#with the anti burn wax

[endlich-allein]

Till, Vallhall Arena, Oslo, Norway, 19-02-2012 © Terje Dokken

[demoanais]

sharon's unceremoniously trashed white suit tfatws concept art being hastily pasted into that comic con poster doesn't mean anything for her re: CA4. they're just using sharon to disguise their pathetic lack of female representation, as usual. the same thing they did during promo for tfatws before it came out (expectation: she's an important heroic character who eventually fights alongside sam and bucky. reality: she's a minimal-screentime plot device masquerading as an incompetent villain in a show with no female lead.). they have no qualms with false advertising if the perceived aura of girlboss feminism gives shareholders the warm and fuzzies.

because of this stupid design choice she's become a visible target for fandom attacks and cruelty, for the millionth time. it's like no matter how many years pass these creeps never let up, even though they got what they wanted. and it would all be endurable if WE ever got even a single thing we wanted and evc deserved.

it's not that they CAN'T treat sharon right, it's that they WON'T.

[shesay]

I'm anti bikini idc idc it's basically underwear and the fact that there r brands making children bikinis 4 little girls is even more insane like i hate how criticizing it get u called a conservative I'm literally not i wore a bikini once and felt horrible like it's so much better 2 wear smth more practical u could move in it u also need 2 get a bikini wax which's so painful like it's insane i felt like i was burning if bikinis have zero haters that means I'm daed

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

The problems I have with HP's world building and the Wizarding World as a whole can be summed up perfectly with Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans. Sounds like a appropriately whimsical treat for a secret magical society. But, they beans flavoured like bodily fluids. We know there's ear wax and vomit flavoured beans, but I bet there are... other flavours.

And the question is, why? Why do that? Why sell something to children where there's a chance they might end up eating a bean that tastes and smells exactly like human shit.

Like, obviously, Rowling wrote it as a funny bit in a children's book that I doubt she expected people to dissect and nitpick over twenty years after she wrote it. But, in-universe, it shows that wizards just lack basic common sense. it's a wonder they made it to the 21st century without going extinct.

As weird as it sounds, I actually find the wizarding world fascinating in that it makes an eerie amount of sense: it's just not what JKR nor anyone else thinks it is/what it's supposed to be.

There's a larger post to be made but to me the wizarding world reeks of an extremely isolated and inbred society, complacent in their use of a technology they no longer understand and slowly forgetting aspects of that technology including the underlying fundamentals, neighbors to very different societies they feel threatened by for all they won't admit as much, and a society that has roots in western traditions but missed out on much of the Enlightenment/Post Enlightenment British history.

So, we see a world that's like Britain but... not...

The professors are there to teach, not go provide emotional guidance or emotional intervention of any kind with the students (read anti-bullying measures). There doesn't seem to be a child welfare or any kind of welfare system in place (orphans get a stipend to attend Hogwarts, but we see no mention of a wizarding orphanage/foster care system or money allotted to those like Ron Weasley who are poor but not Muggleborn). There are two historians ever mentioned and from what we see of Hogwarts a History it is not a modern western historical approach that's covered there. Everyone's extremely closely related and there are no actual positions beyond those a) made for yourself through entrepreneurship b) the ever bloated Ministry. They have no understanding of Muggles at all and those who claim to or wish to tend to be... grossly offensive is the only word I can think of.

It's a great satirical world of a decaying society and, most important, not quite one we'd be familiar with.

But this has nothing to do with your actual question (well, it does, but it's tangential).

To get back to the damned beans, from what we see, the wizarding world loves practical jokes and slapstick humor. Given they're wizards, serious injuries seem relatively easy to repair. If you start vomiting slugs all day, there's a potion for that. If you lose your bones, there's a potion for that. Blow off your hands, there's probably a potion for that.

What that means is that physical injuries in the wizarding world tend not to really matter. Unless you're using dark curses (see Bill's torn up face in HBP), you can probably get whatever it is fixed quickly. Which means that wizards find slapstick style practical jokes very funny.

Which gets us back to the candy.

The beans aren't alone, there are also the acid pops that actually burn through your tongue, blood pops that taste like blood, chocolate frogs which will jump away from you, ice mice that do... something I forget, but point being that we see wizards get very excited about the prospect of not only magic in their candies but some element of danger/just awfulness with it.

That's the exciting gamble of the beans. Sure, you might end up with a nice flavor, you might, but then you could end up with vomit or diarrhea flavored. When the latter happens, you can make a big show to your friends, "OH NO, I GOT THE VOMIT BEAN! OH HELLS, I GOT THE VOMIT BEAN! THIS IS THE WORST! I GOT THE VOMIT BEAN!" and everyone laughs at and with you over your terrible rotten luck over getting the vomit bean while Jimmy over there got strawberry.

It's kind of like a demented version of playing one of the first few editions of Mario Party: someone's going to be fucked over, that's just how the game goes, the delightful enjoyment of it is seeing who the loser is and lording it over them when you steal all their stars they eat the vomit bean.

Basically, you're kind of right about Bertie Botts Every Flavor Bean. They exist because it's funny, I just think the wizards find it funny too.

[dangerously-human]

Lucy looking at herself in the mirror on the way up to confront Marissa is everything to me. Taking in her appearance, the effects of spending an entire day in the land of the dead, and instead of drifting off too far into criticisms and self-doubt, letting it give her confidence:

I didn't care too much about any of this. A fire burned in my eyes.

It was nice to look at myself, after everything. Nice to be reminded who I was. Lucy Carlyle.

My girl!! I know many people have waxed eloquent on this subject, tying this together with Lockwood's state when he shows up, and Lucy's comment that this is how you counter a villain whose desperate goal for youth and immortality has led her to bend the rules of life and death, no matter the cost. I just love that there's a point and a meaningful arc to Lucy's confidence issues, both professionally and in terms of appearance. For a while, I thought the latter was mostly for the relatability factor, and that would have been fine, I guess, if a little boring; but no, it's that familiar, mundane struggle that plays into so many of Lucy's decisions, that finds resolution at the pinnacle of her character arc. And ooh, the delicious anti-Gnostic flavor of setting up Lucy as a foil to the woman who has hopped bodies for the sake of prolonging her youth: to say no, this body is more than an accessory to who I am, this too is me, and I am proud of who I am and what this body can do for the people and causes I love. The physicality of this series is one of its most important elements and I just think that's neat! And Lucy - Lucy is so nearly at her shining best here, she's finally reached a resolution point for what she's struggled with from the beginning; but her arc can't find its satisfying closure, she can't really be her best, until she's no longer alone, until she has Lockwood at her side - Lockwood, whose arc is also reaching its zenith, who has to finally understand the point of true selfless sacrifice.

And then it's really all about the skull and his arc discovering the power of friendship (plus the power of Violence and Mayhem and other Type Three Things), but that's another post.

[aegor-bamfsteel]

It's almost funny how anti-feminist fire and Blood actually is. All the female characters either have cartoonish characterization (the evil stepmother, the tyrannical queen), or have no personality whatsoever. Rhaenys is the "Queen who never was" but actively supports the murder of her son and the daughter of her 'usurper' cousin? Laena is the rider of Vhaegar and... brave? Baela and Rhaena love their stepmom and stepsiblings, have no ambitions, character defining traits or resentments.

GRRM actually goes out of his way to mock American feminism in Fire and Blood. He has Mushroom, a crime and sex addicted (male) jester, refer to the Maiden’s Day Ball of 133–in which Aegon III was to choose a bride amongst the maidens of the Kingdoms—as “the Maiden’s Day Cattle show”. This is a reference to the radical feminist protest of the 1968 Miss America contest at Atlantic City, which included signs such as these:

Although maybe not as well known today especially outside the USA, the protest had a profound effect on the image of second wave feminism. The protesters claimed in a 10 point manifesto that the pageant judged women like animals at a county fair (to the point they mockingly crowned a sheep Miss America), was racist (having only crowned white women so far), supported the military-industrial complex, was consumerist, led to double standard stereotypes (“both sexy and wholesome, delicate but able to cope, demure yet titillatingly bitchy”), celebrated mediocrity by elevating beauty rather than intelligence/ambition as the goal for girls to aspire. They also set up Freedom Trash Cans in which to throw away makeup and bras (the inaccurate report that they’d burned these items gave rise to the stereotype of feminists as bra burners), among other tactics.

All right, so I think it’s obvious that GRRM intended the “Maiden’s Day Cattle Show” to be a reference to the 1968 “Miss America Cattle Auction”, since women were judged based on their appearance and perhaps a brief interview for the ultimate benefit of a young man, Aegon III. There are a few things I found annoying about the reference. One, is that the narrative does not criticize the pageant, quite the opposite; the great lords forced the cruel Lord Peake’s hand in letting Aegon get a chance to choose his new bride, rather than be betrothed to Myrielle and thus give the Peakes long-lasting power. Two, is that it’s Mushroom—who, as mentioned, delights in telling us about the sexual exploits of especially noblewomen—who mocks the ball as a Cattle Show, rather than a woman of any social class; this takes the criticism of beauty standards and women reduced to objects for the pleasure of a male audience (as it was in the original protest)….and turns it into a sassy remark by a man who loves to talk about women as sexual objects. It’s not the families or House Targaryen being criticized for having the ball take place (in fact, Rhaena and Baela presenting Daenaera with a “found your queen” is presented as a dramatic, triumphant moment over the grasping Lord Peake) and parading their daughters around, it’s Mushroom mocking the women as objects only worth their carnal beauty and riches (“Each maid seemed lovelier than the last…. It would be hard to picture anything more beautiful, unless perhaps all of them had arrived naked”. Btw yes, he does wax lyrical on Daenaera’s beauty even though she’s 6). GRRM was so proud of this reference that he partly named the chapter after it: War and Peace and Cattle Shows. Knowing that it comes from an iconic USA feminist protest against beauty standards for women, and how he used it as a joke for his favorite character Mushroom to mock women, I can’t find it funny. Just annoying, and maybe a little insulting.

tl;dr yes I agree, F&B wrote many female characters lacking in nuance (either evil stepmothers, Mary Sues, or tragic victims. Not to put the blame on victims, but that GRRM uses these types of characters to just suffer and then die horribly, with little attempt to treat the issues they face from their POV). The author mocked feminist iconography in a few instances in this book. Not just with the “Maiden’s Day Cattle Show” (though that just seemed the most obvious) but with his one-note stand-in (whose role in the story is to get hundreds of Faith Militant killed in an unsuccessful rescue from a public execution) for Joan of Arc “the Maid of Orleans”, who has been an icon of Western feminism since the contemporary writings of Christine of Pisa.

[my-brothers-corrupted]

My Brothers, Corrupted

Book Five: Section Ten

A familiar figure from Chase's past shows up at their doorstep. Marvin reunites with several old friends and tries to have calmer discussions with his brothers. Masterlist

Tws for alcoholism, self-hatred, and discussion of kids missing their dad. Tws may not be completely exhaustive - keep in mind the heaviness of the fic and look out for yourself.

Thank you to @lehhoh7822 for taking the time to compile this book!

.

“So he’s medicated?”

“Yeah, he’s doing a lot better!”

“Okay, but he needs to be seeing a clinician too. Is he seeing a clinician?”

“Um. You’d have to check with Jackie. I think he was handling that side of things.”

“Oh, Jackie is not good with appointments, Chase.”

“Haha. Well, you’ll have to ask JJ, I don’t know anything about it. But Jackie did go see a therapist and he was talking about maybe going again.”

“Good, he should. What about you?”

“Me? What, in therapy? I - ”

There’s a knock on the door of the apartment. Chase and Henrik both freeze, halfway through getting out of their jackets and shoes.

“Who is it?” murmurs Henrik.

“How should I know?” hiss-whispers Chase. “What if it’s the landlord again to kick us out for being too loud? Or - oh, shit! The hospital social worker! If she sees JJ’s black eye - ”

“Okay, don’t worse case stereo right away.”

“Scenario, Dok.”

“Whatever, just be grateful I’m talking, fucker. Don’t see you speaking German, anyway.”

“Okay - ”

“Is a girl,” says Schneep, peering through the peephole on the door.

“Like a kid?”

“No, a girl as in a woman, not that you’ve ever interacted with one of those before.”

“Marvin?” calls her voice through the door. Henrik and Chase both re-freeze, turning wide eyes towards each other. “It’s me. Are you there?”

“It’s Anti in disguise, like in Singapore,” gasps Chase. “Holy shit, he’s back, he’ll - holy shit. Nobody knows Marvin’s name.”

Schneep looks nervously through the peephole. “She sounds anxious, though.”

“He’s going to kill us.”

“Can we call Jackie?”

“No, we only have one phone and it’s here! The gun, where’s the - ugh, we couldn’t get it through airport security, shit, we’re - ”

“Who’s there?” calls Henrik through the door.

A long pause.

“It’s me,” she says again, more timid still. “Chase? It’s… it’s me.”

She has black hair and blue acrylic nails.

crystalninjaphoenix asked:

It's her, right? Well... let her in. Keep in mind this is going to be awkward at first. We don't know that much. Go slow. Don't expect it to all be fixed right away. And good luck.

“It’s her?”

“Who’s her?”

“Well, if you take a look - ”

“What if it’s Anti?”

“It’s not Anti!”

“You don’t know it’s not Anti - ”

“Jackie burned his corpse, but whatever, just - ”

Chase shoves his eye to the peephole and goes silent.

“Chase?”

“It’s her,” he whispers.

“Trick, you’re shaking.”

He turns to Henrik as white as candle wax.

And then sprints back towards his room and slams the door behind him.

“Chase. Chase?” she’s calling through the door.

Henrik touches the handle. He pulls the door open, just a crack.

Onyx eyes look up at him. His eyes flicker towards a flash of silver. She has a knife in her purse. His tongue wets his mouth.

“Chase?” she asks weakly.

He shakes his head, straightening up.

“Anti?” she asks.

He pulls the door open a little more. She steps back, gripping that pocket knife. As if it would do anything against him if he were really here.

