#so I think the one piece is actually a land where the gods coexisted with humans for many centuries

[strawhatboy]

maybe the one piece was the friends we made along the way

[quazartranslates]

Welcome to the Nightmare Game II - CH16

**This is an edited machine translation. For more information, please [click here]**

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Chapter 16: Journey (First Half) {cw: parent death}

Across the polar ice sheets and mountains and rivers, the aircraft landed in an oasis on the border of the Sea of Tranquility desert. If you continued on, you would enter the domain of the Dragon Ant Queen. This aircraft that didn’t have any loyalty markings could not enter. Her field hung over this desert, and outsiders had to walk through the desert to find the legendary valley and enter her underground kingdom.　

Dozens of tribes, large and small, lived near the valley of the Underground Ant City. They lived in simple grass houses built of reeds and desert poplars, and lived a hard life tending sheep, but they had built luxurious tombs for generation after generation of Dragon Ant Queens.

During the demon invasion over 20 years ago, they survived under the protection of the Dragon Ant Queen. Although tribespeople were killed from time to time in the evil tide every month, they still stubbornly survived and had continued to this day.

The successive Dragon Ant Queens represented the neutral force between the humans and demons. She didn't make enemies with the Holy See, and sometimes even protected human beings, but her identity as a devil makes her position subtle and suspicious. Human beings once feared her, but when the human world was devastated by the wanton invasion of demons, the Underground Ant City she ruled became a land of sin where humans would survive. There, demons coexisted with human beings, and though they were hostile to each other, when the evil tide came every month, they were forced to unite to fight against this test of life and death.

The yellow sand covered the sky, the wind was roaring, and this withered land groaned and sang in despair.

The guard of the Valentines tribe who was on rotation narrowed his eyes. He saw a figure in the swirling yellow sand that was coming towards him. He suspected that he had mistaken the stone forest as a figure and he couldn't help blinking hard, trying to squeeze the sand that captivated his eyes aside. But when he opened his eyes again, the figure was just ahead.

He was wrapped in a white robe against the wind, and the robe was covered with traces of wind and sand. He pulled down his hood and showed a pair of blue eyes, just like the cloudless sky on a hot sunny day.

"Hey friend, where are you from?" asked the brown-skinned Valentine.

Every year, there were always many people who came to the Underground Ant City to seek the Queen’s asylum. When they arrived here, they were often already in a state of hardship, even having no provisions left, only hungry and cold. The kind-hearted people in the tribe would always take out their small amount of food and invite them to have a good meal, and then cheerily show them the way into the Underground Ant City.

The Valentine people shared everything they owned warmly, generously, and happily, even if they lived in this barren land and were poor and strained all their lives.

"I'm from Neverland." He was dusty, hoarse, and pale, but his eyes were firm.

The Valentine stood in awe: "You just crossed the desert? A few days ago, the high priest said that there was a huge storm coming. I was afraid that many people had died. Did you encounter it?"

The traveler nodded: "Lost the camel."

"It's just a camel, at least you haven't lost yourself. This is rare luck to have in the desert." The Valentine said enthusiastically, "Come rest with our tribe. Today is the Bonfire Festival; young girls will come out to dance, we’ll all gather and have fun together, and start again tomorrow morning. The Underground Ant City isn’t far away!"

"Thank you."

The lone traveler rested with the Valentine tribe, and the Valentine guard warmly invited him to have dinner in his home. When the traveler took out the precious spices he carried with him, the guard danced happily and called a dozen neighbors in one breath. They killed a sheep, the man set up a grill, and the woman drew water from the well. Finally, they tasted this delicious roast lamb together without any other fixings, and repeatedly praised the magic of spices. Even the traveler's eagle was given a piece of the delicious roast lamb. It was clever with language and praised the sumptuous dinner, which attracted Valentines’ laughter.

At night, the bonfire was lit in the middle of the village and the tribespeople kept adding firewood to make it burn more brightly. The flaming fire dyed the sky a brilliant red. The old people in the tribe played with rough instruments, while the men and women dressed up and danced around the bonfire. The young girls were shy and waited for the boys to invite them to dance or even propose marriage.

The annual Bonfire Festival was actually a grand collective wedding. The young people in this tribe had no complicated wedding ceremonies. They only needed to invite their favorite girls to dance in front of the bonfire, and take out gifts for their sweetheart after the dance. Once the other party accepted them, their wedding would be completed.

This barren land couldn't support grand weddings, but as long as lovers really love each other, the ceremony is not important.

The traveler looked at the lively dancing from a distance. After taking off his robe, his tall and straight body and handsome appearance could be seen. The girls from the Valentine tribe glanced at him frequently. One bold girl even took the initiative to invite him to dance. She wasn’t annoyed when she was rejected, but ran back happily holding her skirt and whispered to her companions.

The traveler had to sneak away and took his eagle to the stone forest outside the village. Here there was a wind-eroded hill with steep walls, full of wind-eroded boulders and wind-eroded columns. The eagle glided in the night sky while he jumped onto a wind-eroded column several meters high and sat on it, watching the tribe with their glowing bonfire from a distance. Music, laughter, applause, the excitement of this world echoed in this desert, which made people feel excited and eager to walk into bright joy and forget all their troubles and pains.

This excitement reminded travelers of the Twilight Township’s founding day celebrations. On that day, the whole Village of Twilight was also as lively as this. There was only the one day in a year when the sunset would be replaced by a bright starry sky. People would go out of their homes, walk through the streets and have fun, or enjoy fireworks rising from the sea or on the beach, blooming in a beautiful canopy.

On that day when he was still young, and only on that day, his mother would brace herself up from her sickbed, take him by the hand, and take to the streets to watch fireworks on the beach. He sang to her and she always smiled and touched his head to encourage him. Such memories made him sincerely happy.

But this little happiness didn't last forever. Mother's hand was thinner every year. The palm that once wrapped around his could no longer hold him. Instead, his could wrap around her hands—a pair of skinny hands.

Later, she finally couldn't even get out of the house, so on the founding day of each year he didn't go to the beach to watch fireworks, but stayed with her at home. Sometimes she was awake, but sometimes she was asleep. He sat on the floor beside her bed watching the sporadic fireworks from the window, quietly watching them as they bloomed and then extinguished, just like her.

He knew that she was going to leave him, and that there was nothing he could do. He could only pray day after day, asking God to slow down, slow down, don't take away his only relative just yet, don't leave him alone.

But she still left. That year, he was thirteen years old.

After her death, he was sent to the Holy See. Every year, on the Twilight Township’s founding day, he wanted to go back and see it, but he always missed it because of one thing or another. Until one year, he finally took the time to return to the Twilight Township.

But he didn't go to the beach to watch fireworks. He spent it with her at her tombstone.

On the way to the church’s graveyard, crowds flocked to the square and the beach. He walked in secluded alleys and avoided the crowds. Could that joy belong to him? He didn't know, he only felt lonely. For a moment, he even had such a confused thought: At this moment, is Father God watching over this lonely creature?

So he mused in his heart: Please turn to me and have mercy on me, because I am lonely and miserable. Please look after my hardships and sufferings, and forgive all my sins.

Fireworks flew and exploded in the sky. The colourful fireworks attracted screams and laughter from the crowd. He stood in front of her tombstone and looked up.

Every year was so lively, exactly the same as in his childhood memories, but he never had the luck to have a person to watch fireworks with him.

Yes, he did.

He had it.

—What God had prepared for those who loved him was what the eyes had never seen, the ears had never heard, and the heart had never thought of.

It was miraculous and inconceivable, which caused his heart to wander with an oath day and night, but before he could speak it, he was already silenced. Later, the miracle slept in the tree tomb, and the fallen flowers gradually covered his face, but it appeared again and again in his memory. He carefully held this memory and made it accompany him clearly every day.

It was just that he never dared to think about this oath again, because he couldn’t say it anymore. No one could say it anymore.

He also dreamed of him, and each time he lost this heart of his, but even if they met in such a nightmare, it was better than the many nights without dreams. He stayed up all night, accompanied by the bonfire until dawn.

This kind of love was happiness and pain.

It was passionate, but also quiet.

His mind was opened and he was grateful, even if he would willingly spend his whole life in turmoil.

He was grateful for everything in his life.

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Editor’s Notes: A small correction: in the earlier chapter where Qi Leren read Ning Zhou’s letter, I had it say “demon tide” rather than “evil tide”. This has now been changed.

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[rosewould]

*･༓☾ bloodshot // johnny ☽༓･*

chapter i // masterlist

*pairing* you x johnny + jungwoo

*chapter rating* mature

*warnings* gore (I'll put a marker up to where it starts and ends for the squeamish), explicit sexual content, mentions of slurs and sexism

*word count* 2.4k

*disclaimer(s)* I obviously don't think johnny or any other members would act this way. Please don't take anything I write seriously as it is just for fun. I in no way view idols differently and inappropriately in real life because of my smuts or any of their contents!

((TW: you “injure yourself” in this chapter but it’s not driven by any mental health circumstances))

♥　♡　♥　♡　♥　♡　♥

Well, everyone thinks you're crazy now. You really didn't think kicking a toothpick under your toenail would catch this many headlines. Or maybe it was the reason you did it that has everyone's panties in a twist.

"Popular Streamer _____ Injures Herself After Altercation with Fellow Streamer jonssuh"

You had to prove your point. You had no desire to be cordial with that son of a bitch.

"Come on, ___. You love me, right?" Johnny taps on his cheek with his index finger. The gesture was seemingly in slow motion as your blood boiled. You wanted to knock that stupid grin off his face. You balled your fists tightly as the men- no, boys laughed at his joke. Or lack thereof.

"You're so overdramatic." Lucas rolls his eyes at your stubbornness. You felt triumphant as you felt the boys getting upset. Finally their smug acts were over. It was suffocating. You glared at the two massive men as they leaned on the kitchen island, glaring back at you.

"You actually hate Johnny?" You turn to see Mark on the sofa, pushing himself forward a little so he can see beyond the other men on the sofa. His face read of concern. Good. He should be concerned.

"That's what I've been trying to fucking tell everyone. My viewers, you guys, the commentary youtubers, your viewers, everyone! I'm not joking, I was never joking, I could sleep easy knowing I'd never see Johnny again." You turn your gaze back at Johnny who had that amused smirk back on his face.

"You're so full of shit, you know that?"

"And why is that?" You maneuver around the island to stand firmly in front of the human skyscraper. You felt your adrenaline pumping as the air grew more tense.

"Okay guys this is getting stupid. Stop before you do something dumb." Taeyong piped up, you could hear the annoyance in his voice. You stayed put, awaiting Johnny's response. He tilts his head upward and crosses his arms, feigning deep thought.

"Well I don't know, you always seem to be around me. And hm... I don't know... the fact that I did nothing to you." The venom in Johnny's voice made you shift in place with glee. It was very difficult to not smile. You were successfully getting under his skin.

Finally a man among your mutual streamer friends was the one someone made squirm for someone else's amusement. No more sexism and just flat out being a jerk for shock value. Or to just solely make you feel like shit while everyone else laughed. Now you were laughing while Johnny gritted his teeth.

"You see, you did do something and you know you did. Look it's just my personal opinion that you're a piece of dog shit." You finally let a smile stretch across your features as you let one of his signature lines rip.

"Ah, so that's what this is about?" Johnny scoffed, shifting his weight.

"Those are just jokes. You always take them way too seriously."

You feel the power dynamic shifting again. No, you weren't going to let him use this idiotic defense to gain his position back.

"If those are jokes then you're a shitty comedian." You walk closer to him, looking straight into his eyes as you over-enunciate each letter in your insult.

"Everyone else seems to like them." Johnny shrugs, keeping his composure. The dynamic was shifting once more. You snort at his reply.

"Who's "everyone"? The little boys in this room?" You hear the boys grumble in protest around you.

"Or your 12 year old fans who think saying the N word is a punchline. Very impressive audience, Kevin Hart." You chuckle. Johnny stayed quiet for a while nodding as he shifted back and forth. You could feel how no one was on your side, but you muscled forward, trying to ignore it.

"So you're telling me you hate me, because of some stupid jokes-"

You laugh loudly.

"Of course you take two steps back when you're backed into a corner."

"We're not stupid, ____. I get it, I'm a popular streamer and beef with me would get you some decent numbers. But keep it on stream, babe." He pats your shoulder and attempts to move past you.

"I would rather kick a toothpick under my toenail than be forced to coexist with you. I promise it's not a publicity stunt." You cross your arms tightly.

"Oh yeah?" Johnny's footsteps thunder past you as he reaches for a package of toothpicks. He brings them to the island, dumping them onto the countertop. Countless toothpicks clatter onto the granite, some spilling over onto the linoleum tiles. The guys groan and protest in the background, most notably, Taeyong.

