#that shit WORKS and i tended to rule out methods like this out of fear of being cheesy

[stuckinapril]

maybe a bit of an esoteric advice but saving nice things people have said in a notes app entry has saved me so many times. if i’m having a bad day, being hard on myself, dealing w negativity from others etc etc. just whatever it is. i open this page—which is basically a compilation of people complimenting me on certain attributes, sweet interactions i wrote down, or things i’ve accomplished—and it brings me right down to earth. like someone could be saying mean shit about me (whether it be a person or a voice in my own head) & instead of having to go through the mental toil of summoning up positive memories to negate that, i just go to that notes app entry. i read over everything and im like ohhhh ok im not the most horrible person in the world after all. i don’t deserve being told that after all. it’s all written down right here.

[hobidreams]

august 1868.

the gilded throne is, above all, lonely.

pairing: joseon king!yoongi x reader genre: drama words: 1.1k contains: historical au, political talk

moonlit throne index. this is drabble six. start from the beginning?

“No.”

Alone atop his throne, King Yoongi does his best to stare down the almost two-dozen court officials that avert their eyes from him, standing from their proper place below the raised platform. His fingers, spread over the wooden armrests, tighten furtively.

“But jeonha! We believe it is the right decree, if we are to have any chance of quelling the rebellions.” The men beside the speaking advisor, Minister Choi, nod enthusiastically along.

“I do not believe it will be as effective as you think.”

Another advisor pipes up, his grey beard trembling. “If we execute the leaders, the rest of the uprising will lose their morale and cease their protests and ransacking. It will be the best method of control.”

“Please consider it, jeonha!” The rest of the men chime in a chorus, like birds that keep on fucking twittering in the morning when Yoongi just wants to sleep.

When he doesn’t respond immediately, Minister Choi interjects yet again. “Be assured that I only say this out of loyalty for your family,” even though his smarmy tone implies otherwise, “but this strategy has worked in the past for your father.”

Yoongi’s downturned mouth twitches then, betraying his deepening irritation. He despises that phrase. It’s true, his time on the throne doesn’t add up to two years. Most of the advisors here have been working in the palace for more than ten times that length, and they haven’t been afraid to challenge him at every turn. But he is the one on the throne, plagued with uncertainty or not. The decisions are his to be made, no matter how much he questions if they are correct.

Exhaustion pulls at his brain, wanting petulantly to dismiss all of the men for some temporary relief. It’s out of habit that he casts a glance to his right and his chest aches at the empty spot where his mother used to sit, offering him guidance or at the very least, comfort.

Wrong decision.

That one look starts up the murmuring, the not-so-subtle glances amongst the men, his psyche no doubt their concern. The blame all falls on him, he knows. Two months was too long to spend distraught. Without a strong leadership watching over the land, he’d been the one to give the rebels time to rally and flourish. His fault. His fault. His fault, and the skepticism towards his reign seems to spread faster than anything else.

“Jeonha—”

“They are peasants!” Shit. His harsh voice cracks through the space, temper lost when it needed to be kept most. He’s horrifyingly aware that he sounds like a kid, throwing a tantrum when things don’t go his way. He hates those stares that seem to be mocking his authority, questioning it at every turn. What he wants to say is that the rebels are only lashing out because they’re hungry, because there’s not enough grain in the land to feed their families, but so what if he does? He doesn’t know how to fix that either. He doesn’t know what to do, when all these officials are looking to him for answers and he has nothing and every decision feels like it’s damning him or his people further. His people. All those people. If he can’t even control his court, how is he meant to rule the country?

“Peasant or not, they are breaking the law. Your laws, jeonha.”

Yoongi sets his jaw. Clenches his teeth so hard they hurt as tension fills his mind, shoving against his skull itself until the pressure is all he knows. The ache demands his attention, just like everything else, as if he isn’t just one man. But the reality is, he isn’t any longer. He is the king and he needs to do better. He needs to be stronger than this. He’ll lose control soon completely if nothing changes.

“Do it.” He forces his tongue to move. Tells himself it’ll be easier the next time. “Schedule the execution.” If this is what it takes, he’ll do it again and again and again until it’s enough.

The relief that sweeps through the room is instantly tangible. “Yes! We shall!” The men cry, dropping into a row of bows.

Yoongi’s already standing before they rise. He takes hurried, barely-controlled strides towards the door, issuing a firm “dismissed!” right before he bursts into the heat of the afternoon. The bright, sunny weather only feels stifling with all his robes dragging behind him. He kicks up dust clouds as he turns, not quite knowing where to go from here but craving something else, anything different to distract him.

“Jeonha!” Eunuch Kim’s voice rings out and Yoongi can hear the man’s steps trying to catch up but even the presence of his oldest companion irritates him right now.

“Leave me be,” he growls, and keeps going.

Stooped at the corner of the private palace gardens, you smile as you tend to the small collection of herbs your mother was allowed to plant here by the former king. They’re growing well these days, enjoying the bright sunshine that summer always brings. “It’ll be time to harvest you soon,” you murmur in-between your humming of a folk tune. You don’t get to check on these plants often since you live near the other uinyeo on the other side of the palace grounds, and well, being in such close proximity to the king’s quarters these days is… You’re just grateful he let you stay in the palace at all.

“Jeonha!”

There’s a sudden clamor at the exact entrance you were trying to avoid.

Trepidation bursts in your heart as you look up, squinting in the sunlight to see the king entering the grounds at a startling pace. Despite your instincts telling you to flee, you don’t dare make any sudden movements for fear of drawing his attention. But you can’t seem to look away either, sleeves dragging in the dirt as you follow his rush to the pavilion, unconsciously holding your breath until he slams down onto the seat so furiously that you can hear it even across the pond. 

Then, and only then, when he is half-shielded by the pavilion’s low walls, does he huddle into himself. Cradles his head in his own arms, shoulders heaving with the strain of deep, quivering breaths you are too far away to hear. But this time, you know that he doesn’t need you. He’d said it himself, and not a word more has he spoken to you in all these months, as if that awful point needed proving.

So you force yourself to stay exactly where you are, despite your wanting. You keep your distance, even when he’s crumbling before your eyes.

[bansept]

Let’s dance

/NSFW WORK/

While it’s not the absolute worse, nor the absolute best I could come up with, it’s a pretty nice start of the maybe long series of NSFW scrabbles for my dear Ichihime fandom!

To anyone who was a bit thirsty, I give you this fresh refreshment that I hope isn’t that bad!

DANCER ORIHIME X STUDENT ICHIGO

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Blurry windows and foggy mirror, heavy breaths and skin burning.

The light was shining on them, their sweaty bodies moving in rhythm with the music, the gentle voice of the instructor ordering them around, making each movement matter.

Now, if anyone had told Ichigo he would be taking dancing lessons, staring at his reflection in half anger, half concentration and listening to young teenage girls giggle behind him, he would have slapped them. Not because dancing was shameful, because frankly, it definitely was not. Well, except for some dances, like the macarena or shit like that. No actually, Ichigo would not have believed himself for agreeing to come to dancing lessons to stare at the instructor.

As in, gawk at her.

.

.

.

Ichigo Kurosaki’s week had started as normally as any other week : waking up early, drinking liters of coffee, going to work on some english literature thesis, eating with some friends and coming back home to work until way too late at night, and starting over again.

Yes, he had been told several times by everyone he knew that coffee was bad when it was too much, yes, he had been told to work better on his thesis if he wanted to study and teach Shakespeare. Easier said than done, and that was why his friends had kept rumbling about either taking a break, thank you Chad, or stoping any distractions and really work, fuck you Uryu.

He was sitting across them, stirring his lunch leftovers slowly while the tall half Japanese half Mexican giant was pushing his hair out of his eyes, looking around them as Uryu was probably talking to him. Ichigo tended to not care much.

“So you better get back on track before your old man decides to stop…”

“He’s not lending me money anymore. I work now, you know?”

Uryu threw Ichigo a quite unimpressed look, closing his mouth only to push his glasses up his straight nose. Chad was holding back a tiny smile, but Ichigo of course saw it.

“Giving lessons to kids and working part time in a dojo isn’t really enough to pay for important studies. Or keep you floating like now for the rest of your little life.”

Ichigo gritted his teeth together, a hand digging in his pocket to hold onto his phone, anything hard to stop him from throwing hands with his friend. He really wondered how or why he even talked with the blue-eyed man in front of him.

“Excuse me?” A voice came from the side, clear and ringing in his ear loud enough for Ichigo to turn his head around. Any distraction was good enough to momentarily wipe Uryu from his mind.

Ichigo felt his grip on his phone loosen, just like his jaw.

The angelic voice that had called them was probably the most angelic form of life on Earth, putting to shame anything renowned painters and, god forbid, even Shakespeare, had ever described. With long, fluffy and so exquisitely soft looking auburn hair, bright grey eyes surrounded by a round face, with subtile eyebrows, a cute little nose and, fuck, pillowy lips…

The young and oh so magnificent woman was slightly leaning towards them, an inviting smile on her face while her slender hand was handing over rosy flyers.

“I’m sorry to bother you, gentlemen, but we are offering free dancing lessons to promote the opening of our new dance studio.” A sweet smile and Ichigo felt his eyes widen further. “Would you be interested?”

With the push of his friends, and because he was perfectly unable to say no to such a goddess, Ichigo was the only one to accept, the other two finding some kind of weird excuse. But really, the young man was perfectly fine in agreeing to go alone there.

.

.

.

What a fantastic recruit they had chosen for the job, he marvelled, walking down the sunny streets with his backpack, staring at the flyer that the gorgeous woman had given him. He wondered if she would be here, in this class, jumping around in sportswear and doing whatever dance lessons did. Ichigo snickered when he realized he’d be one of the idiots doing those idiocities too.

After a good 15 minute-walk, the orange-haired man stood right at the front of a brand new building, the white walls making the golden-ish design of the sign shining in the sunlight. Windows with closed curtains made him raise an eyebrow, but he still entered the dimly lit building, the office desk standing elegantly, but alone.

“Hello?” He asked, voice calling out in the empty space.

God, he hoped he had not arrived too late. Or worse, too early. Ichigo hated to appear eager, even if his brain reminded him that, actually, he was.

A few quick steps rushed on the clean floor, the young woman appearing from the corner of a room, head out of a door, that certainly led to the dance floor. Damn, he hated that word, but like the way her face lit up seeing him.

“Oh! You came!”

Now, if his heart had jumped when Ichigo had first seen her, now something else did when she walked up to him in tight clothing, working out clothing, that hugged everything and didn’t leave much to the imagination. The man quickly got his backpack into his hands and placed it in front of his groin. Breathe in, you can do it.

“Well, huh, I told you I would come, right?” He chuckled airily, watching her smile again, her shoulders lifting up in happiness, her breasts bouncing NO DON’T THINK ABOUT IT.

“Thank you for coming, sir. You are right on time for the 3PM lesson. Others should come, but classes are mostly in the morning. Though I could make an exception for you!”

She brought her hands together in a small clap, and Ichigo did blush but desperately hoped it didn’t show.

It did, and the young woman pointed at the door in the back, with written in both English and Japanese “changing room”.

“You can go get changed, here is the key. Please be ready in 10 minutes.” she bowed to him slightly and walked back to the studio, slower than when she came in, and Ichigo felt his eyes trailing after her, impossible to stop himself or walk ahead as long as she was in here.

“I’m fucked.”

.

.

.

Yes, he was.

His young, overactive and definitely way too interested brain had created this mental image of dancing lessons, yoga sessions and massages to be a place of filth, where people turned into beasts and let nature rule them over as one of them was bended over a table while the other pounded in them. Instinctively, the clever and thinking part of said brain had stopped the idea, assuring him they were only fantasies young people in rut had twisted to fit their horny selves.

Unfortunately, part A of the brain had been right, and part B admitted defeat immediately when the session started with stretching methods.

With the instructor showing, naturally.

Going up, down, to one side then the other, running around the room wasn’t that bad. It actually helped get rid of the incoming boner Ichigo felt growing, and he stopped at the end to breathe out, now completely calm.

Apart from the moment she had come up to him to gently help him get the posture right, expertingly taking his hands to place them where needed, showing him how to do the exercise, her butt for him to see, and it was easy to think it was simply a coincidence.

One that brought his hard on back.

Then Orihime Inoue, the instructor, who had given him her name at the very start of the session so they would stop calling each other “Miss” or “Sir” as if they were still in school, came next to him and asked him to do some squats.

“I don’t see how that helps the dancing…” He doubted, looking at her in the eyes, and she chuckled lightly, raising her hand to pick up his arms and place them in the air, in front of him.

“Dancing is beautiful and powerful when you have good leg muscles. And while you do have muscles, if they themselves are not powerful enough, you won’t last very long.” She explained.

He sighed, argument hitting the spot, and did as many squats as her, next to him. If he was going to do some body work, then it would have been better to simply just go to the gym…

“Come on, don’t day dream! Do 50 and then we’ll see how you dance.”

The world stopped, all the clocks ticking in the empty void, head turning to stare at her incredulously, catching her puffing out her cheeks and laughing out loud, holding on to his shoulder to avoid slipping on the ground.

“I’m kidding, Ichigo-san! Don’t worry!” She kept laughing in her hand, and the young man felt several things : first, shame for letting his fear sweat outside of his body. Second, amusement at her dorky laughter.

The third emotion was out before he could control it, pulling her close to him and taking her hand off her face. Orihime looked shocked by his actions, ears and cheeks reddening from the effort as well as embarrassament.

“What…”

“That’s enough exercising for now. Let's get to the real work.”

He looked into her eyes, who had kept on looking up and down his body for the last half hour, her hands who ran up his arms to land on his collarbones, mouth opening slightly to let out nothing but a tiny “yes”.

He had been on fire for multiple reasons in life : because of anger against his father, his friends, sometimes his sisters. Because of grief, when he had to help other family members carry his mother’s coffin. Because of anxiety and weariness, because of exercise.

But this time, when he walked the two of them to a bench by the side of the room, he was burning in need and hunger.

Orihime was also fever like, the nice and calm mask she had slipped on falling away with her tank top, leaving her in just a sports bra while she kissed Ichigo deeply, tongue easily giving up the dominance in favor of the man’s own flexing muscles.

The sound of the music all but disappeared when their bodies collapsed together, hungry kisses and nails like tiger’s claws on each other’s skins.

With a quick breath, Ichigo pulled away from her mouth to kiss her neck, lapping at it gently, her hand going to his hair while he touched the skin of her hips and stomach. Softness and hard muscles seemed hard to combine, yet there she was, smooth smooth skin covering powerful muscles, ones that he would enjoy teasing.

After the kisses, his head got lower and lower, caging her lower stomach, not touching in the slightest her breasts, that would come later.

“Hmf, what are you... “

“Sh, don’t talk too loud, others might hear.”

He grinned from ear to ear, looking up as he licked his lips, her breath catching in her throat. Orihime’s hand suddenly caught his hair and pulled him up, as gently as possible, and they kissed again, one nibbling on the other’s lips, Orihime’s hands getting under the man’s wet shirt, feeling the tight muscles, the crease between each abs, the v line digging in his shorts.

“No one else is here… So, don’t hesitate to yelp, Ichigo.”

She murmured agaisn’t her lips before going deeper in her search, this time digging in his shorts to find what she seeked with a grin.

Ichigo yelped indeed, not expecting the woman under him to get so bold, yet there she was, feeling him up and stroking him in his damn shorts.

Fuck, would be the right word to use.

He didn’t utter a single vowel, bringing her pants and her underwear down rapidly, going back to kiss her as their lips found each other again, lost in moans and the electric touches of their tongues. Orihime kept on stroking him, gently pumping him up and down, the member in her hand turning even harder as she placed her thumb on the slit. Slick came out of it, and she chuckled at the man’s reaction : eyes closed and shaking behind the eyelids, Ichigo seemed ready to burst at any moment, but he groaned, not accepting an early end.

His finger, that had been on her lower stomach, stroking at her sensitive part, now had entered her, one by one. The long digits didn’t waste any time in looking for her gspot, that tender place inside of her that would make her see stars in seconds, if he was careful enough.

“Ichigo… No, not like, th-that…” She moaned against him, her free hand digging in his hair, pulling her face in his neck to try to resist the impossible pull on her body. “I… need….”

“I know, baby, I know… Let me take care of it…” He whispered back to her, placing one kiss on her forehead. His fingers came out of her, taking her own hand off of him, even if he twitched in insubordination. “You’re all good, Hime, you’re good…”

He reassured her, voice gentle like he knew she liked, hands lowering his pants to angle his cock to her. Ichigo finally freed her breasts from their confined space, letting them overflow on her chest, filling his vision with sights of her blushing face and exposed tits.

“You’re beautiful Hime…”

He smiled at her, rubbing her nose with his with a grin that she gave back, before entering her fully, nice and slow. She yelped this time, voice resonating in the empty room, but never stopping her sweet sound and words towards him as she dug her fingernails in his back, feeling him getting as deep as possible, filling her up to the brim, the end, to the heart.

She pushed her head out of his neck, and with a tiny frown, pouted.

“You didn't play.”

Ichigo winced, the tightness of hers squeezing just right around him, and nodded his head.

“I’m sorry… I tried, but you always look so fucking amazing in sports wear… fuck, I couldn’t just pretend I didn’t know my own fiancée!”

Orihime didn’t answer, couldn’t really, and pulled him back down against her generous mounds before he got started with his thrusts, rocking them carefully against the oh so fragile wooden bench of his future wife’s dance studio.

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I’ll never forgive my playlist for making me turn what was supposed to be absolute filth into sweet love making on a bench.

Tell me what you thought of it, and how I can better myself!

[hazelenergy]

@bed-of-briars​ @the-road-from-calvary​

So here’s some info on how thinblood alchemy works. Kitty, I know you asked me about it so hopefully this clears things up. Antonia, I hope this has use for you, and I may be able to plague you with more history questions soon. 

What is thinblood alchemy? 

Good fucking question. Professionally, I’d say it’s the combination of high resonances with vampiric vitae and proper catalyzing substances to replicate vampiric disciplines or new powers completely. Among friends, I say it’s walking around my haven, tits out, ingesting random household items to see what happens. 

How long has thinblood alchemy been a thing?

I’ve been trying to pinpoint how long thinblood alchemy has been around and I haven’t been able to find many sources giving concrete answers. It's like they want us eradicated so our notes and research were destroyed with us. The easy answer is thinblood alchemy started booming in the late 20th century with the drug scene. Which is true. With widespread access to technology, information, and the invention of online stores- acquiring the necessary gear is easy. 

However, thinblood alchemy has been around a lot longer. I have been fortunate enough with my thinblood safehouse project to be allowed to see old notebooks passed down from alchemists- some dating from the 1980s and one delicate diary from 1947. I’m not at all surprised when the alchemists who possess these relics feel tremendous responsibility to preserve them. But there are even rarer and older documents. The alchemy notes from the dark ages work for our formulas- if you can translate their coded notes. So in truth, thinblood alchemy has been around since the creation of clan Tremere- or even earlier. 

So how does it work?

Thinblood alchemy is not like other disciplines you may have seen or used. Lots of kindred of the 13th generation or lower are embraced and immediately possess control of their disciplines. Most alchemists wouldn’t describe their craft as something that came naturally to them- it took weeks, months, or even years to experiment and find what works. Additionally, this is not a practice for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. To get the necessary ingredients requires some unsavory acts- it is a fact as true as the beast within us. 

Across the board, you need vitae. Doesn’t always have to be yours but it is awfully convenient to use what you’ve got inside. Cool you got blood, and it's yours because it’s in your possession. Now what? You need something to put it in. But it can’t be just anything. Much like a tremere needs very specific tools to do some rituals, thinblood alchemists need an alchemical cauldron or furnace. There are currently three possible ways to procure such a furnace which have developed into the three distillation methods.