“Schneep,” she croaks. “You’re… alive.”

“I’m alive,” he parrots quietly.

“You didn’t come back. You were just supposed to get groceries.”

“I’m… I’m sorry.”

The wind rushes past them. Her hair flutters into her face and away over her shoulder.

She steps forward. He doesn’t move.

Soft hands wrap around him.

She’s tiny. Shorter than he is. Not fragile, just… small.

She hugs him. Her hands grip his hair at the back of his skull, gently.

He hugs her back. His hands settle uncertainly on her hips. In the open door of the apartment, they’re still.

Anonymous asked:

Jackie, Anti is gone. Why do you still feel the need to grieve later?

“Are you sad?”

“What?”

JJ looks at him for a moment before repeating himself.

“Oh. No,” says Jackie, kicking a rock as they walk back towards the apartment. “No, I’m fine.”

JJ doesn’t push it, just watches him out of the side of his eye. Jackie gives the rock another kick, sending it skittering in front of him.

It’s true, of course. Anti’s gone.

Why do I still do this to myself? he wonders, keeping that rock in front of him. He doesn’t want to have to let it stop. JJ’s allowed to cry but you aren’t? What, you don’t want to think about it? All I do is… push things back.

He kicks the rock.

I work so I don’t have to think about anything. Work and run and repeat. Don’t have to think about how Blue and I are fighting, or how he’s gone, or how we’re so broke I can’t even get them beds, or how sometimes even I wish Anti were here - that structure he gave me. That feeling of knowing my place in the world. And sometimes, just every once in a while - that feeling of being useful to anyone. What, are you going to break down and show them you’re just as scared as they are? I wish -

A hand grabs his arm and pulls him back before he can walk into the street. A car moves past them in a rush of red and gold lights.

JJ’s signing at him rapidly, but Jackie can’t quite follow. He’s suddenly so exhausted.

“Jackie, come on, watch where you’re going!” JJ wraps his arm into Jackie’s and pulls him forward, the vanity mirror held under Jackie’s free arm. “Let’s just get home, okay?”

“Sorry,” Jackie mumbles.

Grieve later so you don’t have to think about it now. Grieve later because if he stops to think about how he’s feeling at all, it’s going to break him in half.

If he stops to think about just how bad he wants - just how much he misses -

JJ wraps their fingers together, squeezing Jackie’s palm through his glove. Jackie wipes at his face and shakes his head, letting JJ lead him.

Grieve later. Or better, don’t ever grieve at all, because if you do, you might just never stop grieving.

Anonymous asked:

Stacy is here! Chase, you absolutely must go see her, and let these emotions happen. You can't hide away from this, this has to happen in order for you to heal. She's your family. She won't hurt you or run from you or think any less of you because of what you've gone through. Go see your partner, Chase, I'm sure she's missed you greatly.

Chase stands by the door to his bedroom, his hand gripping the handle like he might just go back out there. But he doesn’t move. Listens at the door, breathing short and thin. His eyes flicker over to you. Away again. He paces beside the door for a moment, scraping at the old scar at his hand.

“I’ve dreamed about this girl for a year,” he whispers, fingers drifting to the crinkle paper in his pocket. “About her hand on mine, and the way she smelled, and the warmth when you wake up next to her. And then, just now, when I saw her, I didn’t feel - I didn’t feel like in my dreams. Like everything was okay, and nothing was ever going to move her from my side. I felt - ”

He closes his eyes. Shudders out a breath.

“I felt bad.”

scunneredzombie asked:

Well Chase, you and Stacy did get divorced at one point, and we're unsure what the relationship status was when you were last on the run together. So you might have some buried anxieties and pain surrounding that.

“Holy shit, holy shit!” He slumps down to the floor, dragging his knees to his chest and hiding his face in them. “I can’t - ”

“Chase.” Henrik is rapping at the door, voice clear and familiar through the wood. “Are we hiding?”

“Yes, we’re hiding,” he mumbles into his jeans, tugging at his hair. “Forever, maybe.”

Henrik lets out a low hum of sympathy. “I don’t think she’s angry, my dear.”

“I don’t feel good. Tell her I don’t feel good.”

Henrik slips open the door beside him and sits down next to him, touching his arm.

Anonymous asked:

Jackie don't be startled when you get home, Stacy is there and Chase is a bit spooked. As far as us cameras know there's no reason to go on the defensive.

“Wait, what?” shouts Jackie, and if it weren’t for JJ’s hand in his own he’d be sprinting down the street already.

“Jackie, no, stay calm!”

“There’s someone in my apartment I barely know, with my little brothers - ”

“Jackie, she’s the mother of your nephew and niece, don’t freak out! We might be able to see them if we play our cards right! The cameras say there’s no reason to get defensive.”

“She scared Chase!”

“Yeah, it’s Chase, he has anxiety. Dok’s there. He’s fine. Come on, we’ll get home, just don’t freak out…”

scunneredzombie asked:

Even if it feels bad and painful, talking to her is worth it for the chance you'd get to see your babies again, right Chase? Like Schneep said she doesn't seem angry, just nervous and scared. I think you can do it, you're so so strong Chase. You deserve to see your family again, and it's going to be a painful process, but at least you have your brother here with you to help you through it.

“The kids,” breathes Chase. “Fuck, they’re… are they safe?”

“Go ask her,” says Schneep, patting his arm.

“I don’t remember her name,” Chase whispers.

“Go ask her,” repeats Schneep, chuckling flimsily. “You must explain to her what has happened… where you have been.”

“I have to tell her what he did to me?”

“It doesn’t have to be everything. But I think she probably wants to know why we have no memory of her. And why we did not return.”

Chase breathes out.

He’s faced worse things than this, right? He fought Anti. Fought the dark part of himself. Fought off hypnosis, struggled against androids and vigilantes, sprinted down the mountainside to get his brother’s medication before Anti beat Dok to hell and back.

Facing his ex can’t be worse… probably?

“Come with me,” pleads Chase.

“Sure,” says Henrik. “Anywhere. Get up, then.”

Chase pushes himself to his feet and steps out into the living room, twisting his crinkle paper in his hands.

There’s no couch or anything to sit on, just bare space, so Stacy stands by the door, playing with a button of her jacket and frowning. She’s so pretty it almost takes Chase’s breath away. He sees her eyes flicker across his body - his cheap, torn jeans and his supermarket t-shirt. He wonders if she can see all his scars from here - the burned hands and gun-calloused fingers. The cuts along his arms and legs, so old and frequent he doesn’t even remember where each one came from.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” she says.

“I, um. How are you… here?”

She clears her throat and takes a step closer. “Friends got a call from Marv and Jackie. They told us you were here. The magicians were going to come with me, made all these plans… but I snuck off to come see you. Couldn’t wait any more.”

“Oh.”

“So… is Anti going to jump out and kill me in a few?”

Chase shakes his head. “Um. He’s dead.”

“Oh. Good.”

“Yeah.”

A pause.

“Are the kids - ?”

“I just don’t understand - ”

“Sorry, I’m totally messed up and I - ”

“If it was something I did I - ”

They cut off halfway through their rambling, meet each other’s eyes, and burst into giggles.

She’s stepping towards him, tears in her eyes, and he thinks he’s probably crying too.

“Hey, I have amnesia,” he chokes out. “We all do. And I’m really sorry for everything.”

“Oh,” she says weakly. “That explains it.”

“But I - I remembered you, moment to moment. Even when Anti would try to make me stop.”

“Thanks,” she says. “Well. I’m Stacy.”

“Stacy,” he breathes. “Nice to, um. Re-meet you.”

“Can I - can I give you a hug?”

“Okay,” he manages.

And she’s in his arms again.

She still makes him feel scared. But this - the warmth of her arms, the smell of her -

This is something worth remembering.

“Tell me everything that happened,” she begs. “Please.”

“It’s a long story,” he warns.

Her hand squeezes against his, pressing into that faded old burn.

“We have time.”

Anonymous asked:

Oof, that's a long story to tell. Well, to help out, us cameras can explain something. When Chase and Henrik didn't come home from the store, it was because Red, Anti, and Dapper kidnapped them in the parking lot, leaving Marvin scared and alone before he was taken too.

“I always figured Anti must have caught you,” she says, sitting at the table with Henrik and Chase. “When we realized Anti was close, Marvin told me he had to draw him off. He ran off somewhere and said he would let Anti get a hint of him. Just a hint, though. He was supposed to come back once things were more safe. But he never did.”

“So… what did you do?” asks Chase.

“Rebuilt my life in Sweden,” she sighs. “Just… stayed there with the kids. We felt safe with the magicians Marvin trusted. We still do. Leah and Colin and the rest have all made sure we had what we needed. Except the kids’ dad, of course.”

“So they’re okay?” Chase asks.

“Yeah, they’re okay,” says Stacy.

Chase slumps back in his chair, going pale again. If the answer had been no, he thinks he would have broken in half. “Can I see them?”

“Of course,” she answers. “They’ve missed you so much. I didn’t even tell them you all might be alive. Didn’t want to get their hopes up. But I don’t know how they’ll take it, either. But just - you know I’m going to be there through visits, right? And I’m not comfortable with you keeping them overnight or - ”

“Oh, no, Stacy, that’s fine,” breathes Chase, rubbing his face. “Shit, I don’t even know if I would be able to do that now anyway. Yeah, we gotta take this real slow.”

She smiles at him, earnest and sad at the same time.

“It’s really good to be on the same page as you for once.”

“We’re… we’re divorced?”

She reddens a little and nods at him. “But we’re going to make this work as parents, right? That’s what we were working on before all this happened.”

“We were figuring out how to get along?”

“Um, we were actually pretty much tearing each other apart before this all started,” admits Stacy, only turning redder. “But you’d be surprised how much being chased out of the country by a supernatural being who wants to kill you makes you realize just how unimportant most of those fights were. Like, who cares if you let Hunter watch PG-13 movies? There are a lot more important things.”

“I get that.”

“So… he really kidnapped you. And - like he did with Jameson and Jackie. He made you… puppets.”

Chase stares down at his feet for a long moment. “Yeah. He did.”

“It - did he treat you badly?”

Chase closes his eyes. “He… tried to make me believe that he didn’t. But he was a monster. And in the end he - ”

He can’t stop his eyes from flashing over to Henrik. Coated in scars that will never go away.

“It’s over now,” he tells Stacy. “That’s what matters.”

She puts her hand out. He reaches up and wraps his fingers around hers.

“I’m really glad you’re alive,” she says, very quiet. “And I know you don’t remember, but… I’m sorry for how things went down between us. Anything you need now, I will help with.”

“Thank you,” he whispers.

Anonymous asked:

Stacy seems a lot nicer than I was expecting! How are you doing Chase? Not getting too overwhelmed right? Remember to take this all slowly for your emotion's sake.

“Yeah, it’s pretty overwhelming,” breathes Chase. “But, um. I still want to try this. And I know this is probably even more overwhelming, but - but I want to see the kids as soon as I can. Is that - ”

“I’ll see how they react when I tell them you’re here,” says Stacy. “I think Izzy might need a little time.”

The door pushes open with a slam and all three of them jolt up to see Jackie and JJ in the doorway. Henrik and Chase exchange glances.

“Is she cool?” asks Jackie thunderously.

“She seems cool,” answers Chase weakly.

“Hmmmm.”

Anonymous asked:

She's cool Jackie, don't worry. She offered to let him see the kids and she's been very nice so far! Don't get too defensive, it'll be okay, she's family just like your brothers are.

“If Marvin were here, he’d tell you I’m cool,” Stacy insists.

“Yeah, well, he’s not,” snaps Jackie.

Stacy looks at Chase and Henrik, who give her shrugs in answer.

“Whatever,” mutters Jackie, throwing his shoes by the door. “I’m going to go lie down.”

Henrik and Chase blink at him. “What, just like that? You don’t mind?”

“Just call me if you need me.” He stalks down the hall, rubbing his hands across his scalp. Honestly, he’d rather be keeping an eye on her, but he knows he was about to blow up again, and he’s not having a repeat of last night. Screaming at Blue like that… scaring everybody…

He slams the door to his room, leaving the mirror in his closet, and flops onto the bed, letting out a deep sigh. Here, the grief threatens to catch up with him - the grief and the hurt and the anger. He rubs at his face and keeps his breathing steady. He needs something to distract himself. His computer, maybe.

Anonymous asked:

The computer seems like a good distraction Jackie! Maybe you can practice your coding, or watch Into The Spiderverse again? Or torrent some more movies for all of you to watch? There's lots you can do when it comes to computers, which is why it might be good for distracting from a possible meltdown/burnout.

“We can’t afford internet, but I can steal some from the apartment downstairs if I really want it. But yeah, maybe I’ll just code for a while. Anything to avoid thinking about - you know. Everything.”

Anonymous asked:

Chase, what do you expect to happen when you see your kids? I know they'll be sad that you don't remember them, but hopefully it can all work out.

Chase chews at his lip, shaking his head. “I… don’t know. What is that even like? Your dad just disappears and then - then he just shows back up? But he doesn’t remember you? I don’t know anything about them. Maybe it’s better if I don’t see them at all.”

“Chase,” says Stacy. “Uncle Marvin promised them he’d come back. They never stopped hoping you all would. They knew that it was because of Anti that you disappeared… they knew that was why we had to run away and go somewhere new, and why JJ and Jackie never came home. Hunter cries for you all the time. They want to see you. It’ll be hard, yeah, but not as hard as never having Papa back.”

Chase wipes at his face, breathing out shakily. “Do you have any pictures of them?”

“I left my electronics with the magicians. Just in case Anti was here.”

“Oh, yeah. How old are they?”

“Izzy’s eight,” she says. “And Hunter’s five.”

“Five, wow,” he breathes. “I really just… forgot. I just remembered bits of when they were babies. But they’re so big.”

“Hunter just remembers that he loved Daddy and he wants him back. But Izzy - she’s big enough that she still remembers the divorce, and everything that led up to it. I think she’s a little angry, Chase. That she never got a chance to see you better. You were drinking a lot the last time we tried visits. She remembers that. She was the one who would have to go find one of her uncles to bring her home if she smelled it on you. Little kids, they remember that stuff.”