"See- This is what the fuck I'm talking about, man. You guys are so fucking ridiculous."

(gore marker)

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

It was the anger that Taeyong didn't understand why you loathed this man. It was the way Johnny's nostrils flared at you as he gestured to the toothpicks that egged you on. Your movements are theatrical as you take two fingers to lift a single toothpick from the countertop.

"No fucking way?!" Lucas cackled in disbelief. Everyone watched in awe as you saunter to the nearest wall, placing the toothpick under your right big toenail.

"____ cut it out! What the fuck?" Taeyong shot up from the couch, attempting to stop you but it was too late. The mixture of searing pain and screeches of disbelief and disgust overwhelmed your senses. The room spun as your eyesight faded in and out. You stumbled backwards but Taeyong caught you before you could fall. Your toe was burning hot while blood ran down from the wound in various directions. You didn't want to look at it. Taeyong scoops you up and quickly whisks you away to the bathroom.

The maddening discourse was just blurred background noise as Taeyong sat you on the toilet. Your vision was going blurry, hearing going in and out as Taeyong reprimanded you. You couldn't decipher a word he was saying.

"Could you shut up and take it out please." Hot tears poured down your cheeks. Taeyong paused, shutting the bathroom door. The decrease in volume brought you back down to earth. Unfortunately, this meant the pain was clear as well. You inhale sharply before exhaling shakily. Your foot shook violently as you finally saw the viscera. You whimpered worriedly, in disbelief at yourself. Your hands shook as well as you grabbed for something, anything. One hand landed on Taeyong's arm. The other tugged a towel off a bar, the poorly assembled bar coming down as well with a loud clang.

You began to sob, not knowing how to deal with the excruciating pain. You choked, looking away as Taeyong finally removed the toothpick. Your lips tremble as you attempt to stifle your sobs. You squeeze Taeyong's arm but your body never stops shaking.

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

"I'm sorry... I didn't know you were serious."

"You still laughed." Your voice quivered. The words came out louder than you anticipated. Johnny probably heard that. Great.

You hiss loudly as Taeyong applies peroxide.

"You need to go to the hospital, this is worse than I thought."

"Yeah, whatever." You stay turned away from him and the wound. You hear him sigh.

You gave permission to Lucas to tell the story on his stream. You wanted people to know that you will not just sit pretty and giggle while a greasy man talks down to you. You do not associate with Johnny Suh. And now the world finally understood this fact.

Except, your plan backfired. People think you're insane. For good reason. The more days go by, the more idiotic you feel. Of course if backfired. Also, "jonssuh" was bigger than you. Of course people would side with him no matter what.

"People hate me now." You see the opportunity to steal Jisoo's knight, so quickly you do so.

"Checkmate." Jisoo utters as you realize your king is fucked from all directions.

"Fuck."

"You always take the bait so fast. Also, who cares if a bunch of racist white boys hate you. They're all probably 13 anyways." Jisoo starts to put the pieces away but you stop her.

"One more round. Also, that's what I said. But let's be real, they're not all 13. Full grown adults are calling me over-sensitive. Some of them are female as well. That shit hurts." You set up your side with a pout.

"Even so, their opinions still don't matter. They have horrible senses of humor. If "go make me a sandwich" makes them laugh, their opinion is no longer valid." You make you first move.

"I guess."

Even so, the comments and tweets still stuck in your brain. Some of the boys defend you over social media which made you feel a lot better. At the same time, however, it made you feel worse. Your mind flashes back to that night, the things the guys screamed were finally clear.

Mark was just repeating "oh my god" over and over while gagging. Lucas obnoxiously screamed "YOOO!". Typical. While Johnny... well he pressed both hands to either side of his head, repeating,

"You were serious?"

Yes you dipshit. How could he be so dense?

How are men this influential over you?

-

You wished Jungwoo streamed. He's so funny and sweet. Not to mention he would stick up for you with no hesitation when you were with the other streamers.

"I would've just slapped him as soon as he said you take his "jokes" too seriously."

"I know." You melted into Jungwoo as he traced shapes into your arm. Your cheek squished against his bare chest as his other hand smoothed over your hair. Your legs tangled together under the covers. Jungwoo kicks them away, muttering something about being hot. The motion causes his legs to brush firmly against your panty clad core. You whimper, digging your nails into the flesh of his bicep.

"Are you needy, princess?"

You nod sheepishly, humping lightly against his leg. He climbs on top of you, spreading your legs apart with his own. He grinds his bulge against your mound, sending shots of electricity up your legs. You look up into his dark eyes. His dark hair messy and half wet. His mouth hung open as he looked at your half naked figure with want.

You twitch, trying desperately to get as much friction as possible. His motions deepen as he grinds against you. You wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him closer. His thrusts get shorter, brushing perfectly against your hardened clit. Your lips brush against his, both breathing heavily. Your moans become audible as your legs quiver slightly.

He pulls away before freeing his newly erect penis. He jerks it a few times before pushing your panties aside and entering your sopping hole. Strangled noises escape your throat as he bottoms out. You use your legs to pull him even closer. You whimper loudly at how deep his tip burrowed into you.

His hips are poetic as they sway back and forth. His cock was warm and hard as a rock as it moved in and out of you. Your noses bump against each other as he bites your bottom lip. His moans whine and tempt as they twist into your ears. He bites the lobe of your left ear as his love noises increase in volume. You dig your heels into his ass as you let out shallow open-mouthed breaths.

Jungwoo slides his hands underneath your ass to give it a firm squeeze. While doing so he pushes himself even deeper than you imagined he could go. You curse and writhe, raking his back with your fingernails. You bite his shoulder, tears threatening to spill as your stomach tightens. Your wetness spread all over both of your upper thighs. His cock was nearly lost in a sea of your juices as it plummeted deep inside you.

Getting closer, you start bucking upwards. You chased your high feverishly, encouraged by the passion behind your hatred for Johnny Suh. You thought of him. You thought of him as you snapped your hips towards Jungwoo's. You grunt hungrily, thighs quaking as you blindly chased your high.

"I'm so fucking close-" You breathe out as you grind your hips up to meet his. He snaps his hips against yours, movements more erratic and moans more determined. Your pelvis feels hot, stomach tightly wound, and legs going increasingly numb as his cock barreling into you sends you over the edge. Your moans border on a scream as you tug at Jungwoo's hair.

You trail your nails down his neck and back as he continues to thrust sloppily. His hips snap violently a few more times as he ribbons sperm into you. Your chests heave against each other, skin searing hot to the touch.

"Is all that pent up frustration gone now?" He nuzzles his head into the crook of your neck as he laughs. You just nod breathlessly. Your stomach flutters as he peppers soft kisses all over your neck and shoulder.

"I could tell that guy really pissed you off."

"Well it was more than just Johnny."

You were both silent for a moment.

“Taeyong too?” He lifts his head to look at you cautiously. You just nod wordlessly.

“It’s also the constant losing fight. I think it may be better to just separate myself from them completely.”

Jungwoo slides off of you, snuggling into your side.

“It must be really difficult.”

You pout slightly, tears pricking at your eyes. You were being such a baby.

“Yeah.”

“Especially with Taeyong not siding with you before the toothpick intervened. I honestly thought you and Taeyong would be an item.”

“Me too.” You chuckled, it seemed so stupid now.

“But he’s in a relationship now, with someone he knows I’ve hated for years now.” Saying it out loud, you couldn’t chuckle anymore.

“This is just a shitty situation, huh?” You force a smile, looking over at Jungwoo. He was far from smiling, however. It almost looked like he was going to cry for you.

“I’m so sorry you have to go through this, ___.” Jungwoo snuggled even closer to you, nuzzling his head into your shoulder again.

“Yeah, me too.” You replied numbly. You didn't know if you regretted Lucas telling his stream or... the entire thing.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚　끝　˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

[eidetictelekinetic]

Fic Interview Meme

Thanks for the tag, @rubickk7 !

How many works do you have on AO3? 

I have 115 fics.

What’s your total AO3 wordcount?

1,553,954

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

On AO3:

The Magicians (TV) (28)

A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin (21)

Inception (2010) (20)

Suits (US TV) (17)

Game of Thrones (TV) (12)

Black Sails (7)

Supernatural (6)

The Avengers (Marvel Movies) (5)

A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms (5)

The Tudors (TV) (3)

The Hobbit - All Media Types (2)

X-Men (Movieverse) (2)

Marvel Cinematic Universe (2)

The Hobbit (Jackson Movies) (2)

Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies) (2)

X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies) (2)

American Gods - Neil Gaiman (1)

Conviction (TV 2006) (1)

16th Century CE RPF (1)

Star Wars Legends - All Media Types (1)

Star Wars - All Media Types (1)

Star Wars Sequel Trilogy (1)

Whitechapel (TV) (1)

Chronicles of Narnia (Movies) (1)

Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett (1)

Here’s the list from my fanfiction.net days (some overlap here):

Song of the Lioness

Star Wars

Stargate: SG-1

Harry Potter

In The Forests of the Night

X-Men: The Movie

Circle of Magic

Doctor Who

House, M.D.

Wicked

Law and Order: SVU

Torchwood

Charmed

Primeval

NCIS

Tudors

Inception

Supernatural

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The Lady of Rivers and Storms [ASOIAF]: When Lysa miscarries Petyr's child before anyone learns of her pregnancy, her father negotiates a different marriage for her instead. Married to the second Baratheon son, will the future be any easier for either of them?

In the Middle (Before I Knew I Had Begun) [Suits]: It's an accident, when Mike touches Lyla. But everything follows from there. (Or maybe everything follows from the moment Rhi saw the golden tiger and all she could think was how beautiful she was.)

Skyfall Is Where We Start [ASOIAF]: 'At least Stannis won't laugh at Renly if the boy tries to follow him around when he's a bit older and takes a tumble on the flagstones. It's not much, not much at all, but perhaps it's enough to be going on with.'

Robert never loved his brothers, but this is not a story about Robert. This is about Stannis, and Renly, and glimpses of how they might have been different, had they let themselves love each other as brothers usually do.

Breakin’ Out the Institution [Suits]: “OK, so, before we start, a few things you should know about me. My name’s Mike Ross, not Rick Sorkin. I am a lawyer, I just didn’t go to Harvard. But you should hear me out anyway.”

Where Mike is actually a lawyer, a Brooklyn ADA looking for a change of pace, and gatecrashes Harvey's interviews entirely on purpose.

Lay Me Down (Pockets Full of Stones) [The Magicians]: The world spins, and Quentin doesn’t even feel his knees buckle, or how his head hits the wall on the way down. All he knows is the fall into the quiet dark.

In which Quentin survives the events of 4.13 by taking such bad care of himself he never actually makes it to the Mirror Realm. Also in which everyone loses him for a day, and Eliot is Not Happy about this.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Yeah; I like getting responses to my comments so I do my best to reply to comments I get.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I had to go back to fanfiction.net for this because I never crossposted these to AO3, but Kiss My Eyes for The Tudors. It was Anne of Cleves/Cromwell, which was tragic mostly because it was historically compliant so a deathfic. Honorable mention, same fandom, was And In That Hour, Charles Brandon/Margaret Tudor and Charles Brandon/Henry VIII, unrequited love for the latter. 

Fun fact about the latter, it was the first m/m fic I ever wrote; the deal was I’d write a slash fic if one of my forum friends did a femslash one.

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve ever written?

Ha. Hahahahahaha. So, back when I was 17-18 I was working on a verse titled A Moment To Be Real, and it was a crossover verse that, taking all the relevant fics into account, included Charmed, Primeval, the Whoniverse, and NCIS in major capacities. In more minor capacities, the plans for the verse also included Fringe, Supernatural, Stargate SG1/Atlantis, and Warehouse 13. Oh, and there were two main timelines and two minor ones the stories spent time in. Heh. Yeah, that was a thing, yes it was way too big a project and I didn’t finish it, but I truly think that working to juggle all that was very helpful to my later work. 

I don’t write a lot of major crossovers anymore, but I tend to just... live in the idea that certain canons can feasibly coexist so when I can do little crossover cameos I like to do them. One recent exception is return to the sunlit lands, which is a Magicians/Narnia crossover.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Not recently; a long time ago back on ff.net, I left a comment that was misunderstood as hate (I said something was bad, meaning the characters’ situation, but the author thought I meant her writing) and the author of that fic responded in kind. Once I clarified, they were nicer in a subsequent review. I’ve been very lucky in that regard; I’ve had friends who have had to deal with a lot of drama in that sense.

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I didn’t for a long time, but recently I’ve begun to! So far, it’s been m/m and f/f, though there was an intentionally-vague m/m/f scene and I’m... currently avoiding writing a more detailed one because I’m nervous as hell about it, lol.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge. 

