#sorry i don't have a verse page up yet BUT

[apocalypseornaw]

Just Need You

Drabble that ties into Always be Yours (looking like I may write more for that verse👀)

Little steamy, Dean dealing with the mark of Cain, reader dealing with guilt

Half asleep you reached out looking for Dean's arm but wasn't really surprised when all you found was an empty pillow. You climbed out of bed slipping a pair of shorts on under your shirt and grabbing Dean's robe off the dresser before stepping out into the hall.

After checking the kitchen and making sure the door leading into the garage was closed you headed for the library hoping to find him there. You stopped at the doorway wrapping the robe tightly around you as you watched him. There was an open book in front of him, one of the many volumes that all of you had hoped would hold some sort of answer about the mark. So far there hadn't been any. 

His eyes trailed across the page, the little crease between his eyebrows telling you he hadn't found anything worth while. When he leaned forward to reach for his glass and the bottle of bourbon you cleared your throat as a way of letting your presence be known. 

His gaze flew up towards you and a small smile worked its way onto his lips "What are you doing up sweetheart?" You shrugged, stepping further into the room. "Well I wanted to curl up to you and fall back asleep but I found an empty bed instead"

"I couldn't sleep and didn't want to wake you" he reasoned and you nodded, walking over to slip between him and the table. You pushed the book to the side and sat just in front of him so he gripped your hips tightly, leaning his forehead over on your stomach "I've told you to wake me up the nights you can't sleep. I meant it when I said that we were in this together. I can't carry the mark or remove it but I can do whatever I can to help you"

Your fingers played in the hair at the nape of his neck as you spoke and you could feel him nudging you gently any time you stopped. "I love you Dean. I'm not going anywhere" you spoke into the quiet of the room and felt his grip tighten right before he pulled you forward off the table into his lap.

You let out a gasp of surprise and saw a hint of a smirk playing at his lips "I love you too Y/N. I don't think no I know I wouldn't still be standing without you and Sam" you felt a twinge of guilt yet again. You knew he forgave you both for what happened but there was still that sliver of doubt in your mind on whether he truly had or not. 

As if he could read your mind he moved one hand up to cup your chin moving your head to look you in the eye "Past is the past sweetheart. I know how you feel about me, I know how I feel about you. That's what matters. You and Sam have been best friends for too long to let something come between you two and that's my little brother so he's stuck with me"

You shifted in his lap trying to completely regain your balance and noticed how his jaw clenched "And here i thought you wanted to talk" you realized what he meant and froze looking up at him innocently "Sorry?" He raised an eyebrow gripping your hips tightly as he rolled his hips up just enough that you could feel how his body had reacted to your movements "I'm not" 

He leaned forward catching your neck with his lips leaving a trail of kisses along it. Your eyes fluttered shut as you moved, grinding your hips down hard enough to earn a low moan out of him "Dean" "Hmmm?" He asked lips still against your skin.

You swallowed hard twice but knew any logical thinking was gone. He bit down on your pulse point clearly enjoying the moan it pulled from you. "Use your words princess. If you need something just ask" he teased, hands gripping your hips tight enough there was a good chance you'd be bruised the next morning but you could care less "I need you Dean. I just need you" You whispered and he chuckled darkly "Oh you got me sweetheart. Let's go back to bed. I need some room for everything I want to do to you"

[scandalsavagefanfic]

Hello! I am a huge fan of ur writing. I've loved everything I've read of yours. I've read alot of what you've posted, except for a couple of the tags that are squicky for me (so I'm very thankful you tag very thoroughly). No judgement for the squick, it's just not for me. & when I'm having a bad day, I usually just go thru ur ao3 and find something to reread. I think about Therapy's Bruce & Jason every damn day. While I obvs appreciate ur darker more "problematic" content (I really vibe with some of the themes you write about bc of my own trauma, & so it's very cathartic to read about in a fictional setting), I am truly a sucker for ur more happy content. The Happily Ever After verse also lives in my head rent free. Idk more wholesome stuff just seems more special when you write it. Anyways. I would die for you. But the point of this ask is cause I'm curious as to why you don't like Urban Legends? I'm sorry if you already talked about it here or on twitter and I missed it. I was just wondering because I really enjoy your take on things and would love to hear why you dislike it. I've been enjoying it so far personally, but I am always open to DC comics criticism.

Aw thank you so much! I'm so flattered by everything you just said. You're so sweet ❤❤❤❤❤

I haven't talked about Urban Legends here or twitter (I haven't been very active in either place lately. Just a lot going on and no energy 😔) but I'm happy to do it here.

Before I start though, I just want to add a standard disclaimer and make it clear that if you like it, there's nothing wrong with that and you don't have to let me ruin it for you lol. Like what you like.

That said, since you asked...

I said this when I was talking about it on discord, that there is a difference between hope and expectation. I always hope that a new story centered on Jason (or anyone really, but things have been especially egregious for Jay for 15 years) will be good or at least treat the character with a minimal level of respect (to be honest, the bar is super fucking low). But my expectations always temper my hope, to keep it from getting unrealistic. Because my expectations are based on experience.

The long history of Jason Todd, since even before his resurrection, has been one of retroactively trying to make him "a bad seed" in order to absolve Bruce of any responsibility in his death.

I don't even expect DC or their writers to start honoring the fact that Jason was not an angry, reckless Robin (and less of the later than Dick or Tim and definitely Damian). There plenty of ways that retcon can be folded into his history and be compelling and sympathetic. And if they're going to stick with that retcon, I'm only asking that they do it in one of those compelling and sympathetic ways because Jason was 15 when he died, heroically, in one of the most selfless acts in comics, to save a woman who literally handed him over to be brutally murdered. He was 12 when Bruce plucked him off the streets, he'd been homeless and fending for himself for at least two years. I personally think that Jason's story hits harder for him and Bruce if their original, canon relationship, of Jason as starry-eyed and eager to learn and absolutely devoted to Bruce and Bruce to Jason, is preserved. But Jason's origins does leave room for a meaningful interpretation of him as angry and frustrated at the lack of meaningful results of Bruce's methods.

And that's really where my irritation at stories like Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer and Batman The Adventure Continues has it's roots.

Every time one of these stories comes out, I think (or hope, rather) that this will be the one that remembers and respects the origins of the Jason and the Red Hood, that takes into account the changed sensibilities of comics readers in the 30 years since Jason's death and the subtle, 20 year, retroactive campaign to make him the "bad Robin". The "born bad" trope is played out and literally no one likes the message it implies. That some kids are just bad eggs and there's nothing parents or the adults around them can do. Especially when it's played as the kid's fault. If Jason's time as Robin is going to be characterized by anger, then it should be rooted in anger at the social injustices he witnessed as he grew up in an impoverished, crime-ridden, area and the horrors he faced raising himself when every day was a battle for survival. There are topical, meaningful, stories to tell with that backdrop.

But those are never the stories we get.

⚠⚠ Spoilers for Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer ⚠⚠

I'm particularly disappointed in Urban Legends because for the first issue, it looked like that was the kind of story we were going to get. I was put off by the first flashback of Jason being mesmerized by Bruce's guns, and I got that feeling in my gut that it was a bad sign. Jason depicted as impatient and overconfident and the scene with the guns is heavy-handed foreshadowing that got my spidey-sense tingling. I had a inkling then (in the first three pages) of how this story was going to play out, but it was early and I could still see many narrative paths that could lead to a satisfying story. My concerns were soothed somewhat and the little flame of my hope fanned, with the flashback of Alfred scolding Bruce, with Barbara's concern for Jason. A bit of worry returned with the way Jason ruthlessly pursued an addict who didn't appear to be a dealer and with the ending of the issue. The stuff with the addict sat wrong with me but the ending was tempered some by how despicable Tyler's dad was written. The scene was clearly set so that the reader could sympathize with Jason's decision and the scene with the addict could be brushed aside as a side-effect of comics over-the-top need for constant action, so I still held hope.

Issue 2 made me uncomfortable and it's where my hope starts to take a backseat to my expectations. I can dismiss Jason's self-deprecating internal monologue as unreliable narration, except that the flashback reinforces his thought process to explicitly show that it's not unreliable narration, and should be taken at face value. Jason faces physical abuse at the hands of his mother's drug dealer and when the flashback continues later, Jason kills the drug dealer. To be clear, this is a pre-Bruce Jason. His mom is still alive. He's like... 10. He kills this guy for shoving his head into a wall and implying Jason's mother paid for her drugs with sex. This is a scene that serves a single purpose. To show that Jason has always been prone to violence.

In the spirit of full disclosure, there is the small chance the drug dealer might not be dead. But the story obviously wants the reader to think he is, and it hasn't done anything to change that yet.

Starlin already did this story with The Diplomat’s Son in 1988 and he did it infinitely better. AND that’s still technically canon. So now I’m supposed to believe that Jason lost his cool bad enough to kill two douche bags before his sweet 16? Like it’s totally normal for abused kids raised in poverty, who’ve led hard and heartbreaking lives to just... haul off and kill people? That’s bullshit, and when taken with the Jason in the third issue, who is little more than an idiot thug, this story is really doubling down on some fucked up stereotypes.

Which brings us to the most recent issue. I went into this installment with very low expectations. I thought this story was going to be about Jason, through this experience with Tyler, a young boy with a similar background to Jason's, coming to the realization that Bruce's way is the best way and that Bruce did his best by Jason.

That would be annoying (in no small part because it takes increasingly absurd levels of plot armor to keep Bruce's no kill rule relevant, let alone irrefutably right). But I can probably live with that, if only because maybe if Jason officially falls back into line with the Bats crusade, maybe I'll get stories that treat him with respect, stories that don't relegate him to comic relief, dumb brute, or a background body with no lines in a story about the Joker burning Gotham (like Jason would just fucking stand there quietly for that).

And that may still be where the story is going, Jason realizing Bruce is right.

But holy shit do I not have the right words to describe how fucking insulting and gross issue three is.

From start to finish--including the flashback--Jason is written as cruel and fucking stupid. Like straight up dumb.

The entire issue is Bruce explaining the fucking basics to Jason like it's his first day. And Jason flies off the fucking handle and terrorizes a doctor he knows isn't a part of making the Cheerdrops, beats the shit out of some random addicts, and finally, when he can't accomplish anything on his own because he's a dumb brute he calls Barbara for help and rushes in with no information where he's promptly incapacitated and must now wait to be rescued by Batman.

This panel is the least of the issues sins but I can’t screenshot the entire story but it’s representative of the tone for the whole issue (and retroactively tainted the prior two issues).

This is beyond insulting. The only conclusions Jason comes to in this issue are the ones Bruce leads him to by talking to him like he can’t make the simplest connections. And like... in this story Jason can’t make the simplest connections.

This (and the Jason throughout the entirety of this issue) is a far cry from the Jason we fell in love with in Under the Red Hood, who was competent and strategic and intelligent enough to seize control of Gotham’s underworld from Black Mask (who’s no fucking slouch, he’s the first and only person to unify organized crime in Gotham) AND elude and manipulate Bruce until the time and place of his choosing.

This is a far cry from even the Red Hood and the Outlaws Jason who is competent enough to fight the League of Shadows and Ra’s al Ghul (among very dangerous and skilled others) and smart enough to create antidotes for mind control nanotech viruses.

As he should be, by the way. Jason Todd is one of the best, most comprehensively trained fighters in DC’s stable of non powered vigilantes. He’s not irrational or hot headed. He’s pragmatic, tactically minded, and patient. He’s a detective. Right now. Has been since he was 12. Bruce doesn’t have to make him one because he already is. 

Jason is not a stupid thug who uses his fists because his brain doesn’t work. And I can’t tell you how so very exhausted I am by this narrative. 

This is actually the most egregious example of Jason’s skills and intelligence being not just undermined but dismissed entirely. Even Morrison’s Jason had some degree of competency. 

The one, single redeeming factor of this story is the art. It’s beautiful. And Marcus To is a godsend he seems to be one of only a couple of artists who remember that Jason was a child when he was Robin and I’m literally only buying this book because of him. 