A deep shame opens up in Chase’s stomach like a chasm. He’s stiff and shaky against the table, rubbing at his crinkle paper.

“How’s your drinking now?”

“Anti didn’t allow that stuff,” Henrik comes to his aid easily. Maybe even proudly. “It’s not a problem anymore.”

Oh, fuck. Chase nods tersely and avoids their eyes.

“Good,” says Stacy, relaxing.

Oh, fuck, he’s a horrible father.

“Look, I need to get back before the magicians notice I’m gone and follow me here. I’m sure they’ll want to be there before you can meet the kids or anything. They’re good people, though, really. If you guys are really okay and Anti is dead, I’m sure we can convince them that you’re safe. Right?”

“Right,” says Chase weakly. He tries not to think about whiskey and bruised black eyes, about screaming and magic fire burning out of Marvin’s control. About Henrik staring listlessly out of the window and Jameson carving eyes into the walls.

They’re going to get it together. They have to.

Henrik and Stacy talk plans. He catches her up on what she needs to know and she provides him with her phone number. Chase thinks about how different things could be if Anti was here. How he could get inside his head and force him to trick her. Force her to give up the kids.

He was just a slave. And he’s still just a fucked-up drunk with nothing to offer them.

“Chase.” Henrik is gripping his hand, pulling him back to the present. “What’s the matter? Come, let’s say goodbye.”

They see Stacy out the door before Henrik turns back to him, worried. Chase slumps back into his chair and puts his face in his hands.

“Overwhelmed?” asks Henrik.

Chase nods.

“You did well. It’s going to be alright, Chase.”

Anonymous asked:

Chase, you still struggling with alcohol doesn't make you useless or make it mean you have nothing to offer them. You're an addict, it's true, but you don't become worthless just for being one. You have worth, you have value, and your family and your kids love you. Don't feel like a fuck up for relapsing, you're under a ton of stress. One step back doesn't erase the millions of little steps forward. -🎒

He nods to himself, cooking something in the kitchen while Henrik and JJ play cards on the floor of the living room. He’s trying to distract himself with spices and bread, but the truth is he’s going to have to face this, or it will just keep getting worse. He has to find a way to handle it.

“We’ve got to do something about the stress around here,” he mutters. “I - I can’t risk going back. You’re right, I’ve taken too many steps forward. If Anti locking me up was what it took to make me stop drinking the first time, it’s not like I can just go do that again. I have an addiction but… I want to be a good dad. I can’t let myself drink like that again. Fuck, I don’t even know what I was thinking, I just… gah. Stupid.”

He stirs the pot on the oven, glancing over at JJ and Henrik. He should tell someone, but he doesn’t think he could admit it to Henrik when he can imagine the look on his face. Jackie would be angry but try to hide it, because he hides everything these days. Jameson would probably be helpful, but Chase has never really confided in him before. He can’t really picture it at all.

He wishes Blue were here.

Anonymous asked:

Chase, you're still seeing a therapist right? They can probably recommend you to a local rehab group or group therapy to talk about your alcoholism. It could be helpful to talk to people who understand the feeling, yeah?

Chase shrinks in on himself slightly. “I… have not seen a therapist, no. I was supposed to. Jackie saw one, like once, before he got so bummed out. And JJ sees a psychiatrist at the hospital. That’s all.”

He runs his hands through his hair. Just the last bit of yellow at the end of his fringe, now. He’ll be all back to brown next time he cuts it.

“I guess I know I should see a therapist,” he says. “Like, I’ve always known. Anti really fucked me up. But I’ve been so busy trying to help Dok. Maybe him coming back to himself and Stacy showing up - that’s my cue that I need to start going. Even if it’s scary to think about. They could recommend me to more stuff.”

He lets a long, deep breath out of his chest.

“Okay. Yeah. I’ll try it.”

Anonymous asked:

Blue, are you doing okay? Stacy came to visit the others and if... if you want you could head home to meet her and the magicians within the next few days? You must be getting lonely in that old bus. I know it was a really low point for you, running away. You would be better off being with your family, being where you can be safe and healthy.

Stacy walks back through the city towards the library, lost in her thoughts. She gets cat-called and replies with a half-hearted middle finger, barely registering it.

In a way, she supposes there are good things about this. Chase doesn’t have to remember everything that happened between them - the screaming fights, the words they exchanged, how quickly they seemed to turn on each other, the shitty things that he did and the shitty things she did too. How their friends and his brothers ended up having to play mediators between them, getting involved in all their drama. They can move past that.

But he’s also forgotten the good times. What it was like to dance in their pajamas at midnight on New Years, playing old love songs from the computer. What it was like to be mum and dad together. Fuck, they were young. How she came to him sobbing and admitted she was pregnant, expecting him to freak out or leave her or yell - and instead he dropped to his knees and kissed her stomach and asked her to marry him with tears in his bluebird eyes, and wasn’t he so beautiful there in the afternoon light? And isn’t he still beautiful, more grown, more scarred, just as gentle as he ever was despite everything?

She arrives at the fountain beside the library and pulls a piece of paper out of her pocket, unfolding it to reveal an image that is familiar to you: a lapwing bird, the same image tattooed onto Blue’s arm. When the reflection of the bird touches the water, the other dimension opens like a doorway before her, and she can press her hand through the water, and step out on the other side.

Maybe it’s because she’s so lost in her thoughts that for a moment, she does not recognize the person speaking with the magicians.

“It was like being half of who I was at the time,” he is saying, voice loud and confident. “I was so ill every day I thought I would die. And when it was given back to me - I was alive again, and none of the skill had left me. Like a limb was reattached. And I tore the darkness apart with that flame. Rebuilt the trees of the forest. I felt like a part of the earth again, and the earth listened when I spoke.”

Several of the Irish magicians who make their home base here in this mirror dimension and her Swedish friends, Leah and Colin, are crowded around him, listening intently and asking questions, occasionally reaching out to touch his arm or hand like they can’t believe he’s real. He has soft white hair and eyes blue as flame. His hands rise and fall as he speaks, and she sees the glitter of rings on his fingers and the swirl of tattoos. He seems to have his own internal light source. He seems to gleam.

“Couple days after that, my brothers and I went head-to-head with his mind tricks and tore them the hell apart. It made him weak enough we could beat him down, and when he was finally weak enough and begging like a coward, I put a knife in his goddamn heart and we burned what was left of him. Since then? I’m free of him, yeah.”

There’s excited shrieking from his feet as the magicians continue to quiz him and the person leans down and scoops up Stacy’s son into his arms, eagerly rocking Hunter up and down, up and down, fast enough to make him howl with laughter. Stacy steps out into the grand hall of the magicians and recognizes him.

“Marvin,” she breathes.

He turns to her smiling. Goddamn. Goddamn. He seems to glow.

“Hi,” he whispers, and the others around them fall silent too, in honor of the reunion. “I think I knew you once.”

“I think you did,” she answers quietly.

“It’s Uncle Marv!” screams Hunter, throwing his arms around his neck. “You found me!”

“I found you!” He kisses Hunter’s face and throws him into the air only to catch him again. “Here I am.”

Stacy steps up to him and touches his arm. Marvin smiles at her again, perhaps a little nervous closer up. She realizes Izzy is here too, just clinging to Marvin’s leg. But while Hunter is shouting and celebrating, Izzy is just hiding her face against his pants and clinging to him, silent. Stacy strokes her daughter’s hair, but she can’t pull her eyes off her sibling-in-law.

“I can’t believe this,” she says. “How did you lot find him?”

“We didn’t,” laughs Colin. “He remembered that his tattoo lets him into this place and just came down the stairs all of a sudden.”

“Unbelievable,” a second magician joins in. “He’s been missing for more than a year and then just comes back, just like that, alive.”

“I took some time away from my brothers,” says Marvin, a little shyly. “And I should go home, too - I will, soon. But I just… remembered a part of myself that existed outside of them, I think. Maybe I needed that. I’m safe now, though. And I’m not alone.”

“I can’t even believe my eyes.”

“Ah, am I that bad?” asks Marvin, a little red in the face.

“No,” she chuckles, touching his cheek. “You’re as beautiful as ever, pretty boy.”

Marvin smiles so wide his teeth seem to shine too.

“I missed you, Marv,” she confesses. “I really have.”

“We all have,” laughs Leah, beaming at him. “Can’t lose a great friend and a great magician without missing you.”

“You found us!” shrieks Hunter, throwing his arms around his neck. “You found me, Uncle Marvin!”

Marvin lifts him and catches him. Lifts him and catches him. Hunter is laughing and shouting and holding him.

“I love you, Marvin,” says Hunter, giving him a sloppy kiss on the cheek. “I love you.”

Blue holds him and spins him and picks Izzy up too, kissing her face, and she clings to him like all that matters in the world is there against his shoulder.

Marvin.

Coming from them, it really doesn’t sound like too bad of a name at all.

Anonymous asked:

I had no idea images could be used as passwords! That's honestly really cool, could the magicians explain how something like that works? Tattoo passwords seem awesome.

“I didn’t know that either,” says Marvin, turning to the nearest magician, a bear of a man with a wildly impressive beard. “How does that work?”

“You did know it, just forgot it,” replies the man genially, clapping his shoulder. “You helped create that magic, Marvin.”

“Mirror magic is an old art of magicians,” continues a young girl with a shock of red hair. “While most of us have our own unique Talent, there are certain spells like that that can be written down, passed on, and performed by anyone with magic. For the longest time, we just used passwords.”

“Right, spoken passwords,” says Colin. “But then your little brother developed mutism.”

Marvin blinks. “Yeah? So… we figured out a way around it?”

“Yeah! It was our first time trying out things like gesture passwords and imagery passwords. It took a couple years, but we figured it out. Now there’s really no way to get the secret password out of someone. You can’t torture or mind-control someone into revealing an image.”

Marvin brushes his fingers over the tattoo in his shoulder. “Must have meant a lot to me, I guess. To look into it that much.”

“Ugh, we spent the whole year hearing about how sweet your baby brother is,” chuckles the red-haired girl. “By the time we figured it out, you were practically an expert on mirror magic.”

Marvin smiles down at his shoes for a moment. He has a lot to make up for. A lot to rebuild.

But today, he actually feels like it’s possible.

Anonymous asked:

Magicians, why have you broken off contact with other groups of magicians? Were you in hiding after what happened to Marvin?

“Oh, yeah, what the fuck?” he cries.

“Marvin,” scolds Stacy, cupping Hunter’s ears.

“Oh, sorry. But seriously! My brother was in England and he said that the magicians there said they had heard nothing from you for more than a year. They thought Anti might have killed you all!”

“Ohhh, England,” says the bearded man. “Yes, there’s a very simple explanation for that, actually. They’re - ”

He pauses to cover Hunter’s ears.

“They’re DICKS.”

Marvin bursts into laughing, rubbing his head. “Are you joking?”

“No, we cut off all communication with the British magicians. I mean, it’s not that all of them are terrible, of course, but in the past decade or so they’ve become overrun by these monsters you wouldn’t believe. Old leaders who never grew out of outdated, discriminatory practices, young men and women who think they’re entitled to the world… it’s a mess.”

“What, and we’ve just left them to it?” asks Marvin, frowning. “Shouldn’t something be done? Jameson is British.”

“Unfortunately if we set out to correct every magical order with outdated practices we’d be at work in many of the countries in the world. Magical orders are notoriously independent - we barely communicate as is, and largely leave each other to our own devices. But still, there has been talk of it. Sending ambassadors, joining with other nations, and so on. We do communicate with a few British magicians who are not terrible and who want to improve things - the people on the inside who actually understand what’s going on with them - and we try to help if we can. But of course we’ve been so scattered this last year plans haven’t gone far.”

“Why scattered?” asks Marvin.

“Because you were missing,” answers the man, like it’s obvious. “Our leader disappeared.”

Anonymous asked:

Marvin you're their leader?! Holy shit!

“But this must be a lot to take in!” cries Leah. “You don’t have to go back to being in charge if you don’t want to, Marvin.”

“No, you do have to, actually,” protests the bearded man. “You do.”

“David here has been in charge since you vanished.”

“I’m dying, Marvin. I’m dying.”

“No, he’s not,” scowls the red-haired girl, elbowing him in the gut. “He just doesn’t like having to work. Marv, take your time.”

“We have a lot to go over, I guess,” laughs Marvin weakly. “Um. Was I a good leader?”

“Very good!”

“I liked you.”

“Yeah, chill.”

“Do I get to be called, like, High Witch or Dumbledore or something like that?” Marvin asks.

“If you want!”

“Oh, Marvin, stay for dinner! We’ll put something together quickly. I’ve got to call everyone! Sit, Marvin, tell us everything. And we’ll tell you everything. And just - everything!”

Anonymous asked:

Would it be possible to contact the Ravens? Just to let them know that everyone's okay and Anti is gone? Or is that not a good idea right now?

“Is that something I could do?” asks Marvin. “The Peruvian magicians? My brother made some friends over there.”

“Sure thing. I bet we have a contact method somewhere.”

“Dok will be happy,” says Marv, clapping his hands together. “I’ll talk to him about what he wants to say and then - yeah! We can let them know. That’s a good idea.”

Anonymous asked:

Welcome home, Marvin the Magnificent. Welcome back to yourself.

Soon people are starting up food and Leah and Colin are sharing baby pictures and new magicians are coming in from different portals across the country. Marvin tries to take it all in at once - he does not want to miss a moment of it. Glowing candle-light and friends he has forgotten, now coming back to him. Teenagers introducing themselves with awe in their eyes while the old women greet him like a child come home. The warm smell of everyone’s magic spun together and the unfamiliar familiarity of this place where he once worked and lead. He does not want to miss it.

But in the middle of all this, he has a smile just for you.

“Thank you,” he says, and in the light he is gold and white and blue, glowing like a star.

