I’ll tell you… in time. But you have to tell him, too. In front of Annette and Bill. I want them all to know.”

“They’ll skin me alive if they knew I was here.”

“Do you want to fuck me or not? These are my terms.”

“So that is why I’m here?”

She only smirks at you, the wrinkles around her blue eyes crinkling as she does. “Your attraction to me is far more interesting than... well, men are pigs, right? I’m sure you are well aware. But you, you look at me like you want to fuck me, sure, but you also know your place. You respect me, even if you try to talk back. Men don’t know any better.”

“Have you ever slept with a woman before?”

She only smiles. “Does it matter?”

“Just wanted to know if there was credence to the rumors.”

“Rumors? You’re quite bold. I’m the one with my hand...wrapped around your throat.”

“It’d be pretty messy for you if you killed me right now,” you retort, wincing and rubbing your legs together as she increases the pressure on your neck.

“You’ll learn not to talk back, whore. To think you’re a married woman...”

“Yeah? Did you hold your marriage sacrosanct?”

There’s that smile again. She’s beautiful, ethereal, but there’s something so inhumane about the way her lips move upward to smirk at you. Maybe you should learn to shut your mouth, but you always were a brat. Besides, it’s more fun this way.

“I did.”

“Liar,” you accuse, smirking at her as you do, and she lets go of your throat and before you can miss the feeling too much she slaps your face again, the right cheek this time, much harder than the first time. You let out a startled, strangled moan on impulse, stumbling back a little against the wall.

“Oh, did that hurt?” she coos at you condescendingly, fixing a piece of your hair that fell out of place as you stand back up, pressing your back flat against the wall for stability. Claire crosses her arms and stands directly in front of you.

“I can take it. I can take more than that,” you say boldly.

“Oh? What else do you like, slut?”

“You name it, I’m game.”

“Anything? Handcuffs? Whips? Knives?”

You nod at everything she comes up with. Jesus, you would let this woman carve out your heart if she wanted it.

“If I make you bleed?”

“Better.”

“Interesting. Does Duncan play these little games with you?”

You laugh. “No.”

“You only want a woman to do these things to you?”

“Precisely. Are you kinky, Madam President?”

“Whatever my partner requires... I make certain I provide.”

“But what do you want?”

“I’m a hard woman to please.”

“Oh. Is that the kind way of saying Frank wasn’t good in bed?” you ask, feigning sympathy. She only smirks again. “I’m surprised you didn’t slap me for that. He must have really been awful.”

“You think you could do better?”

“Women do everything better,” you laugh, earning perhaps the only genuine smile you’ve gotten from this woman the whole time. “That’s why I wanted to know if you’ve been with a woman...”

“No. But I’ve thought about it. Never had a woman as interested as you.”

“I find that very hard to believe. Maybe you just never noticed. What gave it away?” You’re aching for her to touch you again, give you anything, even pain, but she stands still in front of you.

“I can just tell. Besides, I was interested to meet you. You’re the Shepherd’s weak link. I knew Annette didn’t vet you carefully enough.”

“Are you saying me being gay is an issue?”

“Are you so naive to think it wouldn’t be, given the state of this country?” she retorts. “But that’s not all. I can tell you don’t like them. I could tell you were easy... on more than one account.”

You roll your eyes. “I fucking hate Bill. I mean it’s awful to say, he’s not doing well physically, but he’s just made life a living hell for me.”

“Why?” she asks, tilting her head to the side.

“I don’t know. Maybe he hates gay people. Maybe he hates women. Both. Don’t know.”

“So everyone knows but Duncan? Funny how he’s kept out of all the good family secrets that concern him.”

You sigh. “See, sexuality’s a funny thing. I like Duncan. I do. And sometimes sex with him is good if not great. He’s a good partner. But I just prefer women.”

“Must be nice to have it figured out. Your generation did have it easier.”

You look at her questioningly. You never thought someone like her was human enough to struggle with such a thing, but perhaps that’s an unfair assessment.

Or she’s playing you.

Still. She’d have to be quite a good player - not that you should underestimate her skill - to talk about something as personal as her struggles with sexuality. Straight people just don’t get it. Would she really be this easily well versed if it was a game?

“There’s still a long ways to go,” you say.

“I intend to rectify that.”

“Of course you do.”

Her eyes narrow at you and she tilts her head. “Do you think I should be doing better?”

“Yeah. Come out, for starters.”

“Says the woman in a sham marriage.”

“It’s not a sham. I love Duncan,” you protest.

“Then why are you here, selling out his family just for a chance to fuck me? You’re not much better than I am.”

“I don’t think I’ve told you anything yet. Besides. It’s not his real family… as you say.”

“No. You haven’t told me anything I didn’t already know. But I haven’t fucked you yet either, have I?”

“Touché.”

