#some additional ones in the tags are

[happi-tree]

69 for fanfics asks

Good morning, Cookies!!! Hope you're doing well 💗💗💗 Hehehe funny number :]

69. What are your favorite fics at the moment?

Oh, god. So many. I think I'll just do dndads for now, but I definitely have a few recs for past fandoms as well :)c

In no particular order:

Hold Me Close and Fear Me Not by SilverListensToThings. It's Oakworthy, it's a fae au (one of my favorite au flavors, which is. VERY clear if you've been following me for a bit), extremely well executed just like all of Silver's stuff! Beautiful descriptions, beautiful dialogue, and there's beautiful fanart inspired by it as well!

Chrysalis by kaseyskat. Grips everyone reading this by their shoulders. Listen to me. If you like transfem Sparrow. If you hate transfem Sparrow. If you've been contemplating the idea of transfem Sparrow. READ THIS. Literally THE transfem Sparrow fic of all time, written by my dearest friend Nyx! Sparrow babygirl you are everything to me!!!!! Also speaking of dearest friends...

i don't know how to say this, 'cause you're really my dearest friend by cookiescrumbles. That's you omg!!! CEO of Swiftli. My silly little guys. My beloveds. Really fun dialogue, very in-character, nobody writes Taylor Swift (not that one, the other one) like my lovely mutual Cookies!!!

Cocoa Talk by Anonymous. I have, obviously, NO idea who this author is but I'm kissing them very gently on the forehead for this fic /p. It takes place immediately after the FBI/debate mini-arc and it explores some lingering trauma Link has from being questioned by Schmegan. BIG tws for discussion of sexual assault, but this is really, really well done, and I absolutely adore how the teens are all written here - all distinctly protective of each other in their own ways.

Memories by SandrC. Woah, a season 1 fic??? In my recs??? More likely than you'd think! REALLY fun au concept in which Barry fucks really badly with his son's memory in the Oakvale arc and the only thing Henry can do is escape back to earth. Without anyone else and without his memories. Mercedes and the moms deal with the fallout. This fic is unfinished; however, it occupies such a large space in my mind that I HAD to put it on here. Lots of angst, lots of comfort (or at least attempts at comfort), and a very fun divergence from how Lark and Sparrow turn out in canon as well.

Honestly, I could add many, many more, but basically, as far as dndads goes, anything written by kaseyskat, SilverListensToThings, or astrcnaut and you're pretty much golden!!!

Fanfiction Writing Asks

[gibbearish]

love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

[ohitslen]

Kiss gun!

Based on this tweet!

[spotsupstuff]

day 22 and 25 -looks at date- or at least inspired by them

[queenlucythevaliant]

Just to clarify my thoughts (since I've had a number of people ask me about it) re: Job and cursing God. There's a big difference between cursing God as used in Scripture and how we generally would think of cursing at God today.

Cursing someone, in the Bible, has a lot of depth to it. It's not just saying "screw you " in anger, it's got a sense of forsakenness to it. It's the opposite of a blessing, a removal of blessing. If the blessing is presence, your face shining on the person you're blessing, then a curse is absence. In some translations, Job's wife tells him to "renounce God and die," which I honestly think makes a lot more sense to modern ears.

Job says a lot of unpleasant things to and about God in his anger and grief. So do the Psalmists. A number of the Prophets. So can we. God can take it if we come to him with honest expressions of our emotion, including those not-so-nice ones directed at him. I don't think there's anything wrong with getting mad at God and saying, "How dare you, you bastard" when you suffer unjustly. You can say much worse, I think, without sinning, though I don't feel particularly inclined to give examples. But as long as it's an honest expression of your heart, I think you're doing exactly what prayer is for. You're presenting him your heart with an open hand. He can use that. Opposite of love is not hate but indifference, etc.

Job doesn't renounce God. Neither should we. But I think when you're truly suffering, you're gonna have those feelings toward God either way. He'd rather you address them with him directly than try to avoid them. Cursing at God in the modern sense is actually a great way to keep the relationship strong and not end up cursing/renouncing him in the Biblical sense.

