#what if i just rapid fire posted is that illegal??

[3ver3mber]

"Just this once more..." Arya whispered under her sharply exhaled breath. She knew all too well the cost of casting such a spell, or rather, she understood there were dire consequences. She may have been in Mystra's favor, but even a goddess' grace had its limits.

" 'Only when absolutely necessary'..." She quoted her patron's warning as she calmed herself, already feeling the taut threads of the Weave around her quivering in anticipation for her next words.

"I wish-.." Arya began, her very voice imbued with magic. She hesitated but for a moment, considering if perhaps she was making a mistake.

No, of course not - after all, this entire endeavor was to further her progress on a mission Mystra herself assigned. A test of faith, perhaps...

With her nerves steeled for the time being, she continued, brow furrowed in determination.

"I wish to find Luthen's Library." The statement pulsed through the room with a violent thrum of energy, the rippling wave in the Weave carrying on for miles. Any spellcaster worth their salt was sure to have felt the disturbance, though not much more than an off tingle in the back of their mind. In an instant, though, the blast reversed with the same force, this time entirely channeled into Arya. The impact knocked the small sorcereress onto the floor, her body writhing in pain as rapid-fire visions assaulted her mind.

The vast expanse of sand and sun, a sight she had never laid eyes on. The vision stretched itself thin, reaching as far as it could toward the object of her desire before failing.

Something was shielding the location from even a mastery level spell.

Too quickly to even process, the spell changed direction, attempting to fulfill her wish another way. She was given the aerial view of a neighboring city she had flown over before, a peculiar looking violet tent, an inquisitive raven, and... stars?

Before she could make sense of it, the visions ceased, feeling to her almost as if the very air was drawn out of her lungs. She rolled over onto her front and retched, face twisted into a grimace as she waited for the pain to subside.

Finally, she rose to her feet, albeit shakily, panting in an attempt to catch her breath. She had no time to waste- not only was her goddess counting on her, but the use of such an illegal spell had surely garnered her some unwanted attention, and she wasn't one to simply wait for trouble to find her.

Slipping her necessary belongings into her pack, Arya ducked out into the night, heading for the stables. While she had never been particularly adept at stealth due to her heritage, she did not find a need for it this night. Her short jog to her steed's stall was uneventful, other than the waves of exhaustion and nausea that persisted in the aftermath of her spell.

"Icarus, come on-" she beckoned in a hushed command, clicking her tongue a few times. The large, flame-lapped griffin sauntered out of his pen, his beak extending in a wide yawn.

"I see you've maintained your sense of urgency, hm?" She chided him with sarcasm before exhaling a small chuckle.

"Come then, we've not much time before -" It was as if her unspoken words had manifested, prompting a frustrated hiss as a guard rounded the corner on patrol.

"Go, go, go!" She whisper-yelled, hopping onto the griffins back as it began its takeoff gallop. The thumping of it's footsteps alerted the guard, but as he called out to the pair, they were already in the air, soaring away from a place Arya had once dreamed of being. As she watched her post disappear into the distance, Arya couldn't help but reflect on how quickly a dream could change and how oft they turned out to be nothing more than a fantasy.

Even still, as the wind whipped her hair and all within her vision was sky, the buzz of cautious excitement was palpable. The thoughts of her position and the consequences of desertion were left behind with the barracks. All that remained to her now was the future and what it might hold.

-----------------

After flying through the night, a familair sight sprawled out below- the city she had seen in her vision. With a sharp whistle, Arya directed Icarus downward, and the two began their descent. The blazing duo appeared to the few waking onlookers like a streaking comet against the dark cobalt sky, the sight certainly conspicuous.

Arya could not mind the stray looks any less, entirely honed on finding the blur of purple her vision had promised. It wasn't long until she spotted it, circling the area a few times before finally landing.

She slid from her steed's back with a practiced grace, heavy boots sounding with a thump against the dirt. She did not approach the tent, however, opting to simply stare at it. It was funny to her, the fact that she had just spent hours trying to find it, amd yet, now that she was here...

"...Hello? " Her mouth spoke before her brain gave it permission, and she instantly cringed at the choice of word.

'Hello? Really? A good hundred kilometers and all you could concoct in your addled mind is-' she thought to herself, though the stream of consciousness was again rudely interrupted by her far too eager mouth.

"Pardon the early intrusion, but might I speak with you?"

'Well... At the very least, that one was polite...'

{ @fortune-feather }

[hyperbcle]

@finclines wyatt stuck his tongue out, nose scrunched up in faux annoyance. "why should i be objective about the love of my life? don't snub me." now that he was, you know, allowed to be alive, he was shouting into the echo-chamber that was tiktok on some obsessive and overbearing boyfriend shit. his followers loved it, even though they begged for a finn face-reveal every single time he posted about him. and he was tempted every time because he really was the least objective person ever and wanted to brag about how pretty finn was, but he didn't want it to make it's way back to finn's dad somehow. it was probably for the best, anyway, because accidentally becoming a tiktok couple sounded like a nightmare and wyatt didn't think he'd do well with the serotonin rapid-firing at him via notifications. it was another addiction waiting to happen if he let it. "why are you shocked? people will do and say anything under the guise of anonymity, baby." he pointed at himself, a real-life example. "to be fair, while morally questionable i don't think it's illegal? you're just a t.a." assuming the student wasn't seventeen going on eighteen, of course. but finn didn't really know that, and he could feign plausible deniability or something. he blinked owlishly, caught off guard at finn's immediate acceptance of the idea. and he was thankful for sure, because it wasn't like he wanted to argue with finn. arguing always left him exhausted and itchy, and he could never truly feel good about it whether he won or not. but like... finn had just seemed questionable at best, and now all of a sudden he was agreeing and putting more thought into it than wyatt was. well, maybe not more, but he was thinking entirely differently about it. wyatt had been thinking more about how emotionally ready he would be for a dog - if he could genuinely care, make himself get up and hold himself accountable without making finn take care of not only him but another living thing. his laugh came out a little nervous. "hey, you know you're allowed to think about it, right? i know. i'm very charming and persuasive and needy so you want to give in immediately but this is your house, too. you can like, take more than five seconds." his smile was uneasy, feeling not for the first time that their power-dynamic was a little bit skewed. because look, he could mean it however he wanted but finn's feelings were valid and after the whole student loan thing and the house thing he was trying to be more mindful. "i don't want you to agree because i'm boo-hoo disabled or because it's what i want. i want you to want a dog." he clung to finn's shirt, head dropping back on a dramatic groan that was somewhere between bratty and exasperated. he was maybe trying to make light of the disabled thing, because complex ptsd is like that. but whatever. his point remained. "five? sure, sure." he agreed, solely because what did he know, honestly? his head tilted onto his shoulder curiously, eyebrows pulling together. and... huh? finn was going out of his way to ask about park? his confusion was apparent, using the back of his hand to feel finn's forehead. "are you running a fever? what'd you do to with my boyfriend? who are you?"

[dosneybutwrong]

doodle dump ft clownswald and my pfp... i don’t know much about ortensia but she’s very cute and i appreciate her a lot

[exclamaquest]

I think Ao3 needs a better system and I think it shouldn’t allow horrible fics on it at all because they’re disgusting. The only reason Ao3 is favored by writers is because of its easy to post format and tagging system in a way where, if you tag one thing, you get a bajillion fics with that tag included and if, you want to filter out tags, you’re more than able to do so but—- see, the problem is, Ao3 is all for “we don’t and won’t control what you write.” Because all the other sites have banned things for NO reason and I think, thats the reason why Ao3 is like that too like.

People wanted a site that didn’t ban or censor friendly lgbtq+ content with appropriate tags and edgy content like violence or psychological horror or something similar. They wanted that site to be able to let them write but here’s the really bad part about it, the site also lets freaks write freaky horrible shit because it’s trying to cater to the idea of “posting what you want without rapid fire at your account.” And that’s, that’s the bad thing I believe.

Everyone can fight on this however they wish to, and they can try and appeal to other the side who thinks it’s fine or the side who doesn’t. The crux of the matter is, two statements of “Ao3 is a good site because it doesn’t ban you for no reason, has a slightly better tagging and posting format, and is easier to write on.” And “Ao3 needs more moderation, and it needs to be able to actually ban fics and ban people who wrote them and not allow anything ON their site that is breaking the basic moral ground and it needs to be able to do that WITHOUT hurting the innocent creators.” Should be able to coexist because facing it now, the only other “good” site is … well, perhaps Wattpad?

You can block people on Wattpad, you can report stories and get them deleted. That’s a good thing. The bad thing? Wattpad also allows these stories to exist. Unless you report it constantly, it’ll be there, and it’ll show up in searches for your tags and you can’t stop them. Another statement that should be added is “As much as this site needs new moderation, it is also to say that you can’t expect any writing site to be pure. Once a site seems dark content to be allowed to be published, it is a very rocky slope to attempt to say otherwise, especially if your dark content is nothing if not simple violence and death and nothing weird and disgusting.”

Basically, I think while It’s a right to get mad at, abs it’s a right to hate, I also think, innocent writers have nowhere else to go: fanfiction.net might ban their books for something as small as sexuality or gender discussion or violence, Wattpad and Ao3 allow dark content but only one site lets you block and report it. I do think we should hold Ao3 and those disgusting users accountable, but I also think, we shouldn’t shame writers for being on Ao3 when they enjoy their experience as opposed to everywhere else. At most, we can only direct our ire to Ao3 itself and those disgusting users.

Also, this isn’t really a direct statement to you but I notice your Ao3 post aNd me and my friend talked about it so I wanted to share what I think as well ^^ my English is not very good for explaining what I wish to explain so pls do forgive me for not saying the correct words or misreading something. I would, nowhere, like to talk with you about this topic! If that’s ok!

Sorry for being so late! You summed it up pretty well, and don't worry, your English is fine. I don't blame individual authors (who aren't making the illegal shit AO3 is known for).for just hosting their stuff on the aotform--it really is the best place to do it. I fully blame the site operators for refusing to take down federally illegal content and for refusing to have any kind of moderation.

Tbh the excuse that "it's an archive" is bullshit, too--libraries and other archives have strict standards around what they'll allow into their collections.

Additionally, the alternative to reporting is manually screening every single piece uploaded which...isn't really feasible. So i do agree that a system to actually report users is good.

[primal-con]

Okayokayokay

At least half of what I’ve posted is in relation to this au and I’ve literally never talked about it so uhh,, I’m just gonna compile some thoughts about it here, for all our sakes, as I am incredibly disorganized. So without further ado, I present to you all:

Transformers street racer AU

Now, important questions first: what does that actually mean? Literally, I have no idea how to explain it succinctly and it came to me in some sort of stroke of prophetic genius, so the best I can summarize it is this. 80s retro-cyberpunk human AU where at least half the cast is illegal drag racers. Now some rapid-fire to set the stage. Putting the rest under the cut cause I can already feel how long it's gonna get.

Does it actually take place in the 80s? Kind of! It’s more like 80s sci-fi or maybe an alternate version of the 80s, so it’s high-tech but with a retro aesthetic.

Is there still a war in this AU? Yes, but that’s more backstory than a central crux of the current plot. It was a civil war, it lasted six years, and a decent number of the older characters fought in it, but it’s history now.

Who are the Autobots and the Decepticons then? Within the context of the AU, they are rival racing groups led by Optimus and Megatron respectively, they hate each other’s guts because their leaders have bad blood and no reputable racers let them compete against one another anymore.

Where do the non-racing Bots and Cons fit then? Other Autobots and Decepticons who I don’t include in the inner racing circle basically have some form of ties to one of the leaders. Usually that means they either got help from Optimus at some point or have done some illegal dealings for Megatron. Examples include Wheeljack, who doesn’t race but is friends with Optimus and owns the auto repair shop most of the Bots get their cars serviced at, and Breakdown, who sometimes works as hired muscle for Megatron.

And finally, what actually is the main plot? Well, I have several smaller fics planned within the AU following a bunch of different characters and where they fit, but the actual main fic is centered around Bumblebee! By this point, he’s freshly dropped out of college and moved back home and he’s feeling a little aimless. Now that he’s an adult he’s allowed to race with the others but they still treat him like the baby of the team and don’t really take him seriously. The primary plot surrounds two conflicts: Bumblebee’s crisis of identity and his struggle to figure out his place in the world, who he wants to be, and how he can stop living in Optimus’s shadow, and the rising tensions between both street racing teams as Megatron starts getting involved in more illegal activity and pushing Optimus’s people around. Tons of characters make appearances and I’ve mapped out a frankly absurd amount of lore about them, but a few characters who I intend to write other smaller stories about include Soundwave and Jazz, Drift and Ratchet, the Dinobots, and the man the myth the legend Optimus himself.

With all that out of the way, now we get to the fun part. Characters! (With a reminder that this list is in no way comprehensive and more characters will likely be added and adapted later, these are just some of the more important ones)

Autobots

Optimus Prime, obviously. He’s sort of the de facto leader of their racing “team” in that it’s his house everyone constantly loiters around and he’s the reason most of them have met. His day job though is he’s a librarian, which I think is hilarious because he looks like he walked out of a lumberjack calendar and sounds like he’s about to yell “You shall not pass!”

Bumblebee, who’s been an honorary Autobot since Optimus adopted him when he was eight. He’s trans, he’s disabled, and he’s gotta go fast. In short, he’s the character I’ve projected the most onto

Jazz! Love this guy’s vibe. He was the one to suggest the Autobot title in the first place and kind of cement the group into something less loosely defined. Racing is really more of a hobby though, professionally he’s a dancer and choreographer.

Ratchet isn’t technically an Autobot since he doesn’t race but they call him one anyway. He and Optimus are in a qpp and I will be taking zero criticism of the fact. He used to work as an EMT, now he’s chief of medical staff at the local hospital. He also sort of functions as the Bots’ go-to medic which is why they come away with so few speed-related injuries, they are all terrified of him.

Other folks who I have fewer details about include Ironhide, Hound, and Cliffjumper. Then there’s Knock Out who defects later and Sides and Sunny who have every intention of becoming Bots when they’re older.

Anyone else who’s an Autobot in canon but doesn’t race or at least doesn’t race with the bots counts as affiliated. A few that’ll probably be mentioned in the fic include the Rescue Bots, Hot Rod, Blurr, Prowl, Elita 1, Strongarm, Windblade, Arcee, and Mirage, plus probably a ton of others I’m forgetting right now

Decepticons

The bitch himself, Megatron. He’s a pro boxer but most of his resources come from his family’s history of war profiteering, he rebranded like crazy though after the side his family supported lost the war. He and OP have a uhh complicated history cough cough exes cough cough which is why he’s so hell-bent on stamping out the Bots

The Elite Trine only consists of two racers, Thundercracker and Skywarp. Starscream is basically Megatron’s glorified personal assistant and he hates every second of it. The trine aren’t actually related but everyone thinks they are since they look pretty similar to one another which Screamer arguably hates even more.

