#discord in a nut shell
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Had to share what happened. I haven’t laughed like that in a while....
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BEASTIE ADOPTS - PT 1
Since I'm sick and out of work for a bit, I decided to make some adopts. I've been working hard on these for a few weeks, so enjoy! Pricing + availability below the cut!
What is an adoptable?
An adopt is a pre-designed character that I create, and you can buy to be able be able to use and claim as your own character. You can use it for pretty much whatever you want, as long as you follow the rules below!
INFO + RULES:
Once you buy the adopts, they’re yours. You’re welcome to redesign, alter, give away and/or trade as you see fit. The only thing I don’t allow is reselling for a higher price (same or below is fine).
You’re welcome to use them for any setting that you please! Headworlds, writing, video games, go nuts.
The placeholder names, personality, and info are just.. placeholder/concepts! You can name them whatever you want, give them any pronouns, personality, lore, whatever! I won’t feel bad lol
Once I receive payment, I’ll send you a full size, transparent, unwatermarked image of your adopt!
I can hold them for up to a week!
If one is on hold, you can still message and ask to be next in line if whatever they’re being held for doesn’t work out.
AVAILABILITY + PRICING:
Base price for each adopt is currently $60 USD, however, you can check out some discounts at the bottom! They're numbered left to right.
"OIL ON THE WATER" - OPEN
"ORION" - OPEN
"JAWBREAKER" - OPEN
"DEEP HUNGER" - OPEN
"FISHBOWL" - OPEN
"LOST TO THORNS" - OPEN
DISCOUNTS + DEALS
Yeah, we know this is what you’re here for! I’m going to offer several discounts and deals, which are subject to change, and may or may not pop in and out! This is my first time trying some of this.
COMMISSION BUNDLE
If you buy a character from me, you can also get a get a commission of that character for 25% off to come with it! This only applies once, and has to be worked out around the time of purchasing the character. You choose the type of commission you’d like! Commission info is here.
PASSION DISCOUNT
If you do a piece of fanwork for one of these characters- come up with extensive lore, a piece of art, a piece of writing, etc- and I can tell you actually put some effort and passion into it, then you can get them for 30% off… making them $42! It doesn’t have to be anything fancy and I’m not going to judge you by how ‘good’ your work is- again, it’s only judged by passion for the character. If I can tell you genuinely enjoyed it and had fun and will love the character you get (instead of having them simply sit on a dusty shelf or resold, etc), you get the discount!
If you’re worried about the work taking a while but you want to wait until it’s done to buy them, no worries! I can hold a character for up to a week for you.
BONUS LORE
If you wanna shell out an extra $5, I can help come up with something much more fleshed out as far as lore/backstory goes! Names, backstory, personality, all the bells and whistles. I can also work with you to fit it into any preexisting lore or characters you might want them to be worked with! Once again, you’re welcome to change any of this- but I’ll work with ya on it to make sure it’s something you like!
TRADES
I’m a bit iffy on art trades or character trades, but I’m not going to say they’re out of the question. You’re welcome to ask!
If you're interested, you can message me here on tumblr. We can discuss here, or move to discord if you'd prefer!
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𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐄𝐗𝐄𝐑𝐂𝐈𝐒𝐄: "𝐏𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐄"
╰ ft. kamisato ayato !
warnings: teasing, innocent abuse of power, office sex, fingering…
author’s note: this is just a little writing exercise from the discord server last month. i never got around to posting it so enjoy.
IT’S MORE OF A DEMAND NOW, DESPITE HIS USE OF THE WORD ‘PLEASE’. The slight drop in the pitch of his tone, his half-hooded eyes swirling with something dark and heavy — you were getting under his skin, and the thrill of it all made the pool in your panties grow. A bit of defiance was all it took for Ayato to lose the calm composure he was known for. The same Kamisato Ayato that was head of the Kamisato clan and the Yashiro Commission is the same Ayato you had wrapped around your little finger. The very same Ayato that was about to drill into your cunt like a mad man in a matter of minutes.
“And if I don’t?” Your plush thighs slowly part, giving him a view of the baby blue lace hidden underneath your kimono that was haphazardly wrapped around your body. A sharp breath rushes past his lips and a hand smoothes over his face as if to wipe the building frustration away. You lean back a little. “Maybe I should just go… it seems that my presence is bothering you, Mr. Kamisato,” you say with a mask of concern.
You begin to move, and just as expected, Ayato stops you from leaving your spot on the desk in front of him. His body aligns with yours, and you can feel a hand slide under the floral silk to settle on your hips. “The only thing bothering me is that your clothes are still on.” He moves to your ear, letting his lips graze the shell of your ear, “I wasn’t asking angel, that was an order.” You couldn’t deny it, his words vibrate throughout your entire body as they settle in your core, and you bite back a moan.
“What’s this… an abuse of power? I didn’t know you were capable of that, my lord,” you hum in his ear, testing the waters when you knew they were anything but peaceful.
“The line between abusing power and doing what is necessary isn’t as clear cut as you think, my dear.” A finger slides under the strap of your panties, running back and forth before slightly tugging it down your hips. “And I truly believe it’s necessary to teach you a lesson right now.” You somehow missed when he completely removed the skimpy cloth, but the feeling of his cold fingers slipping past your wet folds cut through the hazy fog of arousal in your head.
Even though his head was nuzzled in the crook of your neck, marking you up like there was no tomorrow, the ghostly moan that spewed from your lips didn’t go unnoticed. By now your kimono covered nothing as it gathered on your waist and exposed your perky nipples to the cold air of his study. With a parting kiss, he leaves your neck and focuses on your doe eyes until his gaze flickers to your lips that form a little ‘o’ when he curls his fingers deeper into your cunt. “See how good that feels? Pretty nice of me even though you were disobedient, right?” You were far from being fucked senseless but you nod anyway, earning the tiniest of smirks from the blue-haired man. Now it’s your turn to be the one saying please…
TAGLIST FORM
tags: @hungrynessforfics @dejwrites @rinhoes @indiecursor @protectpancakes @fight-me-bitch @nneedynymph @po3ticb3auty @nanaminshousewife @festive @apollostears @cosmicglowe @thenerdyrebel @4ngrysgf @daichisbunnybaby @urwifey2 @picayunne @kurtaclangobrr @kookieflvr @woahhajime @syomi @chrolloderulo @vivisspamm @erentoes @kutosznn @takemichiluvr @sweeneyblue1 @tyga-lily @jeanslove @getoswhore @thicksimpx @cosmicyeager @sakurashell @38riku @hyeque @muzanskimono @wiserebelpartypie @sleepy3 @yuujilove @yooniluvbot444 @imperatorkhaleesi @sukunas-left-nut-sack @lawscorazon @sailewhoremoon @chaoticevilbakugo @xxrwzy @wh0reforlevi @nekoriots @yeagerfushiguro @the4thwife
#kamisato ayato#ayato x reader#ayato x y/n#genshin impact x reader#ayato kamisato#genshin impact#ayato#genshin smut#kamisato estate
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So, how's the JukeBox development coming along? Well, it sure is coming, I promise.
In case you don't know what a JukeBox is, it's a little hotkey device I'm building! I originally made this to assist with my endeavors in streaming, but it turns out having extra keys is very useful for a lot of things! Whether it be hotkeys for quickly running macros via AutoHotKey, managing your Discord audio settings, playing funny sounds with VoiceMod, switching tools in your favorite art program like Paint Tool SAI, or managing OBS like I do. It's a very powerful device, and all it does is act like a keyboard with the F13-F24 keys. I bet you didn't even know there was more than the F1-F12 keys, am I right?
About a year ago, I said I would begin selling these soon. That was a bit of a lie, fortunately I am very good at those. That last bit was also a lie, in case you couldn't tell. I got the opportunity to work on the JukeBox as part of an independent study for college credit, so I took a lot of time to plan and rethink the product. That part wasn't a lie The result is the new V5 board!
Ok so this isn't the actual V5 board yet.
I decided to completely change up what makes up a JukeBox. I decided to use an RP2040 chip, which is used to power a Raspberry Pi Pico. I used a Pico board, along with the old JukeBox V4 boards, an RGB LED ring, and an OLED screen to build my ideal V5 prototype. The result is the same JukeBox known and loved but with some added features, like reactive lighting and a screen to display fun graphics and info!
This is the finalized board, it's design has been shipped off to manufacturing, and will hopefully arrive right at the start of the new year. I'm paying a lot of money for just 10 of these things! I can't wait.
The plan is to sell 3 versions of the board, a basic variant (keyboard only), an RGB variant, and an RGB plus screen variant. Prices are still being determined, but they will be higher than previously anticipated due to rising material costs. The goal is to keep the basic variant at $25 to maintain affordability. You will also be able to choose what kinds of keys you want, be it Cherry MX Blues or Kailh Choc Whites.
I'm working on the final casing. It'll be a 3D printed shell with some nice M2.5 nuts and bolts. It'll also be in a mostly-opaque white so the RGB looks good shining through. The legs are also completely optional, both the case and the legs will have nice rubber feet to keep the board steady. The keycaps will be "relegendable", meaning you'll be able to stick a piece of paper in them with whatever you want on them. You get everything seen here, plus a USB-C cable, and my deepest gratitude. Maybe some day you'll get to have a JukeBox in atomic purple instead of a basic white!