The first is my preferred method. The fancy latin some of us use is Athanor Corporis, meaning furnace body. I utilize my own stomach as my alchemical cauldron. After eating or drinking the necessary ingredients, I can will the blood to ignite the furnace. Most of the time it just kinda feels like a heat radiating beneath my ribcage. On occasion it has felt as bad as taking rapid fire bullets to my gut and then pouring vinegar onto the holes...but it's rare. The benefit of this method is it allows me to keep the power or discipline in my system for extended periods of time- sometimes even as long as a month. I also can travel a lot of the ingredients on my person, swallow them, and then hunt down the right resonance. It's a very versatile method that lends itself well to being discreet. The downside is, this is a one power at a time method. If I consume a new formula, it replaces the original power. Which is a bummer and why proper planning is important. Additionally, not every thinblood has the gullet to do this. I can speak from very personal experience that I have eaten and swallowed some terrible tasting things. There are some that even I found myself vomiting back up and then immediately racked with hunger. Those that use this method have given some extreme criticism that they had to train themselves to keep stuff down or chase it with so much vitae that they nearly bond themselves. 

The second method I find morally uncomfortable and I refuse to try it. This one’s called calcinato. Instead of using your own body- which you know can’t die from drinking bleach because it's already dead, you use human vessels. You can emotionally manipulate them to match the resonance you need. You can also use drugs. You can also use sex. Then you feed them with the proper ingredients and your own vitae, and their entire body activates the formula. The alchemist can then drink a number of doses from that vessel until their resonance changes or there’s no blood left. There are a few benefits to this method. I have a sharp nose which allows me to smell resonances. I imagine that if I lacked this innate ability, finding and tapping resonances would be far more difficult or left to chance. This ensures you are getting a specific resonance every time. Additionally, the time it takes to drink from that vessel can be faster than I can swallow new ingredients and will the blood to brew. I’d possibly be hungrier, they could be full. Lastly, a thinblood that uses this method is possibly in the enviable position of possessing a herd. If they are, they could easily have multiple brews in many people- making them more prepared than I could be with pockets full of magnets. The downsides to this method are numerous- besides my personal grievances. The first is that this method quickly lends itself to masquerade breaches. Taking a bite from your vessel in the open is not a possibility if you care to play the masquerade game. Secondly, if you are separated from your vessel, what do you do? If the alchemist is someone who coerced or drugged their victims into doing this, what happens when they escape? And if they do possess a herd, what happens when your stock is depleted? Agh, it makes my stomach turn just referring to people like that ew. The second issue is the same as the first method- one power per body. 

The third method is more common but harder to distill. This method closely mirrors actual alchemy from the dark ages, where all the ingredients are poured into the athanor and distilled inside. The furnace needs to be able to conduct heat. You can use a kiln, a metalworking furnace, or modern inventions like an electric pressure cooker or as its nickname “cooking” suggests, get a meth cooker. Some asshole dubbed it fixatio once trying to give it a better street name. But since Breaking Bad aired, that name is never going to stick. Once distilled, the resulting formula can be bagged or bottled for future use. This method has the most benefits- but also the most disadvantages. It’s that reason I prefer the first method, but I have dabbled into this one to expand my knowledge.  The first benefit is that the alchemy is portable. You don’t have to hunt or lead a vessel around. You can hold a lot of different formulas inside jackets, backpacks, pockets, or my favorite i’ve ever seen- a ren faire waterskin. You can be prepared for lots of encounters, but it still takes time to imbibe the entire dose. The other benefit is its lucrative possibilities. Selling these means money in pockets. And money lets you go buy more weird shit for more alchemy. It’s also excellent for quick favors. The downsides are you have to be cautious of who you’re selling to. A lot of alchemists who use this are also drug dealers and plenty of final deaths have occured from people selling on someone else’s turf. Additionally, each brewed formula is unique to their alchemist. In intelligent hands cough TREMERE (or even an alchemist armed with Tremere secrets) it can be traced back to you… or worse. Travelling around with blood bags, vials, or a waterskin can be tricky too. You have to take care that you don’t burst or break any of these creations. Oh you fell? Better hide that pool of blood spilling out from your sweatshirt pocket. On top of that, most of these aren’t shelf stable. And even if they are kept cold- some still can’t make it more than a few days before it spoils. Like the two methods before, it is a one power at a time rule. Once consumed, you gotta use whatever you drank immediately or it will fade. Lastly, the reason this is more difficult is because it requires more powerful ingredients and a stationary lab. Substitutions don’t tend to work- you gotta have the best you can get. Which gets difficult when high level preparations demand rarer and rarer ingredients.

Each alchemist is going to have their own research methods, however most of us are resorting to trial and error. However, we unanimously agree that you need to brush up on modern chemistry and learn how to hunt for specific resonances. I’ve come to learn that my sharp nose is a trait not just present in thinbloods and by some older kindred it has been dubbed “bloodhound.” I have been fortunate that I don’t need to rely on wit and observation to figure out what resonance my potential victim has. I smell it. However, those without this ability have to learn to pinpoint emotional responses and their corresponding resonance. Put simply, there are five possible resonances: Melancholic, Phlegmatic, Choleric, Sanguine, and Absent. Melancholic resonances tend to be associated with relaxation and calmness but also sadness and fear. Easy targets are stoners, funeral goers, and horror movie newbies. To me, this has an overwhelming sour smell and tart taste. Phlegmatic is content and happiness, but can also be feeling in control. This one can be one of the hardest to pinpoint, since happy feelings blend so effectively with choleric and sanguine resonances. Phlegmatic resonances have a salty smell to them. Choleric is rage and anger, but it also can be passionate and driven. Choleric resonances are typically spicy flavors, and are some of the easiest to recognize. It’s hard to mistake true anger for anything else. Sanguine is also joy and happiness, but also includes how horny someone is. Sanguine resonances are easy to find in flirtatious club goers and generally have a sugar sweet aroma. Lastly, there are those who are completely uncaring and have no resonance. This apathy is extremely difficult to pinpoint- even with my nose as it has the smell of nothing. The only distinguishable thing is that it has an overpowering bitter taste. 

Regardless of whether or not a thinblood is an alchemist, they can take advantage of these resonances to grant themselves temporary power. Most kindred need the resonance to be exceptionally potent to gain these benefits. However, thinbloods are hypersensitive to even fleeting resonances. Most of us have pieced the puzzle together that biting into a club goer equals a bit of presence for the next couple hours. But for alchemists, especially those brewing outside the body, hunting and preserving these resonances is essential for alchemy. Most resonances flicker away within fifteen minutes out of a body, so you have to act fast to get it into the formula and start brewing. 

Once the proper resonance is obtained and mixed with ingredients in the furnace, it’s pretty obvious of whether or not it worked. If it works, you have the discipline or new power until the brew is used up. If it fails, at best nothing happens. At worst, I’ve had some rough stomach aches if brewed internally. I’ve also had some mild explosions or acid seep through objects. Failure can be devastating. But it’s just a fact of the practice. 

So if it's a practice, why can only thinbloods do this?

I don’t know. I don’t think lower gen kindred can learn this. Looking at how disciplines can be gained for older vampires doesn’t seem to match how thinblood alchemy works. It much more closely resembles the paths that Tremere apprentices can choose to learn- but even they couldn’t pick up these tricks. My adoptive sire, a Tremere, tried to mimic our findings and found she could not will the blood like I or my coterie mates could. Perhaps this was part of her clan’s history and curse. However, I’ve not had other clans ever try. To most, the thought of consuming anything but blood churns their undead stomach. Some of you can’t even ingest bagged blood. The ability to eat is a rare trait in older kindred but fairly common for thinbloods. Perhaps this is why it works for us.

Additionally, thinblood alchemy allows us to replicate disciplines but also create new powers entirely. These powers may be unusable to the other clans. And I don’t mean that in the secretive way that Necromancy or Levinbolt is. Your blood is too strong and therefore isn’t affected by the slight changes in resonance and mere drops of vitae in a brew. But to a hungry thinblood, three drops of vitae, some fridge magnets, and choleric blood means we have telekinesis. 

I’m young. And if I keep playing my cards right and brewing my alchemy correctly, I’ll still be here in 40 years and hopefully can refute this entire thing with the years of knowledge I possess. But I hope this answers some questions to how alchemy works, and leaves you with plenty more for us to bargain favors for answers.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #388

“i wanna stay inside all day  /  i want the world to go away  /  i want blood, guts, and chocolate cake  /  i wanna be a real fake”

Name three people who you'll never forget: I doubt I'd forget Jason even if, God forbid, I had dementia. That's trauma for ya. I HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHLY doubt I could EVER forget my mom, either. In many different ways, she's literally kept me alive and has done so, so much for me. Then there's also Sara, whose friendship with me matches no one else I've been friends with. Have you ever been told you are fake? No. What was the name of the last pet of yours that died? Teddy, my dog. Do you like pineapple? I do. When was the last time you wished the day would just get over with? I know this sounds seriously depressing, but that's... pretty much every day. My life is just currently such a drag that being awake bores me senseless. But it's funny, because then some nights I stay up late for like... no reason. My existence alone is confusing. Is there any specific number that has any significance to you? No. Do you remember much from high school? I remember a lot from high school. Where would you go for the ultimate honeymoon? Isn't there a black sand beach in Iceland or something? Take me there, man. I'd also love to go to the Bahamas, but ew humidity and also I'm afraid of the Bermuda Triangle lmfao. If you had to get a tattoo tomorrow, what would you get? The big piece I want to get on my left upper arm; it's called "Denialism" by NukeRooster on deviantART. I got her permission forever ago to get it tattooed. Do you have any alarms set? What time and what for? Not currently. Have you ever had to work while there was a film crew at your work place? No. Have you ever supported anyone’s Kickstarter? If so, what was it? No. What do you like in your omelet? Ham pieces and cheese. Have you ever boycotted something? Yes: Chick-fil-A. Homophobic, transphobic pieces of shit aren't getting my business. Has anyone ever borrowed something from you, and not returned it? Yes. Most notably a video game I LOOOOVED as a kid. I was mad salty and still am lmao. Do you vent a lot on social media? God no, not anymore after embarrassing the everliving FUCK out of myself with a suicide note. What was your first bill you started paying on your own? I don't pay any bills bc unemployed. .-. Do you watch ASMR videos? No. What is your favorite charitable cause to donate to or volunteer for? The Trevor Project. Have you ever received a misdiagnosis? Yes. A psychiatrist I had in middle school thought I had ADHD, which was ABSOLUTELY ludicrous. Most recently, my long-time bipolar 2 diagnosis has been questioned, but I do think I have it. I think. Does it bother you when others don’t share the same religious beliefs as you? No? Freedom of religion is a thing. What was your last argument about? Ummmm... I don't remember. Probably something with Mom. Have you found your first gray hairs yet? No. Somehow. You'd think all the stress would have me pure gray by now, lol. What are the names of all the pets you’ve had? Dude, I've had WAY too many for this. What’s the most you’ve ever spent on a cosmetic or skincare product? *shrug* Who was the last person that invited you to go somewhere? Did you accept? Mom invited me to come with her to Nicole's to get out of the house because at the time our A/C was still out. I didn't want to go, even though damn did I suffer, haha. What was the last food item that you toasted, other than bread? That's... a great question. I don't know if I toast anything other than bread. Have you ever named any of your pets after a cartoon character? I remember I had a cat named Taz when I was younger. What was the last thing that someone else recommended, or suggested you try? My TMS doctor is like SUPER friendly and makes the treatment go by so fast (it's exactly 22 minutes and 30 seconds; don't ask why), and recently she was fangirling to Mom and me about the show Once Upon a Time, haha. I saw very little of it with Jason, but Mom did check it out. When was the last time you wore a hat? What kind? I have zero idea. When was the last time you ate a bowl of ice-cream? What flavour? Oh wow, it's been a long time. It was probably vanilla with chocolate syrup? If you menstruate, has your cycle ever synced with anyone close to you? Yes. Tell me something positive about the town or city that you live in. ... You said "positive," right? Did your parents have high expectations for you to excel in school and go to college/university? Yes. They were pretty serious about going to college when my sisters and I were younger, but they opened up to the concept that maybe it wasn't for all of us (coughmecough). Are you a polite person? I genuinely think I am. I definitely try to be. Have you ever been in a relationship where everything with your partner felt natural and effortless? Sigh. Yeah. Have you ever been in a relationship where everything was difficult and rocky? No. That's not the kind I'd stay in very long at all. I mean yes, there are always bumps, but there comes a point where you gotta say fuck nah and find something better. When you were a teenager, did your parents set rules about dating? Other than keeping age gaps in mind, no. Have you ever committed a crime that directly harmed another person? No. Did you grow up in an urban, suburban, or rural area? My childhood home was suburban, but leaned towards rural. We were on the very edge of the town. Which disease do you personally think is the most horrible? After seeing my mother suffer from borderline stage 4 ovarian cancer, I've gotta say cancer. My mother is the strongest person I know and yet she cried so frequently from chemotherapy. It broke my fucking heart. The person I copied the survey from mentioned especially childhood cancers, and I have to agree. Like just... why. "Everything happens for a reason." Bull. Fucking. Shit. Just TRY and convince me why a young child has to deal with CANCER. Do you remember where you first drove to after getting your license? I still don't have my license, as I've said in many a survey before. What did you get into trouble for the most when you were a kid? Being on the computer too much. What is your biological sex? Female. Do you use online dating? Or do you use another method for finding dates? Nah. I'm at the point in my life where I wanna let love just find me and not actively search for it. What is the oldest gaming console you own? We MIGHT still have our old Atari? If not, it'd be a GameBoy Advance. Which accents can you emulate pretty well? Just British. Do you think you'll ever manage to do everything you want to? No. But then again, I think that sounds pretty realistic? I doubt most people check off everything on their bucket list. What do you fear most? Probably becoming truly homeless, living on the streets. Do you wear shoes around the house? No. Are you a good driver? If you can't drive yet, do you think you'll be good? I mean, I'm not the worst in the world. My mom's always pointed out though that I ride on the brakes (which I do out of fear) and I tend to speed up and slow down quite a bit. I also stop kinda abruptly sometimes. What is/was your favorite thing about school? Seeing friends. What are you most likely to spend money on? My own personal money, tattoos, lol. Have you ever been a complete fangirl/fanboy over anything? @_@ Do you hate how, when the public like a celebrity, they overpublicize them? I feel bad for them, more than anything. You breathe wrong and suddenly it's news-worthy. It's like your every inconsequential action is under heavy surveillance and judgment, and it seems so unfair. Have you ever became attracted to someone you weren’t at first because their personality made you find them physically attractive? That was Jason for me. I never thought he was ugly, but regardless, he became THE most attractive man in the world to me. Have you ever worked in retail? Yes. -_- Are you even a little bit racist? Nah man, it's 2021, baby. Were you more fond of swings, monkey bars, or seesaws as a child? I was all about the swings. Do you believe in a near-future apocalyptic event? I don't know or care, honestly. A gamma ray or whatever they're called could incinerate us all tomorrow. A black hole could swallow the earth in an hour. We don't know. Do you have a chandelier in your home? No. Do you have a bar with stools? No. Is your Christmas tree faux or real? If faux, what color? We use a fake green one. Do you eat the crusts of your bread? Yes; it's the first part I eat. Which body type would you say you had? Did you know whales can survive on land? :^) Have you ever flown a kite? Yeah! I used to LOVE doing that with Dad as a kid when the field across our house wasn't in use (tobacco was grown there). What’s your preferred flavour of jam? I just like grape. What kind of animal did you last pet? My cat! Name a celebrity that you admire that nobody would expect you to: I massively admire Jeffree Star's work ethic. Do you prefer to shave or wax? Shave. I used to wax my eyebrows, but now I just don't care. Would you ever have sex in a public place? Uh, no. Do you think Jenna Marbles’ videos are funny? I've actually never watched her. Your favourite pasta dish: Just your normal spaghetti with meatballs. Strangest thing you’ve ever seen? Probably what I'm assuming was a star (but it was green???) flickering and then fizzling out of the sky kind of like some sort of backwards firework. I'd been watching it literally grow over a few nights, so when this happened, it was a big "?????? the fuck??????". It honestly scared me for some reason so I went inside after that. Aliens? I say aliens. Ever had a crush on somebody of the same sex? Yes. Has anybody ever called you a bastard? I don't think so. Who is the last person you ignored? uhhhhhhh Would you wear feathers in your hair? So actually, for my first prom, I wanted to wear a blue jay feather I had in my hair, reason being Jason's nickname from his parents was always "J Bird." It ended up not working out because we couldn't make it look natural with what we had. When was the last time you were well and truly scared? Hm. Favourite member of your favourite band: Ozzy, obviously, haha. Who’s your favourite female rapper? I don't have one.

[troublecominghq]

character name(s)/alias/etc: jesper fahey / the sharp shooter.

character age and date of birth: 21, april 22nd year 100.

character's pronouns/gender identity/romantic & sexual identity: he/him mostly, but vibes with any tbh. genderfluid. bisexual, biromantic & polyam.

character faceclaim: kit young.

oc or canon + which fandom affiliated with: canon, grishaverse.

currently located: the slat, ketterdam.

moral alignment + people/groups etc they are aligned to: chaotic neutral, jesper is one of the last people to be seen following any rules, but he also doesn’t have evil intentions really. he’s a chaotic entity, sure, but there aren’t any overly bad or overly good motivations to it. jesper is entirely aligned and loyal to the dregs/crows, and though he can be reckless at times with it, he cannot be shaken on that.

tell us about their personality/the kind of character they are/what kind of goals etc they have: charming, witty, a touch full of himself, but jesper has a true heart. he’s not above doing dodgy shit to get what he or the crows want/need, and he certainly dabbles in plenty of vices, but he’s not a horrible, evil person. he doesn’t believe in the oppression of others, unless that ‘other’ is some rich fuck getting off on making the lesser suffer. jesper ‘eat the rich but i also wanna be rich’ fahey. jesper can be incredibly reckless, loudmouthed and overly confident. he’s got a habit for fucking shit up though most of the time it’s not intentional, but in the end, even some of his most chaotic of methods get shit done. there just… might be a bit of a detour first. which, on the note of: jesper has a bad habit for even worse decisions. a gambler, an addict to the rush, jesper has a lot of issues around this and relishes in figuring the odds on most things. the downside is that although jesper definitely isn’t suicidal, he takes a lot of risks with his own life. jesper can be a jittery, anxious person at times and he specifically uses these outlets-- gambling, even fighting to get a fix of an adrenaline rush and soothe it. however, in spite of all of this, jesper has a lot of self esteem issues and doesn’t have a genuine, high value on himself. he has a grandiose and exaggerated personality, but the fact is, so much of it is for show and to cover up his many flaws and the parts of himself he hates. he tends to look to his peers-- the crows especially, those he loves and is dedicated to above all else-- for validation. jesper’s goals are simple, to an extent. they don’t align with big, grand ideas as such and are far more personal. he wants to pay off his debts. he wants to live comfortably, rich and content but he doesn’t want to push down others like him to do it. he knows his issues with gambling will likely prevent it, but he clings on to the small dream and that he could undo the mess he’s made of his life since moving to ketterdam. he wants to see his fellow crows happy, to do what he can to help their plans and gains. he kinda would love to see the old fucks of the city taken down a peg or twenty.

biography: born to a kaelish father and zemeni mother, jesper grew up on a jurda farm in novyi zem, close to the western mountains. tragedy struck jesper’s life early with the death of his mother, a grisha, who died using her powers to protect two young girls from poison. in fear of the same happening to his son, jesper’s father discouraged him from using his own powers, insisting he let them go dormant. jesper obeyed, growing up with a fear for his own powers and an internalised hatred-- not for grisha, but simply for his own powers and self. however, grisha that fail to use their powers tend to suffer ‘sicknesses’. in jesper, this presents itself in a seemingly never ending supply of energy building up inside of him, and is why he often seems anxious and jittery and in need of the outlet he uses for it-- gambling and other reckless, adrenaline inducing vices.

coming to ketterdam for university was supposed to be a turning point in jesper’s life. and to an extent, it was. just not in the way he’d planned. drawn in by the lifestyles on offer, jesper very quickly developed a gambling addiction and as such, he ended up dropping out of university early into his new life in ketterdam. this is where he began to dabble in crime, taking on jobs for multiple different gangs in order to pay off his debts, only to repeat the cycle. this broke at least partially when he met kaz brekker who saved him from a severe beating and took him on as a member of the dregs. in spite of his flaws, jesper is an incredibly talented sharp shooter and an asset to the gang. he’s a quick thinker, and easily adjusts when things don’t go as planned.

jesper was quick to join kaz on the job to find and kidnap the alleged sun summoner and had one hell of a time crossing the fold, delving into more heists and general causing chaos in ravka. tragically though, things didn’t quite go as planned and the crows had to return to ketterdam without a prize but, hey, at least they survived? but that didn’t mean it was an easy return by any means, not when their exit had left so many loose ends in the first place and brought more enemies to the table than planned. but jesper’s faith in kaz never failed, and thankfully, it wasn’t misplaced. some bribery here, a little heartrending beautiful tweaks there and eventually, things were back on track for the crows. jesper knew there was still a threat lurking though, but it didn’t stop him from diving right back into his usual chaotic life. till, that was, a new job came to the table. the biggest one yet and promising a lot more than a million kruge split three ways.

breaking into the fjerdan ice court was a shit show, but one that, in spite of the fuck ups, jesper relished in. the exact kind of thrill he thrived on. of course, until one of their own is kidnapped. but in true crows fashion, they go just as hard, if not harder to get inej back and completely destroy jan van eck. for once, things finally work. maybe not as planned entirely, but they get their win. the dregs come out on top, and jesper feels somewhat settled in knowing that he finally managed to begin to make things right not only with his friends, but with his father too.

but now, he has a whole lot of actual secure looking future to play with and he has to wonder: what beautiful way can he play with that? because he’s far from done with being a chaotic lil fuck.

for those writing canon grishaverse characters particularly from the s&b trilogy, please outline any instances of divergence you wish to include within your portrayal, even if it’s already been mentioned in the biography: when it comes to jesper, i’m chill to keep pretty much everything established in the books while of course, having included the show details too!