“Yeah,” he says. “This - this is the start of something. And at long last, I feel ready to start it.”

In a flame-lit hall set apart from the rest of the world, he sits down with his nephew and his niece and his sister and his friends, and he recognizes a part of himself he thought was gone forever, and for the first time in more than a year, he is able to see that Marvin the Magnificent was someone worth loving.

Like you told him all along.

“Yeah. Yes. Thank you.”

.

Anonymous asked:

Chase maybe you should spend some time with Noodle? You need to do something relaxing after a big stressful thing like that.

Chase sits in his nest with Noodle in his lap, pressing the side of his head into Noodle’s side. His cat purrs. He is a good cat. A big cat, now. A big, lanky cat who grew up from a kitten in what feels like minutes now.

Chase strokes his back. Slow and even. Calm. He needs to be calm.

“Chase?” asks Henrik, sticking his head in the door. “You ready to go?”

Deep breath. Okay. He can do this.

He tightens around Noodle’s body for a minute and kisses his cat’s head. His little companion.

“Hey,” he whispers for a second, scratching his head. “You are the only worthwhile thing Anti ever gave me. Just so you know.”

Noodle purrs at him, his eyes sliding shut. Chase kisses him one more time and then gets up, squaring his shoulders.

“Yeah,” he says. “Let’s go.”

It’s been so long. How could he let fear delay seeing them any longer?

Anonymous asked:

Finally time to see your kids Chase? I'm sure they'll be so happy!

“Yeah, here’s hoping,” he says, clutching his hands together. “Yeah.”

He sits at a bench in the park a couple blocks away with Henrik, Jackie, and JJ closeby. Henrik is waiting with him while JJ and Jackie throw a frisbee they found in the bushes.

“Here she comes,” says Henrik, reaching out to touch Chase’s hands.

And Stacy’s beautiful, and Stacy’s a piece of him, and Stacy is a memory and a presence to him - but she is gone the moment he sees Hunter. She disappears.

There’s just him. In the whole world, there’s just him.

Chase can feel the blood pounding in his head, deafening him. He stands up and moves forward, and he sees that little boy tug away from his mother’s hand and come sprinting towards him on his tiny, chubby legs, and Chase is on his knees and reaching for him -

Hunter.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”

He wishes that Hunter were screaming with joy as they wrap together, but as his awareness comes and goes in numb waves, he hears that Hunter is screaming like he’s in pain, squeezing Chase so hard he will leave little fingernail marks in his skin. Hunter is sobbing and shrieking. Chase bows over in the grass, hugging him to his chest, and Hunter’s legs and arms are wrapped around him so tight that even if Chase let go, Hunter would cling to him like a monkey. Chase rocks him up and down, kneeling on the ground, while his baby screams and cries and holds him.

He can’t speak or breathe. There’s nothing but this. His son has black hair and his mother’s onyx eyes, deep as the ocean. He is small for his age, wearing a blue shirt with a goldfish on it and green shorts. He has freckles all over his face. Chase kisses them even though Hunter’s nose is running and he’s crying wildly. He squishes him back to his chest and stills, and they hold each other there against the grass, and Chase does not let him go.

People have stopped to watch them in the park from the fuss they’re making, but Chase doesn’t notice, and Jackie stands in front of them if people get too close, guarding. Chase rocks Hunter and tries to remember how to breathe.

“My baby,” he whispers. “My son.”

“Where is the girl?” Henrik asks Stacy quietly, stepping towards her.

“She’s, um. Back at the entrance to the park with Marvin.”

“With Marvin?”

“Long story. Just… she’s not quite as eager as Hunter. That’s all. Marvin’s talking to her.”

Anonymous asked:

Why is Izzy so reluctant? Is everything okay? These are some big emotions for some little kids :(

“Where’s my daughter?” asks Chase, trying to get to his feet, though his legs are shaky. “Is she - ?”

“Daddy, don’t go!” screams Hunter, clawing at him as he feels him adjust. “Don’t go, Daddy!”

“Okay, baby, here I am, here I am,” Chase hushes him, pulling him with him as he rises and rocking Hunter against his chest.

“Papa, don’t leave again!”

“No, baby, no,” croaks Chase, cupping his head. “No, I won’t…”

Stacy comes over to them and sets her hand on Hunter’s back, rubbing down his spine. “Papa’s not going away again, okay?” she hushes, and when Chase pulls her closer to him, she doesn’t protest. “Mommy and Daddy are right here.”

Hunter weeps and Chase shakes as he feels Stacy put her head down on his shoulder and cry too, stroking their son’s back. They are big emotions for little kids. Too big. Not for the first time, the reality of how much Anti took from him rolls over Chase, and he shudders through the hatred and the pain of it. For all that he fought for his brothers in the end, he thinks holding Hunter like this even once would have broken Anti’s grip on him forever. He could have stabbed Anti himself.

“Izzy’s just angry that you were taken away,” says Stacy, rubbing his back too for a second. “She has such big emotions already, and then something like this - the temper on that girl. She throws fits. She’s just really missed you, Chase, that’s all. She wants to understand what happened but we never had the answers. We weren’t sure if you would ever come home. She’s just angry and afraid of losing you again.”

“I’ll go talk to her,” breathes Chase. “I… I don’t know, I’ll - I have to see her.”

He actually sees Blue, now that he looks, kneeling to talk with a figure in front of him, his back to Chase. Blue reaches out to smooth away long dark hair. Something in Chase’s chest heaves. He curls around his son.

“Hunt, will you stay with Mum while I go talk to your sister?”

“No, Daddy, no!”

“I’m just going to go right over there, Hunter. Do you see?”

“Hunter, you can say hi to Uncle Jackie and JJ and Sheep!” Stacy encourages him, pulling him away from Chase. He whimpers but doesn’t struggle. “And then Papa will come right back.”

“Right back, Papa.”

“Yes, sweetie, right back, yes. Yes.”

.

“What’s the matter, darling?”

“I don’t want to see Daddy.” She hides her face against his legs as he runs his hands through her hair, pulling it back into a ponytail. “I don’t want to.”

“Why, Izzy?”

She just cries louder, squeezing his pants leg. Blue brushes at her head, beginning to pull her hair into a braid.

“Your dad has really missed you, you know,” says Blue. “He has really wanted to see you.”

“I don’t want Dad to have forgotten me. That’s not fair!”

Her voice rises to a scream and then breaks into crying again.

“I know, cherie,” murmurs Blue. “I know it isn’t.”

He sees Chase coming towards them. “Darling, will you just say hi to him?”

“No, no!”

“Izzy - ”

“I don’t want to see you, Papa!” she screams, tearing away from Blue. Chase stops dead in his tracks. “I want you to go away!”

“Izzy,” says Chase. “If I could just - ”

“I said go away!”

Blue is no longer holding Izzy against his legs.

She is not close to him.

In a single moment - in a single flicker of light, a flash of movement - she is in front of her father.

Chase crashes backwards, gaping. He hears Jackie howl in alarm somewhere behind him and Stacy calls Izzy’s name. Blue dashes forward to scoop her up and hide her before anyone sees, but Izzy whirls on Chase again, and he sees her eyes flash red.

His daughter just glitched.

Anonymous asked:

Woah what the hell just happened! Izzy has magic? Anti is dead, it's not him, don't let fear overwhelm you guys.

“That’s not normal, that was like him, don’t let her - ”

“Jackie, watch it!” snarls Blue, turning on him immediately. “Go sit your ass down. I’ll explain everything in a minute, but you keep your mouth shut, alright?”

Jackie clamps down on his tongue, eyes wild. He grabs Chase’s shirt and drags him to his feet, hauling him back towards the bench. He passes Stacy and Chase meets her eyes, a look of concern flashing between them, but he doesn’t see fear in her face.

She knows what’s going on. This is normal. This is just Izzy.

Okay, he thinks. Then it’s fine.

“Magic,” he mutters. “Like Blue.”

“Not like Blue, why would she transport like him?” asks Jackie, panicked. He grabs JJ’s arm and for a second Chase thinks he’s going to throw him right over his shoulder and carry him home, but he manages to control himself. After a moment, Jackie shudders out a breath and sinks into the grass, holding his head in his hands. “That gave me a start.”

“It makes sense though,” says Henrik quickly, pacing in the grass beside them. “When I was with the magicians I asked them questions about how such things happen. They said there is a genetic component, yes, but for the most part magic is triggered in young children by exposure to other magic. Izzy has the genetic component given that she is a blood relative of Jameson and Marvin.”

“And she would have had plenty of chances to be exposed,” mumbles Chase, glancing back towards his daughter, who is being comforted by both her mother and her uncle.

“It wasn’t just exposure, though,” warns Henrik. “It was like - like scary exposure. Forms of trauma. The need to protect one’s self. While running away from Anti, we must have encountered him at one point.”

“And that would trigger it in her,” signs JJ. “Replicating Anti… to get away from him.”

“Dad, does Izzy gotta go home now?”

Chase turns quickly to see Hunter coming towards him, sort of abandoned in between the two groups. “Oh, honey.” He scoops him up and sits down with him. He tries bouncing him on his leg, but Hunter just scoots forward and lies against his chest, hugging his neck. “I think we better just give her a moment to have some calm-down time.”

Jackie watches from afar as Blue rocks Izzy and pets her hair, his niece crying into his shirt. Henrik sets a hand on his shoulder. “Jackie. We’re okay. Calm breaths.”

Jackie shakes his head, rubbing at his face. How much better Blue looks after only two days away from him.

“You can say hi to your uncles like Mommy said,” offers Chase, pointing at them. “Do you remember your uncles?”

Hunter puts his thumb in his mouth and shrugs, hiding in Dad’s shirt. JJ plucks at the grass and Jackie and Henrik exchange glances, silent.

Anonymous asked:

Wait wait wait wait, what the fuck? Did that really happen? Oh no, I'm already starting to think the worst possible explanations

“I don’t know,” says Chase. “I don’t… remember.”

“She could have just - maybe picked it up genetically?” offers Henrik. “Similar magic?”

“Don’t say that,” mumbles Jackie.

“Anti could have even caught her,” breathes Chase. “What if she had to get away from him? Or she was there when the house was burning? I should have - I should have killed him myself.”

“Papa?” says Hunter.

“Yes, my Hunter.” Chase strokes his hair.

“Is my bad uncle going to come back again?”

“No. No, Hunt. He’s gone forever.”

Hunter nuzzles against his father’s neck.

Anonymous asked:

So Izzy is a young magician? Stacy, did you all have an encounter with Anti while running from him? Izzy could have these particular powers because of that. How long has she been glitching about? Does she have other powers?

“Maybe we should take her home. She can’t be out in public if this is happening.”

“No, she can handle it, Stace,” says Blue, voice steady. “She’s a strong girl, she can handle it.”

Izzy is buried in his chest again, tired now.

“This started around the time Anti was hunting us, yes,” says Stacy, pushing hair from her face. “Marvin was helping her with it as best he could. I didn’t know anything about it except that Marvin was a magician. It was terrifying at first. She would transport miles away and I would have no idea where my daughter had gone, while a real life horror movie monster was chasing us.”

Stacy strokes Izzy’s back. “Marvin taught her the basics, but it was terrible after Chase and Henrik disappeared. She would glitch out of bed during nightmares, glitch up onto something high and not be able to get down, glitch into things and get stuck and terrified until we could help her glitch out again… the Swedish magicians have been our help for years now, I don’t know what we’d do without them.

"There’s no other powers, but she can glitch directly into or through things without knowing what’s on the other side or anything like that. Sometimes, when she does it, she breaks electronics like he did…

"We encountered him just once, the night he burned the house down. Chase and Henrik and Marvin ran to come get us. It wasn’t safe anymore. He had gone after other people we loved - a man Marvin was seeing, a friend of Henrik’s at work… He was there as we drove away, coming after us down the road - glitching out billboards, flashing towards us. We threw the phones out the window and just kept running. Hunter didn’t understand enough, but I think she did. I think she still remembers that whole day. What that fear was like. Chase was burned… passed out in the car from the smoke. She was just there in her carseat while Henrik wrapped him up and everyone was yelling. Left our home behind and just… ran.”

Izzy is quiet in Blue’s arms, held against his chest. She’s heavy but he will not let her go.

“And then she lost her dad, and her uncles, and we were all but alone in a new place, and we didn’t know when or if Anti would find us. She never lost that fear. She’s only nine.”

Anonymous asked:

Does Hunter remember the others or just Chase? I want to say he's just nervous, but given the time line split it's possible he only remembers his dad. Izzy clearly remembers it all though, so?

“I remember mostly kind of,” says Hunter, looking up at his dad. “Cause Uncle JJ was just born, but he’s a grown-up still.”

Chase snorts. “Is that how we put it?”

“Cause it was Halloween and then we were trick or treating and Mum got called and you said ‘don’t come over!’ Cause my bad uncle came with him.”

Chase glances over at Jameson, who is still just picking at the grass.

“You have a good memory for a little one,” says Henrik. He looks down at the child and feels a deep sense of shame to have forgotten his own nephew. He knows it’s not his fault, but that doesn’t really make it better. He kneels down in front of Chase and smiles at Hunter as best he can, even if he’s uncomfortable. “Do you remember me?”

“Uncle Sheep,” says Hunter, squirming shyly against Chase’s chest.

Henrik laughs a bubbling laugh and smiles with his crooked front teeth. “Yes,” he says quietly, patting his leg. “Uncle Sheep.”

“Chase!”

He looks over to see Stacy waving for him. Chase sits up straight and pats Hunter’s head. “Hunt, can you wait here with Uncle Sheep while I go check on your sister?”

“Mh. Okay, Dad. Not for too long, though.”

“Okay, sweetie, there’s my darling.”

Anonymous asked:

Marvin, Jackie is feeling a bit like you're better off after being away from him. Can you give him some reassurances? If you want to, of course, I know things are still tense.

Chase moves towards Izzy and Stacy while Marvin returns to the others, trying to smile despite a synth wave of nerves tightening in his stomach. Henrik and Jackie look up at him as he approaches. JJ plucks grass.