Soundwave!! If you cannot tell, he’s my favorite. His respect for Megatron is probably the only reason he tolerates the rest of the Cons and doesn’t just start racing solo. Officially he works as a DJ and produces his own music, but he also sells information to Megs on the side to make enough money to support Rumble and Frenzy, who in this AU are his dumbass kids.

Shockwave aka the walking car wreck. If reckless endangerment were a person, this would be him. No one likes racing against him because when he’s on the track, chance of injury goes way up, not because he’s bad at driving but because he legitimately thinks it’s fun. He races for the Cons as a favor to Megatron for funding some of his less than ethical experiments.

More honorable mentions include Shadowstriker, “Deadlock”, Knock Out, and truly any of the countless seekers.

Same with the Bots, anyone who’s a Con in canon but doesn’t race for Megatron counts as affiliated and also probably has something criminal goin on that Megs is a part of. Some names include the Combaticons, the Constructicons, Pharma, Ambulon, and of course tons more I can’t think of right now.

Unaffiliated/it’s complicated

The Dinobots, my beloveds! In this AU they’re a dinosaur-themed synthpunk band and I’m obsessed with them. They grew up in the same foster home together and just never abandoned their collective dino phase. Grimlock’s the lead, Sludge plays drums, Slag plays bass and does backup vocals, Snarl plays guitar, and Swoop is on keytar, they all work at Wheeljack’s auto body shop and he’s basically their surrogate dad.

Drift… is…. Complicated?? Is he a Con, is he a Bot, is he just really sad? Who knows! He flips around a little bit but I think by the start of the main fic he’s firmly in the Not A Con zone. Once he’s settled he starts teaching martial arts at a local dojo and so far Jazz is the only person he’s sparred against who wasn’t immediately knocked flat on their ass

Knock Out and Breakdown, who only landed themselves on this part of the list because they defect about halfway through. KO races for Megatron at first mainly because the guy is paying him to act as his off-the-record doctor for any of his “affiliates” but I have a whole major subplot with them and Starscream that makes em flip sides. KO is a nurse at the local hospital and Breakdown is a bouncer at the same club Soundwave DJs at.

Cyclonus, Tailgate, Lug, and Anode are also all unaffiliated for obvious reasons

Cheetor and most of the Beastformers are also technically unaffiliated? They’re kinda complicated in that they’re weird as fuck and idk what to do with them

Anyway, if all that interests you then the first fic of the series I’ll be publishing is Bleeding Heart, a prequel of sorts from Optimus’s perspective that mostly introduces a bunch of context and follows how he came about adopting Bee and starting the Autobots. There’s already a bunch of cheeky references in there to canon material and also I keep including Ratchet in scenes for no reason cause I love him. So if dramatic gay breakups, sad foster kids, Elita and Ratchet being Optimus’s annoying ass best friends, and obnoxious found family is your thing then you’re in for a real treat. It might take me a while to upload the first fic but feel free to stick around cause I post all sorts of doodles and dumb jokes while I’m working and I have no intentions of stopping anytime soon.

[dreamcatcherfication]

Welcome to the Murder House - Amateur Detectives

Bet you guys weren’t expecting this, huh? Well I still wanted to get a daily fic out and this is the only thing I have written that’s good enough to go out right now. I’m really trying to get back on schedule, and I don’t want to rapid fire these parts out, so hopefully I’ll be getting back to requests soon. But for now, please enjoy part two of Murder House! It’s a relatively short chapter, but things kick off real quickly.  I’m getting you guys hooked on the plot before I start implementing a posting schedule. Sorry for any spelling/grammatical errors, it’s 2 AM and my brain is the equivalent of a potato.

Writing Masterpost

If you want to send a request or a prompt, my inbox is always open! I publish a story at 8:00 AM PST everyday, so I’m always in need of new ideas. If you want to be tagged in my works, just let me know and I’ll be sure to tag you!

Prompts | More Prompts | The Trifecta of Prompts | Original Prompts

Trigger Warnings: Talk of death, typical high school swearing/insults, dead bodies

Part 1

“Holy shit, Christina Denmark?” Anne gasped.

Frantically nodding Cathy tried to regain her breath. “The freshmen were having an assembly and one of the cops was there. She left her radio, so Mr. Wolsey asked me to take it back to the station. I was tuning in to some of the police chatter, and they started talking about Christina and -” her voice cut off. Cathy’s hands were shaking as her breathing fluctuated.

All four of the girls knew Christina Denmark, whether it was personally or socially. She had almost dated Henry after he and Jane had broken up, but she managed to escape that terrifying reality. She and Anna had been friends at one point, but that was only through the strands of popularity. “Christina,” Anna started, but she couldn’t get the words out.

“Is this for real?” Kit asked, her previous anger at Anne forgotten.

Nodding, Cathy pulled out the police radio from her bag. “I have the radio right here.”

“Well you know what we have to do,” Anne said seriously. Her gaze was set directly on the radio.

“We investigate,” Cathy finished for her.

Neither Kit nor Anna seemed on board with the idea. “Investigate a possible murder? Guys, we aren’t Scooby Doo characters,” Anna chuckled nervously. She didn’t like how serious Anne and Cathy seemed. With Anne’s thirst for adventure mixed with Cathy’s need for answers, things could only end badly. 

“Yes, but we know Christina. The police aren’t going to tell anyone about this until things get serious,” Cathy explained. “This is our only chance to help find her.”

Shuffling her feet, Kit was unconvinced. “But we’re high school kids. If she’s missing, it could be kidnappers, murderers, any kind of criminal. Do we really want to get involved in that?”

“But we can help! We know Christina better than those cops. Besides, we are high school kids,” Anne spoke with wonder dripping from her voice. “That means we know how Christina acts. If she ran away, we’ll be able to trace her better than anyone else.”

Anna and Kit were still hesitant to agree. It was Cathy who won Anna over. “If there’s anything we can do to figure this out, it’s the right thing to do. We can take action that the police won’t. Shouldn’t we be obligated to do what we can?”

Something inside of Anna switched, and suddenly she was agreeing with Cathy and Anne. “Alright, let’s do it.”

Kit looked at her in surprise. “Anna! You’re agreeing to help them meddle in a missing persons case, possibly a murder investigation? You realize how illegal that is.”

“Kit,” Anne put her hand on her cousin’s shoulder, all ill will forgotten. “Do you want to see Christina dead?”

“No…”

“We can help find her! You won’t get hurt, and you’ll be helping someone. Isn’t that the right thing to do?” Anne was firm on her decision to help find Christina, and she would do anything to convince Kit to come with them.

Biting her lip, Kit relented. “Okay. But if things get bad…”

“We’ll back out,” Anna promised. “All of us.” She glanced at Cathy and Anne who reluctantly agreed to Anna’s terms. “Well then. Cathy? Where do we start?”

Kit did not like this one bit. She expected to be going to Christina’s house and interviewing her family, not trekking through the middle of the woods. But of course Cathy’s police scanner told them that the police suspected her body to be hidden in the woods, so that’s where they went. Anne seemed far too excited for someone searching for a body, but none of the girls tried to damper her mood. “This is like a real life episode of Luther, isn’t it,” Anne commented, hopping over a fallen tree.

“I guess. If you ignore the fact that he’s a detective and we’re a bunch of high schoolers,” Anna cheekily replied. 

Rolling her eyes, Anne stuck out her tongue at Anna. “Okay, I get it, we aren’t qualified to be searching for Christina. But guess what?”

“What?” Cathy murmured, unaware that Anne was being rhetorical.

“We’re doing it anyway,” Anne replied, snapping her fingers. “So let’s get a move on.” The four of them continued their walk, silence settling around them.

“Everyone quiet,” Cathy whispered, freezing in place. The others followed suit, their anxiety levels spiking at Cathy’s sudden apprehensiveness. “Do you hear that?” she whispered again.

Attentively, the four girls tuned into the sounds of the woods around them. Cathy was right, there was a strange sound. It sounded almost like… footsteps. Immediately crouching down, the girls shared terrified looks. Whoever they were listening to could very well be Christina’s kidnappers/killers. As the noise got louder, Anne picked up a large branch and held it like a bat. The footsteps got closer and closer until the girls were holding their breaths in anticipation.

“Ah!” Anne screamed, jumping out and holding her branch at the ready.

“AH!” Came the terrified voices of Catherine de Aragon and Jane Seymour as they jumped back in fear. The six girls were all at varying levels of stress as they recovered from the scare. “What the hell was that Boleyn?” Catherine demanded angrily.

“So you’re Christina’s killers!” Anne accused.

The girls in question stared at her in confusion. “What?” Jane asked incredulously. “Christina’s killers - why would we kill Christina? Why would you think Christina’s dead?”

Cathy held up her radio. “Police scanner,” she answered.

“Why are you out in the woods?” Anne stepped closer, her eyes narrowed. “Come to dispose of the body?”

“What are you even talking about?” Catherine threw her arms up in exasperation. 

Anna stepped forward, less suspicious than Anne but still confused. “The police are saying that Christina Denmark is missing, and they think she’s dead.”

Jane’s eyes widened. “Oh my gosh, that’s terrible.”

“We know,” Cathy agreed. “They suspect that the killer would’ve dropped her body in these woods. If she’s dead.”

“And you think we’re the killers?” Catherine put a hand on her hip.

“No!” Kit jumped in. “We were just scared, that’s all.”

Still wary, Anne lowered her branch. “You haven’t told us why you’re out here yet.”

“We volunteer at a local science research facility,” Jane started.

Kit’s eyes widened. “That’s so cool.”

“It really is Kat,” Catherine smiled at her. Anne shot a scathing glare at Catherine and moved subtly in between the two seniors and her cousin.

“The scientists asked us to get samples from the river further back that way,” Jane pointed behind them. “That’s why we’re here.” Curious, Kit started to make her way around the others and move towards where Jane had pointed.

While most of the girls seemed satisfied with the answer, Anne refused to let it go. “I don’t trust you two.”

“Then don’t trust us Anne,” Catherine sighed.

Cathy and Anna moved next to each other and watched the standoff. “Do you think Anne’s going to rage at them?” Cathy glanced at Anna before turning her attention back to the three girls.

Anna shook her head. “No, Anne’s more controlled than we give her credit for.”

“You say that after she blew up twice in two days.”

“True,” Anna shrugged. “But she’s far more interested in finding Christina than starting an argument with these two.”

A scream broke them away from their conversation. All five girls whipped their heads around, searching for Kit, the one who screamed. Rushing through the trees, they came upon Kit’s frozen form. Anna was the first one at her side. “Kit what’s -” she didn’t get to finish her sentence.

Because there at Kit’s feet was the dead body of Christina Denmark.

--------------------------------------

Tag List:

@radcowboyalmondtree @boleynhowards @annabanana2401 @babeebobo @dont-lose-your-queerhead @everything-insanity @mindless-pidgeon @i-wanna-dance-and-sing-six @thenicestnonbinary @its-totes-gods-will @thatbolxyngirl @thenameisnoone @sixqueendom @frogs-in-clogs @timetoriseabove @obliviousasheck

[haikyuuscreaming]

FUCK THSI POST AND HAPPY BRITHDAY HANAMAKI TAKAHIRO

im so soft for all of the seijou third years and makki is not an exception. we may have been heavily deprived of makki content but i still love him and yes even though i have 3 wips i am dropping all my shit to write for hanamaki

enjoy this really fast-written but lovingly-written fic :) I LOVE U MAKKI

-

As soon as Hanamaki wakes up, there’s something obviously off.

He isn’t stupid. He’s always wondered why those people in dollar-cheap romance novels never seem to know what’s up when it’s their birthday. Like, gee, what’s going on? Why is my S/O so sketchy today, on my birthday? Why are all of my friends busy? He’s always wondering maybe they just  have garbage self-esteem.

Fortunately for him, you’re a terrible actor.

“Morning, Makki~” Your voice is oddly awake despite Hanamaki having just woken up.

“Morning.” Hanamaki stretches lazily and his arm rests around your head. You’re wearing one of his old jerseys and he thinks it’s fitting for the occasion. “Guess whose special day it is.”

“U-Um, I don’t know.” You sound a little bit nervous although your smile’s still radiant on your face.

(He thinks it’s adorable how excited you are for his birthday.)

“B-But, you should get ready for today!! I do too, actually, so, um, I’m gonna get changed and head out..” Your excitement breaks through your ‘calm’ voice and you practically jump out of bed, kissing his forehead before dashing out. “Sorry, babe!”

“Sorry for what?”

“Um, nothing!”

“Just my luck,” Hanamaki mutters to himself. “It’s raining?”

He walks out of his favorite bakery with a box of cream puffs-- the last box of the bakery, in fact-- and suddenly it’s drizzling rain, an earthy scent flooding the world around him.

He’s a little bit frustrated-- god damn, could they at least warn him? At least so he could bring an umbrella.-- but he pays no mind. Oikawa, Iwaizumi, and Matsukawa have all been “busy” with plans (although Matsukawa spammed him with a shit-ton of memes and a ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY YOU ASS <3 FULL HOMO), and you’re obviously doing something either for him or something illegal, so he knows to expect something.

Although he can’t help but shake the paranoid worm in his gut that… maybe everyone is busy? Maybe they really couldn’t spare time for his birthday…

He brushes it off, and walks back home in the rain as he shields his cream puff box.

The rain really does make walking-traffic bad.

Hanamaki was expecting to stroll home in a solid 10 minutes, but he’s stuck in an angry mob of people who are half-drenched like him. He thanks whoever’s up there for giving him a strong immune system, otherwise he’s sure that he’d be sniveling and sneezing on his special day.

He’s trying to guess how much time it’ll take to get home now- five more minutes? Seven? Ten more?- before his phone vibrates so hard in his back-pocket he would’ve thought someone shoved a vibrator back there. There’s most likely no mafia or yakuza here, so Hanamaki takes advantage of the slow-moving crowd and takes out his phone.

There it is: the barrage of texts from you. He knew you would break down eventually, asking if he’d come home soon, but he wasn’t expecting pages and pages of texts.

the fiona to my shrek:

    hiro     hiro     are u ignoring me     bc that isnt nice     HIROOOO     HIROOOOOO     helloooooo     where tf are u     likeeee not tryna be sus or anything but     i need u home     preferably in like     ten minutes     no im not horny     unless u want me to be 😏🤪🤪     pleaseee     u asshat whyd u turn off ur location     please answer?     are you mad at me :(     is it abt this morning?     i didnt mean to brush u off     i swear i didnt forget abt ur birthday     and im like not planning anything or something ok     please come home?     ily <3     hiro     Makki.     hanamaki     hanamaki takahiro     loser baby     the shadow to my sonic     please respond and come home? :(     youre my shrek 5 trailer     OKAY BITCH FINE     im sorry ur not a bitch love u mwah     i mean maybe you are a bitch? but i still love u mwah mwah mwah     are u even reading this     i stg ill be so embarrassed if ur just busy or sum     COME HOMEEEE     ok bye :)

He really does think it’s adorable how much you care about this.