“Come over here,” she beckons, leaning against the desk and once again it strikes you where you are - the fucking Oval Office. Are you seriously going to have sex in the Oval Office? Conservatives would be disgusted by this (although it wouldn’t be the first time this office was defiled). “Don’t look so scared now. You can’t back out at this point.”

You nod, trying not to look as nervous as you feel and walk the few steps over to her, your legs inches from hers. God, you’re practically dying from the anticipation alone.

“Does Duncan ever tell you how beautiful you are?” She asks. You’re absolutely shellshocked. There’s no trace of sarcasm in her voice.

“Sometimes,” you murmur.

“Just like men to not appreciate what they have.”

“Mm. Frank didn’t appreciate you, Claire? Didn’t make you feel good? I would. If you were my wife I’d make you come every fucking day,” you say, and boldly you decide to punctuate that statement by pressing your lips to hers.

Mistake. Or maybe not, you don’t know.

Her hands tangle in your hair and you feel her stand up, press against you firmly before backing you into the desk, pushing you onto it until your back is flat on the wood, and she’s hovering over you, her lips ghosting yours.

“I’m a hard woman to please,” she reiterates and you realize she never fucking lost her breath while you feel like the wind was knocked out of you. “I’m ambivalent about attention in general. But look at you, whore. You crave it, don’t you? Just want someone to tell you that you’re a good girl... oh, look at you squeeze your thighs together. Are you wet for me, slut?”

“Why don’t you see for yourself?” You ask, spreading your legs slightly for her.

She shakes her head, her straight platinum locks shifting as she does so, brushing against your face. “See? You’re not a good girl. You’re a dirty filthy whore and you just don’t know when to shut that whore mouth or close your fucking legs.”

You stay silent - you’re not sure what to do now. Do you antagonize her, push her further, see if it will rile her up again? Or do you try and kiss her again?

Claire has other ideas. “Beg,” she hisses in your ear. “Get down on your knees and beg for me.”

—- and I am evil and ending it there! Plz let me know if I should continue this!

[sgtjbbhasmyheart]

Drunk Texting Is(n’t) Bad for Your Health- Chapter Six (part 1)

Series Summary: Talk about your unconventional meet-cute! Bucky receives a text by mistake requesting he prove he's not Reader's sister. The easy dialogue between Reader and Bucky sparks a natural friendship, but could it lead to more? Bucky still deems himself unworthy of any form of affection or love. Reader is hellbent to prove him wrong. With the help of some (meddling) friends along the way, Bucky may get his happily-ever-after after all.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word Count: 3293

Warnings: ANGST, bad language words

A/N: Tumblr sucks. It forced me to split this chapter up because I exceeded the text block limit. That’s just how I write! Link to part 2 at the end.

A/N 2: Thank you again to everyone for showing this story so much love! And thank you to everyone for your patience and support as I struggled to put this out. As you can tell from the multiple parts, it was a doozy. 🥰 divider credit- @firefly-graphics​

In case you missed the update, I will be publishing a new chapter every other Saturday from here on out. Schedule is in the Masterlist in my header.

DO NOT copy or replicate without my permission.

Monday morning rolled around, and your good mood from the weekend followed you into the office. Spending all of Saturday and the majority of Sunday texting James had lent to this early morning cheerfulness. You couldn’t help the smile on your face. You had even managed to arrive before most of your team.  

You hummed a sweet melody as you booted up your computer and organized a few files for Timmons to peruse. They were statements intended for the press needing his approval about a particular prominent CEO or A-list celebrity client. The firm was not confirming nor denying any knowledge of said client’s whereabouts the previous week or why there was photographic evidence of them coming out of FlashDancers NYC. Other files included those seeking rebranding approval for existing companies looking to revamp their image.

Most importantly, today was contract signing day for Stark Industries. 

You had compiled the document from a generic template the company used for all its clients, manually plugging in Stark Industries’ information in the correct spots and changing or omitting any services rendered or not. E-signing contracts were not only environmentally responsible, but they also saved a lot of your time from printing out numerous copies of a single agreement.

All you needed now was Timmons’ go-ahead to email the contract, and Pepper Potts could plug in her Jane Hancock.

Seeing Timmons enter the workroom, tweed coat draped over his forearm and attaché in hand, you rose from the seat behind your desk. You shuffled into his office after him.

He hung his jacket from the coat rack in the corner near a bank of expansive windows and placed the small, leather case he’d been carrying on the sturdy oak desk. He pulled out a stack of papers and tapped the pile against the desktop to straighten them before setting them down. Looking up at you briefly, he tugged out his laptop next.

You positioned a mug of coffee on Timmons’ desk, turning the handle just so, making it easier for him to grab. You cleared your throat gently. He glanced up at you again.