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes, actually! Two of my older ASOIAF fics, All the Traveled Roads and I Will Not Fall, I Will Not Break have translations, which is just really neat to me.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

About ten years ago I was working on a joint project about modern day Tudors; never did get posted, alas. I’m not sure I’d be very well suited to co-writing a single story; co-writing a verse where different authors do different stories might work, though.

What’s your all time favorite ship?

God, I have no idea, but I still and always have strong feelings about Sam/Jack from Stargate SG1, so let’s go with that for longevity?

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

A Moment To Be Real, actually; it’s not so much that I want to finish it as that I know I won’t and I regret it. I have another verse that I probably won’t finish but one of these days I’ll at least post an outline of where I saw it going so that there will be some degree of closure. Pretty much every other fic has at least a faint chance I might go back to it, or I genuinely don’t want to.

What are your writing strengths?

Worldbuilding and handling the moving pieces of a canon divergent AU. I’ve also been told I’m pretty good with ensembles.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Action scenes, which is unfortunate when I find myself definitely needing to write a battle, and I suspect is part of my smut hang-ups too.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I have done it occasionally, but honestly I feel it’s usually easier to italicize English dialogue and put the other language in the narration - I think it’s probably easier to read, too.

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

Stargate SG1

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

I couldn’t possibly pick one, really.

Tagging @theemightypen @cosmonauthill @jayneladybright @ofthedirewolves @portraitofemmy @nellie-elizabeth @mihrsuri

[ehyeh-joshua]

God of Dragons

@greater-than-the-sword - rather than dragging your post further off-topic, I decided to finally get around to writing this up.

If you honestly want to grapple with the Bible, it becomes essential to consider our ancient scaled friend/enemy the dragon. The Scriptures leave no alternative but to declare that man walked with dinosaurs.

The Hebrew word that we translate as “dragon” is Tannin, and like all ancient Hebrew thought, is not a specific species, but a genera – to us, we categorise things by qualities – we use “pencil” and “pen” and “quill” to describe specific classes of objects; to the mindset of Biblical Hebrew, they are all the same; you write with them.

What Tannin refers to is any large, dangerous reptile, whether on land, at sea or in the air, and while it would include them, it doesn't actually mean our modern understanding of dragon, which having being split from it's roots in historical creatures, is now mythical. (although such creatures are mentioned)

In the Septuagint – the Greek translation of the Old Testament that was considered the Old Testament for the Greek-speaking early church – the word Tannin is translated by “Drakkon” which is the root for our word “dragon”.

The word Tannin is used 23 times in Scripture:(note-all the citations are quoted in full at the end, truncated here for brevity)

Singular form:

Nehemiah 2:13; Psalm 91:13; Isaiah 27:1 and 51:9; Jeremiah 51:34; Ezekiel 29:3,  Exodus 7:9, 7:10 and 7:12,  and Genesis 1:21.

Plural form:

Deuteronomy 32:33,  Job 7:12 and Job 30:29, Psalms 44:19, 74:13; and 148:7, Isaiah 13:22 Jeremiah 9:11, 10:22, 14:6, 49:33 and 51:37 and Ezekiel 32:2.

The second word we need to have in mind is Leviatan – this is the creature we think of when we think of dragon. This word is used five times in four verses:  Job 41:1, Psalm 74:14 and 104:26, and twice in Isaiah 27:1. Like Tannin, Leviatan is translated in the Septuagint by “drakkon”.

Leviatan has the longest description, having nearly a whole chapter devoted to describing it at the end of Job – this is the strongest evidence, as this is God Himself describing this creature as an example of His own power.

One of the reasons I like Dragons so much is that God has set them as a testimony to Himself.

Sadly, this is perhaps the most mistranslated word in modern English Bibles; most English Bibles insert jackals into these verses wherever the Scriptures undeniably mean literal creatures, doing so because of the wrong belief that dragons are mythical.

The thing is, Hebrew has a word that actually means jackal; it is the same as that for “fox”, and for good reason, as they are known to be able to interbreed, and are therefore the same baramin. That word is “sha’ul”.

Nehemiah 4:3 for example; 'Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, “Yes, what they are building—if a fox goes up on it he will break down their stone wall!”'

He’s trying to say that despite the fact that the fox/jackal is such a small and weak animal, it could crush the walls the Jews were building; he’s insulting them. By contrast, a dragon smashing down a wall is kind of what you would expect to happen, and throughout the Prophets, the threat of dragons overwhelming a city is used to express judgement.

Compiling all these references gives us a huge amount of information about these creatures, some of it (most of it in fact) directly from God describing what we would understand as a water drake.

Firstly, that the purpose of these creatures is to give glory to God.

Secondly, it tells us that these are huge reptiles that are very dangerous; enough that the mere threat of them is enough to put a city of people to fleeing for safety – a quarter of the times Tannin is used, it is referring to this terror.

If a city got overrun with jackals, a single person could chase them out; a decent thickness stick as a club, and they scatter. A host of people working together could do it easily. They are mildly dangerous, but they have absolutely nothing on levyatan, which the Scriptures equate to Tannin. A Dragon however? An armoured, fire breathing dragon?

That is dangerous; one dragon is enough to be a risk to an entire region, they are apex predators, there is absolutely no shortage of stories of the danger dragons possess.

Now, if you had an entire city overrun by dragons? You’re not going to reclaim that. Not on the Bronze/Iron age technology possessed by Ancient Israel. Roman Ballistae might have a chance, and a Macedonian Phalanx could make a melee fight in the open stick, but I wouldn’t want to try that kind of a battle without at least trebuchet, if not cannon. And this is from a guy who knows how to solo a T-Rex; T-Rex has one primary weapon, the bite. The solution is a fuck-off amount of three feet long spikes covering your whole body, that way it can’t bite you without facing it’s own mortal peril. You could probably win with a spear, but I’d rather have the spikes.

Dragons? Fire. The accounts of dragons possessing fire-breathing capability are nearly universal, and it is far more reasonable than you might think; using the Bombardier Beetle as a baseline, to breath fire a dragon needs the reaction of hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone, catalysed by catalase and peroxidase; the reactants are ejected from separated storage areas into the front of the open mouth, where the reaction begins in conjunction with the rush of oxygen from heavy breathing out, causing both the reaction and the expellation of the reactants. Range could be comfortably over ten metres and still sufficient to cause burns and scalding on the victim.

Coincidentally, but rather obvious when you think about it, dragon stories generally stop after the invention of cannon, and by the 1800s, almost stop completely outside of Native American tribes.

It is therefore plain that reading the text and allowing the text to explain itself leads to the conclusion that Tannin/Levyatan are a race of immense and dangerous monsters, usually serpent-like but again not always, who’s presence is like the judgement of God, and which God Himself uses to say how awesome He is that He made them and controls their fates. Note also the contrast - the Babylonians had their gods being scared of these monsters, but right from the beginning God takes ownership of them.

The Bible tells us how these creatures lived, where they lived, their diet, their habitat, to an extent their way of life; and it exists as part of material from all over the world that shows that man and dinosaur coexisted. And if humans and dinosaurs coexisted, evolutionary beliefs about ages collapse.

----

Nehemiah 2:13;  “I went out by night by the Valley Gate to the Dragon Spring and to the Dung Gate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that were broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire.”- presumably, the Dragon spring was a well or spring that was named for a resident/visitor dragon.

Psalm 91:13; “You will tread on lion and viper; you will trample young lion and dragon.” - the point is to talk about the protection of God; the claim about jackals makes no sense, and using serpent instead has already been covered. Further, the Septuagint uses Drakkon here.

Isaiah 27:1; “In that day GOD will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent with His fierce, great, strong sword, Leviathan the twisted serpent! He will slay the dragon in the sea.” Again, entirely pointless unless it refers to either a real animal, or a mythologised version of a real animal. 

Isaiah 51:9; “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of GOD, awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not You who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?” Again, a pointless exercise if not referring to an actual event.

Jeremiah 51:34; “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured me, crushed me, set me aside like an empty dish, swallowed me up like a dragon, filled his belly with my delicacies, rinsed me away.” Jackals cannot eat even a whole arm, and certainly cannot swallow a whole man as the similie depends on; whereas plenty of large carnivorous dinosaurs could.

Ezekiel 29:3, “Speak and say, thus says the LORD GOD: ‘Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh King of Egypt, the great dragon lying in his rivers, who says: “My Nile is my own—I made it for myself.” The idea is to convey that Egypt believes itself to be extremely powerful, before it is cast down in judgement.

Exodus 7:9, 7:10 and 7:12; “So Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh and did as Adonai had commanded. Aaron threw down his staff before Pharaoh and before his servants, and it became a dragon. Then Pharaoh called for the wise men and the sorcerers, and they too, the magicians of Egypt, did the same with their secret arts. For each man threw down his staff, and they became dragons. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs.” Not much to say here, although the Septuagint again uses drakkon both times, instead of one of the words that means a snake.

Genesis 1:21; “And God created the great dragons and every living soul that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their nature, and every winged fowl after its nature; and God saw that it was good.” This is one of the few times the Septuagint uses keytos (whale) to translate Tannin, however, dragons are traditionally associated with the sea and sky, so it makes sense that they are created on day 5.

Plural form:

Deuteronomy 32:33: “Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.” This also informs us that some dragons were poisonous, a feature noted of certain dinosaurs, and never with jackals.

Job 7:12; “Am I a sea, or a dragon, that you set a watch over me?” Again linking dragons to the sea.

Job 30:29; “I am a brother to the dragons, & a companion to the ostriches.” By this, he is continuing his theme, and he means he is alone, ostracised from the community. Jackals however, operate in packs. 

Psalms 44:19; “Though you have broken us in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death.” Doesn’t tell us much this one, as it’s relying on the nature of tanninim to convey the situation.

Psalms 74:13; “You split open the sea by your strength; You broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.” Possibly a reference to the Flood.

Psalms 148:7; “Praise the LORD from the earth, you dragons, and all deeps:” An intriguing statement, given extra-Biblical documentation of dragon intelligence, which some sources put as near-Human.

Isaiah 13:21; “But wild animals will lie down there, and their houses will be full of howling creatures; there ostriches will dwell, and there wild goats will dance.” while it doesn’t say dragon, it says howling creatures, Wycliffe was happy to write dragouns as his translation solely from the sound identified, and it has to be inquired why he did so if humans could not have encountered dragons to record the sound.

Isaiah 13:22; " And the wild beasts shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.” Given the reference is about animals being used as tools for judgement, it’s no surprise that dragons are mentioned.

Jeremiah 9:11; “I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a lair of dragons, and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.” Again, a judgement making the city uninhabitable.

Jeremiah 10:22;  “Behold, the noise of the bruit is come, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah desolate, and a den of dragons.“ again, dragons used as a symbol of judgement.

Jeremiah 14:6; 2and the wild asses stood in the high places, they snuffed up the wind like dragons; their eyes failed because there was no grass.“ This gives us information about how dragons breathed, which is something very difficult to know unless you either witnessed it or heard from someone who had.

Jeremiah 49:33; “And Hazor shall be a dwelling for dragons, and a desolation for ever: there shall no man abide there, nor any son of man dwell in it.“ Again, using dragons as a symbol of judgement.

Jeremiah 51:37; “And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwellingplace for dragons, an astonishment, and a hissing, without an inhabitant.” Jeremiah again uses the presence of dragons as a judgement.

 Ezekiel 32:2 “ “Son of man, raise a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt and say to him: “You consider yourself a lion of the nations, but you are like a dragon in the seas; you burst forth in your rivers, trouble the waters with your feet, and foul their rivers.”Not much to say here.

[fortunatelylori]

This episode is more convoluted than the crypts of Winterfell

Disclaimer: Proceed with caution! There is snark ahead! I repeat: There is snark ahead! It had to be done, people. If I had to sit down and actually take this episode seriously, I would have lost my freaking mind!

So it happened. The first episode of season 8 aired. The leaks were true and I am now officially dead inside. Let’s get started. 

General Impressions

Trying to review this episode is an extremely challenging exercise. There is no cohesiveness to it, no narrative strand to tie it all together. In an ideal world, an episode should be linked by a common theme. It should have a structure that pushes you towards the end from the very first scene onward. 

Here the writers have completely given up on even pretending they care about structure and plot progression. They’re essentially jumping from scene to scene like a freaking gymnast on crack. 

Surprised that Euron managed to travel to Essos and back and Cersei still hasn’t grown her hair? Seems dubious to you that the Wall gang not only survived the Wall falling but managed to get to Last Hearth through zombie infested territory? How about Ned Umber traveling all the way to Winterfell and back to Last Hearth just in time to die a pointlessly shocking and gratuitous death? 