Rolling his eyes, he taps out a quick response:

“yea omw home” “oh, a surprise you say? ill be home soon”

He slips it into his pocket even though he feels the vibrations of the twenty or so texts that you rapid-fire send to him, most likely defending the fact that you’re definitely, absolutely not planning any shit for his ass, but he smiles to himself anyway.

He doesn’t even mind the fact he’s getting soaked in the rain. He’s excited to see what you’ve been planning.

“Home,” Hanamaki yells out. “Where are you, you big stinker?”

There isn’t an answer, which Hanamaki supposes is a little bit cliché but he doesn’t mind that much. His shared apartment with you is dark and he has to flicker on some lights through the house before he hears the faint illusion of hurried whispers. He barely makes out a voice to be yours.

“Oh! He’s here!”

“No shit he’s here. Who else comes in and yells he’s home?”

“I dunno Mattsun~ Maybe [Name]-chan has someone on the side?”

“Shut the fuck up, all of you.”

“Thank you, Hajime!”

“Shut up oh my god I think he’s listening to us.”

“Shhh!”

Hanamaki hears a dull clatter from the other room and he hides behind the wall, content with listening for a little bit longer.

“Oikawa you fucking dolt! You knocked over the forks!”

“Sorry, [Name]-chan!”

“Just pick it up already.”

“I don’t mean to burst your bubbles but I’m pretty sure he’s literally just vibing in the other room, listening to us.”

Hanamaki decides to make you all happy and takes a step. He’s kind of delighted in the way you all immediately shut up, save for your hissed quiet!, and he takes another step. Eventually he can’t take it and casually walks into the room.

It’s dark and he can’t really adjust to everything, and he’s about to say something slightly funny before the entire room illuminates and he sees his former third-year team and girlfriend yell, “Happy birthday Makki!!!!”

Makki knows that he was expecting some sort of surprise. Ever since that morning he woke up and saw you and your oddly adorable, alert face, he knew that something like this was going to happen. But still, it took just a few more seconds to register.

There was a cutely handmade banner that read Happy Birthday Makki in big, teal letters, and there were balloons strewn around the room that he knew would eventually be victims of balloon volleyball. On the table that you were all surrounding was a good, small pile of gifts and a tower of cream puffs. Not a cake, but a giant fucking tower of cream puffs.

Oh, so that’s where all the bakery’s cream puffs went.

“Oh god. You stupid idiots.” Hanamaki realizes his voice has gotten a little hoarse with sentiment, and he clears his voice and naturally, his lazy smile comes back. “I’m honored that you buffoons really planned this out for me. Clown party!”

“Be grateful, you big dummy!” You practically throw yourself onto him, and he finds himself latching onto you too. “I love you so much, Makki, happy birthday!!”

Hanamaki smiles and as if on cue, you lift up your head and smile back. He feels his heart beat a little bit faster and he remembers why he’s been loving his birthdays ever since he met you.

“Guess I love you too.”

[theleftgazette]

Erin O’Toole contra Indigenous Peoples

Although Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole had come under fire a month ago for suggesting that residential schools were initially “just about education,” his entire leadership of the party thus far has been thoroughly steeped in racism against indigenous peoples. O’Toole has made it explicitly known that he is more concerned with representing the interests of mega-corporations which profit off of the destruction of our environment—that is, who profit off of the destruction of colonized territories—than he is with representing indigenous interests in the slightest. Whereas a vast proportion of federal politicians at least have the courtesy to pretend like they care about indigenous issues whilst acting to make these issues worse, O’Toole has abandoned pretense entirely.

In a report from 350.org titled Human Rights Abuses by Fossil Fuel Companies, they highlight a review from 2006 which indicated that the fossil fuel industry accounted for two-thirds of corporate human rights abuses, and the extraction industry accounted for “the most allegations of the worst abuses, up to and including complicity in crimes against humanity.”

Some of their human rights violations include extrajudicial killings, and—what has become a Canadian pastime through our cooperation with the fossil fuel industry—the encroachment upon the rights of indigenous peoples. Particularly within the developing world, political corruption is just a normal part of how the fossil fuel industry operates. Within Nigeria, for instance, Shell and Eni were revealed to have bribed the president and politicians with hundreds of millions of dollars—money which we can be sure O’Toole would love to have the chance to accept himself.

As far as we are aware, however, fossil fuel companies aren’t offering O’Toole hundreds of millions of dollars, but his approval of the human rights violations which are part-and-parcel of their industry has no such price tag. He, like an over-exaggerated villain from a comic book, appears just to be corrupt for the sake of being corrupt.

How exactly is he corrupt? Well, within an article he wrote for the National Post, he not-so-cautiously paints a picture wherein indigenous peoples are criminals who are a threat to the prosperity of Canada, and this threat comes in the form of protesting the activities of the fossil fuel industry. Using a popular propaganda technique known as priming—which refers to, crudely speaking, the act of using misinformation to shape the way that an audience views information prior to receiving that information—he opens his article as follows:

Investment is leaving our country at a record pace. Billions of dollars of projects have been cancelled — most recently Teck Frontier, a project that would have created 7,000 construction jobs and 2,500 operational jobs in hard-hit Alberta. Every decision to pull investment from Canada is a threat to our social programs. Teck Frontier alone would have provided $70 billion to governments, money that is desperately needed to maintain and strengthen our health system as our population ages.

The question on the lips of Canadians today is: how did we get here? The answer to that is clear.

Not only is the appeal to emotion so incredibly present here, through a “think about the elderly!” claim which is directly associated with a fossil fuel mega-corporation, but he also makes an appeal to popularity, i.e. “The question on the lips of Canadians today is: how did we get here?” Perhaps this rhetoric would be more effective if he hadn’t already stated previously the intent to “ends fossil fuel subsidies, a form of corporate welfare.” Oops. It’s very difficult to argue that the fossil fuel industry is so strongly connected with the general welfare of Canadians when you admit that the billions of dollars in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry is, in fact, corporate welfare.

O’Toole continues by providing the “clear” answer to the question he raised:

We face this threat to our country’s future because of a Liberal government that has cancelled pipelines, banned tankers and passed legislation that makes it nearly impossible to build major projects. The illegal blockaders have taken their cues from more than four years of the Trudeau government’s attacks on our resource sector and those who work in it.

Yes, he portrays the blockades—which are largely done by indigenous peoples, and those acting in solidarity with indigenous peoples—as just illegal. Emphasizing the issue of legality here is a way to shut down serious discussion about it; it is a common tool for delegitimizing an issue. To further stress his authoritarian intent, he asserts that

An O’Toole government will pass a Freedom of Movement Act that will make it a criminal offence to block a railway, airport, port, or major road, or to block the entrance to a business or household in a way that prevents people from lawfully entering or leaving.

So, O’Toole’s chosen method to address indigenous issues relating to the fossil fuel industry is to use vague and authoritarian legislation in order to make it illegal for indigenous people to protest in the first place? (I’m sure this legislation wouldn’t be abused to shut down any number of other legitimate and peaceful protests…).

But O’Toole assures us that Canada already has a pretty progressive relationship with indigenous peoples:

In the days ahead, the Liberals may try to argue that adopting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) is the correct way forward, but nothing could be further from the case. Canada has, entrenched in our Constitution, a world-leading recognition of Indigenous rights.

Okay. Let’s take a look at what indigenous rights are entrenched in our Constitution, and compare that with UNDRIP. Specifically pertaining to the rights of indigenous peoples, Section 25 of Charter of Rights and Freedoms asserts that

The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed so as to abrogate or derogate from any aboriginal, treaty or other rights or freedoms that pertain to the aboriginal peoples of Canada including: (1) any rights or freedoms that have been recognized by the Royal Proclamation of October 7, 1763; and (2) any rights or freedoms that now exist by way of land claims agreements or may be so acquired.

Despite the emphasis on treaty rights, Canada has a long history of neglecting treaties entirely. For example, Treaty 6—which covers the territory I currently reside upon—meant an even split of resources and the distribution of food and medicine to the tribes which had theirs depleted. Not only was Treaty 6 signed under conditions of distress, alongside vastly different interpretations by indigenous peoples and settlers regarding what the treaty meant, but it also has a history of being violated. The Papaschase Cree were at the forefront of Treaty 6 violations during the 19th century; large portions of Edmonton, Alberta was once a reserve occupied by the Papaschase Cree until they were later coerced to surrender the land to settlers who didn’t want them in the city.

Beyond this, according to one hundred scientists who issued a proposal for a moratorium on the expansion of the tar sands in Alberta, the tar sands have hitherto constituted a great violation of indigenous rights:

Rapid expansion of the oil sands in Canada violates or puts at risk nation-to-nation agreements with Aboriginal peoples. In Alberta, oil sands mining is contributing to the degradation and erosion of treaty and constitutionally protected rights by disrupting ecological landscapes critical to the survival of Aboriginal culture, activities, livelihoods, and lifeways.

So, what exactly does O’Toole mean when he asserts that Canada already has a “world-leading recognition of indigenous rights”? Clearly he must think he lives in an alternate reality of some sort.

What about UNDRIP, then, does O’Toole see as so threatening? Perhaps it is Article 26, which declares that “Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired.” Emphasis here on which they have traditionally owned. O’Toole most likely sees UNDRIP as threatening precisely because it calls into question lands which have been seized under treaty violations—lands which, if returned to indigenous peoples, would pose a threat to the all-consuming expansion of the fossil fuel industry.

I must remind you again that O’Toole, to our knowledge, hasn’t accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from fossil fuel mega-corporations. His unwavering support for them, and his consequential disregard for indigenous peoples, is free.

To read more articles like this, visit our website at theleftgazette.com

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Trump Expected to Order Troop Withdrawal (Foreign Policy) U.S. President Donald Trump is set to order a dramatic and rapid cut in the number of U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia as he seeks action from loyalists newly installed at the U.S. Department of Defense. A perception that Mark Esper, the previous U.S. Secretary of Defense, would not agree to further troop reductions on so quick a schedule, was seen as one of the reasons for his removal from the post shortly after the U.S. presidential election. Although the numbers are not yet public, several media reports signal a halving of current troop levels in Afghanistan from the 4,500 troops currently stationed there. A reduction in Iraq would be less severe, but almost all of the 700 U.S. troops stationed in Somalia are expected to return to the United States. Although Republican leaders are wary, a troop withdrawal appears to be popular among the American public. According to a YouGov poll commissioned by the libertarian Charles Koch Institute in August, 76 percent Americans supported withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, with almost half of respondents strongly supporting withdrawal. The number supporting U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq was 74 percent. The desire to end America’s wars in the Middle East and South Asia is felt similarly among U.S. military veterans. An April poll by another Koch-backed group found 73 percent of veterans surveyed supported a full withdrawal from Afghanistan, an almost 13 percent increase from the previous year.

Covid-19 origin remains a mystery (South China Morning Post, Tumori Journal) The virus that causes the Covid-19 disease has now infected more than 54 million people across the planet, but the question of just where it came from remains a mystery. Researchers may have found a new link in this puzzle after discovering evidence suggesting the pathogen had infected people across Italy as early as September last year, or months before it was first identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The unexpected finding “may reshape the history of [the] pandemic”, said the team led by Dr Gabriella Sozzi, a life scientist with the National Cancer Institute of Milan, in a peer-reviewed paper published last week in the Tumori Journal.

Hurricane Iota bashes Nicaragua, Honduras after Eta floods (AP) Hurricane Iota battered Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast and flooded some stretches of neighboring Honduras that were still under water from Hurricane Eta two weeks earlier, leaving authorities struggling to assess damage after communications were knocked out in some areas. By late Tuesday, Iota had diminished to a tropical storm and was moving inland over northern Nicaragua and southern Honduras, but forecasters warned that its heavy rains still posed a threat of flooding and mudslides. The storm passed about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south-southwest of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, where rivers were rising and rain was expected to intensify. In mountainous Tegucigalpa, residents of low-lying, flood-prone areas were being evacuated in anticipation of Iota’s rains, as were residents of hillside neighborhoods vulnerable to landslides.

Boris Johnson, in self-quarantine, says he’s ‘bursting with antibodies’ (Washington Post) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson boasted that he was “fit as a butcher’s dog” and “bursting with antibodies” as he began two weeks of self-quarantine after having close contact with a lawmaker who contracted the coronavirus. Johnson was infected with the virus in March—and struggled to breathe in an intensive care unit for three days. His staff did not say on Monday whether he had been tested this time, but cases of coronavirus reinfection have been incredibly rare. Johnson on Monday said that he felt great and that because he previously had the disease he was “bursting with antibodies” but that he would self-quarantine for two weeks as “we got to interrupt the spread of the disease.” He added that he would continue to govern by video conference.

After Trump, Europe aims to show Biden it can fight for itself (Reuters) The Donald Trump era may be coming to an end. But European Union ministers meeting this week to discuss the future of the continent’s defence will say the lesson has been learned: Europe needs to be strong enough to fight on its own. EU foreign and defence ministers meeting by teleconference on Thursday and Friday will receive the bloc’s first annual report on joint defence capabilities, expected to serve as the basis for a French-led, post-Brexit, post-Trump effort to turn the EU into a stand-alone military power. “We aren’t in the old status quo, where we can pretend that the Donald Trump presidency never existed and the world was the same as four years ago,” a French diplomat said. The EU has been working since December 2017 to develop more firepower independently of the United States. The effort has been driven mainly by France, the EU’s remaining major military power after Brexit.

Hungary and Poland Threaten E.U. Stimulus Over Rule of Law Links (NYT) When European Union leaders announced a landmark stimulus package to rescue their economies from the ravages of the coronavirus, they agreed to jointly raise hundreds of billions of dollars to use as aid—a bold and widely welcomed leap in collaboration never attempted in the bloc’s history. But that unity was shattered on Monday when Hungary and Poland blocked the stimulus plan and the broader budget. The two eastern European countries said they would veto the spending bill because the funding was made conditional on upholding rule-of-law standards, such as an independent judiciary, which the two governments have weakened as they defiantly tear down separation of powers at home. Their veto has thrown a signature achievement of the bloc into disarray, deepening a long-building standoff over its core principles and threatening to delay the stimulus money from getting to E.U. member states, if a new agreement can be reached at all.