Anyway, I’m sorry. I didn’t want that to come out so... um... passionately lol. I’m just very very tired. My intention with this isn’t to ruin it for you, if you like it, that’s fine. 

But this issue shot this story to the top of my "Vehemently Despise” list. 1) Batman: Urban Legends (Cheer), 2) Battle for the Cowl/Morrison’s Batman and Robin, 3) Batman The Adventure Continues.

I hope the next issues somehow salvage this dumpster fire. But I’m not expecting it.

(Damnit. That sounded harsh again. To reiterate, I’m not trying to judge anyone who enjoys it, I just personally hate it and you asked me why lol 😅)

[therealvinelle]

Hi! I was reading through your meta (which is reeeeally interesting) and noticed you said you don't like Eleazar? I was wondering why that was?

Tumblr ate this ask when I had almost finished it and I hate everything. Also, thanks for the compliment, I’m really glad you like my things.

Now to try and remember what I wrote about Eleazar…

I think Eleazar is a disagreeable person whose gift wasn’t useful enough to warrant a place in the Volturi guard, and Aro jumped on the Carmen-shaped excuse to give him an honorable discharge.

To start with the gift, we see him use it twice and neither time is particularly impressive.

Siobhan Siobhan has the power of reality manipulation. Her gift is noticeable enough that Carlisle is certain she has it, so when he gets Eleazar and Siobhan in a room together he pulls Eleazar over to see if he was right. Eleazar squints at Siobhan. And he squints. Finally he says, «I’ve got nothing.» Now, gifts are an iffy, complicated matter everyone has their own theories about, but I think that at the end of the day we can all agree it’s a binary, you’re gifted or you’re not. Some gifts may be weak, but those are still gifts. And maybe someone will touch the gray zone of «is it a gift or is Johnny the vampire just really good at juggling?», but Siobhan has the power to manipulate reality, and she must do it a lot for Carlisle to have come to suspect it in the first place. She has a definitive and powerful gift. And even if I’m wrong about gifts being binary, if Eleazar wants to be useful to Aro he should still be able to say: Yes, this person has a gift, or no, this person does not have a gift. Sadly, he is not. When brought before Siobhan he says «She could have a gift, she could also not have a gift.» This means he hasn’t detected her gift, which is bad enough by itself. Being able to tell if someone has a gift or not should be a dealbreaker. The way he answers, though, that she could very well have a gift he doesn’t know about, makes it clear that people having gifts he couldn’t detect has happened enough for him to be open to the possibility that the gift there, and he can’t see it. In other words, Eleazar isn’t reliable for detecting gifts and will give Aro false negatives.

Bella This is an aside but as it’ll inevitably come up later in my blog I’ll just drop here that I think Bella’s gift is something more complex than a shield. She has prophetic dreams, hallucination!Edward, and there’s a weird inconsistency as to who is blocked by her and who isn’t. I think her gift is self-preservation, and the shield is one of its manifestations. Anyway, onto discrediting Eleazar. (I’ll be pretty closely paraphrasing what happens in chapter 31 of Breaking Dawn, but since the interaction goes on for several pages I’m not going to clutter this post by pasting all of it.) To his credit, he does notice Bella right away, and he identifies her as a shield based on the fact that he gets this sense of nothingness from her. This is all he can do, however, and I can’t stress that enough. He assumes that she can block Edward, but he’s shocked to learn that she can block Aro. He’s just as surprised that she can block Jane and Alec. He has to interview her to deduce exactly what her gift does, which again has nothing to do with his gift. Anyone could ask questions, in fact Aro found all this out two books ago, without the help of Eleazar. Eleazar then starts musing aloud about who-would-win in a Renata vs. Bella showdown (more on that later), which is as tactless as it is revealing. The guy genuinely doesn’t know, and it’s because he doesn’t understand their gifts well enough. Eleazar’s power means he can tell Bella that she has a gift, and he knows roughly what it is. He muses that usually he can’t even tell that much, which again is quite damning. He can’t tell her exactly what she does without a game of 20 questions first. She gives him more information than he gives her, which he then regurgitates back to her with slightly different wording, and everybody claps. «My god, Eleazar, you’ve done it again!» (No, really, this is pretty much what happens. Eleazar brought no new information to the table, yet he blew Bella and Edward’s minds.) It’s all fun and games to do this for Bella and Edward, as they for various reasons genuinely didn’t realize she had a gift. For Aro, who figured this one out on his own, one begins to wonder what Eleazar was bringing to the table.

Carlisle Bonus bullet point! I’ll make this one brief. I believe Carlisle in canon has a gift he’s unaware of (Yes, I have a post planned, but it will get ugly long so god knows when it’ll come), which makes him another one of Eleazar’s gift detection fails. In short, I think he’s extremely charismatic, able to win over anybody. To list a few examples - he has an extremely diverse set of friends who in Breaking Dawn are willing to lay down their lives for him, Jacob muses how his instinctive hostility around vampires doesn’t apply to Carlisle, and vampires are terrifying to humans (don’t be fooled by the movies, people) yet Carlisle is able to work as a successful doctor, meaning his patients don’t mind being exposed to a killing machine even when they’re at their most vulnerable. He’s able to keep his family of sociopaths in line. There’s not a single person in the Twilight ‘verse that dislikes him. (Billy and Caius excepted, but Billy has no direct exposure to him until late Eclipse, and Caius is responding to a coven that’s potentially threatening the Volturi) People are free to disagree with me on this one, but if I’m right (and I have a lot of book quotes as well as a theory on what gifts even are to back me up on this one. I’m right, damnit!) then Carlisle is another gifted vampire Eleazar failed to detect.

So. We’ve established that Eleazar’s gift will yield false negatives, and that he can’t tell you much about the gifts he does detect.

I think his power is to point out the obvious.

Which means that Aro’s eyelid was twitching slightly, but alright, Eleazar could still be useful.

Unfortunately, there is the matter of weighing up your pros with your cons.

The Volturi are, at the end of the day, a group of people who live in a commune together. Coven, guard, evil minions, call them what we like but they’re exposed to each other and some sense of agreeability is required. And Chelsea is not omnipotent.

More, I imagine that in a coven as large and old as the Volturi, they’ve developed a culture of their own. This means that newcomers will need social awareness and a willingness to fit in.

Eleazar, from what we see of him in Breaking Dawn, appears to lack both.

It’s in the way he speaks of the people he used to work with. It’s utterly impersonal. He tells us how their gifts work, no more and no less. When he speaks of Aro, he speaks only of actions Aro took and orders he gave, nothing about the man’s personality. Now, considering the context, he was speaking in a context where Jane’s thoughts and feelings were far from relevant, but it’s still notable.

Also notable is the fact that he has no issue contemplating a Renata vs. Bella scenario, even though this would mean the deaths of two people he worked with for years. Perhaps it’s a thought exercise, but it’s not a thought exercise I would have gotten into when it was days away from becoming reality. If Renata can’t deflect Bella’s power, she and Aro die.

I’ll put it this way - I don’t think he’d do a «who would win» like this involving Carmen.

At no point in the book does Eleazar show any concern for the eventuality that members of a guard he used to be a part of may get killed.

It seems he didn’t form personal relationships with the rest of the guard. I suspect he considered himself... if not quite above them, then still someone who could evaluate them. Their gifts is what he looked at in them. I also think it’s likely he asked Aro not to use Chelsea on him, which in turn would have made him stick out even more as there’s nothing making him and Volturi Guard Member X just click in the way I imagine Chelsea can be very helpful with. Which in turn means that the other guard members will feel close to one another in a way they’re not close to Eleazar.

Also… he’s just a douche. I’m sorry, but I don’t make the rules and the whole guy radiates douche. I can’t even point to a specific quote in the book, it’s just is.

I don’t think this guy never really fit into the Volturi guard, and his gift wasn’t useful enough to keep him. Aro was thrilled to have him at first, but as time went on and Eleazar proved to just not be all that, he eventually realized he had to get rid of him.

Because as others have pointed out before me, the Carmen excuse makes no sense. There would be no problem in one more vampire in the castle, yet Aro wouldn’t let her in and Eleazar had to choose.

It was a solution that sent Eleazar on his way with his ego intact, and no hard feelings towards the Volturi. More, Aro is on record doing this with it’s-not-you thing with at least one other vampire. Laurent wanted to join the Volturi, had nothing to bring to the table, and Aro used past association with the Romanians as an excuse for why Laurent couldn’t join rather than tell him to his face that he was useless. With Marcus, Aro, and Chelsea around, the Romanian connection isn’t a problem, meaning Aro was bullshitting.

TL;DR: Aro is the kind of person who’d lie and say his grandma died if he doesn’t want to go to your party, and Eleazar is the kind of person who’d say «My condolences».

[calumxkisses]

Yellow | c.h.

pairing: calum hood x reader

genre: fluff

warnings: none

summary: prince!calum au - you're his yellow and he's yours.

a/n: hi! 'm not really good with au imagines but i hope you'll like it. let me know what you think of this imagine. love you!

this imagine its inspired by the song: yellow

✰ ✰ ✰

“Yellow.” A sudden voice makes you jump. You close the book you’re reading as you place a hand on your chest, feeling your heart beating quickly.

The library is huge, the storm lights barely illuminate the room, making it almost impossible to find your way around and read without the help of candles. The smell of old books is strong, there is a lot of dust on the shelves and feeling small near these high shelves make the perfect atmosphere to be able to take refuge from the outside world, from a world made of rules and confined to the land surrounding the property. Your little refuge, however, is interrupted by the presence of this man and you turn around quickly, trying to hide the smile that forms on your face at the sight of the stranger.

Despite the size of the room, the prince appears to be in full control of everything around him. He is standing in front of the door, several meters separate your figure from his, yet you can see the smile he gives you, his hands hidden behind his back and the fine lines near his eyes that underline his amused expression.

“What?” You ask before placing your hand in front of your mouth and widening your eyes. In your mind, a vivid image of your mother scolds you for your language and reminds you that you are no longer a child and that you must be careful when addressing a prince or any other high-ranking social figure.

“I'm sorry for talking to you like that, sir. I'm afraid I don't understand what your 'yellow' refers to.”

Prince Calum laughs briefly before slowly approaching you.

"We've known each other since we were children, we don't need certain formalities."

“My mother says-” you try to justify yourself, but he cuts you off right away.

“Nobody’s here.” He whispers before standing in front of you, keeping some distance to avoid misunderstanding in case someone enters. If it were up to him, there would be no such distance between you, but rules are rules and he would never want to compromise your image.

You look around to make sure no one is spying on you and, sure you are alone with him, you relax your shoulders and jaw, releasing the sigh you were holding back.

“So, yellow?” You ask, smiling, placing the book on the table to your left while you look at the boy, waiting for an answer.

His curly hair is carefully pulled back and the dark circles under his eyes lead you to imagine him sitting at his desk, with a lighted candle next to him and his gaze on the window in front of him, instead of the pages he is holding with his hand, pages he should study in order to become the man his father wants him to be, but that he will never be.

“It was a difficult choice, I will not lie to you. There are so many colors that remind me of you, the red of the dress you wore at your first dance when you entered society, the purple of the vase you broke when you discovered that you have been promised in marriage to an old man or the blue of water of the stream next to the tree where we always go to sit under it. And there are a thousand other colors that I associate to you.”

You smile proudly to hear that he paid attention to every detail and remember how as a child he couldn't even memorize the poems the teachers taught him and the thousand fights you had when you tried in vain to help him learn each verse.

“When I think of you, however, I think back to when you collected Ranunculus repens and put them in your hair, to embellish your hair and feel like the princesses who came to visit us. You always did it and you always took a few more so, when it rained and we couldn't go out, you had your little escort and you could wear them even inside these walls. You always have and if I'm not wrong-”

Calum slowly reaches out his arm towards you, his hand brushes your neck causing you to shiver all over your body, before moving a strand of hair and grabbing something from behind your ear.

“You still wear them.” He whispers, bringing his hand in front of your eyes and showing the small yellow flower you were wearing until a few seconds before.