[minervahopebeyond]

Blood Daffodils.

Chapter 5: The wedding. (Part 3/3)

The ceremony had been beautiful, a perfect mixture of Fleur's culture with the Weasley's traditions...

 

Draco was enchanted with everything, he always loved weddings... The bride's dress, the groom's dress-robes, decorations, the vows... Magic always seemed to surround the recently married couple, bringing them even more together and making them even more in love than before.

 

Of course, that only happen when you got married because of love, not in arrange marriages like it was costumary in the pureblood families. His parents were an exception to the rule, because his mother once told him that she had liked his father since her first year at school. So since that moment, she asked Draco's grandmother, every summer, if she could arrange a marriage with Lucius Malfoy until it became true. His father was taken with Narcissa as well, so as their Hogwarts years went by, they fell madly in love with each other.

 

Draco always dreamed of marrying Harry Potter. He dreamed about having a summer wedding, just like Bill’s and Fleur's, in a beautiful garden, something small intimate with all the ancient traditions; the dances, everything. Now, to that fantasy, he added dancing to 'Love of my life' in their first dance.

 

Not that it would ever happen, of course.

 

He took a sip of his wine as he watched the happy couple dancing in the middle of the dance floor. Everyone was clapping around them as they danced.

 

He could see Mr. Potter smiling softly as he looked at Sirius who grinning wide and beautifully at Bill and Fleur as he clapped to the beat.

 

 Next to them, Remus was trying to explain to Nymphadora that he was quite happy not dancing at all... They were so cute together, it had been quite a surprise to everyone when, last year, after the battle, Tonks kissed him in front of the entire Order of the Phoenix. During the couple of times that they went to have dinner at the Potter's mansion, Draco had taken the opportunity to remind Remus of that scolding, the prior summer, that the blond boy had received for his joke about dating Charlie because of their age difference.

 

Draco's eyes drifted to look at the dragon-tamer. Charlie was laughing at something that Fred and George just said, glass in hand. His dress-robes were almost as dashing as Bill's given the fact that he was the best man, Mrs. Weasley had been quite insistent about keeping the forms and that included the dress-code; the twins were pretty much annoyed about the entire thing. Charlie must had feel his gaze on him because he looked at Draco. The blond boy looked away as quickly as he could, blush appearing in his cheeks.

 

"I think your brother caught me staring at him, be a good friend and hide me, Weasley."

 

The redhead chuckled and waved at Charlie. The blond boy punched him on the arm, which only made Ron laugh before seeing something that seemed to erase his smile automatically. He followed the direction of his friend's eyes to find the source of his discomfort. It was Granger laughing with her international quidditch star ex-boyfriend.

 

Draco brought his glass to his lips before before emptying its content. Hermione was too busy talking with Krum, and Potter was too busy pretending to be a Weasley cousin and talking with Ginevra; hence Ron and him being the bitter bastards of the party. Cheers.The alcohol was starting to low his inhibitions. He didn't mean to drink as much as he had but because of what happened that same morning, he thought that he deserved a bloody break.

 

He turned to look at his friend again.

 

"You know what would be considerably more fun than moping about our love interests, weasel?" The redhead looked at him with amusement in his expression.

 

"Are you drunk already?" Draco only moved his hand, gesturing that yes, more or less. "What's the plan?" Ron asked before leaving his glass on the nearest table. Draco just grabbed his arm and dragged him towards the dance floor.

 

The songs were more fun by then, not as fun as dancing to Queen or, well, any other muggle band, but it was definitely more entertaining than spending the entire night looking at Potter with longing eyes. The song was customary danced by couples, Weasley also knew the steps, probably because Molly or Arthur had force their children to practice before the wedding. Draco and Ron twirled and jumped to the beat, laughing everytime that the weasel stomped on his feet and the blond boy pinched his arm in return.

 

After a while, Draco noticed that almost everyone were looking at them, probably because they were laughing so bloody laud that they were interrupting the party.

 

"I feel judged, ferret."

 

"Couldn't agree more, weasel. How about a drink?"

 

"Yeah, no. You are not allowed to drink anymore, I don't want you tripping all over the place."

 

"I beg your pardon? I seem to recall that you were one who couldn't walk straight to your common room." Weasley smiled smugly at him.

 

"Well, at least, I walk straight sometimes." Draco barked out a laugh and nudged him playfully.

 

Suddenly, someone was touching Draco's shoulder. When he turned around, he found Charlie's gorgeous eyes looking at him, small smirk on his lips. 

"Nice dancing, very smooth, not clumsy at all." Draco lifted his chin.

"I'll have you known that I'm a spectacular dancer, your brother is the one who moves like a troll." Draco could hear Ron muttering a 'Fuck off'.

"Well, how about you dance with a more qualified partner?" The redhead said as he offered his hand to take him back to the dance floor.

Merlin, how Draco wished to don't give a fuck. To not care about Potter, to not think about Theodore; because maybe, if he didn't care about anything, Charlie would seem like an awesome choice. Tall, handsome, brave and kind... Good dancer too, he noticed, funny as hell, he kept whispering things in Draco's ear, trying to make him laugh. He praised him too, said that he looked dashing and that his make-up looked beautiful.

It was so fucking frustrating, he wanted to be able to look at people, really look at them. Like he looked at Theodore, and still, everytime that Potter fucking talked to him, the brunette would instantly disappear from his mind. Because there was no comparison. Yes, he loved Theodore but he wasn't in love with him and he definitely couldn't even look at Charlie, not more than admiring and enjoying his company.

A bright  light irrupted in the tend, a silver Lynx announcing what Draco feared since last year.

"The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming.”

No. Not now.

Everyone started to apparate away and in a matter of seconds Death Eaters were attacking them. Charlie was fighting, along with the rest of the Weasleys, except for Ron who was running towards Hermione. Draco almost ran behind him...

Yeah, no. The golden trio could take care of themselves, Mr. Potter on the other hand had already died once and Sirius tended to do reckless shit when someone was in danger. He found Potter trying to help Ginevra, shouting like a mad man and he caught him by his shirt to stop him.

"SHE IS GOING TO BE FINE! GO, GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!" Draco shouted in between the caos, As he pushed him towards Hermione who was already holding Weasley's hand. Hesitation flashed through the girl's eyes when she realized that the blond boy wasn't making any attempt of running away with them.

"GO. NOW." He commanded at her and the three of them apparated away. Draco couldn't miss the panic in Potter's face before they disappeared.

Good. Now let's find the other two reckless Gryffindors.

It was madness, people were taken away and he could hear the Death Eaters demanding for the guests to hand in Potter.  He found Sirius and Mr. Potter fighting back to back, quite literally, great method to avoid being curse on the back but still, the killing curse couldn't be blocked... They needed to leave.

He ran towards them, almost knocking them to the floor as he casted a Fumos Charm. The cloud of smoke started to surround them as Draco yelled at them.

“We have to leave! We have to find them!”

And that was enough explanation for James who caught both of their arms and apparated them into the middle of the living room of the mansion.

Silence. Fucking finally.

“Kid, you are bleeding.”

“I’ll get the Dittany.” He heard Sirius say before running towards the bathroom cabinet.

Everything was moving too fast. He felt the potion drip over the wound on his shoulder, closing it, hurting like hell. He let out a pained noise.

“Sorry, little cousin, almost done.” Draco shook his head.

“Not your fault, I drank too much.”

After Sirius was done, he asked him to fetch the map that was hidden under his bed. His cousin looked at him with confused eyes but did as he was told. Mr. Potter was frantically pacing around him, so bloody nervous.

“Hurry the fuck up, Sirius!”

“DON’T YOU YELL AT ME, YOU BRAT!” His voice sounded muffled because of the distance and maybe because he had his head under Draco’s bed to get the map.

When Sirius got downstairs to where they were, he had a frowned on his face.

“It looks like a regular map.”

“Because it is. Give it to me.”

His cousin put the map on his hand and Draco unfolded carefully to lay it, on the floor, in front of him. Then he grabbed his wand and casted a Diffindo on his hand. He heard the two men gasp, surprised, as he closed his hand tightly, letting the blood drip over the map. Once it seemed like a good amount, he asked for more dittany on his hand.

‘This is going to work, if you could bring Mr. Potter back to life, you definitely can do this.’

He closed his eyes, trying to focus on the spell and only the spell, on the urge to find them. ‘Powerful spells need powerful magic sources, my Dragon prince. Hate or love are powerful enough to kill or save someone, always choose love. Always love deeply, Draco.’His mother’s voice was echoing in his head.

Love. Potter. Weasley. Granger.

He needed to find them.

He took another deep breath before pronouncing the enchantment.

“Reperio ones diligamus, datur nobis ad ones, quae sunt sanguine.” The drops of blood seemed to begin shaking as they listened to Draco’s command. “Reperio ones diligamus, datur nobis ad ones, quae sunt sanguine.” They started to move, slowly, leaving a trail of red as they gathered together and moved towards their destiny. “Reperio ones diligamus, datur nobis ad ones, quae sunt sanguine.” The blood settled on a little spot. Draco frowned.

“Oh for fuck’s sake! They can’t be this stupid!”

His cousin was frowning at the map as well.

“That’s Grimmauld.”

They went to fetch them when Draco said that he was feeling good enough to endure another apparition.

Wands out, entering the old house again, risking being found by Severus again.

They heard Potter casting a stupefy as soon as they crossed the door. Mr. Potter casted a protego just as quick as his son.

“It’s us, Potty. Lower your wand.”

But the three of them were holding out their wands still, and neither Sirius or James lowered theirs.

“What was the first thing that you said about hufflepuff when we met, Malfoy?” The green-eyed boy asked, suspicious.

“That I’d leave if I got sorted into Hufflepuff. When did we meet?”

“At Madam Malkin’s, your mother was looking at wands for you and you told me that you were going to drag your father to look at brooms after.”

Finally, Potter lowered his wand and everyone did the same.

“Why didn’t you come with us? You bloody scared me to death.” The boy hissed at him.

“I needed to find Sirius and your father, Weasley was wearing the necklace,I knew I’d find you after.”

Potter frowned, maybe the weasel hadn’t told him about it... Ron walk towards him and pulled him into a hug.

“This is really the best present that I’ve gotten, ever. Thanks for coming to get us, we didn’t know if we were being followed.”

Draco smiled softly and tightened his arms around the redhead.

“You are not getting rid of me that easily, weasel. I’m just glad that you are safe, really... and don’t you ever dare to take the necklace off.”

“I promise I won’t, ferret.”

Potter face was as moody as it could be, probably mad at Draco for separating him from Ginevra in the middle of the fight. Draco pulled away from his friend and turned to look at the rest of the group.

“Now, how about we really start that horcrux hunt?”

[bigskydreaming]

Uh.....if you mash together pre-Reboot and New 52 continuities the way we all just tend to do anyway, you know who would have just as much to say about Bruce resuscitating the Joker after Dick killed him in Last Laugh?

Duke. Who does the math and realizes, wait, the fucking clown was actually DEAD, like, game over, the world rid of the problem that is him and the shit he does....and Bruce...actively cancelled this out, whereas if he’d stopped his OWN kneejerk reactions long enough to realize that reviving the Joker wouldn’t erase what Dick had done or lessen Dick’s awareness that he’d crossed that line, literally all it would accomplish is to have all of that remain true WHILE bringing the Joker back into the world and thus creating more potential victims of his in the future?

Victims like....Duke’s parents.

Aka can someone please drag Bruce Wayne’s butt to therapy because his complete inability to bend or budge on the specific issue of killing has 

1) caused his eldest son no shortage of severely debilitating emotional issues all stemming from his deep-seated fear of losing his father’s love due to situations like with the Joker and with Blockbuster 

2) caused and perpetuated his continued estrangement from his second son, whose actual literal death was so devastating to Bruce he was in real danger of getting himself killed before Tim came along and yet upon his actual return from the grave, still took backseat to Bruce’s fixation on a rule he set FOR HIMSELF long ago, because it was always made fairly clear that Jason could have been persuaded to change his methods in regards to fighting all other crimes if Bruce could find a way to make an exception in regards to the Joker, who has hurt all of their family so often and so severely, and that’s not even getting into the shit with the Penguin in RHATO

3) contributed to his third son’s feelings of estrangement and not being deserving of a place in Bruce’s family, in the aftermath of Tim’s entirely understandable DESIRE to see his father’s murderer dead, without even Tim actually acting on it before earning Bruce’s judgment, and with a likely extension and continuation of this divide being evident in how opposed Tim is to going to Bruce for help whenever Ra’s pops up again to be all “I’m outside ur house in the bushes spying on u thru the window, will u join me in remaking the world in our - sorry that’s a lie, I meant my - image, plz check y/n,” because again quite understandably, Tim fears being caught in the middle of Ra’s and Bruce’s ideological war because he’s afraid of Bruce deciding its because Tim is more open to what Ra’s says than he actually is, and the conflicts that could arise from that

4) almost destroyed any chance of a healthy and loving relationship between he and his youngest son before they even got a chance to start one, due to his own issues with a past Damian had literally no ability to opt out of, even if he had been given alternative viewpoints to the morality of killing, as taught to him by the League - Damian was a ten year old child who could not be expected to have the resources to leave the League and their expectations for him, without help, even if he had previously been able to conceive of a way of life other than the one laid out for him from birth

5) I don’t even know where to start with Cass and the whole shit with Deathstroke and like....I just. Yeah

6) As noted at the start of the post, had Bruce simply not intervened to resuscitate the Joker, like didn’t even need to kill him himself, like if he had simply NOT BROUGHT HIM BACK TO LIFE (like and people wonder why Dick was so convinced Bruce would judge him for not stepping between Blockbuster and a bullet to save that villain’s life when not even a year prior, Bruce had established the precedent that apparently in his mind, if there was even a possibility of resuscitating an already dead villain with a body count like the Joker’s, that was apparently what needed to be done)....but like....no Joker after the Last Laugh, no Jokerized Thomases a few years later....not to mention how that could have altered the chain of events that unfolded with Jason’s return and attempt to get Bruce to kill someone who would now already be dead.

Like....Bruce. Buddy. Pal. This vow you made - again, for YOURSELF - to never kill in any scenario, because YOU were afraid that YOU wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from doing it again, and again and again...it might have been born from a place of good intentions, but the stringent, utterly inflexible way you apply it to your own family, with zero allowance for context, let alone exceptions, is actively hurting them in any number of ways, AND HAS BEEN FOR YEARS.

You need to get some nuance. Nobody’s saying YOU yourself have to go out and start gunning people down, but there have to be room for more opinions on this than just yours...especially when it comes to the choices OTHER people make on this matter, for born of THEIR moral compasses. Your moral compass has allowed you to give yourself a pass on some pretty fucked up things, so you need to just NOT, with the whole treating it as the be all and end all of Right and Wrong.

I mean in my professional opinion, of course.

Also also also, I would just like to point out that another factor that in my mind, makes the Last Laugh story and the fact that Dick DID in fact cross that line once and kill someone, even if they were later revived.....

This is important, and potentially central to SO MANY of the internal conflicts within the Batfamily, most of them between Bruce and various of his children....

BECAUSE IT DISPROVES BRUCE’S FEAR OF THE SLIPPERY SLOPE IN REGARDS TO KILLING BEING LIKE...A UNIVERSAL LIKELIHOOD, RATHER THAN JUST A PERSONAL FEAR BASED ON HIS OWN SELF-AWARENESS.

Bruce’s entire thesis about never killing even once, even with someone like a Joker, is because he believes once you start down that road, you’re never going to stop....with him frequently shown as seeing Jason and his actions as proof of that basic premise....because ultimately, like with the Penguin, its like even when Jason has gone a long time without killing anyone, Bruce is convinced that its only a matter of time before he breaks his promises or finds another ‘exception’ he feels he can justify....because again, Bruce so often fixates on this idea that there IS no stopping. With it being very easy to see how this also extends at times to concerns about Damian and the possibility of him killing again, given his own past.

But when you take Last Laugh into account.....and acknowledge the fact that Dick has killed as a bigger deal than the comics or most fics have ever really allowed it to be....

Suddenly you have to take into account that yes, Dick has killed once...

AND ONLY ONCE.

Years and years and years ago....and never done it since. 

And that’s a potential GAME-CHANGER for so very freaking many of the conflicts that keep their entire family so divided....because so many of them are sprung from this one central source.....which is based on this one specific fear Bruce has for himself and has since applied to all of his children as well....

To such an extent that when one of his children crossed this line for the first time....BRUCE HAD TO UNDO IT.

Even though Bruce said at the time he resuscitated the Joker so that Dick could live with himself, not have to live with having killed a man and what that might do to him.....Dick still had to live with himself, still had to live with having killed a man! It very much informed his character moving forward, was a central part of his fears in situations even tangentially similar, like with Blockbuster. Bringing back the Joker didn’t actually change ANYTHING for Dick, other than....render all that kinda meaningless, because he had to work through the emotional issues of having killed a villain....who didn’t even stay dead, and continued to kill and ruin lives.

Nope, I maintain in actuality, Bruce resuscitated the Joker so that HE could live with what Dick had done, not have to live with one of his sons having broken the vow that was so important to Bruce himself, and what that might do to him, Bruce...and his relationship with Dick, or even just his ability to continue to have a relationship with Dick. He was driven to ‘reverse’ what Dick had done, IMO, so that HE didn’t have to face it, could in time pretend that it hadn’t really happened, it didn’t count, his world order was still intact.

And that’s a level of denial that’s actually pretty damn characteristic for Bruce in a lot of ways.....and IMO, the real source of so much of his conflict with his children.

Because then once Jason came along and already had eight heads in a duffel bag by the time Bruce realized who the Red Hood really was.....it was too late for Bruce to do anything about it, to stop reality from crashing straight through every barrier Bruce tried to throw in the way to keep from having to face the moral quandary of one of his children (that he so often saw himself in) taking the step that he’d so definitively feared ever taking.

