#who is the head of the pantheon aka the one who waits?

[lokittystuckinatree]

The Doctor, back on his “I’m the Last of the Time Lords. I’m so special. Look at me,” melodrama, sobbing his eyes out while fighting literal gods and saving the world with the power of friendship

Vs.

The Master, still stuck in that tooth, making sock puppets of themself and the Doctor, probably. “Don’t you see? You’ve been blind too long, Doctor! Look at what you’ve made! Look at me!”

“Oh Master, I’ve always seen you and I always will…because you…see me.” (Doctor puppet passionately kisses Master puppet)

“You’re too late.” (Master puppet brutally murders Doctor puppet)

[cafeinthemoon]

Ruins - Part IX

Chapter 9

Wordcount 3,9k

Title Part IX

Fandom Shuumatsu no Valkyrie / Record of Ragnarok

Pairing Hades X reader

Previous chapters

1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8

Symbols ⭕ . ➕ . 💛

Warnings: none

Tagging @darling-imobsessed @holdyourwine (if you want to be tagged in any of my stories, just leave a comment here or send an ask or a message)

N. A.: I've been so excited to complete this chapter that I've started to work on it right when the previous one was posted, and it took me just a few days to revise it! lol This time we will have more info about Hermes and his work with the human girls aka him being a parent and another encounter at the Secret Garden, full of symbolism and references, which you can read about on my Quotev's list. This chapter ended up longer than the previous ones because there are just too much info, but I hope you like it <3

– I’m glad for our encounters and our conversations, and for your gift. However... I can’t accept more than that. 

You didn’t know who was more surprised by those words: yourself or the people who watched the interaction between you and the King of the Underworld. Hades, on his part, didn’t show signs of shock by your refusal, neither he seemed offended; if you were being honest, what you saw on his face was closer to confusion. You got along in each of the times you’ve seen each other: why would you break this pattern so suddenly? 

This reaction is expected, and it hurts me more than I could tell him. But he will understand my reasons soon. He will understand that this is not my place. 

You kept your hands stretched between you two and, for a second, you were afraid that he was going to refuse to take the hairpin back, but that was not what he did: after an instant of processing the unexpected event, he held the object in silence and hid it in a pocket on his coat. When his hand approached yours, you sensed the slight touch of his fingertips on your palm and felt tempted to close your hands around his, so that seeing it moving away was as painful as what you just said, but that wasn’t the time for weakness; you should not make things harder for yourself or for him. 

You put your hands behind your back as you bowed. Right now, looking in his eyes would be the worst thing you’d do. 

– It hurts me to disappoint you, my Lord, but it’s the right thing to do – you forced the last words out – I have to go, now. Goodbye. 

You didn’t wait for a response, afraid that any word, any small gesture from him would shake your spirit and make you change your mind. Fortunately, the said word or gestures never came; as if collaborating with your decision, Hades didn’t make efforts to make you stay. You passed by him and walked toward the dome that connected that room and the next, where you talked to the elf. 

The guests, still watching the scene, didn’t obstruct your way as you almost ran among them. You avoided looking around, terrified of what you would find in their gazes, and tried not to hear the waves of murmur spreading like fire in the room. 

On your way to the entry, you almost bumped into a goddess whose pantheon you were too distracted to identify. 

– I’m so sorry, my Lady… – you were going to say more, but the crack in your voice indicated that you would start to cry if you did, so that you kept quiet. 

– Are you okay, child? – the woman questioned, frowning – What happened? 

You didn’t reply. You just shook your head and left. 

Finally, the great doors you crossed to join that party you helped to make possible – and about which you’ve been dreaming for days – appeared before you. They were heavy, but you managed to open them, just enough for you to pass. 

The door closed at your back with a sinister slam, silencing the noises of the room as you let go of it and walked away through the corridor. 

*** 

When you left the room, your feet were hurried up, as your only thought was getting as far from there as possible. Now you were running, and your mind was racing just as fast. 

I don’t understand… If I made the right decision, why does it hurt so much? Why does my heart ache when I remember the expression on his face? 

With your mind occupied with these questions, your feet followed an unconscious path toward the corridor through which Hermes led you after giving you the hairpin. Where you going back to the bedroom, then? What were you supposed to do once you got there? 

You turned another corner and stopped when you saw you were no longer alone. 

– Y/n?! What happened? 

It was Hermes. Apparently, he was returning to the girls’ room or to his own chambers, judging by the direction he walked to, but he gave up on whatever task he had to fulfill when he saw your state: when you stopped, your whole body was trembling and your lungs were burning; you didn’t realize you were so desperate until you saw the shock you provoked on him. 

Suddenly, you felt exhausted; you didn’t want to speak, neither you wanted to think of what happened. You just wanted to disappear. Your throat tightened, and thick tears started rolling through your cheeks. Forgetting where you were and who you were, you ran to Hermes like a little girl seeking for her parent; despite his confusion, he hugged you and made no questions until you stopped crying. 

– So… – he started once you calmed down – Can you explain the meaning of this? Things were going so well when I left you at the party’s door. What happened, then? Did you meet him? Did you talk? 

For a while, you were just able to make affirmative gestures with your head, but when you spoke, this was all you could say: 

– I finally understood everything, Hermes-sama… I understood the meaning of my dreams… So I no longer have to stay here… – you breathed deep and looked into his eyes – Please… Give me your permission to leave… 

He frowned. 

– What?! 

– Give me your official permit to leave, please! I don’t want to stay in Valhalla anymore! I want to go back home… 

If Hermes considered continuing that discussion, he gave up on it the moment he heard those words. He has seen this before: some of the girls brought to Valhalla would not complete the process of adaptation for countless reasons, from being homesick to coming to the conclusion that staying under a god’s guardianship wasn’t the best for them; others would face – or cause – serious problems that would result in their forced farewell and, in rare cases, banishment. In each of those cases, he was there, in touch with every part of the cycle and with the girls’ thoughts and feelings, respecting their decisions, admonishing when necessary, working in favor of them whenever it was possible by standing between them and his own people, who wasn’t always willing to show mercy. He remembered that most of those humans were good girls in their essence, who would recognize their mistakes once he brought them up or think well before making their final decision and leave. 

I just want to go home. 

Most of those girls would end up saying those very words to summarize what they carried in their hearts. And, by all the things he witnessed beside them, Hermes would always take those words seriously. 

He held you by your shoulders and made you look at him. 

– Tell me. Do you still remember the path to the Secret Garden? 

You didn’t understand why he was bringing this up now, but confirmed that yes, you remembered the said path. 

– Good. Then, you have to go there. Now. 

– Go there? But… 

– Listen – he cut you off, as if there was no time to waste – Y/n, I know you don’t like this, but this time I need you to do as I say without question. Go to that garden. What you need will be found there. Just trust me, okay? 

You wanted to ask more, but you knew you wouldn’t get anything else but that strange orientation. You nodded in obedience. 

– I will do as you say, Hermes-sama – and, already moving away from him, – Thank you for everything… 

He opened the way and you passed by him in fast steps, his last encouraging words echoing in your ears. 

*** 

That was the first time you entered the Gardens at night, and you thought it was a pity that it happened right after such a difficult moment, for once you arrived at them, you found yourself surrounded by impossible beauty. 

Wrapped in the trees, under the pedestals of the statues and all over the arcs and domes covered with cascades of flowers, there were white and bluish small lamps lighting up the way like fragments of the moon; due to their delicate structure, they were invisible during the day, but became fully alive at night. Thanks to their efficacy, you soon found the way to the covered stairs. 

When you reached them, you had to slow down and raise your eyes to the green ceiling to appreciate what the lights done for it. 

It’s so peaceful inside it. Almost ethereal. 

For a second, you forgot your sadness and thought you would stay there forever if you could. But then you reminded yourself the reason why you were there, lowered your eyes to the stairs and followed your way down to the Secret Garden. 

Your feet reached the last stair and your head left the protection of the ivy tunnel, and it wasn’t a surprise when you looked around and found out that this part of the Garden was superior to the rest during the night, not staying behind of its diurnal version in anything: the little noises of the bugs and the furtive steps of the small, nocturnal animals lurking in the shadow of the trees and bushes, the soft breeze whistling between the leaves, the water running in the stream, partially visible from your spot, the perfume of the night blooming jasmines spreading in the air… each corner of the place was as full of life as the loudest rooms, and would never allow suffering inside its limits. 

And that’s strange… I’d probably feel lonely and desperate if I went to a different place. But it seems that I can clear my mind and process my feelings with no problems here. 

Hermes-sama was right in sending you there. You did find what you needed – a bit of peace in your final moments at the divine lands. 

You approached the stream and stopped at its shore, observing the lights reflecting on the water’s surface. It was impossible to stand there and not remember that day where you walked on the bridge and talked above the flow. The day you revealed your restlessness to Hades and he assured you of your right to dream. 

Why did he do that, anyway? 

And to think that, in the end, it would be thanks to a creation of his that you would find comfort after the unsettling episode at the party. Was it possible that he also considered the young women’s need for mental peace when he designed those gardens that way? How much of the human heart he must have known to be able to do this? 

How much of my own heart he could get to know if we spent more time together here? 

A low, rustling noise was heard over the grass behind you, different from the others you detected when you entered the garden. You turned… 

And felt your eyes getting filled with tears again when you saw him there. 

The ghostly, blue light descending from the trees and touching each spot of his figure – his gray hair; his garment, white from head to toe; the tattoo over his pale skin; his left eye, not covered by the eye patch, glowing in the penumbra, its lashes creating a delicate shadow over his cheek – they would make you believe you had a spirit before you, but you knew he was as tangible as yourself, with flesh and bones cradling the spark of his immortal life. 

And that only made him more beautiful. 

Hades walked toward you and all the feelings you experienced at the party’s room came back at once, grabbing your throat with monstrous strength. 

The first words said between you were his. 

– Hermes said I would find you here. I’m glad he wasn’t wrong. 

Despite your agony, you found it strange that he arrived so fast. And how did he manage to speak to Hermes before it? 

Ah, of course. He designed this place. He must know all the shortcuts and secret passages. 

Part of you was relieved to notice that no wrath or sadness was present in his voice, but there you saw same expression he had when you gave him back the hairpin, and that didn’t hurt you less. 

When he stopped in front of you, you swallowed, and no word came out of your mouth. There was a heavy silence, shared with the creatures of the garden that stopped their noises as if sensing the seriousness of the moment... which was broken by a sigh from him. 

He took off his eye patch, putting it on his pocket, then smiled. 

– Less scary, don’t you think? 

Your chest ached with the gesture, and your lower lip trembled when you remembered how you begged to leave Valhalla without seeing that smile, that face one last time. You hid your face in your hands and started to cry. 

Even after what I’ve put him through, he’s here, trying to make me smile. 

You didn’t see what happened next, only felt it: a pair of arms surrounded your body and brought you close to a warm chest, as a soft hand caressed your nape. Now, the only thing you were listening to was his heartbeats, and all you could think of was that you should have never run away, for things were going to be fixed as long as you stood with him. However, weren’t you supposed to leave now that you understood your place as a human? 

If that’s true, why do I feel like I’m going to regret it once I leave? How could I be able to leave when being with him feels so right? 

– I’m so sorry for all of this… – you heard yourself whisper. 

– What are you apologizing for? – he whispered back; and, making you look at him, – You did nothing wrong. 

You wiped a tear from your right cheek. 

– But, my Lord… 

– Please – you felt the tip of his index finger touching your lips – You already know my name. Use it. I’d like to hear it in your voice a few more times. 

A sudden, violent heat came up to your face. After what happened inside the building, you weren’t in conditions of denying him anything. And, since he was asking so nicely, why wouldn’t you do it? And you liked to discover it and even more to say it, didn’t you? 

– Hades-sama, what I did in front of your family... I embarrassed you in front of everybody… – you frowned in genuine confusion – How can you not be angry because of it, my Lord? 

Hades raised his left eyebrow, and the tattoo over it moved a bit. 

– Because you used your right to refuse something? Why would I be angry or embarrassed for that? 

– But I thought… All those looks… 

– Looks? Ah, yes – he sighed, then smiled, finally understanding the problem – We can be really intimidating sometimes. For this, I apologize. 

Before you could think of a reply, he offered his hand. 

– But, for now, we’re free from them. Let’s take this chance to enjoy our surroundings. We still have too much to talk, right? 

You put a hesitant hand over his, and this latter closed around yours with gentle firmness as he led you to the stream’s shore. There, he leaned on his right knee and rolled up his sleeves, wetting his hands on the flow. 

– It’s always in good temperature by this hour – he invited you to approach – Here, try it. 

When you knelt by his side, he filled his palm with water and gave it to you. Only after proving the water – so cold and refreshing that you felt like you were outside enjoying a summer night – you realized how your throat was sore and dry. Now, you sensed your strength coming back and your sight clearing up. 

Your voice came out stronger when you spoke, too. 

– It’s really good. Thank you. 

Hades smiled in response and you washed your own hands on the stream, then cleaned your face from the tears. When you finished the service, you sighed. 

– When your brother, Poseidon-sama, saw me, the first thing he said was that I have a decent face – you chuckled – I guess I lost all my decency now that the makeup is gone! 

That was his time to laugh. 

– Decent face... My little brother is not so good at complimenting people, I must admit – he took a pair of wipers from his pocket as he spoke; he gave you the first and used the other – But this is more than he has said about all the women he knows. He prefers to keep his opinions to himself, despite being a good observer. 

– Yes, he made that very clear! – you laughed too. And he did it in the scariest way possible, you added in your mind. 

His reply was preceded by a gesture that made you startle: with his fingers, he moved a thin, wet lock of your hair away from your forehead. 

– Still, I’m afraid that he hasn’t seen half of what’s there to see this time. He didn’t witness this smile, after all. 

If this was the way he found to praise your beauty, then Hades indeed had more talent with words than any of his brothers: persuasion was in each of them, so much that you were starting to believe him; just a little a more and you would be entirely convinced. 

And it was with no effort that he stood up and guided you by the hand to another part of the garden, one you haven’t seen the last time you’ve been there. 

In this place, on the other side of the bridge, the lights were softer, in something between blue and purple, hanging in specific spots, away from each other as to not disturb the moths, fireflies and other flying beings that had that corner of the garden as their home. In the middle of what seemed to be a clearing, a small fountain formed by a rounded bowl upon a column of white stone was bubbling with crystalline water; when you approached and looked into the bottom, you noticed the same purple light was present there, oscillating with the waves. Near this fountain, you found a bench under an arc covered in flowers, which white petals were turned into lilac thanks to the lights. You went there and stood in silence for a while, in respect to the living beings that were giving up their space and their privacy for you. 

Even your voices were lower when you restarted the conversation. You, by the way, were just waiting for him to be the first to speak, which didn’t take long to happen. 

– My nephew told me you asked his permission to leave Valhalla. 

You swallowed. 

– I did. 

His quietness was so heavy that, for an instant, you thought he wasn’t going to reply. But when he did, it was with relief that you sensed no change in his tone. 

– It’s understandable. You've been through many things these days and, right when you had the opportunity to relax, a new pressure falls on your shoulders – with his right hand, he caressed the top of your head, just like he did at the bridge – And most of this is my responsibility. I'm sorry for this. 

I can’t believe he’s apologizing. 

– You’re... sorry? 

– I asked my brothers to stay with you until I arrived – he explained – They didn’t know you yet, so they would identify you by the hairpin I gave you. Then I’d take you for a walk to some place where we could talk in private. Once we’d return to the party, we would enjoy the other girls’ presentations and everything you’ve been preparing, until dinner’s time. Speaking of this, I asked the elves to reserve a place by my side on our table – he curled a lock of your hair with his finger – My intention was that you enjoyed the party under our protection, but things didn’t go as planned, and you were the most harmed in this. 