“They still make me feel like a princess from one of those fairy worlds I read books about.” You whisper, you look down as a sense of shame takes hold in your body. Your heart seems to feel pain as you think back to how you still feel as a child, how you still dream of those fairy tales you hoped you could live one day.

“You're a princess with or without those flowers on, you know it too, you just hope that others see you as you do, too special for a life you don't want to be part of.” He says bringing his fingers under your chin and lifting your face up. His gaze no longer conveys joy and his tone is harsh, an angry expression has taken place on his face.

“Calum..” You try to stop him from speaking that truth you don't want to hear, but his words have broken through your heart and the pain you seemed to feel, now you are definitely feeling. You take a step back, trying to get away from a situation you can't escape from.

“You don't have to do it, you don't have to stay and spend the rest of your life between false smiles and sleepless nights. Your sister will be queen and my father thinks I'm a failure since I was born. Let's run away, me and you. My cottage already has everything we need and I'm sure they will never come looking for us. We will live that fairy tale we imagined for us and we will have the life we ​​always wanted.”

His hand grabs yours and his gaze is on you. You know he's not lying, he told you the love he feels towards you in the dungeons of this same castle and you haven't thought twice before confessing your love to him.

But this castle, these people, is all you have always known.

It’s a world that doesn't belong to you but you can't just leave. There are rules, responsibilities, tasks that you cannot escape.

“It's not that easy, Calum.”

“No, it's not, it's not easy and it won't be. We'll probably end up arguing and you'll regret running away with me. But then you'll think back to all these tight corsets you had to wear, all the formalities you had to comply with and the man you would hold if you have stayed and you will understand that country life is so much better than a life spent in sadness and that that terrible man who made you cry actually loves you madly and just wants what he knows it’s better for you.”

He also grabs the other hand and continues.

“And if you really want to go back, I will be ready to be looked at with scandal by everyone and to take you back to the castle, to face your father and see you held by arms that are not mine.”

You know that it will be hard, but you have never wanted to be a queen. It’s a big responsibility for a girl that just wants to live a fairy tale, that wants to be free in her own terms. You never wanted a kingdom, you never wanted to be property of some old man and certainly you never wanted to spend your existence submitted to someone else’s orders.

You just wanted to be happy, to live your life to the fullest, to love a man who respected you, your dreams, your independence and your passion for flowers and books.

And maybe house cleaning, mud and small rooms will never be like having silk sheets, breakfast prepared by someone else and the floor always clean, but they certainly convey a sense of greater happiness and a life spent in misery and in sadness it’s the dream of those who do not want to fight for what they dream of and are satisfied with mediocrity.

And you don't deserve mediocrity and the guy in front of you knows it well, he sees it in the way you feel uncomfortable during the dances, when your father talks to you about matters you can never take care of because you’re a woman and in the look that you give to your mother when she talks about her marriage, that is only political and not based on love.

You turn to your right, a huge gold mirror near the window reflects the library, the place where you grew up and where you have taken refuge millions of times. You look in the mirror, the diamond earrings reflect the gray of the sky and are too heavy for your ears. Your dress is gorgeous, hand-sewn by the best tailors, yet you don't feel as beautiful as when you wear old, unfashionable clothes and run free for the castle hills, without the fear of getting dirty or ruining expensive dresses.

Your eyes, pupils who love to look at the horizon, are sad, aware that by staying they will not be able to see any wonder. You touch your face, slowly run your hands over your cheeks, over your lips and run your finger over the bridge of your nose, remembering when you were just a little girl and were treated like a normal girl, a girl that loved when her father played with her and touched her nose while making funny noises with his mouth.

Then you look outside. The sky is full of dark clouds, the rain falls incessantly and a few lightning illuminate the afternoon sky. You look at that garden you have walked a thousand times, at all the flowers you have collected and at all the plants you have destroyed while playing with Calum.

You close your eyes thinking about all the places you haven't visited, all the trees you haven't leaned on to read and all the rivers you haven't seen flowing. There is a world out there, you think, that has yet to be discovered. And who are you, if not a woman ready for life's adventures?

“You didn't ask me.” You whisper.

“What?” Calum asks, confused.

“You didn't ask me which color reminds me of you.” You repeat as you slowly turn around to look at him.

A huge smile forms on his face.

“What color do you think when you think of me?”

“When I was ten, one night, I decided to explore the dungeons alone. I wanted to prove to myself that I was able to do anything. I almost made it, I almost managed to face the monster we thought lived in the cells, but then it was all too dark and I ended up going back to my room crying.” You slowly approach him.

“The next night, you showed up in my room with a jar full of fireflies, you gave it to me and whispered "You can do it." I ended up walking through the dungeons with this jar in my hand, you were a few meters behind me to make sure nothing happened to me, but I always knew you were there, even if you tried to hide.”

“I was able to face one of my biggest fears that night. Whatever other problem happened, you were always ready to help me if I needed it, you always supported me, with advice or simply by being close to me, a few steps back to let me free. You were essential in making me grow, while remaining away. Like the stars, who guide the sailors from the sky, they let the sailors do what they believe is right, but they are there to help and guide them if they need it.”

You bring your lips to his ear and whisper: “At midnight, in our place. Don't be late and take the blue carriage, it makes less noise on the street.” You turn around and walk to your room to pack a small bag with all the essentials.

“Wait, you didn't answer my question!” He says turning towards the direction you went.

“You are my yellow, Calum.” You say, you are far away but you know he’s smiling and you smile too.

[adventuresoutsidethegenderbinary]

As a queer Muslim, I 100% want to believe that it's permissible in Islam to...you know, be queer.

The thing is, majority of people say its not. Even Islamic scholars who I follow and respect, like Mufti Menk, and other Islamic pages run by straight people, say its wrong to act upon it. It upsets me, because why would Allah SWT love us, but not want us to love? Why would he want us to suffer alone? Why would he want us to feel restricted? Islam is not about restriction at all. Islam is the religion of peace, is it not?

Idk if IS the truth, or just my internalised homophobia talking, but I feel like queer Muslim pages say it's okay to be queer...because they're queer themselves. And they're trying to find ways bargain with themselves to say that its okay. And lots of (straight religious) people don't agree with them (like a scholar for example) I feel like there's just too much evidence on the opposing side for me to believe that it's not a sin.Idk what to do. I even tried to pray so that I could find out the truth or find out answers. Then the next morning I saw yet another person who said acting upon queerness is a sin. I know that it was just one opinion, but I feel like it just happened too soon for it to be a mere coincidence. I ask for signs to find out the truth, but then I don't like the signs.

What makes me even more angry is that all this questioning is happening to me during Ramadan - the time where you're supposed to become closer to Allah.

In the end, I'm just glad I like all genders and can marry a man, if being queer really is a ,,sin" 😔

Hello friend!

I have struggled with these same feelings myself. I often wonder if I am just interpreting the Quran in a certain way to make myself feel better. I don’t think these feelings will ever go away.

However, there is substantial evidence that homosexuality didn’t use to be such a haram concept in Islam, or at least, not homosexuality the way we think of it. For instance, there were many notable Muslim figures who practiced homosexuality or were thought to practice it, particularly from the 8th - 10th centuries. Such figures included Caliphs, and in later centuries, Ottoman sultans. However, this “homosexuality” often referred to men sleeping with young boys (typically too young to have a beard). 

I can’t seem to find it right now, but I saw a post somewhere talking about an Old Testament verse (I believe it was Leviticus) which said, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman, for it is an abomination”, but people later determined that this was a mistranslation and that it originally said “you shall not lie with young boys as with women”. This would make sense given how widespread such pedophilia was at the time, especially in the Greco-Roman world. 

Thus, I think there’s substantial evidence that the Quran was actually banning pedophilia, especially since the word “homosexuality” was never in the book and people had to come up with one when translating it. When we also consider our Allah, most kind and most merciful, we know that he does things with a purpose. Saying that pedophilia, lust, and rape is a sin makes sense because these are all bad things that hurt others. I struggle to understand why Allah would ban relationships between people of the same gender when they pose no threat to others and can actually be quite beneficial in that same-gender couples often adopt or take care of children. 

Currently, many Islamic leaders are quite conservative, and that has more to do with geopolitical forces than religious ones, so I think that also contributes to the fact that most of the people re-examining homosexuality in Islam are queer. Additionally, many Muslim-majority countries are very conservative and the leaders are very oppressive, and hence any major scholars who challenge the “traditional” interpretation of the text may be silenced.

Sorry for the long response - I’m still trying to figure all this out too. All I know is that I have a hard time imagining Allah casting someone down into Hell if they spent their whole life helping others but unapologetically loved someone of the same gender. 

Peace be upon you,

River

[ettawritesnstudies]

notebook, wip, personal (writing ask game)

I am so sorry in advance this got really long

notebook ; how many notebooks do you have? do you write in them?

ahahahaha this is a loaded question. I have at least 8 notebooks that I either actively use or plan to use once I finish the current ones, and dozens of those cheap free notebooks that you get at events just sitting in a box for writing down quick random notes that I don't want in one of the others, if you know what I mean? Just memo logs.I also have several notebooks for lab, engineering projects, and school notes but those don't count. Out of the Real Notebook Stash I have:

Weathered Leatherbound with a strap to close it that I started using as a diary in 2020 and quit when The Apocalypse happened. I've restarted it as my session notes for DnD because I'm in 5 campaigns and have the memory of a goldfish and it fits the vibes

Falling apart dot-page journal from Walmart that I use as my daily habit tracker/diary/bujo/scheduler and take everywhere

Two sketchbooks: one for messy sketches that lives in my bookbag and one big one with better paper that I use for my marker illustrations

Prayer journal that was a Christmas gift from my friend - it's not a devotional with certain Bible verses but each page has a place to write your fears and prayer intentions and what you're thankful for, so it's more guided which I like. I listen to the daily liturgical readings from USCCB or the chronological Bible in A Year podcast from Ascension every day and use it for Lectio Divina. So I'll write reflections on the reading and how it ties to what's going on in my life at the moment. Diary 2.0

Two leatherbound noteboks embossed with trees and flowers that have metal latches I love dearly and haven't started yet, one was a gift from my best friend and the other was a gift from my boyfriend. They will likely become either more dnd notes once I finish the other leatherbound, or a character journal for Madelyn. In Laoche, she keeps a spellbook that becomes kind of her lifeline, and I think it will be cool to fill a notebook with entries from her perspective, worldbuilding notes on the places she travels, scrapbooked with cool things I find, etc. So it will be used I'm just not working on it right now.

My bookbag is so heavy it's becoming a problem

wip ; talk about one work that you've recently started/just started!

I think my most recent are "Space Dragons!!!" aka WorldWanderers, which is exactly what it says on the tin. There isn't a WIP Intro yet because I don't have a set plot yet, but there's a masterlist of mostly worldbuilding rambles here.

I also recently came up with a fantasy story where the magic system is entirely based around textile arts and lying/storytelling. It's set in an ancient/prehistory setting where gods and spirits walk among humans and features a matriarchal society, but it only exists in a discord ramble with the ever-patient @siarven at the moment.

personal ; is there anything that you always try to add to your writing? like a message or moral? anything that you like to read, so you write it yourself?

Family and religion are both really important to me so my work always has Catholic themes in it, though hopefully they're still appealing to a secular audience. I write them without the "christian fic" label because I don't like that, but the morals are there if you put on the apologetics glasses lol.

Thanks for the ask!

[the-resurrection-3d]

Thank you for responding to my ask about how Luca and Alberto work in your fic. I have a follow up: do the different circumstances under which they meet in your modern day AU make a substantial difference to their dynamic? I've been toying with the idea of an AU after my current story is posted in full, but I keep getting hung up on that difference. I was curious to hear how other fic writers view it.

Sorry this took so long! I had to walk home today ripppppp and the actual response got away from me. Something something it's my blog something something my nine-inch cock, y'all know how this goes.

Regardless, I’m glad you found my first response interesting!

Tl;DR: You're overthinking it. You don't even have to come off anon or tell me your story ideas, I just know. Trust.