Armenia seethes over peace deal (Foreign Policy) Armenia’s government is under strain after signing a cease-fire agreement with Azerbaijan in a Russian-backed deal a week ago. On Monday, Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan resigned after a public disagreement with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan over the direction of peace talks. Pressure on Pashinyan has shown no sign of easing in recent days: 17 opposition parties have called for his resignation as street protests against his leadership continue.

Kissinger Warns Biden of U.S.-China Catastrophe on Scale of WWI (Bloomberg) Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said the incoming Biden administration should move quickly to restore lines of communication with China that frayed during the Trump years or risk a crisis that could escalate into military conflict. “Unless there is some basis for some cooperative action, the world will slide into a catastrophe comparable to World War I,” Kissinger said during the opening session of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum. He said military technologies available today would make such a crisis “even more difficult to control” than those of earlier eras. “America and China are now drifting increasingly toward confrontation, and they’re conducting their diplomacy in a confrontational way,” the 97-year-old Kissinger said in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait. “The danger is that some crisis will occur that will go beyond rhetoric into actual military conflict.” U.S.-China relations are at their lowest in decades. As President Donald Trump stepped up his criticism of China, blaming it for the spread of the virus and the death toll in the U.S., each side also has ramped up moves the other sees as hostile.

Hundreds of fraudulent votes were discovered. Then a fat green parrot was elected. (Washington Post) A plump, waddling parrot has soared past its competition to claim victory in New Zealand’s Bird of the Year contest, a tense race marked by attempted voter interference during a divisive month of campaigning. In what event organizers conceded was “a stunning upset,” the critically endangered kakapo flew into first place to steal the title—ruffling the feathers of those who say the bright-green parrot unfairly secured a second term as chosen bird. The bird-of-the-year controversy took flight after data analysts working with Forest & Bird discovered that roughly 1,500 fraudulent votes had been cast. The “illegal votes,” which were submitted using a suspicious email account and came from the same IP address in Auckland, briefly pushed the country’s tiny kiwi pukupuku bird into the lead, a brazen meddling attempt that sent officials and campaign managers into a flap. Those votes were immediately disregarded, organizers said. “It’s lucky we spotted this little kiwi trying to sneak in an extra 1500 votes under the cover of darkness!” Laura Keown, spokesperson for Bird of the Year, said in a statement Nov. 10, adding that officials did not “want to see any more cheating.”

Israelis Take On Netanyahu And Coronavirus Restrictions In Wave Of Civil Disobedience (The Intercept) Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, having been at the helm for over 11 consecutive years. He is also the first sitting prime minister to be indicted, currently on trial in three cases of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, arising from abusing his authority to grant favors for, among other things, favorable media coverage. While there have been small but stubborn protests against Netanyahu since investigations into his corruption first opened in late 2016, it was not until the coronavirus paralyzed Israel’s economy that people—many of them in their 20s and 30s—starting coming out in droves. For more than 20 weeks now, tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to call on Netanyahu to recuse himself for corruption, for failing to manage the pandemic, and for what many describe as his megalomania—doing whatever it takes to evade trial. They have been convening in massive numbers in front of his official residence, many carrying homemade signs, chanting in unison “Go!” and “We won’t leave till Bibi resigns.”

Protests that historically bring out large numbers of Jewish Israelis have long been dominated by Israel’s left-leaning peace camp, and a decade ago, others drawing attention to the high cost of living. What is happening now is different: With over a million people unemployed in a country of 9 million, culture and nightlife all but dead amid the pandemic, and people’s ability to travel outside the country severely restricted, a nationwide movement of disgruntled Israelis, spanning ages and to an extent sociocultural backgrounds, is practicing civil disobedience. The government has responded with relative force against a segment of the Jewish population that is largely unfamiliar with police brutality and has not had their individual rights violated. At the same time, the government has all but ignored incitement and incidents of violence against the protesters. The official response is giving Jewish Israelis a tiny window into what it has always been like for Palestinians, both in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza, whose protests are, prima facie, treated as suspect.

Ethiopia bombs Tigray capital (Foreign Policy) Ethiopia’s air force began bombing the Tigray region’s capital, Mekelle, on Monday in another escalation of the country’s civil war, now entering its third week. In a tweet he later deleted, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni called for the two sides to negotiate and halt the conflict “lest it leads to unnecessary loss of lives and cripples the economy.” Redwan Hussein, a government spokesman, said the war would be a “short-lived operation,” and that mediation offers from Uganda or another country were not being considered.

Amazon opens online pharmacy, shaking up another industry (AP) Now at Amazon.com: insulin and inhalers. The online colossus opened an online pharmacy Tuesday that allows customers to order medication or prescription refills, and have them delivered to their front door in a couple of days. The potential impact of Amazon’s arrival in the pharmaceutical space rippled through that sector immediately. Before the opening bell, shares of CVS Health Corp. fell almost 9%. Walgreens and Rite Aid both tumbled more than 10%. The big chains rely on their pharmacies for a steady flow of shoppers who may also grab a snack, or shampoo or groceries on the way out. All have upped online services, but Amazon.com has mastered it, and its online store is infinitely larger. Amazon will begin offering commonly prescribed medications Tuesday in the U.S., including creams, pills, as well as medications that need to stay refrigerated, like insulin. Shoppers have to set up a profile on Amazon’s website and have their doctors send prescriptions there. The company said it won’t ship medications that can be abused, including many opioids. Most insurance is accepted, Amazon said. But Prime members who don’t have insurance can also buy generic or brand name drugs from Amazon for a discount. They can also get discounts at 50,000 physical pharmacies around the country, inside Costco, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart and other stores.

R.I.P. whoopsie (Euronews) French broadcaster RFI has apologized after a bug on its website triggered the publication of obituaries of Queen Elizabeth II, Pelé, Jimmy Carter, Brigitte Bardot, Clint Eastwood and about 100 other prominent (and still alive) celebrities. RFI said in a statement that a “technical problem” led to the erroneous publications. Broadcasters often prepare obituary material in advance to publish it promptly when a death is announced.

[peepingtoad]

@minaa-munch​​ said: Do you have any headcannons with regards to Jiraiya and fuuinjutsu? The Sannin are part of the few shinobi who exhibit sealing prowess after all. | headcanon asks | always accepting! |

Hello again! First off, great question because it’s always been vexing to me that the Sannin are all so skilled in this area, and yet fūinjutsu overall is such an underexplored, underexplained discipline in general. On the other hand, this gives us a lot of room to have fun with it (which I think I’ve yet to really make any specific headcanon for) so here we go!

What I’ll say first is that I’ve been waiting (I dunno why, because nothing was stopping me) for a reason to post this particular thing for so long now, but in regards to the origin of Jiraiya’s skill in fūinjutsu, I see Danzō being the one to introduce him to it and initially mentor him in his youth—I’d say from perhaps age 13 or 14, for a couple of years. And for this I’ve thought of a few main reasons it’d come about:

Plain and simple, Danzō is keen to piss off Hiruzen by snagging his students because he’s a salty and bitter old goat—and at this point Orochimaru isn’t quite on the cards, what with still comfortably being Hiruzen’s favourite. Meanwhile Jiraiya is underestimated and somehow, despite being the way he is, manages to fly under the radar a lot. The raw potential is there too, and it’s intriguing to him.

To expand on Jiraiya going unnoticed, he is also basically an orphan, with no parent present enough to ever interfere. This is an important factor that Danzō no doubt values in the early stages of building ROOT—and whatever its intentions were at the time, Danzō was not particularly a shady guy at this stage. He could scope out the talent relatively unbothered.

But young Jiraiya’s talents are definitely something he’s seeking out, knowing he eventually wishes to operate from the shadows, to have people who can blend in seamlessly—and Jiraiya, being so personable and capable of ‘acting natural’ to the most human degree, is a great candidate for such a job. Sometimes he barely even seems like a shinobi at all, and that’s a strength for a spy.

Of course, after a few infuriating years he learns that basically everything about Jiraiya as a person is fundamentally unsuited to the type of work he wishes to do through ROOT. What a waste of time, huh?

So with some degree of general mentorship and information-digging going on, Danzō offers some training across various specialties and thus discovers that Jiraiya has a natural flair for fūinjutsu. In fact, despite being a slow and steady learner in many other areas of shinobi discipline, he takes to this like a fish to water. Book-learned basic principles aside, I imagine it’s a very hands-on, intuitive skill that requires great creativity to expand on the knowledge already possessed—which is probably minimal, besides Danzō’s own and the previous Hokage’s contributions, based on how relatively early Konoha is in the whole ‘document everything’ game (relatively).

Needless to say, Jiraiya has the creativity down pat. He designed the seal to suppress the Kyūbi chakra, after all, and was even proficient enough to seal Amaterasu. Hell, his toad-themed jutsu in themselves are quite the exercise in creativity, so even though Jiraiya turned out to be no good for ROOT, he would use that brilliant(!) mind to go on to play a part in developing many seals commonly used among Konoha shinobi today.

His main forte, or at least the area of fūinjutsu where he really went wild, is the design of numerous paper/scroll/tag-based seals, lending to the general convenience of use for shinobi of all ranks. They’re easy to pack, carry and replicate which helped to ensure that units were more prepared than ever. Chiefly, sealing elemental jutsu (exemplified by sealing Itachi’s Amaterasu fire) and weapons within scrolls, along with chakra suppression, vocal silencing, paralyzing and tracking seals. He didn’t invent these manners of sealing by any stretch, but made the designs more... streamlined? Accessible? More simple to draw and execute, I imagine, being generally simpler himself and not so constrained by the rigid teachings of any given clan. 

As an aside—the reason he was so focused on sealing objects at all was so that he could bring Items He Should Not Have into Places They Weren’t Welcome, while being more difficult to notice doing so. Make of that what you will. (It’s booze-related because isn’t it always? Hell, maybe even some of that dank Myōbokuzan kush that the toads are blatantly always smoking in those fancy kiseru... am I joking? Who knows)

Anyway. His weapon seal would go on to inspire Tenten’s technique of sealing many weapons at once. Again by no means did he invent this technique, because this is Tenten’s baby (plus he’s no bukijutsu specialist!), but the theory had its basis within the seals he designed for simple and chakra-efficient storage of weaponry.

Again being very much geared towards paper and tag seals, much of Jiraiya’s training that was unique to Konan, along with combining toad oil/fire and paper, was teaching her fūinjutsu and brainstorming ideas to make her paper jutsu even more formidable and unpredictable than before. We of course see her using all those explosive tags in the fight with Obito, but I think Konan + paper seals doing all sorts of shit, releasing sealed jutsu and who knows what else... was a missed trick!

While I believe Mito definitely had influence on Jiraiya’s fūinjutsu, I think it was indirect, and any learnings of Uzumaki sealing will have been passed to Jiraiya through Kushina and/or what Minato learned through Kushina (who in turn learned most heavily from Mito). My reasoning for this is that as the first jinchūriki, Mito seemed to be far more isolated than later hosts would be, particularly in her older years—and I don’t see there being much inclination to share Uzumaki sealing secrets with someone with no ties to the clan. Kushina and Tsunade? Yes. Random little ragamuffin? Perhaps not.

... I’ve already rambled on a fair bit and think I’m out of proper ideas for now, so I’m just gonna take a moment to list some short/stupid fūinjutsu-related headcanon ideas now:

When he calls Orochimaru’s work sloppy that one time, it’s a big ol’ front. But he does still think this is one area where he’s better than Oro. Nyehhh.

Why yes, of course he has seals for sexual use! Climax-blocking, stamina refreshing, instant shibari (chakra or actual rope), all over stimulation via the mildest raiton contained in a seal? You bet!

Released a book of ‘prank seals’ including ‘poof the object into nonexistence’ and ‘release deluge of oil’ and ‘suddenly frog’ amongst many others. This book is illegal in most countries.

He once sealed (and I guess, technically stealed bwahahaha) a hotel jacuzzi when he was drunk, forgetting that there was no such thing as plumbing on the road, and its not exactly the same experience having to make all that hot water yourself

No appropriate place to piss? SEAL IT. BANISH IT. OR USE IT AGAINST YOUR WORST ENEMIES.

Once heroically sealed an entire town’s vermin infestation, forgot about it, then accidentally released it later. Is now barred from that ryokan, forever.

Has an entire scroll devoted to condoms

And another devoted to flavoured lube.

Not so stupid, but the need for rapid seal-drawing helped him to develop his ambidexterity to the point where you can barely tell what his dominant hand originally was (however he places down his left hand to summon in all early manga panels I remember at least, which indicates that as a child he signed it with his left hand).

He’s able to store Gerotora easily with a seal concealed in his throat. That’s why it’s so easy for him, not because of some other gutter-brained reason, honest.

He got really good at kanji through learning fūinjutsu. It arguably helped him along in his writing career—especially when writing more traditional style poetry.

[kurogabae]

TSUBASA: TRAINWRECK CHRONICLES

And How Bee Train is Single-Handedly Propagating Cancel Culture in This the Year of Our Lord 2020

PART 1 – PART 2 – PART 3 – PART 4 -- PART 5 

[[ join me on PillowFort. i have free invite codes if you need an account ]]

So last post was all filler episodes and we're well into season two of this, and I cannot stress this enough, two season anime. The only canon arc we've had was Piffle so far and it was poorly handled and out of order. Surely, absolutely surely, we are in for a canon arc. Shara perhaps? Skip right to Le Court? We all know they'd never dare touch Tokyo. How are they going to pad out the rest of the season?

Why another filler. A bad filler. The dreaded filler that goes against pretty much all of Fai's everything.

It's "A Date With a Wizard" and Kurogane isn't the one getting the date. If you haven't watched or heard of this episode before, buckle up kids. It's a doozy. And big spoiler warnings ahead.

Fort City Bit AKA Fai Dates His Own Fucking Mom (but like an AU version so it's okay I guess???):

You read that right. Fai goes on a date with this world's version of Chii, who was an artificial being he modeled after his dead mother. I could end the rant here but oh, there is so much to this. So much. It's only one episode long but it feels like an eternity.

The premise for magic use in this world is that:

Everyone has magic and that magic is specialized

Your career path is based on your magic's specialization. Like in MLP with cutie marks. And everyone is Fine with this.

Everyone recharges their magic via the sun, which is risen by their king

The king is chosen yearly after everyone in the country has the same fucking dream one night

The whole country runs on magic, to the point that if there is no magic there is no food, no power, no anything. But that's fine, because every day they get recharged by the sun. Right? WRONG! Because the current king is being a depressed little shit and refuses to raise the sun, effectively dooming the country to a slow death. Neat.

BUT BEFORE ALL OF THAT! The episode opens with Fai having a nightmare about Ashura looming like he's auditioning for a role in Attack on Titan. Vague and menacing, which is literally all we know about Ashura because we know nothing about Fai's past. And we never will. At least not in anime-land. No one knows anything. The manga isn't pulling this fakey flashback shit, so why is the anime? I don't know, but I hate it!