Its not that Bruce was able to ‘forgive’ Dick for killing the Joker that one time, and not the times Jason has killed, because Bruce loves Dick more.

Its because Bruce DIDN’T forgive Dick for it. HE DID HIS BEST TO PRETEND IT NEVER EVEN HAPPENED.

And the reason that didn’t happen with Jason....was because it was never even an option. By the time Bruce was confronting his son as JASON.....instead of a mysterious masked vigilante....there was zero possibility of reframing this in his mind or undoing any of it like he tried to do when he resuscitated the Joker.

Bruce’s vow is all well and good for him....but the thing he’s never faced, because he’s afraid to face it, afraid it could permanently destroy his connections with his family....is that he doesn’t get to make that choice for his children. That it doesn’t make them terrible people to feel differently about the importance of not even allowing a man as destructive as the Joker to die, in large part based on their having entirely different life experiences than Bruce himself, that lead them to feel differently on specific matters like this one.

And I think the most effective starting place for that dialogue, that confrontation, realization....is for BRUCE to face what Dick did all those years ago, AND the fact that in Dick’s case, history has NOT repeated itself since.....that Dick truly did kill a man, kill the Joker, in every way that mattered....and HE’S STILL DICK GRAYSON. The person he was didn’t change, not fundamentally, not in the ways that matter so much to Bruce on every other level. Killing the Joker didn’t make Dick a killer, other than in the specific context of that specific situation.

And that to me, is such an important conversation to have within the construct of the Batfamily and their interconnected conflicts, a confrontation that could actually force Bruce to start shifting his perspective in regards to his CHILDREN’S choices, not necessarily his own....and with that ultimately spreading into each of the individual conflicts Bruce has with his various kids, and allowing for some actual PROGRESS to be made on those fronts, instead of it always just being the same old fight, with them all endlessly running in circles.

[the-darklings]

—we’re good at bad ideas, my love;

pairing: loki x reader

4k drabble celebration: [o6/22]: “I can’t wait any longer.”

word count: 2.1k+ (what can I even say?)

warnings: nada

notes: All prompts for this challenge come from “Super Sappy Lines Prompt List” created by @tiptoe39. Sadly, I can’t link the list without Tumblr sniping this post but you can find a link to it on my tumblr.

. . .

You were surprised you managed to sneak up on him.

Either he was losing his touch (doubtful), or he was too preoccupied with whatever he was scheming (more likely).

The blade slid against the elegant curve of his neck and he stilled.

“You shouldn't be here, silver-tongue,” you hummed behind him, and pressed another dragger against his ribs when he made a move to grab his own weapon. “It’s a dangerous place for a princeling like you to venture to.”

Loki had always been fast—annoyingly, brilliantly, fast. He pivoted on his feet, his own dagger pointed at your throat in a blink of an eye before he flattered upon taking in your face. The piercing hostility melted from his features and into soft disbelief and confusion.

“(Name)?”

You heard the ring of relieved disbelief in his voice, and suppressed a smile at the immediate and calculating way his green eyes started tracing over your features.

“I thought you dead,” he spoke after another moment, and his words felt heavy despite their softness.

“Likewise,” you countered coolly, taking in how different he looked from the prince you once knew. “Last I heard you were dead. Clearly, that’s old news. Though I suppose I should have known better than to trust the word of mouth.”

“Indeed you should have,” he noted, and there was a bite to his words that made your jaw clench.

You wanted to ask him a thousand things: how he had ended up in Sakaar, what happened in Asgard, where was Thor, and most importantly, if what the whispers said about him was true.  

If he had truly aligned himself with the one individual whose name no one dared to speak out loud. If he had truly tried to take over Midgard, and served under the Mad Titan himself. The Titan was practically a myth on Sakaar, yet no one dared to speak ill of him—at least not in public. His influence hung over the universe like a dark shroud, and the thought that Loki had…

“Well, it’s truly difficult to keep up-to-date with Asgard news when one is banished,” you pointed out drily, and the subdued iciness of your tone made Loki’s eyes narrow. He looked different; somehow hollowed out and torn down all at once, unmade. There was a new sharpness to his gaze—still cutting, still far too clever for his own good—that pierced you though. “It wasn’t exactly easy or pleasant news to hear—”

“Did you mourn?”

A million things were packed into the quiet question. His face had smoothed out, giving away nothing as always. He was far too good at this game of words. You had an appreciation for his methods but little patience for them. You had slowly learned how to adapt his method for your own survival. That tends to happen when you spend all your spare time around someone like him though. Or you did.

Once you had been inseparable.

But now—even though you hadn’t been this close physically in years—it felt like a bottomless chasm had opened up between you.

“Yes.”

It felt uncomfortable to admit it. Neither of you had ever been much for heartfelt exchanges of sentimentality. The closest he had come to sentiment was the day you were banished. You could still recall the fervent burn in his eyes when he swore that he was going get you back no matter what.

But that was then.

Years and years of waiting and bitter longing stood between you now.

And here you both were. At the edge of the universe, reunited once again.

“What’s the deal with your new outfit?” you finally forced out, realising that he wasn’t going to say anything else. You couldn’t quite read his expression, and it felt safer to fill the silence with something. Loki always loved to talk.

“What’s the deal with your hair? It looks abysmal.”

A strangled—and dare you say it, relieved—laugh slipped past your lips, and his expression softened too, a smug grin tugging his own lips upwards. And just like that, the suffocating tension disappeared, making it easier to breathe.

This. This you had missed terribly. The easy, near antagonistic relationship between you. And the trust and the respect, and…

Perhaps just him too.

“What are you doing here, Loki? Where are the others?” you spoke, sheathing your blades, and noting that he had already put his away. Still quick with his hands too. “How did you end up in this garbage dump?”

Eyes crinkling, he approached you with that familiar swagger in his step, “They’re not here. And maybe I can’t wait any longer for them to show up, and came to take over and rule this planet myself.”

You made a thoughtful noise at the back of your throat, folding your hands over your chest, and gazing at him for a long moment. Loki always liked being clever. Always liked explaining his grand schemes and seeing how quickly you managed to catch on to all the little nuances in his plan. It had been one of his favourite games to play—aside from making Thor’s life a living misery. Once it had been harmless fun, but now…

“Well for one, you should not underestimate the Grandmaster,” you told him mildly, watching his expression sharpen with interest. A new source of information, that's what you effectively just made yourself, and this felt familiar too. How many times had you both done this routine before? Too many times to count. “He’s far smarter and ruthless than you think. Don’t let the frivolous act fool you. And taking over this world? Have you forgotten what happened in Niflheim?”

Loki’s eyes twinkled with mirth, and in that spark of life, you saw the mischievous prince you once knew so well.

“Oh, Niflheim was a delight,” he practically purred, his smile all teeth like the memory woke up something buried deep down; something dear to him.

And you could understand it. It was a simpler time then. Just you and him, with Thor and Warrior Three, sometimes joining in. The Nine Realms had seemed like your playground then. But that was a long, long time ago.

“No. Niflheim was most certainly not a delight,” you pointed out incredulously, your expression twisting in disbelief. “Did you hit your head or something? I was thrown to prison because you were a little shit and decided it was a good idea to—”

“Help me take this place,” he cut you off, grabbing you by the shoulder, and you felt the air in your lungs burn. Loki’s eyes were aflame with that familiar fire, the drive you once believed would get him the throne. You had never expected this though. “You and me, just like the old days. We take this place for ourselves and the rest of the universe can rot for all I care. Just like Niflheim,” he added, softer, and you exhaled sharply.

Niflheim held many memories for you both. But there were some that needed to stay buried.    

You stared at him for a long moment, and you saw the flicker of realisation in his eyes—perhaps even disappointment—as his hand dropped from your shoulder suddenly. “You’re not going to help me,” he pointed out flatly, but much to your surprise it lacked malice.

“Loki…” you began unsurely, before you swallowed heavily, shaking your head and turning away. “Things are not what they once were. We’ve changed. Perhaps not for the better. I can’t just close my eyes and forget everything that has happened to me. I can’t just go back to the way things were between us.”

“And why not?”

Sharper, colder. This was a tone that matched the man all those rumours talked about. A maniac who tried to destroy Jotunheim. Who obeyed the order of the most hated and feared individual in the galaxy.

“Because you abandoned me,” you snapped angrily, turning to face him. A violent throb of rage and bitterness pulsed with every escalated beat of your heart, and you swallowed shakily. “Left me behind when you swore that you were going to get me back. I sacrificed my freedom, my home, so you could walk away unscathed because I cared for you. Because it was you and me against the universe, remember? I—I trusted you and you threw that trust back in my damn face.”

His face went slack at your outburst. You wished you had a moment to gloat at the fact that for once in your life, you managed to render Loki speechless, and not the other way around. But instead, the rage you had harboured for years crumbled to nothing in your chest, leaving a hollow hole in you that made you feel—

Lost, lonely, helplessly adrift.

If nothing else, you had always had your unlikely, improbable—never should have worked in a million years but somehow did—friendship with Loki.

Even when you had nothing else—a real home, fancy titles, or riches of any kind—you had your trickster. And for so very long, it had been enough.

You were each other’s number one choice.  

Loki envied and loved Thor in equal measure, but you had always known in the way you often exchanged secretive looks and unfailingly had each other’s backs, that you were irreplaceable to him.

And you were wrong.

You had been so stupidly, naively wrong, it made you feel ashamed.

“I searched for you,” Loki’s voice was low but serious, “I did not abandon you. I searched for you.”

Something that didn’t even resemble a smile twisted your mouth, “Not hard enough. Not nearly hard enough, and you know it.”

You saw his jaw clench, eyes blazing but before he could spin you another pretty lie, you reached out first. Your fingers brushed against his cheek and you felt him still under your touch. So helplessly caught in the moment, you almost forgot to speak.

“My trickster,” you addressed him quietly, and hated the note of affection that bled into your words. “I am not cruel, and I will not punish you for this. For old times’ sake, I will help you survive this place, gain a foothold too, if I can. But nothing more and nothing less. I want to be free of you after this.”

His cheek was cool when your lips brushed against it, and you felt his strangled exhale at the contact. You savoured the moment too. The last one you would ever allow yourself.

“I’m glad you live, trickster,” you told him honestly and pulled back, giving him a sad smile. “It would be an awfully boring universe without you in it.”

Loki’s lips were parted slightly, his eyes flickering quickly over your features.

“Thief…���

Your heart stuttered in your chest at the old, teasing nickname he had bestowed upon you so long ago. He rarely called you by it, but he always managed to weave some muted, teasing fondness into the word that once upon a time made you grin and shove him playfully.

Truthfully, there was nothing you would not give to go back to that time.

But you had no such power, and never would.

“We should go,” you stressed weakly, looking away from his keen gaze. “This is not the most secure location, and we have work to do.”

He grabbed your wrist before you could step around him, and when you turned to him, his gaze was gutting in its intensity. Loki had always been full of chaos and mischief; it often felt like it was in his very blood, like he was born for it, ready to unleash it upon others and revel in the chaotic mess after.

But you saw how different he now was too. It was true that some things were unchanged. But some things, you imagined, would never be truly recovered. For you or him.

“This conversation is not over,” he said easily, all matter-of-fact and so sure of himself. It almost made your heart ache. Once, you had taken so much comfort from his quiet confidence: in his plans, in himself, in you. “We will speak of this again.”

“Still a demanding princeling bastard, I see,” you replied dully, forcing the teasing tone into your words.

There was a glimmer of something like relief in his eyes, but it was a gone in a blink. “It’s king now, actually.”

“Hmm...no.”

“You would disrespect your king?”

“Sure I would.”

“Witch.”

You swallowed a sob, your grin almost pained, but it was tinged with relief too, “Bastard.”

Maybe some things could never be recovered.

But maybe better things could be built in their place.

. . .

an: I somehow wrote this whole thing in one sitting in a span of few hours, and you all know I love backstories and angst so this was my favourite type of story to write. Ahh, I might write more for it, I found this dynamic highly enjoyable. Thank you for reading! <33

[mikami]

Death Note Audio Drama 10

Disc 10: Karma Police - a summary / partial translation

Prior translations / an explanation as to what the fuck this is.

After I majorly burned myself out on doing these, I am BACK with the rest of this drama in tow. 10 down, 2 to go.

In this: nonsensical but wild shinigami lore, confirmation of ghosts, an actually sad dialogue of grief over Soichiro, and transparently agenda-based bad writing decisions that make me lose my mind with how bad they are.

_____________________

We start with a dramatic audio sequence from Kira’s Kingdom. Topics are the rise of pseudonyms in social media and unjustified Kira killings based on rumors online. There is also... a studio guest!

DEMEGAWA: Here in the studio, I can welcome Teru Mikami. Prosecutor in new Kira cases from all over the world.  I, Hitoshi Demegawa, take your calls, read your mails, listen to your stories. Whole lifestyles are overhauled, behaviours defined anew. How we approach other people is often only dominated by fear. And... love. The love of Lord Kira. This is Kira’s world. We’re just living in it.

(Note by me: what the fuck does this mean??? Literally what the fuck does any of that mean?? How is a case a Kira case?? He’s pro-Kira not anti-Kira?? Hello?? On that note, DEMEGAWA IS ALSO PRO-KIRA??? WHY IS HE SAYING ANY OF THIS???? The fact that the audio drama writers had zero commitment to even trying to make Kira-following believable in story irritates me a lot. They do so much obvious moralizing at the cost of the story. Like yeah, Kira is bad, but a sane listener doesn’t need you to literally punch them in the face with it............................)

______________________

TITLE MUSIC

______________________

Mello meets Ms Sugai, the mafia lawyer from last disc. They’re at the beach, waiting for the drone to arrive. Ms Sugai is very demanding, definitely views herself as the boss here. She takes Rod Ross’ role in this drama.

The drone gets there, Sugai nitpicks Mello’s methods, Mello stays calm, and the drone is retrieved and brought to Sugai’s place.

_____________________

L and Shidoh arrive in Tokyo. Shidoh remarks how it was very different last time he got there (after the war). Shidoh suspects the war is the cause of shinigami having gotten so lazy, since a lot of them didn’t have to kill for ages after this. (Nevermind that this is complete bullshit because shinigami don’t have anything to do with ‘normal’ deaths and thus would not actually have had to work any at a war unless they were directly painstakingly orchestrating it, lmao.)

L wonders if youkai in Japanese folklore. are just half-remembered sightings of Shinigami. Shidoh isn’t sure.

Shidoh also explains that L’s body is going to change. Everyone starts out with the body they died in and then changes. Shidoh speculates it is related to the manner of death or maybe the personality of the person. 

L: Are you trying to say all Shinigami started out as humans?

SHIDOH: Not necessarily. But even a human will change over the course of centuries. I don’t know, L. Maybe your teeth are going to get longer and longer. Or! Horns may come from your skull. Or you’ll just keep growing taller. Death is only the beginning.

The two of them arrive at the Task Force Headquarter. Shidoh goes in, L leaves.

_______________________________

Soichiro is trying to get into the headquarters despite having already had his retirement party. But officially he’s still employed - yet he can’t get in because he’s suspended after stealing the Death Note to free Sayu.

_______________________________

Shidoh approaches Ryuk about his notebook. He demands it back, but Ryuk doesn’t know where it is. 

_______________________________

Matsuda and Light are sorting through Watari’s huge amount of physical files that he kept in a storage room. None of that seemed relevant to them 5 years ago. It’s mostly data about his charity work, including his orphanage for gifted children, Wammy’s House. There is a file on N, but there is no picture, only a drawing. Likewise with M. M has a juvenile criminal record in his file. They deduce M is the one who stole the Death Note.

______________________________

Sugai comes to talk to the mafia guy the police arrested. Since she’s his lawyer. She tells him that he has to sit his time in jail for a few months until she gets him out. She also dictates what to state as his testimony.

______________________________

Shidoh then approaches the dude. The dude is appropriately shocked. Shidoh wants him to say where the Death Note is. 

______________________________

Light sees this freak-out on the camera feeds and assumes a shinigami is in the cell. Light figures out that Ryuk handed over a stolen Death Note. He’s highly amused. 

The mafia guy tells Shidoh where the headquarters are (on the other end of Tokyo) and the investigators who are listening in now also know.

______________________________

Sugai is incredulous that the weapon they got is just a book. She’s immediately wants to test the book. She and Mello discuss the rules and capabilities of it.

______________________________

Light decides not to tell Near about these developments. The Task Force wants to get the notebook back themselves. They scheme how to storm the building, there is a bunch of technical talk about methods here.

______________________________

Sugai and Mello still discuss the rules. Shidoh appears and immediately tells them the 13 day rule is fake. 

______________________________

Misa and Light are at a public swimming pool. Light chose the location so nobody can wear a bug and also to drown out noise with the whirlpool. Misa is excited about the outing. Light tells Misa to get rid of the notebook. She’s supposed to kill the mafia first, then give the book up. 

______________________________

Soichiro is tending to the roses. Sachiko is giving gardening advice, Soichiro doesn’t know shit about gardening. Sachiko is super happy Soichiro is home and wants to make out, wohoo. But Soichiro gets a call from Kira, rip.

Kira is Misa giving him the plan to storm Mello’s HQ, just like in canon.

______________________________

Mello starts wondering why someone would write the fake rules. And he figures that Kira wanted the police to read the fake rules, to give him an alibi.

_____________________________

The Task Force gets Kira’s Death Note. Soichiro has objections against the plan, morally. Everyone else is just like ‘eh’. 

______________________________

Shidoh asks for his book back, Mello and Sugai don’t want to return it. 

______________________________

The raid on the HQ is happening! Light is also in with them, he even has a gun. 

MATSUDA: Is your weapon ready to fire?

LIGHT: Yes, Matsuda. It is. I’m a real detective.

MATSUDA: For less than a week. How many shoot-outs have you been at?

LIGHT: One, this one included.

MATSUDA: Right. You may officially be my boss, but I still have 7 years on you. This is not a game.

LIGHT: You don’t have to tell me that.

People start dying and the raid is starting.

______________________________

Sugai and Mello notice the attack. Shidoh suggests the eye deal so they can defend themselves.

Sugai also suggests Mello pretend to take her hostage, since officially she is not a criminal and can thus count as a civilian hostage. Mello agrees. They try to take the back door to escape.

Shidoh is surprised nobody wants the deal.

Outdoors, Soichiro yells at them to give up. Mello recognizes his voice and knows his name. Sugai suggests he kill him. They realize neither of them has the book on them.

______________________________

Soichiro meanwhile finds the left-behind Death Note, hurray. Mello and Sugai do their hostage plan to get him to give up the notebook. Sugai screams really melodramatically.

Light also enters the scene but a surviving mafia goon has a target on him. Soichiro meanwhile forgot his weapon on some table, rip.

The situation is dire, Ryuk tempts Soichiro into the eye deal in a lengthy sequence of pointing out just how dire the situation is. Specifically the motivator here is that Light’s life is in danger. Soichiro takes the deal for Light.

_______________________________

The stand-off continues. More and more people from each side arrive at the scene and its more complicated. Soichiro reveals that he has Mello’s name (he pronounces it Michael) and threatens people with it.

Ryuk helps (?) by turning off the light for a moment, which causes people to shoot wildly. Soichiro runs to the roof, injured. Mello and Sugai chase him.

______________________________

Sugai decides to escape without the notebook and fucks off. https://twitter.com/MiyataVld/status/1153658045374746624

______________________________

Ryuk comes to Soichiro and says he ‘has’ to write his name. I don’t know how the fuck shinigami lore works in this. Light comes up to the roof and wants Soichiro to give him the notebook. Shidoh steps in, Soichiro gives HIM the notebook, Light is really pissed about it. 

SOICHIRO: We made it, son. We’re finally rid of it.... nobody can misuse it anymore.... And I still have the eyes.

LIGHT: Father...

SOICHIRO: I can see you now son... your name... your death date... do you know what that means?

LIGHT: You can’t go father! The ambulance is on the day. Stay strong. Look into my eyes. Look at me.