You sensed your chest tight when you heard that. You had no doubts about Hades’ noble intentions when he made all those preparations, but maybe he hasn’t considered that the fact that you were human would automatically change your view on them: what would be a deserved honor to a goddess was just too much for you. 

Still, you couldn’t let him continue to apologize for doing what he believed was right, so you did what was probably your boldest action since you came to Valhalla: you took the hand he had on your hair and held it between yours, all the three resting on your lap, your fingers groping on his skin as you observed the black of his nail polish turn into a deep violet thanks to the lights above you. 

– Please, don’t apologize anymore, Hades-sama. You did nothing wrong, my Lord, and neither did your brothers. Each of them received me well and stood with me until the moment you found us, just like you requested. The issue lies in what I explained to Hermes-sama while he took me to the party: everything we’ve been experiencing in Valhalla, and how things are managed here… all of this is so distant from the life I have that it makes me feel... small. 

Your fingers, tiny if compared with his, closed around his hand with a little more firmness. 

– Despite everything I told you the last time we’ve been here, my Lord, this is something I cannot change about myself. I don’t want my dreams to have boundaries, but I could never ignore the fact that there are limits I must not trespass. No matter how uncomfortable my life becomes due to these limits, there’s no guarantee that what waits for me on the other side will not bring me more suffering. This is what we call knowing our place – you let out a sad smile – Maybe it sounds strange to you, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case. After all, this is part of the meaning of being human. 

– In fact, this is something I can’t relate to, but I’m glad you’re talking to me about it. It helped me to understand what happened – his hand moved between yours, his thumb drawing circles on your knuckles – Besides, I think it would be sad if you just left without saying goodbye to your friends or having the chance to learn more about your... about our dreams. 

Your hands trembled at those words and at his touch, which was extended when his other hand joined yours. 

– Speaking of this, Hermes hasn’t time to explain how it works, but even if he conceded his permission the moment you asked, you wouldn’t be able to leave until tomorrow. 

You gasped with surprise. 

– What?! Why...? 

– Why the surprise, my girl? – the smile he gave you that time was the closest to a smirk that you’ve seen in his face until now – You didn’t think you’d get rid of us so easily, didn’t you? 

You felt your cheeks getting hot. 

– I... 

– Y/n, there’s something about my dream that I haven’t told you yet. The reason why I know it’s connected to yours. I’ve been waiting for the right moment to do it, and I believe the moment has come. 

– Really? And what is it that you need to tell me, Hades-sama? 

– This: unlike you, I wasn’t alone among the ruins of Hellheim. In my wanderings, I found someone there. 

– Someone? Who? 

– A woman – Hades' eyes were fixed on yours – You.

Part X

[lestwritewhilewaitingforajobcall]

The Odd Rumble of Thunder - Thor x Reader

(A/N)

Hey guys! I wanted to personally thank you all for the kind comments and messages, they really inspire me to continue writing more and the support truly means a lot! Also, I just found out how to access post replies, I apologize I haven’t gotten to reading them since my first story, I’m still trying to figure out the gist of things here on Tumblr! Anyways, recently I’d only been posting more on Poseidon, so here’s a special one for our Norse god of thunder (aka the god I simp for the most). This idea came to me while out on a camping trip, I hope you guys enjoy it! Feedback would really be welcomed and appreciated!

This is for entertainment only. Record of Ragnarok belongs to Shinya Umemura, Takumi Fukui and Ajichika. I also do not own you, the reader.

The Odd Rumble of Thunder

Thor x Reader

Even before the news spread like wildfire, Thor had become under the tyranny of a good habit to bringing his wife with him wherever he may go. It stood to reason that he would never be so careless to invite you over to danger, hence why, at a god’s ephemeral notice, he had stopped seeking direction for his combative side, but when, at last, he had to venture, he made much quicker work of it than when he would have otherwise.

Inarguably, if you’d wanted to lay down and rest instead, it was a surety you’d receive your meals in bed, unbothered. But for Thor there was no guarantee he’d ever have to worry about you, so the whole of Asgard knew by now he’d drop whatever he was doing to accompany you, uncaring about diplomacy in the first place.

Not that Odin nor Loki minded either; especially since the Allfather knew more about the concerns of a father expecting their first child. Moreover, Loki enjoyed shapeshifting into his cousin during days he was absent. It was much more fun to cause mischief legally, as he would say.

Today, Thor stood by his wife who sat comfortably in her rocking chair on the porch, allowing a full view of the hills that sloped gently down to the grand gardens. You were seven months along, approaching the eight month, the swell of your stomach now far more prominent.

At the very moment you had begun to show, you had a companion of whom would almost never leave your side, your husband’s absence in the kingdom gradually becoming more frequent, more lengthened, till at last his presence among his people became an exception. Despite your constant reassurances that you would be fine, Thor insisted on staying, casually sweeping aside your thoughts regarding his habitual sense of duty.

“I would only be gone for nine months to tend to my wife and child, they should fare well on their own lest they are more incompetent than I would’ve thought.” Thor had told you once before, and you’d decided not to question him further on that. You understood your husband’s concerns, to be truthful, you had a few of your own as well, so having Thor assist you alleviated some of the stress and worry concerning your child’s safety.

Especially now that you were nearing your due date. For instance, you were having the toughest time moving, suffering primarily from the weight in your belly and pains in your back and legs that made walking and even standing difficult. What made the physical strain worse too was your child’s eagerness to know you and Thor both, unable to stay long in one position, much like their father’s enthusiasm for battle.

“How are you feeling?” Thor’s question rested upon a rather precise calculation of the last time he had asked the same only a short moment before. It was quite visible in his actions that he did not want to cause any negative feelings if he could help it, though desiring you to avoid stress as much as possible.

You smiled. “Come close. You’ve been standing there for ages just ogling at me.” You opened your arms out wide. “Are you not tired?”

Truth be told, despite Thor’s constant need to remain close to his wife, he felt a real, undeniable fear of touching you, specifically, your abdomen. He closed the distance between until he was right in front of you, staring down at you with hard eyes. Longing leaped like a flame reaching out in his celestial yellow orbs.

“Love, I am always grateful for your concern for me. And I am feeling much better just knowing you’re beside me.” You raised yourself up, pushing against the chair to try to stand. Thor rushed forward, held you then put his hands under your arms to lift you up. Your child was growing fast. “But how about you? How are you feeling?”

You inched closer, your fingers playing with the locks of his hair that you could reach. “Aside from the stress of waiting, I’ve noticed that you have something else weighing on your mind.

“Tell me, what is it?”

At the sight of you through his warworn eyes, his mind was filled with bliss. For that loving glance of yours, he felt a divine presence and holy atmosphere that seemed to pervade everything around you. Having an inkling of what you were hinting at though, he broke your gaze, in an attempt to avert the guilt you conferred on him.

“Please. We’re in this together, I would want nothing more than to help you back as much as you’ve helped me.” Thor felt you shift in his arms, get more comfortable. He felt the bulk of your child across his legs, the weight no doubt pulling you down. Seeing you in pain like that, was sad and unbearable, and the gnawing feeling grew stronger. And since he knew you were always so full of strength and determination, always unrelenting in your attempts to make him feel better, he began,

“I am afraid.” Red eyebrows drew together.

“Afraid of what?”

“That I might accidentally hurt you and our child,” Thor took a deep breath in then let it out in a sigh while taking a step back. “I do not want that to happen, even if I want to be at your side at all times. And this frustrates me to no end.”

Thor did himself a favor by giving attention to anything other than his wife, refusing to be a witness on the sadness and any he may have caused. Dealing with his own disappointment was nothing new, but he had trouble dealing with the fact that he was the cause of yourpain. He wished he could take his troubles which escaped, hanging in the air, and all the bad feelings on himself and let things continue as they were, but he knew it didn’t work that way. You needed to know that he only wanted you and your child safe and protected, even from himself.

He could not understand how the cosmos could play such a cruel joke on the both of you: you, bore so much pain because of one of the greatest affairs of life, and him, the strongest deity in the Pantheon, was powerless against the natural laws of existence.

Strong shoulders slumped, head bowing as stray strands of red hair fell over Thor’s brow. Not again. He did not wish to be reminded of the cautious sympathy his father and cousin had approached him with. His stomach lurched whenever the subject of your frailty came up. Dread and a terrifying fear overwhelmed his soul for the first time, the thought of losing you−

“Hey,” Your voice which lingered on the gentle breeze brushed against Thor’s face, pulling him out of his stupor. He refocused, turning his gaze onto your sweet face.

How were you able to hold yourself up well despite your obvious pain and suffering? Did you not bear the same nervousness as he did? The answer was obvious, practically screaming in Thor’s ears but became deaf following his guilt and clouded instincts. For a long time since you’d first told him about the news, he bore these worries in silence; but when at length he’d been perplexed by your introspection−or seeming lack of it. Why, in fact, did you concern yourself with him at all? Compared to you, there was hardly any threat to his own life posed. Why had you always done more to make him feel better when you were the one who needed it most?

Cutting through the haze he found himself in was the shape of you, or maybe your hair billowing in the wind, a wisp of it across your face, and then suddenly the feel of your skin, the sense of your head on his chest. Even if it were fleeting, that alone brought him the possibilities of comfort that he’d so needed. Oh, how he missed this; you cupped his big callously marble hands around yours, caressing them so tenderly, as if he were fragile and might break, so short it could never be pulled back.

As he relished the warmth of the blaze you gave him for the winter of unease, he’d realized much sooner that the coldness that inched its icy fingers up his spine still threatened to battle your kind words, you, his very own wife, and he detested himself for being unsure whether or not it was of his own doing; was he pushing you away when you’d only wanted to offer your help?

Thor’s immediate impulse was to pull back from you, abruptly halted by your fingers which slipped between his now splayed hand. You wrinkled your nose in a delightfully unguarded manner that caused his breath to hitch in his throat.

“Do you remember the first time we said our vows?” If only you knew the way Thor perceived you: in his eyes, your radiant smile reflected the morning sunlight of Valhalla, for a split second picturing the moment you’d walked down the aisle, that headpiece on your head instantiating the paradox of mystery that once lifted revealed your beautiful face, marking it the best day of his long life. Something warm bloomed in his chest once again and spread its heat out through every vein in his body. He remembered the smooth feel of the veil against his cheek after sealing your promise with a kiss, his lips parting with a breathless sigh.

“Your hands caressed my fit of nerves with light, tender touches and then inspired me with hard, passionate embraces,” With effortless ease, you lifted your intertwined hands to your mouth and kissed his knuckle. Thor watched with great admiration your every move, the desire to distance himself was now but an afterthought. Nothing would ever separate him from you when all you’d ever done was pull him closer than ever.

Then, you sought out his hand, kissing his palm as he stroked your face. You clung onto his arms, gripped at his chest as if you were searching for warmth, as if you needed his touch, and much like him, couldn’t bear to be even an inch away. His mind was still slowing its racing to let him mutter something in response, so he allowed himself to be entranced by how smooth and sure of yourself you were, with nothing to mar the calm serenity of your features. Your smile seemed to be a natural adornment, the utter gentleness in your eyes, reminded him of every morning when he woke up, he would see you by his side, as well as your sleeping snoring face. Right at that moment, the silly scream finally made it to the deaf god’s ears:

He was your haven,

The place you called home and went to find peace.

As Thor immersed himself in your smell, your sparkling eyes, he felt the excruciating cold all melt away in your warmth. No more seeds of doubt with which to sow and seek his destiny. Slowly, he began to see his surroundings from a keener point of view, realizing, then appraising them: from the passing wind your hair messed which he pushed aside, tucking it behind your ear, to how his sash seemed to fit him better indeed, rather than cling onto his skin even tighter as brutally as it had done before. He noticed the minute changes since he’d last taken a good look at you months ago: a little flusher on your skin, lines around the eyes a little deeper, a little increase in body temperature.

He pulled you closer, his actions not arising from calculation instead led by instinct. You let him take more of your weight, your belly pressed against his stomach as you sighed, his fingers working wonders on massaging the muscles that had been much abused in carrying the baby’s weight. A sudden wrenching through his sash struck Thor’s heart and had him holding his breath.

The baby had moved, and he’d felt it.

Bending down, he buried his nose in your hair, closing his eyes as he drank in your scent. Your arms wrapped around his back as he connected in this loving embrace, feeling his heart beat in rhythm with your own.

“Our child would no doubt love to be enveloped in their father’s safe arms,” With a light, gentle touch, your fingers ran through Thor’s hair, making him shiver with delight.

On that day, only the beautiful gardens of Asgard became privy to nothing more than a moment in which husband and wife reached for the same comfort and their concerns met. These gardens were simultaneously the very same place where Thor had first avoided the problems that plagued his mind, but also became exactly the same place where he’d find solace in the arms of his lovely wife.

Resting his hand on where his child was, he recognized that familiar feeling turning up, but upon realizing the bittersweet irony of and within these gardens, the revelation came to him: happiness could also come from the very object of fear.

And as you had an unmovable trust in him, there was an unspoken mutual understanding that he too, should put his trust in you.

[eggysimblr]

Eggy’s guide to Egyptian Pantheon.

ANUBIS: He’s a good boy, he Guards your tomb after your death. Also keeps balsamists from goofing up on the job.

BAST: She’s a happy Kitty who likes to party, she’s the goddess of the home, and, like a real cat, she keeps vermin away.

ATUM: The Big Daddy, who created other gods by jacking off. No, seriously.

SHU: Son of Atum, God of Air. Pretty boring.

TEFNUT: Shu’s wife, Goddess of Moisture. Yes, MOISTURE. Let that sink in, MOISTURE.

GEB: Son of Shu & Tefnut, God of Earth. He has a goose on his head. The Goose’s name is Steve (not really), and it has rabies (Propably).

NUT: She’s the Big Lady in the Sky, except she actually IS the sky, With Geb, her husband (And Steve the Rabid Goose), lying under her.

OSIRIS: You know him, you love him, It’s the Lord of the Dead! And Vegetation, that’s why he’s green. He got chopped into pieces by Seth, who scattered his body parts, then he was brought together again by Isis and Nephtys, got embalmed by Anubis, and avenged by Horus.

ISIS: AKA the best Mythological MILF, Change my Mind.

NEPHTYS: Isis’ equally sexy sister, she’s the goddess of... Death, I guess? And Magic, and, amusingly enough, Beer.

SETH: WTF Is his fursona anyway? A Tapir? A Donkey? An Anteater? The big bad of the Osyrian Myth, and the god of Desert and storms, and Desert Storms.

HORUS: Son of Osiris. Captain Falcon over here was a pretty big deal, he was the patron god of Pharaoh, and Egypt in General.

HATHOR: Horus’ wife, Daughter of Ra. Her fursona was that of a cow, but here she only wears horns. She also was a Party girl, and goddess of Love.

SONS OF HORUS: These rapscallions protected mummy’s extracted innards. And only poor Imsety doesn’t have a fursona.

RA: Ra-Ra-Rasputin lover of the... No, wait. Birb Boy here is Ra-Horachty, AKA: Horus LARPing as a Sun God. Ra in general was the Sun, and he had a pimpin boat in which he cruised the sky.

Khepri: God of the Rising Sun, His head is a scarab, because just like a dung beatle rolls a ball made out of shit, so does Khepri rolls the sun. Ewww...

AMUN: The big boss of Thebes. He became the main god during the Middle Kingdom. His name means “Hidden”. Good luck with hiding while wearing such a huge hat tho, idiot!

MUT: Amun’s lovely wife, with a dead vulture on her head.

KHONSU: Amun’s son, he’s the God of the Moon. He sometimes had a falcon fursona.

ATEN: This stupid frisbee with hands, is a result of King Akhenaten being a fucking hipster, and trying to create “A nEw mOnOtHeIsTiC rElIgIoN, Hurr Durr”. Good Riddance.

PTAH: Basically Osiris, but without a fancy Atef crown, this guy was the main god of city of Memphis (the one by the Nile, not Mississipi). He also was a patron god of artisans.