Anyway, the family gets the low down from Touya and Yukito - who still do not recognize Sakura and that upsets me because of the implications that there is no Sakura in this universe. (Sidenote: Kurogane recognizes them, even though he's never met them in the anime so far so honestly, just fuck everything.) While Touya is feeding them a frankly lavish meal that he's magiced up he explained their king problems. This leads to my next issue - if you're so worried about running out of magic why are you using it so flippantly and in such an extra ass way? Can you not make normal food? Does it only exist in magic form? Maybe just summon some soup? Does all food cost the same amount of mana? THIS MAGIC SYSTEM IS BAD!

So, back to the whole the king is too sad to raise the sun which powers everyone's magic which is now beginning to run low. Another problem I have. You get a recharge on your magic everyday. They have not gotten ANY recharges for, and I'm quoting here, months. They change kings every year. So even on the low end of things we're looking at 3-4 months before anyone got concerned about the king just. Not raising the sun. Personally, I would have gotten worried after a few days, a week at most. No one wanted to go and find out like "Hey your highness, why no sun? What's got you down?"

That, however, would be logical. This is a place of magic and whimsy! Not logic. Fai is asked to use his magic to figure out what is wrong with their king. Predictably, he tells them they have a better chance of meeting god, so everyone gets thrown in jail. Because refusing to solve a country's weird problems is illegal. Not that jail has ever stopped them before. Not with Kurogane and his muscles around. And while I am always up for watching Kurogane break things I do have to wonder - why are they not just warping free? Mokona said there was no feather. No one said anything about being magically held back. And yet, they are running through the castle, endangering themselves and the children!!!

Obviously this is For Plot Reasons, and I use the words "plot" and "reasons" loosely here.

Somehow the kitties and puppies get separated and Fai and Sakura end up surrounded by guards. Does Fai finally fight? Does he open that can of whoop ass we all know he's been saving? No. He leaps into the air and takes flight like some sort of stork. And while Fai's current cocky attitude is refreshing, he's working on some sort of idiot bimbo in a horror movie logic of "to escape the building I must do upstairs". This is not a man made to last on his own.

And, like Shrek to Fiona, the stairs lead him to the highest room in the tallest tower. Fai, then, promptly loses his shit as if he's not fully aware that doubles exist across the multiverse. Like, yeah, it would be a shock and anyone would be freaked out at the sudden surprise of it all, but Fai acts like he thinks he's stepped back into Celes. Like an idiot. He's better than this.

Now, we learn more things about this messed up king situation. Not only does everyone have a dream every year electing the new monarch, but the new king gets their memory erased for the whole year so that they can "rule with a pure heart" or some shit. Which seems like a baaaad fucking way to run.... anything. At all. Ever. Might as well pick up a fresh baby and put it in charge. It's bad. And it gets worse.

Chii is sad, but she wants to hang out with Fai and it's the first time she's shown any interest in doing anything but being Sad so her babysitter spirits are all like "Oh that's neat!" And Fai takes this is his chance to just... run off for a night on the town with her? They literally vanish and leave Sakura ALONE IN THE CASTLE WITH THE SAME SPIRITS WHO JAILED THEM. In what fucking universe????

Look, they are trying so so so so so so hard to sell this FaiChii shit. Fai leaves Sakura alone in a castle where they have just busted out of jail, he has no idea where or how Kurogane and Syaoran are, he's clearly uncomfortable around Chii as she reminds him of what he's running from, and, oh yeah, she's a copy of his dead mother he created in another world in order to comfort him and his dead brother as a child. Everything is Fine. Let's go get tea.

I'm gonna rapid fire some S tier bullshit:

no one knows where Chii has taken Fai - why is there no way to track your baby-brained king?

Fai leaves with Chii happily and cheerily, again, leaving Sakura behind and alone - who is this man because it isn't Fai

the only clue they have to Fai and Chii's location is that they are no longer on castle grounds, yet somehow Syaoran knows Exactly Where to Look - because sure why not?

Chii doesn't know how to drink???? - does this happen with every king? do they have to be potty trained too? omg they really are babies this is a terribly way to run a country!!!!!!

teaching someone basic life functions is not romantic but Bee Train sure wants us to think it is

"I want to stay with Fai forever and always." - at least he panics at commitment still... and probably incest

“I should be thanking you. It’s been a while since I’ve felt this way.” - What? Uncomfortably reminded of your past and why your life is just shy of a living hell? Who are you? You are not Fai

Kurogane and Syaoran show up to save Fai and Chii, who have been surrounded by guards (I think, I can't remember exactly but I'm pretty sure they're there to take her back to the castle and her Sad Room). Fai apparently won't fight in front of Chii but whatever at this point.

It comes out that Chii is an artificial soul/being (like the Chii in Celes) and because of that she cannot leave the town or she DIES and that means the king dies and I guess they don't have a back up plan for that. Unsurprising but bad. Still, Chii begs Fai to take her away and show her the world and Fai like... hesitates? Thinks about it? Considers it?!?!? I dunno but he doesn't automatically say "Uh no, you'll die and also I have other shit to do, bye" and that's dumb for a lot of reasons.

Eventually he tells her no and convinces her to bring the sun back and be happy because she'll be able to remember him or some shit (you know, unless they take those memories too!) and  they all say goodbye. And I couldn't be more thankful.

Honestly, the real MVP here is Kurogane for not just losing his shit at all of this like I have. He's a better man than I.

Tune in next time as I continue to scream, in vain, at god.

PART 1 – PART 2 – PART 3 – PART 4 -- PART 5

[darkwoods-darkdreams]

Imagine you’re helping to perform a ritual (I)

When the priests had asked you to help them with their ritual, this was the opposite of what you had in mind. Most religious practices consisted of prayer and the drawing of some runes in the dirt in order to promote safety and prosperity. The city was fond of such practices. It was better than letting witches gain the public’s trust. The priests swore to help the city guard find and eliminate witches, but you hadn’t seen a single witch in your life.

It had started with you changing into a simple cotton dress and joining them for prayer. They led you into another room, which you had guessed was a secluded area for more focused, intense prayer. The walls, floor, and ceiling were covered in runes made from dark paint. There were four wooden stakes buried into the ground, about as tall as your hip from the dirt to the top. Chains were fed through holes in the wood, shackles on the ends. You stopped, the two priests who had been walking in front of you continued, but the rest were stuck behind the doorway. A chill worked its way down your spine. Something was wrong.

One of the priests shoved you forward, a second moving to your other side. You staggered toward the wooden posts, “What’s going on?” You looked to the head priest, the one who had convinced you to take part in the ritual.

He spared you a glance before beginning a prayer in a low tone. The other joined in. You were familiar with their usual verses, but this was something different. The priests on either side of you grabbed your arms, guiding you to the room’s middle.

“Please, I’m sorry, I don’t want to do this anymore,” You begged, as they forced you to your knees. One man held your arms to keep you from struggling while the other placed the shackles over your thighs, tightening them until you couldn’t squirm out. Your clothes were pulled from your body, leaving you bare before them. They pushed you, your hands meeting the dry earth, “Stop!” You tried to get up and hit them away, but they merely pinned you down while the other shackles were bound just above your elbows.

The head priest gestured to the others, who grabbed the ends of the chains and gently pulled. The metal became taut. You tried to resist, but they were too strong. Your arms gave out, forced onto your elbows when the chains tugged you down. Your legs were spread, causing you to shiver from the cold air. They hammered the other end of the chains deep into the ground. You wouldn’t be able to escape no matter how hard you pulled and struggled.

“Whatever I’ve done to deserve this,” You looked to the head priest, who was standing a few paces in front of you, “I’ll atone for it, but not like this. Please! What are you doing? This isn’t right!”

“It is that which must be done,” He replied, “The witches must be stopped. We cannot do so alone. Humans with only brute strength are powerless against those who use magic.”

Another priest knelt beside you, a paintbrush and pot of ink in his hands. He dipped the brush, then traced it over your body. Up your spine and along your ribs, the coarse hair irritated your skin. The wetness of the ink making you squirm in discomfort. He moved between your legs, creating patterns below your navel and across your hips. You could tell from the brushstrokes that they were runes. You tried to fight against your bindings, but you weren’t strong enough.

Just as the priest moved away from you, the sound of panting and footsteps became audible. You were facing away from the door, but you heard it creak open. The noises became frenzied. Then, the barking started. You tensed. Dogs were uncommon in the city. They were often considered too vicious to be pets, especially when witches or intense situations could drive them to attack. But you had seen the occasional stray lingering outside of the city.

The dogs were clearly agitated, growing louder and pulling at their iron leashes. You quivered, the clamor beginning to scare you. You didn’t know what purpose they had in the ritual, but your first guess was that they would be sacrificed. Such a practice was illegal. It shared the border with blood magic. However, if the priests were truly desperate, then they were likely to use anything if it meant destroying their enemies.

“Release the first,” The head priest ordered. A leash was dropped and you could hear one of the dogs running toward you. You screamed, closing your eyes as you waited for claws and teeth to sink into your body.

But it stopped just behind you. You felt puffs of hot air against your back, which then drifted downward. You squirmed, crying out in surprise as a rough tongue lapped at your entrance. You looked up at the head priest, wishing that he would see the evil of what was happening, but he merely watched. As the tongue dipped between your legs, you lowered your head out of embarrassment. Even though they were the ones in the wrong, you couldn’t bring yourself to face the priests standing around you. You couldn’t fathom how they had succumbed to committing such an atrocity.

The snout left your body and you let out a shaky sigh of relief. Your hope was quickly replaced with fear as the dog’s front paws moved to your hips, its claws digging into your thighs. Something warm prodded against your body in shaky thrusts. You tried to squirm away, only to wince in pain as the claws sank deeper into your skin, forcing you to stay still. You whimpered, tears streaming down your cheeks and falling to the dirt.

After a few seconds of blindly searching, the appendage finally found its mark. What started as a tentative nudge into your entrance immediately turned into a full thrust. You gasped, every breath cut short by the rapid pace. It only withdrew about an inch. It had to stay buried inside of you. You looked up to the head priest, about to beg for forgiveness, only to stop.

He stared at you coldly, then looked down. He brought his hands together and bowed his head, beginning a prayer that you didn’t recognize. The word were old. You knew of hymns that weren’t in the common tongue, but this was different. The words were harsh and low. The other priests soon joined in, ignoring your cries.

The dog’s movements became faster and more erratic. Its appendage began to swell at the base, pressing into your entrance and stretching you slightly. You tried to angle yourself further away, but chains on your arms and legs were pulled, offering more of your body. Another thrust. The knot pressed against you. Another jerk of the dog’s hips forced the bulb inside. When it tried to pull back, it caught and pulled you backwards with it. You bit your lip, the sensation of your walls being stretched around the knot as the dog continued to move making you quiver.

Its thrusts were sloppy and brutal, the scratches on your thighs and hips deep enough to sting with blood. It panted heavily as it found release. You tensed, nails digging into the earth as warm liquid spurted into you. The dog paused, giving a gentle tug. It had swollen enough to keep itself inside of you, the pull causing you to whimper and squirm. It continued emptying itself inside of you, fidgeting as it waited impatiently. It tried to withdraw again, but the knot was still too big. You cried out in pain.

Finally, after a few minutes had passed, the dog removed itself from your body and trotted away. It was satisfied, no longer agitated. However, the others still being held by their leashes were growing ravenous. You waited. You didn’t have the heart to hope that it would end with just one.

The head priest paused, his prayer ending despite the others continuing. He sighed, “Again.”

You braced yourself, another dog immediately running up and mounting you. It was bigger than the first and already heavily aroused. You closed your eyes. You almost began to murmur a prayer, but found yourself unable to speak the words.

You weren’t sure how long the ritual had been going for. You had lost count of the times you had been violated by the dogs. You were sure that some of them had returned for a second bout, but you couldn’t be sure since you couldn’t see any of them. There was only the head priest in front of you, still praying in a low voice.

Your body had relaxed, exhausted from the ordeal. You didn’t have the strength to keep your head up. Instead, you rested your cheek against the ground that was wet with your tears. You didn’t try to fight back anymore. You were too tired. Every time you almost slipped into unconsciousness, the pressure of fluid filling you made you groan.

They were waiting for something. The head priest was becoming impatient. He had muttered something about not being able to afford another mistake. You listened, knowing that he was likely referring to at least one other girl that they had tricked into compliance. You wondered when they would put a stop to the ritual if nothing changed. Perhaps they would continue until you fainted.

But the air in the room shifted, the temperature suddenly rising significantly. You panted, each breath feeling like you were inhaling fire. You were sweating heavily. One priest stopped to wipe his brow with his sleeve. He hesitated, glancing to the head priest.

“Keep going,” The head priest warned, “We cannot stop until it is here,” His words stirred you from semi-consciousness, your vision clearing slightly. You wondered what would come. You wondered if things would only get worse.

A low growl drowned every other noise out. It was coming from the back corner of the room. You could see something step forward. Even in the darkness, it gave off a faint light like fire buried within the earth. Your eyes widened. You had heard of such a creature. It was not of the mortal world. It remained in the darkest of realms, only appearing when great bloodshed or sin summoned it. The very thought that it had been lured by what the priests were inflicting upon you made you cower in shame.

The priests stopped, remaining still. One of them brought out their blessed talisman, “I-It’s here. The beast.”

The dogs all whimpered and hid themselves in the opposite corner of the room. They felt the sheer power lurking beneath its charred skin. The beast stepped toward you, becoming visible in the candlelight. You stared, eyes widening in fear. Your body shook with trepidation. It was twice the size of a normal dog, its sharp eyes glowing. Its tongue slipped from its mouth, moving across pointed, white teeth. It approached you, heat radiating from its body. Sweat dripped from your skin and mixed with your tears.

It walked toward your legs. You knew what was about to happen. The beast climbed over you, its dark fur brushing against your back. It wasn’t hot to the touch, but soft. It felt like the soot remains of a house burnt to the ground. It was the skin beneath continued to give off waves of heat. Your hair shifted with the beast’s every exhale. It stood there for a moment, its only movement the rise and fall of its chest. The priests were silent, worried that the slightly noise would cause the ritual to fail. They refused to move, even with the sweltering temperature of the room.

The beast shifted, breaking the stasis. Something pressed between your legs, so hot that you worried that you would be burned. You screamed, but the sound caught in your throat as your entrance was forced open, widening in order to accommodate the beast’s girth. It was much larger than what you had experienced from the dogs. Your body twitched involuntarily as you were filled to the brim, tears building in the corners of your eyes as the tip met your cervix. The heat was unbearable, drifting just beneath the temperature required to burn you.