SOICHIRO: As I can see... it means... you’re not Kira....

LIGHT: Yes, father, I’m not Kira. But you have to hold on and tell it to the others as well. You can’t die, stay strong! Tell them what you’re seeing! Tell them... Father?! [sobbing noises]

______________________________

Soichiro’s funeral. A Christian sermon again, because who cares these guys are Japanese, I guess.

MATSUDA: Chin up, Light. He’d be proud of you.

LIGHT: Thanks, Matsuda.

AIZAWA: My condolences.

LIGHT: Thank you. Come on, mom. Let’s go home.

SACHIKO: You couldn’t change it either, huh...?

LIGHT: Mom! 

SACHIKO: I had him for two days! I waited 35 years and you only left him to me for two. days.

SAYU: Mom... Don’t say that! Not here!

SACHIKO: He was retired. Why was he even there?

LIGHT: He saved my life.

SAYU: And mine, too.

SACHIKO: Hah.

SAYU: He was a hero.

SACHIKO: I didn’t want a hero. I wanted my husband.

SAYU: Calm down, mom...

SACHIKO: Don’t you dare tell me to calm down. I lost him to the police. I lost my whole life to the police! And now they’ve got you, too.

LIGHT: He was proud of me.

SACHIKO: Of course he was. You’re just like him. It’s as if he was still standing in front of me, ready to doom another woman who will spend her life waiting for him to come home! 

MISA: Sachiko, please...

SACHIKO: Run while you still can, Misa. It’s not worth it! [sobbing] Why did you let him go?! Why didn’t you talk him into staying home?!

__________________________

RYUK: Humans are so funny.

L: You’re a monster.

RYUK: What the hell?? How did you get here?

L: Surprised to see me?

RYUK: Uhh, yeah? You’re... uh... You’re dead.

L: People keep telling me that lately.

RYUK: What’s going on here? Are you.... Wait. Are you buried here? Is this just a common haunting? 

L: Nope.

RYUK: In that case you’re just an echo, you see? It’ll fade soon.

L: Do I sound like an echo?

RYUK: No. You can’t just come back from the dead. That’s impossible.

L: Are you sure?

RYUK: There are rules. 

L: And do you also know the one that says you’re not allowed to steal someone else’s death note? That’s one of those rules, isn’t it?

RYUK: Aaah, that’s how Shidoh found me. 

L: We helped each other out.

RYUK: But he’s back home now. He left you here.

L: Yeah, there’s still a few things I need to do.

RYUK: You know that there is only a single way for you to still be here? There is only one way for this to end.

L: Yes.

RYUK: Wow, L. You really have to carry a major rage inside of you. 

L: I think I merely have a reason.

RYUK: Then just wait, buddy.

L: What?

RYUK: Light has got his teeth in your successor. You know, that miniature version of you.

L: Near. What can Light do to him?

RYUK: He’s close. Light is gonna turn his lights off.

L: But he doesn’t know his real name. He can’t kill him.

RYUK: He doesn’t need that. He just needs to cut him off from reinforcements. Cheers to the chief inspector!

____________________________

A press person tries to do damage control on Trump’s terrible politics. Many Trump jokes here. I am so tired of this drama reminding me Trump exists.

Trump then announces that the US won’t oppose Kira anymore.

___________________________

We’re still at the cemetery. Light is chilling there, as Ryuk urges him to go out. Light asks Ryuk what happens after death and wonders if Soichiro might know the truth now, wherever he is. Ryuk doesn’t answer conclusively. He accuses Light of being scared of his karma and scared of his father’s disapproval.

Light kept a few pages of Shidoh’s notebook. He killed Sugai with it. Light still wonders if his father is watching.

Ryuk says that ‘almost’ nobody ever came back from the dead.

__________________________

Mikami is on a debate program, opposing Paula Virilio. They’re discussing the US’s recent decision. This discussion is BIZARRE and I don’t understand why a single writing decision in it was made. Like, it just makes me so mad. I am solely translating it so everyone else can be mad with me.

TAKADA: Shocking statements from the US president today. But are they really so susprising? That’s what I want to ask general prosecutor Teru Mikami. Mr. Mikami?

MIKAMI: Good evening. No, it really isn’t surprising. I think this recent deed by the US mirrors are global, fast-growing movement that isn’t afraid to call Kira’s actions good.

TAKADA: It probably isn’t true that there aren’t any wars or crimes anymore.

MIKAMI: No. Kira’s actions are rather localized. He pays almost no attention to the third world. And not all crimes happen intentionally or are able to be put to trial without reasonable evidence.

TAKADA: And for you that’s alright?

MIKAMI: I think Kira is listening. I think he is watching us at this very moment. I think he reacts to movements and campaigns in the public. If his punishments reflect the worries of, say, the Japanese middle class, then that’s also a... how should I put this... function of his loudest supporters.

TAKADA: You’re saying that if we were more interested in, for example, Simbabwe, then Kira would do the same?

MIKAMI: That’s my firm belief. 

TAKADA: Also in our studio, is the law consultant Paula Virilio, who has lead both Interpol and the SPK in the past. To you the question... where is the 180° turn of the US president taking the criminal justice system?

VIRILIO: I don’t know if this step was really thought through. Only a short while ago, he signed a paper assigning more money to the according task forces. This step now... it is putting the whole task force into a tight spot. There are definitely going to be conflicts with Interpol. The step back from American engagement will likely have consequences.

TAKADA: Do you mean financially?`

VIRILIO: Interpol still views Kira as the world’s most wanted terrorist. And those who work with Interpol usually do this in the shape of a substantial financial contribution. So yes, I think this step will freeze both the US engagement with Interpol and this form of international cooperation at large, for an indefinite amount of time. With a whole row of unpredictable consequences, by the way. Cooperations across borders, agreements to hand people over, tax agreements... At baseline, he just turned the US into a paradise for organized crime.

MIKAMI: Come on, Paula, that’s ridiculous! 

_________________________

The scene cuts, to the SPK who was watching. They’re understandably displeased. And they argue that Kira must be blackmailing the president to do this. The SPK things they had something on Kira that made Kira fear them.

This makes them think back to the kidnapping stunt in Japan. 

Mello then calls the SPK.

MELLO: My condolences for the end of your job contract. Looks like sticking to the rules was a waste of time.

He then tells Near that he used to have the notebook for a little bit. Near is shocked the task force didn’t tell him any of that. Mello tells Near that he’ll have to work hard to catch up with him now.

Thus he gives Near a tip, telling him a rule is fake.

___________________________

We’re back on Kira’s Kingdom. They talk about Sugai, who’s suicide included a confession (thanks Light), about the family feud at Soichiro’s funeral, and then about protestants circling the SPK building.

___________________________

Near calls Light. He confronts Light on not informing him on the raid. He’s pissed and says they failed because they didn’t use his resources for backup.

He also asks Light what he thinks of fake rules and immediately admits Mello told him this.......................

Near elaborates on the idea that the fake rules were made to create an alibi. Light ‘deduces’ the correct fake rules.

Near suggests testing the book and its rules, the task force refuses this. Near then addresses the task force members and calls suspicion to Light being Kira. 

After the call ends, the anti-SPK protesters arrive at the building and try to storm it. Near and the SPK make a run for it.

_____________________________

Light says that Near is just desperate to present just about anything before his special task force gets dissolved. The task force discuss Near’s theory anyway.

Matsuda says that Near is just trying to split them apart. The other task force members aren’t as anti-Near.

[isobel-thorm]

all of them for john/nic/sharky? (eyes emoji)

1. Who makes the first move and how? Nic. They were a couple of drinks in when they were hanging out, she started talking about her college days where she got up to some adventurous stuff in bed, saw that both her boys were listening very intently so she kissed Sharky and things escalated from there. 

2. Who is the most insecure and what makes them feel better? Tied with Sharky and John. John because he’s afraid of losing two of the things that make him happy in life, Sharky because “holy shit these two are beautiful and there’s no way I actually got this lucky, when am I waking up?” 

3. Who is the most romantic? John or Nic. They tend to plan anything that happens between them, whether it’s G or R rated and try to make it as pleasant and romantic as possible. 

4. Who can’t keep their hands to themselves? All three of them, the buncha sluts. 

5. Who says ‘I love you’ first? Sharky, because he word vomits it because the other two said it to each other all the time and wants to be a part of it- even if he didn’t know how badly he did until he says it. 

6. Who would they ask if they ever had a threesome? N/A because that’s what they are 

7. What do they get up to on a night out? Hanging out and having a few drinks at the Spread Eagle, hanging out at Sharky’s ‘old’ house. 

8. What do they like in bed? Anything and everything, but the boys personally like having Nic between them in whatever positions allow for it. 

9. What is the most embarrassing thing they have done in front of each other? Sharky brought out the fursuit once and Johnnic couldn’t look him in the eye for days, Nic got absolutely shitfaced and was stumbling all over creation and knocking into everything, and while it’s nothing wrong with it as far as Schnic was concerned, John lost an argument over something with Addie, and he’s absolutely baffled that a woman ‘half as smart as him on a good day’ outsmarted him.  

10. What two songs, two books and two luxury items do they take to a desert island?J: “We’ll Meet Again”, “Til There Was You” , the Book of Joseph and... idk some law book, some fancy watch and a fancy jacket for cold nightsN: “Fighter” and “U + Ur Hand”, Austenland and a survival guide, a fancy camper and also a fancy jacket.S: “Disco Inferno” “Stayin’ Alive”, ... honestly he’d probably just bring two porno  mags, and then two expensive things of junk food

11. What do they hide from one another? Nothing. They try to be as much of an open book with each other as possible. That said, when Sharky first got involved with them he was kind of guarded out of fear the other two were just trying to keep things casual but when they told him it was serious/they were keeping it casual because thats what they thought he wanted, everything got cleared up. 

12. What first changes when it starts getting serious? Got far more cuddly and stayed longer in bed after sex, otherwise not much since they were close and loving before it. 

13. When do they realise they should get together? It’s initially a mess. Nic realizes she’s in love with Sharky just about as much as she’s in love with John, confesses to John fully assuming it’ll end their relationship as much as she doesn’t want to end it, but John doesn’t want to lose her so he suggests inviting them into their bed a few times to try and even things out, but they both sort of realize they’re over-attached to him after the first handful of times they all have sex and before long they end up an actual Thing. 

14. When one has a cold, what does the other do? John assumes he’s dying so he’ll be out of commission in bed or the couch and the other two will reluctantly fuss over him. Same goes for Sharky but he tries to tough it out, then makes himself more sick in his effort so the other two have to wrestle him to the nearest surface to rest. Nic gets sick and she tries to power through while taking it easy, but  John and Sharky still absolutely fuss over her and encourage her to take it even easier. 

15. When they watch a film what do they choose and why? Who gets the final vote? Nic and Sharky live for action flicks or romcoms, John’s more of a 40-60s classics kind of guy

16. When the zombie apocalypse comes, how do they cope together? Settle in, hope for the best, lay as low as possible. 

17. When they find a time machine, where do they go? Find a way to bend the rules where they adopt baby John, Joseph and Jacob before the system takes them,  right around when Joseph starts going mad to try to help him out from a distance or up close before things escalate, oorrr somewhere around the Baptism where John goes to talk some sense into himself so the ball gets rolling slightly quicker and things can change before they get too violent. 

18. When they fight, how do they make up? Sex. And then talking it out. Then more sex. 

19. Where do they go on their first date? They don’t really have one until they’re well established, but once they build up Prosperity out of the Ranch’s remains, they set up a nice picnic dinner on the roof and watch the sunset. And then bone down. 

20. Where do they go on holiday? Once they get on better speaking terms with Joseph/are comfortable traveling north, they head out to the mountains for weekends away. 

21. Where do they get nervous about going with one another? Basically the same as the last answer, but this time it’s going north to see Joseph. John and Joseph are working through their issues, John doesn’t want Nic around Joseph, Sharky still doesn’t trust Joseph and is protective of the other two. 

22. Where does their first kiss happen? Same as the first time they had sex. 

23. Where is their favourite place to be together? In the backyard of the Ranch/Prosperity. 

24. Where do they first have sex? Their room in the bunker. 

25. Why do they fight? Little stuff, issues about Joseph, leadership methods when it comes to taking care of the other Survivors

26. Why do they need to have a serious chat? Same as the last question again. Usually if they need to talk about Joseph or the darker parts of their pasts if it ever comes up in conversation. 

27. Why do their friends get annoyed with them? Being The Annoying Cutesy in Love People Who “Rub it in Everybody’s Faces” , also when they get too loud while being amorous. 

28. Why do they get jealous? Not for that many reasons, considering them getting together was sort of born out of jealousy, and they only have eyes for each other and know the other two feel the same way. 

29. Why do they fall a little bit more in love? They just continue their alone time more and more each day / it’s closeness that makes the heart grow fonder in their case. 

30. Why does it work (or not work) between them? They were all friends first, and John and Nic and then Sharky and Nic were already mutually in love, John and Sharky care about Nic enough to work hard to make it work. 

[nochedura]

bane “nochedura” bane timeline of events

so the thing about bane is most of the shit written with him in it is a) racist, b) ooc, c) a horrible mix of both, or d) uses him because of his status as Bat Breaker as a way to show someone else’s strength which is often times not realistic (ex. theres a new villain in town and to show how tough they are they clowned on bane). a lot of interpretations tend to forget he is brawn And brain (tbh i tend to write him as a strategist first and a fighter second) and its all just a mess.

this interpretation of bane is an attempt to right these wrongs and also streamline his canon a bit because we All Know comics are a mess and extremely inconsistent but especially with characters who don’t get their own titles. nochedura is an anti-hero and also currently on the path of redemption. obviously he’s still not nice and has done a lot of Fuck Shit but yknow. who hasnt.

with that in mind this is a very broad timeline of events that have happened to this bane in particular (with the links to the comics accompanying these events) to clarify what the heck is happening with this man and why he’s like this. im taking a lot of liberties here but fuck everybody im god. without further ado.

bane is born in pena duro. he grows up under the prison’s influence, gets a vision that he was born to rule and in order to become his ideal self he must kill his fear (which takes the form of a bat, obviously), spends 10 years in the cavidad obscura* after killing a man at 6 y/o, and comes out the biggest and the strongest. he trains his body and his mind (by reading thousands upon thousands of books) as he pursues self actualization. he learns from his ally bird that the greatest city in the world is gotham and it is ruled by batman and he decides to break out of prison and kill him to take gotham by force. he is selected for venom experimentation and is the only survivor of the drug’s intensity. the venom aids him in his efforts to get to gotham (if you read nothing else on this list read vengeance of bane #1 (+ 2) because its Good and its required bane reading material)

bane relocates to gotham after kidnapping and killing pena duro’s warden and studies batman. he’s able to figure out his secret identity within a few months and unleashes everybody from arkham city with the intent of mentally and physically breaking bruce so that he can kill him. this culminates in the final confrontation in which batman isn’t even strong enough to fight back and bane decides that killing him would be a mercy and breaks his back. (knightfall is long and incomprehensible so i’ll just link the directory page and broken bat #11)

bane rules gotham for a while and its sexy up until batman’s replacement azrael clowns on him. the fight’s pretty sexy but honestly i dont care about this that much. (he who rules the night #11)

after losing to azrael bane does some silent contemplation in black gate prison. he was taken off of venom cold turkey and suffers through crippling withdraws but he, and i quote, “bears the pain.” he realizes venom was, in fact, poisoning him and taking him further away from his Ideal Self. he finds out venom is being further distributed and after some nonsense breaks out of prison Again to track these clowns down. he has a confrontation with bruce who he tells he has no qualms with, decides he wants to find his father, and presumably goes back to santa prisca. this is also the beginning of bane coming to the conclusion that he’s an innocent man which comes up later. (vengeance of bane #2)

so this is where im Really taking liberties. this is what i’m choosing to call the switcheroo arc where i clown around and decide im in charge and im going to make this more comprehensive. bane goes to santa prisca and gets told that there are five men who could be his dad and it probably takes some time to narrow down that list (while also finding out who each of these men are) so i’m declaring that’s what he’s doing for a while. this search is ongoing and doesnt stop until, well, he finds him. he’s still a villain at this point even though he claims to be innocent.

this is also where he’s knocking out some loose ends. specifically he tracks down a reporter who interviewed him as a teen and murders him for knowing something that could paint him as sympathetic. (batman secret files #2)

it’s at this point that he joins up with the secret six. he probably does this for the purpose of networking and garnering information, but then gets sort of swept up in everything and grows extremely attached to scandal savage, who he takes in as an adopted daughter. secret six 2008 is long and has a lot going on but its a good time. (SPOILERS) at the end of it he convinces everyone in the group to go on a suicide mission with an ulterior motive of severing his attachments to them because he feels that his affection has weakened him. everything goes according to plan and he breaks out of a police van and fucks off. (/SPOILERS) (secret six 2008)

after some time away from all that he gets into a feud with ra’s al ghul who wanted bane as his heir but some bullshit happened with talia, i forget, this doesnt matter to me, what Does matter is he’s now on a crusade to fuck up all the lazarus pits for funsies. this is also the point where he realizes one of the men on his Dad List is thomas wayne. he confronts bruce about this and everyone in the batfam is, understandably, cross. but bruce is nothing without his rehabilitation shtick so he goes crime stopping with bane in the batmobile until the results of the drug test come out and thomas is not, in fact, the father. this absolutely crushes bane for reasons he doesnt understand (he’s a lonely man and it turns out he Does need a family) but batman tells bane if he proves he’s Actually innocent by, yknow, stopping crime rather than doing crime, then he’ll help him find his actual dad. he agrees, but uses... unconventional (read: horrific) methods. (gotham knights #33-36) (tw for rape)

bane continues fighting crime and trying to prove his innocence and change/redeem himself up until he actually finds his real dad who is.......... king snake! who at this point in the canon is really fucked up and somehow alive in the himalayas and is just a real mean son of a bitch. bane is conflicted because like, hey cool, a dad, but also, he kinda sucks! bane’s kinda fucked up himself because he’s been climbing up a mountain and he’s a little brain sicky so i think hes just like... trying to absorb everything and then the bat crew shows up because they do Not like the idea of bane finding his dad who is king snake who is also at a fucking lazarus pit. king snake gets pissed when they show up and starts attacking and almost shoots batman but bane, distraught, jumps in front of the bullet and takes several in the back, lamenting that he wishes thomas was his father and not king snake. king snake ends up getting killed(?) and batman dunks bane in the remainder of the lazarus pit and gets brought back to life, reborn and changed. (gotham knights #47-49)

at this point this is just. my own writing. i guess. but after bane, yknow, literally died for bruce, bruce realizes that bane truly has bettered himself and is on the path of becoming a good man. he welcomes bane into the vigilante side and, eventually, to the batfam itself. when a man breaks your back and then takes several machine gun bullets for you a few years later i figure batman’s like... alright we’re square. comics are like that.

this is also where bane realizes he was wrong to cut ties with the secret six and seeks out scandal savage and her wives and brings them back into his life as his adopted daughter (and daughters in law)

so bane’s just... clowning now. he’s still like, brutal, and when he’s fighting baddies he’s not opposed to just Wrecking their shit (see: the time he used one of mr. freeze’s goons’ freeze gun on his arm) and i think he definitely does some murders but only if it’s like. the sort of bastard who really deserves it(tm) so like. mass murderers. the joker. sex criminals. etc. he’s not always in bruce’s best graces and he’s still on THIN ICE with dick and tim and the rest but its a work in progress. he’s trying.

anyway i left out a Lot of shit because like. theres a lot. but this is ... the basics believe it or not tl;dr bane is a good man born into horrific circumstances and he did a LOT of bad shit but he’s working on redeeming himself.

[itsallavengers]

The Problem With Communication

For the REAL MVP’S WHO BOUGHT ME ICECREAM EARLIER, MIMI AND STRIVINGARTIST. YALL ARE THE BEST.

Anyway, have some deaf!Tony and smitten! Steve who fall in a love in a coffee shop, because I’m Basic like that.