SAKHMET: Unlike Bast, this Kitty here is an Angry pussy (Watch your wording Eggy!). She is a goddess of War, after all, and somehow the Eye of Ra? I dunno, Egyptian Mythology is weird.

MIN: Basically Osiris, but with Amun’s hat, and a raging boner. Why he has a stiffy you may ask? It’s symbolic, cause he’s a god of Fertility, you pervert!

HAPI: The androgynous personification of River Nile. That’s why he/she’s Blue dabadee dabadai.

SOBEKH: The God of water, who decided to be original, and instead of being a furry, he became a scalie. XD

TOTH: Another Birb-boy, this time based on an Ibis, was the god of science (however oxymoronic it sounds), and was the one, who invented Hieroglyphs. Gee Mr. Toth, couldn’t you invent a more coherent system of writing? Because it’s really freaking difficult to read those little pictures, have you heard about an ALPHABET?

MA’AT: Goddess of truth and law. Her feather was not just a fancy hair accessory, but also acted as a counterwight for the deceased heart, during the judgement of Osiris.

TAWARET: The Hippo Goddess of childbirth. That’s why she THICC yo!

There were many MANY others, but these guys are the most important/interesting/well known. Hoped you liked it.

[taeminstetrislips]

School Trip Series - Italy Pt. 2

Rome

With the two scheduled activities done for the day, your group is sent to the hotel before being released to do what you wanted without plans. You’d be staying at the Hotel Savoy which upon arrival took your breath away with its view. All of you line up to collect hotel keys and organize who will be rooming with whom. Unsure of what to do, you hang back and wait for one of the groups of girls to offer an open spot to you. You can overhear conversations stating that the rooms that had been reserved can sleep 3 people in separate twin beds. Then, you are pleasantly surprised when the guys all come over to you, arguing who was going to ask you to join their room to see if you’d be comfortable. Eventually, Xiaojun approaches and asks the question. Delighted, you agree to be the third to the room Renjun and Sungchan were sharing (Xiaojun and Johnny had already claimed they wanted the room with Jaehyun).

After taking the luggage up to your rooms next to each other, the guys from the other room bombarded yours claiming it would be the “party room.” Before you could protest, they already started spreading themselves out on the joined beds of Renjun and Sungchan. You took note of how they were respecting your personal space and not laying on your bed.

“So what’s the plan? What are we going to do?”Renjun asks the group. His response is just a lot of shrugging and mumbled “I dunno”s. You suggest taking a walk and just seeing what’s nearby. Everyone simply agrees because they have no better ideas. On the walk, you discover that you’ve stumbled upon the Fontana di Trevi. Once getting a closer look, you immediately ask if anyone has change. Johnny pulls out his wallet and offers a few coins to the group. You toss a coin into the fountain, keeping your wish all to yourself and the rest do the same. It takes you a second, but you realize you recognize the place.

“Oh my gosh, don’t make fun of me but this was the place they went to in the Lizzie McGuire movie.”

“The what?” Sungchan asks you. You look at all of them with a deadpan expression.

“I'm not mad, just disappointed," you say and turn around to walk away.

Renjun pipes up saying, "Hey there's this cool hidden gem I saw when I was doing research around here. I think we just have to turn this way. Hold on, let me pull it up."

Jaehyun asks, "Where did you conduct this research?"

"Tik Tok." Renjun responds matter-of-factly before pointing us toward the street we were to walk down. Following him around a few turns left and right leads to this place that seems very unassuming, the sign saying ‘Vicus Caprarius’. But, after each of you purchases an entry ticket, you understand what he meant by hidden gem. Just beyond the staircase lies the water tank of an ancient Roman aqueduct. Jaehyun reads the information on the plaque.

“It says this is ‘The Aqua Virgo’ and it still provides water to the Trevi fountain.” The way they've lit the surroundings makes the water look hauntingly romantic as it reflects the blue lights. The calming sounds of water flowing summon an atmosphere that you can't explain. It feels like this moment is private, intimate, like it just belongs to the six of you. Probably the quietest you’ve all been on this trip, you observe in awe. In a few more steps, you are led through the views of the remains of a Roman house, a headless statue, a section of an old mosaic floor, and many more mysteriously beautiful exhibits. On the way back out into the sun, you make sure to hang close to the back of the group where Renjun was walking.

“Hey, thanks for showing us that. It was really cool,” you tell him.

He looks kind of shy and embarrassed when he says, “Oh yeah of course.”

You all continue to walk around and take in the views before heading back toward the hotel. You were told that there was a rooftop lounge and Xiaojun desperately wanted to be there to watch the sunset. After grabbing drinks at the rooftop bar, Jaehyun helps you claim a couple of couches you can all hang at. Sungchan takes the seat next to you and has to scoot even closer when Xiaojun sits next to him, causing his thigh to brush up against his. You feel like a kid again as your heartbeat gets faster. It's like all you can think about at that moment is the spot where his leg meets yours.

Finally, you manage to get a grip on yourself and raise your head up, only to lock eyes with Jaehyun before he quickly turns away and pretends he wasn’t looking at you. However, you allow your eyes to linger on his face as you watch his dimple deepen while a small smile grows on his face subconsciously. It’s at this moment that you realize all of these boys are not only becoming some of your closest friends, but you might start falling for one (or all) of them.

Following an elegant dinner at the hotel restaurant, the group retires to your respective rooms. You all were encouraged to get some sleep early tonight for the busy schedule tomorrow. But of course, the guys had other plans. After everyone crashes the “party room” aka yours, Johnny starts pulling up Disney plus on the TV.

“What are we watching?” you ask.

“We found the Lizzie McGuire Movie.” Johnny says, extremely serious as he starts typing in the title.

“No! You’re not serious. Oh my god.” You’re starting to feel a little embarrassed about your taste in made-for-tv disney movies.

“Oh I’m serious. We’re watching this. Wouldn’t want you to be disappointed in me.”

Now you have to laugh. “Okay fine, but if you don’t like it, don’t blame me. I’m sure I only like it as much as I do because of nostalgia.”

This doesn’t seem to be a problem because as soon as the music starts, you’re singing and dancing along. And so do the guys if they recognize the song playing. Damn, they have really good voices. There’s even a point when Renjun decides he’s going to be the Paolo to your Lizzie and duet the final song with you. His imitation of the character’s voice crack is so good that it leaves the rest of the room laughing. You can just feel the inside joke growing already.

Before you get in trouble with the other people staying in the hotel for noise, you make the decision to kick out the other boys and get to sleep.

After stopping at a cafe and getting caffeinated and bakery-filled stomachs, you are all on the way to the pantheon to once be quizzed on architectural vocabulary by your professor. You have all decided to make it a friendly competition to see who can get the most questions right.

You would’ve won against Sungchan but you forgot the word for a coffered ceiling. But, you can’t be too mad because you guys all pleasantly surprised the professor with how much you remembered and he granted you an extra hour of free time before you had to get on the bus. This made Renjun really excited because he had another hidden gem he found on tiktok that he wanted to show.

He nearly started running in the direction of where he wanted to go. You followed closely after him, remembering how cool the first thing was that he found. Eventually, you are led to the church of San Luigi dei Francesi. Looking behind you, you see that the other guys haven’t quite caught up to you yet, but Renjun doesn’t seem to care as he grabs your wrist to drag you along behind him inside. Immediately, you are in awe. This church is so intricate and elaborate that if you didn’t know better, you’d think this was a hallway in the Palace of Versailles. Renjun only takes a few moments to admire the frescoes on the walls and ceilings before directing you to a corner where a lot of people were gathered.

After sifting through the crowd to the front, you see three dramatic paintings displayed on the walls in front of you. One of them seems familiar, so you ask Renjun, “Was that one on the left on one of our tests?”

“Yeah, these are all Caravaggio paintings,” he responds. You can’t help but look at him in admiration for his knowledge and passion for art. He must feel your stare and he looks back at you. A smile covers his expression, lighting up his entire being. It wasn’t until now in this perfect setting that you notice how perfectly his hair sits on his forehead in delicate waves, his eyes sparkle as much as the gold embellishments surrounding him, and his smile is that of a fairytale’s prince.

“There they are!” you recognize Xiaojun’s voice and see that the group managed to finally catch up to you. When you turn back, you see Renjun still softly smiling at you and get shy, choosing to break away and join back up with the group.

Your visit in Rome is then completed and you all begin on your way to Florence.

Masterlist

[killjoy-loveit]

Unexpected Inspiration

A/N: Welcome to Spring Season Stories! This is the 9th of the daily stories in April, so be on the lookout for more! If you’re wondering what the posting schedule is, then search ‘Spring season Stories’ on my blog and the calendar should pop up. I would like to clarify that everything written in this story is complete fiction and isn’t to be taken as a true portrayal of reality. This is in 1st POV! As always, the links for my masterlists will be in the notes, though I have come to find (after months of doing this lmao) that on mobile you have to click my reblog of the post to actually get the links- same applies to desktop. Also this has not been proofread, sorry!

Excerpt: Being in pairs could go one of two ways, either I would be paired with someone who excelled in composition to which I could provide lyrics. Or I would get stuck with someone in the same boat as me and be screwed.

Word Count: 955

Genre: Mythology AU, College/University AU, a little funny? I really don’t know

****WARNING: There is one (1) curse word in this piece.****

     Glancing down at the paper in my hands, for a minute I question if I should’ve taken this class in the first place. Sure, music was something I enjoyed, but it didn’t exactly coincide with my major. Not to mention I didn’t expect that part of this class required composing a song. Just how am I supposed to do that? Even though I can read sheet music without a hitch, I struggle with certain aspects of music theory, thus making it difficult to compose four measures, let alone an entire song.

     There was only one benefit to the composition part of the class: it would be done in pairs. Being in pairs could go one of two ways, either I would be paired with someone who excelled in composition to which I could provide lyrics. Or I would get stuck with someone in the same boat as me and be screwed. The latter option is the one I hoped to avoid, it was something I feared. Considering who my father is, most would expect me to be capable of anything and everything. Those people were forgetting the other part of my lineage, my human mother to be precise.

     My mother is the sweetest woman I have ever known, however, she’s not the brightest bulb. Neither was the rest of my earthly family. So, it was shocking, to say the least, that I excelled in academics and was going to college majoring in history, ancient history to be specific. 

     “Hey,” I hear a voice say to my left. Placing who the voice belonged to wasn’t hard, after all, he was always answering questions the professor asks in class.

     “Hey, Youngjo.” 

     He stared at me with a raised eyebrow. “Did you not hear what the professor said?”

     I smile sheepishly at him, shaking my head. “Heh, no. Sorry, I got distracted thinking about the final project.”

     “Well, if you’d been listening, you would have heard him assigning partners. You and I are working together on the final.”

     “Oh, really? You’re good at composing, right? You always seem to know a lot when you talk in class.”

     “Yes and yes, well, at least I’ve been told my compositions are good.”

     I let out a relieved sigh. “Thank the gods.”

     Plans are made to meet up outside of class to start the project and numbers exchanged. Class lets out sooner than expected, not giving us enough time to discuss our opinions about the kind of song we should make. I didn’t have enough time to stick around and chat despite being let out early, because the next class I had was across campus. The rest of my classes pass quickly, especially the one that dives deep into prehistory. Today was the day I had been waiting ever so patiently for, aka the time in which my professor would finally bring up Lucy, the Australopithecus. 

     I arrived at the cafe in just the nick of time, spotting Youngjo sitting at a table to the right side of the entrance. Dropping into the seat across from him less than gracefully, I set my bag in the chair next to me before snatching my laptop from the depths of it. 

     Opening the device swiftly, I decided to initiate the conversation. “So, what kind of song are you wanting to do?”

     He looked up, eyes widening as though he hadn’t noted my appearance yet. “Oh, well, before I knew it would be a partner project I had wanted to make something inspired by a Norse myth.”

     “I, umm… Excuse me, what?” I asked after I gaped at him for a good thirty seconds.

     “Do you not like Norse mythology? I just always found it a bit fascinating, which is why I wanted to make a song with its influence.”

     I couldn’t help but laugh, partly in disbelief, and partly from the sheer unexpectedness of it. “Okay, I’ll bite. Is it something specific? A myth or Norse god in question you wanted to reference?”

     “There are a bunch of things I’ve thought of. A couple relating to Loki’s mischievous nature, Idun’s golden apples that are meant to preserve youth, the Valkyries, or Valhalla.”

     If there’s one thing to admit, it’s that Loki’s antics were widely known, even to me. Some were a tad nefarious, yet he was never turned out by the others. “I think the golden apples or Valhalla would be good for inspiration, but just for shits and giggles, do you have a favorite god in the Norse pantheon?”

     “Uh, I don’t know for sure, but to pick one off the top of my head it’d probably be Odin. Probably because he’s depicted with a complex character.”

     I almost choked on my water at the mention of my father. “Out of all the answers I was expecting that was nowhere on the list. You know, most people would say Thor or Loki are their favorites.”

     He shrugged. “What about you, do you have a favorite?” 

     “Uh,” I hesitate, wondering if I actually do. “I don’t have one.” I guess knowing some of them personally makes it hard to say.

     “Oh.”

     From there the conversation progressed into the meter and key of the song. Each time Youngjo talked about Norse mythology in-depth I couldn’t help but giggle at the seriousness of his voice. Clearly he knew quite a bit about it, which you found a tad endearing slightly because he didn’t know my lineage. If he had, I’m sure he would feel awkward. Yet, I find it interesting to hear someone else’s takes on everything. 

     “I think we’re going to get along well.” I murmured sometime later.

     His eyes twinkled at that, a small smile tugging at his lips. “I think the same.”

[kyrinasha]

⭐️

Gonna use this to talk about my Gay Wizards (aka the A Hollowed Pantheon cast). Specifically Mara’s Fight Scene that gets her Real Fucked Up So basically, A Hollowed Pantheon has been through like... several different titles and concepts that have worked around it through the years, but the very first iteration of it was the scene where Mara fights the Archmage (who might have had an actual name at that point, but was always the sort of head of the magic school/church thing). I wrote it for my high school’s writing club, and to this day it’s still something I think is pretty good writing? But the reason I like it so much is because there’s always That Scene in YA fantasy stuff, right? The scene where the young protagonist faces off against the seemingly too-strong foe who represents all that is wrong with the world. And they fight, and the protagonist wins! But this happens near the beginning of AHP. And Mara loses. She loses and she loses so badly that her arm gets... practically vaporized, and she’s left with severe scarring and is effectively blind in one eye. And that’s where the story begins. Mara was never going to win that fight. Not in the original scene, where she was just fighting because of an ideological difference on how magic should work, and not in the current iteration, where she’s lashing out in the overwhelming grief of her friend’s public execution. Because even if Mara’s a really strong fighter who specializes in combat magic, she’s still like.... early 20s? She just doesn’t have the experience needed to come close to beating the High Mage Of This Branch Of Magic Church. And she knows this. Mara goes into that fight knowing she’s going to lose. But she does it anyway (which is a Serious Problem Mara, ma’am, please get some therapy you’ve got trauma). And I think part of the reason I like this scene so much is that there also isn’t another one. There’s not going to be a rematch where she shows the Archmage how much stronger she’s gotten. Because there’s just no time for her to master that. The Archmage’s fucked up and evil plans won’t wait for her to get stronger. And the course of AHP’s story is, in part, about figuring out how to beat an enemy that you can’t overpower. It’s also about dealing with the trauma and learning how to rely and lean on the people around you when you don’t know how, but that’s not as related to the big fight scene

[storiesofwildfire]

In this headcanon, I will be describing the reworking of Loki’s origins to correspond with God of War 2018. After playing the game, I was hit with a massive wave of inspiration because the game is genuinely very accurate to Norse mythology and it explains a lot of quirks about Loki that both Marvel and Norse myth have failed to explain or elaborate on.