Well, I’m here to tell you to knock it off! GOT does not give a shit. This show has its priorities straight. And those priorities are: 

Pretty pictures of people being dismembered, burned alive or generally dying painful deaths. 

Porn ... we got to get that porn quota up, you guys! Just you ladies, of course! Who the hell wants to see naked men on this show?!?! Not the Ds certainly. That would be yikey. 

For the sake of my own sanity, I’m going to try and bring some order to the chaos by splitting the episode into 3 main story lines. I’m extremely generous here because 2 of those story lines are barely there at all, and the other one is not linked together by anything other than location: 

Story A 

Winterfell is turned into a Big Brother type house where everyone that ever hated each other is now forced to coexist. If I were to pick a main character in this story line it would probably be Jon. 

The problem is Jon is confused and confusing so watching him work his way through this meandering plot is painfully strange and frustrating. And that’s because his POV continues to be, at least, partly hidden, meaning that I never get any idea of what the hell he’s doing or what is actually driving him in this episode. 

Generally this would allow for some sort of character reveal at the end of the episode when all these loose ends would be brought together and we’d finally know what Jon is up to but these are the Ds. They’re going to milk the ambiguity for all its worth and in true Ds fashion run it into the ground from sheer exhaustion. 

If I were to summarize Jon’s story line in this episode it’s: Jon arrives at Winterfell and proceeds to be flabbergasted that the people he knew would be upset that he bent the knee, are actually upset that he bent the knee. He rides a dragon and gets down to some PDA in the middle of nowhere because he needs to amuse the royal bush. He reunites with his long lost family members and spends most of the episode sulking because Sansa is giving him the cold shoulder. 

I feel like I’ll be saying this a lot but this is not a story line. This is a character aimlessly drifting from scene to scene whose reactions don’t make much sense. 

Then there’s the parentage reveal: 

This goes just about as bad as you’d expect. The dialogue is slightly sophomoric with John Bradley being forced to deliver this line straight: 

Your mother was Lyanna Stark. And your father, your real father, was Rhaegar Targareyen. You’ve never been a bastard. You’re Aegon Targareyen, true heir to the Iron Throne. 

This little bit of exposition here just sounds off and strange, despite Bradley’s best efforts to soldier through it. Not to mention that the writers are ripping themselves off by having Sam parrot basically the same thing Bran said in season 7. 

But the real problem with this scene is ... and I’m very sorry to say it ... Kit Harrington. He just doesn’t deliver. He doesn’t find the right tone and reactions to the monumental reveal and the whole scene falls flat on its stupid, exposition face. 

It’s made even worse that this scene is following the Tarlys burning reveal in which John Bradley does, without a doubt, the best bit of acting in the whole episode. 

The Tarlys reveal is a strange and off kilter scene as well but Bradley sells you on Sam’s grief and horror so you’re instantly in his corner, which in turn helps ground the entire piece. 

Harington doesn’t manage to do that so the scene ends up not amounting to much of anything other than setting up the future plot point of Jon and D*ny as rivals to the Iron Throne. We’ve known the truth of Jon’s parentage since season 6. What’s interesting to us in this scene is how Jon reacts to the news and we want to be given the opportunity to commiserate with him. Alas, we never get the chance. 

Story B 

The King’s Landing plot. This is not really a plot. More like an amalgamation of scenes that are sporadically thrown at you in haphazard fashion, with the only goal of setting up plot points for future episodes.

 In quick succession we get Euron and Cersei having sex (off screen). Lena gets about 10 seconds to act some sort of emotion once the business is concluded and we’re off to the next plot point. 

Theon and Yara reunite and separate within the span of 5 minutes and Bronn is off to kill the Lannister brothers - one man sent into hostile territory, in the freezing winter, with a crossbow. What could go wrong here? ... WHO CARES?!?! PORRRRRN!

The funniest thing about this plot is that the White Walkers are treated as an after thought at best. 

Cersei is more upset she didn’t get her elephants. How much do you want to bet that the Ds blew their CGI elephant budget on the dragons? Speaking of which, should we start putting up flyers for Ghost? Lassie has been MIA for a while now, guys. I don’t think she’s coming back this time. 

Bronn is trying to get it on with the 3 prostitutes in what is easily one of the least sexy scenes I’ve ever seen in my life. The 3 ladies of the night, however, seem determined to kill his buzz with talks of dragons disfiguring people. I guess everyone in Westeros is a fan of D*ny’s children, right? You know what they say: no press is bad press and all that. 

Story C

The Wall gang meet up at Last Hearth and, in true redneck style, get down to some barbecue! 

Again this isn’t a story line. It’s just two scenes hobbled together for the purposes of: 

Exposition: we know that they’re going to ride to Winterfell and arrive in the next episode so we’ll have all of our main characters in place for the big battle in episode three. 

Gratuitous child murder: 

Complete with a strange parallel to this: 

I take no credit for this connection. It was pointed out to me by @and-holly-goes-lightly​. At this point they’re just hitting us over the head with the clues that once the Night King is dead, D*ny is the next, big bad. 

And putting the fear of God into the audience when they realize they’ll have at least 1 episode of night scenes: 

Do you see anything? Yeah ... hope you enjoy darkness for a full hour because that’s exactly what you’re going to get. 

Favorite scenes

The opening sequence: 

The writers swore up and down that the first episode of season 8 would be filled with callbacks to the pilot. The only one that lands, in my opinion, and makes a good counterpoint is this scene. Visually, it looks amazing. We have a little Bran stand in to act as the POV and we have Arya watching her beloved brother finally arrive home. 

It’s poignant and unsettling at the same time. When I watched it the first time, I wasn’t really sure why it felt so unsettling to me. I knew that D*ny wasn’t going to receive a warm welcome in Winterfell and I knew she’d be angry about it so that wasn’t the reason for my misgivings. 

Later on I realized, the most unsettling thing to me in this scene is Jon. He left Winterfell as the character that I most relate to and came back as a distant, off putting figure. Jon, who has never been elevated above those around him, is now marching into Winterfell in the midst of a foreign army and he’s so dead eyed and distant, that he doesn’t even notice his sister in the crowd: 

Who are they now? What are they to each other? There’s something deeply sad and mournful about these shots and seeing these two people that were so close at the end of a very long journey of being torn apart. And Maisie Williams does a fantastic job of conveying all of these emotions.

To me this scene was better than Jon and Arya’s reunion. The reunion is pretty by the numbers, with the two of them comparing swords and not truly ever communicating. It was heartwarming but it didn’t have the emotional punch this scene did. 

The Tarlys burning reveal: 

I’ve already talked about this scene in the Winterfell plot section but, while I felt the scene was awkward and choppy, John Bradley completely sold me on Sam’s tragedy and I can’t help but love the scene because of it. 

There is something else that caught my eye, though: 

From this scene, it seems pretty obvious to me that Jorah knew about the Tarlys’ execution. Which makes it all the more interesting that Jon, on the other hand, doesn’t know. I guess he’s not the only one keeping secrets. 

The Gendrya reunion: 

Initially, I really disliked this scene because it feels stilted and it doesn’t flow properly. I still think it’s poorly constructed. However when watching the behind the scenes video, Maisie gave me some much needed context. Her saying that Arya was in love with Gendry and would have followed him to the ends of the Earth finally made the Gendrya relationship click for me. 

While I’ve always liked the idea of them together, I never really understood how we were going to get there. But this is, actually, about a girl reuniting with her childhood crush and him being able to see her as a young woman, instead of a little girl. 

It also plays in really nicely with Arya’s standoffish-ness in the scene, since Gendry abandoning her to go off with the Red Woman gets a romantic connotation as well as explains Gendry’s awkwardness around her. She’s not a little girl anymore and, dare I say it? He likes her. 

It’s all very cute. 

And these lines? 

Gendry:  It’s Valyrian steel. I always knew you were just another rich girl. 

Arya: You don’t know any other rich girls. 

Legitimately adorable banter. 

The scene is also setting up something with the weapon Arya is commissioning. It looks like a spear or an arrow of some kind. It reminds me a bit of that flash back Bran has in the books of one of the Starks making an arrow from a weirwood branch. It’s been theorized that those arrows were meant to kill Aegon’s dragons. I wonder if they’ll tackle that plot point with Arya?

The opening credits: 

Yeah ... I’m really scraping the bottom of the barrel on this ... 

I assume everyone noticed that the title sequence has been changed. What I found really intriguing is that they focus a lot on the underground tunnels of both Winterfell and King’s Landing. 

The Winterfell sequence doesn’t feel like such a novelty since they’ve been pushing the crypts pretty hard in their promotion so far. The crypts represent the parentage reveal as well as possible danger for whoever hides down there once the dead attack the castle. 

But King’d Landing is intriguing because the thing that I most associate with the tunnels underneath the Red Keep is wild fire. I guess we should get ready to see King’s Landing go up in flames. 

Episode MVPs: 

Lord “I think you’ll find you’re wrong” Varys

Varys would have been on this list for this alone: 

Tyrion: You should consider yourself lucky. At least your balls won’t freeze off. 

Varys: You take great offence at dwarf jokes but love making eunuch jokes. Why is that? 

Thank you, Varys! Thank you! I’ve been saying that Tyrion is a mean spirited hypocrite since season 1. Glad I’m not the only one that noticed. 

But then, Varys goes on to shoot down the idea of a Jon/D*ny marriage alliance with this: 

Varys: Nothing lasts. 

Lolz ... you, my friend, are a STAR! Keep doing what you’re doing!

Sansa “No time for your bullshit” Stark

If looks could kill ... Sansa was so on point this episode that I relished every second of it. Not only did she look stunningly beautiful but she decided to give some much needed reality checks to everyone she came into contact with. 

Apparently everyone that arrives in Winterfell is delusional because Sansa’s actions of merely pointing out the obvious, like: 

Armies and dragons eat a lot. How are we going to feed them? 

or 

You really took your sister at her word?  Am I supposed to keep thinking you’re smart, Tyrion?

Is met with shock, horror and confusion. Everyone and their mother is wondering what Sansa is doing and what she’s up to. Jon is sulking because Sansa is not jumping at the bit to see him. D*ny is upset Sansa doesn’t like her. Tyrion is shocked that Sansa doesn’t think he’s as brilliant as he thinks he is. 

Meanwhile, Sansa is just standing there, not breaking a sweat while everyone around her is twisting themselves into pretezles trying to figure her out. Now that’s a Boss Bitch right there! (yeah, yeah, too much Good Girls. I know). 

Bran “King of the Clap back” Stark

Talking of Boss Bitches, here comes Bran to ruin D*ny’s day. He ain’t having whatever lame attempt at human emotion D*ny is trying to convey and decides to spread some reality checks of his own: 

Bran: The Night King has your dragon. He’s one of them now. The Wall has fallen. The dead march South. 

Also: 

Your hair looks stupid. That coat is lame and I don’t like you very much. 

(this was the subtext, right?)

But Boss Bran doesn’t stop there. He decides to out creep even himself by waiting in the freezing cold of night in order to spook Jaime Lannister upon arrival in Winterfell, like a ghost in a gothic novel: 

Since I apparently have a lot more to say, I’m going to make a little series out of this. In the next two installments I will tackle the J0nereys and Jonsa relationships. Stay tuned!

* none of the gifs or pictures are mine. Thank you to the content creators!

[defenselesswriter]

I saw that you were asking after sterek prompt so I hope this one will inspire you : Stiles is haunted by a ghost but they are not a mean one, they think Stiles and Derek are true love and attempt to get them together...

“No, seriously, my house is haunted,” Stiles tells Derek.

Derek looks around the old house doubtfully. “Just because it’s old, doesn’t mean it’s haunted.”

“It’s haunted,” Stiles says, kicking Derek softly from across the couch.

Derek catches his foot before Stiles can kick him again and then puts it in his lap with a roll of his eyes. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

“My house being haunted doesn’t help me sleep at night!” Stiles exclaims, waving his hands around. He should’ve known Derek wouldn’t believe him. Derek is like Stiles: he needs proof. Stiles looks around the house like he could see the ghost, but of course... he can’t. 

The ghost only acts up when Derek isn’t here. They’re strangely silent when Derek is here. Stiles says as much.

“Maybe your ghost likes me,” Derek offers.

“More than I do right now, that’s for sure,” Stiles mumbles.

Derek squeezes Stiles’ foot hard enough to get his attention but not hurt him. “You’re rude,” Derek says plainly.

“Yeah, and yet you’re still here,” Stiles says, gesturing with his arms. “I’ve been trying to get rid of you for years.”

“Is that why you invited me over for dinner and to watch movies?” Derek asks, looking mockingly confused.

“You’re an ass,” Stiles tells him matter-of-factly.