[kaeyachi]

Diluc had his father's hair.

His father's nose.

His father's laugh.

Diluc had the brains that could combat Crepus in chess matches and a heart of gold that would occasionally shine thru.

Diluc was so much like Crepus.

It must be awful for Diluc to keep seeing that.

Kaeya, however... Kaeya can't help but feel a bit jealous anyway.

When Kaeya looks in the mirror, he gripes at the fact that he doesn't have anything that could remind him of Crepus at all. All he had was blue hair instead of red, eyes with stars that are telling of a cursed civilization, and bony hands that get cold quickly.

Kaeya was nimble and quick, with words that could be like flowers for one instance and poison in the next.

All Alberich and no Ragnvindr.

He doesn't hate his birth father, but some days, he can't help but wish he was a bit more like man who took such good care of him instead.

[katabay]

L'APPEL DU VIDE

okay so. jack! jack. what a collection of guys. the overlap between jack and the beanstalk and jack the giant killer, though. that sure is something! sometimes king arthur is there, which always takes me by surprise.

this. specifically. is an idea I've been kicking around. jack and the beanstalk is not a story I've ever enjoyed, as a kid it was probably my least favorite to read. as an adult, I was INTENSELY fascinated by reading j.g. ballard's the drowned giant. I think about it frequently, and somewhere during a re read of it, I ended up revisiting jack.

combining different versions of jack into one character is not a new concept, but it IS a fun one! the version I've been assembling together plays less with the fun elements of a jack story (and adjacent folklore stories), and focuses more on the potential for tragic elements with the addition of the usual grim and jagged narrative edges that I personally enjoy.

jack with the backstory of the devil and the three golden hairs, only jack doesn't find love, he's TIRED, all he wants to do is go home, but there isn't a home to go back to. what is the point of being born lucky if this is what it gets you? jack the giant killer, only he doesn't want to kill giants, jack who saw a body of a giant when he was a small child and cannot bring himself to do as a king commands. jack, who climbs up the beanstalk and stops halfway to look down. etc.

to go back to the drowned giant real quick, both to set the tone about jack seeing the body of a giant as a youth, and also because I've been haunted and obsessed with this excerpt of it ever since I read it:

J. G. Ballard, The Drowned Giant

anyway! this was originally like, a two illustration concept to get out of my system. however. I'm halfway through outlining a narrative. so. maybe it will also be several illustrations and also comic.

bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost

[cypher05]

had an exchange with a friend yesterday and have not stopped thinking about it since

sova fursona by @the-pyre-of-stars, posted here

more art below the cut, cypher specific (really just doodles and sketches, nothing complete)

[sunnykeysmash]

Charlie: "Hey, uh, Dennis, uh, get to Frank as fast as you can. I have Malcolm and his dad."

[snuggleboots]

♡ in which i'm still having big feelings about kisame. naturally, i'm cramming the reader into said big feelings. have some genin and newly-graduated chunin kisame and reader, his one and only friend (´。＿。｀) it's dark, lots of death, so huge dni to minors. ♡

♡ might make this a dumb little series of drabbles, maybe? i'm sure as hell not dropping a whole thing in one post when it turned entirely into a chunin selection thing. it's choppy, probs has mistakes, but that's because i wrote it here and i am dogshit tired and slightly scared to post smth i just roughed out here :' ) ♡

Tags: kid kisame (6-10), kid reader (6-10), reader-insert, canon/reader friendship, dark themes, such as kiri's chunin selection, mentioned child deaths (the chunin selection), angst, shock/trauma.

It's a death of spirit, slow to manifest, to make your home in another person. The innocence of youth was never something fostered in the Land of Water, reclusive and cutthroat was the village that stands bastion in the heart of the island nation. Those of the Mist learn young that survival is a series of little deaths, each one an intangible shepherd to the next that awaits them.

Kirigakure, where connection is granted to budding shinobi for the sake of becoming one of life's many harsh lessons. It's when you're small, and your childish sense of hope is somehow still naïve and alive, that something so treasured as a comrade is allowed to be anything more than a means to an end. Sharing meals, and clinging to life by the skin of your teeth through missions too gruesome for children so young, one's genin team is often one's first true taste of friendship.