It withdrew slightly, then pushed back inside of you. The priests watched in an awed silence. The humidity made it hard to breathe, your panting growing worse with each thrust. Being so full was clouding your mind. Small moans bubbled up from your chest. The pace remained slow, but the sheer size caused you to whimper as your walls constricted around the beast. It kept moving, disregarding your cries of pleasure. You were oversensitive now, unable to stay quiet. Your cheeks burned with shame, a hand moving to cover your mouth and muffle the sounds you were making.

The beast growled, its thrusts becoming faster and rougher. Its claws dug into the ground, teeth bared. The base was swelling, but the appendage was already so deep that it widened inside of you. You squirmed, uncomfortable. Your body ached for more but you refused to succumb to its desires. It could only move an inch back and forth, pressing against your cervix and then pulling at your walls. You tensed around it again, oversensitive to every movement.

A scorching heat met your cervix. You stiffened, fearing that it was too much for your body to handle. But there was no pain, just warmth. The pressure built, but with the knot buried inside of you, there was nowhere for the fluid to go. It filled your womb, growing heavier with each pump. The beast went still, allowing for its body to take care of the rest. It went on for what felt like ages. The priests you could see exchanged glances, as if concerned.

Then, the beast stepped back. Its appendage slipped from your body. Its seed poured out, pooling between your knees. Most of it was kept inside your body due to your hips being higher than your shoulders. When you squirmed, you could feel your stomach brush against your thighs. The room grew cold. The beast had been satisfied and disappeared.

One of the priests stepped toward you, but the head priest cut him off, “No! Wait, it’s not done yet.”

You rested your cheek against the ground, exhausted. The heat swirling in your womb kept you from drifting into sleep. You waited, wondering what they were expecting to happen. The beast was gone. It seemed like the ritual was over.

But your body throbbed. You shut your eyes, overwhelmed by the pain. It coursed from your hips to your ribs, then through your spine. The runes were reacting, glowing faintly. It gave off the same colour as the flame beneath the beast’s fur. You inhaled sharply, wishing you could smudge the runes enough that they could no longer bring you discomfort.

Whatever the priests had wanted done, it had worked. The head priest sighed in relief, gesturing to the others, “Release her.”

You felt the chains loosen, allowing you to sink to the ground completely. When your stomach was pressed between your body and the earth, more of the fluid spilled from your entrance. You paid no mind to it, far too exhausted to care. They turned you onto your back, looking over the runes. The light slowly faded, once again returning to black ink. The pain disappeared, allowing you to relax. Two of the priests removed your shackles and lifted you from the ground. They carried you out of the room and down a few hallways. They reached a smaller room with a cot. There was a chain attached to the wall.

Your mind registered what was happening and you kicked at them, trying to escape, “No! Let go of me!” Your struggling was in vain. They shoved you to ground, one keeping you still while the other fastened the iron around your neck. You pulled at it, trying to remove it or loosen it enough to get your head out, but it was useless. You winced, pressure growing in your womb and keeping you from yelling at them. You had trusted them and they had betrayed you.

The head priest stepped forward, a cruel look crossing his features. You cowered in fear. He gave off the impression that he was so kind during sermons, but it was all just an act. His war against the witches had driven him to the brink of sanity. Or perhaps he had always been this cruel and was using his position as a man of faith to prey on the weak. He drew closer, “Do you realize what we’ve done, girl? We’re going to win against the witches. We will eradicate them from this world and send them screaming into the darkness. But we need allies to do that, and we’ve just obtained one of the most fearsome creatures in existence. You are the contract binding his allegiance to us. When you’ve served your purpose, he will grant us unimaginable power,” He laughed, “He’s a lonely creature, which made obtaining his loyalty all too easy. The runes reacted, after all. Yes, you’re going to give him some nice pups in return for his help.”

Your blood ran cold. The runes they had painted onto your skin were to promote fertility. They would then glow when the seed took. You were pregnant with a monster’s young. Fresh tears rolled down your cheeks, “No, please. You can’t do this…”

They ignored your cries, leaving the room and locking the door behind them.

[stevieang]

Life As You Know It

Pairing: Tony Stark x Fem!Reader Insert, college AU

Word Count: 3500

Warnings: High school clique drama, implied bullying, mean girls, boy/girl best friends, vague reference to death if you look sideways and upside down

Tags:   @3dsaunt​  @andiyholly​  @averyrogers83​  @babybluesunsets​ @bettercallsabs​ @brittyevans​  @brookebarnes​ @captain-rogers-beard​ @cecygee​​   @csrfavs​​   @docharleythegeekqueen​​  @dorito-distractions​​  @everythingisoverrated​​  @fabicchi​​  @fandomliane​ @favhearts​​  @fictivefrolic​ @flawless-disaster​​  @gifsbysimplysonia​​ @hazeleyedgirl7​​   @hennessy0274-blog​​ @inumorph​​ @jaguars2007​​  @jaamesbbarnes​​ @jamesbarnesappreciationsociety​​  @janeyboo​​ @joshburtonhellzyess​  @jouhainak​​ @learisa​​ @lemurian-starship​ @letsgetfuckingsuperwholocked​​ @lilylovescomics​​ @linesal​ @lojo83​   @lookwhatyoumademequeue​  @lostinspace33​  @madicardi​  @magellan-88​​   @mamapeterson​​   @marvellouslyaveragesblog​ @me-a-hopeless-romantic​​  @mentalfictionleftmyassbehind​ @meyoko10​​  @mindingmyownbusiness​​ @minesig​ @mizzzpink​​ @naritasamoosa​ @neverleturheartshow2​​  @nomadicpixel​​  @ohwhatamessiam​ @part-time-patronus​​ @patzammit​​ @pinkieandthebrain1​​ @redqueen1221​​ @sebbytrash​ @sixweekcure4dreams​​  @sgtjbuccky​​  @sony-undead18​ @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan​​  @stark-spangled-banner-man​​  @st-eve-barnes​​ @stillherebiandabitch​​ @sunriserose1023​​ @suz-123​​ @the-real-kellymonster​​ @their-bibliophile​   @tutis24​​ @ultracolorfulnerdcollection​ @vinygurl​ @winterisakiller​ @winterismyfavoriteseason1945​​  @winters-beauty​​ @yaykitty3​​

Summary: You and Tony Stark were best friends, your mothers were best friends, and you were always there for each other.  You went to the same high school and attended college in the same town.  Maria Stark loved you like her own, and knew that, given the right amount of time and opportunity, more could develop between you and her son.  Would the two of you catch on?

A/N: Congratulations to @fanficfaerie for this follower milestone, it is so well deserved!  Thank you for creating and running this Disney Song and Quote Challenge, I am sure it is time consuming and taxing in ways I can’t imagine.  I appreciate the opportunity to participate, though I’m a tad nervous - I’ve never written Tony Stark before - hope this fits the bill!  

Quote: “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” Winnie the Pooh 

You were fuming.  The good-girl, goodie-two-shoes rep that you so carefully cultivated with your teachers had always served you well.  It was a complete act, but only your besties had any inkling.  Until today, when the meanest of mean girls in your private school learned that you were responsible for a social media post detailing her daily atrocities.  Your best friend Tony Stark helped you erase all traces of a digital fingerprint, but somehow, Christine found out and, after enlisting her parents’ help, had your ass hauled to the principal’s office. 

As you listened to the adults yelling, lecturing, and threatening, all you could think of was the scene in “The Incredibles” when Dash’s teacher was trying to convince the principal to suspend him for putting a tack on his chair, to no avail.  Except in your reality, there was no parent in the room to defend or punish you.  Your parents were divorced, your Dad living on the other side of the country and your Mom, a pharmaceutical sales rep for a national company, always on the road.  You had a good relationship with both your parents, but they were of the mind that the biggest part of their job was to instill solid moral character and independence from an early age.  When you turned 16 and started driving, your mom made good on her plan to prepare you for adulthood.  You had to complete all necessary home and school functions, maintain an acceptable GPA, incur no disciplinary problems, and communicate daily with her about the little and big things going on in your life.  In exchange, you could come and go as you pleased, and have run of the house when she traveled, which was more often than not.  Your living situation was the envy of the school.  You weren’t about to do anything to mess it up, but today, it seemed you were on the fast-track to doing just that.

As your mom was out of town, the person they called, your guardian in absentia, was your Mom’s best friend since childhood, Maria Stark.  Mrs. Stark was used to being called in to various offices of authority to answer for her son’s behavior, ego, or infractions.  Tony started building internal combustion engines when he was 6, so high school was something he could have skipped altogether, but was forced upon him by his mother, to “foster social skills,” and help him get the “traditional teenage experience.”  He was smarter than all his teachers and never let an opportunity pass where he could point that out.  It was never well received.  You two made a great “we don’t fit the mold and we love it” duo.  

“Explain to me again why we’re here, sir, because I am at a loss to understand what rule this young lady has broken.”   Maria was elegant, sophisticated and, in her own right, a very smart woman.  When she asked a question, most likely she knew the answer; she was simply gathering information to support her argument against the unlucky person sitting across from her.

“Mrs. Stark, this young lady used social media to smear and defame the reputation of another student.  As the school handbook states, this is grounds for detention and possibly suspension, as well as joint treatment sessions with the school counselor.”  You leapt out of your chair, full of righteous teenage anger, intent on storming out.  Maria’s hand on your arm and supportive gaze cooled your temper; she wasn’t going to let anyone steamroll you.

The next hour was spent determining what evidence, if any, conclusively linked you to the incident.  Turns out, there was none, other than the suspicion of parents who were mortified that their daughter’s abhorrent behavior was now out in the world for anyone to see.  You admitted to nothing, and though Christine’s face was chartreuse as the rapidly-growing Twitter feed was read aloud, there was nothing that pointed to you, other than the well-known fact that you hated the girl’s guts.  It was the tragically classic scenario of a beautiful popular girl collecting herdmates to make fun of and torture girls like you, someone who didn’t fit nicely in any round holes. You left with a week’s worth of detention for the bogus crime of “lack of adherence to the school’s honor code” and a promise to clear your name when they found out you were innocent.  After you filled him in, Tony shared your disbelief, and immediately started plotting.

You and he sat in the backseat while Maria drove home, spending the entire time texting with back and forth about ways to get even with the principal, to continue to make Christine’s life terrible, and to find out who suggested you were responsible.

“Hey, you two.  I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I know it’s some kind of revenge plan.  I won’t have that, Tony.  I will not have you two digging yourself any deeper.”

Tony:  My mom knows it was you?

You: I never said a word, but she’s not dumb.

Tony: No she’s not, but do you want to tell her?

You: u think I should?

Tony: I would.

You: You would put up a billboard on the highway to announce you did it.  Not a great role model.

Tony: I’ll give you that.

“Ok, Mrs. Stark, no revenge.  I promise.”  You leaned forward to lay your hand on her shoulder.  “Thank you so much for being there today.  I’d probably be suspended if you hadn’t been.”

“Yes, you’re right, I’m sure.  Let’s forget all this and have some dinner, shall we?”

The Starks employed a chef, but when Mr. Stark was traveling, Maria often chose to cook.  Tony ate, but he preferred the company of metal and circuits to people, so he often brought his plate in his room.  When you joined them, he was required to come to the table, and Maria always prepared something you both loved to eat.  Tonight, it was vegetable and pasta salad with steak and potatoes, accompanied by calm and civilized conversation that focused on things other than what happened earlier in the day.  You appreciated not having to rehash the event, again, not being judged.  You looked at the mother and son sitting next to you and felt cared for, taken care of.  It was nice to not be a grown-up for once.

Tony’s thoughts were multiplying on how to get back at that little bitch Christine and her circle of hags.  He looked at you, his best friend, one of the few people in the world that cared about him without reservation or expectations.  He looked at you, the girl who stood by him at every step, every failure, every success, who encouraged his work, appreciated his failures, and called him out on his bullshit at every opportunity.  Senior year was in full swing and he knew he never wanted to be without you.  He also knew your insecurities and that made his heart bend even more, because he had them, too.

Maria looked at you and her son and smiled.  Your rapid-fire conversation was smart, witty, and, at times, vulgar, but with an undercurrent of true affection.  When she and her best friend delivered what would be their only children within a month of each other, they made a promise to remain a part of each other’s lives.  That promise had borne this friendship playing out at her dining room table.  Tony looked at you adoringly, and you returned it with a gaze full of laughter and spark, two things that were necessary if you were going to ever be more than friends.  Maria knew the ingredients for a great match were already there, all that was needed was time and opportunity, and there would be plenty of both.

Until there wasn’t.

After graduating from high school, you both attended college in Boston;  Tony blowing shit up at M.I.T. and you diving head-first into your double-major at Boston College.  He was famous before he arrived, but after? He was a magnet for all things flashy, fun, illegal, and new.  He was surrounded wherever he went; inundated with phone numbers, obvious invitations to a variety of one-night stands, and so much debauchery and alcohol that the head of campus security told the president of MIT, who then called the big man, Howard.  After the browbeating, the only change in his behavior was an improved ability to slide under the radar and avoid trouble.  You only found out on the increasingly-rare occasion you texted each other.

You lived in separate apartments, attended different schools, pursued different fields of study.  It was natural that you wouldn’t see each other as you once did.  You shied away from the big loud crowds that were Tony’s new normal, and he couldn’t understand why you enjoyed spending quiet time with friends that weren’t him.  The waning friendship hurt both of you, in ways the other didn’t recognize.  Tony sought out the company of an unceasing string of one-night stands and you finally decided to open your heart to guys whose names weren’t always in the paper.  Life went on, with a little less spark, less laughter, less heart.  The holidays were fast approaching, and this time, they felt different; and not in a good way.

Thanksgiving break was a quick one, spent catching up with family and marshalling your energy to push through finals.  For the first time in your memory, you did not want to go to the Stark’s home for the traditional day-after-Thanksgiving dinner, where everybody brought a dish of leftovers, the Stark’s added liquor and pizza, and you caught up for hours.  You tried to get out of it, but it was non-negotiable, from your mother’s perspective.  You planned on staying away from Tony, kissing Maria and Howard, and coming home with claims of a headache.  After the party, the Moms talked and compared notes about how glum their children became at the mention of the other’s name.  They each took it upon themselves to plant seeds that would ignite the feelings they knew you had for one another.  

“Hey, Stark’s here for you.”  You were on your bed, hair up, pencil through the elastic, piles of books and your laptop spread out everywhere.  The sigh that escaped did not go unnoticed by the playboy who didn’t bother to wait for an invitation to enter your room.