Derek nods solemnly. “But your ghost likes me.”

Stiles rolls his eyes because Derek is ridiculous. He doesn’t know why he even likes Derek... as a friend just to be clear. No romantic feelings here whatsoever. Not even a little.

Derek’s hand is circled around Stiles’ ankle, his thumb idly rubbing the bare skin right below Stiles’ sweatpants.

Okay, maybe a little.

When Derek leaves that night, the ghost starts acting up again. The cabinets in the kitchen are rattling, and Stiles is too tired to even deal with it. He remembers a post he saw on tumblr once where someone wrote a story of a ghost writing out what’s wrong with them and why they’re wreaking havoc.

So. With obvious science on his side, Stiles pulls out a notebook and a pen, throwing them on the counter.

“Please, air your grievances, ghost,” Stiles says to the empty house, but it’s not empty because it’s haunted.

He doesn’t expect to see anything tonight and maybe the ghost is shy, so Stiles turns off the kitchen light and heads upstairs to go to bed. 

To be honest, he didn’t expect anything from his uninvited house guest, but in the morning, as he’s grabbing coffee, he spots something on the notebook.

There’s a big heart drawn in the middle of the page, and inside the heart, it reads:

S + DForever

Stiles frowns at it for a solid minute, trying to decipher it. “Uh, it’s a very lovely heart,” Stiles tells the ghost. “But, uh, I’m not sure what you mean? Are you declaring your past love for someone? If you’re wanting me to find this person for unfinished business, I’m gonna need more to work with.”

A cabinet door opens and slams shut in response.

“Okay... don’t know what that means either, but we’ve opened up a way of communication, so I think we could use it.” He looks around the kitchen warily. “No? Okay then. I’m just gonna go about my day. Let me know if you need anything.”

Stiles reaches for the mug on the drying mat by his sink, but it slides over before he gets a grip. He lets out a huge sigh that rivals Derek’s dramatic ones. “Thank you for not throwing it on the floor like you did last week,” Stiles says instead of yelling. Maybe pissing off the ghost is a bad idea, and now that Stiles is older and more mature and has pissed one too many supernatural creatures, he’s learned his lesson. Don’t piss off what you can’t fight.

“I respect you, Casper, but I really do like my house in one piece. I think we can find a way to coexist. Just...let me know on the notebook, okay?” He looks around again as if he is actually talking to someone, which he is because ghost, but to the outsider, he’d look a little odd.

He reaches for his mug again, and thankfully, it doesn’t move out of his way. After pouring his coffee, he sits at his table and pulls out his phone.

Stiles: The ghost left me a message on a piece of paper

He waits a few moments, switching between tumblr and Twitter. The response is quick, though.

Derek: wtf

And of course, that’s all Stiles gets. He stands up and walks back into the kitchen where the notebook is still lying on the counter.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I’m taking a picture of your art to show Derek,” Stiles says. “He doesn’t believe me that you exist, so...proof.” He snaps the picture and sends it to Derek immediately with a message that reads:

Stiles: Does that look like my handwriting?

Derek: Oh shit it doesn’t. What does it mean?

Stiles: No idea. I’m trying to get more information but also trying not to piss off the artist.

Stiles’ refrigerator opens and slams. “Were you reading over my shoulder?” he asks, stunned. “That’s fucking rude, dude, and if you’re a kid I’m sorry for my language and also for, like, dying young because that’s awful.”

Suddenly, the pen starts floating and holy shit. Stiles knew there was a ghost but oh my god there’s a fucking ghost in his house.

The pen is hovering over the notebook and then touches down on it, moving up and down as the ghost writes. Stiles doesn’t want to be rude or scare the ghost off, so he waits until the pen is away from the notebook before he looks.

At the top of the page, there’s a new addition that says:

Your language isn’t the problem

“Then what’s the problem...?” Stiles asks.

The pen is picked up again, and it circles the heart. 

“Okay, what’s your love’s name? I can go looking for them and relay a message if you want.”

Not my love. Your love

Stiles frowns, setting his coffee cup down and looking closer at the message. “Uh, I don’t know if you noticed, but I don’t have a love, so. Thanks for pointing that out.”

The next message makes it all clear:

Derek?

“S plus D... Stiles and Derek? Forever? You think we’re in love?” Stiles is so confused, and the novelty of the fact that he’s communicating with a ghost is wearing off. “That’s super flattering and all, but we’re just friends.”

Liar

“Okay, first off all, you don’t know me,” Stiles says, pointing in the direction of the floating pen. “Second of all, that’s just rude. Derek and I are friends. Really good friends, yeah, but just friends.”

Doesn’t mean you’re not in love with him

Stiles takes a deep breath. It’s too early for this supernatural shit. Only in Beacon Hills, he swears. “So what if I’m in love with him?” he shouts. “Doesn’t change anything. We’re still and always will be good friends.”

Not true

“What, you know something I don’t, Casper?”

Derek loves you

Stiles laughs a little hysterically at that message. The unmistakable sound of something shattering on the floor stops him, and he looks down at the shattered mug and coffee on the floor.

“You’re cleaning that up,” Stiles tells the ghost, “because that was fucking rude.” Stiles walks out of the kitchen, giving up and needing to go work on editing his manuscript, so he goes upstairs.

The rest of the day, the ghost follows him around and knocks things over, slams doors, and generally makes Stiles’ life a living hell.

Stiles: please for the love of god come over and make the ghost stop torturing me and racking up my water bill

Derek: How am I supposed to help?

Stiles: the ghost likes you remember?

Derek: Right. Be there soon

“Thank god,” Stiles sighs, leaning back in his desk chair with his hands in his hair. “Your favorite is coming over, Casper. Hope that helps with the temper tantrum.”

Surprisingly, that does stop the ghost from doing any more damage to Stiles’ poor house.

Stiles can hear his front door open and Derek calling out his name, so he lets Derek knows he’s upstairs. Derek stomps up the stairs and leans against the doorjamb of Stiles’ office with an eyebrow raised.

“Don’t judge me,” Stiles immediately says, pointing his finger. “I’m not the delusional ghost who thinks you and I are in love with each other.”

Now, Derek’s frowning and steps in the room to sit on the couch across the room from Stiles’ desk. “The ghost thinks we’re in love?” Derek asks slowly.

Stiles turns in his desk chair to look at Derek and nods. “Which is ike super flattering that Casper thinks I could land someone like you, but uh.” He laughs and shrugs. “I don’t know, dude. Can you just tell them you don’t love me like that, and maybe they’ll leave me alone?”

Derek looks around the room in the same way Stiles does when he’s about to talk to the ghost, and Stiles slumps in relief. Hopefully this will all end soon.

“Uh, hi?” Derek calls out. “I guess you know this, but I’m Derek.”

“Really?” Stiles asks.

“I don’t know how to talk to ghosts, Stiles,” Derek snaps, glaring at Stiles. “I’m doing this for you.”

“Point taken,” Stiles concedes, holding up his hands.

Derek sighs and then goes back to talking to the ghost. “I just wanted to say, uh... you’re right.”

The mug shattered on the hardwood floor of Stiles’ office is, for once, not the ghost’s fault.

“I’m in love with Stiles, but he doesn’t feel the same way, so please don’t take it out on him. I’m honestly okay. We’re good friends, and I’d rather that than nothing.”

“I’m sorry - what?” Stiles practically shouts. “You’re in love with me? And never thought that this was information that you should share with me?”

Derek shrugged. “They’re my feelings, so no. Didn’t think I had to share them. It’s obvious they wouldn’t change anything.”

“Oh, my god,” Stiles groans. “You’re such an idiot.” And before Derek can say anything else, Stiles is shooting up off the desk and striding across the room to the couch. He straddles Derek’s lap and cups his face. “You really think that I’m not in love with you? After all these years? After all the awkward tries of flirting?”

Derek looks confused, his eyes moving back and forth between Stiles’ eyes. “I... feel like anything I say right now is going to make you think I’m even more of an idiot.”

“You’re probably right,” Stiles agrees, his thumbs idly caressing Derek’s cheekbones. “I think the only way to get around this is to kiss me.”

“Yeah?” Derek asks.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, suddenly nervous that being in Derek’s lap isn’t the best idea because yeah, he just admitted he loves Stiles, but what if Derek doesn’t want Stiles there?

Which Stiles figures is a stupid thought as soon as Derek’s hands grip his hips. “Uh, Casper, can we get some privacy?”

The door closes in response, and then Derek is leaning closer and wow. Stiles’ house being haunted is the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

[carolynpetit]

lonely warriors across space and time

Keleyna of Azeroth

Keleyna awoke in a small tent. Or was this something other than waking? Somehow she knew that it had not been hours or even days since she had stepped into the tent, but ten months. It was as if she had nearly phased out of existence, as if she were part of someone else’s dream and had been all but forgotten. She thought the sudden sensation of reawakening—re-existing—after so long was not unlike plummeting into a pool of icy water.

Dazed and unsteady on her feet, she emerged from the tent to a familiar sight. Yes, this Alliance fort in the Barrens was the last place she remembered, and seemingly nothing had changed. She stumbled over to a smiling, stationary gnome, Mizzy Pistonhammer, who it seemed was still patiently waiting for the eight pieces of siege engine scrap she’d asked Keleyna to collect for her ten months ago. The distant sound of explosions told her that goblin suicide bombers were still steadily charging the battlements. Gods, this world seemed so resistant to change, the constant conflict as pointless as it was endless.

Still, as she left Fort Triumph to go do something, anything, she remembered that she loved the Barrens. A phrase formed in her mind: “Lonely as I am, together we cry.” She didn’t know where it came from—a fragment of a mostly-forgotten song, perhaps—but whatever the source, it seemed fitting. In a world where her actions so often seemed insignificant, there was something oddly comforting about the forthright way in which the Barrens seemed to say to her, Yes, you ARE small, just one little, tiny part of this vast world, this mysterious universe. There was a spiritual comfort in the sparseness of it all, the heat of the dry, cracking earth a balm for her loneliness.

A balm, but not a cure. When she’d last gone to sleep all those months ago she felt a troubling void inside of herself, a persistent lack of purpose or meaning to all of her questing. She couldn’t recall any dreams from the deep sleep into which she’d fallen, but if she’d had any, they clearly hadn’t offered any answers.

Keleyna decided to see if she could be of service to the dwarves at Bael Modan, and when Marley Twinbraid asked her to retrieve his tools from the nearby digsite, she immediately set herself to the task, as much to distract herself from the troubling thoughts and feelings she couldn’t shake as anything else. It wasn’t long until she returned with the tools in hand, which Twinbraid promptly used to repair his flying machine. He entreated Keleyna to join him for a quick flight to his father’s nearby camp, but shortly after liftoff, a massive explosion shook the air around the contraption, and they went plummeting toward the earth.

Walking away from the wreckage unscathed, Keleyna wondered if she shouldn’t be a bit shaken up about what had just happened, but somehow she knew she hadn’t been in any real danger, nothing had been at stake. This was just a bit of fun, an adventure, a chapter in a story that couldn’t really hurt her, no matter what happened. But, then, what was the point? People didn’t usually go to Disneyland alone and ride the rides by themselves, she thought. The magic wasn’t in Pirates of the Caribbean itself; it was in making memories together. It was in holding hands on the ride. It was in going to the Blue Bayou Restaurant with people you loved right afterwards, your spirits buoyed by your shared experience. Wait, what’s Disneyland?

She’d heard rumors that soon, through some sort of arcane magicks, adventurers who so desired would be able to return to the way things had been long ago, before the great cataclysm remade the world. Some said that what had made things better then was that people were friendlier, that they adventured together more, they cooperated more, they talked more. Keleyna definitely felt the absence of these things in her adventures. She’d recently had the eerie experience of venturing through a dungeon with others, nobody saying a word to each other the entire time, and when it was over, they all parted silently, as immaterial to each other as phantoms.

She couldn’t say if things had been better back then. She hadn’t even existed. But she seemed to carry with her the vague memories of a night elf druid who had existed back then, someone who was somehow both her and not her. When she examined the place in herself where those memories resided, she saw some warm recollections of fellowship, but also some frustration and bitterness, as the druid quickly fell behind those she’d called friends, lacked the experience needed to journey alongside them any longer, and found herself feeling lonely and left out.

Keleyna imagined a goblin zeppelin drifting across the sky, blaring a repeating announcement: “A new life awaits you in World of Warcraft Classic! The chance to begin again in a golden age of opportunity and adventure.” She’d heard some big proponents of Classic, as the land through the portals was called, use the slogan “Make Azeroth Great Again,” a phrase she found repellant, though she couldn’t articulate exactly why. Maybe it was just that people who held romanticized notions of the past tended to be hostile to people different from  themselves in the present.