Just to name a few, the new additions to Loki’s backstory offer insight into:

i. Why Loki is the God of Fire despite being a Frost Giant, as Kratos was the Greek God of Fire who often wielded the element in battle. Loki’s development of fire came directly from their father. 

ii. Why Loki is so small in comparison to other Frost Giants. Always described as a runt, the true reason that Loki was born so small is because they are only half Jotun and their mother had taken up the form of a mortal at the time of conception and birth. Mixed in with Kratos originally being part mortal as well, it makes sense that Loki’s size would not match that of a typical Jotun. 

iii. The event in MCU that seemingly erased so many people’s memories of Odin’s horrific and bloody past ( aka, what is discussed in Thor Ragnarök ). Living through one cycle of Ragnarök gave him the ability to alter his course in life without people noticing or questioning.

iv. Why Baldur is never mentioned. Baldur is Odin’s eldest son and yet, is never mentioned or discussed. Why? Because he already died to ignite a cycle of Ragnarök. Most people don’t remember him.

v. Why Odin is so incredibly desperate to keep control over Loki. He’s already experienced a cycle of Ragnarök because of him and he wants so badly to stop it from happening again. Though this is something I’ve already touched on for years, because Ragnarök happened once, Odin’s motivation is even more dire. 

vi. Why Laufey is always described as Loki’s mother in mythology where Marvel claims Laufey is Loki’s father instead and never actually discusses the other parent. 

And, in all honesty, after playing the game, I felt a strong connection to the story it presented, one that could easily feed into the timeline I’ve already set in place for Loki, so I decided I was going to do some updating. I haven’t had this strong of an emotional response to something in a long time and this just came so naturally to me, I couldn’t ignore the urge to do the crossover. 

A game where Loki’s actually a good guy and ultimately the hero, that calls Odin on all of his bullshit, won game of the year in 2018 and if that ain’t incredible, I don’t know what is. I saw so much of how I’ve been writing Loki for years in how the game portrayed Atreus because it focused on his knack for storytelling and his love of animals and how empathetic he truly is. All those little details resonated with me. It made my heart sing, so my updates will act accordingly.

Many years ago, deep in the forests of Viking Age Scandinavia, a seemingly mortal couple married and had an incredibly special child.

The father, Kratos, son of Zeus, a Spartan warrior, and the bringer of the end to so many deities that made up the Greek pantheon migrated and took to a life that was not his own. Seeking the life of a common mortal over the corruption of godhood, he found himself far away from home and further still from the memories he believed were better left forgotten.

The mother, Laufey, although blessed with powerful Seidr that kept even the most powerful enemies at bay, hid the truth of her origins as she wandered Midgard, claiming to be nothing more than a human witch. In reality, the woman hailed from Jotunheim, the land of the Frost Giants. Laufey wasn’t just any Jotun either, but the rightful ruler of the realm. She watched as war broke out between the Aesir and the Vanir, a war that quickly spread throughout Yggdrasil and left no realm untouched. Jotunheim did everything within its power to keep Asgard out of their realm, quickly marking themselves as a powerful adversary and painting them as a target. While Laufey wished to stay with her people, her realm was dying, and she could do nothing to save them by sitting on a throne.

With a burden resting heavily upon her shoulders and the gift of foresight, she saw a future that included a husband and a child, the foundation of salvation for not only her people but all the realms. Her purpose took her to Midgard in the disguise of an average-yet-beautiful young woman with porcelain flesh, vivid emerald eyes, and dark, ebony hair.

Not long after the pair’s first meeting, they fell in love, and quickly after that, Laufey gave birth to a redheaded child with her jewel-toned eyes. She wanted to name the newborn Loki, as she had already been calling the child Loki in her visions for years. Even her people knew the child-to-be as Loki. Kratos, however, wished to name the child Atreus, after a Spartan warrior who died in battle protecting his own, a man that Kratos admired and daresay even loved.

They decided to give the child both names, one from his father and one from his mother.

Loki ( Atreus ) spent most of his younger years with his mother. Kratos spent many days and nights away, hunting, often leaving Laufey to look after Loki on her own. She did so without complaint, enjoying the company of her beautiful baby more than even the most loving and attentive mother could. As much as her love ran deeply, though, she often found herself fearful to leave Loki’s side. He would grow up to be one of the most important people of their time, but her foresight did not offer her insight into the complications.

As a small child, Loki suffered greatly from illness, often left weak with a fever, unable to get out of bed. Sometimes, the ailment grew so severe that Laufey feared losing her child, though as Loki grew older, he grew stronger as well. Still, his ailment never seemed to fully disappear, but the risk of loss of life faded over time.

Laufey never got to see her son grow up, as she passed away when he was still quite young. Old enough to learn to hunt, read, and recite stories, but much too young to be without his mother. Especially when left with a father who, in Loki’s eyes, did not want him. Kratos was never around, hardly spoke to him, and did not seem to hold much interest in holding a relationship with him. He didn’t understand why his father remained so distant, didn’t know of the hardships that plagued the God of War, or how fearful he was of being a father without Laufey at his side.

Shortly after his mother’s funeral, as Kratos and Loki gathered Laufey’s ashes and discussed a journey to spread them across the highest mountain peak in Yggdrasil, Odin’s son turned up on their doorstep. Baldur, Odin’s eldest ( and at the time, only ) son came looking for Laufey under Odin’s orders. Odin, the “All-father” and King of Asgard, became obsessed with obtaining as much information about the future as he possibly could so he could prevent Ragnarök and therefore, his own death. Laufey, a powerful sorceress with a natural gift for predicting the future as well as Jotunheim’s rightful heir stood as a prize and a threat for the Hanged God.

Upon seeing that Kratos lived in a modest home with not one, but two beds, Baldur, a God blessed and cursed by his mother so he could never be harmed but, in turn, could never feel anything, became obsessed with hunting Kratos and uncovering what the God so desperately wished to hide. He’d believed he was looking for a sorceress to steal away and take back to Odin, but what he found ran much, much deeper.

After being discovered, Kratos and Loki ( who Kratos insisted on calling Atreus or, even more commonly, “boy” ), were forced to leave their home, lest they sit and wait patiently for the slaughter Odin’s brood was sure to deliver. Unsure of what they should or even what they could do, they turned to the one goal they both shared. Pay respects to Loki’s mother by granting her final wish of spreading her ashes across the tallest peak in Yggdrasil. Foolishly, they believed that to be a nearby mountain, but as they finally reached the tip of said mountain, they came face-to-face with Mimir, the Smartest Man Alive, as he described himself, instead. Trapped in a tree that grew around and threw him by Odin, he had no real means of escape and was kept there for when Odin could make use of him.

Mimir informed them that the tallest peak in Yggdrasil was not, in fact, on Midgard and, instead, on Jotunheim, but all pathways to the realm had been sealed many years prior. Mimir begged and pleaded with Kratos and Loki, promising to help them get to Jotunheim in exchange for chopping off his head. Contained and tortured by Odin, he claimed it would be a kind service and if they knew someone gifted in Seidr, his head could be reanimated, and his knowledge could still be of use.

They took Mimir’s head to a witch they met earlier in their travels, a woman whose identity would not be revealed to them for some time. Eventually, they learned that the witch’s name was Freya, a Vanir Goddess who married and later left Odin. The very same Goddess who blessed and cursed her son, Baldur, the man relentlessly hunting them on behalf of his father. Gifted with powerful magic but cursed with the inability to do any harm to others, Odin banished her to Midgard for breaking away from him. She developed a soft spot for Kratos and Loki. Her maternal nature bled into the young boy, often wishing to help or even protect him. She willingly helped them reanimate Mimir’s head and later, as Loki once again fell victim to his severe ailment that plagued him throughout his life, she lent her aid again. This time, though, she informed Kratos that his ailment was rooted in the lies that Kratos constantly reinforced on his child, insisting that Loki was mortal rather than allowing him to flourish as the young God he actually was.

The power of a God attempting to flow freely through the body of a small child who believed themselves mortal created a psychological barrier that resulted in sickness any time godlike power bubbled up to the surface.

Forced to save his child and own up to his falsehoods, Kratos told Loki the truth of his existence. Well, he learned half of the truth. The story of his mother would not come until the end of their journey, but they still had many hardships to face before they could venture to Jotunheim. Resources were collected to open a pathway to Jotunheim, multiple realms visited and explored, and one particularly annoying God who kept cropping up everywhere they went, hunting them.

Eventually forced to face down Baldur for a final time, Loki threw himself between Baldur and his father before the Odinson could deliver a finishing blow. Freya looked on in horror as she pleaded with her son, attempting to talk him down from his chosen path, but Baldur struck the boy who fell back against his father, struggling for breath but mostly unharmed. As Baldur stepped back, he found the shaft of a green arrow lodged into the palm of his hand, and he marveled at it because, for the first time in a century, he could actually feel it.

Why? Mistletoe. The arrow had been crafted of mistletoe and presented to Loki as a gift. Kratos used a piece of one of the arrow’s shafts to fix the strap of Loki’s quiver so it would sit properly across his chest after snapping. And mistletoe, as we all know, was the one substance that could actually do harm to Baldur, the one substance that Loki had been foretold to use to kill Baldur and bring about Ragnarök. The substance that could break Freya’s spell and make Baldur vulnerable again.

Despite Freya’s best efforts, Loki and Kratos killed her son before he could kill either of them. The father and son were prepared to leave Baldur alive, believing he’d been beaten without death, and that they needed to be better than the murderous Gods who came before them. As Baldur attacked his own mother, however, they realized they had no choice but to put an end to him.

With Baldur defeated and the immediate threat dealt with, they were finally able to make their trip to Jotunheim to spread Laufey’s ashes. They found the realm bleak, empty, and devoid of life, but they also found a mural depicting the journey they’d been on together after Laufey’s passing. For the first time, they both came to realize that Laufey had been hiding something as well, that she was no mortal blessed with Seidr, but a Frost Giant from a realm far from their tiny home. She predicted her child’s life and what he would accomplish and as he spread her ashes from the top of the tallest mountain, his magic traveled freely with her, dusting across the realm.

Killing Baldur, however, marked the beginning of Ragnarök. No one had been prepared for it, as it had not been prophesized for many more years, but Baldur’s death ensured the beginning of the end was upon them, the very thing that Odin feared the most and desperately wished to keep from happening.

Ragnarök, however, was not an end to everything, but a cycle. Loki would bring about an event that changed everything and those who were lost would be reborn. Intentional or not, the waves were in motion and Odin, though prideful and arrogant, was no fool. Stopping it would not be possible, but enduring and surviving Ragnarök and breaking the cycle so it would never come again? Now that could very well be accomplished if he played the game well enough.

It was this event that brought about the change in Odin’s demeanor, why he went from a bloodthirsty conqueror at war with every realm who refused to aid or support him to a “benevolent God” who wished to unite the realms. Ragnarök gave Odin a fresh start, it allowed him to craft and rebuild and bury his past sins under a road paved in gold. It explained why so many throughout all of Yggdrasil seemingly forgot all that transpired prior to Loki’s appearance on Asgard.

As for Loki, though? He could not risk killing the boy. If Loki died in Ragnarök, Loki would be reborn and Odin would have no way of guaranteeing that he would find the child again to prevent the next cycle of Ragnarök from occurring. No, in order to keep the same from happening again, Odin needed to control Loki rather than destroy him. Thus, the All-father descended upon the boy and his father, ripping Loki from Kratos and retreating back to Asgard where he stole the child’s memories and turned to raise Loki as his own, where he would always be able to keep Loki on a short leash. Where Loki could exist as a tool that Odin could use and siphon power from, but could never be used to harm him or his own again.

[bibliotechnician]

Matriarch//Drabble

~INSPIRATION [ x ] [ x ]~

I’ve been sitting on this prompt for like ... three years now. Volk vs The Matriarch; AKA why you cannot pay her enough to go back in the Archives.

The clouds broke enough for the moon to peek through, slivers of soft white light glinting off the ruined landscape of Moscow. A low wind blew over jagged peaks shot up like mountain ranges of asphalt and masonry, whistling forlornly through the broken windows of buildings and the rusted husks of cars. The occasional clack of erosion echoed over empty city blocks, an ambient sort of silence that was broken by the muffled crunch of footsteps on frozen rubble.

Daylight was better for Stalkers, certainly, and Volk was one of few who could take the glare of day, but even her eyes adjusted better to the dark. Without the reflection of stronger light off the sheets of ice and snowpacks, she could see farther and pick up on movement easier. 

She paused long enough to look around, trying to pick up on any activity in her immediate vicinity. When nothing out of the ordinary moved and the sky proved clear of Demons, she shifted the Preved on one shoulder and checked the pressure on her Tikhar hanging on her side before moving on.

The glimmer of faint light caught the edges and columns of the Moscow State Library, casting it in shades of silver-painted ivory. It likened a pantheon of godly folk before the clouds covered the moon again and stole its facade, turning it back into the ruin it was. Still, it was beautiful to her, caked in grunge and blood and bodies of fallen humans and monsters alike. The towering structure was still a beacon, even if it matched the destroyed world around it.

The path she took was well-worn to her, one she knew all the nooks and crannies. Still, she kept her head down and her eyes vigilant, watching shadows and paying mind to how far off the howls of Watchmen sounded. A few times, their closeness gave her reason to pause and look around before continuing. Only once did she see a Watchman scout too near for comfort, standing tall and dark against the clouded sky on what used to be a van. The hand on the strap of the Tikhar tightened as a precaution, though she didn’t move. Simply watched and listened as best she could to hear if its pack was nearby, holding her breath so it wouldn’t interfere.

After a minute or two, the scout stepped down and bounded away from her and with no sign of its pack anywhere close by, she let herself breathe again. Once she had the rhythm back, she returned to her journey toward the Library.

The rest of the way was fairly uneventful, her path crossed by small skittering vermin and nothing more exciting. Even the open courtyard of the Library, a danger to any unprepared visitor, was quiet. A quick look around was given as she ascended the stairs with carefully-placed steps, expecting one of the Librarians to be out on a night-time romp. A brisk wind swirling around the pillars of the building was all that greeted her for her efforts, the chill it brought with it penetrating even her thick radiation suit and causing her to shiver.

Volk turned toward the front doors, ornately carved brittle wood that creaked and groaned and threatened to give way as she pushed one of them open. It wobbled unnaturally along its surface, but swung open enough for her to fit through. She shuffled her equipment around as she entered, keeping her armament and her bags separate to avoid entanglement, before pushing the door closed behind her with a gravelly click.

The entry room was a disaster, as it always was. Bookshelves were tossed about and broken, books scattered across the floor (or ground into it in some of the more damaged cases), drifts of snow piled beneath the glass-less windows while ice glistened from the barren frames. Across one of the doors that lead further into the interim was a tangled mass of wood, one of the plants cultivated here; she suspected its canopy was dangling along the walls and ceiling in the upper mezzanines. The room was a shadow of its former self, she knew this only from seeing pictures of it in books ironically taken from its very walls.

Once she assessed she was alone and not in any immediate danger, she changed the filter on her mask and continued in. Her observations of the resident Librarians that lived further in helped her crest the pile of rubble that was a partially collapsed doorway into a smaller antechamber beyond the entry, scurrying over it and slipping with a little wriggling beneath the precariously balanced door frame above. She tried to keep as silent as possible, though the Preved at her back clacked against the fragile wood and hardened plaster mush that kept the haphazard supports from collapsing at the smallest sneeze. Worried, she stopped long enough to scan the room for any company of the mostly-unfriendly kind and, on noticing she was all alone, continued on through.

The room she entered was in better condition than the last, an antechamber by decay alone. The staircase that lead up and still further in was sliced almost neatly in half by a support beam from the roof above, the rest of the structure having collapsed at just such an angle to cover everything from the elements above with little openings between stonework. The bookshelves on both levels of the room and by association their books were still mostly intact, a few destroyed from the caved roof scattered along the rotting flooring. Even with a few books left on the shelves, the room had been picked clean, by her or others. Her target lay further still into the building and she shifted her weaponry again as she ascended the stairs carefully to the final door.