The best part about it all is that you don't need to install any drivers! The keyboard component is always guaranteed to work on any computer that supports USB, and most usually do (hopefully). The screen and RGB won't work without a companion app, sadly, but I'm working hard to make it painless to setup and use, near plug-and-play. I've been writing it in Rust while working on the board, and it will support Windows and Linux without much issue.
Lastly, the entire project is going to be open source! The code will be under an open license, and all the physical parts will be usable under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA). I won't allow people to just up and sell the boards without modification, but if someone wants to make and sell their own variant I'd be more than happy to allow it if they ask. Devices like these should be cheap and accessible for everyone.
Hopefully I'll start selling these on my Ko-fi before Q2 of 2024. See you then!
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Pinned Post!
So, I'm starting to get some traction so ig time to make a pinned post!
First off, hello! My name's Tord (or Danni, both work) and this little guy is my sona for this blog! I'm a tord irl and I love drawing my little scrimblos!
I also love to chat abt my favs!! Ask box is always open pls talk to me I prommy I don't bite!!!!!!
I ship pretty much everything (polyworld ftw!!) but I'm weak for p much all tord ships (it's like im rlly there!) I also post NSFW from time to time! So minor's go elsewhere!!
Also basic DNI criteria; if ur pro//ship, racist, lgbtphobic, zoo//phile die in a fire <3
General Tags
#commie art - Art tag! All my artwork goes under this tag
#stfu commie - Basic post tag, if I'm just chattin off it goes there! Or if I'm answering an ask, also goes there
#commie edits - Tag for my edits! There may not be many but I do them
I also have an Adult Eddsworld server! If you wanna see me be fucking insane in my natural habitat, come on by!
(Note that I do ID check, just gotta make sure everyone is adults n all that!)
I also have many au's! I'll keep an updated list here along w the tags for each one! This part will be under the cut as it gets quite long </3
My The End rewrite comic - Over on @the-end-rewrite
Synopsis: My retelling of The End. It's still in its early stages, but the story has already been almost fully developed and chapter 1 is almost completed! It takes a vastly different approach form The End while still keeping the same basic ideas and important details.
You can start here
Monster AU - Tagged with #monster au
Synopsis: This was my very first au I made back in 2017! All of the eddboys are monsters from folkore or fairy tales! They live in what's called "The Monster Plane" and can traverse into the human realm from time to time (That's how we know about them!), however humans cannot cross into The Monster Plane. Basically, a silly comfort au that I added lore too :3c
Furry AU - Tagged with #furry au
Synopsis: It's judt the guys as furries, nothin too much to explain lmao! Here's a list of what each animal each character is!
Edd - Capybara, Tord - Honey Badger, Tom - Bintarong, Matt - King Cobra
Eduardo - Caimen, Jon - Sea Otter, Mark - Mongoose
Patryk - Pelican, Hellucard - British Shorthair Cat
Owl House AU - Tagged with #owl house au
Synopsis: Eddsworld Owl House AU! It's still being developed but the base idea is just the gang are all witches and/or demons! Something seems to be up with a certain blonde guy, however... And Tord seems to be cooking up some plans... hmm....
Youtuber AU - Tagged with #youtuber au
Synopsis: The gangs all youtubers! Or streamers, same difference really. This is just a silly little au I made back innn 2017 or 2018 and there no serious lore or whatever, just silly guys doin their thing! Tom's a twitch streamer, Tord runs a podcast w Paul and Pat along with a gun nut youtube channel, Edd does animations and art tutorials and all that, Matt is a beauty guro/vlogger!
Panty and Stocking AU - Tagged with #paswg au
Synopsis: I combined hyperfixations by making Tom and Tord Panty and Stocking! However, things are a tad different in this au, like they are not related, and Tord's weapon... prolly isn't his panties lmao, it's most likely just his pants! Tom still uses his socks, weapons stay the same. Edd and Matt are Scanty and Kneesocks (still haven't figured out who's who yet)
Horror AU - Tagged with #horror au
Synopsis: Tord comes back to try and get his robot, thinking it'd be an easy in and out job... Oh, how very, very wrong he was. seems that everything had gone to shit since he's been gone. Tom's been completely taken over by the demonic possession, leaving him as only a shell of his former self. Matt's let his vampirism take full control, leaving him a walking corpse constantly on the hunt for blood to keep his beautiful, youthful looks, and has also named himself King of the Night. Edd's radioactivity seemed to have backfired on him and jumbled his brain just a tad, he's gone completely off the wall and is desperate for his old friends again, when he catches wind that Tord is back, well... He seems very excited to get the gang back together.
Okay thank u for reading!!! Have a good day, love uuuu
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Back in the days when humans crafted Poke Balls from apricorns and tumblestones, it very quickly became common practice for wild Pokemon to not attack humans who were busy harvesting apricorns from trees.
This was because humans had sharp tools to pierce the nuts with, and were only interested in the shells - meaning piles of edible apricorn fruit would often surround an industrious human when they were done, free for the taking by any Pokemon who stayed to watch. Humans would also often hand out the fruits to any Pokemon brave enough to approach, quickly befriending them!
(submitted by ElementsnStuff on discord!)
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So when I was listening through TMA, I typed and sent reactions live during each episode on a discord server to two internet friends of mine who’d already listened all the way through.
And I can get uh. Pretty over-the-top when it comes to sending reactions. By which I mean there was a LOT of keysmashing, particularly when cupcakes were REALLY hitting the fan. Those times there would be tons of capslocking too. And sometimes a LOT of screaming and/or crying and/or emoji-spamming. During episode 79 I was sending keysmashes so fast discord gave me a pop-up telling me to slow down.
If it was a REALLY freaking ASDFGHJKLQWERTYUIOPZXCVBNM episode my reactions would only escalate after I finished listening and had room to just go completely nuts. Not only do I tend to let loose even MORE capslock keysmashing then, there have been SEVERAL instances of me sticking my entire upper body into the void and screaming at the top of my lungs for a VERY long time.
I remember the stuff I sent after episode 160. I screamed. I cried. I threw things. I smashed things. I tore things. I fired weaponry. I screamed long and loud enough to temporarily tear reality itself apart.
After episode 200...the series finale...I didn’t do any of that.
No screaming.
No crying.
No keysmashing.
I just sat frozen in total silence with the most completely shell-shocked expression on my face, not responding to anycreature or anything.
For a long, long time.
I wonder if that spoke louder than any of my screams.
#tma#the magnus archives#tma spoilers#spoilers#spoiler#the magnus archives spoilers#major tma spoilers#tma episode 200#tma mag 200#tma finale#the magnus archives finale#stuff i did#stuff that happened
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Keeping Crows
Jaskier never ate all of his meals. A crust of bread, a strip of meat, a slice of apple, a handful of wild-harvested nuts—all of these got squirreled away in Jaskier’s colorful pants. Set aside for future hunger, Geralt thought at first, and Jaskier did do some surreptitious snacking while they were on the road. But when they stopped to water Roach at a stream and heard a crow cawing at them from a nearby tree, the truth came out as quickly as Jaskier’s hoard did.
“Here you are, my feathered friend,” Jaskier said. “Toss some food to your corvid, o’ valley of plenty!” He tossed his scraps at the base of the crow’s tree.
Geralt frowned at him. Perfectly good food, and a crow was getting it?
“I’m making friends,” Jaskier explained. “I know this is a difficult concept for you, but I share things with creatures that I like.” He spread his arms wide as if offering the crow a distant embrace.
If it was some kind of weird religious thing, it was for a god Geralt had never heard of. Probably it was just a weird Jaskier thing. Crows, of all creatures! Corpse eaters. Grain stealers. No one liked crows. But Jaskier was voluntarily traveling with a Witcher; maybe he just had poor taste.
(Or maybe, as Jaskier had recently claimed, he had chosen to travel with Roach and Geralt just happened to be there, which meant Jaskier had excellent taste. The odds were against it.)
“They’re very clever,” Jaskier said, his eyes on the crow click-clicking its beak around an acorn until the shell came off. “And funny, if you watch them.”
As he spoke, another crow fluttered to the ground and nipped at the first one’s tail so it turned around, leaving the invading bird time to snatch up a strip of meat. It bounced a few feet away with its catch and nibbled on it, eyeing the first bird all the while.
“Hmm,” Geralt said.
Did crows feel petty satisfaction in the same way that Lambert did when he snatched the last cheese and onion pasty right out from under Eskel’s nose? Maybe not. But Jaskier was right: they might be grave-birds, but they were a little bit funny.
(Continued on AO3, and also under the cut)
—
Fresh off killing a nest of nekkers, he guided Roach a respectable distance away from the bodies but stopped at the first suitable clearing he found. The rustle of the leaves cracked through his ears from every side, and each beat of his heart pounded through his head, too loud, why couldn’t his bloodstream shut the fuck up and be still? The metallic stench of nekker blood reeked in his nose, inescapable because the source was himself. He shucked his bloody armor and moved to the opposite side of the clearing to take off Roach’s tack.
Maybe realizing he wouldn’t be moving on, a flock of crows started yelling from the trees, strident and piercing. Fuck. But going back to the inn to endure the sounds and smells of a gaggle of humans would be worse. Once he had her kit off, he leaned his face into Roach’s neck. The smell of Roach wasn’t nekker, and that was good. He tried to focus on the familiar sounds of her breath, the rise-fall of her chest under his hand as she inhaled and exhaled. She knew to be still for him when he was like this.