“Here’s the media statements for today,” you said, handing him a group of manila folders. You smoothed down the hem of your cardigan, smiling at the reminder of Bucky. You wished there had been a way to apologize to him again. He had left your apartment with such a pained look on his face. Maybe you could ask Peter. “And the Stark contract pdf is ready to go. I can email it over to you for final approval.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Timmons replied absent-mindedly, lifting the organized piles on the desk as if looking for something.

“Oh, okay,” you returned, nodding your head diminutively. “Do you want me to forward the contract on to Ms. Potts, then?”

“Ah-ha!” Timmons exclaimed, plucking a pen from underneath a stack of envelopes. He twirled the writing implement in his hand and peered at you, finally taking in your presence for the first time that morning.

An uncomfortable feeling washed over you as he evaluated you from head to toe. What was he looking at? Your hands tensed into fists as you continued to wait for his answer, growing impatient.

“Should I go ahead and do that, then, sir?” you asked, folding your arms across your chest like a protective suit of armor to deflect prying eyes.

“Yes, yes. That should be acceptable,” Timmons answered.

It threw you off balance. What had gotten into him? Timmons always had to have the final say on everything. It was so unlike him!

“Just so we’re clear- I will be sending the Stark Industries contract via email to Pepper Potts to e-sign,” you said, seeking clarification. You wanted to dot all i’s and cross all t’s because you weren’t going to lay your ass on the line for a misunderstanding. Especially not with something as crucial as the Stark Industries account.

“What? No, there’s been a change of plans,” he corrected.

You stared at him dumbfounded. Was he purposely trying to give you mental whiplash?

“Change of plans,” you affirmed. “Has Stark Industries decided not to use the firm, sir?”

“Oh, no. They’re still going with us,” Timmons said, rearranging the clutter he’d made on his desk.

You dropped your arms to your sides, although inside, you felt like throwing them into the air in frustration. Why was he so vague? He was usually wholly transparent with you. “Would you mind explaining it to me, please?” you asked, borderline annoyed. “Last time I checked, Stark Industries’ contract signing was still on the calendar for today’s agenda.”

“And it still is,” Timmons acknowledged. “It’s moved to an in-person signing.”

Your stomach plunged to the floor. Shit! You hadn’t printed out the contract! When was the appointment? How much time did you have? So many questions flew through your head.

How could Timmons keep something like this from you? Your heart hammered in your chest. You practically wobbled on your feet. Were you going to be sick?

I’m going to get fucking fired over this, you thought, trying to steady your breathing.

“Will you be ready to go in twenty minutes?” Timmons questioned, sitting down in the comfy desk chair and opening his laptop.

“Go?” you squeaked, attempting to recall how much you had in savings. You shook your head, trying to understand his words. Was he already asking you to clear out your desk?

“Yes. The car will be here at nine,” he said, keyboard clacking as he typed something.

“Car?” you asked, finding great difficulty comprehending the situation. Your head felt like it was stuffed with cotton.

Timmons regarded you in bafflement. “Have you been drinking?”

“What? NO!” you declared. You didn’t need that added to “the inability to perform required tasks” as a reason for your firing.  “I’m-I’m just really confused, sir.”

“About what?” Timmons asked, sitting back in his chair, folding his hands in his lap.

“Well…” you started. “What do we need a car for?”

His chocolate brown eyes shone with what you imagined might be excitement. “To drive upstate, of course.” He smirked as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desktop.

Upstate? What was upstate?

Timmons’ smile broadened as realization crept across your face. “Are we-”

“Yup!” he interrupted gleefully. He was like a child in a candy store. “We are headed to the Avengers Compound with a personal invitation from Tony Stark himself!”

You blinked several times at your boss, not entirely computing what he’d said. You were usually a lot quicker on the uptake than this. Why were you having such an off-day? 

“We?” you asked, shaking your head clear of the cobwebs. Why on Earth would he bring you along?

“I need someone who knows the ins and outs of these contract signings,” he said, fiddling with his pen again.

Wasn’t that his job?

“I’m just the schmoozer- the people-person,” he admitted, shrugging. “You’re the real brains behind this whole operation.

You nodded your head in agreement. He wasn’t wrong. The office would collectively collapse without you, and it felt good to hear your actual boss say it out loud.

“You better not forget it, either. Especially when my job performance evaluation comes around,” you asserted.

Timmons swiftly saluted you as if he was the subordinate. You huffed a laugh at him while shaking your head with incredulity. You took a step or two toward the office door before looking over your shoulder at him.

Timmons had turned back to his laptop screen already and started typing again. “So, twenty minutes?” he asked with an air of levity.

You faltered, nearly tripping over your feet. “Wait? You were serious about that?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Timmons wondered, looking up hurriedly from his laptop.

“I need to print out the contract and make copies, for one thing,” you mentioned, almost accusatory. Maybe if he had warned you ahead of time, you wouldn’t be so defensive.

“Already taken care of,” he soothed.

“What do you mean it’s ‘already taken care of’?” you asked, raising your hands to make quotation marks with your fingers.