It opened with some resistance, grinding against the floor with a loud squawk. The noise caused her to stop and listen. Although there were no Librarians in the first two rooms to worry about, they were always in the main Library itself and were touchy to foreign noise. Especially one, a big one who towered over her by at least two feet alone and easily dwarfed her by build and weight. She had designated it as male, given its aggressive territorial tendencies, and named it ‘Shit’. He was more than a little picky about noise he couldn’t pinpoint and would rush at whatever the source to confront it. He was the one Volk worried about the most at this point in time.

She listened for a half a minute and when she didn’t hear his battlecry, pushed the door open a little further and slid in. The main hall was a thing of beauty, rows of intact shelves hiding all number of treasures and dangers, the vines from the plants grown in the Library dangling from the ceiling and down the walls as expected. The skylight high above the main floor let a little light in, but not much. She was going to have to rely on spurts of her headlamp and memory to navigate this without running into something meaner than the three Librarians she knew.

Every step was carefully planned and placed, making sure no unusual noise broke the ambiance. It would do no good to draw attention and agitate the inhabitants within the labyrinth of shelves. Making them such only served for them to start setting traps and causing trouble, as told by many other Stalkers who had tried to infiltrate the bastion of knowledge and culture and failed, in one way or the other. It proved Librarians were smarter than the average mutant monster, however, and with her own observances of the creatures, Volk had discovered that they could be reasoned with, so long as it was on their terms.

She entered the shelves in the middle of the main hall, aware of her surroundings on all levels she could. Movement on one wall caught her attention and she looked up out of reflex toward it. There was one of them now, a Librarian she did not recognize hanging from the support framing on one of the mezzanines and pruning leaves from one of the vines. The sight caused her to stop suddenly, accidentally kicking a pile of books amid rubble. Almost immediately after the sound of leathery paper and pieces of masonry clattered into the quiet, the familiar roar sounded. The Librarian at the mezzanine was gone in an instant, disappearing into the shadowy confines of the floors above.

Even if she knew him on relatively decent terms, Shit still scared the crap out of her. As he should, since Librarians were deemed as one of the most dangerous monsters the surface had to offer. Volk felt her stomach drop and her heart stop as the ground thudded to announce the arrival of the big alpha male. She backed up enough to give him space, a thing she had done many times before, like the lightweight flutter of adrenaline flooding her system at remembering he was still an apex predator. She waited for him, squaring herself up and leveling her eyes at where she anticipated his to be.

Shit was a monolith, for sure, nearly filling the entire aisle between bookshelves. He skid to a hard stop against one of them, wobbling the heavy furniture and knocking several books onto the floor in the process. Though her first instinct as a Brahmin Stalker was to catch and retrieve them to preserve their condition, Shit was considerably more pressing. Her eyes found his and she held her ground, her hands away from her weapons. The stare-down was nothing short of a dance of territory and no one brought a gun to a dance.

The massive Librarian rose up on his legs, making himself considerably taller than before and forcing her to crane her head back enough to maintain eye contact with him. After a moment, the lip-flap pulled back to show his teeth in obvious threat, one fist pounding his chest with a roar of his name.

“ssssSSSSSSSSSHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT”

He took a step forward, she took one back. “It’s me.” she replied, calmly but loudly.

His head tilted to one side, then the other, and he unleashed another roar. “yyyyYOOOOOOOOOUU”

“Ja. Me.”

He contemplated the response again, tilting his head one way and then the other before he took a deep breath, loud through the sharkish teeth still showing. She never broke eye contact with him, even when he fell forward on his knuckles again and slammed a fist into the floor so hard, it broke more of the floor tiles and she felt it through the worn concrete. “sssSHIT”

“It’s me.” she repeated, moving her hands up to toward the back straps of the gasmask on her face.

The motion caught his attention and the curiosity caused him to break eye contact and look at the moving hands. There was a brief moment where it registered in either the animal or the logical brain what he’d done. She held her position, hands no longer advancing for her mask and her eyes still facing forward, when he gave up the dance. Everything in her stopped on the spot when he roared at her, his teeth mere inches from her face, and then he turned and fled back around the bookcases.

She was able to track him for a while, the galloping gait tapped out by his knuckles hitting the floor stopping only when he started walking again some ways away. He didn’t sound particularly angry, or at least not angrier than usual, but she would have to keep an ear out for him and an eye for any potential traps he might lay for her in his annoyance at losing the territory battle. She let out a breath she had been holding without realizing and after a quick glance to make sure no other beady eyes were watching nearby, readjusted the Preved again and made her way further into the bookcases, eyes scanning book bindings and ears open to the Library.

Seeing pictures of what the Library had been made her wonder slightly at where the winding maze had come from, even as she traversed through it. Perhaps it was put together by the three big Librarians that frequented this room as a means to confuse prey, human Stalkers and other animals alike, or perhaps it appealed to their better temperament concerning plants and books. The shelves in this portion always seemed to be kept fairly well stocked and the books themselves were in about as decent condition as one could imagine; torn and stained and water-logged in some cases, but still legible in most. Theories of Librarians being human once had some proof here, in the way the labyrinth was kept, and she always found it abjectly fascinating.

She was putting a few books about pre-war economics in her bag when the shadow on the other side of the shelves moved. It made her jump and take a step back to wait and give the encompassing Librarian on the far side some space, trying to catch a glimpse of it through the open slots. The gasp she let loose at realizing it was there spooked the monster just as much as, with a low rumble, it turned and fled. Unusual for a Librarian, for sure, but it proved to her which one she had just encountered; Oops was a giant among Librarians from what little she’d witnessed over the past few years, though she had never seen it in the full open. It tended to hide from view and run rather than challenge. Which was good, because in her mind, nothing that large should be so quiet and if it was an aggressive monster, she would have been dead long ago due to it. Oops’ encounter merely upped her awareness, remembering as she finished settling the books in her bag that if Oops could get so close, another less-timid one could as well.

Slowly and cautiously, she turned the corner, keeping her eyes at a level they could catch any other Librarians looking to surprise her, listening to the shuffling of the creatures in various parts of the building, and taking note the one who had been tending plants before was slowly making its way back to finish the job. It was out of range and wasn’t paying her much mind, so she wouldn’t focus solely on it as she moved into the aisle Oops had been hiding before. The way was empty and with a final look behind her to make sure nothing was sneaking up, she walked down the aisle part way.

Another book of interest to the Brahmin was pulled and slid quietly into her bag, something about the History of..., the last part of the spine smudged in something black. A quick thumb through the pages showed it was still somewhat legible, so it could be useful. She turned her head and stopped when something seemed slightly out of place. The shelves at the end of the aisle moved strangely in her view and after a cursory glance around to make sure she was still alone, she moved forward to investigate.

The disparity was realized when she noticed a shelf behind the one she was focused on, offset a width back and lined so the edges overlapped and made it look like a solid wall from a distance. She couldn’t help the smile that moved across her face behind the mask at seeing it. If the Librarians were the ones moving shelves around in cognitive patterns and making secret passages to trick the eye, they had much better spacial recognition than most people thought. She would have to make note of it to write down later. She mused that she should probably keep a pad of paper and a pencil with her the next time she came to write down more observations of human-like behaviour and comprehension.

The new path was shorter than expected, leading out to the side in an alcove beneath one of the mezzanines. Volk stopped there, looking around carefully and paying especial mind to the pruning Librarian. It stopped on noticing her, looking almost curiously in her direction. However, after a moment of changing attention nearer the front doors, it decided she wasn’t worth it and went back to pruning. She heard Shit huffing around near the doors, a fair clue that the one above saw her as one of his and didn’t want to toy with something he considered family.

Once she was under the edge and nearer the windows on the far wall, she took a moment to look around. It was darker, even with the windows, and she had to flash her light around to see certain details and, more importantly, if there was anyone hiding in the shadows beyond the clouded night’s light. She thought she saw eyes at one point, but bringing the light back to where it was showed an empty hole in the wall instead. She let the light linger there to make sure nothing was waiting to pounce before deciding to move on.

The light beam was dragged across the floor in front of her to the wall opposite the hole, illuminating a door set into it and out of sight without a light to reveal it. She flicked the light off to avoid drawing any attention from nearby Librarians, sending the far wall into darkness, and walked toward it with slow careful steps meant to muffle any noise. The closer she came, the more she saw the door again, materializing out of the darkness. When she was a foot from it, she took care to change her mask’s filter and look around again. Librarians were just as sneaky as she could be, if not moreso. This was their terrain, after all, and they likely knew more than one way to creep up on unsuspecting Stalkers.

The door was an old metal fire-door, not uncommon in buildings like the Library. She held in a laugh as she thought on how such things did little good for the fate that befell Moscow. It was a small joke, something that made her relax enough to put her hand on the bar and push.

It took several good leans into it, but eventually it pulled free from the settled frame and swung inward with some difficulty. The wall and frame groaned worryingly, rust from the crumbling metal frame raining down on her as she passed under it. The concrete landing on the other side was small, made smaller with the door. 

After making sure she was alone in the space she had entered, she grabbed the side of the door and made to push it shut. As soon as it started moving again, what little support it gave to the wall above was disturbed. With the sound of crumbling weakened plaster and the rending crack of rusted metal, the wall above and around the door came crashing down, effectively cutting her off from the place she’d just left. She shielded herself with her arms over her face to protect the mask from any projectiles, hearing and feeling in the concrete landing as the metal fire-door tipped over with a loud clang and fell off the edge of the landing. It hit the ground far below, smacking things on its way down, before she decided to assess her damages.

The filter in her mask was changed again on account of radiated plaster dust choking the air briefly and from the other side of the collapse, she heard Shit roar and stomp his way in the general direction of it. He wouldn’t see her through the rubble of ancient wall and twisted metal, so she turned her attention instead toward the room she had entered. 

The light was flicked back on, charged with a few pumps of the battery, and cast across what used to be a shaft with a spiral staircase moving down into the bowels of the building. She shined the light briefly toward the bottom and through rusted concrete supports that had once been a central column for stairs, she could see the bottom and -inevitably- the door. Not knowing what exactly was below to meet her, she turned the light off again and let her eyes adjust to the grimy darkness.

The stairs seemed fairly intact, at least, and with nowhere else to go, she descended the stairs. Every step was cautious, every nerve alert to the feel of the crumbling stairs beneath her. A few times, she had to jump over gaps, moving a few steps forward quickly on landing to make sure she didn’t bust through and fall. 

She made it to the bottom without much incident, noticing the floor was shimmering. Water, probably from the thaw of ice and snow leaking into the basement of the Library and pooling. Sure enough, when she got close enough to observe the door in better detail in the murk around her, she noticed it was lapping at the edges. She decided not to touch it, as it was not hard to guess it wouldn’t bode well for her if she did. Carefully, she used the door as a bridge, stepping on it to get to less-soggy ground.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the new darkness that was the subfloor space she’d entered. Support pillars that were almost as big as she was rose out of the gloom, defining clear sections around an otherwise wide-open chamber. A few clusters of questionably glowing mushrooms on the floor and walls provided just enough light to accustom herself to, and she concentrated on what she had been told by other Brahmin Stalkers concerning the Library at length to figure her location. It hit her then that she knew where this was. This was an entrance to the Archives, though she would have to find a different way back up top.

She advanced further into the room, looking down as the sound of crinkling and tearing reached her, and grimaced. Even in the dimmest light provided by the bioluminescent fungus, she could see the spines and covers and pages and papers that had been books and folders and cards, stock and organization of a library of any merit. There was something down here that apparently didn’t like paper, given the condition of the partial mush on the floor.

A shuffling further in caused her to stand perfectly still and listen closer. If there were other entities in the Archives with her, she wanted to be perfectly aware of what they were, how many, and where they were coming from. There was something about mutated Librarians told to her by a few of the older Brahmin, creatures that were hulking and nasty in temperament. Probably, they were the ones that had strewn the contents of the Archives about, having none of the care and precision of the Librarians above. That meant they were possibly more animal and less reasonable. With this in mind, she glanced around slowly to take stock of her surroundings and when nothing stood out as threatening, she continued her trek in.

The dim light played tricks on her eyes, causing her to stop every few feet as she navigated the twisted catacombs that were once the Archives. Glimpses of things moving in the peripheral put her immediately on edge, especially when she looked to find nothing there. The soggy ground muffled her footsteps, a sensation that only served to send disgusted shivers up her spine. The squelch of the marsh of soggy pages was like nails on a chalkboard to her. She didn’t want to be down here anymore, she decided. Not if everything truly valuable was scattered on the floor, squishing underfoot.

She had gone a fair ways into the twisting maze of the Archives, keeping an eye out for any stairways that might lead up to the ground floor and musing that it was surprise she hadn’t run into a single one of the mutated Librarians yet when she did. She turned a corner and almost walked into it, it was simply sitting in the path. It was a relief to her that she had found one, having begun to discount the noises she heard being something of less savory existence, like Lurkers or Nosalises. Or her own imagination. The knowledge that there was still something she recognized and knew making sounds made her relax. Maybe they weren’t as difficult to figure out as the stories told. Maybe she could stare it down and get it to leave her alone like most of the others she knew.

The beast was immense. Easily bigger than Shit and scrunched uncomfortably into one of the spaces between support pillars. Even through the gasmask, which filtered a fair bit of odor, she could pick up its pungent stink. The way the skin, colored darkly, sagged in unnatural places and bubbled at equally unnatural angles and made it seem like a grotesque memory, something dredged up from a nightmare. The eyes haunted her, big and gold, partially reflective in the dim light of the mushrooms. There was no intelligence in them, nothing but the cool gaze of a predator who has been waiting patiently for prey to come to its waiting jaws.

It looked at her, the eyes alone almost as big as the palm of her hand, and she looked back at it. Eyes met eyes, and for a second, Volk believed she had managed to calm it with the usual tactic, not that it appeared agitated. If anything, it was regal in its gruesomeness, calm and unmoving. She felt nothing menacing about it, outside its size, and figured that perhaps it was the reason there were no others prowling in her path. 

“Your name is The Matriarch.” she told it, her voice barely a whisper. “You are respected and honored.”

Whether it was that it finally registered her existence or maybe that her voice had disturbed it from a disquieting nap, quiet as she was, giving it a name broke the facade. With a deft speed unexpected of such a large creature, The Matriarch rose upright and pushed through the columns it had nestled between. The concrete crumbled and snapped and it landed close by the Stalker, the unsettlingly human-like screech of a roar emphasized by pounding its fists on the floor. 

Despite not knowing her way, Volk wasted no time and simply ran away from it. You weren’t supposed to run from Librarians, much less turn your back on them, but she felt like this was one exception to the rule. It didn’t matter if she looked at it or not, The Matriarch would kill her either way. This was the feeling she got from it, and she had no intention of proving or disproving the theory with such wild aggression shown.

Drawing on her own reflexes to move out of the way of obstacles that rose from the gloom in front of her, her feet occasionally slipping on the slick floor covering, she kept a wary eye on the walls around her, flicking on her light when she found she saw nothing. It didn’t matter whether or not she was seen by anything, the one thing she worried about was rattling along behind her, screaming in raw anger at her existence. Dark shapes darted in and out of the corridors and alcoves and accessible rooms, she assumed they were other Archive Librarians, making a bid for their own for safety from the rampaging monster. Too bad hers was still not in sight.

She felt a swipe at her back, didn’t dare turn to look when it scratched the metal of the Preved still hanging there, the strap tightened to keep it out of the way. She didn’t look back, kept looking for a way out, and didn’t see the broken threshold on the floor. It caught her boot, sent her sprawling through rotten putrid papers and books, and in her panic, she drew on everything she had. Both the human ... and the animal.