He was so young when you met, six years old at best; a competitive thing- oblivious of his own strength and rough at times, but fierce in his loyalty. It started then, a boy with a gruff heart too big for his body, and a sawtooth grin that looked more frightening than he ever bothered to actually be. He was your friend, with cute ears that stuck out and gills that sometimes flared in a way that made you helpless but to laugh, and an unyielding sense of self-assurance that made missions less frightening, so long as it was him that fought at your side.

Hoshigaki Kisame was not a monster. Not as you knew him.

Companions in a shared misery back then, you were each other's determined and desperate support through the trials of your paths; assurances shared with conviction carried you through the horrors that no heart so soft as yours should ever have been forced to witness. You wanted to heal, he strove to conquer the art of blades.

Children are, unfortunately, as precious as they are blind, and their pride is earned hard through enduring that which would cull their lessers. Together though, there was nothing that could stop the unbeatable two that made him and you. It was a connection found only by the miracle of chance, a friendship forged through the four years shared as junior shinobi. Your sensei, your third man - they existed beyond the bubble of two.

You were children together, once.

But in the Bloody Mist, you fight or you die. It was a death of heart to swallow the fear in your throat when it came time for selection. Ten years old by then; it was cold that day, and the pit in your stomach was nearly all-consuming when Kisame bid you the first of many goodbyes. 'Just in case', he'd said - his voice quiet, and heavier than you'd ever heard it then - just in case one of you failed to survive. It was better to say goodbye now than risk losing his chance if it had come down to facing you.

Through the chūnin selection your three-man squad became a bitterly victorious two-man cell. It was only a small mercy given to you by chance that you weren't forced to face Kisame, and not yet was he forced to turn his strength on his team. He survived by the ferocity of his blade whereas you weathered the terrified betrayal of your third man, a soft-spoken boy no older than you. A tracker - or, at least he would have been.

Surviving that was the first time you saw Kisame's eyes feral and searching, his developing muscles drawn taut and teeth bared like a wild animal as he tore through the small ceremony of fellow children-turned-soldiers that had proved their mettle in the slaughter, each newly minted journeymen shinobi drenched in the blood of their friends.

Some were too stunned from the shock of their own actions, most too numb to react to the Hoshigaki boy who sought you out like one drowning sought the ocean's surface. There was no pretence of honour or achievement to be found in the way his hands, still slick and stinking of iron, had gripped your shoulders when he finally found you, as if you were the only tether he had left to anything good.

Neither of you smiled that day. There was no crooked grin that greeted you there, and no stifled tittering that followed the frenzied flaring of his gills to welcome him in turn, not that time. Finding each other through the bloodshed as official chūnin, you both learned that no amount of conditioning could have prepared either of you for the reality of taking the lives of your compatriots. It felt different, somehow more visceral, compared to cutting down someone marked an enemy.

Kill or be killed, neither of you had any other choice. That day would not be the one that marked his end, nor your own. Not yet - he was manic and peaked, you were despondent and spiralling - not yet. You weren't ready. He wasn't ready. Not yet. It was a shame that you weren't built for killing, and an even greater one that Kisame's concept of a comrade, that day, began chipping down to you. You became the exception.

Fear is something any child is bound to experience in life; a crawling dread felt in their bones when something goes bump in the night. It wasn't fear he had felt, and he was a child no longer when he emerged as one of the several victorious. No, the young swordsman-to-be was a selfish boy, he knew, because what he felt when he'd shoved his face into your hair and squished his nose into the crown of your head was the shameful sensation of relief. So many had died horrible, gruesome deaths - but not you. You lived, you breathed, you were shaking like a leaf and staring through him, but at least you were alive.

He was surely broken, and at that point so were you, but at least you had survived.

Your body moved through the motions of a person after the fact, while each champion was recognised, your stare one thousand yards detached from the moment when the weight of your certificate soaked up the death from your killing hands. You hadn't had it a moment, hadn't had the chance to exchange it for your hitai-ate, and already it was marked with blood. You were meant to feel proud, strong for having outwitted and overpowered the others, too weak to serve the village - yet, you'd felt sick. Bile burned the back of your throat, swallowed down hard while your brain marked you a hypocrite that day, despite the ceremony of congratulations thrown in the faces of you and your peers.