“I had one of the other grunts do it last night.”

You gaped at Timmons like a goldfish, mouth popping open and closed. Did you hear him correctly? Timmons did something to make your job easier? You could hug him right now! You felt like pinching yourself to make sure it wasn’t a dream.

Once you gathered your wits again, you glanced to your feet bashfully. “Oh,” you spoke, absently fingering the bottom button of your cardigan. “Thank you.” You smiled gratefully.

Timmons returned the smile with one of his own. “You’re welcome.”

“Nine o’clock, then,” you agreed, moving further toward the doorway.

“On the dot!”

Words couldn’t even begin to describe the Avengers Compound. You’d seen it on the news, sure, but that didn’t compare to seeing it in real life. It was grandiose, imposing. You felt dwarfed in size looking up to the high rooftop. 

It was almost ostentatious in a way. Much like the man who designed it. Larger than life.

Tony Stark.

Tony had insisted he take you and Timmons around on the tour of the compound. You still hadn’t seen the need for a tour.

“When Tony Stark invites you to tour the Avengers compound, you don’t say no,” Timmons had said in the car-ride up when you questioned why it was necessary.

It was all superfluous, really. Like Tony was trying to woo the firm to sign them, not the other way around.

A headache was forming at the base of your skull as you waited in line at the reception desk to return your visitor security badge.

The tour of the facility seemed to have been drug out longer than it needed. Tony had appeared overeager to show off every little gadget or trinket. Or maybe he just liked to hear himself talk.

When Timmons excepted the lunch invitation after the tour was completed, you felt the urge to run down to the armory, grab a gun, and shoot yourself in the foot. You were kicking yourself for ever agreeing to come on this dumb tour.

As the line slowly dragged forward, the muffled noise of men’s voices caught your ear. It sounded like an argument. Your line of sight followed to where the altercation originated.

Standing twenty feet away was Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, clearly disagreeing.

Your breath stilled as you watched the two super soldiers quarrel in a near-stage-whisper. What could they be fighting about?

From your place in line, you saw Bucky shake his head adamantly, his chestnut hair swishing about his shoulders. He might have even stamped his foot like a child, but you were too preoccupied with the look of abject horror on his face. He turned away as if to flee, but his friend caught him by the shoulder to stop him.

Were you causing this reaction from him?

You looked to your right to see if there was possibly someone else. All you noticed, though, was an empty space. Had you hurt Bucky’s feelings that badly? Your stomach clenched. The last thing you wanted was to be on an Avengers’ shit-list.

Glancing back to the two men, you caught Steve gesturing Bucky forward with short sweeping motions of his hands. Bucky shook his head again, stubbornly.

Even at this distance, you could feel the frustration rolling off Captain America.

Like a sucker-punch to the gut, you suddenly became very aware you were eavesdropping on Captain America and his best friend.

Your cheeks heated instantaneously, embarrassed of your staring. You shouldn’t be spying on them, you admonished. No matter how much your curiosity is piqued. 

It was none of your business.

You turned away from them, facing the reception desk again.

As hard as you tried not to pay attention, you could still see what looked like wild gesturing from the corner of your eye.

What if they started fighting? Shouldn’t you be conscious of your surroundings for your own safety? You fidgeted in your spot as you debated your moral compass.

Fuck it, you thought.

As you peered over to the two super soldiers, Steve shoved Bucky forward gently, causing the latter to trip over his booted feet. Bucky glared back at his friend, his hands clenching into fists. Steve shooed him further. You could barely make out the word “Go!” on his lips.

As if in slow motion, you eyed Bucky taking step after step toward you. Was he coming over here?

Once you realized what was happening, your heart plummeted to your knees as your head whipped around to the front of the line.

Bucky Barnes was definitely walking over to you. 

Had he noticed you staring?

You tried to stabilize your heart rate with slow, easy breaths, but Bucky was beside you much sooner than you could imagine.

A waft of aftershave hit your nose- woodsy and deliciously masculine. Your stomach swooped.

God, he smelled good.

Without having to turn your head, you could feel his brawny mass hovering near you.

How do you play this?

Perplexed? 

“Oh, my gosh! I had no idea you’d be here!” Of course, he wouldn’t believe that. This is where the Avengers lived. He’d probably think you were a stalker.

Apologetic?

“I’m so sorry Peter and I made fun of you! Will you ever forgive me?” Nah, too needy or clingy.

Or--

Before you could think of any other ways to portray the situation, you heard a large gush of air escape from Bucky. Was he nervous?

“Hey-hey, (Y/N),” he said, voice shaky.

You gazed to your left. Bucky looked as white as a ghost. Had his ego taken that big of a hit?

At that moment, you wanted to do nothing more than wrap him in your arms and tell him sorry, and everything would be okay. You couldn’t, of course. You didn’t know the guy. So you settled for the next best thing.