“Um. Hi,” says Marvin.

“Thought you were staying on the bus,” says Jackie numbly.

“Well, I… remembered some things.”

“Oh. Good, then.”

A dry silence. Hunter is following a grasshopper through the grass, crawling towards Jameson for a moment. JJ jumps and gets to his feet, walking towards a nearby tree and sitting down again, turning his back to the others. Marvin only catches his gaze for a second, but it’s long enough for him to see the bandages wrapped around his face from the cut he gave him. His fists curl and uncurl. He stares at the ground.

“I just thought I’d catch you up on Izzy’s power,” says Marvin. “I know it’s a little out of the blue. But magic starts young in kids and - ”

“Henrik explained,” says Jackie.

Henrik flashes a peace sign.

“Oh. Great.”

“Yeah, good. You’re still feeling well, Schneep?”

“Fine, really.”

“Great.”

Hunter has caught the grasshopper, playing with it in his hands. Nobody else does anything.

“Um, Jackie, can we talk over here?” asks Marvin weakly, pointing away from the group.

Jackie flushes. “I think I better stay here and make sure everything’s okay,” he answers, gaze moving away from Marvin and refusing to come back again.

“Jackie - ”

“Blue,” says Jackie tightly. “We’re just going to fight again. So how about we just… don’t, okay?”

Marvin stares at him, blinking. He sighs and shakes his head, feet shifting uncertainly in the grass.

“You can call me Marvin.”

“What?”

“You can call me Marvin,” he repeats, quieter still.

It’s Jackie’s turn to stare at him. Some of the heat leaves his face.

“Oh,” he says again. “Good. Great, that’s… yeah, you just needed some time away, that’s…”

He gets up and stalks over to join JJ by the tree, fists clenched.

“Jackie!”

Anonymous asked:

JJ are you feeling okay? I know you're owed quite a few apologies around this group, so if you're bitter it's understandable.

“Not bitter,” he replies lightly, shooting you a small smile. “No worries. Just not good around people I don’t know. Anymore. I think it’s better if I have some space from the kids. And Stacy. I’m just - just meant to stick with my brothers.”

He pauses, plucking at the grass again.

“Not really sure I want to talk to Blue now, though,” he adds. “Just a quiet day in the park, please. I don’t want to get… put back in that headspace again.”

scunneredzombie asked:

Jackie, what's upset you? Marvin is back with you and they're willing to talk. Wouldn't it be good to talk and fix things between you two?

“Jackie.”

He can hear his twin coming after him, but he doesn’t turn.

“Rose!”

Marvin catches his shoulder, pulling him back to him. “Talk to me.”

Jackie flashes him a look, eyes watering, and turns away again. Marvin squeezes his shoulder, blowing out a breath of air.

“Can’t talk or choosing not to talk?”

Jackie shrugs, mouth trembling a little. Marvin sighs and steers him to the side.

“Let’s go talk, okay? If you can. Come on.”

They sit on a bench closer to the pond in the park. Marvin decides to give Jackie a little time, and, after confirming no strangers are close, he uses a little magic to grow hyacinth in the water of the pond. A group of ducks goes nuts.

“I can’t make you happy,” manages Jackie, wiping at his face. “I’ve never been able to.”

“Jackie, it’s not about that, dammit, it’s not your job to make me happy!”

“Then what am I even here for?” snaps Jackie, turning on him.

“For yourself, Jackie, shit!”

“Yeah, well, that sucks,” he snarls. “I don’t care, I just want to - I just - I can’t make ANY of you happy and I’m just shit at this and I - I - ”

Jackie lets his head fall back against the back of the bench, burying his face in his hands. Marvin lets out a sigh that’s almost a scream of frustration, grabbing his hand and letting his own head fall against Jackie’s shoulder.

“Jackie,” he groans. “I can’t… can’t force you to understand you’re worth more than your ability to be an overprotective, overinvolved older brother. Oh, honey, what am I going to do with you?”

Anonymous asked:

Jackie, starlight boy, burning flame. You are important too. You deserve to be happy just the same as your brothers. Anti's rules don't matter here. You are a separate being from your family. You are a whole person all on your own. You deserve happiness and comfort, and you won't achieve that through working yourself to death and pushing yourself to the brink trying to make everyone happy. You need to listen to Marvin. Be there for yourself for a change. Bring joy to yourself instead of the others, just every now and again. Start slow, but this needs to change.

“What does this have to do with Anti’s rules?” spits Jackie, kneading at his hands. “I’m not like him anymore.”

“Jackie, you still just act like big brother a hundred percent of the time.”

“I am big brother! A hundred percent of the time!”

“Would you listen to everyone for a second?” Marvin demands, taking hold of his shoulder. “You have to look after yourself too. I know it’s only been a couple days, but I just needed some time to get my head straight without worrying about… how I’m not what any of you need me to be, or how embarrassed I feel when you see me weak… I didn’t want to admit how much I need to work on myself because it was scary to face that. And because - well, I hated myself, Jackie.”

Jackie looks up at him, eyebrows drawn back.

“I hated Marvin for not being able to save everyone,” he says. “I wanted to separate myself from all the pain he went through, but I couldn’t. Blue - Blue was the person I became to survive. The truth is I don’t think I was ready to put that person aside because I didn’t feel safe being Marvin yet. I was scared of how much brokenness I would have to admit to, how much I would have to feel, and how much work it’s going to take to start healing. So I just… stayed Blue.”

“How did you stop being scared?” asks Jackie weakly.

“I’m still terrified! Are you joking? It makes my heart race just thinking about it. But I realized that I have to start taking steps or I’ll be stuck as miserable, hurting Blue forever - and what’s worse, I will drive you all away too. Blue only knows how to fight and take care of you all in emergencies. Marvin - he’s his own person too. I have to start being him again. And you, Jackie, Ro - you are everything to us. We all love you. Even if we didn’t, you’d still be worth loving and you’d still deserve some joy for yourself.”

Jackie kicks at the dirt beneath his feet, shaking his head.

“Jackie,” sighs Marvin. “Have you been doing anything for yourself at all these past couple weeks?”

“What do you mean? I got a job, I found us an apartment, I found Chase’s kids, I - ”

“That’s all been for us,” Marvin protests. “All of it.”

“I went to therapy!”

“Once, Jackie! And even then I think you were doing it for us!”

He doesn’t have an answer for that. Digs the toes of his shoes into the ground and closes his eyes.

“Aren’t there things that you want? Aren’t there things that you feel that you need to process? Why have we been avoiding each other, Jackie? Why don’t you spend time with me anymore? Why are you hiding yourself and everything you want from me?”

Anonymous asked:

Good question Marvin. Jackie, what are you avoiding? What are you escaping by being an overinvolved workaholic and avoiding emotions with your brothers? You seem so miserable below the facade of being 'big brother the provider', surely you have emotions you need to talk about. You need something for yourself, you need to care about Jackie too, not just the others. You deserve to look after /you/ too.

“You going to talk to me about it?” asks Marvin.

Jackie stares down at the ground. His fists are clenched against his knees.

“Jackie. What’s the problem? What’s the fear?”

But his brother doesn’t say anything.

Marvin rubs at his head and leans back against the bench, touching Jackie’s gloved hand.

“Break in half,” whispers Jackie.

“What?”

Jackie has gone silent again. Marvin waits a long time, but he doesn’t say anything more. Marvin squeezes his palm and rests his head on his shoulder for a minute, frustrated and worried at the same time. He plants a kiss there against his twin’s shoulder, exhausted.

“I’m sorry we fought. That I ran off like that. That I scared you. I love you.”

Jackie nods rapidly.

Anonymous asked:

I think Jackie means he's trying to avoid a breakdown by working and focusing on you guys because he can't face his own trauma without crashing and burning, breaking in two. Am I close JBM?

Marvin’s brow furrows as he tries to meet Jackie’s eyes, but his brother just turns his head away, shrinking in on himself and clutching his ribs like he has a stomachache. Marvin rubs at his back, setting his head down again.

“My Roser…”

“I don’t want to talk about this, Marv,” protests Jackie.

“Because you’ll get upset?”

Jackie groans, rocking his torso back and forth.

“Well, we don’t have to, okay?” murmurs Marvin, keeping a steady pressure on his back. “But even if you’re scared of what will happen, at some point you have to start dealing with how you feel, Jackie. Love, you’re miserable. I’m sorry I’ve been too self-absorbed to help, I truly am. I think I wanted you to save me from myself, but - ”

“Then I should have!” cries Jackie. “Then I should have been there and I - ”

“Jackie! I’m the only one who can save me from myself. I just need help sometimes… not saving. And I know you would have done what you could if I had reached out and just asked. You have to start dealing with your own shit too. Because I know how it feels to just be holding on to the hope that things will magically get better, but the truth is that even if the rest of us were all suddenly happy, that wouldn’t make you happy too, Jackie. You’re holding on to something that’s not going to happen. And I don’t want to see it all come crashing down around you. Please - find a healthy way to start dealing with this shit. I don’t want to see you miserable anymore. I love you. And Jackie… if you really can’t get through this without breaking in half - then break, Jackie. And let us, for once, pick up some of your pieces.”

Jackie’s eyes are red, his mouth shaking. He pulls on his hair and hides his face between his wrists. “No more talking.”

Anonymous asked:

Might be best to drop it for now Marv. But Jackie, they're right. It's okay to break down sometimes. It's not your responsibility to make things perfect, you have limits and trauma too. Keep that in mind, and keep going go therapy. Your family is here for you.

“Okay,” sighs Marvin. “That’s enough for now. Sorry if I lectured… I know I’m the one who messed things up. Well, neither of us should have acted the way we did. I’m just worried about you.”

“But you’re coming home tonight. Things will be better.”

“Jackie. I think maybe JJ could use a little more space. Besides, I really can’t come home until I’m sure the two of us aren’t going to fight like we did again. That wasn’t fair to ourselves or each other - and especially not to our brothers.”

“What? No, you’re coming home tonight.”

Marvin shakes his head at him. “Jackie. Please don’t start.”

“I want you to come home! Now! Where are you staying?”

“I’m staying with some of the magicians in town. I - ”

“Where?”

“I don’t really think you need to know.”

“Don’t need to know? You’re going to stay with strangers and I won’t even know where? What, you’re scared I’m going to come and embarrass you? You don’t want to see me? You don’t - ”

“Jackie, stop!” Marvin snaps, clapping his hands in front of his face. “We are not shouting at each other anymore, period! You need to start doing things for yourself. You need to get rid of all this pent-up fury and all this fucking pain and just - gah! You’re driving me crazy, love, don’t you know I’m in the same position as you, feeling like I can’t help you heal? You have to start making steps for yourself, Jackie, have to, have to.”

“And then you’ll come home?”

“Yes, I swear. When I feel ready and we’re both working on things, yes. I never want to scream at you like that again, Jackie. Do you understand that?”

“You could come home and not scream,” offers Jackie. “Please.”

Marvin hugs him to his chest, rubbing his shoulder. “I’m going to go check on Stacy. Just think about what I’ve said, and listen to the cameras, okay? You can call Stacy’s phone if you need me. Come on, give me a hug goodbye.”

Jackie pulls him reluctantly against his side, buzzing with frustration. He squeezes Marvin so tight he hears him grunt before he lets him go again.

“My Roser,” says Marvin again, fondly, and Jackie reaches out to run his thumb over the silver rose ring on his finger before he lets his twin walk away again.

Anonymous asked:

I'm so proud of you Marvin. You finally know you are someone worth loving, someone worthy of healing and happiness. Don't let this realization slip away, keep finding yourself and growing past the pain. You deserve it, you deserve to heal.

Marvin smiles weakly, letting a white rose bloom between his fingers, the petals soft against his hand. “Thank you. I’m trying my best. It’s going to be a lot of work. But I don’t want to let this go again. Don’t want to let my fear rule me anymore. I have to get better - for them, but for me, too. I deserve that. Marvin deserves that. Even though he’s made mistakes.”

He steels himself before returning to Stacy and takes a detour towards the tree by the benches.

“Jamie?” he calls quietly.

His little brother looks up with one big, clear blue eye. Marvin breathes deeply and forces himself to look at the bandage around the other side of his face. The pain that he gave to him because he let himself lose control.

“Hey,” he says, trying to smile, without much luck. “I know you’re not really ready to talk and that’s okay. I’ll try you again sometime. But for now, I just wanted to say I’m really sorry… and I lied when I said I didn’t love you.”

Jameson stares up at him. Marvin leans carefully down and offers him the white rose, which JJ accepts with a tiny smile and curling white fingers.

“You are a piece of my heart,” Marvin says quietly. “And I’m sorry I tried to forget that. I will do what I can to make it up to you.”

Jameson smiles shyly up at him. Marvin lets his fingers scratch over his brother’s beard, just for a moment, before rising and turning away.

Anonymous asked:

Jackie you have to start doing things for yourself. You are deserving. You are worthy without even having to try. You matter to your brothers, you matter to Stacy and the kids, you matter to Max. You should do things just for you, like the yo-yo you got. Things that you do just to make yourself happy, with no relation to the others. Try it, please? Just to see how good it helps you feel, how brave and strong it helps you become.

Jackie sighs out, slumping back on the bench. Even thinking about some of the things he wants… it’s so scary. Not just what he would feel and how it could hurt, but the way he could be rejected, let down, left still unhappy even after he tried to get better. It’s not fair. It’s too hard. He wishes the things that made him sad were just enemies he could beat up or faults in the code on his computer screen.

There’s a tongue-click behind him and he looks over his shoulder to see Jamie coming towards him, a flower big as his palm in one hand. He leans over the back of the bench and drapes himself over Jackie’s shoulders, grinning at him from the side. Jackie chuckles, messing up his hair. JJ comes to sit down beside him and rests against his side, petting the rose as he examines it, quiet by the pond as the ducks race in circles and weave through the water.

So happiness, Jackie supposes, is not completely elusive. But he’s going to figure out how to start getting it for himself - and that, if he’s honest, sounds harder than killing a monster.