To answer your other question, I think overall their dynamic is similar enough, especially with how you’d expect Luca to act, but Alberto is a much bigger mess because his trauma from Nick obviously drastically shaped his view of romantic/sexual relationships, and is still ongoing.

Something I do as a crutch for myself is keep as many emotional elements as possible more or less unchanged. Luca has still been under his mother’s thumb for the majority of his life and now actively feels every second of every day ticking away from him even though he’s too shy to really take life by the reins the way he feels like he should be able to just do. Alberto has had a dad now for several years, hooray! He still has that deep pit of loneliness inside of him that naturally occurs when you’re neglected. And what do people who never got enough love growing up tend to do? Look for it in partners.

Holly Lisle has a good article here on “stealing” characters/plot elements from books you like, but the basic gist is to peel back as much of the surface-level context of the original canon until you find out what you actually like about the story element. So if you’re like me and like Luberto as two verse kings emotionally malnourished boys finding refuge in each other (even if I tend to focus on Alberto’s angst more), then you can use that as your core and reverse-engineer the actual details of the AU around preserving that.

With all that out of the way, welcome to class, I'll be your professor for Modern Lu(Nick)berto 101.

The simplest way I can summarize the difference between modern!Alberto and modern!Luca is that m!Luca hasn’t ever gotten naked in front of anyone he wasn’t related to and m!Alberto has snorted coke off Nick’s cock.

Since Luca and Alberto haven’t met “on the page” yet, I’ll elaborate on Luca’s motivations briefly. Luca, in short, is on Tinder to lose his virginity. Luca is very socially behind and knows it— emotionally he’s closer to how he was at the start of the movie. Without a person like Alberto who he can lean on totally, however, he always feels like he’s thiiiis close to slipping up and not just exposing himself as a sea monster but as a failure. His mom might have agreed to let him attend human uni, but that doesn’t mean her fears that Luca “can’t handle it” magically vanished, and the more Luca stumbles through his first semester, the more he starts to wonder if she was right.

One of the areas Luca is socially lacking in is dating— he’s had a first kiss, a few first dates that never went anywhere, but now that he’s surrounded by people who are very open about their sexual escapades, he feels self-conscious and wants to just get it over with (maybe even with another man, can you even imagine?).

Alberto, by contrast, is … largely over his abandonment trauma from his father. I emphasize father specifically because, having been fully embraced by Massimo and now in a good place with Giulia, Alberto doesn’t consciously think about his bio-dad very much. Furthermore, he goes to public school in the modern!verse, so he has greater opportunities for socialization (in theory if not so much in practice).

Yes he still listens to Tyler, the Creator. Yes he still calls the dark, hateful voice in his head “Bruno.” Why do you ask?

He still can get triggered into those old feelings, but for the most part, it’s the lingering results of that neglect that cause Alberto the most problems. In walks Nick. While Nick in the regular timeline vanishes after about a year and basically never talks to Alberto again (until he’s 35 and about to suck off a shotgun and is like — well, actually don't worry about it, we can get into it later), Nick in the modern timeline is much more willing to tell Alberto why he had to leave. So they continue their relationship through a long-distance cycle of weeks of almost non-stop texting/FaceTiming and then weeks of ghosting, punctuated with occasional physical meet-ups like the Berlin trip.

Alberto is also, at various points, actively suicidal. He definitely has suicidal tendencies the way I write him normally, but modern Alberto has a little computer in his pocket that can tell him exactly how to actually do it.

And sometimes Nick is the only one who can calm him down. Sometimes Nick’s promise that he’ll move Alberto to New York City and they can finally fucking just be together after Nick’s uncle dies is the only thing keeping Alberto from giving up entirely.

Alberto has a hard time letting his sexual partners actually get close not just because he’s afraid he’s too fucked up for them (although that’s also true), but because he’s holding onto that hope that he and Nick will finally work out— after everything they’ve been through, how can they not work out? Who could ever make him feel the way Nick does (both for good and for ill)?

But Nick is not his boyfriend, which is what Alberto wants more than anything. For too long Alberto dances around asking Luca if they’re actually going out just because he’s afraid of getting that same rejection he’s been with from Nick for years. Luca does the same because Alberto is so much more experienced, I mean, there's no way-- Luca doesn’t know what he’s doing, like, all of the time, he can’t go too fast or he’ll scare Alberto off.

Because Alberto is great! He’s cute and he’s sexy and he’s so, so nice — they don’t fuck on their first date, or even their second or third, but Alberto is so understanding and helps Luca explore his sexuality in ways that make Luca actually excited to lose his virginity, rather than just viewing it as some hurdle he has to clear.

Alberto has had plenty of one/two-off fucks, but most of his sexual experience has been with Nick, so Alberto both enjoys and gets anxious as Hell helping Luca explore himself — Nick is that kind of abuser who’s very, very good at using “therapized”/consent language to manipulate Alberto into doing what he wants, so part of Alberto worries he’s grooming Luca pushing Luca too far too quickly and Luca is too scared and polite to tell him "no." They get along so well, though, that Alberto can push the fear down for the most part.

They're both just crushing so hard. And when they find out that they're both sea monsters, it’s a whole new level of intimacy that neither of them expected to find. Their honeymoon phase is ridiculous. Luca has never been happier. Alberto dares to imagine, even if only briefly, a future without Nick and it isn’t like the spiritual equivalent of holding his hand on a stove.

And then Nick finds out about them and the honeymoon comes to a screeching halt. But we can get into that later.

I just wanna say that I really appreciate the questions! Today was--to put it delicately-- fucking miserable, and getting this in my inbox really made me smile. And I hope it helps! Like I said at the start, you're almost certainly overthinking it. You've gotta keep your channel open. Worst case scenario, you have a draft that feels kinda OOC and that you can always fix later. I just wrote a fanfic about Luca biting Alberto's dick off. You cannot possibly embarrass yourself as a creator more than I do on a daily basis.

[seoafin]

hey love! guess who just systematically binged through all your jjk posts, which was like 100+ pages of your tumblr?? its me 🤡 i love gojo (sorry), but i love your analysis of his character so much. i think your observation about how he cares about the people in his life, but he isn't able to be completely empathetic was a *chef's kiss* point. ALSO the point about how he's someone who looks at a situation big picture and is an ends to a mean kinda guy! (1)

but i think that's why i appreciate him in the first place! i don't think gojo has any delusions that he’s a good guy or anything like that which was shown in his convo with ijichi in the beginning of the story. you KNOW that he would have no problem or regrets about committing mass murder by the easy way that he considers massacring the higher ups (or the cult members in the HI arc) and i truly think the only reason he refrained was because it wouldn’t serve his purpose in the big-picture. (2)

so basically my love for him stems from the fact that his character fascinates me. i’m SORRY i’m in grad school to become a clinical therapist and i would love to pick at gojo’s brain (and most of the characters in jjk bc boy, all of them are unhinged to a certain extent) lmao but that is also why your au verse with the rip mc is so cool to me! she brings a whole new kind of dynamic to the original sss trio and ALSO brings out a new aspect of gojo’s character. (3)

it’s interesting bc since she’s someone he genuinely loves and cares about, she brings out his more “human” characteristics BUT also highlights his not-so-normal characteristics bc his perspective of relationships is so different and twisted (i.e. how he wants to “take care” of her or would rather curse her than let her die so he wouldn’t lose her 💀) (4)

and of course it’s not like rip mc had the most healthy upbringing as well (i may be tripping but i think you may have implied that her father blamed her for her mother’s death??) so she doesn’t have the most accurate grasp of what a healthy relationship should be like either. but in the end, the one healthy thing that gojo and the rip mc DO have is their unwavering faith and trust in each other which is why i think their relationship works! (5)

AND i know riko hates her dad, but since she has both limitless and six eyes, i’m wondering whether they are the only ones who can truly understand each other. or is it different bc riko was raised in a more functional family dynamic?? like limitless and six eyes basically elevated gojo to a pseudo-god so did riko have to come to terms with that as well??? jfc sorry for word vomiting at you but i really do love your ripverse + all the aus that came out of that verse too. (6)

i have SO much more to say (especially about i bet on losing dogs and geto bc that literally ripped my heart out 🥺) but i will leave it here for now!! can i be 🍑 anon if that hasn’t been claimed yet?? (8??? sorry i lost count lmao 🤡)

WELCOME TO THE "I'D LOVE TO DISSECT AND STUDY GOJO'S BRAIN CLUB" current members include me celi and vanessa LMAOOO

okay before we get into this I just wanna say that your asks literally made my entire morning!!! I’M SO GLAD YOU ENJOYED IT ENOUGH TO SEND ME THESE ASKS!!!

not that anyone has to justify why they like a certain character, but this is such a lovely well thought out ask from someone who likes gojo!! it’s really interesting to get a different perspective from mine. I truly do appreciate and like gojo as a character! but as a person.....i’d want him as far away from me as possible LOL

and yes! i think of gojo as someone who always looks at the bigger picture, which is why he tends to overlook people (those he is not emotionally invested in) and finds it hard to empathize. I’d also say that this tendency of his is why he overlooked geto’s suffering too, because although gojo cared about geto I’m sure the thought of geto being depressed is something that didn’t even cross his mind, that geto someone who gojo considered an equal, could be spiraling when he himself was fine. it’s also why he was so shocked when yaga told him geto killed all those people.

caring about someone ≠ understanding them.

you don’t know how happy i am to know that you think rip!mc humanizes him!! that’s exactly what I was trying to go for!! it was kinda my way of combating the fandom’s whole “untouchable god” imagery of gojo (which is also a very valid interpretation). i rlly like playing on irony in my works and something about gojo letting his infinity/physical shields down with rip!mc contrasting with the fact that emotionally gojo is pretty closed down, not because he doesn’t want to be open, but because he has difficulty communicating with her. also yeah, his perspective on relationships is messed up!!! and i really wanted to highlight that bc i got asks saying it was all rip!mc’s fault as if gojo would be the perfect boyfriend lmao please!!!

i agree with you! their unwavering faith and trust in each other is why while dysfunctional, they work. however, one thing I also really wanted to portray is how easily their relationship could tip over into codependent territory (which gojo basically encourages). with gojo in the cube, I think rip!mc is going to have to come to terms with that and take the initiative the establish healthy boundaries. but once again. gojo and boundaries. that’s going to difficult, not only for gojo but rip!mc it’s something she’s never had to do before. yes that was implied! but then again child rip!mc is an unreliable narrator so there’s that. we’re going to have to unpack all that LOL

i’d think that riko gets it. i said before that gojo would truly never be able to be understood by/understand another person but maybe his child with abilities like his. but I also think gojo’s upbringing had to do a lot with it. i feel like riko would have to grapple with being a very powerful person, but i don’t think she’d grow up like gojo, but more...self aware if that makes sense? she’d be conscious of her power and especially conscientious of other people. in the end, riko would grow up very human! i think putting effort into communication and empathy young, would help her as she grows older.

while gojo is a god that can be human at times, riko grows up the exact opposite. riko is a human with godlike powers!

anyway, i’m sorry I rambled !!!

i’d love to hear your thoughts on I bet on losing dogs and geto LOL (i love him so much....so much....) I appreciate this ask so much!!! and yes you can be 🍑 anon!!

[angelofthequeers]

How is Zoe's comic racist? (sorry don't mean to question you, genuinely curious) Also, I admit I was also sucked into the salt fic whirlpool, but quickly left after I realized how toxic it was being. Could you also elaborate on GalahadWilder, if it isn't too uncomfortable for you? I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, or ask uncomfortable questions.

I can’t point out everything off the top of my head but the racism (along with everything else but that’s not the focus) is a large part of what made me throw my hands up and write this. And I won’t be answering any more asks about any of this because I just want to get it out there so people know (because of how many people genuinely don’t see it) and then go back to trying to forget that this shit ever existed, rather than dragging out some new fandom drama. Also keep in mind that while I’m West Asian/Arab, I’m also white-passing so if I get anything wrong, I appreciate call-outs. (Also I finally got my laptop charger today so I can snip my posts again 😭)

Her treatment of Max in ‘Gamer’.