You smiled at him beatifically. “Hello, Mr. Barnes.”

Like a veil had been pulled, his demeanor changed instantly. He returned the smile. “Ja-” he started but scrunched his nose as if he’d made a mistake. “Please. Call me Bucky.”

“Okay, Bucky,” you replied.

Timmons turned around, ahead of you in line, and eyeballed you. You gave him a dismissive look, praying he wouldn’t butt in.

“So, you here visiting?” Bucky asked, observing the badge in your hand.

“Sorta. It’s a work thing,” you remarked, waving the plastic fob in the air. “Stark Industries has hired my firm as their PR representative. It was signing day.”

“Ah,” Bucky said, nodding in understanding.

“And I got the tour and lunch courtesy of Tony Stark,” you added.

“Oh, yeah?” Bucky’s eyebrows raised in interest. “What did you think?”

“Honestly?” You watched Bucky shake his head in agreement. “It was extremely overwhelming. How do you not get lost in this place?”

Bucky laughed. Crinkles appeared in the corners of his eyes, yet he looked so boyish. He was beautiful.

“When I first got here, I did several times,” he huffed. “Every hallway looks exactly the same!”

“Right?!” you exclaimed. “I kept thanking my lucky stars that I had a tour guide!” 

Timmons rolled his eyes and pivoted, facing front.

“Steve had to draw me a map to help me find my living quarters after the third time,” Bucky confessed, running a hand through his hair.

“Oh, no!” you empathized, bringing a hand up to cover your mouth. “That must have been so embarrassing!”

“Bird brain caught wind of it and gave me shit for weeks,” he lamented.

You gave him a confused look, not understanding who or what he was referring to.

Realizing his mistake, Bucky corrected, “Sorry. Bird brain is Sam.”

“Because he’s Falcon?”

Bucky bobbed his head yes, looking a little sheepish.

“It’s clever,” you grinned. “I like it.”

Bucky reciprocated the smile, and your chest warmed. It was a feeling you usually felt while texting James. Light and airy.

Finally making it to the reception desk, you relinquished your security badge to the pretty blonde in the too-tight sweater set. She handed you a clipboard to initial and fill out your departure time.

While signing, you surveyed the blonde as Bucky stepped closer. Her eyelashes fluttered rapidly, and she bit down on her bottom lip. Was she giving him bedroom eyes?

A new kind of warmth flooded your body. It felt a lot like jealousy as it snaked its way up to your ribs and circled your collarbones, which was absurd because you had no claim to this man. You’d met him one other time. Why would you feel this way?

Shoving the clipboard back at the receptionist, you spun toward Bucky. He regarded her politely and nodded, “Ma’am.”

Her shoulders slumped, and a frown slithered onto her painted lips. Somehow you felt triumphant, but not sure why. Bucky hadn’t picked you over her.

Your heart thumped harder in your chest as you walked side by side with Bucky, nearing the exit. You were suddenly overcome with the feeling of apologizing. What had you told James if you ever saw Bucky again? Apologize profusely and ask him to coffee.

You smiled at Bucky once again as he rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. The sound of a throat clearing resonated nearby. It wasn’t until you glanced up did you register Timmons standing so close. You had nearly forgotten about him.

Trying to gather your courage, you glimpsed between the two men. Bucky was squinting suspiciously at Timmons, and it made you chuckle lightly. “Easy tiger,” you assured. “That’s my boss, Roger Timmons.”

Bucky’s blue eyes widened a fraction, and he raised a hand in hello. “Sir.”

Timmons raised his chin in acknowledgment before looking down at his watch. You took it as his way of telling you to hurry up.

Okay, it’s now or never.

“Would you like to go to coffee with me?” Bucky blurted out, cheeks coloring pink.

Your eyes roamed across his handsome face. The boyishness was back, along with a touch of uncertainty. He was sweet, regardless of what the media claimed about him. Your lips curled up into a broad smile. “You read my mind,” you revealed, then winced. “That’s not one of your superpowers, is it?”

Bucky tittered. “No, no mind-reading.”

“Good,” you said, relieved.

“Whaddya say? Coffee?”

You dipped your head in a slow yes. “It’ll have to be after work, though.” You motioned over your shoulder with your thumb. “The slave driver over there is taking me back to the office to put me to work.”

Giggling, as you heard a scoff come from behind where you were standing, you reached into your purse and pulled out a pen and an old receipt. You quickly jotted down your work address. Handing it to Bucky, you began moving towards Timmons. “I get off at five,” you called. “I’ll meet you in the lobby.” You waved goodbye.

Bucky smirked. “Don’t work too hard!”

You flashed him one last smile before disappearing through the exit door.

You had a coffee date with Bucky Barnes!

You couldn’t believe it! The giddiness swelled inside you.

You gazed at Timmons’ profile as you walked to the waiting car parked at the curb. He had that look on his face.