[strawwritesfic]

Bard x Female!Reader: Angst

Summary: Victory, though sweet, can always be tinged with the bitter taste of despair.

Rating/Tags: T (Soap Opera Disease; character death; during canon; not canon compliant; not anti-Bard’s canon wife; reader is not Bard’s canon wife; The Hobbit; human reader)

Challenge: “160 Collective Drabbles” challenge by BobaPop on Lunaescence Archives.

Tag List: @imaginesfire​

Notes: Please take note that I wrote this long before -- Oh. The Hobbit trilogy started coming out in 2012? Well, it doesn’t matter when this was written as compared to the movie releases, because I never saw the second or third movies anyway. The point is, I’m sure that things were portrayed very differently in the movie than I have portrayed them here.

Angst

It was over. At last Bard could release the long-held anxiety that burned within his lungs. It was over. All was quiet, save for distant crying. All was still, save those already sifting through the rubble. All was peaceful, save for the fires that continued to lick through broken windows. The dragon was slain. Laketown was safe. It was over.

Ash continued to drift from the slowly clearing sky, sticking to his dark hair and lashes as Bard stood in what remained of the town square. The taste of smoke and soot hung heavily in the air. No helpful breeze blew through to clear it, nor to cool the sweat beading his brow. He could have moved, perhaps, and felt something other than heat against his skin, but he did not. For the time being, he could do little but allow his mind to reel.

“Bard!”

The voice of the town healer stabbed through the haze like a dagger. Bard turned to see the man running toward him, stumbling on fallen boards as he went. There was something about that and his tone of voice that Bard did not like. His heart thundered, though he knew not what could be more terrible than staring down a dragon.

“You must come now,” said the healer, and Bard heard it for certain this time: panic.

He was falling into step beside the man to race back the direction he’d come from before Bard even thought to ask, “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“It’s…” the healer hesitated, then finally finished with a quiet, “[Name].”

There was no need for further explanation. Bard’s heart gave a great leap once more, then seemed to fall dead inside his chest. Unthinking, he picked up his already considerable pace still further. “Is she worse?”

“Considerably so. All the smoke and the excitement. I-I do not believe she will be with us much longer.”

They had reached Bard’s home. It was not your home, but the building was closer, and it was there he had sent you earlier that evening when you had so boldly strode into the midst of the battle. He pressed his hand against the door, but found he had not yet the courage to step inside. 

“There is nothing you can do?” he asked quietly.

“Nothing more.”

“Then leave us,” said Bard. “I will send for you when…when I am ready.”

“Of course.”

Bard did not wait to see his orders followed. They would be, he was sure of that. Already the people of Laketown were treating him differently. It was not exactly what he had envisioned for his simple life of smuggling, but face the change he would–and face it as he always did: alone.

Grim-faced, he slipped through the house’s narrow dark halls. He ought to have been grateful that this building continued to stand, that you could be comfortable in your final moments now that your home was in flames. Grateful was the farthest emotion from Bard’s person just then, however. All he could think about was that blasted dwarf king and that cursed dragon.

“You made it,” came a hoarse voice from inside the bedroom.

Bard entered to find the snug room lit with the last scrap of candle wax to his name. So be it. He could think of no better use for it, and, if he had his way, that so-called King of the Mountain would be paying enough to have Laketown swimming in the stuff in due time. But that was a thought for a different time.

“I made it,” he agreed as he settled into the empty stool the healer had pulled up by the bed. “Did you think I would not come?”

You smiled the same soft smile he had fallen for at first sight, the same smile that had made him wonder if love could come twice into his life somehow. Even now, it reached your eyes. 

“How is everything?” you asked.

That was not an answer to his question, but Bard didn’t push. Instead, he reached for your hands that rested on the covers. Already your fingers felt cold. 

“The battle is over,” he said as he rubbed his thumb across your knuckles. “Smaug is dead.”

“The town?”

“Still standing. Most of it.”

“And the children?”

“Safe,” he answered. It hurt his heart to think about them. Sigrid, Bain, and Tilda had already lost their mother. Now on the cusp of finding someone to fill some of the hole left by her, that someone, too, passed on. Bard knew Tilda would take it the hardest; he dreaded telling her the news. “They will miss you.”

“I’ll miss them. And you. Most of all you.”

“You should not have come into the thick of things.” Perhaps Bard shouldn’t have said it. What was done was done. There was no changing your decision now, and you knew even better than he the fruits of your effort. “You were becoming well. Had you stayed put–”

“And burned alive without seeing you again? While the rest of the village died defending the town without me?”

“Smaug has been vanquished without you, and yet you lay dying,” Bard answered hotly.

He should not have been feeling so angry at your deathbed, but Bard could not help himself. Only now was the cold horror of seeing you out of bed, eyes blazing brighter than the fires the dragon spewed out, sinking in. There was nothing he could have done once he saw you; your death had been imminent from that point on. Only the thought of killing Smaug had distracted him.

Bard bowed his head. “Is this to be my reward? Losing you when everything should be rescued?”

A rough laugh spilled from your throat. “Maybe you’re right,” you said. “Maybe I just wanted one last adventure.”

Had you not seen him weep before? The tears had not yet sprang to his eyes, and still it was hard to force them up again. You smiled. Had Bard not watched you waste away these past months, he would not have known the pain you were in, would not have understood how close you were to fading away from him entirely. Your smile sweetened.

“I didn’t have much time left anyway. I’m glad to have spent the last of mine helping you, Bard. Not dying quietly in my own bed.” Slipping your hands out of his, you lifted one to cup his face. “You will be a magnificent king.”

“I never wanted the title.”

“I know. But now it is yours. I love you. I shall pass your love on to your wife when I see her.”

One of his hands lifted to hold yours against his cheek. He could not blink his tears away now, though his eyes were merely wet. Missing seeing you go would be unacceptable.

“I love you as well, [Name],” he said softly. “And I thank you. For everything.”

Grinning, you brushed your thumb against his skin. Over and over, and over and over, and over…and…over. Then nothing. The spark in your eye disappeared.  His breath came slowly in and out as he looked on, still grasping your hand. All warmth inside it was gone now. Bard closed his eyes before slowly lowering your hand to the bed. 

But he could not stay as he wanted. He could not even take the time to mourn. As you had reminded him, there was much work to do, and he was now the one to do it. He would not let your final words to him echo in his mind in vain.

[thescarlettbitch]

Do you know any healing spells? If they exist. My friend is sick and I can’t get to them to help. My sister is a witch and she’s looking for spells that could help

First of all I am so sorry I'm just now seeing and answering.

I did not have any at the ready but I did some research (as is the foundation of the craft) and found some information to aid in the creation of a personalized healing spell for your friend. Making it personalized could help make the spell more effective.

Healing Herbs, Plants, and Spices (and what they heal)

Chickweed - used for blood disorders, bowel and intestinal issues, asthma, lung disease, arthritis, eczema, etc

Aloe Vera - topically used to treat burns and rashes, can be ingested (please make sure you prepare it properly) to sooth sore throats, colds, and as a natural laxative.

Calendula - anti inflammatory, used as an ointment or cream for burns and rashes

Ashwagandha - a natural anti inflammatory

Black Cohosh - helps ease menstrual/menopausal and arthritic pain

Catnip - soothes an upset stomach

Cranberry - helps with intestinal issues and might help with chronic pain

Echinacea - antiviral and immuno support

Elderberry - antiviral, immumo support, good for colds and fevers

Garlic - antimicrobial, regular usage can lower blood pressure, combats colds and fevers

Ginger - antinausea, vomiting, treats cold and flu symptoms

Ginseng - helps with exhaustion and fatigue, can also be used to reduce the frequency and severity of colds (I'd use this for healing burnout)

Hibiscus - good blood pressure, heart and respiratory health,

Thyme - fights bacterial and fungal infections, and an antioxidant

Arnica - pain relief, can be used topically or ingested however be very careful using it internally as it can be toxic if used incorrectly, I recommend topically or in a spell jar

Obviously this is not a completed list, just a list of the first few I found or the ones that I have used. Feel free to do your own research, look for holistic or old remedies for whatever is ailing your friend and go from there.

Healing Crystals (and their properties)

Jasper - helps in times of stress

Obsidian - protection

Amethyst - general healing, headaches, stress

Bloodstone - healing blood related issues

Rose Quartz - provides comfort and peace during stress

Citrine - concentration, optimism

Turquoise - good luck, balanced emotions

Tigers Eye - protects against negativity

Moonstone - encourages growth and strength

Sapphire - attracts happiness and peace

Ruby - restores vitality and energy levels

Opalite - magnify your power

The color green is associated with health and healing.

My thoughts:

Now for things like this, I'd go for a Spell Jar.

Get a jar, any size as long as it will fit all of your materials.

A candle (green or white).

Based on the specifics of how your friend is sick, pick herbs, spices, plants, and crystals that you think would best help.

A piece of paper.

An incantation. (Can be as simple as "powers that be, please help to heal [name] or as complicated as you want)

Your preferred method of cleansing.

Make sure absolutely everything, including your space, has been cleansed and charged with the intent to heal.

Optional: carve or write your friend's name and sigil for good health on the candle

Light the candle.

Use the paper to right your friends name (full or first and last) (optional: draw a health sigil underneath their name), roll it up, stick it in the jar.

Next add a pinch of the gathered herbs and spices, and crystals, to the jar. As you do this, recite the incantation.

Close the jar tight, use the wax from the candle to seal it, let the candle burn through, or you can snuff it to reuse it later (if you plan to reuse it, don't label it).

Place the jar in either sunlight all day or moonlight (preferably full but any stage would work) all night (go off whichever you or your friend feel more connected to) to charge it and really blend the energies. Say the incantation when you place it in the light.

Put the jar in a dark, dry, cleansed place. Say the incantation once more.

Optional: take the jar out daily or nightly and sit it in the sun/moonlight, recite the incantation, put it back. Can be done as often as you feel the need.

You could also do a witch's ladder

Use a green string (green is associated with health and healing), cleanse it, set your intention, do the ladder like normal (you can find instructions in many places) and ta da. This can also be placed in the jar, or on an alter, or in a cool, dry, cleansed space.

Best of luck.

[limetimo]

Ceremonious Nerves by tenrousei_kuroi psychological horror, Harry just arrived to Grimmauld Place and is finding out just how messed up his godfather is... and it's not just baout Azkaban

Confusions and Complications by whos_creativity third year. boggart lesson. On Harry's turn the boggart turns into a soaking wet bleeding boy... who is no-one else than Remus' old friend, Regulus Black!

old men and their pajamas by rsbarelle Fleamont and REgulus have the same pyjamas.

constant vigilance by maladaptivewriting jegulus smut, noncon roleplay

Regulus's (very professional) Guide to Forming a Family - a series -a feshly free (but still deeply traumatised) trans regulus starts working at a cafe, is befriended against his will by Remus, bumps into his estranged brother, meets said brother's friends, starts dating James, and overall finds himself with more family than he ever thought he'd have or need.

and though i burn, how could i fall? by theicarusconstellation icarus Regulus and Apollo James

lost and found by rxgulus James adopts a stray cat, doesn't know the stray cat is regulus actually

The Marshmallow Test by Scorpsblack CUTE CUTE CUTE CUTE CUTE BABY REGULUS AND BIG BRO SIRIUS DOING TEH MARSHMALLOW TEST IM DEAD

is this the end of all the endings? (his broken bones are mending) by rsbarelle sirius is raising regulus, also bartylus ♥

Gathering Home by Quietlemonhush Sirius is rasiing both Regulus and Harry, and Remus is the kindergarden teacher

Black's Anatomy by Scorpsblack sirius is a doctor and also raising regulus, who is 3 and has a brain tumor. Thankfully the hospital is full of friends! Regulus and Barty traumatise the entire play room.

Little Lion by TracingPatterns undersage incest also James/Regulus/Sirius

we're not worried, we're just having fun by grimjobs remus is a virgin and regulus is a slut, james has a brilliant idea.

How we all fall by georgia_sk harry is trying to get draco to date him and is very dramatic about it, much to jegulus' amusement.

Naughty, Knotty, Naughty by Anonymous Regulus/Harry/Sirius animagus smut

i can go anywhere i want (just not home) by rsbarelle regulus is Not having a good time and decides to follow in Sirius' footsteps and run away to the Potters.

the love of a brother by rxgulus - regulus is tasked with writing an essay about the people who raised him. backgroud estabilished jegulus

alcohol free by rxgulus when james gets drunk he starts waxing poetics about his husband to whoever is nearest; this time it's Regulus' coworkers Lily and friends.

the soldier by woobyo soon after Regulus' death, Sirius finds himself being 11 again. This time around he's not going to let nobody get n the way of their happily ever afters. (Even if it takes a liberal amount of murder.)

Mortal Once More by SheOfTheBookAndSong reg takes snape's place in narattive

Eighty-Twenty by FrankieQuinn13 back at school, james dumped severus because the boy didn't fit his idea of two children and a picket fence. He marries Lily instead and... it's fine, the marriage is fine. It feels a little less fine when they find out Severus is dating Sirius... and it's pretty serious

anti-hero by rweoutofthewoods regulus dies... or does he? :D past and endgame jegulus, lily lives. good writing!

Meet on Telegraph Avenue by ani_wahstan Regulus gets kicked out and goes to love with his brother and his sexy, slutty best friend.