She hated the war. She desperately wished that the Alliance and Horde could put aside their differences once and for all, and learn to coexist. She even sometimes felt that the Alliance might well be the more unjust and oppressive of the two, though she couldn’t say that out loud, of course. In her mind, the only real hope was to create a new future that looked like nothing the peoples of Azeroth had ever seen before, not to go back to the earlier years of this relentless conflict. But she was also willing to try just about anything at this point. If there was even a chance that the togetherness she longed for would be waiting on the other side of those portals to the past, then why not make the leap?

The portals hadn’t been opened just yet, though, and while the warm empty vastness of the Barrens had been a welcome comfort, it couldn’t stave off the feelings that sapped her will from within for long. Craving a change of scenery, she hopped a gryphon to Theramore Isle, the sturdy trees and salty sea air a welcome change from the dry heat of the Barrens. She entered the inn and felt a pang in her heart at the sight of its emptiness. Weren’t inns like this supposed to be places where adventurers connected, sharing tales of their latest quests over flagons of mead? With a heavy sigh, she sat down, wondering when she might reawaken, or if this time, she might slip out of the world’s dreams forever. 

-----

Many miles away, something flies from the surface of a blue marbled sphere…

-----

The Guardian, Milky Way Galaxy, sometime in the future

She had a name, of course, though nobody knew it but herself. People just called her The Guardian. There were other guardians, of course--tons of them--but if you just said “The Guardian,” everybody knew you were talking about her. After all, she was the one who had done that one big thing, and then, later, she’d done that other big thing, too. She couldn’t actually tell you what those things were that she had done or why exactly they’d mattered so much, but the Vanguard clearly relied on her to take care of the biggest problems that came along. Oh, and she’d avenged Cayde’s death. That, at least, had been an adventure she’d more or less understood, and she’d liked Cayde a lot, but she didn’t feel great about revenge as a motivator. Still, her options had been to do that or to not do anything, so she’d done that, too.

Everyone knew of her, but nobody knew her. When she walked past the ramen shop in the Tower, the people at the counter would talk in hushed whispers, wondering what the Guardian really fought for, and if this woman who had done so much for so many others had anything, anyone, in her own life. Or at least, the Guardian liked to think that this was true. It was her own personal headcanon. The world hadn’t given her what felt like a meaningful story, so she created one herself. She was a legend in her own mind. Sure, she’d fought alongside other guardians a handful of times, guardians she’d known and felt safe with, and those times had been, by far, the most enjoyable and meaningful of her adventures. But those guardians had disappeared without a trace, long, long ago. Now, she knew she could team up with other guardians at random, but she would never do that. She had strong defenses up, and with good reason. Too many bad experiences, too many painful memories.

So she worked alone. It was something to do, but it felt empty. She’d go on missions and get some gear that raised her light level a bit. It was tangible progress, but to what end? So that she could go on more missions and get more gear that raised her light level a bit? Was this all there was?

She looked up at the Traveler, that mysterious being, a fusion of magic and technology that hinted at possibilities beyond this life of guns and blood, and wondered if anything stirred inside of it. She wondered if there actually was more than this, or if this was all there was. She wondered what it was all for, and figured that people had been looking to the sky and wondering this for as long as there had been people, so at least in this, at least in feeling alone and lost and uncertain, she was connected to everyone who had come before. But that was cold comfort as she climbed into her little single-seater starship and set out for The Tangled Shore in hopes of finding a better pair of gauntlets.

-----

“I wake up scared, I wake up strange, and everything around me stays the same.”

--BNL, “What a Good Boy”

-----

Carolyn, Berkeley

Here I am, the link between these two characters, projecting all my own doubt and dissatisfaction onto them.

Things are up in the air right now, Unstructured. Scary. The one constant is that I’m steadfastly working on a long-term project that’s quite unlike anything I’ve done before. It requires a lot more planning. I know where it’s going. I mean, I don’t know exactly what turn it’s going to take at every crossroads, but I have a map to the final destination. There’s comfort in this, but it also means that this writing comes from a different place than so much of the writing I’ve done. I believe in it. I feel good about it. I like doing it and knowing that I’m capable of doing it. But also, it’s safer, less emotionally urgent. (Whether or not it will ever see the light of day, now that is a question of some urgency, as it’s not exactly pulling in any money just yet, but that’s a different matter.) That project aside, lately I’ve felt like I’m looking for a reason to write. The pinprick, the provocation, the punch in the face. The things I usually find in life and in art, and in the space between myself and the games I play.

Destiny 2 and World of Warcraft don’t give me those reasons. So why do I keep returning to them, when whatever comforts they offer are fleeting, when they leave me feeling as empty as when I started? Why, when I’m so desperate for connection, do I keep playing alone these games that are designed to be played together? Why don’t I take the hours that these games swallow up and use them to read a book? Is it because I think that at any moment, something may change? Is it because I know that, while a book may be far more worthwhile, I won’t find the connection I crave in its pages, either?

I want games that fuck me up. The first episode of Stories Untold, man, that fucked me up. My brain buzzed for a few hours afterwards with the excitement and stimulation of having played something truly surprising. Destiny, WoW, these games might be fun if I had people to play them with, but the one thing they will never be, especially not as long as I play them on my own, is surprising. I know exactly what I’m in for each time I fire them up. And yet I do it again and again and again.

Here’s why I think I keep coming back: Because in this moment, when my life feels so uncertain and terrifying, I know for certain that in those worlds I can succeed, that after an hour or two, the numbers that define my character will be a little bit higher than they were when I started. Things feel so out of my control right now. Here’s a place where I can have a kind of control, however small, however empty.  

But games can’t be the answer. Life has to be. A few shallow, friendly connections won’t cut it, whether it’s people I hang out with but don’t really know in the real world, or people I run dungeons with in WoW but never really talk to or touch. As Olivia Laing so perceptively writes in The Lonely City, “[L]oneliness is hallmarked by an intense desire to bring the experience to a close; something which cannot be achieved by sheer willpower or by simply getting out more, but only by developing intimate connections.”

Or, as Bruce Springsteen sang,

I'm dying for some action I'm sick of sitting 'round here trying to write this book I need a love reaction Come on now baby gimme just one look

Because that’s where life is. That’s where the reason to write is. That’s where the reason to play is. You take what life gives you and you bring it to those things. But if life isn’t giving you the stuff of life, what, then, do you do?

I don’t want to be a warrior anymore, or at least not a lonely one. I don’t want the Boba Fett mystique. When I was younger I thought maybe I did, but now I know I don’t. Keleyna and the Guardian don’t come from anywhere, they sprang into the world fully formed as adults with no past, no family, no history, but I want someone to know where I come from. They quest alone, or when they do team up with others, it’s a fully superficial affair, no words exchanged, no lasting connection. I want to go on adventures with someone who takes on my complexity and lets me into theirs, someone I can have a real conversation with at the end of a long week, someone to walk around a real city with, someone I want to be there for and who wants to be there for me.

It’s not that I want to stop playing. Not at all. I just want the flame to be reignited. I want something to hold onto, something I can bring back to my time with the controller to make it all mean something. I’m sick of sitting ‘round here trying to write this book.

-----

Thank you for reading. If you liked it, please consider sharing it, or, if you’re in a position to do so, supporting me on Ko-fi. All donations are greatly appreciated as I continue looking for work.

[s-asuke]

Naruto FemSlash Week 2017 - Day 2 - First Kiss - SakuKarin

Small.

Smaller.

Smallest.

The roots have been crushed in small pieces, the wood ripped clean – Sakura’s doing. Karin’s soft movements exceed by the bareness of this holy ground. When Sakura’s training ended – she thought it to be equally as destructive as Sasuke’s. Ground bare. Sky screaming. Animals running away because those humans were walking disasters. Althrough she didn’t trust Sasuke (how could she again, Karin’s bones were brittle, she had always bit her tongue and torched her dreams – a mind made of thorns and secrecy), she had trusted – no – loved Sakura with an overwhelming force.

Spending those days in the cursed, wretched hospital, healing from the dark-haired nin’s lightning jutsu, Sakura shown kindness that had Karin weeping after the rosette would exit the room. Does it hurt Karin-san? Would you like me to not look now? It’s still a private part. Can you do this, please?

The amount of kindness displayed was… weird… fucked up even. Because how can one live and coexist with such kindness and not grow attached to it? It seemed as if thr affection she held for the youngest Uchiha never existed.

She would ask her if she wanted to go hang out, talk, or train. She would learn her favorite drinks and foods – she would learn to play Karin’s favorite melodies on the ocarina. She had beautiful fingers which held even the most deadly poison or weapon with a certain gentleness. She had a gorgeous smile, and her laughter wasn’t like a sound of thousand crystal bells – it was loud, proud and rang though her cavities, filling up the room with warmth and Sun, healing Karin’s old scars, making them meld into her forgotten skin.

So when the redhead, equally as red eyes mixed like red velvet, almond shaped with a tinkle of spun gold in them, arrived at the place where the gentle kunoichi trained, the heavily clad one – as for the winter not to bite her, since Karin learnt that Sakura’s body temperature was everpresent and didn’t change much – even when she was overly warm or cold.

The cute girl waved excitedly to her, so contrasting to the tenacity she displayed. Again, Karin’s love for her bursts and blooms – her lungs overwhelmed by a pleasant pain, yet it still wasn’t pain, it was Sakura’s hand, around her heart that said ‘You are mine, and mine alone’.

So Karin appears at the edge of the now cleared field, the snow gingerly falling on her typical white Konoha coat. The cream colored snowflakes not noticing the beauty of Sakura’s destructions they were supposed to honor.

And yet, Karin stood there, thinking how Sakura could slap her and she’d say thanks.

How dandy, Karin, she’d think morbidly.

“Karin! I just trained so… excuse me for being all huffy and puffy, hehe. Did you want to talk about something?”

Karin blushed furiously, forgetting how to breathe. “N-no. Just… wanted to spend time with you.”

“Sure. Let me grab my stuff and off we go.”

It was three years after the war and Sasuke left for his travels, Suigetsu, Juugo, Sakura, Lee and Karin building themselves a slightly larger home in the place where the Uchiha compound once stood. Sasuke told them to. He said that it didn’t deserve to be barren land for eternity, cursed by old hatred and useless oaths.

So Karin seen every change in Sakura, every droplet of her charisma deflate and expand – and thought of her affection towards her to be useless. Sometimes, Karin would feel as if every being in this world teamed up against her – to never love her, never know her or feel her for the person she’d been. Even Sakura didn’t notice the deep bond and affection.

Karin sulked.

Over the course of the night, they sat at the dango shop, had lemonade, drank sake and talked about everything that fell on both women’s mind. Karin relished – a sole thought remaining, the one that some days kept her alive at the hospital.

This woman’s kindness will partially always be directed at me.

Even if she will always love Sasuke.

And so her heart would weep as Sakura gently took her hand, into her smaller one, her fingers shorter than hers, middle finger having a weird, small bump at the top (Karin’s mother used to call that the writer’s anomaly) and Karin positively adored to pass her digits over Sakura’s, gathering that small semblance of intimacy.

The cancellation of her own brain when in the dark, snowy street she was stopped by Sakura, a thoughtful expression stuck to her face, scared her, rattling her bones.

“Saku-what?” The now taller of the two, had been wearing heels so she asserted some non-existent dominance over the beautiful god-like vision accross her; astounded at the bashfulness this usually confident person displayed. “Karin… I know that… I know that I’m maybe annoying with all the presumed love and affection I hold for Sasuke-kun… but I will let you know that I have stopped loving him long ago… My… my affection,” she takes an awkwardly long intake of air, and Karin thinks she stopped breathing. “My affection is being held by another person.” And Karin loses it, everything in her fucking breaks because if it isn’t Sasuke who is it who is it who isitwho-

So Sakura mumbles something, just white noise through Karin’s ears – because Sakura said something, the redhead wanting to ask her to repeat it, but Sakura already leant forward – her soft features puckering, since she touched Karin. Their lips were broughttogether in a perfect dance of emotions and passion, Sakura guiding. None had their hands to each other, until the dam that held Karin back for so long burst – and burst hard, leaving Sakura for the redhead to devour, her maddening scent driving the sensory nin up the wall, her hands were roaming everywhere – Sakura’s hair, shoulders, under her cape, her ass. Karin lifted her up in the middle of a dying blizzard, abandoned street not caring for the antics of the couple, and driving Sakura up the wall as she kissed her – throuroughly and fiercely. Sakura’s legs were forced around the other girl’s hips, enjoying the rough surface of the wall. Opened up her mouth – wanting everything Sakura had to give, and when she started sucking on the tongue of the pliant pinkette she actually lost it. Karin lost it. She sucked it like the tastiest candy she ever put in her mouth, the afterthoughts of mint and seduction dancing on her beautiful lips. Sakura’s hands were trembling in Karin’s messy tresses, which have been stung up in a messy bun, but Sakura’s skillful, fast hands ripped it away during their fevered makeout.