Jaskier arrived after a few moments, having observed the kill from a tree on the far side of the fight. He moved into their routine, humming quietly as he unpacked their bedrolls and scouted for fallen wood to lay their fire. He didn’t say anything about heading off the forest’s gathering dusk and moving towards civilization. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all. Small mercies.
The crows, on the other hand, clearly felt that they should leave. Even though their initial outburst of displeasure faded away, one of them still cawed periodically, as if to say, ‘We haven’t forgotten you! You aren’t welcome!’ Every discordant squawk scraped its way across the inside of his skull.
Geralt gritted his teeth and stepped away from Roach. Dinner. Right. He tracked a pheasant to Axii, made quick work of snapping its neck, and sat down cross-legged by Jaskier’s surprisingly well-built pile of firewood. Mechanically, he cleaned the bird. Food would help. The scent of cooking would, too.
“Here,” Jaskier said, coming up beside him. “Trade you.” He held up a fistful of wild garlic leaves, pungent allium prickling Geralt’s nose pleasantly, and gestured at the dripping entrails in Geralt’s hand.
Geralt tilted his head, looking up at him. Jaskier, volunteering to get his hands dirty?
Jaskier rolled his eyes and made the exchange without consulting Geralt any further, his fingers sliding across Geralt’s palm to cradle the still-warm offal. “Disgusting,” he commented, but he dropped the garlic leaves in Geralt’s now-empty hand, and instead of burying the entrails like Geralt did to avoid attracting scavengers, he walked a ways away with his new burden. “Toss some food to your corvids, o’ valley of plenty,” he sang, much quieter than usual, and shimmied up a tree with surprising agility. He distributed the organs along the branches and slid down the trunk at speed, leaping upright from a comical tumbling roll once he reached the ground.
Geralt snorted. “Expert dismount,” he said.
Jaskier grinned and bowed. “Thank you, thank you; I am honored to accept your award for ‘best leap from one’s lover’s window,’” he said.
Of course. Sneaky ascent and hasty descent? Jaskier hadn’t learned his climbing skills from picking apples, but from pursuing other, lovelier rewards.
The crows found their own rewards quickly enough. Incredibly, they also shut up. Beaks too full to complain? The same trick never worked with Jaskier, who somehow managed to talk and empty his plate all at once.
Their dinner lay skewered across Geralt’s knees. He had carved and prepared the pheasant while watching Jaskier’s antics, but he hadn’t lit the fire yet.
“I’ll cook,” Jaskier said, plucking the skewers from his lap. “You turn around and meditate or something. Just let me know when dinner’s done; I’m sure you’ll smell it before I see it.”
“Hmm.” Geralt hesitated. He had cooked through potion after-effects plenty of times before, squinting into the flickering light of the fire and enduring the way his eyes throbbed. “You don’t have to.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” Jaskier said. “Nor do you, for that matter. Now, go on,” he made a spinning motion with his fingers. “Your pretty face is far too distracting; I can’t focus at all.”
“Figured that was a congenital defect,” Geralt muttered. Unless he was in a fit of composition, Jaskier’s mind flitted about like a puppy through a meadow, determined to sniff at everything.
“Well, your handsome visage is around all the time, don’t you know, so you’ve never seen me un-distracted, have you?” Amusement bubbled in Jaskier’s voice. Amusement, but not mockery—they’d been together long enough for Jaskier to know the best way to lay a fire and for Geralt to know that Jaskier genuinely saw beauty everywhere, even in scarred old Witchers.
Good humor tugged at the corners of Geralt’s eyes. “Guess I could take pity,” he said, and he turned his back on the fire-to-be, put his hands on his knees, and closed his eyes. He would hear any threat before seeing it, anyway.
In the night, a couple of wild dogs snarled, probably fighting over the remains of a nekker. The wind whistled high through the trees. But the rustle of the grass under Jaskier’s feet wasn’t so bad, nor the loam-smell from the ground. Above them, an owl soared from its branch on almost-silent wings. Around them, frogs and night insects chirped their familiar soft chorus. Behind him, the fire crackled to life, a flare of warmth at his back. Jaskier sang under his breath, “Pheasant is pleasant on a pyre of fire, roasting and toasting, our meal we acquire,” and the sound of his usual nonsense somehow soothed as much as the other night noises.
The crows, so unhappy before, stayed as quiet as Geralt did.
—
Jaskier kept feeding their entrails to the crows near their camps, and if he and Jaskier came through the same place again, the crows mostly didn’t caw at them. The pattern held even months later, and even if they set up at a different camp and interacted with what was clearly a different flock from last time. So long as they traveled in the same general vicinity, the neighboring crows seemed to recognize them.
Crows must gossip, Geralt realized, which seemed...unusual. Maybe Jaskier was right about their intelligence. Did the crows have names for them in bird-speak? Was he white-hair-two-swords-silver-neck, while Jaskier was lute-singing-with-many-colors?
Sometimes one of the birds fluttered down from the trees to bounce around Jaskier’s boots, its head cocked inquisitively, and Jaskier serenaded it with a tune about the beauty of its glossy feathers and the strength of its beak.
“You’re an ebony beauty, a guard-bird on duty, so quick and so keen, your bite’s a cricket’s bad dream! Oh, damn, keen and dream, I can do better than that, terribly sorry. And perhaps you might like grasshoppers better, but they just don’t scan, darling,” he added after the crow plunged its head into the grass and returned with a wiggling prize in its beak.
If the crow were especially charming, Jaskier offered it a shiny bit of ribbon or a scrap of cloth from the latest tunic that a monster had ‘cruelly victimized.’ And if Jaskier were especially lucky, the crow took it in its beak and flew off with it, and Jaskier walked with an extra bounce in his step for the rest of the day. Ridiculous bard.
Even more ridiculously, in the places Jaskier traveled through most often, the crows started to give him things back.
Outside of Oxenfurt, a crow deposited a shiny brass button at Jaskier’s feet. In Dorian, a floren by his bedroll. In Ellander, a crow dropped a silver charm shaped like a penis right onto his head, a relic from the recent fertility festival that made Jaskier grin for days afterward when he recalled it.
“Even my feathered friends think I need to be getting laid more,” he chortled.
“Your feathered friend was saying you’re a dick,” Geralt replied.
Jaskier kept the gifts in a velvet-lined wooden jewelry box, each trinket in its own little compartment, and the feathers of his pens were often black, foraged from where they’d naturally fallen.
Geralt tried not to give Jaskier anything that he could put in a box.
A jar of honey for Jaskier to sweeten breakfast, share with Roach, and lick from his long fingers when he thought Geralt wasn’t looking. A pair of soft woollen socks when winter was coming on, sure to be worn through by the end of the season. A night of sleep at an inn that they left behind the next morning, Jaskier’s eyes brighter after a few hours of human company.
Nothing permanent. Nothing important. Nothing to tie them together.
Jaskier seemed to follow the same rules: a second dinner bowl charmed from the kitchen and shoved across the table at him; a hot bath after a hunt; Roach brushed until she gleamed; the cramps massaged out of his sword hand after he’d spent hours killing ghouls, Jaskier’s frowning face half-caught by the firelight, his strong lutenist’s fingers rubbing and smoothing until the pain was gone and easy warmth took its place.
There were crows who had a more lasting piece of Jaskier than he did, their nests lined with his silk.
—
Foglets dealt with. Roach safe. Bard found. Sun still up, plenty of time to get out of Brokilon, get back on the Path, get a good few hours of travel in before they made camp. Or there would be, except—
“Just ride ahead,” Jaskier said, and his lips pressed together stubbornly. “I know the way back to the road.” He pointed in the exact wrong direction.
Geralt couldn’t tell if he was bullshitting or not; Jaskier had chased his foglet illusion into the treeline with a singular focus. In case Jaskier wasn’t fucking with him, Geralt said, “No, you don’t,” and resigned himself to the latest idiocy, because of course. Of course they survived all the bullshit in Cintra, and of course they made it through an attack by foglets without a scratch, and of course they were going to get held up anyway because a nest with its nestling had been knocked out of its tree by an Aard and Jaskier had a bleeding heart.
Damn Jaskier’s wayward organs. When would he learn to keep his cock in his pants and his heart locked in his chest?
“Oh dear, oh dear, I’m sure Mama and Papa Crow will come back,” Jaskier cooed at the nestling, as if parents didn’t abandon their young all the time. The stunned little bird, cupped in Jaskier’s hand, stared up at him. Its dark, downy body trembled. No flight feathers yet. A baby.
He and Roach herded Jaskier and his new charge to a spot that smelled of loam and sharp fir trees instead of the mouldy-amphibious damp of foglet corpses. “Cold rations,” Geralt said. If he left to hunt, something even more ridiculous might happen, like Jaskier trying to adopt a godling or getting kidnapped by irate wood nymphs.
“Cold rations are the fashion to keep our heads un-bashed-in,” Jaskier chanted with a shrug and a nod. He threw down his bedroll and sat with the nestling tucked between his crossed legs. His body heat would warm the bird’s new haven. That was good; it might not keel over immediately in front of Jaskier’s naive little face.