It was a blur, what little remained of that day. You have no memory now, nor did you then, of dragging yourself to the baths, but you know that every time you closed your eyes you saw the faces of those you'd defeated. Their faces stricken with panic or wet with desperate tears, voices squeaky or hoarse in their last moments - your kunai buried deep in the throat of your squadmate, his tantō skewered through the fleshy part of your waist. Pain, in every manner of which it existed.

No matter how desperately you'd scrubbed, your skin left raw and burning, your breathing haggard and unbearably tight, the blood never seemed to wash clean from your hands. Kisame was a persistent one, perceptive for his age and unwilling to part while his brain somehow struggled to rationalise that you lived, even if you'd left his sight. He'd scrubbed your back and bid the little comfort of his company - a silent sentinel that never once mentioned the strangled sobs that wracked your body when finally, you'd worn through what little energy you had left.

You couldn't understand why you cried.

And he had no answer as to why you didn't feel clean - he didn't either, though it bothered him somewhat less than it did you. Then, he'd never had as optimistic an ambition as yourself. His path was always of the sword.

You'd managed to patch your own wounds, and then Kisame's - because that was meant to be your path. The medic, the healer, a preserver of life. The death of hope was dealt through the cold realisation that you would never truly be that. At least, not in this lifetime. Not like this.

You were naïve to have ever thought that the path of a medic was above the demand of bloodshed.

It was he who helped you fix your clothes when your fingers refused to, no words exchanged when he pulled you under his arm and guided you from the baths - it was good, at least, that you'd washed up before heading for home. The silence shared between you, then, remained unbroken out of respect for those unfortunate dead. Loyal to a fault, and in search of an excuse to be near, he'd helped you back to the tiny apartment you called your own.

You felt many things that he didn't, then - but it didn't make you weak. You survived selection, you'd survive this too, he knew.

Your home was empty, polluted with noise from the market district beyond your windows, inhabited at that point only by yourself - still a child, yet so alone. Long had the Land of Water suffered civil wars - and your parents' lives were claimed somewhere along the line, but at the very least he was there. This world had no shortage of children orphaned, and like you, there was no one left alive to have awaited his return.

His home was with you. At least, it was then.

You were children together, once.

That day, through a series of deaths both tangible and in spirit, began the first of many goodbyes. To childhood, to juvenile altruism, and to the hope of most things good.

But not Kisame.

Kisame was not a monster, not then, at least. Not ever when you knew him.

[loveyazy]

wanna post my theory before Elain's book is here

I know people say Feysand is Hades x Persephone, but NO. Wrong. They're Beauty and the Beast as well. Rhys is literally described as having a beast mode/version/side. People are scared of him. He's misunderstood, etc. And because these are retellings, some things are changed. Like for instance, Rhys teaches HER to read, the way Belle taught the Beast to read in the Disney version (I can't recall if they do that in the original fairytale).

I think Tamlin x Feyre were the BatB fairytale retelling, and Feysand were more the Disney BatB retelling.

Hades kidnaps Persephone in the original story. Rhys tells her he wants her to come to the Night Court as part of her deal. You know who else makes a deal to stay with them? Belle and the Beast.

And yes, Rhys takes her away from Tamlin, but that's literally the only similarity to Hades x Persephone they have. Feyre was never spring-like to be Persephone, but who is?

ELAIN.

Elain is actually going to be the Persephone retelling. She is SPRING and where is she? In the Night Court, aka The Underworld, and ope, who is the male she likes? Azriel. Hades kidnaps Persephone and makes a deal to keep her in the Underworld. I don't think Az is obviously going to "kidnap" Elain, he doesn't need to, but I do think some sort of deal will be made, finally ending any sort of tie of her to Lucien and breaking the mating bond (because let's be honest, everyone and their mate getting together is boring af and is honestly why I'm kinda eh about all the mate reveals in her books now but I digress). Also Az's personality fits Hades much more than Rhys did. Hades has been written as a quiet, reserved introvert who likes to stay in the "shadowy darkness of his realm". Does that sound like Rhys or Az? I mean. It's right there, really.