One of her hands reached out to try to stop her from skidding, catching a jutting tile edge through the mash of paper beneath her, using her faltered grip to pull her around and up. Her boots gripped into the messy floor and as she spin around, the light illuminated another one of the staircases leading to the main Library above. As she turned, however, she saw The Matriarch barreling through the corridor behind her, its mouth wide in a roar and its eyes shining deviously. It froze her for half a second, long enough for the creature to pull an arm back for another swing. Instinct took over and despite herself, she leaped sideways into the stairwell and ascended it on all fours as far as she could before using her legs.

Maybe she thought that leaving the Archives would settle The Matriarch down enough she could get away without further incident, but clearly, she had underestimated the thing’s territorial rage. Such a shrieking retaliatory fit at being disturbed paled Shit by comparison, making the big alpha Librarian look timid, especially since Shit would never actively pursue an intruder into another alpha’s territory.

The stairwell echoed with the sounds of the deep angry roar and that of crumbling concrete and the screech of metal supports, and a quick glance down proved her fear to be true. The big Archive Librarian had bashed its way after her and was trying to follow her up the shaft, the vibrations of both howl and force of strength cascading chunks of the narrow space on them both. Not that it slowed the monster below her with its twisted caricature in any way, huffing after her and occasionally taking a good clean strike when she was in range as she scrambled over holes in the stairs and the rubble of others from above.

Halfway up, she turned to face The Matriarch, feeling her heart drop through her stomach at how close it was. Reflex made her jump to avoid the sweeping deformed claw that reached for her, pulling the Tikhar to aim between its eyes. Normally, she would never aim a weapon at a Librarian, but this was self-preservation now, The Matriarch proved it couldn’t be reasoned with. Though she felt a respect for it still, it was no different from a Watchman in the streets outside.

The ball hit its mark or at least close to it, the beast losing its grip on the walls and stairs and falling backward. She took a moment to settle the rifle back at her side out of the way and change her filter, gasping through burning in her lungs that was not just breathlessness. She took a moment to catch her breath again, and was standing up to continue her ascent when a deep groan resonated in the stairwell, raising in volume and intensity to that terrible roar.

The bearing had only stunned the beast, not killed it, but she had no time to think on it when the black arm wrapped itself around the steps she was standing on and forced her backward. One foot fell into empty space between the stairs, her hand flailing for balance coming in contact with the grid frame for what had been a concrete pillar up the center of the shaft, and she wasted no time in swinging herself around and using that to scale the distance between stair pieces. 

The Matriarch had found purchase, staring at her from under the platform as she landed on the other side before pulling itself up and resuming the chase. She barely heard it anymore, her ears ringing with the flood of panicked adrenaline in her system, her heart pounding in her chest, and the lightheaded breathlessness. The final stretch of the stairs was finally in view, as was the vile hand that gripped the side of the upper tier as she passed it, barely missing her by mere centimeters. Never before had a door on the surface of Moscow looked so inviting.

She crashed through it with reckless abandon, the wooden barrier ornately carved and heavy. Had she been in her right mind, she would have admired how well it stood up to irradiated time, but she wasn’t. The situation didn’t call for it. She did, however, slam the door shut as soon as she exited, the main chamber of the Library echoing with it.

She was shaking fiercely with the overflow of adrenaline as the barrier moved and blocked out the sight and sound of the Archive Librarian what was still ascending the stairs beyond, sweat mingling with tears behind the mask’s face plate as she wheezed to catch her breath. She put her back to the door in an attempt to calm down, hoping with everything that not seeing her or knowing she was there would end the pursuit. Knowing she had almost died below, and in the stairwell. It was a miracle she was in one piece and hadn’t lost bags or equipment, and it was just enough to make her decide to leave the Library alone for a while.

She heard the familiar roar of Shit as he heard the noise from the door, caught sight of Aha not far from her. Strangely, Aha wasn’t making a move of aggression toward her, standing across the alcove with its head tilted, its fangs showing. But not at her. She stared at the Librarian quizzically for a second before it occurred to her.

It was looking at the door.

The first blow boomed in the small alcove, the crack of splintering wood audible and Aha taking a step or two forward with a roar of threat of its own. Volk pushed herself to run, getting to her feet. One step, she saw Shit gracefully crest the top of one of the labyrinth’s bookcases and come running in full battle mode. 

The door exploded into the Library with such a noise it made her ears ring instantly. The force of it hit her, as well as most of the door itself, a fair chunk of the wood slamming her hard enough to send her flying a fair ways from the fight for territory. It toppled her head over heels, her face meeting the tile floor with a sickening crack as the acrylic all but shattered. She was vaguely aware she had taken some of the wood with her, felt the slight tingle of radiated air against the skin, the odd sensation of knowing large splinters of the door were embedded in her back and arms and legs, but being too much in shock to feel the pain or care.

The world was a blur through a cracked lens, hollow and far away from her, the trickle of moon’s light through the windows illuminating both Aha and Shit beating and scratching and biting something nearly twice their size, trying to pummel it back to where it came from or kill it trying. She heard none of it, could barely concentrate on the intricacies of any of it. Had surrendered herself to what she took was the creeping cold of death. The fight was over. She lost, slowly beginning to close her eyes.

Something blotted out the light from a window near her. It was big, whatever it was, and distracted her long enough from her fate to put together that there was one more Librarian left unaccounted for. That or this was a very awkward angel come to take her to whatever afterlife was in store for her. 

It moved toward her slowly, shyly. A hand reached forward, carefully patting the side of her head before it and its twin gently lifted her up and settled her along one arm. She could feel it through the tears in the suit, the roughened warm skin of the arm. It was soft to her, it was safe overall. The muffled angry roarings were disregarded for this, though there was one final glimpse of the battle scene. Shit was winning, Aha was nursing itself.

She saw everything else through snippets of fleeting consciousness. Her saviour bolted through the Library. Through a window. Across the courtyard. The moon was pretty, it was peeking out again. Moscow was cold. The car at the base of the stairs was too, she could feel it, but not the splinters yet. She longed for that warm arm again, the glimpse of sympathetic green eyes watching from around the statue. A roar here, a roar there, squealing of some small nuisance or another. She should really change her filter, she couldn’t reach her filters. She could barely bend a pinky, couldn’t move at all. The green eyes glowed as the moon hid behind the clouds again. A flashlight’s beam on the statue, no more eyes. The light on her, washing the broken face plate with white. Human hands, reaching for the tag around her neck, checking her pulse. They were chilly, there was more than one here. Muffled voices, the filter changed thank God, being lifted off the car. Humans were not as careful, but they were friends. Green eyes, green eyes. Green, hopeful, caring eyes. 

Oops. Darkness.

[popculturespiritwow]

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #27: OB-SESSION

After many months, I’m back! Sorry for the long silence. Life=Crazy=Sorry.

I’m planning over the next couple weeks to post summaries of the rest of Imperial Phase I & II and then hopefully I’ll catch up soon after that. It’s hard to believe there’s only a few more issues left. (Nooooooooooo.)

I’ve actually held off reading the most recent couples issues until I’ve gotten back onto this, so if as we go you’re wondering how it is I don’t already know this or that, that is how. I think the last issue I read had all kinds of crazy reveals about Baal. Speaking of which...

BAALER (I Hate Myself for this Title But There You Are)

The big reveal of issue 27 is that Baal has some kind of magic super secret voodoo he can use to stop the Great Darkness. It builds on last issue, where we learned he’d not only been previously briefed on the GD by Ananke but seen his father murdered by it. It’s also the beginning of another shoe dropping, except we don’t really know what gets squished beneath it for another eight issues and two specials and like a year of reading time so it doesn’t seem like a shoe so much as a hmm, that’s mysterious, I’m sure it’s fine, shall we rave then?

I love the visual structure of this page, the way it uses repetition to express the passage of time and also distance to simultaneously demonstrate our own distance as readers from whatever horrible nightmare things are going on and to minimize those events. (It’s so small; whatever it is, it couldn’t be that bad, could it?)

(Baal, what have you done...)

I also like how Baal’s “reassurance” to Mini repeats his mother’s words from last issue--“It is what it is,” but then adds on in a way that sounds like the sort of ‘steel yourself for nightmares’ mantra learned from everyone’s favorite grandmonster. Even as it gives Baal an adult-sounding stoicism, it also makes him sound like a little boy. 

And speaking of Baal’s complicated relationships with children: Had we been told before now that Mini ascended just a month after him? It strikes me as a brilliant move on Ananke’s part. Right from the start she’s set up her replacement self as a little sister for Baal to protect.

Two issues in a row we’ve got Mini as the seeming target of the Great Darkness bug fiesta. Is that because it knows who she really is/will be? Is the GD somehow in league with Ananke, and the attacks on Mini are just another way of keeping everyone thinking of her as Everybody’s Favorite Divine Lil Sis? Or does this, too, have something to do with Baal? Could it be that it’s actually Baal and not Laura that is well and truly cursed?

TOPOGRAPHICAL FLUIDITY

The heart of issue 27 is the five double-page spreads in which the standard left to right, up to down of Western comic storytelling slowly breaks down. On the first splash we’ve got a Laura/Sakhmet story riding the top, then the lower three quarters of each page telling their own stories (though really it’s the continuation of Baal’s story from page one to two). The second spread flips the structural arrangement, but now the left and the runner are continuing a story while on the right page we’re with Laura and Baph and Laura’s sister and ow oh God that hurts to read. 

The pages continue to shift and change from there, with one section always following Laura, at least one following Dio/Cass at the rave, and the other one or two checking in on what other characters are up to.

The thing I love about the approach is how it speaks to the disintegration within the group that Laura ordained with her choice of “Anarchy” last issue.  We’re not in complete collapse by any means, we can definitely follow the narratives, but the idea that these characters are starting to go in different directions is literally demonstrated in the structure of the page.

And also in the way the pages alter the visual language of Dio’s earlier rave (from issue 8). We’ve got the same 16 block grid structure, but it’s twice as dense; now every block contains an actual story panel, as compared to half for most of 8, with the other half used for the ongoing rave 1-2-3-4 countdowns.

Whereas issue 8′s dance pages had a sort of expansiveness, a sense of the rave as the overriding context that the story panels are just a part of, in 27 we’ve lost all that. In fact the rave is only one small part of what’s going on, even as its grid and color frames remain. (It’s interesting to see the rave visual style used as well for what precedes and follows it; it’s like the energy of the rave is starting to bleed out beyond the confines in which it makes sense.)

It’s also worth noting the rave in issue 8 ends with different members of the Pantheon one after another finishing Dionysius’ sentence, as though all one person. Another great contrast with the never-united narratives of issue 27.

But you know, even seeing how issue 27 offers an intensifying deterioration of the rave joy feel of issue 8, I still easily get lost in the visual dance of its two page spreads. I think it’s those bright frames; they just read to me as “fun”. (Apparently I’d be all good living in a prison camp as long it was decorated with Christmas lights.)

One moment does really snap me out of it, though:

No matter how bad things have gotten, Drunk Child Star Mini feels very unexpected. Plus who is she talking to? The camera team? Herself? Ananke Within?

(Actually, going back to issue 8 I realize we get a similar moment where out of the blue the story cuts to Minerva, talking directly to the camera with that same combination of ‘Don’t mind me.” and “Life sucks.”

So she’s almost certainly talking to their documentary squad.)

Mini drinking is not the worst thing we see in these pages by any means.

Ow. Ow. Oh God, Oh God it hurts.

But somehow that Mini moment (that mini Mini?) (#sorrynotsorry) is the moment I find most off key.

ONE MORE ONE MORE TIME

Hmm. That comparison between the two Mini moments has got me thinking...

You know, give me a second...

*time passes*

So hey, I’m back. I just went back through the rave in issue 8. Here are some of its major beats:

Dio tries to help Laura let go.

Laura becomes a part of everything going on.

Laura talks about her family and sketches them in light.

Cassandra cannot connect. 

Sakhmet and Laura look each over and then start dancing together.

Woden watches.

Mini is left out.

The Morrigan warns Laura about getting too into Baphomet.

Everyone unites around Dio’s thought of making people’s lives better, because the end is coming soon.

Each of those beats is returned to issue 27.

Dio tries to help Cassandra let go.

Laura tries to disconnect from everything that’s happened.

Laura thinks about when she got Baphomet to create an illusion of her family.

Cassandra finally connects, saying “You’re full of stars”, which is what Laura said to her at the rave in issue 8. But then she rejects the connection.

Laura, now with Sakhmet, wonders what’s the worst thing she could do to her.

Woden watches. (Jamie uses the very same image.)

Mini is still left out, and now drinking. 

Laura gets too into Baphomet, and now Baphomet is locked away with the Morrigan.

Cassandra rejects the connection.

There’s a little more in each rave than that (Woden plotting, Woden calling for a hook up, Baal and Inanna), but you gotta love the way the parallels show those stories having progressed (and not for the better).

(Also, I know Dio is on life support at this point, but man it feels like there should be one more cast rave, doesn’t it? Jonesing for my rule of threes.)

LOCK STEP

In the final pages we shift to two pages of a sort of call and response; on the left side we get David telling us what’s “really going on”, aka in year two the gods lose it, and on the right we cut back to each god in their own version of doing that, and ending on the punch line of Cassandra.

She’s the one god who seems to have her head well and truly on straight, the adult in the room, but here she is just staring silently at what has been her white whale the whole issue, Ananke’s Murderous Mystery Machine.

Gillen’s notes on this moment are familiar, chilling and wonderful:

Comrade Rossignol, my old partner in crime, game developer and co-writer on The Ludocrats, and I have a line we tend to quote to one another. It’s a paraphrase of a quote from Ballard: ‘My advice to anyone in any field is to be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker.’

We quote it as: ‘Stay true to your obsessions and your obsessions will be true to you.’

It’s basically been our respective careers’ magnetic north, but there’s certainly times when I wonder how good it’s proved for us as human beings.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE

You could easily go from Cassandra staring silently up to the spooky final full page spread of her white whale itself. But instead Gillen gives us an extra six panel page first. It seems puzzling; we don’t really need to have David ask “Are you okay?” We already know that Cass isn’t, and that she doesn’t know it.

But for me what makes that page so important is that it gives the other Norns the chance to ask David about their own fate. Imperial Phase I has taken Skuld and Verdandi from silent back-up singers to real emotional partners with Cass, indeed the dominants to her submissive. By presenting us with the question of their fate we’re reminded of the fullness of their humanity; their lives are just as valuable as that of Cass.

Their question also plays very much to Gillen’s comment about the destructive impacts of artistic obsession. These gods don’t just hurt themselves; they put their families, their fans, their friends at risk. What will Skuld and Verdandi do when those dangers come for them, one wonders...?

[cedarmoons]

spring; rebirth

fandom: the arcana | ship(s): lite asra x nadia, hint of asra x mc aka the greek god au no one asked for, you’re welcome.

spring; rebirth

It’s summer in Vesuvia, as always. Down below the mountain’s peak, the world shimmers in shades of white and brown and blue, winter blowing in from the godless sea. Nadia sits with Asra’s head in her lap, stroking his hair as she reads. It’s from Prakra, he thinks, her homeland—she’d carried it with her when Prakran immigrants brought her over to Vesuvia. Pasha and Ilya had similar items to remind them of Nevivon, he thinks, though Vesuvians had renamed them Portia and Julian.

He doesn’t have anything like that. He’s been part of the Vesuvian pantheon for ages, even before the darker half—the gods of storms, plague and pestilence, famine, war and chaos—had been cast out from the celestial palace, exiled to the underworld, hopefully never to return.

“What are you thinking about?” Nadia asks, still reading. Asra catches her hand and brings it to his lips, kissing her fingertips. It catches her off-guard; she looks down, a light blush darkening her features, and he smiles at her.

“You,” he says. Nadia’s smile widens, and she tilts his chin up, leaning down to kiss him. When she pulls away, he twists his wrist, crafting a sprig of lavender from the ether, and puts it in her hair.