Geralt took aim and thumped that naive face with their bag of salted pork, ignoring Jaskier’s sputtering complaints. Then he gave Roach a good grooming and counted himself lucky that she was a sturdy companion.
Spots of afternoon light flickered through the verdant canopy, dappling Jaskier in shifting spots of light and shadow. He plied the bird with little bits of dried meat that he softened in his mouth and spat back out onto his fingers. “There we go, open that beak nice and wide, very good—oh, gods, birds’ necks really are hideous stretchy things until they get their feathers, aren’t they?—that’s it, eat up.” The bird ate, and napped, and after the nap it started hissing and hopping after each bite it took, much more lively than it had been when they’d found it.
Geralt sharpened his swords and cleaned the foglet gore off his armor. At least the baby bird was quieter than its adult brethren. Smaller lungs.
When the sun went down the thing finally, blessedly, shut up, its fuzzy body safe in a handkerchief-nest pressed against Jaskier’s breastbone. Jaskier had curled up on his side to rest. He seemed to have discovered the ancient truth that infants of all kinds were exhausting. Children of all kinds were exhausting.
Moreover, there was still no guarantee that the bird would live through the night, or that if it did, it would survive the next day. And the day after that. And the days after that...
“Baby birds die a lot,” Geralt said into the quiet dark between them. They’d forgone a fire.
“I know,” Jaskier said, surprising him.
Jaskier’s hand fluttered towards the handkerchief-swaddled bird, fluttered away again before he could disturb it. He hadn’t touched Geralt, either, not since the kind of child-ruining monster Geralt had sworn never to become had dug a burrow under his skin, ready to make itself at home if it ever got the opportunity. Not since they had fled in the night, one of Jaskier’s hands gripping his shoulder, and Geralt had growled, “Don’t touch me!”
Jaskier had listened. He hadn’t sulked either, not about that. And he was listening and not-sulking now, too, with the baby bird, because it was important.
“I’ll leave him in the morning,” Jaskier was saying. “Don’t worry. But there’s no reason to let the thing die of shock before his parents can come back for him. We can at least give them a chance. And no reason not to give him some decent memories even if his life turns out to be short.” The fist perched on his thigh clenched, but he smiled at Geralt through the dark, like there was nothing wrong with loving something that might die tomorrow.
Abruptly, Geralt’s mind formed an image of what it would have looked like if, impossibly, Jaskier had found him when his mother had left him by the road. Jaskier would have dandled his smaller self on his knee, would have fed him trail rations until his belly went round, would have played games with him to make him smile. Maybe Jaskier would still have given him up to Kaer Morhen, just so a Witcher didn’t kill him. (A Witcher would have, if Jaskier had tried to steal him.) But at least Geralt would have known before he went into that place and came out—different—known how it felt to be precious to someone who valued his life instead of his possibilities.
(Precious like his Child Surprise would be, living safely with her family instead of with him.)
“You’re an idiot,” Geralt said, glad that the dark hid his face.
“I’m a master of the seven liberal arts!” Jaskier protested with a squawk not unlike that of his nestling.
“An educated idiot, then,” Geralt replied, and found one corner of his mouth lifting in a wry smile despite his thoughts. Such was the effect of Jaskier. “You don’t have to leave it,” he said a long moment later, even though it was stupid.
“We don’t have to do anything,” Jaskier reminded him, as he often did. “We make choices. And I choose to leave the wee babe for its parents, even though it might be dangerous, because our life would be more dangerous still. And that’s all right.”
In the morning, Jaskier left the bird in its old nest, and the nest in its old tree.
Geralt hesitated, looking up at the nest. He couldn’t say that things would be fine. But he squeezed Jaskier’s shoulder, felt Jaskier’s hand find his forearm and squeeze back. The two of them would be all right, at least.
They hoped for the best and walked on.
—
As the years passed, Geralt kept traveling up and down the Continent, his horse underneath him and his bard trailing behind. Even when they parted, Jaskier’s songs smoothed his way, and there were fewer and fewer places where someone spat in his ale before they brought it to him, and more and more local leaders willing to hire him for a fair price.
Despite these changes, a friendly corvid ‘hello’ continued to be more likely than a human one. It was...pleasant...making camp and spotting a greedy little opportunist hopping in his direction with no concern for monsters or mutants, only for its hungry belly and inquisitive brain.
Was this what Jaskier felt like, every new place filled with possibilities for unthreatening companionship?
(...He wasn’t going to do anything with those entrails anyway. Better that someone get a use out of them.)
(And if he was more assiduous about grooming Roach’s shedding winter coat when there was a crow family around who might like to line their nest with horse hair, well, the crows weren’t going to mention it.)
—
After the incident with the djinn, Jaskier’s singing voice took longer to come back to him than his speech did. But when he sang-croaked at the crows in their camp outside of Rinde, the crows called back in their own raspy voices, and Jaskier smiled. “You know, technically, they’re songbirds.”
“I’m not hearing a difference from the usual,” Geralt teased, and it was a tease, really, now that he’d had some sleep.
Jaskier clutched a dramatic hand to his heart. “Just for that,” he said, “I shall serenade you with the ballad of the Witcher who needed a nap. Still in the drafting process, but I had ample time to compose while you were otherwise occupied.”
Geralt braced himself for excoriation, for a thorough reminder of his flawed decision-making and Jaskier almost dying.
What Jaskier sang for him was even worse: he had made the song cute.
“No,” he said, horrified, after Jaskier hoarsely concluded that ‘a glass of warm milk/will calm a Witcher’s ilk.’
“No?” Jaskier asked, his face shining with false innocence. “You mean to say you appreciate my other singing much more?”
Jaskier didn’t bluff about music; he would actually sing it, and knowing his luck there would be someone from School of the Cat sitting in the corner, ready to claw his face off for the warm milk comment. Not to mention the possibility of the other wolves hearing about this; they would tease him for decades.
“Only the milk pie is empty,” Geralt said.
“The others are…?” Jaskier prompted.
“Filled. With filling,” Geralt said.
“That’s what I thought,” Jaskier said, smirking at him. Vengeful little fucker.
Jaskier’s face shone in the light of the dying sun, alive and mischievous, alive and petty, alive and happy. Alive, alive, alive.
The next time the crows cawed, it sounded like laughter.
—
After he had bound himself to Yennefer to save her life, he had half-thought it would be like the crows: mutual aid and entertainment. Instead they orbited each other as though on distant ends of the same tether, coming together and clashing apart with equal fervor when they met.
Much more commonly than he saw her, he went to brothels, which was satisfying until his post-coital prostitute remembered that it was a Witcher who had just made them come, a mutant who had made their toes curl. He was good at distracting them, but the sour tinge of stress always returned to their scent.
Occasionally there were late nights like tonight: easy hunt, room in an inn with a barmaid who wanted a bit of weird in her bed, whispered to her friend that she’d tell her tomorrow if the rumors were true. A fuck with her got the tension out, though she was disappointed that he only had one cock down there. “Come back if you do grow a second,” she told him as he left. Easier to leave after one round than to chance another and make them do the how-do-I-kick-out-a-Witcher dance, he’d learned.
He returned to find Jaskier in their bed, his warm body sprawled greedily across the whole mattress. Geralt lifted the bulk of him and deposited him a few inches to the side.
“Hmm, that didn’t take long,” Jaskier muttered with a sleepy laugh, his eyes fluttering open.
Geralt slid in behind him. “Told you not to sing that song about my two swords.”
“That song just got you laid, my friend,” Jaskier said, huffing with obnoxious offense. He didn’t get it, that Geralt needed sex but it made him feel like a drowner dragging people in his wake, like something his bed partners escaped from afterward.
Jaskier wanted to fuck him—Geralt could smell it sometimes—but Jaskier wanted to fuck most people, so Geralt didn’t think much of it. He didn’t want Jaskier to flee him, so they didn’t fuck.
Anyway, Jaskier touched him even without sex as an excuse. Even half-asleep like this, he reached back to pat Geralt’s knee for no reason. As if their touches were a pleasure. As if Geralt were a person worth touching.
Skin-hunger happened less often with Jaskier around. Saved on brothel money.
—
A puerile problem: The City of Metinna’s nobility had slighted Lord Forgeham’s son, who had retaliated by vandalizing Metinna’s castle with the help of his friends and a few wagonloads of shit. This had led Lord Metinna’s forces to occupy the best bridge across the River Sylte, disrupting Forgeham’s trade to the north, ostensibly so as to prevent further be-shittings but really because some people with money were bored, and the common folk were bored, and a fight with those fuckers across the river would really liven things up.
This had led to an extremely stupid battle in which more of Lord Metinna’s hired soldiers and armed peasants died than Lord Forgeham’s hired soldiers and armed peasants, largely because Forgeham’s local men were willing to hack at the cavalry in a way that the horse-breeding folk of Metinna refused to.
Many of the professional soldiers were foreign, which meant no family around who cared to fetch their remains, and those corpses had been left to linger ‘as a warning,’ which was even stupider than the battle had been. The dead had, of course, attracted ghouls, and now Geralt got to be one of Forgeham’s hired men too, contracted to clear them out. Decent pay, at least. He wouldn’t turn down the work. But he would take his horse and his bard away from these idiots the very next morning, in case the foolishness was catching.
“We could head to Ebbing next,” Jaskier said beside him, and he patted Geralt’s booted foot where it rested in Roach’s stirrup. “Claremont has a surprisingly good arts scene and a notably diplomatic aristocracy.”