It was stupid, to be half in love with a person you’d never even spoken to.

Steve watched as the barista named Tony swing the cardboard cup up in the air, bouncing it off his elbow without even looking and landing it on the counter with ease. Long, beautiful fingers flipped the switches on the coffee machine and set it off working, and then he jerked his head, flipping the thick curls out of his face, letting Steve see the tiniest flash of the most stunning blue eyes he’d ever seen. He set his focus on the coffee underneath his hands, his face intense, like all his attention was devoted to the fairly mundane task, and Steve knew he should probably stop watching right about now, because it was getting weird, but he just couldn’t help himself.

He’d been coming here every day for weeks, since he and his friends had opened up their comic-book store on the other side of the street to the café, and each and every time Steve had never had the courage to just go up and speak to the damn guy.

It might have been easier if the man actually served people, but it always tended to be someone else who took his order, and just Tony who made the drinks and then dipped back into the kitchen before Steve could speak a word. Sometimes though, he got a shy little smile from across the room when Tony was wiping down the tables or clearing up behind the counter and caught Steve watching him. Steve always quickly averted his gaze and tried to hide his blush at being caught out, and sometimes he would even hear the smallest and most lovely chuckles. They made Steve’s entire morning whenever he managed to coax one out of him.

They were currently communicating through half-hidden smiles, stolen glances, and occasionally Tony would draw smiley faces or leave little messages on the cup before the server handed it over to Steve from across the counter. Steve retaliated by leaving doodles of Tony at work on scraps of paper, and then dropping them hurriedly on the counter before hurrying away.

It was a bit stupid. Steve just needed to grow some courage and actually talk to him. But…

God, he was just so pretty. Steve knew that he would fumble it, and then he’d ruin everything and Tony would think he was super weird or something. He was… well, he was working up to it, okay, slowly. Thinking over what he could say. Working on his pickup lines.

 “This is pretty pathetic, dude,” Bucky told him as he sat across from Steve on the soft couches in the open-plan café. “Does your idea of flirting just involve staring at him like a creep until he calls homeland security or something?”

Steve blinked, and pulled his eyes away from Tony’s back as he reached up for some syrup on the top shelf. He then shoved Bucky sulkily. “It’s not pathetic,” he said, pouting a little. “It’s romantic.”

That made Bucky chuckle. “Oh, Steve, one day I’ll teach you how to flirt. Until then, though, I’ll just leave you with a simple task: fucking say hi to the guy.”

“It’s not that simple, Buck-“

“Why the hell not?”

“Because!” Steve flapped his hands, flustered, and then quickly tamed them into something more normal when Tony caught the action and looked over. Steve just smiled at him, and then felt his heart do a few flips ion his chest when Tony looked down for a second and then smiled back, before slipping into the kitchen again. Steve watched him go, and then whipped his head back to Bucky and pointed over at the space Tony had just occupied. “Have you seen him? He’s… he’s gorgeous! He almost certainly has a girlfriend, because he is hot and cute and straight, undoubtedly-“

“Oh, right,” Bucky scoffed, “because all these overdrawn staring matches and ridiculous smiles are just casual, definitely.” He leaned forward, grabbing his cup and taking a hearty swig of espresso. “Look, Steve, he’s into you. Even I can see that- although God knows why, after the flirting tactics you’ve been employing. But whatever works for you guys, I guess. Anyway- I’m going to leave you now, and when you get back on shift, I am expecting you to tell me that you at least said hi. At the very least.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I’m coming in here and telling him myself,” Bucky declared promptly, before standing up. “Good luck, buddy.”

Steve’s eyes widened in horror. “No, nuh uh, don’t you dare-“

“Now or never, Stevie!” Bucky jogged backward and grinned, waving a hand toward the counter where Tony had just reappeared. It was early on a Tuesday morning, so there was no-one else in the café at all aside from Steve, Bucky and Tony. The other ginger woman who usually manned the counter was nowhere to be seen, this time.

Steve flipped him the bird, but Bucky just cackled and then let the door shut with a small tinker of the bell. Tony was looking at the place Bucky had just left, blinking a few times in confusion, before he once more turned to Steve and then smiled once again.

Now or never. Now or never. Come on, Steve, just man up and say hi. Hi was easy. It didn’t mean anything. It was just a hi, for God’s sake.

He stood up and rubbed his palms on his jeans, before stumbling forward. Okay, this was going to be fine. He was just saying hello to his ridiculously attractive barista who he’d been staring at for pretty much one month straight.

Wandering up to the counter as casually as he could, he pressed his hands into the cool marble and leaned forward, clearing his throat. Tony, who was cleaning the espresso machine, didn’t seem to notice, and Steve resisted the urge to just turn tail and run. He’d got this far. He could do the rest, right?

“Hi,” he blurted, before his anxiety could start screaming in his ears. “Hi, I’m… I’m Steve.”

Tony didn’t even turn around.

Steve stopped, caught like a rabbit in the headlights. Tony hadn’t even acknowledged him at all. Oh, shit, now what was Steve supposed to do? Act like he’d never said anything? Never come to the café again? Apologize? See, this was why he should have just kept his mouth shut, how the hell was anyone supposed to talk to strangers, there should be a fucking rule book for this shit-

Tony turned, then, reaching for the cloth, and he saw Steve staring at him like a lost puppy. He stopped in his tracks.

“Sorry,” Steve blurted hurriedly, looking down and backing up, “sorry, I don’t… I didn’t… God, this is so weird, did I freak you out? Sorry-“

He paused his rambling when Tony gave him a blank look, and then held up his two hands. Steve just kept looking at him, entirely unsure of where to say.

But then Tony did a funny gesture with his finger. Moved it from his ear down to his mouth, and then licked his lips nervously. Steve stopped for a second, completely blanking. He had no idea what Tony was doing, and was far too frightened to even ask.

Tony did it again, and then shrugged. He looked slightly sad now, and his eyes fell away from Steve’s as he shook his head.

It clicked, somewhere in the back of Steve’s currently frozen-in-fear brain.

“You’re deaf?” He blurted, before shaking his head. Oh God. Idiot. He was asking a deaf person a verbal question.

Tony must have been able to lipread or something though, because he just nodded a little sadly. He shrugged, and then made an aborted movement with his hands like he was going to say something, before he realized that Steve wouldn’t understand it. He shuffled uncomfortably on his heels and looked down.

Oh. Tony was embarrassed.

Steve felt himself frown, his anxiety suddenly forgotten as he decided on a method to get around this problem. A second later, however, a beautifully lucky realization threw itself into his mind, and he jumped on his feet, making Tony look at him in surprise.

Steve grinned, and then held up a hand, beginning to step backward. “Wait here,” he said, hoping Tony could lip read well enough to understand what Steve was saying. To solidify the request, he pointed to Tony, and then to the ground, before suddenly turning on his heel and sprinting out of the door without another word, heading in the direction his little comic-book store where the rest of his friends were working.

He had a plan. 

    _____

 _____

   Tony watched as Steve turned and hightailed it out of the café, and all he could do was sigh.

He hadn’t expected anything less. It’s what everyone did, when they realised that he was, y’know, deaf as fuck. Tony couldn’t even blame them. How was 90% of the world supposed to have anything to do with him, when he couldn’t even hold a conversation?

Steve had been nice, though. And hot. Tony had stupidly found himself wondering, just a little, whether Steve would be able to speak ASL- or just any sign language at all. Tony knew British, Spanish, French and Chinese sign language- any one of them would have been a Godsend, even if Steve had only known the basics.

Tony had still been too scared to actually do anything other than smile at him from across the room, though. Because he knew it was stupid to wish for things like this. Normal people didn’t know any sign at all. Normal people just tended to stare at him blankly when he shrugged and told them he was deaf, and then make some hasty excuse to leave so they wouldn’t have to attempt the awkward task of communication.

Tony looked down, and bit his lip. It was fine. He didn’t have time for more people than Rhodey and Pep, anyway. He was busy inventing, and writing up his thesis for MIT. Other important things. More important than friends, for sure.

Slapping the cloth a little more violently than usual onto the counter, Tony wiped down the surface and tried not to think about Steve, and how he probably wasn’t actually going to come into the café and smile at him again. Which was fine. Maybe Steve would see him in five years, when Tony was on TV, famous for his designs, and able to hear everything perfectly thanks to the invention he was currently working on.

Hah. That’d show him. And Howard, who’d kicked him out four years ago at fifteen after getting too bored of trying to fix Tony and decided him a lost cause. And all the teachers who’d looked down on him and thought he was stupid. And everyone-

There was a sudden movement ahead of him, and he looked up curiously.

Well. Okay. He really… hadn’t expected to see Steve back so soon. And this time, he was dragging a friend along with him. With ashy, spiky blond hair, he was short and stocky, and looked rather confused to be here. Tony was feeling the same way.

Steve looked over to him and smiled brightly, and Tony just blinked. Steve, apparently unperturbed, turned to his friend, and spoke rapidly, too fast for Tony to be able to catch and lipread. He stood there rather awkwardly, until the blonde man turned to Tony in surprise, and then grinned.

Then he lifted his hands and signed ‘hi, I’m Clint.’

Tony took an instinctive step backward in shock. Steve was just smiling happily.

It took a moment for him to be able to respond. Too busy staring at Steve incredulously. ‘Hi,’, he signed back, ‘I’m Tony. And I’m... very confused’

That made Clint laugh, and he turned to Steve and repeated Tony’s words, keeping his mouth facing Tony as he did it. Tony read easily this time, because Clint’s mouth moved slowly, expertly. Steve nodded, and then smiled brightly at Tony. It was like the sun, Tony thought a little dazedly.

Steve said something else to Clint, who nodded with a small roll of his eyes. He turned back to Tony, and then lifted his hands once more. ‘Steve’s asked me to tell you that he thinks you’re really pretty, and he’s been wanting to talk to you for ages, but he never knew how to start it because he’s an awkward bitch.’

Tony grinned, and cocked his head. ‘How hard were you paraphrasing there?’ he asked, because he’d been watching Steve’s mouth, and was pretty sure that it hadn’t been saying things like that.

Clint shrugged. ‘Oh, none of that actually came out of his mouth. He told me to tell you something about dumb cup flips and the smiley faces you drew which he liked, because he is way too socially awkward to  actually let you know about his massive crush. But he is totally smitten. He talks about you all the time at work.’

Tony raised his eyebrows, feeling his heart speed up a few notches. He looked to Steve, who was grinning a little bashfully, and rocking back and forth on his heels. It was adorable, and it was… it was touching. That Steve had thought to do this for him, to go to that much effort.

Most people just gave up.

He kept eye contact with Steve as he signed ‘can you tell him that I think he’s cute?’ over at Clint.

Clint did, and then Tony watched as Steve blushed firetruck red and then bit his lip as he held his smile down, looking to his shoes. Tony didn’t hear his own laugh, but he felt the vibrations in his throat.

Steve paused for a moment, before stepping forward. He didn’t break eye contact with Tony as he snagged a pen from his pocket and then held out his hand. Tony may have been deaf, but he knew a cue when he saw one, and he dutifully held out his own hand in response, aware of how fast his heart was going underneath his skin.

Steve really wanted… to keep this up? Even when he knew that Tony was-

Steve’s mouth started to move, and Clint translated with the appropriate signals, diverting Tony’s attention. ‘Steve says that you should text him sometime. He would love to get to know you, but he’s going to need a month before taking you out to dinner, if that would be okay?’

Tony felt the pen scrape against his wrist, and felt the warmth of Steve’s fingers. He swallowed, and then nodded dumbly. ‘Sure’, he responded, which Clint then told Steve, who positively radiated happiness when he looked to Tony again.

When he dropped Tony’s hand, he immediately missed the heat. Tony remained rooted to the spot, somewhat unable to process the information his brain was receiving.

Steve wanted to go on a date with him. Steve wanted his number so they could text.

No one had ever asked him on a date before.

He smiled nervously, and then signed ‘I’ll text you tonight then, hot stuff,’ which made Clint grin when he processed it, and Steve blush even redder when it got translated for him. Tony felt himself laugh again, and he stepped back, unable to quite wipe the smile from his face, even as Steve backed off and left the café, waving as he went.

As soon as he was gone, Tony pulled out his phone and then typed in the number, the light feeling in his heart making his fingers shake the tiniest amount. He was scared, and he had no idea how to do any of this, and would almost certainly ruin it in less than a week, because that was just the way he worked, but-

Well. Steve liked him. That was… more than anything Tony had ever had before. It sent a weird feeling into the pit of his stomach; fear and panic and a weird kind of hysterical happiness, that centred itself right above his heart.

 Maybe, just maybe, this could work.

     _____

 _____

   Steve swallowed nervously, hands going through his hair for the seventh time that minute as he looked to the entrance of the restaurant and waited for Tony to walk through the doors.

Over the past month, they’d pretty much been texting non-stop. Steve found that not only was Tony amazingly attractive, but he was funny too. And kind. And interesting. And smart, god, Tony was pretty much the perfect guy, wrapped up in a beautiful package. It was a wonder that no one had picked him up already.

Steve couldn’t exactly say he minded about everyone else’s idiocy, however. It just meant that Tony was there, for him.

And, of course, speak of the devil-

Steve’s breath caught in his throat as he caught sight of Tony as he slipped through the doors. Dressed in a midnight blue suit, curls styled out of his face, aside from one ringlet which had fallen free and draped itself over one of Tony’s piercing blue eyes. His gaze shifted across the room rapidly, and Steve waved, standing up so suddenly that he almost knocked the bottle of water over in his clumsiness.

Tony smiled at him- the same shy little thing that they’d been sharing at the café for nearly two months now- and Steve just melted.

He wandered forward, a little nervously. He seemed to be searching for someone else- Clint, no doubt- but when he came up blank, his face twitched into the smallest frown of confusion, and he looked back to Steve.

Taking a deep breath, Steve lifted his hands and signed ‘you look beautiful’.

For the past month, he’d been taking lessons whenever he could. He had Clint testing him every night, and his quick learning meant that he’d managed to grasp the basics of it all fairly rapidly. He could finger spell with ease, and for the words that he didn’t know or couldn’t understand, he’d brought a pen and paper handy with him too.

Tony froze, eyes going wide. Then he laughed. Loud and untamed due to the fact that Tony could not hear himself, Steve thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world. He lifted his own hands and signed slowly, ‘you learned for me?’

Steve nodded. ‘I’m still bad. You have to sign slowly. But I have pen and paper in case I don’t…’ he paused, trying to think of the word, before clicking his fingers and finishing with the ASL for ‘follow’.

Tony was looking at him with a face so full of softness and… and emotion. He licked his lips and looked away, and when he looked back, Steve noticed that his eyes were a little damp. Immediately, Steve’s face fell, and he rushed forward, going to reach out for Tony’s hands, before pulling back and signing ‘sorry, sorry, I just wanted to make it easy for you’

Tony shook his head though, and he smiled, even when the first tear fell from his cheek. He cupped Steve’s cheek with soft and lovely fingers, just for a moment, before pulling away and signing ‘No one has ever gone to that much effort to understand me before.’

Steve stopped, and then he clenched his jaw, gathering all of his confidence and then taking Tony’s hands into his own. Pressing the most feather-light kiss to his knuckles, Steve smiled, and then dropped them. ‘Well, no one else knew what they were missing out on.’

Tony huffed, and quickly wiped his face, before looking back to Steve. Taking in a small huff of air, he suddenly leaned up onto his tiptoes and then placed his hands lightly to Steve’s chest, kissing him ever so softly on the mouth. It was nervous and quick, and when Tony pulled away he was looking down at his feet, blushing bright red.

God, Steve was so lucky.

“I have a feeling this is going to go really, really well,” Steve said out loud whilst Tony was still looking down at his shoes, feeling as if the grin on his face was bright enough to light up the entire room.

AO3 /// Donate to my ko-fi ! !

[thatsadorbsyo]

Heads up: This post is me journaling some thoughts, not an attempt to start a Discourse-style conversation. I’m beyond disinterested in discoursing with roleplay tumblr about the nuanced subject of performing masculinity.

I saw the start of a conversation today about gay male characters “piloted by fujoshi girls who just want to fulfill a boylove fetish” and my soul sorta exited my body for a moment, but it also brought up some Stuff that’s been simmering under the surface for me ever since I made the return to playing male characters.

I put a lot of hard work into authenticity when it comes to writing my characters, whoever they happen to be, and it doesn’t always come easy for me. Masculinity is a particularly finnicky subject for me, when it comes to how I like to portray it, how I like to see it portrayed, and what makes me want to roleplay with a male character. Part of that is because, like a lot of people, I’ve been severely harmed by the real world consequences of how my culture frames masculinity. Part of that is because, as a nonbinary person, I struggle to reconcile the parts of me that I want to connect with masculinity, the ways I want to connect with it, and the harmful things about it that I’ve picked up through cultural osmosis.

Authenticity can mean a lot of things, and picking out what that means to me in a roleplaying context can be extremely ill-defined and arbitrary. I know a male character that “feels” authentic to me when I see one. Sometimes they’re written by people who aren’t men. Sometimes male characters written by men feel extremely inauthentic too, but that’s usually because they’re relying too heavily on tropes and aesthetic to drive their roleplay and less on making a character with real and dynamic motivations and behavior, but whatever, whatever.

I will say that a lot of people miss the mark for me, going both ways (women who write male characters, and men who write female characters), but so fucking what? Not everybody has to meet my arbitrary standards of what makes a believable character. Not everybody has to play by my rules of fun.

While it’s true that there’s a lot to be said about how gay men are fetishized by straight women and how gay women are fetishized by straight men, I find it hard to care too much when I see it happening in RP, because I’ve lived long enough and I’ve been roleplaying long enough to realize that a pretty large percentage of the people playing across gender are Figuring Out Some Gender Shit, whether they realize it yet or not. And while, yeah, there’s still gonna be a chunk of people who just wanna objectify something and get off to it, I wanna leave space for people to figure themselves out, whether I think they’re doing it well or not.

We can talk until we’re blue in the face about IC/OOC separation, but there’s a lot of me in all of my characters. Even if that separation veneer is necessary for me to enjoy the experience of RP, most of my characters still wear massive shards of me in them, my personality quirks, my fears, my desires, things that I struggle with, things that I want to be (or things that I specifically don’t want to be). I think that’s true for most of us. So how I construct masculinity in my characters is often pretty deeply tied to my own fucking hangups. 

(This next part gets personal. If you’d rather not know the ways that my characters reflect me, the real puppeteer, skip it.)

It’s personally important to me to reflect a lot of real-world authenticity of how masculinity is constructed in my characters, but what it means to be “authentically” masculine, specifically queer masculine, is heavily informed by so many variables like social and political culture, geographic region, religion, sexuality, race, socioeconomic status, etc. etc. that it can feel impossible to know where to start. I have my own experiences with it. I draw on the experiences of queer guys that I’ve known, I draw on media created by queer male creators (movies, musicians, writers, poets). I try to draw less from stuff like TV shows because those tend to be written by an ensemble that may or may not contain anyone who knows what they’re doing and are almost definitely pandering to a lower common denominator than, say, a musician who is branding themselves and their personal experiences. I draw on what feels right in my heart, a pastiche of all of the above.

Most of the things I draw on are things that have specifically spoken to me, as a nonbinary person, as types of masculinity that I want to embody, or that I feel like I can relate to personally. Things I struggle with myself.

Makoto has a very specific idea of what a guy is supposed to be--an idea that is informed by his profession, his place in the world, the people who help shaped him as a person while growing up--and it’s sometimes at odds with how his gut wants to react to things. Makoto is comfortable with his sexuality as someone who is attracted to both men and women, but not always comfortable with how he wants to express it, or what his specific sexual desires are, because they go against some of the ways he thinks he’s supposed to act and carry himself. When he meets someone who doesn’t adhere to his idea of what a guy is supposed to be like, or when he feels a desire for something he thinks he isn’t supposed to want, that rocks him, and it’s evident. He’s working through some shit. A lot of it is conveniently shit that I, the player, need to work through myself.