Toujours-effin-pur, baby! by kwiewi Bartylus cruisin' and vibin' and lovin' on the roads of USA

make me stay by vick Regulus can't believe he's got crush on his brother's best riend. humiliating. pathetic. jegulily

Slipping through the mirror's cracks by Careless_Mirel walburga stuffed sickly regulus' soul in his healthy out-of-wedlock sister's body and it's overall a mess but Regulus and i forgot her name right now are going to figure it out

best friend behaviour by Anonymous barty/evan/regulus smut

Fuck The Monarchy! (Literally) by Bartemius_Crouch sirius and regulus are princes. what the title says, by james (and remus)

you're too sweet for me by fullonbicrisis regulus does sex work on the phone on side. his newest customer james is so sweet! there's no way things could get crazy!

though I try to resist, I still want it all by deanconti sirius/regulus/remus/james smut, sweet

Sirius rides his brother's Tickle Me Elmo by thebestmaraudersslythetinskittlefaneva_8 sirius does some self-discovery

A potion a day from The Black Apothecary by ani_wahstan james is looking for a long term solution to his anxiety, falls in love with a handsome potioneer along the way. sweet

Begin Again by slutforJamesPotter98 regulus dies, time travels, jegulus ensues

all I see is you by morgana_moonlight regulus wants his ears pierced, somehow he gets a date with james out of the whole mess?

god bless america by rweoutofthewoods sirius left. regulus stayed. knocked up a girl. called remus for help. and things stay the same in the sleepy rualr american town. will things change now that sirius and james are back in town? (beautifully written, the atmosphere is somehting else)

How to Raise the Chosen One series, past Jegulily, Regulus raises Harry, Dumbledore's a blackmailing DICK

More than Magic by Hometown_Nerd ♥♥♥♥♥ squibified Reg kidnaps harry, ect ect love it

Best Part of Waking Up by starling011, TemieTem remus/sirius/regulus smut with a surprising amount of plot-oriented chapters.

Curse Breaker (or how to find answers) by vianexa regulus is trying to break a curse, james helps, you can connect the dots

pearl necklace by indecest for PsychiatristGirl orion/regulus incest

A Man On The Horizon by vianexa cowboys!!! after regulus kills a man he can no longer stay in his hometown. in search of his brother he finds James ♥ and a new home ♥♥♥

A star for a summer's day by her_smile_forges_galaxies bartylus fake dates to get james and evan's attention

Drifting by indiantaylor regulus dies and goes back to 13. jegulus

Baby Black by miss_little_kitten regulus is accidentally de-aged and given to sirius to care for

Porn Delivery Service what it says on the tin ft james sirius regulus barty evan uuum remus too i think in various pairings/groups

Faith in Fear | A Regulus Black Story by chilloutkid regulus survives cave, v good

i will touch you with my mind by jaywalkers kinky jegulus

evocatio by justwhatialwayswanted regulus fake-dates evan into real dating

the tips of your teeth (fit perfect in me) by damagecontrol demon regulus priest james fuck nasty

Past Zero Hour by anonymsly ♥♥♥♥♥ :D:D:D:D:D

[thelandboundseawitch]

🪵Cinnamon 101🪵

Cinnamon(Cinnamomum verum)

Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus Cinnamomum. Cinnamon is used mainly as an aromatic condiment and flavouring additive in a wide variety of cuisines, sweet and savoury dishes, breakfast cereals, snack foods, bagels, teas, hot chocolate and traditional foods.

Medicinal Uses & Properties

🪵Antioxidant

🪵Anti-inflammatory

🪵May reduce neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease

🪵Anticancer

🪵Improves blood circulation

🪵Boosts brain function

🪵May have antibacterial and antifungal properties

🪵Control blood sugar

Magickal Properties

🪵Love

🪵Fire Magick and Warmth

🪵Lust

🪵Purification

🪵Money

🪵Protection

🪵Passion

🪵Sex

Uses for Cinnamon

🪵Make a potpourri or simmer pot

🪵Burn cinnamon incense

🪵Brew cinnamon tea, or make other foods

🪵Use cinnamon(or cinnamon products, such as oils) to keep away bugs.

🪵Make a candle and add cinnamon to the wax

🪵Sprinkle cinnamon around, or make a natural bug repellent, to keep away pests, such as ants.

Safety

🪵Please do not burn cinnamon. Inhaling cinnamon, especially for long periods, can lead to respiratory inflammation and irritation, as well as coughing, wheezing, and breathing difficulty. Please buy cinnamon incense instead of burning cinnamon directly, the cinnamon in the incense has been prepared in a way that is safer to burn.[1]

🪵Please use a carrier oil when applying essential oils to your skin or scalp. I recommend doing a skin patch test before applying in large quantities. NEVER put essential oils on pets, even when they're mixed with a carrier oil. It can and most likely will irritate their skin or otherwise negatively impact them.

🪵Please keep cinnamon and cinnamon products out of birds access. Allegedly, Chinese/Cassia cinnamon is toxic to birds but not "regular" cinnamon. I say just keep all cinnamon away from them.[2]

🪵Cinnamon, while not fatal, can become toxic for dogs when consumed in large amounts. It causes skin and digestive irritation when consumed and inhalation can cause coughing, choking, and difficulty breathing.[3] These same warnings also apply to cats.[4]

[bracketsoffear]

Who Goes There? (John W. Campbell) "A group of American researchers, isolated in their scientific station in Antarctica towards the end of winter, discover an alien spaceship buried in the ice, where it crashed twenty million years before. They recover an alien creature from the ancient ice. Thawing revives the alien, a being which can assume the appearance, memories, and personality of a living thing it devours, while maintaining its body mass for further reproduction. Unknown to them, the alien immediately kills and then imitates the crew's physicist, a man named Connant; with some 90 pounds of its matter left over, it tries to become a sled dog. The crew discovers the dog-Thing and kills it midway through the transformation process. Pathologist Blair, who had lobbied for thawing the Thing, goes insane with paranoia and guilt, vowing to kill everyone at the base to save mankind; he is isolated within a locked cabin at their outpost. Connant is also isolated as a precaution, and a "rule-of-four" is initiated in which all personnel must remain under the close scrutiny of three others.

The crew realizes that they must isolate their base and therefore disable their airplanes and vehicles, yet they pretend that everything is normal during radio transmissions, to prevent any rescue attempts. The researchers try to figure out who may have been replaced by the alien (simply referred to as the Thing), to destroy the imitations before they can escape and take over the world. The task is found to be almost impossibly difficult when they realize that the Thing is shapeshifting and telepathic, reading minds and projecting thoughts. A sled dog is conditioned by human blood injections (from Copper and Garry) to provide a human-immunity serum test, as in rabbits. The initial test of Connant is inconclusive, as they realize that the test animal received both human and alien blood, meaning that either Doctor Copper or expedition Commander Garry is an alien. Assistant commander McReady takes over and deduces that all the other animals at the station, save the test dog, have already become imitations; all are killed by electrocution and their corpses burned.

Everyone suspects each other by now but must stay together for safety, deciding who will take turns sleeping and standing watch. Tensions mount and some men begin to go mad, thinking that they are already the last human, or wondering if they could know if they were not human any longer. Ultimately, Kinner, the cook, is murdered and accidentally revealed to be a Thing. McReady realizes that even small pieces of the creature will behave as independent organisms. He then uses this fact to test which men have been "converted" by taking blood samples from everyone and dipping a heated wire in the vial of blood. Each man's blood is tested, one at a time, and the donor is immediately killed if his blood recoils from the wire. Fourteen men, including Connant and Garry, are revealed to be Things. The remaining men go to test the isolated Blair, and on the way, see the first albatross of the Antarctic spring flying overhead; they shoot the bird to prevent a Thing from infecting it and flying to civilization.

When they reach Blair's cabin, they discover that he is a Thing. They realize that it has been left to its own devices for a week, coming and going as it pleased, as it is able to squeeze under doors by transforming itself. With the creatures inside the base destroyed, McReady and two others enter the cabin to kill the Thing that was once Blair. McReady forces it out into the snow and destroys it with a blowtorch. Afterwards, the trio discover that the Thing was dangerously close to finishing the construction of a nuclear-powered anti-gravity device that would have allowed it to escape to the outside world."

Wax (Gina Damico) "Paraffin, Vermont, is known the world over as home to the Grosholtz Candle Factory. But behind the sunny retail space bursting with overwhelming scents and homemade fudge, seventeen-year-old Poppy Palladino discovers something dark and unsettling: a back room filled with dozens of startlingly life-like wax sculptures, crafted by one very strange old lady. Poppy hightails it home, only to be shocked when one of the figures—a teenage boy who doesn’t seem to know what he is—jumps naked and screaming out of the trunk of her car. She tries to return him to the candle factory, but before she can, a fire destroys the mysterious workshop—and the old woman is nowhere to be seen.

With the help of the wax boy, who answers to the name Dud, Poppy resolves to find out who was behind the fire. But in the course of her investigation, she discovers that things in Paraffin aren’t always as they seem, that the Grosholtz Candle Factory isn’t as pure as its reputation—and that some of the townspeople she’s known her entire life may not be as human as they once were. In fact, they’re starting to look a little . . . waxy. Can Poppy and Dud extinguish the evil that’s taking hold of their town before it’s too late?"

[sugarrspice]

For a request: possessive Antiaverage. Sorry for the format, anon; I tried to work on this while our power was out and wound up losing both the first draft and the ask. Your format was fine, there's no real official rules here!

warning: off-screen brutality, minor hypnotization at the start.

--

He's drifting. That much, he knows. Someone's speaking, distantly, their words a gentle lilt.

Come closer.

Through the comfortable haze, he hums, and takes another step further. He doesn't know them- doesn't think he does, at least, but it doesn't matter, not now. All that matters is this- this peace. Even their words taste sweet, and he wants more.

He steps forward, again. There's a faint impression of teeth, in front of him, rows upon rows, arranged in neat, concentric circles; a gentle coo--

A shrill screech rips through the comfortable silence, and Chase reels back, clapping a hand over his ringing ears, the trance shattered. A shadow hurls itself over his shoulder, and Chase determinedly turns away from the wet sound of something tearing. He doesn't need to lose his dinner, tonight- not that he thinks he had any. Or maybe he did. He kind of- it's a blur, after he'd stepped over the threshold of that restaurant, his date waving him over to their table. They had very, very blue eyes, that much he remembers. A lovely voice- a singer, they'd said, on their profile.

And now he's in a back alley, sans his wallet and fucking keys.

The growling cuts off right as there's one last wet squelch, and Chase stares at his hands. In, and out. Deep breaths, Chase, in for four.

Claws scrape across the concrete; his ears pop, briefly, at the sudden displacement of air. Deep breaths. Out for six. He's not panicking, he's great at just- shoving all of those feelings down for when he's out of the very dark, very sketchy alley.

"I'm beginning to see why you need company," Anti says dryly. Something about the way he's popping his t's; Chase frowns as he darts a sideways look at Anti, abruptly torn out of his spiral. He's not expecting for the fae to be as close as he is, eyes bright and silvered under the waxing moon. His heart, hammering as it is, skips a beat. "Go out for a date, trust the fae-marked to stumble across the first starving siren."

Right. One thing at a time. "A siren," he says, because he's got great priorities, and because if he focuses on starving, then he has to think about the fact that he was probably the dinner and he'd just stopped that thread of panic. And then: "Does that mean you just murdered someone?"

He's not as upset about this as he thought he would be, honestly. It's not- it's not a situation he's thought about often, or- no, actually, that's the shock talking, he thinks. Anti cocks his head- like a bird, Chase thinks, and that's probably the hysteria, talking- and smirks.

"Should check to make sure your meal's not got something bigger swimming around it."

Which. Isn't a no. Nor is it a I won't do it again.

The normal reaction to that is probably something like oh my god, or you can't just kill people.

Chase just stands there, hands jammed into his pockets, turning over the promise burned into those words, and says, apropos of nothing, "you're a little edgy for a knight in shining armor."

Anti, with apparently infinite patience, stares at him, considering this. "Usually," he says, finally, "the knights come to slay the fey folk."

Chase snorts, and starts making his way out of the alley, because it is genuinely making the back of his neck crawl. That, and the proximity of knowing that if he looks behind him, there's going to be a cooling corpse, and- as good as Chase is at compartmentalization, he's not that good. Anti falls into step beside him, and Chase glances sideways; he starts at the sight, the weak yellow fluroescence of the streetlamp above them illuminating the fact that Anti's arms are black with iridescent blood from the elbows down.

"Anti, Jesus fuck," he hisses, and shucks off his jacket, throwing it at the fae. "Put that on before someone arrests you."

"I'll be impressed if they have a precinct competent enough to arrest me," Anti murmurs, looking amused, but he does tug the jacket on. And. Okay.

Chase knows he's got a few screws loose, if the night hadn't already proven that. But- there's a dark sense of pleasure, coiling in his gut. Anti, in his jacket, somehow making the thick fleece seem sharp. Anti, in his jacket, covered in blood, for him.

Quite suddenly, he realizes that Anti's staring back at him, almost expectantly. His eyes don't look so silvered in the night, now. They're pitch-dark, thin rings of pale green around slitted pupils blown wide.

Chase's breath catches in the moment suspended between them; Anti blinks, then, and it shatters. Chase looks away, abruptly, and sucks in a shaky breath.

That's something for the priest, he thinks.

"Wouldn't be too hard," he says instead, "if you're gonna walk around looking like a murder victim."

"Murderer," Anti corrects, and Chase squawks, flapping his hands in his direction.

"Shut up!"

Anti only laughs at him, the bastard. It ratchets the purring thing in his chest tighter, and- not thinking about it. Not thinking about it. Not talking about it. Anti's not asking about why he's not freaking out, he's not thinking about why he's not freaking about, they're fine, this is fine-

He darts one more look at Anti, who's got his arms hidden in the fleece of the jacket, popped the collar to hide the blood streaking across his face as best as he can. He's still walking like he's- like he's hunting something, and Chase has to look away very quickly, at that, before he can start thinking stupid things like I want him to look at me like that or oh, maybe I do have a type.

He knows better than to say thank you.

He also knows that Anti has a weakness for spiced tea, and that there will be fresh cups waiting when Anti looks away. Little things.

[the-wild-goblin-witch]

Rose~~ a tiny guide <3

When people talk about roses in spell work, the first thing you think of is love. Roses are great for so much more than love spells, they have so much potential that gets overlooked. {the leaves petals and rose hips can be consumed. be carful when consuming rosehips as they have tiny fibers that can cause splinters in your digestive tract, consume properly.}

Folk names~ can't find any ;-; i have been searching for a while now and have given up... guess they are just 'roses'.... lame

Gender~ Feminine

Planet~ Venus

Element~ Water

Properties~ love, healing, divination, peace, harmony, psychic ability, spiritual growth, luck, beauty.