“Springtime is almost upon us,” she murmurs. “Pasha has just returned from the last harvests. Soon you must leave me once again.”

“I’ll be back,” he promises, sitting up. He rests his head on her shoulder, turning his face to press kisses to her neck, brushing his lips over spots he knows will make her shiver. “It’s only three months.”

“Such a short time should not feel like an eternity,” Nadia murmurs. She closes her book and faces him, properly, leaning against the back of the stuffed chaise.

“You could come with me,” Asra offers, smiling. “Get to know the people you saved. They love you, Nadi.”

“Yes, I know.” She glances over her shoulder, to the flowers and choice cuts of meat and golden coins resting on a silver platter, brought to her from beneath the mountain by Chandra, her messenger. There is a room bursting with flowers just like the ones on the platter, and the coins are given to Asra, to place in the hands of the poor whenever he sets out on his journeys. “But there is too much to do here. Vesuvia is not yet healed from the war with Lucio and his ilk. I am sorry, dear Asra, truly. Perhaps next year.”

Asra kisses her cheek and lets it go. Spring always comes; there will always be another chance to see the wonders of the mortal world.

+

He wakes on the first day of spring with the scent of flowers clinging to his hair. He reaches up and pulls a blossom from behind his ear, smiling slightly. Spring feels fresh, this year. It has felt that way since Nadia cast the evil from Vesuvia and assumed her place at the golden throne.

He gets dressed, puts on his cap and his scarf, and fetches Faust from her favorite place in Nadia and Pasha’s gardens, equally shared: a willow tree that overlooks a shimmering, iridescent lake. Spring! she says to him, brimming with anticipation.

“You feel it too, don’t you?” Asra asks, smiling, and makes his way down from the mountain.

This is how he spreads springtime: walking from house to house, coaxing greenery and life and warmth from the frozen, brittle ground. He kneels and holds his palms over dead bushes, and from his hands come growth, renewal. He blesses farmer’s fields by night, watches festivals held in his honor by day, meadows blooming around his feet.

Ilya always attends those festivals, of course. He’s the god of healing and revelry, and he adores mortals in a way no one else in Vesuvia does, except maybe Pasha.

Asra’s journeys take him to the sea, where he finds a cottage built a few hundred feet from the coast, its backyard fenced off. He doesn’t remember it being there, though perhaps he had seen it yet not noticed. Gods have long memories, and with long memories come forgetfulness.

He takes on a mortal form, concealing the mark of godhood that would injure mortals, either with blindness or worse, and knocks on the door. There’s someone inside, he can tell: he just wants to know if they’re the sort to open their home to strangers. He just wants to know if they’re the sort to share their story.

Nadia enjoys the stories he collects; she enjoys hearing about the lives of the people she protects.

Lucio had always enjoyed these games; he’d always punished those who didn’t open their doors to him. He sometimes punished those who did, if he thought they were rude or inadequately hospitable or otherwise not worshipful enough.

A woman opens the door, and Asra blinks when he senses the mark of godhood within her. It’s faint, but there: not fully-fledged, like his, but half-formed. Like a demigod, who were created either by god-mortal unions (rare, but not impossible) or through a favor bestowed by a god.

There haven’t been demigods since... he can’t remember. Lucio had been fond of killing them, way back when they’d first ascended. He’d thought they were challengers to his rule. Since then he hasn’t seen a trace of a single demigod.

Until today.

The woman senses his godhood at the exact same time he senses hers; before he can even get a word out, she shuts the door in his face and he hears the locks behind the door turning into place. “Wait!” he calls through the door. “I won’t hurt you, I promise. I didn’t even know you were here, I was just passing through.”

“Leave,” he hears, muffled.

Asra sighs and steps back. He could just appear in her house—locks and stone and wood aren’t obstacles to him—but that would be incredibly rude, and invasive besides. He won’t push where he’s not welcome. He is the god of magic, of springtime, of travel. Violence and rudeness just isn’t in his nature.

He dips the brim of his hat, walking around the perimeter of the cottage to the fenced-in backyard. She has an extensive garden, but all the plants are still trapped in winter sleep. Even if she won’t let him into her home, he still has a job to do—and maybe it’ll show her that he doesn’t mean her any harm.

He blows away the frost that clings to the leaves of her lavender plants, coaxes life into her mint plants and reawakens the roots of the peach tree in her garden. He thaws the ground, warms it with his hands and his magic, and smiles when he feels the garden start to respond to him, turning toward his magic, drinking it in. Provided there are no storms, her garden should be blooming within the week.

When he has gone through her extensive garden, bringing Spring with him, he looks over his shoulder and sees her watching him from the window, her face half-concealed by foggy glass. He smiles at her and stands, dipping the brim of his hat. She withdraws from the window, and he sighs again.

Well. If she doesn’t want to talk to him, that’s fair. He can’t really blame her for her hesitance. Demigods and the Vesuvian pantheon don’t have a great history.

He leaves her garden and her cottage in peace, once more on his way to bring Spring to the next house and town and city under Vesuvia’s mountain, but the strange demigod by the sea never leaves his thoughts.

[league-of-light]

Week 4 Pick’em

Look, I know I’m late on the picks this week.  I wanted to get them in yesterday, but other things came up and I didn’t get to it.  I’m sorry, ok?  To make up for it, I have written quite the long pick’em for this week.  I’m not entirely sure if I will be able to make them this long every week, but I think I should be able to. 

Why would I spend all this time writing the pick’em? Great question.  Isn’t there a more productive use of your time? Probably.  Will, you’re moving next week, shouldn’t you be packing or something?  Are you just spending way more time writing picks as a means to delay the inevitable anxiety you’re going to feel about starting a new job and moving?  Do you think this is the healthiest way to deal with that? Psh, you’re not my therapist. 

Anyway, here goes

Yerboi vs Brenner? I hardly know’er

This Will vs. Brenner bout, should be promotionally billed as “Chronically Injured and Underperforming” vs “Complete Lineup Ineptitude”. Both teams come into Week 3 at a resounding 0-2, and are looking to get their season on track after some of high profile trades in the first couple weeks of the season.

There are always big expectations when you make a trade in Fantasy Football.  Typically speaking, you hope and expect that the players you got are going to outperform whomever you traded away (or at the very least perform somewhat similarly). Unfortunately, that won’t always be the case.  Sometimes there are weeks like last week, where JuJu outscored T.Y. Hilton and I am forced to sit there and reflect on how I would have won if I just kept JuJu.  Other times, there are weeks like this week, where Brenner ensures he doesn’t have to deal with the emotional trauma of a trade gone awry because he benches the players he traded for. (No there aren’t, this literally never happens)

I pick myself, simply because I don’t think I’ve actually ever seen a team projected to score as few points as Brenner.

Story To Watch: How quickly it will take Drew Brees to score more than the 3 points Brenner got from Tyrod Taylor.  My guess is 4 plays.

Tangiphil vs Hewie and the Hashslingers

After a fairly explosive first week of the season, we can all finally exhale — Phil’s team is bad again. Shockingly, his 3-headed Running Back Monster is down a head.  Unlike the legend of the Hydra, instead of another head growing in it’s place, Phil decided to chase last week’s bench points and play Nelson Agholor.  If you check his bench this week you may notice Joe Mixon outside of the IR slot, Isaiah Crowell’s wasted 18 point TNF total, and another Jets receiver.  That’s right folks, it’s week 3 and Phil is already in midseason form.

But enough about Phil. Steve is 2-0 and I expect his win streak to continue this week.  In my humble opinion, his team is underprojected with only 98 points, as Big Ben, Melvin Gordon, and Marvin Jones all look poised to be playing catchup in potentially high scoring games.  Look for Steve to hopefully rise in the power rankings after squashing Phil.

Story To Watch: He may be the second head of a three two-headed running back monstrosity, but Adrian Peterson is going to look more like Mike Wazowski than James P. Sullivan this week.  The Packers offense comes to FedEx Field with an offense that looks like two-day expedited shipping, while the Redskins offense has been looking like the Pony Express. Game script gets away from the ‘Skins and they abandon the run.

Kyle vs Sean

Close to half of this league isn’t from Rockland, so I’m going to use this opportunity to tell a story.  To the hometown heroes - some of the overarching details may be incorrect, but I don’t care I have the talking stick. If you want accuracy you can write the damn blog post next week.  Anyway, in sixth grade every middle school student has to take World History.  The curriculum is geared towards ancient civilizations, and a decent chunk of time is spent on Egypt.  As such, every year there was (is?, not sure if they still do it) a grade-wide Egypt project where students had to use their knowledge of Egypt, make something, and showcase it to the class.  Think of it like a science fair, but with crappy Egyptian dioramas instead of baking soda volcanoes.  Since I was a bright eyed ambitious young man who loved art and mythology, I knew I would do great on this project.  I chose the ambitious task of making a sculpture of Horus, the Falcon-headed man prince of the Egyptian pantheon. It wasn’t long before I realized my doodling skills didn’t translate well into making 3D models, but I was in far too deep.  I molded the clay as best I could, and then “accidentally” left it in the oven too long so it burned to a crisp and was nearly unidentifiable.  Needless to say, I didn’t do very well on that project.

Why am I telling you this? Because look at Sean’s team.  Does it look real good on paper? Sure. Does that mean he is likely going to win this week? Probably.  But has his overconfidence blinded him into creating a team made of glass with absolutely no depth in a 16-team league? 67%, yes.  (Because that is the grade I got on the project.)

Story to Watch: Alex Collins has become the running back equivalent of Hillary Swank.  Hot or not? Stay tuned this week and find out…

You Guys Again vs. Johnson Ertz

The moment you’ve all been waiting for is here folks.  I…..I can’t believe it’s finally happening.  After almost two full years, the day has finally come.  Dylan Feldman vs. Dylan Costa are facing off in a fantasy football matchup which I am officially dubbing “The Battle for the Right to be Called Dylan in the Fantasy Football League Group Chat” (and since we love our acronyms here, aka TB4TR2BCDITFFLGC).  Two Dylans enter, only one Dylan leaves. This matchup is arguably one of the most important matchups we have ever seen in this league, and has a chance to change the history books forever.

Unfortunately for Dylan Costa, his squad isn’t exactly striking fear into anyone these days.  I’ll have to go with Dylan Feldman, but his lineup has more red letters than Hester Prynne after an all weekend slumber party at Arthur Dimmesdale’s Dimmesdale Dimmahome.

Story to Watch: With the return of Aaron “I smoke Marijuana so Bowers thinks I’m a bad person” Jones coming back to Green Bay, Jamaal Williams’ usage should be monitored. As the kids say, he hasn’t been very good over the past two weeks, and Aaron Jones is ready to come in blazing *~!420!~*

Bearkley vs. Watch Me

Imagine my shock when I saw I won the bidding war for Ryan Fitzpatrick.  I immediately rushed to find the owners of the Tampa Bay WRs so I could celebrate our good fortune as Fitzmagic showers us all with fantasy points.  Now imagine my shock when I saw Samantha has benched Chris Godwin, not only a rookie (we all know my irrational hype with rookies), but a rookie whose name is lit a combination of God and Win.  I don’t know about you, but doesn’t it feel like Samantha has renounced God and doesn’t want to win this week’s matchup?

On the flipside, Nico runs our Dungeons and Dragons group, and if the 80s taught me anything it’s don’t feed weird aliens after midnight, and that D&D is for devil worshipping heathens.  With any hope of good Christian fun squandered for this matchup, it really is anybody’s game.  I want to believe in the underdog, but more favorable matchups lead me to believe that Nico will pull out the W.

Story to Watch: Saquon Barkley caught 2 of 6 targets week 1 against the Jags.  That number increased to 14 of 16 targets last week as Eli Manning completely lost interest in holding on to the football for more than 1 second.  Is it possible that Saquon receives 28 targets this game as Eli Manning has to look JJ Watt and Jadaveon Clowney in the eyes?

Washington vs. Walshington

I want to take a second here and pour one out for Walsh, who didn’t answer my trade offer or my text message regarding Dalvin Cook and Allen Robinson.  Walsh, you took an injury bullet for me and I will forever be grateful.  It’s appropriate that I mention taking a bullet, because rumors have it Frank Gore was actually there when the first metal bullet was shot in 1425.  Between Gore and Kerryon Johnson, Walsh will be lucky if he gets 14.25 points from his running backs this week.

Andy surprisingly continues to ride or die with Andrew Luck, despite Luck being unable to throw the football more than 15 yards. At this point I assume he is just taunting Arielle with Bortles on his bench, and we have to assume that if Bortles continues putting up 30 point games, eventually Andy might start him.  The biggest story on this squad is how Andy managed to get two of the best big play boom or bust WRs with John Brown and Will Fuller, while also having Amari Cooper and Mike Evans.  That’s a solid receiving core you got there pal, and I just want you to know I see it and appreciate it.

Story To Watch: C’mon, it’s Philip Lindsay.  Every week it’s Philip Lindsay. Everyone loves a hometown hero and I have greatly enjoyed watching this kid ball out.

Bowers v Arielle

I’m high on Dylan Leone Arielle’s team this year.  How could you not be? It was drafted by a man who has $45,000 in fantasy football great young woman who has shown her commitment to the league.  For whatever reason, ESPN’s site stopped working just as I was going to look at this matchup, so unfortunately I am going to have to give an abridged write up of my pick.  I have played these teams back to back so you would assume I know who is on their rosters, but I can’t remember anything other than Russell Wilson and James Conner on Arielle’s team, and Golden Tate and Kirk Cousins on Bowers’.

Based on this limited memory alone, I suppose I am going to pick Bowers in what will likely be another close matchup for the Reikland Reavers

Story to Watch: The story of life as I take this momentary absence from ESPN’s Fantasy Football to reflect on the finer things in the world.  Like Yahoo Fantasy Football.

Jason v Harnsowl

ESPN is still not working for me, neither on my phone nor my computer, so I can’t really give much analysis here.  However, not much analysis is needed.  Unlike his godless sister, Jason is a man of faith. And if George Michaels taught us anything, it’s that you gotta have faith.  You gotta have faith, faith, faith.  Carson Wentz returns this week and I don’t care whoever Harnsowl is playing, it doesn’t really matter.  I mean, as far as the matchup is concerned it might matter, but emotionally speaking, Jason has already won this week. 

I can’t be expected to pick a winner in a matchup that already has a winner, so instead I’ll take this time to remind you to spay or neuter your pets.  Bob Barker used to do a fantastic job of reminding the American people to do so, and if I am being completely honest I just don’t think Drew Carey delivers the message with the same panache. Like sure, I know Drew still says it at the end of the show, but does he really even believe it? Only Drew can really answer that question, but if I had to guess I would bet $100 $101 Drew.  While we’re on the topic, if any of you ever manage to go on Price is Right and you do that thing where you bid one dollar higher than someone else did, you can consider our friendship over.  Not only is it the worst strategy ever, it’s also rude as hell to the other contestant.  In some cases I’m sure the people legitimately don’t know what to bet after someone else bet around the same thing they did, but for the love of God at least bet like $10 higher so there is some tension in the room.  

But yeah, back to football, I pick Jason

Story to Watch: The next episode of Price is Right, Monday September 24th

[mothermaidenclone-blog]

Deadpool 2 or The Script Confiscated From A Year Nine Class

Deadpool 2 was a disappointment in my opinion. The original film took me by surprise with its love story plot and silliness outweighing offensiveness. It also included wonderfully unexpected, off-beat jokes about Judy Blume books and Ikea furniture. Whilst I still had some real chuckles at moments of Deadpool 2, such well written, humorous moments were in the minority. These were replaced by fourth-wall-breaking in-jokes about other Marvel franchises and witticisms acknowledging sexism and racism that were present in the film, without actually addressing the issues or making amends for how problematic they were. All of this, combined with the higher frequency of gore, made it feel like Deadpool 2 was written by a fourteen year old boy and a ropey A.I. that had been fed the first film.