Karin had the rosette moan in her mouth, and that’s when she decided it was enough. Karin will stop, here.

“K-Karin… agh… does that mean…?” Karin had the feeling she could murder her. How the fuck did that kiss not prove her all of her emotions, and more?

“It means everything, dear. I love you so much.” She smiled, her glasses fogged up from the feverish embrace. Sakura makes a strange sound, between a whine, groan, and a breath stuck in her throat. “I love you too, Karin. So, so, much…” The girl bearing the Byakugou leans in her throat, settling in the crook of her warm neck. Karin lifts her, walking like that, and Sakura protests weakly how she should let her down, because she can walk on her own. “No. I wanna carry my beautiful girlfriend all the way to our house, and then cuddle with her, and then sleep, since we pretty much shared the apartment since, always.”

Sakura blushes at Karin’s, maybe all too bold remark. Karin stops in her tracks, bewildered as she fears that she has not insulted Sakura in some way.

“Was I – too straightforward?” Sakura laughs at the cute pout, the action had always been quite endearing to her.

“No, never. I mean, I can’t wait too, since we have a lot to fill in on.”

“I can’t wait,” said the bubbly redhead.

[sartle-blog]

Art in Film – Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky and Land Art

[redantsunderneath]

Critical Accommodation

The first forum thread I ever started, on some televisionwithoutpity-type forum, was on the topic of simultaneously overrated and underrated art/artists.  Now, I don’t know if I expressed my ideas clearly or not, but in the email exchange subsequent to a strangely angry moderator deleting the post, clarity didn’t seem to be the issue as much as a failure on his part to admit to the idea that the relationship between quality and popularity could somehow be multivalent.  At the time, I probably used Radiohead or something as an example – underrated by any sort of mass audience but overrated by what you might a few years later have call pitcthforkers – but maybe Serial is a good modern equivalent.  I doesn’t hold enough interest for anyone who has seen more than 3 Datelines and thinks the idea of NPRing the concept up is boring, but elicits a little too much ado from the Slate reading contingent who, maybe, believe True Crime as a genre just got invented.

 I kind of lost interest in this as a concept as, after a while, all you can see are the social signaling aspects of this multi-audience interaction, maybe thanks to hipsters turning countersignaling into a game of chicken where they threw their steering wheel out the window. But it seems that multiple axes of “is it good” that coexist have become more obvious lately, and not just because people are starting to notice that everyone lives in a bubble. Case in point: I was involved in an exchange recently about the movie Suicide Squad, with a poster claiming that the response to the movie showed how pronounced the divide was between critics and the casual audience.  I had to ask what this meant because the critics I pay attention to have been very positive about Suicide Squad and the DC movies in general (in relation to the Marvel movies especially) and dismissive of the sea of internet opinions that call the films garbage.  The person bringing it up was talking about the actual moviegoing audience which made the movie immensely profitable because they weren’t told they were supposed to hate it vs. the majority of internet based and payed critics who poo-pooed the movie as you would expect.  Both of these critical-mass divides were true at the same time, but each of us preferentially saw one.

 I’ve written a lot about textual story and subliminal story in an effort to pick at the meaning of entertainments of all kinds.  But all this is making me think about the fact that there are more levels than just above and below and various audiences are habituated to look for satisfaction at a certain level. One problem is that no matter how smart and attentive the audience member is, they tend to privilege this one layer and, as a result, this strata is optimized for by producers (via a complex Darwinian system) if they are viewed as the primary audience.  So the actual most complicated and interesting multilayered stuff is going to suffer for any specific audience in that it will not be “the best possible thing” at the level they are trained to value the most.  The funny thing is, this system more and more doesn’t favor people who focus on depth and complexity in producing a serious work, but artists who are profoundly unhinged at some level who are willing to operate at the most superficial levels primarily with the deep stuff inadvertently spilling out like piñata guts.  These movies often don’t make intellectual sense.

 I think in order to consider this, text and subliminal aren’t going to cut it.  There is a superficial or visceral level of engagement – incident, big emotion… the action movie thing, but also at a different pitch the romantic comedy thing.  Crowd pleasers that satisfy the lower levels of Maslow’s pyramid – oral (safety, threat, need, good/bad) and anal (dominance, desire, will).  Then you have the mid level engagement of the genital (intricacy, complex relational, intellectual satisfaction) and basic social consciousness (mid to upper Maslow) which is common internet aesthete and print critic land.  If there is talk of screenplay structure or complex characters or representation, it is in this middlebrow-that-thinks-it’s-highbrow area. The Oscar zone.  

 There is another level, though, which me might call the ineffable, the preconscious, the deep structural, the semiotic, the transcendent, or the sublime.  People who I usually pay attention to are focused on this later level to some degree. The thing that ties these people together is an emphasis on visual storytelling (or poetics if we are talking about print) and a philosophical bent.  The escape of conscious forms, of spoken language and structure, receiving symbolic content and using that to construct meaning.  There is a lot of theory in this zone… it is not not intellectual, but rather senses something hidden or unintentional and wrestles that into the zone of language and reason.  This includes primal unexamined societal impulses where the motivations for politics and hatred lie.  

 So group 1 are the conscious experiencers (popcorn moviegoer).  Group 2 are the social intellectualizers (the maven or critic).  Group 3 have found some way to touch an unmediated submerged experience and bring it up to examine, which oddly gives them more in common with group 1 (the dredgers and deep divers).  Everybody at a higher number level has some experience with the lower numbers but what I have noticed is that most people in this hierarchy tend to limit focus to their preferred layer and stick there, losing the ability to really engage at the other levels with something that doesn’t satisfy on theirs.  I do run into more people who are able to put a foot on 1 and a foot on 3, people who go deep on trash cinema for instance, but these people usually take a shit on level 2.  Many of these people hate prestige TV very viscerally.  Others stick to 3 and tend to close read based on one particular “deep topic” like capitalism or gender.

 This leads to extremely insightful people who have a fixed level of focus.  I almost said “myopia” but a better ophthalmologic analogy is loss of lens accommodation, a common problem of age (the need for reading glasses after you turn 47 is this).  With this condition you can be nearsighted or farsighted or have 20/20, but you can’t focus very well outside of a narrow range of your focal length.  My very favorite writers on narrative art are able to focus up and down the scale and, importantly, experience the piece as a blank slate, so the reading can be guided by the piece and not a bias as to level of engagement.  Zizek is great, but I’d prefer it if he seemed to be able to be exhilarated, have fun, recognize bad pacing, or appreciate an actor/actress performance without making these a function of some Marxist/Lacanian equation.

 The good reviews of Batman vs. Superman I have seen dwell on the visual composition and fuck off attitude, but also focus on the movie as a critique of a kind of moral simplicity implicit in nerd/internet culture who can’t see what these characters are really up to.  The film is deliberately provoking the group that generates all the reviews.  Superman is an alien who is hyper aware of the conflict between humanity’s potential and its reality. His choice to act for the good in Man of Steel is that of a god in absolute agony as he has to take the war into himself, killing because moral choices are horrific and don’t have the external consequences they should in a just universe. Superman knows he chooses his path to suffer and serve the good and the universe could care less (Nietzsche’s Ubermench, anyone?). His suffering imposes a moral order on the universe.  In BvS he confronts the prospect of progressive inaction, the Obama path, do no harm because everyone seems to want you to be blamed, shamed into will-less-ness… one of the failure modes of the current American (masculine) spirit. Batman represents the other failure mode, the wallowing in the anger at traditional American values violated by the rise of selfishness and me first mentality.  Of course they need to fight – they are primal opposites: deflated optimism vs. pessimism on steroids, past vs. future, sun vs. void, naturally gifted immigrant vs. driven legacy born on third base.  

 These are gods, and are presented like gods, in a series of mise-en-scene straight ripped from renaissance paintings. It is wrong to speak of subtlety, because subtlety is the opposite of the point.  Look at those (Turin?) horses, gaudy symbols like oranges in the Godfather! The structure of the story is a mess by normal metrics, but there is a shape there, and that is enough when you are dealing with art film rules.  The collision of two celestial objects, awaiting the feminine to mediate their Hegelian synthesis and convert their masculine valances to the positive.  Dwelling on act structure is stupid.  Recognizing that they failed to make this a conventional narrative is useless.  Citing plot inconsistencies, “X wouldn’t do that,” and calling it emptyheaded and over the top mean you are watching a movie you can’t handle.  This is a skilled, smart but “off,” bodily centered outsider artist grappling with shit that is really, really big and deep.  It isn’t perfect, but no one should want that out of this (there are countless clockwork left brain things to watch)… you should come to this wanting a mess, gods of ideas punching your midbrain, opening you to experience the catharsis of basic archetypal struggles in the world.  You know, like superheroes work.  It is wrong to privilege level 2 which, remember, is where mass of expressed “learned” opinion is.  This is where the DC Verse lives.  Marvel is centered in DC’s hole, and it is right to talk of story as structure.

 My point is that the best thing you can do is learn to focus where the thing is most ready to connect with you and be flexible enough to let the thing tell you how to read it.  There is a lot of crap, but there is a lot of good stuff that gets critically ignored because too few are focusing in the right areas.  If you like more stuff, if you find everything more interesting and complex, you win. Not everything is good, but you can almost always find a way to engage it at its best.  You can say many bad things about the book Twilight, but damn if there isn’t something there about the subject/object struggle of being desired as a young woman, the disconnect of inner and outer experience, and the consideration of the choice of traditional-relationship-as-road-to-marriage in a modern context.  If you smirk and say Mary Sue, you have failed.  

 This three cluster model isn’t perfect, but explains a lot why I see lumpy, weird high budget stuff with the high viewership (mass audience), pissed off forums and think pieces (critical consensus/perceived audience if you live online), and elated jaded curmudgeons (deep critics) troika so often.  I think this is more than just a status economy (though that is clearly involved) but the production system has adjusted so that the qualities of the output levels align to the audience expectations.  The most interesting stuff is that which crosses levels, which requires risking a product that will probably seem suboptimal to everyone.  So, let’s have a toast for the auteurs who don’t fit, making movies that are a scrum of potential meanings that require you to get dirty and renounce the tyranny of “the way it should be done.” And I mean Michael Bay as well as David Lynch.  If they seem insane, it’s a feature not a bug.

[xlewandowski]

NFL Mock Draft — 2018

Welcome to my annual 1st round mock draft! 

Why I lead off like an announcer I will never know..

Before I get into my picks I need to get something off my chest, it’s obviously quarterback related, because with this years draft how could it not. It’s my ranking of the top 5 quarterbacks, yes FIVE. This whole nonsense of Lamar Jackson not being in the mix of the top quarterbacks is simply ridiculous.

Josh Rosen. Over this draft process I’ve read and heard a lot on how Rosen is the most pro ready and natural thrower of all the quarterbacks. So why is he not in contention for the 1st overall pick, mainly cause Cleveland isn’t the most intelligent, but I feel the real reason, not this ‘he’s too smart’ thing (actually), I believe it’s his injury concerns with sustaining two concussions as well as a shoulder injury in his final collegiate season.

Lamar Jackson. Picture Michael Vick, but more committed to the game (early in his career that is), will put in the time and not just rely on his God given ability. He could add a bit of weight to his frame, but overall he is the most dynamic player in this draft. And no, he’s not a wide receiver, that was simply an ignorant statement to make.

Sam Darnold. Has the potential to be the best all around/overall quarterback in this years draft. Has all the tools to be a franchise quarterback (height, weight, health). Biggest knock on him is the turnovers in college, and that’s where you have to wonder if it was the talent around him or his decision making.

Baker Mayfield. Let me just go on the record with that I do not like Mayfield, I think he’s too arrogant, cocky and immature to last long in the NFL, however, he won games and no matter how much I am not a fan of his character you can’t deny that he can win. Now there is the whole height thing, but I don’t think that’s the biggest flaw; when Ryan Leaf and Johnny Manziel are mentioned within the same sentence as you, red flags will be raised. Tread lightly.

Josh Allen. He’s big, he’s tall, he has a cannon for an arm and could very well be the next Carson Wentz! Look, if people keep telling themselves that or saying that they will believe it, and a lot of people believe that, I just don’t. When (Lamar) Jackson was getting trashed about his accuracy and Allen is being praise, yet he had a lower average I just don’t get it. The only way Allen can be successful is if he sits behind an experienced veteran. The ceiling is there, but the floor is also very, very low.