Jaskier had come along for reasons known only to himself. No thrill to be had in crossing Metinna’s endless grassy plains, nor in the ghoul hunt. Unless they reached horrific numbers or exceptional power, ghouls meant a slaughter instead of a battle. Pest control.
“Better to cross the Pliszka into Geso,” Geralt said, leaning over to tweak Jaskier’s cowlick as revenge for the boot-pat.
“Not the hair, you—! Oh, wait, you mean Geso that borders the desert?” Jaskier asked, perking up, as Geralt had known he would. “It’s said the wind plays across the sand dunes like an instrument.”
“It’s also said people die of dehydration and heat sickness,” Geralt said. “And if not from those, then from the desert bandits. But in the villages before the dunes, there will be new songs for you to learn and plenty of work for me to do.”
They smelled the rot before they reached the battlefield, and Jaskier held a mint-scented handkerchief to his nose. “I’ll stay with Roach while you do your thing,” he offered when they found a good shade tree with a view of the carnage. Probably some people with money had rested under this tree and complained about the heat of the summer sun in between cheering or groaning as people bled out before their eyes.
Geralt nodded and dismounted.
Monsters gnawed at the corpses of people and horses littering the trampled grass, but so too did crows: crows pecking at eyeballs, crows tearing at sun-shriveled lips, crows nipping at internal organs that had been exposed by mortal wounds.
“Your friends are having a feast day,” Geralt said. He tried not to look at the horses, good mounts turned into crow-meat. If Jaskier had had any illusions about his so-called ‘corvid companions,’ surely this sight would break him of them.
But Jaskier only nodded, not looking away from the scene. “Bad day for the dead, good day for the carrion-eaters,” he said. “It would make a good topic for a bard—war benefitting no one but the scavengers. I could lay on some apropos imagery about where the meals of our weapons-makers and profit-takers come from.” His lips curled, mirthless. “Shame patriotism is always going to sell better.”
“Humans like to puff themselves up,” Geralt said. He oiled his silver blade.
“Humans have a bit more choice in what they consume than crows do,” Jaskier countered. “We could develop a taste for something other than martyrs to a rivalry born of ennui.”
Geralt shrugged. “Only know how to deal with the literal kind of necrophages,” he said, and the first ghoul lost its head shortly afterward.
He didn’t try to avoid the crows, but they had the sense to scatter out of range of his sword and his Igni. Crows had rules. They mated for life; they gifted trinkets to their friends and mobbed their enemies; they didn’t cannibalize their own dead; they tried to stay alive. Like him, they were taking advantage of a shitty situation.
The only rule for a ghoul was hunger. Either you were dead, and it would eat you, or you were alive, and it would try to kill you and eat you.
“Nicely done!” Jaskier called when the last ghoul dropped. “Nine out of ten from the Viper judge.” Then he put Roach’s blinders on and murmured softly to her while Geralt bombed the ghouls’ nest. Roach would kick a ghoul before she bolted from it, but she hated bombs.
Forgeham had tried to be cheap, of course, and let the bodies keep rotting. Upon hearing this, Jaskier had pulled out his crispest Oxenfurt accent and asked him to sign a document saying that Geralt couldn’t be held liable for a second ghoul attack in the event that the bodies continued to decompose in the open. Forgeham had folded like a man with the wind knocked out of him and coughed up the oils and coin for cremation as well as extermination.
Geralt harvested his trophies and alchemical ingredients, and then he set the field and the bodies aflame until they crumbled to ash.
Most of the bodies, anyway. He left one ghoul to the side: a warning for anyone who cared to see it; a compensation for the birds’ other lost meals.
“An awful offal offering,” Jaskier said as they walked away, dodging the flick that Geralt half-heartedly aimed at his ear for the wordplay. “But at least I didn’t have to climb a tree with a ghoul on my back.”
When they returned to Forgeham, Geralt collected his pay and was back at their lodgings in time to hear Jaskier performing a biting song with a catchy chorus that included the words “Born in Forgeham town!” shouted with apparent fervor. His audience was too drunk to notice the political criticism, which Jaskier had undoubtedly planned on, and patriotic coin filled his purse.
Back in their room, Jaskier flopped onto the bed and heaved a great sigh. “What a dismal day,” he said, staring up at the ceiling. “I know it wasn’t really bad—routine drivel, completely unsurprising mediocrity of leadership and sense—but that’s part of what I hate about it. I wrote that song with easy rhymes so I could substitute any town and a few of its traits in there, so sure am I that this kind of balderdash will happen again.” He tugged at his hair and hid his face behind his arms.
Geralt sat on the edge of the bed and patted him on his brocade-covered shoulder. “Crows prefer live food to carrion,” he said. “They love insects. But they’re opportunists at heart, and a bird has to eat.”
“I know,” Jaskier said, wrapping his hand around Geralt’s wrist and squeezing. “We don’t have to do anything, but if we’re to live then a crow has to fly, a bard has to sing, a Witcher has to hunt, and we’ve all got to eat. And sometimes there’s only corpse soup for supper, never mind our discerning palates.”
Geralt poked him in the ribs with his free hand. “You were able to have your corpse and eat it too with that passive-aggressive little song you wrote,” he pointed out.
Jaskier grinned. “Maybe. But so were you, leaving that ghoul behind like they left that shite in Metinna,” he said. His hand left Geralt’s arm, curled around an imaginary glass, and made a toasting gesture: “To fucking with the establishment.”
“To surviving stupidity,” Geralt said. He waited a reasonable few moments before adding, “Now stop moping and move over, you’re hogging the mattress.”
“You haven’t even taken your armor off—”
“Sometimes a witcher has to lie down,” Geralt retorted, and he tipped over onto Jaskier’s chest and lay across him.
Jaskier’s breath came shallower, his lungs trapped beneath Geralt’s bulk, but after a moment his body went limp, all the tension draining out of him. “Yes, okay,” he said, his hands open at his sides and his mouth gently curving.
Geralt shifted to cover Jaskier all the way, his face against Jaskier’s soft neck, his greaves knocking against Jaskier’s shins. The armor had dried ghoul blood on it, but the heft of it made him heavier, and something about the feeling of weight and pressure always closed its jaws softly around Jaskier’s hindbrain and scruffed him like a kitten, his restless energy becalmed.
Geralt breathed in the scent of him, the fading tang of stress and the warm bloom of contentedness. It wasn’t a terrible day if it ended like this.
(But they were still leaving this pit of insensibility first thing in the morning.)
—
The northern land near Vespaden carried its wealth in its flocks of sheep and in its chalky green hills, flecked with clover and buttercups; coin came in a trickle instead of a rush, but Geralt always left with a good winter coat and a hefty wheel of smoked cheese. It was the kind of place Jaskier would enjoy if Geralt ever brought him up north. Most of the shepherds also played an instrument—a pipe or a harp—and they were polite but wary of strangers, and Jaskier loved to convince reticent people to be his new best friends.
This year, the people here mostly wanted him to clear the monsters out of their old guard posts, disused stone towers that they had previously been happy to avoid in order to keep their wallets a little fuller. With Nilfgaard on the move in the south, they sharpened axes and fletched new arrows while wearing anxious frowns on their faces, and they spoke of setting guards, though there was hardly anything north of Vespaden to conquer.
If Nilfgaard made it this far, what could a country of shepherds do to resist? But there was flint in these hills as well as chalk, and if farmers knew how to do anything, it was how to prepare for what the next seasons might bring.
Geralt vanquished specters, mostly, and culled the odd pack of wargs, until at the base of the last of these derelict towers, he came across a crow ripped to shreds, harpy feathers still clenched in one of its torn off feet. The rest of its flock, perched in the arrowslits around the building, sounded their scolding alarums. Warning him off? Or just warning him?
Hard to tell. Vespaden’s crows ate his offal, but they tended to be as aloof as their people. And as stubborn, he thought, watching as the crows cawed from the safety of their narrow apertures. Few animals ventured into harpy territory; none stayed. But these crows refused to move.
“I’ll avenge him,” he told the crows. They probably didn’t understand him, but someone had cast a powerful blessing on the towers, and enough time around magic could change a creature; one never knew.
In any case, actions would speak louder than words, and he was here to kill monsters.
Above them, the harpies, beasts with eagle-like bodies and almost-human faces, screeched and wheeled through the air. At least a dozen by the sound of it. The ammonia stench of their guano burned in his nose. Usually they hunted like owls, with silent diving and individual attacks on their prey, but these knew enough to make a Witcher come to them so they could swarm him.
A murder of crows watched from the rafters as he entered the tower, oiled his silver blade, and ascended the stairs. He came out of the hatch to the roof Aard-first, knocking the harpies gathered to gut him off balance. Then Igni, a jet of flame across the ones he’d dropped, catching their wings alight. Hard to fly without feathers. Hard to dodge a blade when your balance was fucked. Hard to see when the blood of your brethren splashed in your eyes.
The harpies died burnt and bleeding, all fourteen of the damned things. Once their screeching stopped the crows joined him on the roof, watching as he smashed the harpies’ eggs and reduced their disgusting nest to ashes. A crow’s worst fear, he thought, visited on their enemies. Jaskier would have appreciated it.