*Deadpool 2 spoilers follow*

Deadpool 2 saw the return of Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), the partner of Wade Wilson aka Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds). Within a couple of lines of dialogue she establishes herself as an understanding person with a razor sharp wit, a cutting sense of humour, a libido and a desire to become a mother. Vanessa is built up as an incredibly three dimensional character in a very short space of time, all whilst displaying a combination of characteristics not usually afforded to women in mainstream cinema. All good so far, what could go wrong? How about she is promptly shot in the head to give Wade something to be sad about for the rest of the film. You did The Bad Thing, Deadpool 2! I feel as though the writers noticed the success of the love story angle of the first film, so they stuck a bunch of movie genres that Deadpool isn’t in a hat, pulled out “family film” and spent the rest of the creative process figuring out how to shoehorn a plot around that. Vanessa and Wade’s honest, raw and genuinely funny relationship was what made the first film so good, murdering Vanessa right at the beginning of the sequel is not the right way to keep that momentum going.

Furthermore, Vanessa isn’t even allowed to rest in peace. She becomes a metaphor for heaven, rather than a character. In her pink, fluffy jumper she becomes inseparable from her hazy, pastel surroundings - what happened to her amazing, grungy, leopard-print fashion? Her individuality is stripped away and she becomes a homogenous ideal of a stylised afterlife. Her acerbic humour is replaced by generic platitudes about how Wade can’t join her because his heart isn’t in the right place, which is nonsensical in itself because in life she loved Wade for all his flaws and foibles. In short, it is tragic to see Vanessa - one of the reasons that Deadpool was so original and funny - killed off almost instantly and then reduced to one of the most ubiquitous and boring tropes imaginable.

Another fabulous female character who makes all too short of a reappearance is Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand). She is a fantastic comedy counterpart to Wade, dry and stoic where he is emotional and silly. The audience is not only treated to some great one liners from her, but also a brief display of her combat prowess and spectacular mutant powers as well as, if you wait until the credits, impressive technical capabilities. Negasonic continues to be a unique and strong addition to the unwieldy X-Men pantheon, my only real criticism is that we didn’t see more of her.

Negasonic’s personality is developed somewhat in Deadpool 2 by the introduction of her girlfriend, Yukio (Shioli Kutsana). Whilst it is always amazing to portray a lesbian relationship as the norm and not murder one of them (everyone needs to do this more please) it did feel a little like box ticking in this film. This is mostly because we don’t get to know Yukio at all. Once again, we see a small demonstration of her exemplary martial skills and supernatural abilities, but we don’t really see any personality. Basically all of her lines are a cutsie, cheery, “hi Wade” or “bye Wade.” On the one hand, this is a good comic balance to Negasonic’s broody attitude, but on the other hand, it does feel like a stereotype of a “kawaii” Japanese girl. If she had literally any other characteristics this might be excusable, but as it is, she remains a two dimensional character. On top of all this, she goes by what I presume is her Japanese given name, rather than a pseudonym like the vast majority of the other X-Men, hammering home the uncomfortable and somewhat fetishistic, Orientalist aura surrounding Yukio. I can’t wait for all the fan art of Yukio and Negasonic because it will undoubtedly be deeper and have more narrative than Deadpool 2 awarded the pair.

One final, returning female character reappears in Deadpool 2. Al (Leslie Uggams) returns as Wade’s elderly, black, blind flatmate, which in itself is positive to simply have someone so far from the white, young, able-bodied Hollywood norm included in a superhero blockbuster. Once again, Al has some excellently funny one liners, but these seem to be overshadowed by gags about her blindness, which places her more as the butt of the joke than the creator of the comedy. Furthermore, she only appears in one, brief scene, so I feel that Al was wasted somewhat on Deadpool 2.

Deadpool 2 did introduce a new, black, female superhero, Domino (Zazie Beetz). She has the unique superpower of being lucky, things just seem to work out for her. In addition to this power she is shown to be funny, brave and compassionate, as well as a skilled fighter. Most notably, in the final standoff which is comprised mostly of men battling each other, she goes to save the children from becoming collateral damage in the crossfire. Despite Wade calling out the sexism inherent in the X-Men and proclaiming that the X-Force will be “forward thinking, gender neutral,” Domino is the only woman in the original line up, being outnumbered 7:1 if we include Weasel (T.J. Miller) in the calculation. She is, however, the sole survivor of these new recruits, and undoubtedly steals the show in the ensuing action sequence. The second X-Force family is somewhat more balanced, but men still outnumber women 5:3.

Overall, the women in Deadpool 2 are mostly strong, capable and hilarious. However, the vast majority of them have very little screen time, sometimes due to their untimely and unjust murders, and the racial stereotyping cannot be ignored. All the elements for a great story are here, they’re just lost in the quagmire of self-referential almost-jokes. I’d like to see the version of this film conceived by queer fan artists, and not the rude, crude scribblings of teenage boys in the backs of their homework diaries that this film was.

And now for some asides:

Domino’s fashion was amazing, I want all of her jackets.

“Hands off that kid, John Connor” doesn’t make any sense as a reference! If you insist on all of your humour being referential, at least put in the nerd hours to get it right.

You know an ending is dragging on too much when you abandon it in favour of not missing the post-credits scene, because your broken body can’t make it through both without a toilet break.

[maracate]

Fic rec list for @maternalcube

I avoided everything explicit and most of the things that haven’t updated since feb (unless I really liked it) which makes this list about 300% shorter (and also means there are very few soulmate aus, people do not like to finish those)

it’s still long though, so under the cut

Finished:

Unwritten (T)

Every Victor Nikiforov fan has three things in common. 1. They have unrealistic expectations for romance. 2. They mark their calendars with the dates of his newest book releases and the premieres of his latest movie adaptations. 3. They either passionately hate or love his greatest rival, a mysterious author whose pseudonym is only two letters: “KY.”

High flying, adored (G)

Being a superhero is hard. It's even harder when you're desperately in love with the most famous figure skater in the world, who never seems to notice you. Of course it doesn't help that he's a superhero too--and he's head over heels for your alter-ego.

Enjoy the awkward fumblings of these two erstwhile masked men as they dance the terrifying tango of young love and secret identities.

Starstruck (T)

(in which yuuri is a simple barista, viktor is a famous movie star, and yuri is an 8 year old kid stuck in the middle of it.)

Autumn in detroit (M but i think that’s for violence)

In a world where Viktor Nikiforov was forced to retire early due to a leg injury, he sought work instead as a police detective in Detroit. Now a young skater with a poster of him on his bedroom door has gone missing and Viktor knows beyond a doubt it's the work of a man who's been brutally murdering professional dancers for years. It's impossible not to take this case personally. Viktor will find Yuuri Katsuki.

Entwinning fates (T)

Imagine if Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, after the demise of you-know-who, started accepting foreign students in an effort for greater unity among wizarding communities around the world. Imagine that, in this changing climate of diversity and social acceptance, Hogwarts also decided to host an exchange programme with select students from Durmstrang Institute and Beauxbatons Academy of Magic for a semester.

Imagine, then, if a young Japanese wizard by the name of Yuuri Katsuki had transferred to Hogwarts to escape his past, just in time to meet a Russian Quidditch player who would blow open the very doors he was trying so desperately to close.

A story of love, magic, and teenagers trying to find themselves.

Dear mama (T)

In which Victor writes letters to his mother, who is fifty percent of his rationality and self-control.

Like your french girls (T)

in which Victor is an artist, Yuuri is his figure skating muse, and Yuri is so done hearing about their stupid love story through Instagram

Unwritten (T)

Soulmates AU where whatever you write on your own skin appears on your soulmate, but when there is a language barrier, meeting becomes just a little more difficult than it should be. 

I love you, my dear (T)

Musician au where famous YouTube singer Victor is practically in love with a famous singer/lyricist named Lilith (who has never revealed his true identity to the public). Victor feels compelled to go to Lilith's first show of his world tour (even though he's never met him) and on the flight there, he sits next to this guy named Yuri, completely oblivious to the fact that Yuri is his idol, Lilith.

or, the one where Yuri/Lilith accidentally says "I love you, my dear" to a man he has never met before.

Unfinished:

The power of love (T)

“The two Japanese singles medalists make a beautiful pair! Here, at the 2009 Tokyo GPF, we have the start of this power couple’s reign!” Yuuko and Yuuri dominate the singles skating competition as Japan’s power couple—except they aren’t a couple, and when their old skating idol stumbles into their personal life, everything rapidly goes downhill. 

The ice prince’s rose garden (T)

Light political struggle and mystery all spun up with master/servant Viktuuri.

bear your soul on the ice (M but it’s mostly in passing)

At age fourteen, Katsuki Yuuri had been determined to be Japan's next great figure skating hope, but with no coach that would never happen, so his ballet instructor packs him up off to Russia to train with Yakov Feltsman. The Yakov Feltsman, otherwise known as the coach to rising figure skating star -- and Yuuri's idol -- Viktor Nikiforov.

Dancing daffodils (M but I think it’s for violence? idk)

A god falls for a man.

Expomise (T)

Expomise: a transformation spell that bonds two objects together. / Yuuri is at Hogwarts. So is everyone else./

Nuclear hearts club (T)

Being seventeen and chronically confused isn't always a walk in the park - especially when you've been crushing on your brother's best friend since you were nine. You'd be crazy not to. Victor's the best thing to happen to the world since sliced bread.

(Join Yuuri Katsuki on this pine-fueled adventure full of teen angst and astronomical fuckery.)

A thread of silver (T)

Once upon a time, there was a boy who got lost in the woods... AU. Inspired by various fairy tales and mythologies.

That old-time religion (T)

Yuuri is pretty sure that when an impossible stranger turns up and tells you he’s the god of victory, it doesn’t matter how good-looking he is. The moment he asks you to abandon your mortal life and come back to his mountain kingdom with him, you turn around and walk away.

An AU based loosely around the Greco-Roman pantheon. Very loosely.

Death or glory (T)

aka 'The Hunger Games AU that happened by accident'. May the odds be ever in your favour.

I’d rather be skating (M for some reason idk)

Sometimes, when a muggle child gets an acceptance letter from a wizarding school, they say no.

Victor Nikiforov would rather be skating. Yuuri Katsuki would rather be normal.

The rules for lovers (T)

Prince Yuuri Katsuki has a duty to his country, above all else (his desires, his dreams, and his happiness included), and he knows this alliance will help to ensure the safety of his people. That’s the only reason he accepts Prince Nikiforov’s hand in marriage. The pleasant surprise, of course, is the part where they fall in love along the way. The unpleasant one, well…

That’s a long story.

Like a fairytale (T)

In which Prince Victor gets swept off his feet at a royal banquet and will go to any length to find his 'Cinderella' Yuuri. (And Phichit is the fairy godmother who has no idea what he's doing).

not gold like in your dreams (T)

in which Victor and Yuuri are roommates and Yuuri has a secret

taking the long way home (T)

In which Vicchan never died, Yuuri won bronze at the Grand Prix Final, didn't get drunk at the banquet, and never made Victor fall in love with him./

Aria: Stammi Vicino, Non Te Ne Andare (T)

The tale of a lonely traveler, Victor Nikiforov, and his encounter with an equally lonely immortal man.

Alternatively: the tale of Yuuri Katsuki, who never ages and never dies and has lived frozen in time for centuries, and his attempts to keep his adopted son from killing the new guest.

Destiny may ride with us (T)

Viktor Nikiforov spent the first twenty seven years of his life waiting for something exciting to happen. And then, it did.

AU in which Yuuri is a little bit more than human, someone seems to be stealing all of Viktor's spoons, and Yurio is the only person who thinks this is all rather strange.

Lost and found (T)

AU in which: Yuuri is a cop who works at the Hasetsu policebox, and Victor is the new skate instructor in town who almost always ends up on the steps of the aforementioned policebox to flirt with him.

The Castle Atop the Hill (T)

In a cursed land covered in unforgiving ice, Yuuri becomes a knight so that he and his family can survive. In the castle is where he finds Viktor, a prince with a magical gift, whom Yuuri believed could save anyone. But maybe Viktor needs saving too. 

One Shots:

Drunk on you (T)

A one-shot collection of soulmate AUs.

What you should know about dating a man with children (G)

"AU scenario where the skaters mistake the triplets for Yuuri's kids when they first meet him, possibly when he brings them to the skater-only area as a b-day treat, or something? (Kudos if you can work in jealous!Victor somehow, but the skaters having a fun reaction would be A+, tbh. Would be lovely if you could include Chris and/or Yurio :D )"

I’m just going to the store (T)

Accidental masked vigilante Victor Nikiforov.

Or: how Victor's impulsiveness backfires and creates one of the greatest living internet memes to ever come out of Russia.

hood and glove (T)

"I don't mess with the fae," Otabek says.

"I'm not asking you to mess with them," JJ flat-out lies.

"The Adventures of Sparkly Elf and Soft Hobbit, Endured With Great Patience by The Bright And Powerful, Best In The Land, Yuri Plisetsky." (T)

Critics have always considered "The Adventures of Sparkly Elf and Soft Hobbit, Endured With Great Patience by The Bright And Powerful, Best In The Land, Yuri Plisetsky." one of the most faithful descriptions of Legend Victor Nikiforov, the greatest elven fighter for more than eight centuries. Although it is narrated by Plisetsky as an adolescent, and thus contains strong language and spends more time ridiculizing his travelling companions than giving thoughtful insight into Nikiforov's psyche, it still remains as an essential reading in every scholar that decides to study Nikiforov [...] // Day 95: Caught Nikiforov writing love poems. Am appalled at bad writing more than anything else. Example: “I really like your dark eyes / and all the other parts of your face. Your butt is the perfect size / and I would love to see you in lace.” Hope the Hobbit cannot read, or am afraid this love story will not have a pleasant ending.

Never tasted rubies (T)

in which Yuuri is an unwilling radio host and Victor won't stop calling in to chat with him

love me do: a victuuri week compilation (t)

Every chapter is a short fic based on one of the Victuuri Week prompts.

The Goddamn Tie Has Got To Go (T)

Dear God. Yuuri was wearing the tie again.

The powdery blue monstrosity was not only unfashionable (and where did Yuuri even manage to acquire such a tie?), it also reminded Viktor, with shocking clarity, of a sweaty, half naked, pole dancing Yuuri. It reminded him of a night of joy, a night of passion. The night where he was finally, and without warning, lifted from the fog that had crept up on him in his last few years of skating.

Understandably, it elicited quite the unfavorable reaction in him when they were out in public.

For the sake of his remaining dignity, Viktor needed to improvise a plan to dispose of it as soon as possible.

Welcome Aboard Eros, Commander (T)

Commander Nikiforov is frustrated. For years, he has been chasing Eros, the most elusive pirate ship to ever sail the Seven Seas, and its even more elusive captain, whom it appears no one has ever been able to lay their eyes on. With the threat of every royal treasury in the whole of the Caribbean soon being emptied down to the last coin, the commander sets sail again, determined to track down Eros and its captain once and for all.

That is, if the mysterious Captain Katsuki doesn't find him first.

Victuuriweek day 2: Traveling AU: Historical

Winter Solitude  (T)

Victor was cursed by a fellow competitor many years ago, jealous of his skills on the ice. The curse limited Victor to a lake in Hasetsu, Japan, where he appears to others as a blue-tinted human.

He can't age. He can't leave. And he can't let himself feel emotions for the pain it causes.

But a skater comes to the frozen lake one day and ignites a fire in his heart that he hadn't felt in years.

Series:

Cubicle gods

Flourist and wedding planner au

stop, erase, rewind

Haven (okay this series is E and kind of messed up maybe? but i love it)

have you heard there's a rumour in st. petersburg

A Real Life Cinnamon Roll

Even Ice Gods Can Melt

warm-up hogwash

must love dogs