“I heard that sigh and I resent it.  What? No confetti? No nudity?  What the hell?  When did you turn into a grown-up?”  You snorted, knowing this line of questioning was meant to either convince you to do something you didn’t want to, or to help assuage his guilt.  “I grace you with my presence on a Friday night and this is what I find? The old lady librarian look?”  It didn’t matter to him what you wore, anything you chose made his heart leap, but damned if he was going to let you know that.

Your glasses slipped off as you leaned forward, doubled over in laughter.  “Guess so, T.  There’s this thing most neurotypical humans do.  It’s called “studying,” it’s in every college handbook ever printed, and if I don’t do it, I’m not going to Oxford.”  Your undergraduate work had led you to your calling, Cognitive Neuroscience studies.  Your entire life’s goal was to gain admission to the Wellcome Trust Doctoral Training Program in Neuroscience at Oxford, which meant every grade counted, every test and paper was important.  You had no time to indulge in dinner out, let alone participate in the Unequivocally Unchecked Life of Tony Stark.

His facade fell, a bit, as he sat next to you and gently placed your glasses back on your nose.  You immediately pushed them up to avoid his eyes, and pulled loose papers out from under his exceptionally toned butt.  Not that you noticed.  “C’mon, it’s Friday night, when’s the last time you left this apartment to do something other than study? I told our moms I would check in on you.”

“Ahhhh, so that’s why you’re here, Moms Mandate.”  Your disappointment must have been evident, even to the oblivious Tony Stark.

“No.  I’m here because I didn’t get to see you over Thanksgiving and I miss hanging out with someone who doesn’t kiss my ass.  Though, if you wanted to kiss anything of mine, I would be more than open to that idea.”  Tony rarely seemed awkward, he covered it so well with bravado that it took a trained eye to realize that insecurity bubbled close to the surface.

You surprised yourself, and him, when you slowly leaned forward and, at the last minute, kissed his forehead.  His expression caused you to cry with laughter, again, as you hopped up and grabbed something to drink.  A surge of pride filled you; you had unsettled the unflappable Tony Stark.  “You can report back to the Moms that I am fine.  Working very hard, achieving excellent grades, exhibiting an appropriate level of safety, enjoying my friends, and unsullied by neither man nor woman.”  He sighed and dropped his head in disgust.

“That is the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard.  C’mon, you’re coming with me, you are going to experience Boston nightlife and actually live the college dream.”  He was clearly thrilled with the idea, but you put the brakes on his party train.  

“Thank you for taking on the role of social protectorate, but I can’t.  I am not going to engage with you about why and how, I just need you to trust that I cannot go out tonight.”  His skepticism didn’t make you waver one bit.  

“Ok, then tomorrow night, and I am not taking no for an answer.  You are going to get all dolled up and enjoy a breathtakingly irresponsible night on the town.  My treat.”  Your heart flipped at the invitation, but it didn’t stop you from speaking your mind.

“As enticing as that invitation is, I do not want to be an anonymous member of the Tony Stark entourage.  I can find my own fun, thanks.”  You stood and opened the door, picking up additional reference materials and returning your attention to the task at hand.  “Bye T, thanks for stopping by, say hi to your Mom for me.  Please tell her I can’t wait to see her and your Dad at Christmas.”  

Tony Stark was unaccustomed to being dismissed.  He knew that other than his mother, you were the only person that could do it and cause him to pause and re-evaluate his behavior.  As he left, he knew he had to prove to you that he was sincere, that he wanted to hang out with you, help you lighten up, and watch you enjoy yourself.  You gasped and looked at him as he gently encircled your waist and hugged you.

“I miss you.  I want to spend time with you.  Please.”  You froze in his arms, unable to process what was going on.

“Sure, T.  Text me tomorrow and let me know what’s up.  We can meet up somewhere, no problem.”  Little did you know that Tony had much more in mind than a simple dinner.

You awoke to a confusing text.

Tony: When you read this, please head to the campus library and ask for the head librarian.  She has something for you

You: Ummmmmm, ok?

You’d be lying if you didn’t admit you were a tiny bit fluttery that Tony had taken the time to think about you to this degree.  You grabbed a bagel and your protein shake and headed over.  You knew the head librarian, Ms. Williams, very well and she smiled upon seeing you.

“One moment, dear.  I’ve got something for you.”

Follow this clue to the 8th floor.  You will find an old friend waiting in the Children’s Literature section, with your next objective. You complied, searching for the provided shelf number when you arrived at the 8th floor.

You laughed as The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh came into view, with a Pooh and honey pot bookmark stuck in the pages.  This book was a staple of your childhoods.  Your mothers gave each other copies, read the stories to you every night, and your favorite quote was under your senior picture in the high school yearbook.  Your excitement grew as you remembered how fun Tony could make the most mundane events.  You also wondered how the hell he had time to do all this between last night and this morning.

The bookmark was tucked into the page with the quote, and you smiled at his sweetness.  He knew how much it meant to you.  

 “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” 

Did you think I could forget these words? They mean as much to me as they do to you.  I wanted to remind you of how much you mean to me.  There’s a surprise waiting for you at your apartment, where you’ll find the next clue.

You practically sprinted back home, gasping when you saw a beautiful soft yellow dress hanging on your closet door, with an appointment card to a very expensive salon on Newbury Street.  You turned the card over and continued to smile - Tony had already paid for whatever you wanted done and had left a tip. He really could be thoughtful when he took the time.

It was early December, so you bundled up before heading out to your appointment.  When you left, you could not believe the transformation.  

You: Thanks Tony, I can’t believe you did all this.

Tony:  For you? Of course.  I’ll be by at 8pm.  Can’t wait to see you.

That felt different.  Your insides squished and squirmed - whether it was excitement or nerves, you weren’t sure.  You dressed, beautified, and waited.  

Tony: I hope you’re ready, beautiful.  On my way.

Geez, he was laying it on thick.  You laughed when he pulled up to your building in a regular old car he must have borrowed from someone’s father and jumped out to open your door.  You had no idea why he would not drive one of his ridiculously flashy fleet.  You were a huge Madonna fan in your younger years, and this struck you as the plot of her “Material Girl” video; was he trying to impress you by thinking he was just as “regular” as you were? Tony could never be described as “regular” or “average,” even if he didn’t have a dollar to his name.

Tony never really stopped.  He momentarily paused, he changed his focus, but his brain, his body, his mouth were always in high gear.  So when he got out of the car and saw you, it was a wholly different feeling.  He had never seen you look so beautiful - the dress wrapped within your white winter coat, your cheeks pink from the cold, your hair beautifully styled.  He hadn’t realized how long your hair had gotten and how much it changed your entire appearance.  

“You look stunning.  I did a very good job picking this out, didn’t I?” Now this was your best friend.  

“Yes, Tony, you did an amazing job.  I loved the clues, loved the book, loved everything.  It made me realize how much I missed you.”  You turned to him and asked him to stop.  “How much I missed the real Tony Stark.” His eyes closed as you softly kissed his cheek and let your hand land on his.

“C’mon, time for me to show you off and ply you with insanely expensive drinks.” He kept his promise.  The night was fun, like old times, but prettier and with alcohol.  You talked about everything and nothing, filling each other in, sharing your hurts and stories and plans, and reveling in each other’s company.  Neither of you wanted the night to end, so you invited him to your apartment for a nightcap.  You were shocked when he refused.

“No thanks, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”  Your eyes questioned and he saw the sting of rejection.  He looked at you, held your hands, and pecked your lips with his.  You stepped back, stunned. “You have no idea how much I want to, but I want to earn you, and I haven’t yet.”

“What does that mean? What are you trying to earn?”

“Someone I don’t deserve.  You.”  With another soft peck on the cheek, he was gone.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas break, you wondered if that night was a dream.  You and Tony awkwardly texted a bit, but didn’t see much of each other in the mad rush of finals.  After handing in your last project and dragging yourself to your apartment to make up as much lost sleep as possible, you were stunned out of your stupor by the sight of Tony waiting in front of your door. 

“You’re done, right?” His tired smile mirrored your own.

“Yes, thank the Lord in Heaven and every deity known to modern man.”  

“Good.  I wanted to show you something I’ve been working on.”  He stood and took out his phone, ready to press play when you put your hand over his.

“Tony can we go inside so I can sit down and maybe sleep for 2 days?”  He barely heard you, his nerves clearly a distraction, but he nodded and sat next to you, relaxing when you lay your head on his shoulder.

He apologized for leaving you hanging since your night out, for not paying enough attention to you, for not showing you how much you meant to him.  “My mom also slapped me once or twice to drive the point home that I’ve been a douchebag.  I’m sorry.”  He cued up the video on his phone and played it.  The introduction included the theme song to the “Winnie the Pooh” movie and cut to your favorite quote.  He took your silence for awe, then realized you were sleeping soundly.

As he tucked a blanket around you and kissed your forehead, he whispered, “You are the reason I am braver and stronger, and that’s because you’re smarter.  I hope you hear me because I can’t imagine saying it out loud again.”  You smiled to yourself as you snuggled under your covers and drifted off to sleep.

The End

[linskywords]

1M Words Week: 1988 Dragons

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7

The second in a series of seven starts of unfinished stories I’m posting to celebrate my having hit 1M words on AO3 (today!!!1!!11!!).

This one is an AU where dragons are real, non-hockey-player Jonny gets turned into one, and hockey-player Patrick finds him in an alley.

The important thing, Patrick thinks as he smuggles the half-grown dragon into his apartment at three in the morning, is that the team can never know about this.

***

Patrick’s not planning to smuggle an illegal dragon when he comes home that night. Obviously not. He’s just out, minding his own business, coming back from a totally respectable evening. Or, fine, maybe he’s a little drunk. But he’d challenge even the soberest of soberers not to be moved by that little dragon face in an alley.

So what if at first he was terrified. Humans are supposed to be terrified of dragons, okay, it’s like survival instinct or whatever. But this little guy, well, he clearly isn’t like the ferals they warn you about on the news. Patrick took one look and leapt back, because he was drunk, not stupid, but the dragon didn’t charge him or go for his throat or anything. He just turned his head, leaned it against the pile of garbage, and keened.

After that, there was no hope for Patrick.

So yeah, he knows how dumb it is. But that’s why he’s smuggling, at three a.m.

This would be easier if he lived in one of those normal-people buildings without a doorman. As it is, Patrick’s going to have to do some quick thinking.

“Oh heyyyy,” he says to the doorman, whose name is Teddy. He’s pretty sure. “Um, do you want to look out here? I saw a…thing.”

Teddy gives him a narrow-eyed look. Teddy definitely thinks he’s drunk. Which, to be fair, is true.

Fortunately for Patrick, Teddy gets paid to not call residents on their questionable drunk antics. “Certainly, Mr. Kane,” he says, and he gets his undoubtedly long-suffering self up from behind the desk and goes to look outside.

Goes right towards Patrick, who definitely didn’t think this through. Patrick angles his body in the hope that it will obscure the suspiciously smoking lump under his jacket. “Um, I meant by the back door!” he yelps, and Teddy gives him a weird look but turns and goes toward the door to the parking garage. Patrick seizes the moment to make a break for the elevators.

The doors slide close, and Patrick slumps a little in relief. Not too far, though, because his balance is definitely thrown off by the dragon in his coat.

The dragon hisses his displeasure at all the rapid movements. It scrabbles at Patrick’s belly when the elevator lurches, and it’s not like it’s actually trying to dig into Patrick’s skin, but dragon claws are no joke, okay?

“Stop it,” Patrick mutters at the dragon. “We’re almost there.”

The dragon bats at the collar of his coat, like it’s making a bid for freedom.

“No, you can’t get out,” Patrick says. “I have neighbors. What if one of them comes into the elevator at three a.m., huh?”

In that case, they’d probably notice the dragon even under Patrick’s coat. But at least it might take them, like, a couple extra seconds to do so.

The elevator finally, <i>finally</i> comes to a stop at Patrick’s floor, and Patrick speed walks down the hall to his condo. There’s a really nosy woman in the condo across the hall, and he wouldn’t put it past her to be away at three in the morning, peering out her peephole just waiting for illegal dragon smugglers to come by. Or something.

The dragon makes a pitiful noise from inside his coat. “Yeah, yeah, just a minute,” Patrick says, and he manages to get the door open and staggers into the kitchen so that he can dump the dragon onto the table.

If the dragon was unhappy inside his coat, it seems to be even less pleased with being dumped on a table. Smoke curls from its nostrils in a distinctly displeased manner. Patrick’s glad he went with the kitchen and not somewhere more flammable, like the living room couch.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he says. “First rule. You are not allowed to light anything on fire.”

The dragon huffs a breath.

“I mean it,” Patrick says. “First fire in here, and you’re going straight back outside.”

The dragon looks away and starts preening a wing. Patrick swears it looks unimpressed.

It was hard to tell outside, but it turns out it’s actually a reddish dragon. Reddish-black, maybe. Like, in some lights, it looks like some of its scales are red and others are black, but then if Patrick moves his head they’ll switch, like some kind of holograph.

“Hey, you’re kinda pretty,” Patrick says. He reaches out a hand to touch the dragon’s head, and it snaps at him and hisses. Then it goes back to cleaning its wing.

“Okay, okay, no touching, I got it.” Patrick doesn’t mention that he had to touch the dragon plenty to get it here. “So, you want some food?”

The dragon swings its head back around so fast Patrick’s surprised it doesn’t get injured. “Ha, thought so,” Patrick says with a grin and goes to see what he has in his fridge.

He’s not really sure what dragons eat, but probably meat, right? He has a couple of steaks in the freezer, and he throws one of them into the microwave to defrost. It’s maybe not the healthiest meal, but he doesn’t want to deal with the complications of dragon digestion until he’s done some research.

Speaking of which. He should probably do some of that. He’s not sure if it’s safe to Google dragon care from his laptop, though. What if the government watches that shit? He’s pretty sure the Dragon Containment Bureau doesn’t care <i>that</i> much, but you never know with governments. Maybe he can get an actual book. If they even make one. It’s not like dragon-rearing is a legal activity.

Hm. He’s starting to realize why this was such a dumb thing to do.

The steak is defrosted, so he takes it out of the microwave. It’s still, you know, raw, but that’s probably how dragons like their food, right? “Here you go,” he says, depositing the plate in front of the dragon.

The dragon looks at it. Then at Patrick. Then at the food. Then back at Patrick.

“What?” Patrick says. “Is it the wrong cut for you?”

The dragon rolls its eyes. Honestly. It should not be possible for a dragon to roll its eyes, but it does.

“Well, it’s all I have,” Patrick says. He crosses his arms. “If you want rare manticore, it’ll have to wait for the morning.”

The dragon appears to think it over for a minute. Or maybe just to sulk. It’s hard to tell, with a dragon face. Then it lowers its head and takes a delicate bite. Then another bite, much less delicate and much faster, like all of a sudden it realized it was ravenous and needs to eat the entire steak in the next five seconds.