This last tower lay a long distance from the Lord’s castle, so he fetched Roach from the clover-patch he’d left her in. They spent the night in the tower and slept with the ruffle-rustling of crow feathers all around them. The crows had nests in the rafters; explained why they hadn’t left after the harpies had moved in.
When Geralt woke in the morning, he found a silver ring perched on Roach’s saddle, bright against her dark leathers.
“Thank you,” he said. He dropped the ring into a saddlebag. Every year, he and Lambert and Eskel got together and compared—what was their strangest contract? With payment from a crow, he had a feeling he would win this winter.
(Jaskier, on the other hand, could never know about this; he would be insufferable.)
—
Eskel fed the crackling dining hall fire with a cinnamon stick and a thick log of apple wood before settling down on the bearskin rug in front of the hearth. Last year’s winner got to choose the scent for the night, and Eskel loved apple pie.
Geralt sat opposite him on the rug, breathing in the sweet-smelling heat. Might be cold outside, but it was warm in here, and there weren’t any better Witchers to spend the winter with. He set his loser’s tribute next to him, a fine cask of Erveluce, and filled the three tankards he had fetched from the kitchens. (Vesemir had given up on stocking breakable cups.) They might bicker all winter, but tonight was for celebrating, even if they didn’t say it outright. Another year on the Path; another year they’d all made it back.
A few moments later, Lambert arrived and sat diagonal to them, completing their triangle, and with him he brought a platter of tart cheese, crisp apple slices, smoked bacon, and still-warm honey bread. (When they were lucky, Lambert took his temper out on a ball of dough instead of a person.)
“Fuck yes,” Eskel said as soon as Lambert sat down, and although they had all enjoyed the venison at dinner, half of Lambert’s tray disappeared into their bellies in short order while Lambert ducked his head to try to hide his pleased smile.
After shoving a last bite of Lambert’s bread down his gullet, Eskel tried again. “Ahum! I call this meeting of the Wolf Surprise to order,” he said. “Time to find out: which one of us has the best surprise this time?”
Eskel pulled a silver disc from the back of his medallion and set it down on the rug between them: the blank face of it had been engraved with a teddy bear design, a reminder of the time a child had paid him in candy to fetch her soft toy from a wraith-infested field. Whoever won would sand it blank and add their own engraving, carry it with them on the Path until they all met up again. Easy to add and remove it from their medallions when a little Igni could melt the glue.
Lambert sipped his wine, his eyes flicking from the silver prize to Geralt, and for once he kept his caustic mouth quiet. No one who thought they had a winner wanted to go first.
Geralt often experienced surprising things on the Path, but not always on the job. The djinn, for example, had been disqualified due to being not-Witcher business. Cintra hadn’t counted either; invoking the actual Law of Surprise to get your surprise story was cheating, which had been their first rule when they’d made the game up in the year after Eskel’s Child Surprise had slashed his face. So Geralt met Lambert’s challenging gaze with his own; now that he had a real contender, he wasn’t going to let Lambert win easily.
“Right,” Eskel said, snorting as he looked between them. “I’ll go then. This is the story of the bruxa contract that wouldn’t end.”
They nibbled at Lambert’s snacks while Eskel wove the tale of killing a bruxa in Kerack, only for two more people to disappear before he left. Then the same thing happened again—another bruxa lured and killed, another two people disappeared. The bruxa even seemed to be the same one that Eskel had killed before. By that time, he and the villagers sorely wanted some answers, so Eskel surveilled the village that night and tracked the bruxa and her newest captives to her lair.
“She had ensnared a mage,” Eskel said, downing his wine. “Wanting sisters, she bade him make them for her. He had a spell that could change a human into an exact copy of her, but it required a sacrifice, of course. Blood and bone. They were both pissed off that I’d undone so much of their work, and even angrier when I undid them too.” He softened the frown of memory on his brow and straightened his shoulders. “Hard recovery,” he admitted. “And the village didn’t have the coin for the shitshow it turned out to be, but they put me up at the inn for as long as I needed to heal. Scorpion too.”
Lambert harrumphed. “Hospitality. That’s the real surprise right there. Still,” he gave an impressed whistle, “a mage and a bruxa? Not bad.” Fucking dangerous, he didn’t say. But he shoved the food tray closer to Eskel. They’d left the last apple slice for him.
Geralt nodded. “Good fight.” Glad you’re still here, he didn’t say. But he patted Eskel’s knee.
Still not as surprising as the story we have to tell because mages and bruxae get up to no good all the time, they didn’t say, but Eskel read it in their faces and laughed at them. “Rock, paper, knife for the next one,” he said, and he halved his apple slice, gave the other half to Lambert.
They all drained and refilled their tankards, and then Lambert’s paper beat Geralt’s rock, so Geralt told his story next.
“This is the story of the time I made a contract with a crow,” he said, gratified by Eskel’s startled twitch and Lambert’s frown. He channeled Jaskier and did his best to convey the good parts about the avenged crow and its stubborn flock, even showing off the ring at the end, polished so it shone in the flickering firelight.
“A true surprise!” Eskel said at the end. “Might be the first time an animal’s given us silver. We’d have to ask Vesemir to make sure.”
Lambert rolled his eyes. “Right, like Vese-drear wants to hear about us having fun instead of being miserable. And the real surprise is Geralt saying more than ten words.”
Glad you didn’t let the harpies get you, neither of them said, but Lambert rocked on his hips so his shoulder bumped against Geralt’s, and Eskel shoved the food tray back in his direction, one slice of cheese still left for him. Geralt tore it in half and shared it with Lambert.
They drank and refilled their tankards again, and then he and Eskel looked at Lambert, expectant.
“As it happens,” Lambert said, smiling slyly, “I met some crows too. This is the story of how those little fuckers stole my medallion and a lark brought it back.” He bared his neck, making it obvious that his medallion hung from a silk ribbon instead of a chain.
Eskel laughed, more incredulity than mirth flitting across his scarred face. “What, did you just leave it hanging on a tree branch for them to take?”
Lambert scowled. “Yeah, Eskie, I thought I’d make this one conifer real pretty, just do some exterior decorating while I was hunting a leshen.”
A leshen—he and Eskel sat straighter, their eyes searching Lambert for signs of injury even though they’d all given each other a once-over earlier. A leshen’s magic could spread through an entire forest. They fought fiercely, with cunning and cruelty, and they ensorcelled packs of wolves and flocks of crows to do their bidding. Every fight a Witcher encountered was a potentially deadly one, but a fight with a leshen more so than most.
“It was a big one, too,” Lambert bragged, his chest puffing out. “Tree-limbs thicker than a troll’s chest, and the antlers on its skull were as long as Vesemir is old.”
“Let me guess,” Eskel said, quirking his eyebrows. “It gored you with the antlers.”
“Little bit,” Lambert admitted, holding his thumb and forefinger a short distance apart. “Had some back and forth with it first, you know, bombs and shit, but its flock flew in my face and it got a hit in. Antler snapped my medallion chain right off my neck.” He pulled his shirt up, showing a pale scar that crossed diagonally from his belly to his right shoulder.
Fuck. The scar had long since healed, but the blood would have gushed. That gods-be-damned lightweight Cat armor he’d taken to wearing—
“I charbroiled it with extreme prejudice after that,” Lambert said, “but it managed to slam me against a bastard-thick tree trunk before it died, knocked me out. You’ll never guess what I woke up to.” He aimed his cocky grin right at Geralt.
Geralt shoved down the image of Lambert’s desperate gout of flame, his crash into a tree, the leshen burning and Lambert blacking out without being sure if he’d wake up. “Crows?” he asked. They might have appreciated being free of the leshen, and they would have been curious.
“There were some around,” Lambert said, his grin widening. “But what was better was the chatty little bard who’d taken my chest piece off and put a field dressing on the bits where I was bleeding.”
This couldn’t possibly be happening to him. “No,” Geralt said, putting his hand over his eyes. His two worlds were meant to stay separate.
Eskel barked a laugh.
“Yes!” Lambert crowed. “Do you know what he told me?”
“He told you that you were an idiot for fighting a leshen in light armor,” Geralt growled.
“He did mention that,” Lambert said. “But! But, but, but—he also said that I was a beautiful specimen of Witchery. Ha. Your bard likes me, o’ famous White Wolf!”
“He meant that you were fucking heavy,” Geralt told him, which was conveniently the truth even though it also satisfied his need to squash any of Lambert’s bard-snatching thoughts.
“Yeah, he said that too,” Lambert said, apparently unbothered. “He sweet talk you all the time?”
“How did he even find you?” Geralt asked, ignoring the question.
“That’s the best part,” Lambert said. He flicked his medallion. “You and he had been through the area before, he said, so the crows knew him. One of them knew him well enough to give him my medallion after stealing it while I was out.” He and Eskel shared a glance and peered at Geralt.
Geralt grunted and suddenly found his drink very interesting. Trust Lambert to uncover all of the ridiculous attachments that he wasn’t supposed to have.
“Anyway,” Lambert said, shrugging, “he figured if you didn’t have your medallion some bad shit had gone down, so he did the stupid thing and went towards the magic medallion vibrations instead of away from them. He found me instead of you, fetched my kit from where I’d stashed it, stayed with me while the potions did their thing, and offered to compose a song about my ‘fierce clash with a forest god.’”