It was a long drive back to the city. There was no way you could endure it if he started up now.

You gave a stern look before you stated, “Whatever you’re thinking, keep it to yourself.”

Timmons threw his hands up in mock surrender. “I wasn’t thinking anything.”

“Uh-huh,” you said dubiously. Timmons smiled smugly as you both climbed into the town car.

Chapter Five | Chapter 6 (part 2)

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[your-brilliant-lady-m]

Part 5 - Basic Concepts of Miraculous Ladybug: Guardians

Helloooo! Did you think I was done? No!

My PhD thesis chapters were approved last week, so have some celebratory meta. I haven't seen the latest Season 4 episodes, so do forgive me for not being up to date.

Welcome to the next part of my analysis of the basic concepts of Miraculous Ladybug. Today we are talking about Master Fu, Order of the Guardians and how little everything here makes sense. I highly recommend reading previous parts to fully understand this one, but I'll try to quote most parts of earlier posts.

Order of the Guardians

Order is an international and ancient organisation (New York Special showed us the guardian from North America and he was dressed like Su Han). Presumably, Miraculous jewels were created by these people. Guardians are responsible for the preservation of jewels and knowledge about them. They also distribute Miraculouses to worthy people around the world to combat mostly magical threats, but sometimes jewels are used against normal threats too. It's implied that Master Fu used Miraculouses during WW2 when he was in Paris. Perhaps he performed some spywork with Marianne, but the magical nature of his interferences was discovered and he was forced to flee, before returning to France many decades later.

Why does the Order need so many people to take care of a 3 Miracle Boxes? If its only purpose is to preserve knowledge, keep magical secrets and distribute Miraculous jewels then wouldn't it be more logical to have Master-Apprentice system? It's much easier to keep magic knowledge a secret and train a few people in martial arts than doing the same in the self-sufficient temple full of people, keeping in mind that a good part of them are teenagers and children, who are bad at keeping secrets. Also a single person can travel around the world much easier to give out Miraculouses. Imagine that we have a few active guardians traveling the world with Boxes. What do other people at the temple do in the meantime? They teach the next generation about the powers of each Miraculous and Mirakung Fu, but besides that?

Master-Apprentice system gives us more personal conflict between Fu and his mentor and makes his relationship with Marinette and Adrien more nuanced. In this scenario Fu accidentally caused the death of his Master at 14 because he wasn't careful. It makes sense for him to take on only 1 or 2 students if this is how things were done with Miraculous Guardians. This Wang Fu is very cautious and protective, he spent the majority of his life afraid of hurting someone else and never took an apprentice as a result. But now he is ready to try again, since he is not getting any younger and he likes these 2 kids. He wants them to succeed. Maybe Master Fu, becomes the father figure for Adrien in this situation and a guide for Marinette. Just think about it. This way writers avoid the need to develop all these extra characters (Su Han) and traditions related to the Order. All inconsistencies I mentioned before and later in this post are gone now! Hell, even memory loss and the changing of the Miracle Box shape could make more sense. We also raise the stakes post-amnesia, if it happens of course (the whole Season 3 finale didn't make sense, so stay tuned for my next meta). Marinette and Adrien are on their own now, there's no one who can give them answers. It's very fun scenario, which has potential to be brilliant. Any thoughts on that?

The existence of Order of the Guardians is not quite a secret, at least it wasn't in XIX century China. Master Fu in "Feast" says that guardianship was considered "a great honor". It implies that people who lived close to the temple of the Order knew about Miraculouses and what exactly guardians did for the greater good.

The existence of other Miracle Boxes around the world makes sense from a real-life perspective. Writers have the ability to create many stories set in the same universe and use them for merchandise and an almost unlimited amount of content. Judging by the unholy amount of specials in production, this is exactly what the creators are going to do. It probably won't go down well, but who knows?

However, it doesn't work in our main story. The main conflict is Paris-centred. Gabriel's motivations revolve around Emilie's resurrection and Season 4 gives us more reasons to suspect that Adrien's mom wasn't as wonderful as everyone says. Hawkmoth still remains the main villain of the show and most likely it's going to stay that way. There's no point in moving the main story to different places for the sake of introducing more Miracle Boxes from around the world. Ladybug and Chat Noir aren't needed to fight something halfway across the world unless Hawkmoth also changes locations.

LB and CN are centrepieces of this franchise. They brought success and money to ZAG. Creators constantly need to remind the audience that this new piece of media with new characters who will never be mentioned again is connected to Miraculous Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir. Writers have to come up with reasons to include our heroic duo into the story even if makes no sense.

New York Special had to introduce American Heroes whose names rarely come up in the fandom because people stopped caring about them or their stories shortly after the release of the Special. I barely saw any content dedicated to them. In order to bring LB and CN into the story, you have to include Hawkmoth too. Gabriel suddenly needs to get his hands on the Eagle Miraculous and goes to USA. Marinette and Adrien suddenly have a class trip to New York. Unfortunately, their presence in this story is required only to expand the world of Miraculous and attract fans of the show, so that they could keep an eye on new content related to newly introduced characters.