“Okay, so you do like it,” Patrick says, just as the dragon makes a little yelping sound like pain and flinches hard.

“Oh—oh shit, you’re hurt,” Patrick says, because yeah, that’s probably not what a dragon’s wing is supposed to look like.

The dragon keens softly and turns its head to start doing the thing it was doing to its wing before. So, not grooming, then. Patrick raises a hand to touch, and the dragon hisses again.

“I’m not going to hurt it,” Patrick says. “I just want to see.”

The dragon looks at him for a long moment. Patrick holds its gaze. The dragon’s eyes are a really deep brown, and maybe Patrick’s imagining the pain he can see in them. But finally it moves its head back and lets Patrick get at the wing.

Patrick touch his fingers to the scaly surface. It’s surprisingly warm—the dragon’s whole body was warm when Patrick had it under his jacket, but this is pulsing hotter than that. Like an infected wound. The wing is a thin membrane of flesh strung on a webbing of bone, except for one spot where the flesh is torn and the bone is bent at an angle that really doesn’t look natural.

Patrick touches the wing near the wound. The dragon hisses a little but doesn’t move away. Patrick is suddenly reminded that he’s drunk and utterly without dragon knowledge. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, I don’t know how to fix this. And it’s two in the morning, so probably we can’t do anything about it now. But tomorrow—tomorrow we’re gonna figure this out, okay?”

The dragon looks skeptical. It’s not the only one.

[alexsmitposts]

America Under Total Censorship Lockdown as it Circles the Drain The United States is under a broad censorship lockdown. News from regional press is blocked from national coverage, stories are crushed, certainly Facebook and Google ban and delist, but now at a level that should be unimaginable. The stories run in two areas, seemingly unrelated, that being BLM protests and the other COVID-19. Both are political issues for sure. One strange, certainly inexplicable move has been made by the Trump regime, starting July 16, 2020. Trump has ordered defunding of COVID-19 testing, something that will certainly cripple efforts to rein in the pandemic, and he has also ordered massive cuts to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), ending their ability to report test numbers, hospitalizations and deaths. He then issued an executive order to hospitals to stop reporting COVID-19 data to the appropriate agencies and to channel data directly to his political staff. This will be the painful story as there is a reason for these actions, ignored entirely by the press, but first we need to establish the extent and severity of censorship from the ground up. We will cover a number of stories that should have been followed, certainly investigated and ask some hard questions. Real news reaches a very few and with it warnings, to be careful. Even the FBI, once the enforcers of corporate rule in America, is left out of the loop. There may well be a hideous secret being kept from Americans and the world about how bad things are in the US and any who threaten that secret may well face the fate of so many who have died reporting facts that make the Deep State uncomfortable. As a journalist, I regularly get whistleblower reports, certainly on a daily basis. Many are outrageous and conspiratorial and weeding between credible and insane is taxing in a world where “insane” is the norm. However, a pattern has made itself perfectly clear. Let us take a few anecdotal issues and see where we go. This week, in Detroit, a man convicted of two murders was released. It seems the police detective who handled the case back in 2002 faked everything, witnesses were coached, evidence fabricated, a man spent 16 years in jail and was obviously innocent. The story was reported but what wasn’t reported is that the same Detective Sergeant had done this before. All complaints were quashed by police officials, and many of his fake cases were featured on reality television. Up to half of the “solved” murder cases in Detroit, once “Murder Capital of the World,” involved this corrupt cop, who is still “on the job,” meaning hundreds are in prison for decades, even life, who are innocent. It also means this is still going on. Worse still, who did the killings? We now suspect that a criminal group within the police may be running a “murder for hire” organization and has been doing so for years. There are no investigations, and no one is asking why. Who are their clients? On a broader national issue, there is a huge but largely unreported controversy in Portland, Oregon. President Trump and Attorney General William Barr have sent several hundred armed personnel to Portland to act as fake police against protesters there. No one is sure where these men come from, the fake police, not the protesters, though this is a valid question also, but they seem to be prison guards. It is illegal in the US for the federal government to send police to a state. It is illegal for prison guards, who are not police, to exercise arrest power outside the walls of a prison as they are not “certified” and “sworn” law enforcement officers within the state where they are, in this case, deployed. This is a massive constitutional crisis. Then something more curious happened. Senator Ted Cruz, a comic figure, tweeted a photo of those arrested by these fake police. Photos of a dozen young men, all white, claiming they were Antifa operatives. In the Tweet, Cruz referred to their “mullet” haircuts. The “mullet” is a style often ridiculed. Those wearing this hairstyle are invariably rural, deeply conservative, and poorly educated. They are classic “Trump base.” There was little evidence, other than sketchy news stories, that Antifa even existed. It is now clear that the all-white violent demonstrators are hired thugs from among the rural poor, hired from “Trumpland.” This is a common GOP practice dating back to Watergate and Donald Segretti. The same story came up in Grand Rapids, Michigan when violent demonstrators began looting during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in June. Those arrested were white, had arrived from across the state, and had been paid $300 each by political organizers. Guessing whose political organizers isn’t too difficult. These facts were delisted by Google, the Tweets were taken down and Facebook posts were erased as well. No press follow-up was done and both police and prosecutors have since “disappeared” those arrested. On June 1, 2020, a Ukrainian truck driver who had worked for a CIA sponsored militia fighting against Donbass separatists, plowed his vehicle into protesters in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Bogdan Vechirko failed to kill anyone, but shocking video showed 2000 peaceful demonstrators running for their lives. All reporting ended there. We found that Bogdan Vechirko was not jailed and that no legal action has been taken. Worse still, no one has asked why. A month later, in Seattle, an Eritrean immigrant plowed his white Jaguar into protesters killing two. His family has strong ties to CIA sponsored war lords. The video is among some of the most horrific ever filmed with those he struck at 100 miles per hour flying high in the air. He was chased down by a witness who pulled his vehicle over miles away. Press was told he is under arrest. No details are available. He may be out on bail; no details are available. Where he lives, anything about his family or background is withheld. He is a ghost. Only days ago, a Trump supporter entered a convenience store outside Lansing, Michigan. State law requires anyone entering a store to wear a mask. When confronted by a shopper, the Trump supporter pulled out a large kitchen knife, just the thing used for buying cigarettes and milk, and stabbed the 77-year-old shopper repeatedly. The video from the store is withheld as is the name of the victim and any witnesses. It gets better. In moments, police found the perpetrator and an officer pulled his car over. This was in an affluent neighborhood, in front of the perpetrator’s home. The perpetrator got out of his vehicle with a butcher knife in one hand and a large screwdriver in the other. The police officer, a woman with 22 years’ experience, demanded he drop his weapons. His replies, maniacal and haunting, are unforgettable, like something out of a horror film. As he ran toward the officer, she fired more than a dozen shots, hitting him 8 times as he slashed at her. He barely went down even then but died at the scene. Now the incident has been “un-happened.” There are no facts about who this was, why this happened or how the perpetrator, a well-paid state employee, became a terrorist. We have dozens more such incidents daily in the US, some are legitimate, angry people under pressure while others are theatrical with the perpetrator’s ghosts. As a juxtapose, when a wealthy couple in St. Louis pointed weapons at demonstrators near their magnificent home, media reported on every aspect of their lives, story upon story for weeks. These are all tabloid level stories that should have driven media to shake every tree, question families, show photos of victims and bloody crime scenes. This is how the media makes money, as the saying goes, “if it bleeds-it reads.” Not anymore, not when perpetrators are clearly not what they seem to be. Where are we going? Well, we are certainly going to take this one home. So, why is there a massive crackdown on reporting? Is it tied to police murders? Yes, maybe it is but we don’t think so. Is it tied to COVID-19? We have held off thus far in asking questions about censorship of COVID-19’s impact on the US. We will ask some of those questions now. We have both facts and “alternative facts” hitting the media regarding the pandemic. As COVID-19 levels skyrocket in states like Arizona, Florida, California and two dozen others, reporting becomes, not just contradictory but insanely so. In Florida the governor, DeSantis, claims that 98% of the state’s hospital beds are currently empty. The graphs he publishes are all over Twitter and Facebook, placed there by political trolls. At the same time, however, the largest hospitals in Florida report that they are at 119% of capacity and are overrun with COVID-19 patients. Rebekah Jones, a medical statistician fired for disputing faked data ordered by Governor DeSantis, says deaths are being not just underreported but on a large scale. Easily available video of overflowing hospital wards and licensed “real” medical professionals complaining of lack of medicines and equipment, can be found but are never reported on mainstream media. We do know this, the only drug that treats COVID-19, Remdesivir, is virtually unaffordable, is totally controlled by Jared Kushner and that the State of Florida, in the midst of a massive outbreak of COVID-19, exhausted all supplies over a week ago and Washington isn’t sure when they can release more. This isn’t being reported either. We are also told that those who die are often over 80 years old but massive anecdotal evidence, including regular reports by experts, cite the large number of young victims who are seriously ill. However, their serious illness and hospitalization is not reported and their deaths, if they are dying, are unreported as well. In fact, none of the data received can be depended on, not just in Florida but in dozens of states that seem to be “sitting on” numbers hospitalized and even fatalities. This censorship is driving many to openly shun needed precautions leading to massive increases, all documented, of COVID-19 infections. Why? Conclusion As a test against censorship and misreporting, algorithms are run, based on total tested, total tested positive, total hospitalized, total cured and those who die. As more are tested, more with lesser symptoms, the percentage of infected who later die is continually lowered or was until the beginning of July 2020 when numbers hit a plateau. When COVID reporting began to yield usable data, around mid-April 2020, death rates of those infected were at an unrealistic 36%. Testing levels, through presidential interference, were extremely low, something that would seal America’s role as a failed state. As testing increased, the percentage of recovered compared to deaths followed a predictable curve, which would flatline at some point. With testing levels, after months of interference, substantive enough to give a meaningful result and death levels somewhat modified by the use of Remdesivir, the death percentage “flatlined” at 7 percent. Thus, if a state like Florida were to have 10,000 new cases in a day, with an average of 7% dying, this would mean that eventual death levels would hit 700 a day for this state alone. This figure would be modified by higher or lower numbers testing positive or by lower death rates for larger numbers of younger infected. No such figures are reported. Using figures already proven, many states are reporting very inconsistent figures when looking at testing-hospitalizations-recoveries and deaths. Simply put, they are lying, underreporting by as much as 50%. Florida is clearly one of these. It is clear that the press has yet to do any statistical analysis on COVID-19. Why? There is also significant evidence that the medical community is aware of these inconsistencies. Respected medical professionals have come forward repeatedly with claims of underreporting and, more serious as well, their own theories that COVID-19 is a biological weapon. Attempts to debunk professionals by medical quacks and charlatans backed by conservative think tanks fill the media, while respected professionals are boycotted entirely. Could the US be hiding 100,000 additional COVID-19 dead? A recent leak from the CDC now predicts 800,000 dead by the end of 2020. From the Daily Beast: “If someone had suggested five months ago that we would be seeing more than 3 million cases and 135,000 COVID-19 deaths in the US by mid-July, I wouldn’t have believed it. But now it’s distinctly possible that, five months from now, half of all Americans could have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, and more than 800,000 Americans may die in this extraordinary outbreak. That is what many of our most prominent public-health experts now expect.” However, as of this writing that figure is 143,042, or is it? Is there a lie so big that the United States would find it offensive to perpetrate? I think we all know that answer.

[deviationdivine]

100 Follower Celebration Prompt Poll

Whoa! I honestly did not expect to gain any kind of followers. The number really picked up lately and it’s kind of blowing my mind. Honestly, I’m shook. Every like, reblog, comment and follow makes me want to continue providing content for you guys. It really motivates me!

Anyone who’s liked what I’ve put up on this blog I really want to thank you! Those who pop up in my notifs constantly, including my silent readers, I love you and you know who you are. 

I appreciate you lovelies! So to celebrate I wanted to offer a new prompt poll for you guys. There are still requests I have in my queue to complete but rest assured I will be doing them all. I won’t leave anyone out! I promise. 

DBH After Dark Trilogy

OK I just started doing these late night previews for upcoming smut fics. Now this is a little different. Here is a poll option for 3 full length fics one for each RK boy: Connor, RK800-60 & RK900. 

As you know from these ‘after dark’ previews these always contain mature themes and sexual situations. This trilogy will tie together. Reader is pursued by all three RK’s and has trouble deciding who they want to be with. Smexy times ensue. If this one gets the most votes, I’ll have you guys do a second vote after writing each one of these to decide who comes out the victor. 

Futuristic Dark!Prince AU (Series)

Detroit • 2045

The city runs rampant in crime, a grimy nu-tech age devoid of glitzy veneer. 

Not everything is run by the illicit trade of red ice and illegal undertakings of a cybernetic black market. There is a darker core hidden among its surface, unknown to those who trickle through streets daily. Blissful ignorance becomes their shield but there is a great power aiming to smash it to pieces.

Three brothers separated in childhood brought back together under the prophecy of the Endless Night Tide and you are the final puzzle piece....

Connor: deviant!persona | Hunter of Earth

RK800-60: cyberlife!60 persona | Emissary of Chaos 

RK900: ruthless+overprotective!persona | Bearer of Darkness

Interactive Fic Choices

For these I will write two different endings depending on which decision you as the reader choose. (X) and (O) will be the selection markers when it comes to the pivotal end of these 3 part mini shots.

Connor/RK800-60 - The Cyberlife Tower showdown goes a little differently causing you to make a rapid fire decision. Which is which, who can convince you they are the one who loves you? Choose wisely.

RK900 - Nines is hellbent on completing his mission, snuffing out the remaining resistance against Cyberlife. Only you stand in the way. Will you make him deviate or will he remain a cold, ruthless machine?

machine!Connor - Somehow it always ends on a rooftop. Will Connor continue to deny his deviancy or will he sacrifice the protocols that tie him into obeying his masters? Either way nothing will be ever the same. 

If this gets the most votes, each one of these scenarios will be written up under a new tag for: DBH Interactive Fiction. Then you’ll make the blind choice!

Human!AU

This option is pretty open ended. It’s pretty much something I would like to build off from your suggestions so consider this a wild card. It can be either one of these boys, a pair, all three. Whatever you like! I’m flexible. I’ve been sucked into the human reverse lately and it’s thanks to precious baby @01010010-posts. I love you sweetie. 

So this is an all reader choice. It can be a mini-series with a couple parts, a lengthier series, one-shot with a specific theme. Whatever you like! If this gets the most votes I’ll get your personal feedback for it! 

human!Connor

human!Nines

human!60

Tag List: @elydith   @your-taxidermy   @tropfenlady   @connorswink

(So these loves don’t miss this. If you want to be added to tags let me know ❤️)