“Spirit,” Geralt said automatically. “I’ve told him they’re not gods, just some people are stupid enough to worship them—”
Lambert threw his head back and cackled. “He—he said you’d say that!” he gasped out in between his laughs. “And to tell you that nothing good rhymes with ‘spirit’!”
Eskel’s shoulders shook with silent amusement.
It wasn’t that funny, but they were all a little drunk, and it was hard to keep from smiling when his brothers were laughing. Damn Jaskier for knowing him so well. And damn him for running towards a leshen that might not have been dead, and for finding Lambert of all people.
“A Bard Surprise is a good one,” Eskel said when he’d recovered, his eyes still crinkled with mirth. “But I have to say—seems like an ordinary contract to me. The surprising parts happened afterward.”
That was true, actually. Geralt glanced at Lambert, making sure he didn’t think this was favoritism between the two older Witchers.
Lambert raised his eyebrows. “Oh, I know my contract was tame enough,” he said. “But a crow paid Jaskier in silver to help a Witcher; seems like his contract was pretty unusual. I think Jaskier should get it this year.”
Geralt opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried again. “He didn’t keep the silver,” he said, ignoring the ridiculous fact that said silver was Lambert’s medallion.
Lambert shrugged. “Not in the rules that you have to keep your payment. Only that you have to take it.” He met both of their eyes; they had all had the experience of accepting a poor man’s coin only to sneak it back to him.
“Fair. I’ll add it to the bylaws,” Eskel said wryly. Geralt still wasn’t sure if Eskel really had the rules written down or just kept them in his head.
“He’s not even one of us,” Geralt said, though the words left his tongue reluctantly.
Lambert leaned forward. “Also not in the rules,” he said, his eyes intent. “You only have to be someone who walks the Path and takes contracts.”
And Jaskier walked the Path with Geralt and took contracts all the time, albeit for music instead of monsters.
Eskel made an impressed noise low in his throat. “Playing dirty, Lam. I’ll allow it.” He looked at Geralt.
If Geralt objected, it wouldn’t go further. And if it were just a stupid, silly game, then he might be petty enough, possessive enough, to strive for the win.
But when Geralt searched Lambert’s face, Lambert met his eyes and spoke in Vesemir’s gruff cadence, a mantra they’d heard a thousand times, “No kids. No spouses. No, not for us,” before asking in his own plaintive voice, “Do you think we can’t have friends either?”
Of course they couldn’t. Monsters didn’t have friends. But even as he thought it, he couldn’t look away from Lambert’s fingers tapping at his thigh. Always moving, was Lambert, like Jaskier. Always pushing, like Jaskier. And Lambert had been happier the past couple years, traveling with the Cat he never talked about, the Cat they only knew about from Lambert’s new armor and flexibility. And like Jaskier, Lambert was a little shit, but he wasn’t a monster, and he deserved—he deserved to have whatever he needed in order to be satisfied on the Path. And unlike Jaskier, he was so often snarling and unhappy about his fate that Geralt couldn’t imagine denying him this. Did he have to?
No, he thought abruptly. He didn’t. He didn’t have to do anything.
Geralt lurched sideways and embraced his brother. “You can,” he said, his throat tight, his arms squeezing around Lambert’s hunched shoulders. “We can. Of course we can.”
“Of course we can,” Eskel echoed, and the wonder in his voice crushed Geralt’s lungs in his chest. Eskel tried so hard to be the perfect Witcher. No crows greeted Eskel on the Path, no bards. If it had been him in Dol Blathanna, he would have Axii’d Jaskier away.
If misery were a monster, Geralt would slay it. He swallowed and pulled back so he could look at them both. “If you want a friend, have them. Keep them. We’ll figure it out. And if you want a—a companion, I’ll witness the handfasting. And if you want a child—I don’t know. Logistics would be hard. Not impossible.”
They stared at him, pulled up sharp by the heresy.
“You’re fucking with me,” Eskel said, his eyes bright.
Geralt shook his head. “It’s only the three of us,” he said. “And Vesemir. Can’t we decide what being a Witcher of the Wolf School means?”
Lambert glared at him, his lip curled. “Show me. Prove that we can.”
Geralt exhaled. They had a whole winter, and he wasn’t a mage, he couldn’t snap his fingers and bring Jaskier here. But he could— “Here,” he said, lifting his medallion off his head. “Swap.”
Lambert frowned.
“It’s my bard’s ribbon,” Geralt said, gesturing at Lambert’s medallion. “Isn’t it? So I’ll wear it, and Vesemir can deal with it, just like he can deal with—other things.” Vesemir would hate the idea of their medallion hanging from something so fragile, which was undoubtedly why Lambert had kept the ribbon in the first place. He probably even had a spare chain hidden in his pack for when he returned to the Path.
Lambert bit his lip. “Guess I can find some other way to mess with him,” he said, and they traded.
“Right then, meeting concluded!” Eskel said, pulling the mantle of the host role back over his dazed face. He passed the silver prize to Geralt. “You can give it to him in the spring and take it back before winter,” he said. “Or you could bring him with you and have him hand deliver it.” His wolfish smirk was definitely a dare.
Geralt made a point of rolling his eyes, exaggeratedly long-suffering. “There’ll be no living with him if I tell him that a songbird managed to win a wolf competition,” he complained, and the others went to bed sniggering.
The ribbon around his neck smelled like Lambert, like hard-worn leather and the walnut oil he used on his hair. Lambert probably would have been fine after the leshen. Probably would have woken up and managed to crawl to his bag, cursing and bleeding all the while. But he might not have. It had taken Jaskier and a fucking crow to tip the scale to certainty.
On a purely utilitarian level, hard to object to having better odds.
—
Vesemir did lecture him about the ribbon, but he also made a point of celebrating the solstice that year, gave a little speech about finding lights to brighten the dark points of their lives. He reminisced about a time when the keep had been full of Witchers: numbers enough to meet periodically on the Path, to support each other on difficult hunts.
“Enough Witchers to drag more kids off to a life they didn’t ask for,” Lambert snarked.
“Enough to make sure the ones who survived the Trials would live for longer on the Path,” Vesemir countered. “Back then, a Witcher could only trust another Witcher.”
Back then.
Geralt wondered, not for the first time, how much of their little ceremony Vesemir might contrive to overhear.
—
The week before he left, Geralt found that a parchment had been slipped onto his desk while he was out, the contents written in Eskel’s most formal hand:
The Rules of Wolf Surprise
1. Invoking the Law of Surprise is cheating
2. The surprise must be acquired as part of a contract
2a. Djinn wishes don’t count, Geralt
3. Payment must be taken for a contract
a. Payment need not be in coin
b. Payment may be returned according to the judgment of the Wolf Surprise participant
4. The surprise must be acquired by someone who walks the Path
a. This person may or may not be a Witcher of the Wolf School
5. Wolf Surprise participants are permitted to
a. have friends, companions, and partners who are not Witchers of the Wolf School
b. have children—ethics and logistics permitting
c. decide for themselves* what being a Wolf Witcher means
i. *decide in committee, Lambert; don’t get ideas
Eskel had signed it with a doodle of a wolf with a scar across its snout. He had also drawn a lamb next to it, but someone with a different pen had crossed the lamb out and replaced it with a second, larger wolf that had two slashes across its face like Lambert did.
Geralt rolled his eyes, but that didn’t stop him from drawing an even bigger wolf with a scar over its eye on the parchment before he tucked the rules away in a desk drawer. It felt...good. Seeing it written out in black and white. Knowing the rules represented Eskel and Lambert’s voice, not just his own.
Eskel had always had a knack for knowing what people needed.
—
He found Jaskier in a Maribor tavern, singing his face off, and he endured the taste and smell of cheap ale at a back table while Jaskier finished his set. Red trousers, red doublet; he danced a courtship dance for his audience and looked more cardinal than the crow Geralt had carved into the silver prize for him. But once his songs were sung, it was Geralt who Jaskier quickly invited to his room.
“Did he win?” was the first thing Jaskier asked once the door was closed. “We worked so hard on how he would tell it! Did he use the comparisons we talked about? Did he have good imagery?”
“It wasn’t that kind of competition,” Geralt said. “You unrepentant sneak.” He arched an eyebrow. (The idea of the story competition was, of course, how Lambert had persuaded Jaskier to keep their meeting secret.)
“But did he win?” Jaskier asked, ignoring the accusation of treachery. He sat down on the bed, his hands clasped in entreaty. “I’ve been in suspense all winter!”
“No win,” Geralt told him.
Jaskier flopped back on the mattress. “Oh, poor Lambert. It was such a good story! I should have sought him out again before winter. ...Wait.” He sat back up, peering at Geralt. “Does that mean you won? Did you, Witcher of few words, win a story contest?”
“Hmm,” Geralt said dryly.
“That was a negative ‘hmm,’ my closed-mouthed companion, don’t think I can’t tell. So...Eskel again?”
“No,” Geralt said, and having got his revenge for the secret-keeping, he withdrew the silver disc, threaded now on a silver chain that he’d picked up in the market earlier in the day, and dropped it over Jaskier’s head so it settled around his neck. “Your new friend nominated you for the honor.” He explained a little of the decision and his lips rose at the sight of Jaskier’s bewildered face.
“I’m—but I’m not even a Witcher,” Jaskier stammered. His hands fluttered above the necklace like they’d once fluttered above a baby bird.