In the end, it's not their story. Events of the special don't affect main story of the show and the development of the love square is merely an illusion, because Adrien and Marinette are no closer than before. In season 4 LB and CN are growing apart and their test of trust in NY Special doesn't matter. Perhaps, some people don't see it that way and it's their right, but I find it hard to see NYS as a valid contribution to canon. I mean, even people in large portion of the fandom state in the tags on AO3 that "specials are not canon", "specials didn't happen" or "ignores both specials". It speaks volumes about continuity and preferences of your fandom.

Shanghai Special didn't give us more information about the Order, which is located in China, history of Miraculous jewels. We still don't know much about how Gabriel and Emilie found Peacock and Butterfly. Maybe, Marinette's family had connections to Miraculous jewels. Maybe, Adrien does some snooping and discovers research his parents made while Gabriel is away. All of these are relevant to the main story. However, we got something much different in the end.

Marinette chases Adrien across the globe and they make new friends. Fey becomes Ladydragon and now has a direct contact with Marinette through her uncle. Gabriel's desire to get his hands on the Prodigious comes out of nowhere. Apparently, he had been planning this trip for years, presumably even before Adrien was born. It probably happened at the same time as Agrestes found 2 Miraculouses. He bought bracelet-key (which is also a Miraculous apparently, but its Kwami is a Guardian of the Prodigious and they existed separately for a very long time - and let us not dwell on this mess) from some shady mafia boss, who can easily find out just who Gabriel really is (fashion designer billionaire) and use this information to blackmail him. This Special didn't answer important questions, but it gave us a new superhero character.

The real question is whether Miraculous as a project will survive long enough for writers to create content for every minor character they introduced in all specials. This is only a beginning after all.

Miraculous is not a global show and it can't be globalised in a way that makes sense, at least with Ladybug and Chat Noir in the centre of action. Case closed.

Mirakung Fu

I liked the idea of Mirakung Fu introduced in "Furious Fu". It makes sense and things rarely do in this show. Miraculous grants its holder superhuman strength, stamina, endurance and ability to fight. This means that essentially transformed heroes are guided by magic in combat. There's nothing personal in the way Miraculous holders fight. You can predict their moves and learn how to fight this magic guidance, which is what Su Han does.

However, if the holder has any special training, skills or knows any martial art in their civilian life then they become more dangerous opponents during transformation because now their fighting is a mix of magical moves and their personal knowledge, tricks and style. Therefore, Adrien and Kagami as skilful fencers have more chances of winning against someone who knows Mirakung Fu than Marinette, for example.

Memory loss

At the end of season 3, we find out several things:

apparently, now Miracle Box can change appearance to suit its guardian;

when Guardian passes down the Miracle Box to someone else, they lose memories not only about everything related to Miraculous, but also about pretty much everything in their life (Fu doesn't recognise Marianne, instead he experiences the love at first sight)

Master Fu trains Marinette to be the proper holder and next Guardian off-screen. He says that her training as the holder is complete in "Feast" and wants her to become the next Guardian. Fu told her lots of things, and yet, he never mentioned the fact that he would lose his memory after relinquishing the box, nor the fact that Marinette would lose her memory afterwards. She finds out about this from Wayzz after the battle with Miracle Queen and the letter that Master Fu gave her. That's not proper training! How on Earth do you forget to mention this memory loss? How?

Master Fu's amnesia is a convenient plot device that removes him from the narrative almost completely. That's mostly all there is to it. Why? Because it doesn't make sense.

Fu was around 7 or 8 when he started his training. The disaster at the temple happened when he was 14. He stated that his training was never complete, which means that he never passed any magical ritual, never swore an oath or was bound by some kind of spell that made him subjected to the rule of memory loss.

Miracle Boxes belonged to the order, not Fu. Their design reflected their country of origin because these Miraculous were made and kept in China. They were just standing there on the shelves not magically bound to anyone in particular. When Feast attacked, monks just tossed Wang Fu the miracle box and grimoire. No one at the temple lost their memory after Fu took the box with him (Su Han is the proof). Su Han not only remembers Fu and his mistake but everything that happened that fateful day as well. In "Furious Fu" Marinette explains Su Han that Master Fu lost his memory in the very first conversation they have. However, after Ladybug and Chat Noir fight Su Han on the roof and escape with the Miracle Box, the latter searches for Fu and attempts to take his staff from him. In this scene, Su Han acts like Fu knows very well what is going on and who he is.