It’s not unique to her; it’s a very common salter thing to utterly tear into Max for being a “sexist jerk” and daring to underestimate princess Marinette because she’s a girl. Never mind that they canonically aren’t close friends because of Chloé’s bullying, so Max probably had no idea that Marinette’s liked video games all this time, where Adrien is the new boy so it’s just one more thing to learn about him.

It’s especially heinous compared to how the other classmates are treated far more leniently for their own mistakes - they still get salted on but Max, aka the Black boy, always seems to get singled out and held to higher standards. Just look at ‘Chameleon’ and how the other classmates are mildly to moderately attacked by salters but Max gets utterly ripped to shreds because he “should know better”. (Never mind that just because he’s smart doesn’t mean he’s good at human interaction. They just want to attack him).

It also angers me because people like Nathaniel and Ivan are absolved of what they do as akumas (like kidnapping others and literally forcing someone to go on a date with them) because they couldn’t help it, yet Max is literally held responsible for what he did when akumatised (because he dared to go after Princess Marinette) and even for daring to get akumatised in the first place. Both these things just make him a sore loser, apparently.

So SL ‘Gamer’ was the final straw for me, especially with how she characterised Max as a smug arsehole, and it made me so angry that I just exploded to my friends, but I didn’t know how to directly call it out without looking like a petty bitch.

Here’s a post I made about salters and ‘Gamer’ if you’re interested in a more coherent and in-depth thing about it.

Alya’s treatment throughout the whole thing.

In canon, she’s an enthusiastic and passionate girl who sometimes gets carried away and goes too far and who idolises Ladybug because Ladybug stands against evil. Here? She’s treated as the butt of the joke for being so starry-eyed over superheroes that she idolises Scarlet Lady while Marinette mocks her behind her back. Never mind her iconic line of “all that is needed for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing” and this is why she loves Majestia in the first place. Never mind that she loves Ladybug because Ladybug is kind and passionate and strong and creative. Canon Alya wouldn’t want a bar of Scarlet Lady, who just sits around complaining, and yet SL!Alya worships her because...why? Running joke? The only Black girl in the series is treated as a gag to be made fun of by someone who’s supposed to be her best friend, just for the audience’s amusement. Marinette’s probably meant to look funny and relatable here, but she just looks like a major bitch to her new friend. Alya’s flaws are basically blown up and exaggerated for comedic effect, while Marinette in contrast is airbrushed to perfection, with no flaws and no anxiety that was only alleviated in canon by - guess what - being Ladybug.

It’s like Zoe wants to stick to canon while adding her own little “fun” twists for humour, like making Marinette snarky and perfect (which just makes her look like an utter bitch) and in the case of Alya, it does her so dirty that even Lila is more sympathetic. LILA. After SL humiliates Lila, Alya looks doubtful but buys some bullshit excuse so that she can continue to be the Scar-worshipping idiot. And then in the aftermath, her concern isn’t for Lila, the girl who was humiliated and bullied by a literal superhero and then ended up sick. No, she’s angry because...Lila lied on her blog. The blog that doesn’t have nearly as much recognition as in canon because SL would never validate her, unlike Ladybug. So her passion for her blog is exaggerated to imply that she’d say that a girl deserves to be bullied and sick because she told a few lies (since at this point, Alya doesn’t know about any possible malice on Lila’s part, just as in canon. All that’s known is the lying for attention).

It’s horrible hypocrisy, where Alya is held to higher standards than the other (white) characters and when she fails to meet those standards, she’s torn into. She’s not afforded any sympathy for being hurt that Lila lied to her; in fact, she’s demonised for feeling hurt, especially because of the running joke that her blog is focused on someone so horrible and she doesn’t see that. Lila is presented as the sympathetic one here. LILA. Just because Alya dared to believe her in canon.

Also, how she’s constantly trying to either tease Marinette for having a crush or insist that Marinette’s only doing what she does because of a crush...even though according to this ‘verse’s canon, Marinette is too good to make mistakes and do obsessive stuff over a crush, which is why canon Alya thinks this about her in the first place. That didn’t just come out of nowhere in the show purely for “woe is Marinette, her best friend doubts her”.

Like in the first part of ‘Gamer’, where she’s accusing Marinette of only entering the tournament to flirt with Adrien while Marinette so “coolly and calmly” rebuts her...why? By the ‘verse’s own logic, Marinette isn’t a flustered mess around Adrien. The only purpose of this scene is to glorify Marinette and her amazing calmness while making Alya look like a nosy idiot who dares to doubt her best friend. The logic of the ‘verse and of canon clash really jarringly in moments like this, and it becomes clear that the only purpose of these moments is to make Marinette look better at the expense of others. Most often her best friend, who’s an utter idiot for not seeing Scarlet Lady’s true nature and just can’t keep her nose out of Marinette’s business and so comes to wrong conclusions. Why are Marinette and Alya even friends in this ‘verse? SL!Marinette’s been nothing but condescending towards Alya most of the time.

Uh, and also the way she occasionally whitewashes Alya. Just look at the SL headers. She literally made Alya, aka a Black girl who’s one of the good guys, lighter than Lila, aka a white girl who’s one of the bad guys and not even that tanned in canon. Why do people make one of the villains darker and often whitewash one of the heroes? It’s not that hard to figure out.

(Also the way she really played into the aggressive Black girl stereotype in ‘Horrificator’ over a minor argument, even physically threatening Nino. Why? Literally why did she have to go full-on aggressive instead of just looking angry and scolding him or something?)

This all might not be conscious on Zoe’s part but the way Alya is treated is still disgusting, especially if you’re operating on internalised salt from other aspects of the salty fandom. I’ve seen her claims that she’s trying to help Alya improve and she’s not being salty but...even if she’s not being consciously salty, her salt is definitely still leaking over it and part of that salt includes racism. I also don’t see how making Alya a joke and exaggerating her flaws is helping her to improve when there was plenty to go off in canon but, well, that might just be me.

Even Marinette, who’s pretty much treated as white for 99% of it.

Marinette, aka the girl who’s only made visibly “Asian/Other” in SL ‘Reflekta’ with her Chinese-inspired Black Cat suit and name which is a one-off, while her permanent Bee outfit is just the bland tight suit that salters criticise Ladybug for having and her name is just Marigold. It comes across as using “Asianness” as a costume and it really didn’t sit right with me at first, but it took me a while to tease out why exactly this made me feel ick.

There’s nothing wrong with touching more on Marinette’s heritage and expanding on it in ways that the show doesn’t, especially because this is a big sticking point for salters, but again...it’s only a one-off. A costume. There aren’t casual hints sprinkled throughout the comic that just normally establish Marinette as half-Chinese, aside from like a page or two in ‘Timebreaker’ showing Sabine’s outfit. It’s another ‘Kung Food’ where it’s slammed into one episode and shoved into our faces that Marinette Is Chinese and it’s really jarring and unpleasant.

It just comes across as fetishising, is all. I don’t think it’s something most people would pick up on unless they’re used to being able to see this kind of thing.

Master Fu. Oh, Master Fu.

From an old man who made mistakes but tried as best as he could with the limited knowledge he had, he’s now a bumbling idiot who...put the earrings in Marinette’s bag instead of her room for some reason? To kickstart the plot? Especially because the ring was still in Adrien’s room. It’s very, very contrived.

And then in one of the most recent updates, Zoe has Adrien - a white boy - physically threaten Fu, aka an elderly Asian man. It’s disgusting. I was gobsmacked when I first saw it. And that’s the thing with salters: they tear into Adrien for being a white boy so they can look Enlightened when he hasn’t actually done anything racist, yet they then turn around and perpetuate actual racism in trying to “fix” him

There’s probably more but those are the examples that jump out at me of the racism in SL. There are plenty more problems but...whatever. I’ll be here all day if I try and cover those.

As for the Galahad thing...it’s personal. That original post was as much as I was comfortable revealing.

[botanicallyinclinednerd]

Hi!! I don't know much about the death&destiny verse as I'm a bit new here so idk if this has been brought up before but I'm curious so: If you had to explain the biggest change between each of the 4 versions how would you do so?

( I'm sorry if this is annoying. )

Anon this is not annoying at all, in fact this has made my night!

Spoilers for Death and Destiny ahead!

Okay so the way I wrote Death and Destiny was in google docs and after a while the document would lag really badly because I was at 40+ pages so whenever copying chapters for AO3 took ridiculously long, I would copy whatever I had written that I hadn't posted yet into another document. Because of this, things I had written in the beginning of this au for later chapters got preserved in the early documents. Document one has the final versions of chapters 1-12, document two is 13-18, document 3 is 19-20, and document 4 is 21 and 22. For the completed and final chapters, that is. There are scenes written in those documents that haven't happened yet or never happened because of changes.

The biggest change from document one to document two is chapter 16, which is the lamia chapter. In document one, the chapter is outlined as being aftermath only, as the only change from canon would be that Lancelot was there. In document one, I hadn't even decided to have Agravaine banished yet (which is chapter 15 of Death and Destiny). But all the knights would have been enchanted and would have remembered everything and felt guilty. Merlin's magic also wasn't going to be revealed to the other knights and Gwen. So that was definitley the biggest change from one to two

The biggest change from Document two to Document three is that originally, Merlin's magic wasn't supposed to be revealed to Arthur until around the time of the Disir. I planned for Elyan, Gwaine, and Percival to be the ones to rescue Lancelot, Leon, and Gaius from the dungeons. But when I wrote chapter 19, I removed the smugglers because I didn't want to do the sword in the stone plot and deal with Arthur being mopey about Tristian hurting his feelings. So I removed them and patted myself on the back, problem solved. Then I realized that Isolde saved Arthur's life and I needed an Isolde. I decided I was going to have it be a main character rather than a generic background character so Merlin would reveal his magic to Arthur in order to heal his friend. This was not planned anywhere in document two as it spawned from a very lively struggle with myself on how I was going to proceed.

The there are no major changes between documents three and four, mainly because they each only hold two chapters and the path I went down in document 3 continued directly into document 4. I did almost have a different ending to Death and Destiny though which was basically meta as hell and I realized I didn't like it as soon as I started to write it. Basically Kilgarrah uses his dragon breath to give Leon a dream that would have showed him how things would have happened had Leon never died during the dragon attack and never fulfilled his destiny. And it would have been flashes of scenes from canon. Again, meta as hell and I really didn't like it.

So yeah! Those are the biggest changes between documents!

[tellmewhatyouc]

Okay, I was tagged but I don't think I got the notification, so sorry for being very late for asking for the WIP game, and as you're dipping in and out of tumblr and mostly writing on SK8, don't worry answering this if you don't have the impetus, but if you do of course I want to know about:

1. fuck it, the law and marco fic

wip file names

hey no worries! my brain has in fact been taken over by the skateboarding anime for the time being but i’m always down to talk about law and marco :3c

i’ve been really vague about it since i’m kind of not entirely sure where it’s headed?? but i basically just wanted to write canon verse marco & law (which like? it seems like they maybe exist in the same space in more recent canon which is cool? but i don’t actually Know). it’s all very self indulgent and i had the idea for a while but decided on impulse to actually start writing it, hence the title

the basic idea is a rescue mission, though i’m still deciding on what exactly caused the need for a rescue. it’s ~2.5k so far and progress is Slow but i’m happy to share the first part since i’ve been sitting on it for so long! keep in mind that it’s a draft so it may not all sound nice or make sense but i mean you can get the general idea-

Breakfast on the Polar Tang could only be described as chaotic. An even distribution of night owls and morning birds made for a wide variety of energies and a whole lot of bickering. Grouchy, overtired people didn’t mix well with the others who had willingly woken up hours prior.

Naturally, Law was in the former group, though he didn’t participate in the bickering. Sometimes, he’d diffuse arguments between members of his crew, but he’d mostly just listen in for entertainment purposes.

“Did you hear about the Whitebeards?”

Law perked up at the question and looked towards the source. Clione had spoken to Uni just a few seats down from Law.

“Yeah, with the Phoenix?” Uni asked. “That’s gotta suck real bad, losing track of your first mate.”