The performance aspect of machismo is very front and center when I play him, because that’s what feels authentic to me. If machismo is a performance, what’s underneath? I think that’s the crux of why I find Makoto interesting to play. Makoto is a colossal fuckup who coasts on the performance he’s been taught, and what happens in private RP when that performance cracks has been the most compelling stuff about him that I’ve written.

As a person who often struggles with wanting to be seen as more masculine than they often are, these are things I think about a lot! The performance, how you come off to others as a signalling method vs what you actually feel and want. I work to carry myself differently in public, to make people question what they think they know about me. Does this actually make me a different person? Does it really matter? Fuck, dude, I don’t know! I don’t know!! Is it authentic? What’s that even mean? I’m sure there are a lot of more well-informed people who have talked about all of this shit ad nauseum but it would probably be inaccessible to me anyway, and this is my fucking blog so whatever.

Above everything else, I look for nuance. If I see a portrayal that has nuance, I’m likely to be drawn to that character and maybe also their player. It doesn’t matter what you’re playing, it doesn’t matter who you are in the ~real world~, if I think your character has shades of grey to how they perform their gender and what their gender means to them (consciously or not, not every character actually thinks about that stuff, but it can still come off in the portrayal), how it has shaped the way they navigate the world, if I can clearly see the thought that went into that, I don’t fucking care who you are or what you get off to.

Sorry about the word dump. I just needed to sort my thoughts on some of this stuff, and journaling is the most effective way for me to do that. I, uh, would prefer not to see reblogs of this? (See above re: not a Discourse) but if you want to talk to me about anything I’ve said, I’m open to it.

[qm-vox]

So You Want To Run An Autumn Court

(Check out So You Want To Run A Winter Court if you missed it.)

Winter may be the most misunderstood Court, but Autumn may have the strongest claim to being the odd man out. In a society built on recovering from horror and trauma, the Autumn Court (the Ashen Court, the Leaden Mirror, the Court of Fear) seems purpose-built to churn out monsters, murderers, and slasher villains. If that was all this is, if Autumn was only part of the system because pacts and Pledges made it so, the Court would have been killed to the last man hundreds of years ago. So why do the other three Seasons tolerate Autumn? What purpose does it serve in the Freehold, and what does its defining passion - Fear - offer to the other Courts?

The following article offers advice on designing and running your own Autumn Court and Autumn Courtiers, either as a player or storyteller. It draws primarily from Changeling: the Lost, Lords of Summer, Rites of Spring, Dancers in the Dusk, and Swords at Dawn; further books, if referenced, will be cited.

God Damn It White Wolf, Not Again

Make no mistake: this article is meant to be rooted in the canon of Changeling: the Lost and help present and expand on the Autumn presented in that canon. Unfortunately, more than any of the other three Seasonal Courts, Autumn is both inconsistently characterized, and constantly mischaracterized. For every two great ideas presented about it there’s some shit that’s definitely a flashback to when oWoD was still being designed and the entire staff of White Wolf was doing hard acid. Where necessary, I will be bringing up those parts, explaining why I have chosen to refute them, and offering alternatives rooted in the canon and/or how actual human people behave. Consider yourselves advised.

Witch-Queens - An Overview

The third of the Seasonal Courts and the first of the Declining Seasons, Autumn is associated with Fear in all of its forms: fright, terror, panic, dread, anticipation, doubt, horror, and suspense, among others. Autumn cultivates fear in themselves and others; to have an Autumn Mantle is not just to be an object of fear (though yes, it very much is that), but to know your own fears, to understand them, even to nurture them. Just like the other Seasonal Courts, Autumn rules its Freeholds for one-fourth of the year, generally from the equinox to the solstice, though local custom may vary.

Magic is Autumn’s claim to fame and specialty as a Court, but their MO goes beyond it; in part this is because Autumn is a big believer in efficiency, cunning, secrecy, and prudence, but this is also in part because Autumn is keenly aware of how much they just do not know. “Magic” is an incredibly diverse field, especially when one considers that Autumn takes it upon itself to investigate rumors or knowledge of non-Wyrd magic. Much like medicine, occult knowledge is a field in which you could be a lifelong expert, outstanding in your field, whose knowledge is consulted by Lost the world over, and still both not know shit and be aware that you don’t know shit. Thus one of the first questions Autumn tends to ask when solving problems is, “is there a non-magical solution to this problem?” Often the magical solution ends up being safer and more efficient, but the question is still worth asking, if only to arrive at that answer with confidence.

Talk Shit, Get Hit - Politics in Autumn

Brace yourself, this section is long as fuck.

While Autumn has traces of cooperation between Freeholds (notably, Autumn publishes magazines shared between Autumn Courts, and sometimes funds lectures by members of other Autumn Courts courageous enough to travel to strange lands), it is ultimately a local creature, with much more in common with how Spring governs itself than Summer or Winter. Where Winter’s understanding of internal rank and politics is informed by the knowledge that Pledges get broken and thus are insufficient to enforce trust, Autumn’s various forms of governance are informed by a certain cynical acceptance that violence and authority are related.

There is an unspoken understanding in Autumn that crossing certain lines will get violence enacted upon you. The vast majority of Freeholds - even failing Freeholds - do prohibit members just killing one another without at least prior approval from the current Crown, but as a genie in a Disney sequel once said: you’d be surprised what you can live through. Despite this, the act of violence is much more rare in Autumn politics than the threat of it. Occasionally hot-headed Autumn youngbloods figure their elders can’t be as scary as all that and end up learning a cruel lesson, or a bid to remove a rival or a hated enemy goes badly (or, depending on the Courtier, very well), but more often Autumn’s political maneuvers are undergone with a certain understanding that everyone involved is a killer, will be a killer again in the future, and is quite capable of making even your victory over them cost a pound of flesh.

How Autumn selects the bearer of its Crown varies from Freehold to Freehold, and how that bearer organizes their Court will likewise vary, but some trends and consistent titles do appear in addition to the local ones. You can broadly classify the Autumn Crown as follows:

Rule by Fear - It’s an obvious leap, really. Autumn is the Court of Fear, so from a certain perspective the scariest person there is Winning At Autumn. The Court’s casual attitude about violence definitely helps foster this style of rule, as does the fact that life under a master of Fear is likely to keep the Court flush with fearful Glamour that can be invested in further power. Now at this point you may be asking, quite reasonably, what the Court does about the usual attendant issues of attempting to rule through violence and fear, and the answer is: absolutely fucking nothing. An Autumn monarch that seeks to rule by fear needs to balance their ruling style with a certain amount of consent from the people they are ruling, because everyone they’re reigning over is playing the same game they are. Callous brutes who try to run roughshod over a Court of killers and witches find themselves nailed to a door and left to die alone.

Witch-Queens  - The other obvious candidate for the Autumn Crown is a talented sorcerer of some kind. This approach tends to be somewhat more nuanced than rule by fear; a powerful witch granted the Autumn Crown has also likely been selected for a reputation for wisdom, cunning, and leadership acumen, even if another person might be acknowledged as a more powerful witch. It’s easy to think of such Courts as more stable, considering the track record of autocrats that rule through terror, but that’s not necessarily the case. As much as Plato and people who still think it’s okay to wear fedoras in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Eighteen would like to think otherwise, ‘intellectual’ and ‘good ruler’ are not synonyms; such figures can be and often are vulnerable to manipulation by more savvy Courtiers, and sometimes to straight-up being murdered by those who would prefer to rule through fear. A wise or at least self-aware Autumn Court takes steps to protect a good witch-queen from those events, and to quietly replace a bad one, but unfortunately ‘self-aware’ and ‘powerful’ are also not synonyms when it comes to Autumn.

An Actual Politician

(Zoe “Zippo” Morris, the Queen of Bonfires. Credit to @lidijadraws)

Finding someone who runs their local Autumn Court because they’re a legitimately competent politician with a functional understanding of human and/or post-human society is like finding an albino raven: it’s rare in the first place, they probably die before they reach adulthood, and if they didn’t it’s because someone else helped to shelter and nurture them. Despite the prevalence of Lost in Autumn quite willing to kill these fledglings in their nests and the seeming non-obviousness of them taking power, wise Autumn rulers of the other two types - generally those who have lived long enough to come to some kind of terms with their own abuse and trauma - will put in the work to raise these politicians so that they can be succeeded by someone who will keep the Court stable and prosperous in the long term. Managing Autumn through a mix of careful alliances, threats, and support from the other three Courts helps such rulers get away with not having the personal power to fight off all comers, and more importantly ties Autumn into the rest of its local society so that it gets a reality check more than “sometimes, when people can screw up the courage to actually show up”. In that way it’s better for the ruler too; without the might to trample over those who disagree with her, she must instead keep the members of her own and other Courts in mind, and be aware of her own bullshit lest she leap up on it and get herself killed.

Lords of Summer details a method of ruling Autumn that it labels as the Palace of Dust, in which Autumn is a wholly secret society hidden even from the rest of the Freehold, who acts to cause Fear and protect its fellows in secret. This is naked fucking stupidity. Even if Autumn could do such a thing without shredding its Clarity all to hell (which it can’t) or get a crack at recruiting new members without the other three Courts mistaking them for privateers or loyalists (which, again, it can’t), Autumn still has to run the god damn Freehold for 1/4th of the year, which among other things means having a person with a big obvious crown on her head, to say nothing of all of her Courtiers and their Mantles, or needing to be physically present to accept tithes of Glamour and oaths of vassalage. I encourage you to discard this idea entirely; it has no relation to how any society functions, and is riddled with logistical, psychological, and thematic problems. Autumn jockeys with Spring for the title of “most dramatic and theatrical Court”; don’t waste that opportunity trying to be the edgiest version of what is already the edgiest Court.

Not even the mightiest Witch-Queen rules alone. Lords of Summer presents some potential titles denoting status and responsibility in the Autumn Court. Not all of them will be present in every Court, and they aren’t necessarily called by these titles (in New Avalon, for instance, the Witch of the Bitter Wind has been called ‘Baba’ for many years, an allusion to Baba Yaga). Each has a role in Autumn’s society that is expanded on below:

Twilit Page - Broadly, the Twilit Page is in charge of neophyte Autumn Courtiers, but this is a more difficult prospect than you might expect. Where Winter is perfectly willing to leave its Flowing Pages out in the wind to die if they can’t form a relationship with a more senior Courtier willing to save them, Autumn is somewhat more likely to attempt to come to the rescue. Some of this is simply because Autumn is more likely to form personal attachments, and some of it is that you don’t bother gathering immense personal power if you aren’t going to use it. The Twilit Page has to keep tabs on aspiring and young members of Autumn, try to teach them the local culture of the Court, and hopefully palm them off into a more formal apprenticeship as soon as possible. Bad Autumn Courts emulate Winter’s example and give this job to a more junior Courtier to keep them busy with paperwork; wiser ones promote more powerful Courtiers to this position so that aspiring members of the Court know what they might become and can be certain that if they call for rescue, rescue will actually arrive.

Paladin of Shadows - Frightful warriors who for some reason don’t want to be in Summer end up in Autumn under this name. Paladins drive Winter mad, given that they’re a role specifically for Autumn Courtiers who are, seemingly, bad at being members of Autumn. Paladins embody the threat of physical violence and death, and are often a natural role for battle-sorcerers in Autumn; Ogres and Elementals especially fall naturally into this method of serving Fear.

Hedge Ranger - Hedge Rangers represent a sort of practical occult knowledge that few people immediately associate with Autumn. Rare is the person who hears the words “Court of Fear” and immediately thinks of a survivalist with a crossbow, but such is the nature of the Thorns: a land of magic that demands practice to go with your theory. Hedge Rangers rarely lack for work; the Hedge is a source of fear and doubt to almost all of the Lost, and those who must brave it will pay dearly for an expert’s guidance. More importantly, Hedge Rangers may be the Freehold’s first line of intelligence against an imminent invasion of the True Fae, privateers, or hostile hobgoblins.

Legate of Mists - Oddly enough, this is one of the positions potentially unlikely to be filled in a healthy Freehold. It sounds counter-intuitive; surely a diplomat is a valuable role in keeping friendly relationships between Courts? But when things are going well, members of the other three Courts generally go directly to the Autumn Courtiers they need for various services. Why cut a finder’s fee to some random asshole to direct you to Jack the Ranger when you can just find Jack or a member of his Motley yourself? But in an Autumn that is less trusted by its fellows, or a Freehold with sharp conflicts between the Courts in general, having someone more outwardly collected and socially savvy as a point of contact can be essential in not escalating conflict to a place people are going to regret. In a Freehold that doesn’t necessarily need a Legate, someone with a related skill set (such as a Baron of the Lesser Ones, or a member of the Legacy of the Black Apple) might have the title bestowed upon them in recognition of their skills, or to formalize their role in negotiating with those other beings.

Fool of First Frost - Any idiot can put on a clown suit and chase people with knives. The role of the Fool is not to spread fear directly, but rather to spread Autumn’s self-awareness of its own deliberate evil to the other Courts. When Spring, Summer, and Winter begin to grow toxic or to cause social issues in the Freehold, it is the Fool and their comedy that first holds them to account through dark parody, scathing rebukes, and the occasional terrifying mystery. Fools also hold Autumn to similar account. A good Fool is socially adept, cunning, and politically aware; a bad Fool is generally killed in their sleep by a slighted noble.

Lord/Lady Scrivener  - Perhaps one of the most inconsistently filled positions in Autumn, the Scrivener writes things down. The Lost have an uneven relationship with the idea of writing things down, in part because writing things down has a bad habit of getting people killed, and in part because of a strong oral tradition and the presence of the Eternal Echoes (Lords of Summer). Some Freeholds never learn the grim stories of When It Goes Wrong and install a Scrivener to keep records of the Freehold or the Court; others follow Winter’s example and record their histories in code. An Autumn Court involved in the aforementioned magazine-publishing and lectures keep a Scrivener in charge of their creation and distribution, but beyond that this title is often quite empty, and infrequent attempts to install it are generally shut down hard.

Ghul - In a Court whose role in the Freehold is often ‘odd jobs, but especially the horrible ones we don’t want to do’, the Ghul is the person who does the most horrible things. In theory, the Ghul’s role is that of assassin to the Court of Fear, but a Freehold that maintains and tolerates one likely also employs them as an executioner and a Jack Ketch. In many Freeholds, the Ghul may be a secret position, kept quiet so that the other Courts don’t know Autumn is willing to retain a paid murderer.

Witch of the Bitter Wind - Quite possibly the only title as ubiquitous to Autumn as the Crown itself, the Witch is the Court’s most prominent sorcerer. It isn’t enough to have raw power (represented with high Wyrd and Mantle); the Witch of the Bitter Wind needs to have broad and deep knowledge of magic, including things no one really wants to know but sometimes has to. The nature of their work means that Witches often shed Clarity to an alarming degree, but replacing a Witch of the Bitter Wind is no simple thing; Lost who can do what they do are not a dime a dozen. Keeping a leash on their Witch is often one of the Autumn Crown’s most important ongoing duties.

Magister of Nightmares - You know what would be nice? If White Wolf could write one god damn thing about this Court consistently for five minutes straight. In Lords of Summer, the Magister is purported to capture and maintain the target of the Ashen Hunt...a ritual in which the entire Freehold goes riding out to kill any of its enemies that it can find. One of these things has to be wrong, and on the balance considering that the Lost have severe problems with imprisoning anything or anyone for any reason, I am inclined to advise you to throw this title out, shake your first at the sky and scream White Wolf’s name at the top of your lungs.

Ashen Notary - One of Autumn’s more surprising roles, the Ashen Notary is an expert in Pledgecraft and is charged with maintaining and, if need be, recording knowledge of powerful Pledges sworn in the Freehold. In a society that sometimes has to establish trust between people who have understandable trust issues, an expert in Pledges is a powerful asset and a vital cog in the smooth running of said society. The Ashen Notary’s knowledge empowers them to check in on Lost who have sworn powerful Pledges, advise them on keeping said Pledges, and to offer their services to broker Pledges between parties who might not otherwise be inclined to do so. The Notary serves another purpose in Autumn itself: they force loners of the Ashen Court to actually participate in society, even if only on the pretext of checking up on their oath of service to the Freehold itself. Autumn Courtiers more inclined to counsel rather than terrify, with a talent for putting people at their ease, thrive in this role.

Aside from these largely internal roles, Autumn Courtiers thrive in the Freehold itself as advisors, viziers, and hatchet men. Though Autumn trends towards skill in violence and magic, its lack of an overall required skill set (in sharp contrast with Summer and Winter) means it often makes its bones doing odd jobs. Need a family of Fetches murdered? Autumn is looking for work. Need a guide through a dangerous Trod? Autumn has a man. Looking to learn Contracts that might help you in your day job? Autumn knows them. While Autumn joins Summer as one of the Courts that spends money rather than makes it, it funds its internal expenses by tithing from these services and otherwise making itself available to its peers.

The Promise of Autumn

What does Autumn offer to potential members, and to those that keep faith with it? UNLIMITED POWER is the answer that springs to most people’s minds immediately, and this is true to an extent, just as it is also true that Autumn provides a haven for those who have fallen in love with magic and struggle with the awkward feelings of shame and self-doubt that said love engenders. But neither captures the entire story. Alone among the Seasonal Courts, Autumn is not offering recruits the chance to heal, not as such. Where Spring holds faith in its renewal, where Summer promises to create something good and noble of the evil done to you, and Winter quietly sells a new life built on your own terms, the children of Fear seem, so often, to leap screaming into an abyss from which there is no return.

So why join Autumn?

Just as every Lost is scarred by Sorrow, so too is each and every living Changeling a child of Fear; Fear of the Others who may come calling to drag them back, Fear of what they have or might become, Fear of rejection by mortal society or mortal loved ones, Fear of betrayal, of privateers and loyalists, of the Thorns, of the things that live in their dreams, and this doesn’t even get into more mundane or personal Fears that may stalk them. Autumn’s offer is simple but compelling: join with the Ashen Court, and you can come to understand your Fear, and to master it. Autumn does not promise to make you unafraid; such a promise would be a lie, and counter to the Court’s ideals in any event. To join with Autumn is instead to develop a relationship with Fear, to confront your abuse directly and thus to lift some of its terrible power over your life. For many drawn to the Court of Fear it can be a relief to be told that it’s okay to be afraid, that even the grim demons that sit the high seats of Autumn are afraid, and that life can go on in the face of that Fear. This quieter, more intimate side of Autumn doesn’t get a lot of press, in part because Autumn prefers it that way, and in part because it can be genuinely hard to talk about. Fear is an intimate emotion, and for those of Spring, Summer, and Winter who go to Autumn for help with their Fears the idea of gossiping about those who guided them, aided them, even befriended them, can be unthinkable.

Other Lost join Autumn because they are in love with magic and they want more of it. The reasons can vary, but Autumn generally puts in quite a bit of effort to recruit such Changelings. Many assume this is because Autumn wants to retain its status as the foremost practitioners of magic, and this is to an extent true, but the Ashen Court also considers this a service to the Freehold. Unwise use of magic is dangerous; just as Autumn takes in the fearful and teaches them sorcery, so too does Autumn take in reckless sorcerers and teach them fear. Magic for magic’s sake is like the pursuit of any form of power for its own sake: foolish and likely to get someone killed. Autumn puts leashes on such Lost until they learn better.

Both sorts of recruits are ultimately made the same offer by Autumn, often unspoken but powerfully present: Autumn can give them the power to no longer be victims. Many Lost were helpless in the face of the evil which claimed them, abused them, and ultimately transformed them. The Court of Fear provides not just the personal power to fight back, but the knowledge and presence of mind to act, not without Fear, but with courage. For many, whose lives are defined by the Fear of going back to the Fairest of Lands, Autumn represents the ability to live with themselves again, in a way the other Courts can’t.