Now the other retelling was Snow White and The Seven Dwarves, and other than a total crack explanation that Nesta went through several men before finding her prince, aka Cassian, (they did say her mother wanted a prince for her and Cassian was referred to as the Prince of Bastards so....?) it's hard for me to really place them as Snow White, but there wasn't another retelling in the first three.

People say oh three brothers, three sisters, so boring. And everyone and their mate getting together is what? Not boring? Not easy? I would LOVE for someone to finally break the mating bond and say yeah no, I don't want you.

Possibly hot take: Nessian would have been 100000000x better if they didn't turn out to be mates. The reveal at first was like WHAT. And then like five seconds later, I was like, "ope, wait. I hate this."

*spoilers up to cc2, all acotar, and tog 7 in the tags

[lsleofthelost]

genuinely feel the need to ask some people in the descendants tag if they even like the source material

[amplexadversary]

Completely self indulgent post but here's one of the post-canon scenarios I have in my head for G Gundam.

Maybe skip this post if you don't like dark themes. Not all of what I've outlined is dark (most of it isn't), but I do cross the line past what appears in the show in regards to DG cells and abduction.

The shuffles all get roped into restoration projects on Earth between the 13th and 14th gundam fights, partially to have something to do alongside their training, partially out of inspiration by the common points of the Kasshus' and Master Asia's goals, and partially because netting their countries some decent publicity is likely to earn them favors during the Gundam Fight's off-years.

Sai is contacted by Kyral about an effort to clear out the infamous buildup of trash and cadavers on Everest; he wants Sai to leverage Neo China's help as something of a reparation kind of deal and Sai goes sure why not.

Sai recruits Argo because Bolt Gundam is built to withstand the cold, and he thinks Argo and Nastasha could help reverse engineer that quality to enable the use of their Gundams as both heavy work equipment and protection from the harsh environmental conditions that normally prevent this kind of operation.

George gets involved because someone he knows has a distant relative who died on the mountain a century ago, and they wanted him to check in with the forensics team on the project. This detail is important because eventually it becomes clear that there is a mystery to solve (that I myself haven't figured out all the details of yet but broadly know the setup and conclusion); DG-infected people are disappearing and not being investigated due to stigma. Our heroes are naturally going to be pissed about this, and will need an "in" with the field if they want to do anything about it.

First massively self-indulgent element: The forensics/body identification team inexplicably includes the real-world author Kathy Reichs, who somehow exists in this universe, and there's a little side bit about her having written a Bones book right before the 12th fight that featured a cooked cadaver found inside a gundam after entry into the Earth's atmosphere. There are a lot of weird coincidences in the book that parallel the DG incident, which creeps everyone out, but the similarities are merely born of the writer threading the needle of being believable and interesting in a way that became very true to life.

What does become relevant is when the Shuffles eventually meet up, she's able to explain the implications of a bunch of weird shit the fighters discovered (also Marie Louise read her book, and one of the in-universe liberties Reichs took writing about the gundams' black boxes that she explains in the afterword leads to ML realizing something important; that Neo Germany does not have its gundam's remains.)

While the Everest project is happening, Domon, Chibodee, and Allenby all want to continue their training somewhere on Earth, and receive a proposal from (an OC of mine who is) a historic preservationist (and an acquaintance of Allenby's): she has acquired the grounds of an abandoned castle in Europe* after submitting a plan to restore it, and needs to hire people to help with the labor.

*the castle is probably somewhere in Germany because I also want this pitch to have drama over Schwarz (pre-13th fight), Schwarz (Kyoji), and Schwarz (the next guy who was supposed to inherit the mask when the older ninja retired). Also Germany is fucking pretty.