“What about the Phoenix?” Law interjected, causing both heads to turn and face him. The rest of the table’s chatter died down, curious to see what was important enough to grab their captain’s attention.

“Oh, uh… I heard he’s missing,” Clione said. “It was in the paper.”

“Missing?” Law echoed. “I didn’t see anything about that.”

“Today’s paper,” Uni said. “I snagged a copy when we surfaced earlier.” He reached across the table to snatch the newspaper from Shachi’s hands, earning a ‘Hey!’ before he set it down in front of Law. “Said they haven’t seen the guy in weeks.”

Law frowned before he set his fork down and picked up the paper. A few pages in-- he didn’t even make the headline-- there was a short article about Marco the Phoenix of the Whitebeard Pirates. Allegedly, he’d gone on a solo mission a few weeks prior and had yet to return. His crew claimed they hadn’t had any contact with him since he left.

“Bullshit,” Law decided as he dropped the paper back onto the table. “Whitebeard would never let something like this get out.”

“Then... why’s it right there?” Shachi asked, pointing to the photo from Marco’s wanted poster. “Kinda looks like he did let it get out, Captain.”

“It’s a bluff,” Law said. “It makes them look vulnerable. If rival crews see his most powerful man is MIA, they get a false sense of security. And that’s the perfect time for them to strike.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I do wonder what else he’s planning, though.”

“Hey, why haven’t we tried to take him on yet?” Penguin chimed in, already laughing at his own suggestion. “I bet you could at least take the Phoenix. You’d just have to slice off his wings.”

Law shook his head. “I don’t care about Whitebeard. We have other matters to attend to.” He looked down at the picture again, squinting at Marco’s half-transformed state. How did his powers work, exactly? “I wonder, if I did cut his wings off… would he be able to grow them back?”

“Whoa.” Penguin bounced in his seat. “You think so? By that logic, couldn’t you get, like, unlimited body parts from him?”

“He’d be useful for transplants,” Ikkaku chimed in from the other side of the table. She’d spoken into her coffee cup, as if she wasn’t addressing anyone in particular, but Law heard it perfectly.

“That’s a very good point,” Law replied. “A healthy donor who can regrow anything he gives up.”

Ikkaku chuckled. “Sounds like a surgeon’s dream.”

“And that poor guy’s nightmare,” Shachi added. “Captain, please don’t tell me you’re thinking about looking for him.”

Law shook his head. “Oh, no, I’m sure he’s perfectly safe with his crew, and Whitebeard is just spreading lies to throw people off,” he said. “The Phoenix would never join us, anyway. That crew is all about loyalty. I’m sure he’d sooner die for his captain than consider working under someone else.” He paused. “And forcing someone to join my crew against their will isn’t really my style.”

The table went silent. Everyone was staring at Law.

“...What?”

“Nothin’,” Shachi answered quickly. “But, hey, we’ll be sure to let you know if we see any giant flaming birds flying through the sky next time we surface.”

[mythandlaur]

Burai here on anon, rip Side-blog personal blog. Anywhoo-- The Will of the Swarm, Children of the Archives, Light Unseen, and are ya winning the tournament son. If you don't mind.

The WIP Tag Game

@buraidragon​ You should know these--you were involved in at least two of them.

Lots of text under the cut!

The Will of the Swarm (working title only) - Spiral Knights - 2018

A collaborative project with friends Burai and apprenticeNerd; a roleplay adaptation that would’ve made for a multichapter fic. Knight-Elite Ixtharion and his protégé, the slightly pyromaniacal Ashoza, are called on for a cryptic rescue mission in the Wildwoods, only to find the person they’re rescuing is none other than Parma, reconnaissance specialist of the lost Alpha Squad, who bears worrying information from the Core and evidence of her claims in the form of a dark miasma that appears to have eaten away her right arm. Ix has some knowledge on prosthetics, and takes over the effort to get Parma set up with one, facilitating interaction and camaraderie between the trio--and it’s them who chase after Parma when she delves back into the deepest layers of the Clockworks upon word coming back of the fate of the Alpha Squad’s technician...consumed by the Swarm and working for Herex.

I still really enjoy this concept tbh??? Like I don’t know if I could WRITE write it but if you guys still wanted to poke at it after all this time I’d be game. I don’t have a snippet, but I do have some nigh-incomprehensible notes from a document dated August 2018

Events:

Parma needs to recover a little bit, explore Haven when she can (her arm’s definitely going though)

Ix dinner party

Discussion of important things/she lets them in on what she found

Vanguards find Shadow Rulen in the depths and Parma immediately runs off looking, Ix and Shoza having to follow after her

Other ideas and stuff:

Scout slowly becomes a Seraphynx

Drunk Ashoza happens at some point

Concepts:

Shadow Rulen/Technomancer Rulen:

Is possessed/corrupted by the Swarm and taken in by Herex

Speaks in the plural in this state

Creates a very large mech (possibly named “Omega” something for irony?)

Swarm turret gatling gun

Shard bomb launcher

Tears out bits of the world and slams them down on enemies

Weak to overheading

Last ditch attempts to escape deeper into the core

Potential concept of Rulen losing his body to the Swarm and becoming a spirit who possesses/manipulates technology

Grantz’s Sword:

This dude took his oath way too seriously and stuck around even after dying, possessing his sword which remains around the core

Doesn’t realize he’s dead

Inadvertently possesses whatever knight holds the sword

---

Children of the Archives - Hollow Knight - 2019

Another collaborative project between the same trio, an AU affectionately referred to as “Monomom”. There isn’t so much a plot summation for this as there are a bunch of concepts; basically, in this verse, a very large amount of Vessels find their way out of the Abyss and into the Teacher’s Archives, becoming mainstays around there long before the Infection starts to take hold. Though Monomon still fulfils her duty, she isn’t happy about it or the Pale King’s plan, and Quirrel stays behind to take care of the Vessels after she’s gone, though becomes infected as a result. Several events in the game go differently, partially because Hornet is aware of the vessels and is more open with Ghost because of that awareness. Was meant to probably be a verse with a lot of domestic nonsense going on overall.

I don’t have a snippet, but there’s a doc with a lot of concepts, including about three pages’ worth of Vessels created between the three of us. Have some favorites:

Trio - Early model, has three arms. Acts like the older brother to other Vessels. Probably has three small Nails. 

Ase - Broken Vessel, stoic leader, mature, has been wandering longer than the others, cares about siblings more than themself - Insists they’re strong and independent and don’t need help, try to get to the void, fail, several others from the Archives sneak out to drag them back to the Archives badly injured and scare the living daylights out of Quirrel

Lantern - Likes putting lumaflies in their head. Yes, the eyes glow depending how many there are. Theoretically if they Consume the shock ones, they could have laser beam eyes? 

Vault - Taller and thicker vessel that likes storing stuff inside of them. Not a fighter. They fight by flinging stone writings at people and running.

Spite - Seven horns, is upset about that, breaks one off that forms the core of their nail, always down to fight. Will probably stab you if you insult a sibling.

Ink - Gets really good at making ink, their shell’s always stained, loves learning, pesters the students. Probably carries brushes instead, and would hang around Sheo for art.

Legion- One Shade spread over five Vessels. They act as a collective within a collective. If threatened will pile into a very stable tower and initiate a five-tiered Loom. Highly skilled in combat, as you need to take all five of them out within a short time period to fully incapacitate them. You might find one of their Shells roaming Fog Canyon, too keep a scout’s eye out for any potential dangers. If nothing else, they’re bouncing off of jellyfish because it’s fun. Each Shell of Leigon’s has a pentagon inked onto the back, with a dot in each corner responding to which Shell it is. Legion’s shade is as large as Hollow’s. 

Smith: Slightly-large Vessel, missing a leg, really wants to be a Nailsmith. Alters between studying under The Nailsmith and practicing Nailcrafting on sibling’s blades. Keeps them in shape, if nothing else. Has a metal peg-leg they are perfectly willing to take off and smack you with if they’ve lost their nail.

---

Light Unseen - Destiny 2 - 2019

A backstory oneshot for Kaira, a blind Guardian only capable of seeing traces of Light where it’s present, and her Ghost, Nel, who acts as her guide. This particular bit of writing was meant to be Kaira and Nel’s first meeting, and Kaira’s first (and second) revival, as Nel tries to figure out how to accommodate her and help her escape from a Cabal ambush in the EDZ, eventually assisted by more experienced Guardians Irina and Elara-4, who become Kaira’s good friends.

I really, really love this character and I really, really want to do something more with her, but D2′s writing has gone in the crapper since Forsaken and I don’t agree with basically anything Bungie’s done with the game in the last year, so I’m in a bit of a pickle. I do have a snippet, though. Trigger warning for a brief description of an extremely long-dead corpse/skeleton.

Other Ghosts do this for years, he’s heard. But for him, it only takes a few minutes.

Sticking out of some bushes, the Ghost finds a leg. Not much of a leg, of course; the flesh has long since rotted away, and the elements have left just the barest scraps of fabric from the deceased’s clothes. As he delves into the bushs, branches scraping and poking at his shell, he sees the rest of the remains tangled inside are similarly skeletal. The skull is the worst, mangled and caved in around the eye sockets. He wonders how they’d come to be in a place like this, in a state like that. Had they fallen? Had someone, or something, tried to hide their body?

There’s no way for him to know, and he doubts he ever will. But it doesn’t matter, because what he does know is that this is it.

He doesn’t know in any logical capacity, but he knows because he can feel something inside of those bones reacting to his presence, like a pair of magnets drawn to each other’s polarities. He feels...warm, and whole, and his shell is buzzing as if with errant electricity, except it is not electricity, it is Light, his Light, the Light the Traveler had given him with the sole purpose of passing that wonderful gift on to another.

Their body isn’t really in an ideal position for resurrection, and he can’t do much about that given his lack of both size and limbs. But that doesn’t dampen his growing excitement, as he looks at those bones and wonders not for the first time what they’ll be like, what sort of adventures they’ll go on together.

There’s only one way to find out, he knows.

The red-shelled Ghost hovers there, relishing this moment of anticipation for a few seconds longer. And then, he can’t contain it any longer.

He opens himself up to the gift of the Light, and it all but consumes him; his form expands, a little blue sun with little metal planets orbiting around it, and every mechanical sensor cuts out. The part of him that isn’t mechanical reaches out, and from the tiny floating solar system comes a beam that bathes the lost bones in Light.

Flesh reforms itself in the wake of shimmering waves, and clothes over that. The skull rearranges its broken, twisted parts and knits itself back together. After what feels like an age to him, his sensors come back online as his shell wraps around him again, and he drifts back to check his handiwork.

They wear the cloak, hood, and mask of a Hunter, hiding their face. Their shape is vaguely feminine--he’s going to assume until they tell him themself. Her chest rises and falls slowly with her newly-restored breathing, as if she’s not yet fully awake, and she doesn’t seem to realize the fact that she’s lying in a bush.

“...Guardian?” He quells his excitement, trying to keep his voice soft as he flies in closer to her face--then quickly back as he realizes he may be too close. The branches rustle with a slight movement of her arm, and her head turns sluggishly. “Guardian, wake up. I’m sorry, I couldn’t move you--you’re going to have to get up.”

She tilts her head slightly upwards towards his voice. For a moment, there’s no other reaction, but then the words seem to register and she starts pushing herself into a sitting position. Branches snap and crack as she pushes against them, struggling, before she seems to realize a better way and starts sliding her feet along the ground, dragging herself out with her knees little by little until she can sit up unhindered. Once she’s up, she crosses her legs under her and sets her hands in her lap, chin dropped towards her chest as he hovers around her to make sure she’s all in one piece.

He can hardly believe it. His Guardian, living and breathing once again, right here in front of him. The Ghost flies around to hang in front of her face. “How do you feel?” No response, no acknowledgment. He guesses she’s still a little rattled. “Not much of a talker? Okay, you don’t have to talk right now, but we do need to get moving, there’s--”

The Hunter abruptly raises her head, and he stops talking. In the silence, a loud rumbling can be heard, gradually growing louder. Seconds pass, and he turns his eye upward to see a shadow in the sky above the trees--a very familiar shadow, as he’s seen several of these during his scouting missions.