Without any further ado, this is my prediction for the 1st round for the 2018 NFL draft:

Please note that I will not be predicting trades in this mock; they are inevitable, a mock draft is already a guessing game so why add to the fire with trades.

1. Cleveland Browns — Quarterback, Josh Allen


Let’s be honest, Cleveland is going to screw this up, they just are, and the real sad part that it may not be the talent around Allen, and you know what it may not be Allen himself - he does have the potential to be great, but that’s the thing, potential and Hue Jackson don’t coexist. Sorry Cleveland, but you deserve better then Hue Jackson and his average of 0.5 wins a season. Good luck, Josh!

2. New York Giants — Quarterback, Sam Darnold

You guys all know Sam, he’s the quarterback that has been predicted to go to Cleveland for months on months. New York said they wanted Darnold and that he is the only quarterback they like out of the bunch. Darnold gets a chance to learn behind a successful quarterback who too turnovers the ball more than you’d like.

3. New York Jets — Quarterback, Josh Rosen

Baker Mayfield is the flashier, more Joe Namath pick, but Todd Bowles does not strike me as the flashy guy, nor do I think he cares. Rosen is the best pure passer in this draft and he gets to learn behind a real pro in Josh McCown (All the Joshs!). This further makes you wonder why they even bothered bringing in Teddy Bridgewater for the year.

4. Cleveland Browns — Defensive End, Bradley Chubb

Hue Jackson said he fantasizes of teaming up Myles Garrett and Bradley Chubb; I’ll refrain from making an innuendo joke on how Hue gets a chubby… Look this pick is a solid pick because you can never go wrong with multiple pass rushers, just ask the Philadelphia Eagles.

5. Denver Broncos — Running Back, Saquon Barkley

I mean C.J. Anderson was just released 10 days before the draft, it just makes too much sense + Case Keenum is good, he proved this last year, so why not equip him with the best player in the draft which also happens to be one of Denver’s biggest needs.

6. Indianapolis Colts — Offensive Guard, Quenton Nelson

Andrew Luck is going to be back… right?… maybe?… Look I have no idea, but I do know that Indianapolis finally has to upgrade their line. Nelson is in the running with Barkley for one of the best and safest picks in the draft. Guard isn’t a sexy pick, though sometimes you need to go against the grain. Protection isn’t for everyone, but sometimes you need to play it safe.

7. Tampa Bay Buccaneers — Offensive Tackle, Mike McGlinchey

I had Minkah Fitzpatrick in this spot but I couldn’t commit to it as Dirk Koetter is now grasping at straws on how to make Jamesis Winston somewhat competent. McGlinchey shores up the offensive line giving Winston the time he needs to connect with 2017 free agent acquisition DeSean Jackson.

8. Chicago Bears — Cornerback, Denzel Ward

Chicago had surprisingly a pretty decent defence last year; though in a division with the likes of Rodgers, Stafford and Cousins, you can never have enough talent at the cornerback position. Ward is the best pure corner in the draft and Chicago is banking on him being like ex-college teammate Marshon Lattimore of New Orleans.

9. San Francisco 49ers — Wideout, Calvin Ridley

Linebackers (Roquan) Smith and (Tremaine) Edmunds have been flipping back and forth for the 9ers since mocks came out but I just have a feeling that this pick has the ripple effect of Jimmy Garoppolo. Ridley is slightly undersized, but so was Sammy Watkins when he came out of Clemson. He is a fluid runner that can hopefully be for them what Buffalo thought/wanted Watkins to be for them.

10. Oakland Raiders — Linebacker, Tremaine Edmunds

I’m going to do my best Jon Gruden impression in describing Tremaine Edmunds: 
Tremaine Edmunds, man, wow, I mean that guy is a freak, I call him Freak-a-Leek. Man that’s crazy, it’s like Pablo Petey went to Virginia Tech or something man. He’s a joker as well, you know why, he makes you laugh but not cause you’re happy, cause you’re scared man. Wow.


But seriously, this kid is 6’5, 250lbs and he’s not even 20, just let the resinate with you. Edmunds has the potential to not only be a sideline to sideline linebacker, but could also rush the passer as well - scary next to Khalil.

11. Miami Dolphins — Defensive Tackle, Vita Vea

Adam Gase still believes in Ryan Tannehill, why I do not know, especially with Jackson and Mayfield still on the board. Miami goes with Vea in a lateral move in shipping off Suh and plugging in Vea. Miami is basically where they were to begin the off-season just without a significant cap hit owed to one player. Vea is however the most dominant interior defensive lineman in the draft, and with him it will allow Wake and newly added Quinn to put pressure on the quarterback.

12. Buffalo Bills — Quarterback, Baker Mayfield

This is the dream scenario for Buffalo, as they don’t want to use the 12th pick to reach for Mason Rudolph and they hate any quarterback that reminds them of Tyrod Taylor, sorry Lamar, it’s not you, it’s Buffalo. Mayfield brings the spark and excitement back(?) to northwestern New York where he has some pieces to be successful in LeSean McCoy and Kelvin Benjamin. Buffalo may actually be the most ideal place for Mayfield to land, as the media market is very small and unless he’s going to Niagara Falls on a weekly basis there are very few places for him to get into trouble.

13. Washington Redskins — Defensive Back, Minkah Fitzpatrick

The slide stops at lucky number 13! Fitzpatrick’s slide has less to do with his abilities and more for the teams ahead of them going for players that fit their scheme and need. Fitzpatrick can play in either the slot corner position but I believe his best spot may be safety; he’s a very rangy and ballhawking defensive back that will bring stability on the back end for Washington.

14. Green Bay Packers — Linebacker, Roquan Smith

Like Rodgers back in 2005 falling to them, Green Bay lucks out in getting a top talent that somehow fell to them. Roquan is the linebacker Green Bay has needed for what seems like forever now. Smith will shore up the linebacking corps and allow Matthews and Perry to get back to what they do best, focusing solely on rushing the passer.

15. Arizona Cardinals — Quarterback, Lamar Jackson

Jackson trades in his Louisville cardinal for the Arizona cardinal. Teaming Jackson and his all world abilities with David Johnson and an ageless Larry Fitzgerald just makes sense. Steve Wilks was part of a team (Carolina) that had a running quarterback (Cam Newton) so he has seen the pros that the mobility can bring to the game. The fact that Arizona signed Sam Bradford means nothing, as two years ago Philadelphia resigned Bradford then traded up to get Carson Wentz, it’s just science.

16. Baltimore Ravens — Defensive Tackle, Da’Ron Payne

This is what Ozzie Newsome does, he drafts Alabama players, and with his final draft as GM for the Baltimore Ravens, he says why not. Payne also works with the rotation alone the defensive line and further anchors that position. Baltimore could use more playmakers on the offensive side, none available (to them) are worth drafting this high.

17. Los Angeles Chargers — Safety, Derwin James

Derwin James has the potential to burst on the scene like Eric Berry and Earl Thomas; he’ll make an already solid defence and take them to dominant/elite status. If Jason Verrett can stay healthy LA may have one of the best secondaries in the NFL.

18. Seattle Seahawks — Edge Rusher, Marcus Davenport

With the release of Michael Bennett, Seattle is in desperate need of restoring what used to be a once dominant defence. Davenport brings not only size but also versatility and could be that chess piece that Seattle has desperately been needing. With the back end not as potent as it once was, Seattle needs to get to the quarterback faster; Davenport helps tremendously.

19. Dallas Cowboys — Cornerback, Josh Jackson


Dallas needs more impact players for their defence, and with a not so elite pass rush they need guys who can cover. Jackson, a taller ballhawking corner can team up with second year player, Chidobe Awuzie and then allow Byron Jones to move to safety (his more natural position) and Dallas will have solely built up their secondary that desperately needs to make the jump to help out their middle of the pack pass rush.

20. Detroit Lions — Edge Rusher, Harold Landry

Detroit has one pass rusher that strikes fear into opposing offensive lineman, Ezekiel Ansah, that’s it, that’s all; Matt Patrica needs to bring in an impactful player to take the focus solely off Ansah. Landry (like Davenport) has the ability to play with his hand in the dirt or as a stand up edge rusher.

21. Cincinnati Bengals — Offensive Guard, Will Hernandez

Hernandez is the second best guard in the draft after Nelson; his height is a bit on the shorter side, however his power and footwork make up for anything he may be lacking physically. Andy Dalton borders on the line of not great and passable, and the only way Cincinnati has a prayer in the AFC North is if he can be protected and they have a solid run game. Hernandez brings the physically back to the Bengals that was solely lacking last year.

22. Buffalo Bills — Offensive Tackle, Orlando Brown

Bit of a reach here for Brown, but Buffalo is hoping that what Baker Mayfield told them that Brown is an ideal left tackle and someone who he trusts in blocking for him from college and into the NFL. Brown was horrible at the combine, I mean dreadful, but his game tape was fantastic; he is the player that will define if the combine measurables mean absolutely nothing.

23. New England Patriots — Offensive Tackle, Connor Williams

Brady is 41 and Nate Solder just left via free agency, look just because it’s obvious doesn’t make it not true. Williams fills a massive need for New England and provides much needed leadership along a line that is good but not great.

24. Carolina Panthers — Edge Rusher, Sam Hubbard

Carolina needs to (finally) address their aging pass rush, Julius Peppers can’t play forever, (I mean he probably could) and there hasn’t been a player ready to take the reigns from him. Enter Hubbard, he has all the measurables to be a dominant pass rusher, but it is his athleticism that leaves something to be desired, however Hubbard can use his tremendous motor to get off blockers.

25. Tennessee Titans — Tight End, Michael Gesicki

Mike Vrabel was brought in to be creative for Marcus Mariota; Gesicki gives them a younger option to learn behind a real pro in Delaine Walker, who is still serviceable but is getting up there in age. A young core of playmakers is being brewed in Tennessee, and Gesicki could be that final piece that could make the Titans a dangerous offence, if they gel.

26. Atlanta Falcons — Cornerback, Mike Hughes

Hughes is what Dan Quinn thinks is the final piece to creating a secondary that resembles what he had in Seattle as their defensive coordinator. Hughes isn’t the biggest corner in the draft but his coverage makes up for his lack of height, think Jason Verrett of the Chargers but who can stay healthy. 

27. New Orleans Saints — Tight End, Dallas Goedert

New Orleans, and especially Drew Brees, has missed a game changer at the tight end ever since they traded Jimmy Graham away to Seattle. Goedert may as well be a Jimmy Graham clone, and seeing as New Orleans tried to sign their former tight end but failed, why not get a younger, significantly cheaper option. Goedert would be the perfect compliment to the outside presence of Mike Thomas and the dual threat of Kamara and Ingram. This offence would be downright scary.

28. Pittsburgh Steelers — Linebacker, Rashaan Evans

I don’t mean to be the bearer or bad news, but Ryan Shazier isn’t coming back. Don’t get me wrong he is a tremendous story, an inspirational story but for his short term and long term health, his career is over. Enter Evans who can anchor the middle of a linebacking corp that has severally been lacking a dominant presence, even when Shazier was in the lineup the group left something to be desired. Evans hits like a linebacker but has the speed of a safety.

29. Jacksonville Jaguars — Wideout, Courtland Sutton

Jacksonville has a lot of number 2 wideouts but not a true number 1, big bodied wideout to keep the defence honest. Sutton will give the Jags what they had briefly with Allen Robinson. Sutton isn’t the fastest in this years draft but with his size he can out muscle the majority of corners. You can’t teach 6’4.

30. Minnesota Vikings — Offensive Tackle, Kolton Miller

When you pay 84M guaranteed for your quarterback you want to keep him upright, hell, you don’t want him to be touched, ever. So solidifying the offensive line, which made great strides with it’s upgrades last year isn’t a bad idea. 

31. New England Patriots — Linebacker, Leighton Vader Esch

New England has needed a big rangy linebacker ever since Chandler Jones was shipped off. Vader Esch just looks like a Patriot, not just because he’s white, but he reminds you of a Mike Vrabel, Rob Nikovich do everything linebacker except he can rush the passer and easily get around blockers with his enormous wingspan.

32. Philadelphia Eagles — Running Back, Derrius Guice

Your Super Bowl Champions just keep getting better and better! If Philadelphia wants to reduce the amount of hits and runs Carson Wentz receives the best way is to keep the ball on the ground and let the running backs do the damage. Guice is a luxury pick who teams up with an already formidable running back core in Jay Ajayi, Corey Clement, (pending return off injury) Darren Sporles. Guice will be the hammer that LeGarrette was, but with more juice (I’m horrible) in his legs.

Thank you for taking the time and hope you enjoyed reading what I believe, but will ultimately not even come close to unfolding in Round 1 of the 2018 NFL Draft!

If only I lasted as long as my articles..

Enjoy the Draft on Thursday!