In exchange for the help of the three gundam fighters, they and Rain get paid, plus room and board anywhere on the grounds, plus full access to the grounds and miles of sparsely-inhabited countryside for training purposes, and the privacy and ability to practice with their gundams that comes with being in the middle of fucking nowhere. Rain sets herself up to work a clinic in the next town over as well as practicing pro re nata wilderness medicine (I'm convinced every medic supporting the gundam fight would need to be able to do this.)

The group involved in the Castle project sticks around for a time, makes some good progress, and engage in occasional Shenanigans that come up when you put a bunch of weirdos in a Situation.

They aren't in town a lot save for Rain, but when they are they eventually start to pick up on gossip and news about the Mysterious Disappearances correlated with DG cell infection (as well as details that turn out to be important later). Eventually Rain brings this to Domon and Chibodees' attention and they decide that, yeah, this is tied to the DG, this is their problem, they should convene with the rest of the Shuffle Alliance about it.

Also of course Schwarz is involved because I'm the one writing this; the culprits' DG-tissue harvesting operation relies on having him captured and helpless, using cells from his body to "update" other victims' DG infections to a less aggressive strain. One thing I haven't decided is whether I want a reinstantiated Wong to head this shit, or make up my own morally bankrupt opportunistic asshole looking to twist the DG to their own benefits. I also need to decide where on the planet the center of all this insanity is, and it needs to be a place that isn't going to have any unfortunate implications (because that's a genuine risk with dark story elements)

... That's about as much as I have that is thought-out enough for me to explain. I return to thinking about this scenario a lot because it puts most of the characters way out of their element (and has a bunch of details that appeal to me specifically), and it kind of evolved into an incomplete plot outline that I don't currently have any plans to flesh out.

I think it's an interesting enough direction to go, because it follows through with a lot of the themes present in G, but takes advantage of the genre shift to avoid DBZ-crazy power scaling and adjusts the conflict more to a matter of where the main characters' prowess is most effective (Both in and out of the gundams. I'm assuming there are a ton of guys similar to Michelo's gang that just need fighting interspersed with everything else I described. In fact, kicking Some Group of Douchebags out of their protection racket is probably how team Castle even gets ahold of evidence related to missing persons.)

[whatsupspaceman]

made this specifically for the 90s 2000s kids. don’t ask me why i grouped them like this i simply was going on vibes

[feydfuckernation]

medieval chess au….? that sounds so cool

so originally i wanted to do some kind of historical au for chess set during the medieval era, but the more i looked into it the more i realized that trying to do something like that in a real world context while still keeping the same real world political context (apolitical chess is just not as interesting to me tbh) just wasn't going to work, so instead i decided to do what george r.r. martin did when he was writing game of thrones and use real world history (game of thrones was largely inspired by the war of the roses) and real world politics within the context of a fantasy setting, so the main conflict is still east vs west, but it's the eastern kingdoms vs the western kingdoms.

freddie is ser fredrick, the gilded lion, born and raised in the golden city (the main seat of power among the western kingdoms similar to king's landing, located by the sea) to become king, beloved by most while also being regarded as a petulant child that (seemingly) hasn't had to deal with any real hardship, and then across the emerald sea are the eastern kingdoms, a colder, harsher climate compared to the western kingdoms, which is where prince anatoly, the black prince (or the white wolf, depending on who you talk to), lives with his wife, svetlana, and his advisor, aleksander molokov, who himself was born in the small settlement of alexandrovitch, located just outside the black gates, which separates the northernmost mountain range and the freefolk lands from the rest of the southern kingdoms. florence, meanwhile, is ser florence, a former advisor and freddie's royal mistress whose family comes from the eastern kingdoms but grew up in the golden city before deciding she was fed up with her life and ran away to become a knight instead, and then other plot details that include things like anatoly abdicating the throne because he never wanted the responsibility of ruling a kingdom and leaving his wife to take over the responsibility instead as the czarina and her doing so knowing that there are people who depended on them for leadership and guidance (and honestly probably being better at it than he was), molokov secretly plotting to take over the throne for himself (having already earned himself the nickname of the wolf whisperer), freddie regularly competing in the tournaments held in the golden city and being a very capable warrior in his own right (he's big on jousting).

[tallest-tiptoes]

this episode was good, great even. then it turned sour really fast.