“...Maybe they’ll pass us.”

The dropship stops in the air, almost directly overhead. The side of a wing is all he can see, but he can hear grunts and shouts all too close nearby, feet hitting the ground hard.

So, he’d been quite lucky to find his Guardian so quickly and easily. But apparently, he’d used up all that luck at once, and now a Cabal scouting party is here, for whatever reason.

“You know what I said about moving? We’re going to need to start on that right now.” The Ghost quickly disappears in a shimmer of light, still keeping an eye out around them. “I’m still here. I’ll explain everything later, I promise, but right now we’ve got to run. I’ve got a marker up for you, just follow that and don’t stop. Don’t worry, I’ve got your back.”

The Hunter stumbles to her feet, holding her arms out to steady herself. The Light is still waking inside of her; she probably doesn’t know how to control it, and without a gun, running is their only chance. She glances about wildly, and then takes off--not exactly in the direction of his marker, but he trusts she’s got a plan. If she’s a Hunter, she’s likely got impeccable instincts.

---

are ya winnin the puyo tournament son (doc name) - Puyo Puyo - October 2020

You know I had to do it. This is a oneshot based in an AU where Sig’s ancestor, Ajisai, is reconstituted by the deus ex machina duo themselves, Ecolo and (much to their chagrin) Satan. After spending a few weeks living in the middle of nowhere, Ajisai hears about an upcoming Puyo tournament and decides to participate in the festivities, using it as an excuse to endear themself to varying degrees to the students and visitors. Eventually, they confront Satan about his unacceptable behavior, and get a hint that Satan’s actions may be a bit more tragic than merely pathetic.

Basically this is just ‘what if Ajisai lived because I want to write more for them and I want to see how they’d interact with more characters’. It’s mostly just me goofing in 15th anniversary’s style and I don’t know if people would be interested, but I’m getting some enjoyment out of it.

Looking down on Primp Town from the ridge is rather like watching a beehive--except instead of honeycomb, the excited bees are rushing about building a network of colorful streamers and decorations hanging between buildings.

“You certainly have a lot of celebrations here, don’t you.”

Sig gives the barest of shrugs, not even bothering to glance up from the caterpillar that’s made itself at home on a finger of his claw. “Guess so. It’s fun, though.”

“What is it this time? The Primp Festival wasn’t too long ago. It can’t be that again, can it?”

“Puyo tournament. The school’s running it.”

“Ah, I see.”

“They did it last year, too. Bunch of Arle’s friends showed up.”

“You do realize I was there for the last one, yes?”

Sig finally looks over, and they patiently wait for him to arrive at the realization. “Oh, yeah. Right.”

Ajisai chuckles quietly under their breath as their descendant goes back to admiring the caterpillar. It is easy to forget that they’d been present during many of the major events in Sig’s life, if only because they look and act so different now that they have a whole body to themself again. It’s a small price to pay for their freedom, of course, and they owe Ecolo a great deal for the service.

Well, not just Ecolo, they suppose. There had been...others involved.

“It’s different playing in it yourself, though,” Sig continues after a pause. Ajisai shakes their head to dislodge the loose thoughts before turning back to him.

“Are you going to be joining in this year, then?”

“Yeah.” A tiny smile comes to Sig’s face, though he still doesn’t look up. Nothing more needs to be said, so a comfortable silence stretches on between them, as Sig watches the caterpillar climb his arm and offers his right hand to crawl on instead so he doesn’t lose the little thing. Meanwhile, Ajisai can’t help but glance back down towards the frenetic party preparations, slight fangs poking at their lower lip in thought.

They’ve been alive and well for at least two weeks now, and only four people even know about it; they’ve either been staying at Sig’s house rereading the collection they’d passed down to him or wandering about the Forest of Nahe aimlessly, occasionally slipping into town at night to have a look around before quickly leaving again. But...they’d like to go into town, if only to visit the library. There are so many of Sig’s classmates they’d never gotten to meet properly, too. After so long isolated, they finally remember what it’s like to feel a need for companionship.

There’s only the question of if they deserve it. If they’ll be welcome there.

Ajisai takes a deep breath. “Is this tournament only for the students?”

“No,” Sig replies without missing a beat, “Bunch of other people are probably gonna play. Arle’s friends, Ringo’s friends, the space guys, Ally…Dunno who’s coming, but I’d be surprised if those guys didn’t.”

“Hm.”

“You wanna play too?” Sig takes his attention from the caterpillar, looking over at them with half-lidded, questioning eyes and pursed lips. “You’re really good.”

“Well…” Leave it to their ‘nephew’ to see right through them. Ajisai looks away, hair flicking in slight agitation. They’ve picked up a thing or two about Puyo over the years, it’s true--they’ve even given some of Sig’s classmates a run for their money in the past. Though that only brings up the circumstances of those battles, which were...less than ideal. “Do you think they’d be willing to have me?”

“You’d have to ask Ms. Accord.” Typical Sig--doesn’t even notice their internal struggle, or perhaps he does and doesn’t think it’s an issue. He points down at the town with a clawed finger. “She’s probably down there helping set up.”

Ajisai narrows their eyes, considering it. They suppose the worst that can happen is them being told no and having to go back to the forest, but the idea of just walking into town as they are is a bit unnerving. Still… “Would you mind if I went down there now, then?”

“Go ahead,” Sig says, focus returning to the caterpillar. They can’t help but chuckle a bit under their breath at their nephew’s fascination, the same all-consuming interest that they had for books and stories. 

Ajisai stands, shaking the grass out of their cape before resting a hand on Sig’s left shoulder and squeezing slightly. “Don’t go running off,” they say with a wry smirk, fully aware that Sig will probably still be watching the caterpillar twenty minutes from now.

Sig knows it too, and huffs a little, amused snort through his nose. “Yeah, I’ll try not to.”

[imaginethewitcher]

Hey, can we maybe get an unkowingly hurtful, busy Geralt/Regis who accidently blows off the reader when the reader excitedly tried to show off something sepcial to them, and Geralt/Regis don't realise until they haven't seen the reader in a while.

The long-awaited imagine is finally there! Thank you for your patience :D

Geralt: Thelast few days were the most exhausting ones you’ve ever experienced. Dandeliontaught you every single detail, no matter how seemingly trivial it was. Youaimed on writing the perfect ballad for Geralt. So you’ve asked theself-acclaimed master himself for advice, which he generously gave. Afterlistening hours and hours about every possible way to interpret a single lineof some poet, written by him self-explanatory. However it was worth the effort.You grinned wide as you put the last full stop and stretched your arms afterthe long hours of crossing out words, crumpling up papers and rewriting versesagain and again until you found the perfect words.With a wide grin and melodic humsyou skipped to Geralt. He sat at the desk of the room filled with numerousbeautiful paintings, old books and yellowed letters. The flickering of a candlethat was almost burned to the end of its wick, enlightened his face and ahalf-filled letter. His forehead was laid in wrinkles while he starred at thewords he wrote.You cleared your throat, but didn’tget a reaction. You were thinking of showing him the ballad later, however,your determination was stronger. So you tiptoed closer to him. As whispered inhis ear a “boo”, he turned around abruptly, hands already on the daggerfastened on his belt. You raised your hands immediately. On seeing you heexhaled and put his dagger back.“That could have ended muchdifferent. You know that”, he said and gave an annoyed grunt.“I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware you werethat focused”, you said and looked over his shoulder. “What’s with this letteranyway? It seems to stress you out a bit”.He quickly turned the letter.“It’s nothing”, he replied.“If you say so”. You wanted to keepon asking, but you knew how much of a pain he could be once he’s reallyannoyed. “So, I’ve been doing something for quite a while now. It’s finallyfinished and I thought you might want to hear what I wrote”.The only reply you got from him wasone of his uninterested grunts.“You asked me what kept distractingme, you remember? I’m done with it now. Even Dandelion said it’s wonderful and‘would melt the heart when reading the lyrical syylables’”.You looked at him, in anticipationof an answer, but all he did was staring at that piece of paper and dipping thequill in ink.“Did you listen to me?”, you asked,clearer and louder this time.“Maybe later”. He didn’t turn tolook at you.“I see”, you said after a break, “Ifyou say so”.You stomped out of the room, yourcheeks and eyes felt like burning flames, only cooled by salty tears. All thework for nothing! The papers containing the most loving words fell to theground.

Geralt felt the heat from thedancing flame on his face. It was annoying, distracting from writing andthinking. Since months he didn’t know how to formulate this letter. Dandelionsaid he should ‘just write from his heart’, which was easier said than done. Herubbed his hands over his forehead. The words didn’t flow today how heimagined. With a deep sigh he got up from the chair. Another day without aproper result.“[Your name], are you there?”, he asked as he looked around the house. But theywere nowhere to be found, however, paper lied all over the ground. “Hm, odd”,he mumbled, picking them up.He recognized the cursivecalligraphy immediately, it was theirs. The writing told a heroic tale about alone witcher with white hair. The more he read the more he realized it wasabout him. The ballad ended with him being contented and finding a companion,who stays with him in united love until the end of their days.He cried their name again, but noanswer came back.“Dammit”.That was what they wanted to showhim and he replied to them with curtness. He could have slapped himself forsuch a manner. And all that for this cursed letter, which should have resultedthe opposite way. It was supposed to be a poem for them. Now he stood there,his gaze still captured by the graceful words, telling the story of them and him.Fortunately he knew where to find them, when they want to be alone or areupset.

Geralt went to the garden, seeing themsitting there with sunken shoulders, looking over the fields, which assumed thecobalt-blue of the night.“Hey”, he said in a quiet tone, “youlost something”.They shook their head.“It’s not important. I’m sorryhaving distracted you”, they replied still staring at the wide fields.”There is nothing you need to apologize for. It was my fault, not yours”.He took a seat beside them. For awhile both of them merely sat there in silence, looking over the fields.After a while Geralt broke thesilence.“I’ve read a few lines of it, but Iwould like to hear from you much more”.Now they looked up at him. He heldthe pages to them and their lighted up slightly.“If you say so”.So they sat there while [your name]read the ballad of a witcher, who is not lonely anymore.

Regis: Regishung over countless documents about a variety of statistics, scientificfindings, and anatomical sketches. He was literally buried under stacks ofpapers and books, as was the case most of the time. You opened the door to hishumble personal library. A creaking sound escaped from the old wooden door. Youhid your hand, keeping a little surprise, behind your back and walked towards himwith sedate steps thus not distracting him from working. You took a glimpseover his shoulders. Papers filled with notes in every corner.“You should take a break. I didn’tsee leaving this room since the early morning. It’s already late”, you said.“Thank you for your worries, but I’mstill not finished with the documents about herbs, that might cure variouspoisonings”. He pointed to yet another high stack of documents.You sighed with your hands on yourhips. It’s almost as if he’s addicted to work even though he has so much timeto live, work and learn.“I have a surprise for you”, yousaid optimistically, “You will love it! Believe me! Also you can continueworking later. A little break won’t disturb your studies. Take my word for it”.One book after another, one researchpaper after another, one herb after another, you collected every fact andinformation about herbs curing poisonings in a herbarium.He turned around and looked deepinto your eyes.“[Your name], I’m really not up to abreak right now. These studies are much more important than it might seem atfirst glance. They could save someone’s life, maybe even yours someday. And Ihope not to lose you, because I took a little break. We all profit from them”,he explained.He talked to you like a mother to achild, that just did something incredibly foolish. It was his way to staypolite, yet telling someone to leave him with his work alone. Your face wentred and heat grew in it. You knew he just wanted some quiet time and normallyyou didn’t bother him as he doesn’t bother you when you are busy, however, inthis case his whole work of collecting relevant information was senseless.“I’m aware of that. It’s just ashort little moment”.“Then I keep this small littlemoment for later as a reward for the finished studies”, he concluded and gaveyou kiss on your forehead, his way of apologizing.It was of no use to discuss with himfurther at this point. All your work was for nothing, an unsuccessful surprise.You left the room and banged the door. Sometimes you couldn’t understand Regis.Why he was so interested in human and their well-being and spent his whole lifewith studies about them. He has all this time for it, but you won’t be thereforever.There was one person who understoodthat struggle and that was Orianna. Tears ran down your face while you workedto her estate. It was silly, yet, they didn’t stop coming. You threw theherbarium in the grass. It didn’t matter anyway.