Su Han should be aware of the memory loss rule as the Celestial Guardian. He remarks on the different shape of the Mother Miracle Box and calls her "incorrect", which means that Su Han should have been able to easily tell that previous Guardian lost his memory and the Miracle Box is now bound to someone else. But he doesn't say anything. Moreover, since Su Han is supposed to know about amnesia, he seemed awfully chill about forcing this 14-year-old girl in front of him to give up the box and her memories. Hell, Chat Noir wasn't on board with this. But we get zero reaction from Su Han.

During the first conversation between Marinette and Su Han, he doesn't ignore what she is trying to say, instead he actively comments on every word. Even if Su Han didn't listen when Marinette told him about Fu's memory loss, than he still should be able to understand that Fu doesn't recognise him, because of common sense and the "incorrect" shape of the box. But nothing of the sort happens. Because writers apparently forgot that "memory loss" is supposed to be known to everyone in the Order. On-screen it looks like Su Han is not aware of the "amnesia rule".

"Furious Fu" makes the concept of memory loss a plothole no matter how you look at it. Just like "Timetagger" and "Chat Blanc", as well as "Kwamibuster" this episode is not consistent within itself. It does not surprise me, however.

Grimoire and Guardian Staffs

Let's talk about the Miraculous Grimoire. Good things first.

There are no illustrations of Miraculouses in camouflage. Kwami can't read its contents, only guardians can. Certain elements are written in riddles as an additional precaution. The book contains only the information people have learned so far, which means that Miraculouses have more unexplored potential ("Mr. Pigeon 72"). It describes powers of each Miraculous, provides information about weapons, has instructions for potions that don't make sense (see previous parts).

Unfortunately, everything is about to go downhill from here.

Guardians are taught how to read the writing in this book. They can read it just like people learn to read texts in a different language. This means that one can read Grimoire like any other book (you don't need to consult some guide to decode each letter or word). Master Fu proclaimed Marinette an almost fully trained Guardian. He should have taught her how to read the Grimoire then (he doesn't know the code very well, but he knew enough to understand the general meaning and content of the book according to "Collector"). He didn't. We don't know why. He shows her powers of every Miraculous but doesn't teach her the code.

Master Fu knows that Grimoire now belongs to Gabriel Agreste. He knows that it's dangerous for someone else to have it. If they knew how to read the Grimoire, they could discover all secrets of Miraculouses and harm Ladybug, Chat Noir and other heroes. It's very important to keep the information about the code top secret because Fu is not the only one with the source material.

What does he do then? Master Fu proceeds to write a French translation of Grimoire for Marinette, a translation that he doesn't even need. He carries it with him at all times on a tablet (without any precautions) just like the Miracle box after "Feast". Naturally, it means that in "Miracle Queen", Gabriel and Nathalie easily managed to get their hands on the tablet and Miracle Box. It allows the plot to happen, sure. But it doesn't make any sense.

"Furious Fu" created another curious plot hole. It will probably be ignored, of course. Su Han has a staff with a magical compass that allows him to find any Miracle box, but not the Miraculous jewels for some reason. How does the staff work? Can it locate the box without the Miraculous? If yes, then it seems useless. What's the point in the ability to locate an empty box? If it can locate the box only with the Miraculous jewels inside, it implies that the staff can track the location of every Miraculous too. So, Su Han could just locate the Butterfly and Peacock without any problem. But he talks about reassigning Ladybug and Black Cat to adults and defeating Hawkmoth like locating the Butterfly is not possible. This situation makes the Guardian Staff a simple plot device that creates plot holes and its only purpose is to explain how Su Han found Marinette.

Also, I have a few more words to say about this. Master Fu had a Guardian Staff that was never mentioned before. I wonder why? That's because the staff didn't exist before "Furious Fu" was written. Writers just went: "Do you know what would be cool? If Fu's cane was really a secret Guardian Staff with a compass all along that he decided to keep even after he lost his memory? It would make people wonder whether Master Fu is faking amnesia, and everyone will definitely call him an awful mentor after this even though we kind of tried to make him a good and responsible person."

Fu didn't give it to Marinette and didn't mention it to her. Why? When he gave up his memory, he should have written about this in his letter at least. Why did he decide to keep it? He can't use it anyway now.

Please note how in the flashbacks Fu didn't take any staff with him when he escaped the temple. Su Han seemed to know how Fu's staff looked like. It means that Master Fu didn't make this staff himself, because it belonged to the Order.

Su Han wasn't even surprised that Marinette didn't have the staff as the current Guardian. Was she not supposed to have it? He never questioned the fact that the former Guardian without memories has the staff. Su Han actually returns this staff to Fu after he is deakumatized and Fu acts like they have never met before. Why did Su Han gave the staff back when he knows what it is and to whom it should belong (to him or to Marinette as the current Guardian)? The staff is useless in the hands of the civilian. Does Marianne know about its secret? We'll probably never find out, unfortunately.

Guardian Staff of Master Fu has a compass too and therefore this also makes it a plot device, just like Su Han's staff.