There is a certain ironic selflessness in remaining in Autumn. The Court of Fear purposefully takes on the evils needed to keep the Freehold running and safe, and as a result its active members are often, not to put too fine a point on it, evil. Autumn doesn’t just employ killers, thieves, and abusers, it cultivates them. For Lost whose skill sets fall into these shady categories, Autumn can be a place to belong; for others, remaining in the Season and deepening their relationship to it means asking hard questions about what they’re willing to become, and how hard they’re willing to work to avoid becoming something worse. Autumn’s peers are vital in keeping some semblance of an even keel on its Courtiers, to remind them both not to get lost in the vicious madness of power for the sake of power, and of the joys, pleasures, and sorrows of life that exist outside of the context of Fear. Autumn, in turn, helps hold its peers to account and provides both a spoken warning and a living example of what it means to slide into darkness.

Fear Itself

Autumn’s relationship to Fear is more complex than the other Courts often think it is, and definitely more complex than Autumn itself advertises it as. Just as someone who spreads Sorrow but does not feel Sorrow is a bad Winter Courtier, so too is the ideal Autumn Courtier someone who feels Fear in addition to spreading it. The dance between an Autumn Courtier’s public persona (something at least partly artificial and theatrical) and their private one is a complex affair that can be harsh on Clarity if not managed correctly, but it is absolutely vital to maintaining some semblance of sanity and perspective.

Outwardly, Autumn practices Fear of all kinds. They learn to cultivate and project images that fit their personal brands of Fear (in New Avalon, the local Autumn Court puts its apprentices through drama and theater classes specifically for this reason) and to sow Fear upon others. Only rarely is this visceral, violent terror, for a host of reasons. While the Court could create a glut of Fear by, say, killing an entire fraternity in its frat house on campus and leaving the excessively gory scene to be found by their friends and loved ones, such an event has repercussions beyond the emotion created: mortal police will investigate, bereaved loved ones seek closure or revenge, the school itself might be shut down, and such a vicious assault is certain to take a toll on whatever unlucky Courtiers are expected to carry it out. Much more common are activities such as spreading rumors and urban legends, telling terrifying stories, stalking mortals out alone on lonely nights, blackmail, and acts of violation such as breaking the locks on someone’s house or leaving unsettling ‘gifts’ in their personal possessions. Autumn’s own need to exercise a light hand in cultivating their passion in the mortal populace. Fear, while an effective emotion for manipulating others, can be difficult to predict and control; those Lost who don’t understand that spreading Fear can have unforeseen consequences soon learn better when they bite off more than they can chew and get someone hurt or killed. This is one of Autumn’s harshest and most necessary lessons: you, ultimately, are responsible for the desperate actions of those upon whom you spread your Fear.

Inwardly, Autumn Courtiers seek to relate to their own Fears, to understand them, and to take action about them. Fear can be a healthy response, and the Lost live dangerous lives in which vigilance and caution are quite reasonable daily activities, and the Fears that inform these behaviors are among the more universal to Changelings, but all things Fear more than just the Others. To be Autumn is to ask yourself questions like, “why am I afraid?”, “can I live my life with this Fear?”, “do I also love or Desire the object of my Fear? Does it make me angry?” and, “am I okay with the power this Fear has over me?”. There are many answers to these questions; Autumn encourages its Courtiers to make their own decisions about their Fears, to excuse themselves from projects or tasks where their Fears would cripple them and to seek out those professions where their Fears can be helpful to them. Many a Hedge-Ranger starts their career by acknowledging that they are afraid of the Thorns and seeking to overcome the darkness of that Fear with the light of knowledge, and Autumn knows well the power of desperate terror to turn a cornered rat into a vicious killer. Just as mortals seek out horror movies to experience a visceral thrill, so too does Autumn put themselves in a position to be afraid so that they can teach themselves to live with Fear, to act in spite of or even aided by Fear, and to prove to themselves that they are stronger than their own Fear.

While they are rarer than those Autumn Courtiers who also spread Fear upon others, some Autumn Courtiers relate to their Season only in terms of their personal fear, and their journey into Autumn is founded on understanding and choosing to nurture or overcome their individual Fears. The Ashen Court puts a lot of value in these more gentle, introspective Courtiers, in part because someone has to be around to tell the supervillains when they’re up on their bullshit (again), and in part because these are often those Autumn Courtiers who most openly serve as counselors and healers to their fellow Lost. Many of the Court of Fear’s most talented oneiromancers fall easily into this image of a kinder Autumn.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice - Organizing Autumn

The basic unit of Autumn is the Courtier, but the basic plural unit of the Court of Fear is the Master-Apprentice bond. While individual Courts do likely organize by appointing nobles and people to assist those nobles (such as, say, a Mistress of the Harvest in charge of the Court’s stores of Goblin Fruits and Harvestmen to assist her), Autumn’s basically selfish organization naturally breaks it up into those who do not yet have power - personal, social, magical, political -  and those that do. The most basic function of a Twilit Page is to help connect potential apprentices to potential masters, who take over the role of educating those apprentices, attending to their personal safety, and ensuring that they don’t starve to death on the streets. These apprentices in turn assist their masters with various projects, enabling them to focus on purely occult matters rather than attending to inconveniences like laundry, cooking meals, or replacing the sinister cobwebs that just won’t stay up in the corners properly. It is during this stage in their life that youngblood Autumn Courtiers learn about the divide between their work face and their friend face, the ideals of Fear and magic, and - hopefully - learn to Fear themselves as well as others. The results can be a bit disorganized, but it keeps Autumn in possession of broad skill sets that appeal to many potential new members who are looking for a place to belong in their new society.

Early adopters of Autumn are often somewhat lonesome by nature and don’t necessarily join Motleys straight away, but as they calm down and start to grow into their own the Court subtly or not-so-subtly encourages them to do so. While Autumn doesn’t have a formal commandment to join diverse Motleys the way Winter does, a sane and stable Autumn Court usually encourages it; Autumn needs the perspectives of its peers if it intends on surviving the journey to power with some semblance of its sanity intact. A Motley also represents a power group that a budding Autumn Courtier can use to further their interests within their own Court, both because a Motley is capable of defending itself from (and committing) greater violence than one Courtier, and because the interconnection of the Courts means pissing off an entire Motley is a much different political prospect. As the Autumn Courtier rises in power and ambition they find themselves with descriptive titles bestowed upon them in honor of their expertise, and with nervous members of the Freehold coming to them for their unique services (prophecy, assassination, occult knowledge, guidance through the Hedge, etc).

What happens from here depends on the Court and the Courtier. The higher echelons of Autumn are staffed by survivors and killers who have seen and done things they would rather not have seen and done. Lost can live for a long time if they’re not killed, but in a Court that respects these elders those lusting for a high office may have no choice but to hone their own skills and wait for the incumbent to finally die. For some positions - especially the Crown or the Witch of the Bitter Wind - there’s a certain “you kill it, you bought it” understanding, in which some degree of personal and magical violence is a permissible method of advancement. You can bet your ass that the Court keeps a careful eye on such usurpers, however; it doesn’t do to encourage random murder with leniency.

Mark Me Down As Scared And Horny

Autumn Courtiers are still (post) human people, and passionate people at that; Autumn’s self-awareness and caution don’t come even close to Winter’s deliberate culture of stoicism and self-denial. Just as much as any of the Lost, Autumn’s own crave personal bonds with others; they want friends, family, lovers, and the respect of their peers. To split the difference between the figures of dread their Court expects them to be, and the more vulnerable and human person such bonds require, Autumn is of necessity somewhat two-faced.

Ultimately, to be friends with a member of Autumn is to accept that you can’t talk about the person you know that others don’t. It’s more than just a PR problem, though that definitely factors into it. Fundamentally, it’s about trust. Just as you sharing your intimate Fears with your friend in Autumn means trusting a known monster and professional abuser with knowledge they can use to hurt you, so too does that Autumn Courtier trust you with their own feelings in a way that could hurt them. A friendship built on mutually assured destruction is no friendship at all, not even in Autumn, and if the children of Fear have to think of their close friends and family in that way then they’re already on the fast way down to staging slasher flicks in real life. For those who can respect their friend’s public persona in public (which does not necessarily entail pretending not to be their friend), Autumn can be among their staunchest allies and most protective supporters. It can be hard to have friends in the lands of Fear, and Fear’s children guard the ones they have with a ferocious will.

Romance, for those Autumn Courtiers inclined to practice it, is similar. Unlike Winter, which is more likely to seek out its own members to love, Autumn relationships with other Autumn Courtiers generally end in a certain amount of blood; each feeds the toxic traits of the other, generally creating a downward spiral of Fear. Summer and Autumn end up together quite a bit, bonding over a common interest in direct action and the similar problems of those who have made a career in violence, but Spring/Autumn relationships can be some of the strongest and most surprising. The renewal Spring believes in and offers to others can give Autumn something to live for besides power, and Autumn in turn provides support and love through the times of Fear and doubt that can sometimes cripple a Spring Courtier. Either way, loving someone in Autumn means to some extent accepting that they have chosen evil when they did not have to. Relationships that last involve both the non-Autumn partner making peace with that choice, and the Autumn one remembering that evil is the tool with which they do their job and not a toy that they play with for fun. If either side can’t swing their role, the relationship often fails.

If you go leafing through the published books you might notice a trend of Autumn Courtiers getting written as femme fatales that betray their lovers and/or murder them. Throw this in the garbage where it belongs. While a certain amount of backstabbing is endemic to Freehold society in general, Autumn being “the people who betray you all the time” leads us back to that idea in the introduction where if this was a thing that happens Autumn would have been killed to the last man a long time ago. This trend in the writing seems to be the meeting point between ‘Autumn is a social Court’ (true), ‘Autumn is often deliberately evil’ (still true), and ‘White Wolf didn’t bother reading their own books’, without stopping to ask about the psychological toll, how Autumn fits into a society, or even the fact that this stereotype fits Spring and Winter’s MO insofar as it fits anyone’s. Even if you were inclined to go here, White Wolf has done it to death. Please don’t.

Lords of Dust - Making Autumn Courtiers

When making your own Autumn Courtier, think about the events in their life that drove them to make this decision. Did their mind bend and then break beneath a particularly cruel Durance? Do they see Autumn as a way of bringing wonder into a world that can so often feel thin and grey? How do they respond to the fundamental questions at the heart of their Court? Autumn deliberately does not command answers to those questions. After all, it doesn’t do to sell yourself as the Court of scholars and wisdom only to discourage questions. Some other helpful considerations to keep in mind include:

What Do You Want?  - Autumn encourages ambition in its Courtiers, and offers power as a method of fulfilling it. What is the throne of your character’s ambition? Why do they seek it, and what will they do or what do they think they’ll do to achieve it? How does their ambition relate to their Fears, and to their own Court? “Keep my family safe” is a perfectly valid ambition, after all - especially given how dangerous it can be to love the Lost, as is joining a prestigious Entitlement, or even using the power of Autumn to reform an aspect of Freehold society.

What Do You Fear?  - The Ashen Court is defined by its relationship to Fear. What things and ideas inspire Fear in your character? How do they react to and relate to those Fears? Which Fears are they trying to shed, and which are they trying to cultivate? How does your character spread their Fear on others, and why? Do they treat the Fears of their friends and loved ones the same way they treat their own?

What’s Your Specialty? - As alluded to earlier, “magic” is an incredibly broad field of study. What sorts of lore attracts your character? Why did they become interested in the sort of magic they practice? What risks are they willing to take for the sake of knowledge, or to use their knowledge? Do they see magic as something mysterious? Spiritual? Scientific? Does your character prefer to keep their lore secretive, or do they perhaps like to foster a more general interest in magic?

What Are Your Sins? - Plenty of the Lost emerge from Arcadia scarred by the things they did to survive. To join Autumn means accepting that further acts, made more questionable by your newfound freedom, will be added to this tally. How does your character feel about Autumn’s deliberate, self-aware evil? Have they been asked to do morally questionable things? What lines do they draw, and how do those lines affect their relationship to their Court? Do they nurse doubts about the morality of spreading Fear?

Chaos Reigns - Autumn In Your Freehold

While Autumn boasts a diverse skill set, ultimately their dual role is to know things, and to do unpleasant things. Other Courts will come to Autumn for these needs, especially where they intersect, which gives you a place to start; figures such as Paladins of Shadow should be the exception, not the rule, unless you have a highly unusual Autumn (perhaps one that exists in relation to a relatively weak Summer). Likewise, Autumn is the Court where the line between a healthy Autumn and a toxic one is most heavily blurred, and where each vision of the Court will have elements of the other. Is your Autumn counterbalanced by a strong Spring and/or Winter that can help keep it on the straight and narrow? How does it relate to the mortal society around it, and what do the other Courts think of that relationship?

Though Autumn is not among the Courts that generates most of the Freehold’s money (as mentioned before, they join Summer in the caste of ‘retained killers’ that costs money), think about the social venues or businesses that your Autumn Court maintains anyway. An Autumn Court that operates a movie theater has access to a steady supply of Fear that also gives them an excuse to hang around normal people and reality check themselves; contrast this with an Autumn that has its claws sunk into a local university, or a Court entwined with a criminal family. Autumn joins Spring in being a Court whose members likely own and operate their own businesses as some kind of front, from book shops to stores catering to the modern witch; these locations can provide a pop of flavor to your Autumn and its Courtiers, as well as fronts through which the Freehold might launder money or stash sensitive objects or knowledge.

I welcome all questions, comments, feedback, and criticisms on this article - send ‘em my way! Next up: Summer

[divine-daenerys]

GoT viewers double standards when it comes to Daenerys Targaryen

So I’ve been watching a whole lot of Game of Thrones reaction videos and reading the comments on them and whatnot, and all this Daenerys is cruel/turning into the Mad Queen/unfit ruler bullshit that I find wherever I look is really getting on my nerves.

So, to get this irritation off my chest and to point out just how hypocritical this fandom can be, let’s draw some comparisons between Daenerys’ actions that bring her scorn and similar actions by other characters that are either rewarded or ignored. Do keep in mind this is not meant to bash any other characters, simply to point out the hypocrisy of some of the people who watch this show.

On using fire in battle-

Tyrion uses wildfire in the battle of Blackwater bay to attack Stannis’ fleet, said wildfire kills the majority of people on those ships including Ser Davos’ son(s), yet he’s praised by the fandom for his great thinking and strategizing.

Daenerys uses Drogon in battle against the Lannisters in season seven, doesn’t use Drogon to burn the entire line the Lannister soldiers formed to avoid killing more people than necessary although she could have done that and cut her Dothraki losses by more than half, yet the response is overwhelmingly negative, calling her a mad queen for utilizing a weapon available to her.

On poetic justice-

Cersei kills Elleria Sand’s daughter the same way she killed her own daughter, keeping them in the dungeons together so Elleria can watch her daughter rot for the rest of her life. Everyone views this as justice and cheers on Cersei for her actions (including me, I liked the sand snakes but that was a great scene).

Daenerys crucifies the Masters in Mereen, just as they crucified 163 slave children, to show them their cruelty would not be tolerated under her rule. She then grants their families permission to take them down and bury them properly, a courtesy those children did not have.

On taking responsibility for children’s actions-

Joffrey was a terrible cunt, he tortured animals, whores, Sansa, and anyone else who bothered him. He was cruel and entitled and an all around terrible human being, tormenting all those around him, yet his actions were never punished or even reprimanded by Cersei.

For lack of better comparison (even though Drogon is my precious baby), Daenerys compensated all farmers who lost animals to Drogon’s fire three times their losses, and the moment a child’s corpse was laid at her feet she locked the dragons away in fear that they would harm another innocent, regardless of the pain it caused her and the rift it put in their relationship.

On using fire as an execution method-

Stannis burned people alive both as a method of execution (e.g: Mance Rayder) and as a sacrifice to R’hllor (e.g: his own daughter!!), yet until Shireen nobody truly gave a fuck that many died at the stake by his and Milessandre’s hands. Also a friendly reminder that being burned at the stake is one of the most painful ways to die, considering the fire slowly works its way up a person’s body, making them feel the prolonged torture, rather than engulf them completely the way dragon fire does, which as the dragons got bigger killed people in seconds.

Daenerys uses fire on the Tarlys and on a Master in Mereen, and she’s immediately compared to the mad king and given shit by the viewers. Do keep in mind the Mad King burned people for entertainment and laughed as they burned, while anyone with eyes and ears can see that Daenerys doesn’t enjoy doing it.

On betrayal-

While we’re on the topic of the Tarlys, remember Roose Bolton? Remember how much people raged when he betrayed Robb? When the lord of a house swears his vows, his vow is first to their Liege lord/house, then to the crown. The Boltons were sworn to House Stark, they betrayed House Stark, they took Winterfell, and they participated in the death of their liege/king in the north. People raged and hated the Boltons for their betrayal, and frankly, nobody really gave a fuck when Roose Bolton was killed by Ramsay, or they were happy he finally died.

Now, House Tarly was sworn to House Tyrell, they betrayed House Tyrell, they took Highgarden, and they participated in the death of the last of that house, Olenna, sound familiar? They were then executed for treason by Daenerys, and the fandom went batshit crazy calling Daenerys mad and impulsive.

On allegiances-

While we’re on the topic of that damn execution, people gave Daenerys shit because the people who bent the knee after the battle were doing so out of fear, thus she must be a bad queen. This is of course completely forgetting the slaves she freed, the unsullied, and the Dothraki, who all follow her out of respect and love.

Cersei is followed purely because she is feared. Everybody hates her, yet with the propaganda she spread about Daenerys, the people somehow see her as the lesser of two evils (yeah, right). There’s no need to wake the old debate of whether it is best for a ruler to be feared or loved.

On demanding Jon to bend the knee-

Daenerys has worked since Khal Drogo’s death towards taking the seven kingdoms, she took cities and freed slaves and tried to do good on her way while also practicing to eventually rule from the Iron Throne. She finally gets to Westeros, and a man she doesn’t know comes in claiming that monsters that were thought to be fairy tales up until this point are real, telling her he needs the armies she worked hard to gain, the dragons she loves more than life itself, and needs her to turn away from her lifelong goal, while providing no proof of the threat’s existence and refusing to pledge allegiance to her. We all knew Jon was telling the truth, but she didn’t, and she had no reason to believe him either. Now, with all that in mind, is it really so hard to understand why she refused him? And considering he was asking for her life’s work, isn’t it common sense that she would demand his loyalty? She would be sending her people to die in a war for him, it’s not unreasonable for her to ask him to bend the knee in return. She did what she could with what he was giving her, she allowed him to mine the Dragonglass and provided the supplies and men he needed to do so, even though she didn’t have to do that.

On attacking King’s Landing-

Daenerys refused to attack king’s landing once she arrived in Westeros because she didn’t want unnecessary death, because she didn’t want to harm the small folk who have already suffered through enough wars. Yes, she lost her temper at Tyrion and almost attacked KL, but she listened to council and attacked the enemy army instead.

Meanwhile, Cersei blew up a sept full of people with wildfire, the damage to the sept likely killing thousands around it as well, and smiled as she watched it burn. Who also tended to smile while watching wildfire burn things? Oh yeah, the mad king.

Honestly, I could go on forever with those comparisons but my fingers are cramping. So, Daenerys is not a mad queen. She is not cruel, she is not emotionless, and she’s the best chance Westeros has. She does not torture and kill people for entertainment (her initial refusal to reopen the fighting pits and clear disgust when she did), she always attempts to motivate and inspire people to join her willingly before resorting to violence, she cares deeply for those around her (her anger when Ser Barristan was killed, her immediate switch in attitude when that Second Sons leader threatened Missandei, her tears when she found out Ser Jorah had greyscale, despite his initial treachery).

Yes, she’s had disagreements with her council, but what ruler hasn’t? That happens because she made an effort to surround herself with people who would tell her if they thought she wasn’t doing the right thing, instead of surrounding herself with people who listen to her every whim regardless of the harm it may cause. That alone makes her better than most of the kings and queens Westeros has had.

Thank you for coming to my very frustrated TED talk🤷🏻‍♀️