Roses are often used based on their color as well

red ~ Love, attraction, romance

pink ~ self love, platonic love, compassion, decition making

white ~ Peace, Balance, Purifying, Clarity

yellow ~ Joy, happieness, friendship, protection from jealousy

Of course you can use rose in attraction and beauty spells, infusing water with red rose petals then wearing it like a perfume to attract love and such, or simply making your tea with a few pink petals for self love or beauty spells. But you can also use them for divination spells, psychic ability's.

I like to burn petals with mugwort to help with meditation before preforming tarot readings, or I will make a tea. sometimes just placing a few petals on my alter just to support a balanced atmosphere during spell work.

Rose is great for luck charms. placing a few inside a locket to be worn or making good luck satchel to keep on your person.

Need protection from evil eye? try throwing a rose petal or two into your evil eye charm. yellow or white is best for this.

Using rose petals can be used as support in dream satchels. using the right ones based on your intentions, say you want to dream about your next romantic partner, you could use red rose. or if you want to dream about what is the best decision to make, a few pink petals can do the trick. so on and so forth.

a majority of my spell work involves burning things {don't know what that says about me but. } so i usually just use them as incense during spells. But here is a list of things that you can do with them.

burn them as incense

infuse them in water or oil

make tea

add them to bath water

add them to wax melts

make charms with them

place them on your alters

carry petals around

cook with them as an herb

Rose is just a good support herb. it can be used in so many types of spell work. and can be use in whatever way the spell caster seems fit. and not only does it have good magical uses, it has some good physical ones as well.

roses smell amazing so they can be infused with oil to be used as incense, or in your bath water. consuming rose leaves, petals, or hips can act as minor anti-inflammatories and aid digestion.

{make sure any essential oils you use are safe and toxin free!!! and do not consume if you suspect they may be harmful.}

[khepiari]

Hello, children of lusty void. I need to vent about censorship nonsense brewing up!

[first published as note on a fic of mine that has age gap and child marriage as the plot of romance, this here is an updated version of the author’s note for more people.]

Before the TiffnanyG election debacle, my OTP, and my fellow OTP fandom had been caught between pro-ship vs antis and the whole age gap is problematic idiocy.

Recently, I came across same problems on other fandoms where posts and accounts were created that have been exclusively targeting shippers, creators and consumers on Twitter and Instagram and Tumblr which have “problematic ship” dynamics namely characters with age gaps or have NSFW and other such things.

Look if you have faced bullying because of your ship preference, do not engage for your own mental well-being, report the account, share the account details with your fellow friends from the same ship fandom and do a mass reporting, and don't stop at that, send email to your respective social media companies and take screenshots at every step of it and keep it. In case you find no action has been taken, you can use the screenshots to make your case stronger when you re-report.

Shipping is a personal choice and no one has the right to ship-shame you, if these bullies can't distinguish between fiction and fictional characters and reality, then they are definitely in need of classes on critical reading and thinking. Please read this to understand what Proship means!

Fandom is meant to be a safe space you curate by your own choice where people with similar interest communicate, create, collaborate and fiction is the best way to explore one's ideas; sometimes those ideas can be cringy, problematic, vile or outright scary and that's okay and that’s why Dead Dove: Do Not Eat exists. Because we are channelling our ideas, thoughts and traumas and curiosities and thriving towards a path of self awareness with help of our fan art, fanfic, fic prompts, podfic, fmvs, amvs, animatics, songfic, character role-playing, cosplaying, writing threadfic or just engaging in speculative discussion or just vibing.

Thinking is not a crime, writing or creating creative work is not a crime. As long as you do not harm people in real life or practice the evil elements of your imagination in reality; you are fine as a person. Trust me; my mind is a wonderland of gore and angsty stories where I want characters to burn someone or declaw an animal for the story I am telling, and I have never gone and tied up a lover of mine with leather belts and poured burning liquid wax on them just because I imagined it and assumed it is a language of love, and I have many pets as well whom I will never hurt.

We should never shame shippers or fangirl, fanboys, fanperson for their OTP or headcanons, they are harming no one, if you don't like something, just ignore it!

Before ao3 existed, reading fanfics on Fanfiction dot net was playing a Russian Roulette. All the fics basically came with K, K+, T, M, MA, and it came with a warning Don’t Like it Don’t Read it! And then came the purge, overnight MA content was gone! And worse things happened, people stopped rating their insane stories! Instead of preventing people from reading triggering stuff with the rating, the rating system was used to censor people out and their work deleted!

Having Ao3’s tagging system is a privilege that has been built on years of trial and errors and loss of many stories! We are literally standing on a graveyard of purged and exiled stories! And it is a fanperson/fandom’s duty to make sure that you select your tags wisely and read the tags and story summary. Even after that, if people choose to violate the barricades put to protect them, why should the creators be blamed? [Read this]

And it is an awful and unhealthy attitude to engage with fanworks with so much hate, why would you waste your time hounding people of ships, ficwriters or fanartists you don't like? You cannot change the world with meanness. And how is sending CSEM (child sexual exploitation material) against Ao3 volunteers helping the cause of your protest?

I can understand why many of them oppose and demand content moderation, because of age difference, complicated and complex topics that need supervision and proper understanding before a person delves into them, and of course the NSFW stuff. First, they are fictional. Second, each creator changes or adds their own details in their creation.

Each writer can deal with age gap stories or any kind of topic the way they interpret it! Each artist will put their own twist to NSFW. Soulmate AUs sound loveliest, but they can be a horror story of about predestination vs free will! Yes, Soulmate AU horror story can make people uncomfortable because of the way it is written. Similarly, body possession trope can be a story of transition and self acceptance instead of presenting it as an invasion of body, or it can be written as a story of change!

Context brings clarity. Proship and Antis are by-product of same fandom. So how does these divides crop up? It is simple, people interpret things from different contextual standpoints. Many factors play role into the whole process of thought making; hence the terminology Thought Process. No two minds think the same because no two minds process the same information in the same way. Two people from the same fandom might come to a same fanfic; one for SMUT, while another comes to elongate the established emotional relation they have with the story. One can hate the fanfic for being NSFW and feel it is a corruption of their beloved story, and second others will love it for the NSFW because the OG Work didn’t have anything, and they wanted to read it. Both can be right and both can be wrong at the same time. Contextual reading/consumption is common, it is critically thinking and examining stories what makes aware brains. And by principle I am against censorship, because someone’s world view or imagined discomfort should not take away someone else’s right to express. Even if I don’t like a work of fiction, I will defend its existence. Words on paper [I mean all mediums] don’t hurt people, people hurt people.

Difference lies in how a story or art work is created, and if I had written a Soulmate AU Horror Story with tinted lenses, it definitely could be a read as a predatory story. I understand the concern about running into things that are “bad” in fiction! But not every work of fiction owes people comfort. We write the stories that we think needs to be told. Everyone has a right to be concerned, hence we think like this— “If we don’t let 10 years old into an A+ film in theatre, why should they be exposed to A+ stuff in words and artworks?”

Hence, the tags have been put up for better navigation. Hence, we have warnings and rating on Netflix screen when we turn on Squid Games. You cannot read a Mature story on Ao3 without consenting to read it. Many will argue —“But the trigger warnings and tags were not properly done.” No, you can’t expect every author to tag every possible thing that can trigger a reader. The trigger warnings are in place to give you a heads-up, a moment to understand what you are getting into, and should be used it as indication. No writer or creator wants to hurt you, we all write and create something because we love and want to share joy. How are people reacting to books in real life? Do you think Little Red Riding Hood should have a trigger warning for people with Lupophobia or Thanatophobia because Red Riding gets eaten by the wolf? And what about its rendition at the hands of Angela Carter, where beastiliy is written and printed in book form? Shape of Water has Monsterfucking, people knew about a monster from teaser, but not about the fucking. Like life, literature [including fanfics] are full of surprises, and we might not like many of them, it is part of growing up not just 16 turning 17 then 18, then 19; no you have to face shitty stuff your entire life because growing up is painful. And not liking something is a natural reaction, sometimes the dislike is overwhelming, and turns into rage and revulsion and yet you should not demand censorship!

Censorship kills creativity. If we give an inch to the voices of “but what about this and this group of people who suffered?” we open a crack to a system that is meant to preserve. The group who suffered, suffered at the hands of real physical people. A book murdered no one until it was held by a hand that saw it as a weapon, similarly reading/watching a “vile” fanfic or fanart could damage no one in real life, because there is no direct action and reaction that left consequences. Archive of Our Own is an ARCHIVE. It is meant to digitally preserve everything ever created in it, and slowly they are bringing in other fan works that are in danger of extinction as more and more people are capitalizing on the internet like it is real estate. And Ao3 was never meant to be the only fanspace! Tumblr used to be one, look what the purge did! When you implant censorship, you are pushing creators who are already marginalized to the extremes end of the internet. As Kis aka blow_me_a_kiss on Twitter said, Ao3 is not a business that needs a manager for people to complain about every time they run into things that don’t align with certain world views, it is a collective. This is how things and institutes and systems are meant to run publicly! You have to learn to curate your own reading/entertainment lists, and you really can’t appreciate the good without having your face slammed by the bad. Why should you or anyone need a pre-formed judgement about things they consume; reviews, kudos, comments, praises are all there to show what people felt after coming in contact with a creation, it is not a universally common experience! Hence, some people love Inception and hail it as masterpiece, while some people like me find it very basic storytelling. You have to have learn to face the bad! You must. Censorship is not about protecting the vulnerable! It never was, censorship has always been about exercising power over the vulnerable one. It takes a lot of courage and time for creators to present their beloved works to the world. Remember what happened to Isabal Fall? All she did was write a story, and people’s inbuilt fears and apprehensiveness turned into bullying which they projected on her, and she was forced to out herself! The same happened to Becky Albertalli author of Simon Vs The Homo Sapien Agenda.

I request you all not to engage with so much hate, I have been shipper/fanperson since I was 13 and been active on internet since 18! I began working on fics when my first ship was a rare pair, I am 29 today, and it is one of the biggest ships; biggest queer ships in my fandom!

Because of this OTP, I have made many friends and read amazing fictions and seen glorious fanarts and doujinshi and watch cosplayers do beautiful concept photography.

Please do not be mean and rude and do not bully people because you don't like something.

Death threats are not cool, they hurt, and can suck away a joy of participation from people. Even if the account you are bullying has an anime/manga image with no real name, there is a real person behind the screen.

Be kind.

Be kind.

Be fucking aggressively kind!

[nixalegos]

<< i’m fine, I can continue fighting for a little longer >>

Somewhere in the Ohn'ahran Plains. The sound of open warfare, centaur screams, the hissing crackle of shadowflame and elemental fire and protodragons screaming in hateful glee somehow managed to let that single sentence reach his ears. 'That was meant for me.' He thought to himself, watching as the boulder sized glob of semisolid slag and shadowflame continued to burn. His cowled visage turned then to the barely propped up death knight, a last minute tackle charge into the conflagration that had held the warlock attention not a moment ago had popped their abjurational anti magic shield like glittering glass. Shadowflame sparks flickered and popped at what was left of the fallen draenei shoulder. The desperate maneuver had cost them an entire arm. But this was not a moment to wax poetic on the virtues of undeath. How Arthas's chosen shock troopers had no nerves to fall into shock. How coagulated blood prevented bleeding out. How amputation was mostly a matter of suitable replacement. What mattered was the damn fool still tried to get up as if it was the third war, up, and inexorably forward. Seeing them try to reach for a weapon that wasn't there snapped him out of his stupor. "Hey hey! Knock it off." He barked as he moved to their side, a healthstone could do alot of things, but limb restoration, well, that needed a little more then stolen life essence. He brushed the embers of shadowflame off them, the darkened motes of fire held little threat to him, but it did manage to get his palm covered in excess ichor. "You might not feel anything but a want to get back in there, but I can't even see your weapon, and you had shadowflame hit exposed nerves, it'll muck up your inhibitions if we don't patch you up and you'll do something even stupider then running into a fireball." He growled. Patching them up was going to be the interesting part. Using a corpse to repair another corpse was technically easier then patching up himself. Carbon was carbon. But problem was the lack of corpses. What centaurs fell to firey blows were carbonized to little less then ash and soot. The ones who fell to shadowflame were in even worse shape. Some of their corpses were still screaming. But there was one suitable candidate nearby for...donation. It'd taken three volleys of ballista to bring it down, and its wide still splayed wings practically screamed 'cut here'. One of Fyyraks little empowered experiments. 'Oh yes. That'll do nicely.' He reached around and under the heavier man, his gauntlet servos whined at the effort to start dragging them towards the dead dragon. "Gonna...reconstruct your arm, good as new. Well. Good as old." He said as he continued to pull them across the open battleground. A djaradin rose over the crest of a hill, bellowing a challenge at the clearly busy warlock as still recovering death knight. He didn't even look at the near giants direction, still dragging the technically dead man towards the shelter of another corpses wings. Bellows turned to screams as four swords swung from invisibility behind their would be attacker, and cut hardened ligaments to ribbons. "You ever used another creatures flesh transmuted into your own?" He asked them as if the conversation was enough to distract them from the gnawing sensation at the back of their mind, from the phantom sensation of where the limb had been, or perhaps from the very battle itself. A tall order for mere chit chat. "Cause you're about to have protodragon essence for an arm, how-how's that sound?" He said as he managed to bring them up to rest against the chest of the dead dragon. "Helluva lot heavier then you look." He said as he composed himself and looked to the massive joint the dragon had for its wings. It would take alot of cutting. The snap swish clank of the circular sawblades ejecting out the knuckleplates of his gauntlets was his rebuttal. "...You could have let that hit me you know." He said without looking at them.

@areniaagn