You knocked on the door.‘Stupid tears!’, you thought, wipingthem away, but the swollen red eyes gave the shed tears away.Orianna opened the door, already inher dressing gown. Before she could ope n her mouth, you fell around her neck.“Come in first and then we can talk.I’ll get you some wine”. She stroke your shoulders and pulled you carefully in.You tried to hold back, however, themoment she closed the door the words escaped your mouth like a waterfall.“I collected every littleinformation, every small detail about those cursed herbs, but of course he’s working.That’s all he does! I seem to be air to him. I wanted to give him a surprisewith a herbarium and he’s working continuously without taking a break once in awhile. He has all this time, all this time to do whatever he wants, but can’tspend only a few minutes with me”, you cried and tried to calm your heavy breathingdown, breathing in and out slowly. “I just want to spend some time with himwithout all this work”.Orianna loosened the hug. Her handsheld still onto your shoulders.“He knows”, she said.“What?”, you asked surprised andlooked at her with big eyes. “How do you mean this?”“You’ll see. I get you a glass ofwine”.She stepped away in her elegantattire and left you alone and confused.‘What did she mean by that?’, askingyourself, realizing you felt much better now.Standing felt like an eternity thereuntil the unexpected happened. A knock from the door was heard.“[Your name], are you there?”. Itwas Regis’ voice!You sprinted to the place the voicecame from, but stopped shortly before pulling the door. You didn’t want toargue with him. You didn’t want to have stress with him. Nevertheless youwanted things to change and be clearer about what you wanted. After moments of silencehe broke it.“I’ve made a mistake. It wasn’t myintention to make you feel as if you were naïve or perhaps even a waste oftime. My studies seem to be my prison, I have to get out of in order to spendmore time with you, the person I love. Can you forgive me?”, he talked in acalm soft voice.You inhaled the cold air. Regis’ noticedquickly were his weaknesses laid, and you were thankful for that, as well ashis will to ask for forgiveness.“I wasn’t the most understandingperson either”, you sighed, “I know how important all of this is and I admireyour sense of care. I still wish to spend more time with and not always see youburied in work”.You opened the door and hugged himtightly. He closed his arms around you. You stood there like this under themoonlight for a wonderful while.“I found your herbarium on the wayhere. Fortunately it wasn’t damaged greatly. It’ a valuable piece of information.Thank you, my love”.“I’m glad to hear this”, you smiledand nestled closer to him. “I have made it just for you”.

[squirenonny]

i have been reading your duality verse full time and i love it, esp seeing all the neurodivergence of the cast! reading how you portray pidge and keith reminded me A LOT of a friend of mine and I feel like they could be autistic as well? I don't want to superimpose anything on them or idk patronize them or like do anything bad bc there is a chance my hunch is wrong and??? but I think they would benefit from looking into neurodivergent resources but idk how to tell them 1/2

2/2 bc just going like HEY FRIEND I THINK YOU MIGHT BE AUTISTIC AND THERE ARE COOL RESOURCES ON THE INTERNET YOU MIGHT PROFIT OF just seems offensive and tactless and??? like this is not meant to come off as an offense/criticism of them as a person but could easily be read as such probably if approached on the wrong foot??? do you have any advice on how to reach out to my friend on this??? is this something i should do at all?? i am so sorry to bother you thank you and good bye

Hey! And thanks! I’m glad you enjoy the series and especially the neurodivergence. That’s a huge part of why I’m so invested in this story and it always makes me happy to see it resonate with readers!

As to your question--that’s something that’s really hard to answer without knowing you or your friend personally, so I can’t give you a straight “yes you should do this” or “no, better not.” A lot of autistic people, myself included, are much happier for having discovered the autistic community, and your friend might appreciate someone pointing them toward it, but other people may not feel the same--or it may take time for them move past the initial pushback of denial/self-doubt/fear that hits a lot of us when we’re first presented with the question (from ourselves or from other people) of whether or not we might be autistic.

Ultimately, your friend will probably have to do their own research and reflection before they self-identify as autistic or seek a diagnosis. So even if you decide to strike up this conversation, don’t push. Let them take it at their own pace. Other things to consider (below the break cause this got a little rambly)

1) Do the two of you talk about neurodivergence (be it politics, representation, or just in general) at all? This conversation will probably go better if you’re both on the same page and you can be confident that your friend isn’t going to misinterpret your comment as an insult or otherwise offensive. If you don’t already talk about neurodivergence and you don’t work up to it, you’re going to want to be very careful to make it clear that this isn’t a judgment or a criticism because you’re right. The unfortunate reality is if you’ve only seen Hollywood autism (the “genius asshole” or the ~poor little kid trapped inside his own head~) then “autistic” can sound like an insult.

2) Is there something specific you’ve noticed or better yet that your friend has told you about (sensory overload, meltdowns/shutdowns, ect) that you think your friend could benefit from knowing about/having access to resources? You could start there--it would be a way to introduce the topic of autism in a way that lets your friend know that you just want to help them--and since a lot of autistic traits overlap with other forms of neurodivergence (ADHD and anxiety just to name a few) it’s possible that you’re close but not quite right in thinking your friend might be autistic. That’s okay! You can’t possibly know every facet of their experience, so starting with something concrete might be easier for both of you than coming right out and saying, “I think you might be autistic.”

3) How much do you know about autism? If you want to have this conversation with your friend, it might help to do some research on your own so you can articulate your thoughts and point your friend toward resources they might find helpful and also because your friend might have questions. You don’t need to have all the answers, obviously, and if your friend is anything like me odds are they’re going to go read everything they can find on autism for themselves, but it might help to be able to provide some basic facts to illustrate what you’re trying to say. Alternatively, if your friend is open to it, research together. Say basically what you said to me--something like, ”I was reading a story with autistic characters that reminded me of you and now I can’t stop thinking about it. Did you know [thing that reminded you of them] is common in autistic people?”

4) If you aren’t sure about having the conversation point blank (either because you’re worried your wrong or because you don’t know how your friend would take it) then make it not about them. Encourage them to read something with autistic characters that remind you of them. If they aren’t into Voltron fic, try:-the second Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson (starting with Alloy of Law.) Steris Harms is autistic and she really shines in the sequels especially-The Stormlight Archive also by Brandon Sanderson. Renarin Kholin is autistic. He’s a relatively minor character so far, but I love him.-On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis. Denise is explicitly stated to be autistic in the text. She’s also the main character and holy crow is she #relatable.You could also share autistic headcanons posts for characters you both know. There are lot of them out there (just google “autistic [character/fandom] headcanons” and odds are you’ll find something.) Honestly, when it comes right down to it, if your friend is autistic, the right kind of representation is going to resonate with them and there’s a good chance they’ll go digging on their own.

5) Most importantly, be on the lookout for signs that your friend is uncomfortable with the conversation and if they are, drop the subject. Nothing good is going to come of pushing, and neurodivergence is a very personal thing. It may well be that they’ll come back to you sometime later and initiate the conversation when they’re ready for it. So just be there for them and let them take it at their own pace. I’d been researching autism for six months before I even let myself think the words, I might be autistic, and it was over a year before I said anything to anyone else. So be patient, and focus on being a friend no matter what does or doesn’t come of this conversation.

[treadmilltreats]

Embrace every season with gratitude

I will start off today's blog with this bible verse as it says it all about gratitude:

Ephesians 5.20

"Giving thanks always, for all things unto God and the father in the name of Jesus Christ"

In every season, good or bad you should give thanks.

Now your thinking "Come on how can I be grateful in bad times?"

You might go around thinking you got the short stick, that life sucks, you feel like quitting.

You're frustrated, you lost your drive, maybe you lost it all.

Maybe this pandemic was the straw that broke the camel's back, you've not been happy in years and this just took it over the edge.

"Hello! With all that going on, you want me to be grateful?" You might be saying.

Ever think even if you had everything you still might not be happy? Maybe you're one of those who are never satisfied?

You experienced the good and the bad times yet you're still unhappy?

Maybe you're living in a good season and you're still unhappy?

Maybe it's you? Maybe...just maybe you need to change your outlook and your attitude.

You are still not grateful for even the good times, so how can you be grateful for anything?

You will have moments that are sweet, that are good and you will think this is wonderful but believe me, you will get the bad times, you will eventually get the bitter part of life. The part that truly will suck and you put them all together and label them unhappy, label your whole life unhappy.

Some of you, I am sorry to say, but nothing will make you happy... Ever! Because you have chosen to dwell on the bitterness of life.

I know this to be a fact because my grandmother was like this, nothing ever made her happy, she was bitter about what life had given her. She was the most negative I ever knew. And as long as I knew her, she was like this, even when things were good, she was still unhappy, carrying all the hurts of her past with her into the good times. I vowed never to be like her and every day I chose to think differently, to be grateful, to be positive, to forgive and let go of hurts.

Do you focus so much on the bad moments that you're not even grateful for now? Give thanks always! Even in the bad moments.

Do you ask why am I here? Why is this happening to me? Where is your faith? Why don't you believe in miracles? Why cant you be like the bible tells us to be:

"Always be joyful, Never stop praying"

Not sometimes, not when things are good, not when your life is great...but ALWAYS be joyful.

If you always embrace a heart of gratitude, your life will be better.

My aunt always said "Sit at a table with others and put your problems on the table and believe me when you see others problems, you will be fast to take back yours"

The grass is not always greener on the other side, it just looks that way.

I can speak of this because I was in that dark place, I had hit rock bottom yet every day I pushed myself to be grateful for at least one thing, then I pushed to be grateful for 2 things and so on until I was grateful for everything even all the pain and suffering I went through because it made me stronger, it made me who I am today.

So today my friends, remember to always be grateful, always pray because prayer changes things. Start being grateful that God woke you up, that you woke up in a bed and not on the streets, that you have food when so many go starving every day. That you have a job, that you're able to walk, that you're in your right mind, things we take for granted.

Even during this pandemic, we can all still find things to be grateful for. Time with our family and friends, time to praise God, time to figure out what we are doing with our lives, what the little things mean, there are plenty of things we could learn from this if we try.

Be aware of these small things and be grateful, then from there you will be able to add on...and before you know it you will be grateful for everything, even your bad times, even during this pandemic...trust me.....and like I always say at the end of every blog….

"Be the change you want to see"

 

"And just when the caterpillar thought his life over...he turned into a beautiful butterfly"

**Now released my latest book**

The Blessing in Disguise.... revealed

https://www.amazon.com/Blessing-Disguise-Revealed-story-faith/dp/1074340493/ref=sr_1_19?keywords=the+blessing+in+disguise&qid=1561392004&s=books&sr=1-19

***Now available***

My 1st book The blessing in Disguise 

Selling on my website

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[neurowaltz-archive]

@librarywent​ asked : [care] from Louis?    /    from here.

         𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖇𝖊𝖆𝖙 𝖎𝖘 𝖆 𝖉𝖚𝖑𝖑𝖊𝖉, 𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖞 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌.

         slowed by the venom coursing through his veins- blood the only thing occupying this hollow shell. this corpse. jervis notices idly the bruise receding into the skin of his arm, louis’s fingers moving to survey it. he spares a dry laugh- how naive the young always were. willing to help anyone, eager to find a place to hang weary bones.

         ‘ there’s no need, ‘ jervis says, pulling his arm away. ‘ i am an old thing, & to - day shall not be my last. ‘

         his eyes, unnaturally & severely blue, survey the vampire before him, remembering idly some memory of america about a century ago.

         ‘ i did not invite you to my parlor to play nurse , ‘ he chides . ‘ i wanted the opportunity to introduce myself. i am dr. jervis leopold tetch, though i’m afraid my degree is somewhat... outdated. ‘

          ‘ what brings you so far away from home ? ‘