“We decided that was fine,” Geralt said. Jaskier was still staring at him, so he added, “The prize has to go back to Kaer Morhen this winter, but the chain you can keep.”
“I can keep?” Jaskier repeated, as if the words were foreign. “But—you understand, right, that it won’t disappear into nothing like a pair of holey socks or a honey cake?” He bunched the red silk of his trousers in his fists, not touching, as if he didn’t know whether Geralt would let him. As if he wanted but couldn’t have. Waiting, like he had waited in Brokilon. Had waited for years, maybe.
Geralt gently pried Jaskier’s hands open and clasped them in his. “New rule,” he said. “We can keep things now.”
“Things like necklaces?” Jaskier asked.
“Things like bards,” Geralt said, and hugged him close.
—
When they walked into the stone-walled outer bailey of Kaer Morhen that winter, Geralt wore his medallion on a chain that matched Jaskier’s, and Roach had new tack, and there were books in the saddlebags because Jaskier had figured out that Geralt liked learning new things. Jaskier wore a new winter outfit from Vespaden, warm wool in a bright blue that favored him.
“Not well-acquainted with the local crows,” Geralt said, finishing up a lecture about the castle’s surroundings. “We hunt in rotations and they’re not always around when it’s my turn.” Kind of embarrassing; he knew the crows around Novigrad better than the ones on his own grounds.
Jaskier spun to face him. “Of course we must befriend them,” he said, his arms spread wide and welcoming before dropping back to his sides. “But you should know, I didn’t give a damn about crows until I met you.”
Geralt stopped in his tracks on the way to the stables, his stomach drawn tight, Roach’s breath hot against the back of his neck. “Were you making fun of me?” he asked. It was the only thing he could think of.
“Nothing like that,” Jaskier said, and he put his hand on Geralt’s shoulder and looked him in the eyes. “I just wanted very much for you to believe that clever, funny creatures who people say nasty things about deserve to have nice things, and that those nice things don’t have to come with strings attached. And between you and I and Roach and the crows and your wolves, we managed it.”
Geralt considered this. “You seduced an entire species for me.”
“Maybe,” Jaskier admitted, glancing up at Geralt from beneath his lashes.
“You know we have to keep them, right?” Geralt said, starting to smile. “Crows talk to their kids. Crows who are too young to have seen us still recognize us. We’re already in the third, fourth generation of them. More, maybe.”
“Then it’s a good thing that I plan to keep you and the crows for as many generations as you’ll have me,” Jaskier said. “If you’re all right with being kept?” He fidgeted.
Jaskier having him as much as he had Jaskier, he meant. Two-way commitment. Could have felt like a trap, like Fate’s rope wrapped around him. Instead it felt secure, like the certainty that most places he went, a nosy black bird would hop over to him, hoping for a handout, willing to shout a warning if it saw something dangerous. Not because of destiny, but because he’d made a choice.
“Been your Witcher for as long as you’ve been my bard,” he finally said. “Not planning on a change.” And then he let his lips curve up to show a flash of teeth. “Besides, stupid to let you go now that you’ve almost figured out how to sing.”
Next to him, Jaskier squawked his indignant crow squawk and informed him about his plans for vengeance, and behind him Roach snorted and shoved her head at his back to get him moving towards the stables again. But they would care for him no matter if he teased or walked slowly to the stables, just as he cared for them. That was what keeping someone meant, he thought: that the caring, like the gifts, didn’t come with strings.
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As fun as the events and ideas you posted about 19days would be, wouldn’t it also just bring in more negative stuff - like fandom in general has become a field of land mines and I fear that something that’s supposed to fun will turn into some sort of battle. Like how some people get extremely heated over any other ships outside of their fave ship and they cannot possibly have other ships except theirs, etc. The last thing anyone wants is for content creators to be targeted simply for making something they thought would be fun
(This ask and answer is about this post.)
First of all thank you so much for addressing such a big and valid concern. I agree that that has indeed happened in certain fandoms - I can say I've been in the thick of it and witnessed quite the warfare - but in others it has also brought fans and readers and content creators together even closer and tighter in a wonderful thriving community.
I have the feeling this'll get quite long so please proceed under the cut with that in mind.
I believe all things are potential harbingers of both discord and harmony. There will always be people who feel entitled and who want - even demand! the audacity! - authors and artists to create for their ships and their ships alone. And there will also always be people who can appreciate the writing and the art without judgemental treatment regarding the pairings/characters depicted, no matter their preferences.
All of that happens and will continue to happen, whether we go forward with these events or not. And yet authors will still write what they want to write, artists will still draw what they want to draw, graphic designers will still make the edits they want to make as well. What we could do, in this small and close knit fandom, is take in our hands this powerful rich opportunity and try our best to make a model of positivity out of it.
In these events, there would be no bashing or shaming allowed. The content created would be to be enjoyed by those who are attracted to it, and those who do not have a taste for that fanwork in particular would be asked to remain respectful. (As it should always be.) There would be no ship wars in these spaces. Discourse, hate-speech or anti-behaviour would not be tolerated by the moderators of the event.
Creators who indulged in it would be immediately disqualified. Any unnecessary commentary or complaints from the audience would be deleted and reported as spam. Anyone instigating conflict would be only painting a target on their back, really. Because most of us - I dare say - are only here to appreciate the brilliant artwork and fanfiction woven and crafted by the talented people who share it with us.
If it came to it and it escalated, this hellsite has several tools that can be put to use to that regard. Accounts could be blocked and/or even reported. They wouldn't be able to interact with the blogs created to run these events from then on. We would be able to create a black list and post it publicly so everyone else who wished to could simply block those unruly pesky accounts and remain at peace and free to enjoy themselves to their utmost.
Let us not forget that this is all fiction and it's all for fun. Everyone's allowed to have their own opinion, likes and dislikes. There simply is no need to step on anyone else and their interests to elevate them.
Let's exemplify, for the sake of clarity:
Do I personally ship A with B? Imagine I do not. I do not search for it. If I come across it? I scroll past it. Once or twice, I may even like - and even reblog - if it happens to catch my attention and it's well written/drawn! (I have tags along the lines of 'I don't ship it but' and 'look at this beautiful art' or 'drown in the power of these words.')
It's so easy to interact amongst ourselves without coming with pitchforks at one another. Know what actually needs effort? Being a meanie and a party popper! Who in their right mind wastes their time on things they don't care for? Dum dums, that's who! Of course, we're all dummies at times... and that's okay! Let's just not harass people or crash their fun while we're at it!
If nothing else: you wouldn't like if others did this or that to you, therefore don't do it to others. It's a simple concept to grasp.
Very important: in these events, every single piece would be explicitly and properly tagged and warned for right at the very top of each post, so there would be absolutely no excuses for anyone being nasty.
We would just have to be open to the experience. Enjoy our ships and let other enjoy theirs. We do not have to all like the same thing. That would be just boring. But we can cohabitate devoid of trouble in fandom. Each one of us just has to be respectful. No need to even be nice. No one has to compliment something they don't like. They also don't have to step on what others do.
Don't like a ship/character/theme? Don't read stories focused on it. Don't put down authors who write it or readers who enjoy it. Same for art. No need to shout about how awful it is just for the simple reason that it does not fit into your personal shipping preferences. It can still be still be a tasty and wonderfully baked cake, it's just that you're not fond of vanilla or strawberries. It's okay. There are all kinds of cake for everyone's tastes!
Further examples: If a ship happens to be a NOTP for me or I don't care for the character(s)? I filter the tags. All of them. Any and every tag I can think of. It's very easy to protect ourselves on Tumblr from content we do not wish to see. (My own list is huge and just as effective.) Filtering is incredibly important.
So go ahead and filter out the ships you can do without! Filter out porte-manteaux like Tianshan, Zhanyi, Qiucheng, Tianxi, Tianyi, Lishan, Litian, Liyi, Shantou, Polydays, (...) Filter out any ship tag that doesn't strike your fancy like Q x MGS, HC x JY's mom, (...) Filter out characters that aren't your cuppa tea like HT, HT's dad, SL, JY's mom, XH, (...)
Make it safe for yourself and for others. That way you won't rage at the sight of your NOTP, won't feel the compulsive need to trash the people who ship it, no one is hurt and everyone is happy!
There are many steps we could follow to prevent rotten eggs in our coop. And many more actions we could take to throw them out if need be. I firmly believe, however, that if we're all of the same mind everything would go well and with very few bumps along the way.
If we only ever feared the possible negative consequences of our actions, never taking the risk for the possible positive ones, we'd never get anything done. I say let's not let our beloved fandom stagnate or dry out. Let's incentivate and motivate and inspire! Let's share! Let's have fun!
Think of it in these terms: it wouldn't be a competition at all but rather a charity event. Performers and spectators coming together for a common good, raising content and spreading joy! There would be no winners or losers or prizes. What would matter would be good old-fashioned participation, both by providing content and/or consuming it.
It could also a good way to get people to express themselves more. Many content consumers tend to lurk or keep to themselves even if they like the content posts. (I used to be one myself and only a couple months ago started to come out of my shell.) I myself advocate for reblogging instead of liking - if you have to choose one or the other, I mean, why not do both? - and leaving a word on every single post I like and/or reblog. Sometimes I go nuts commenting, sometimes I leave a small note in the tags.
It doesn't matter how. Even if you're shy or introverted (*raises hand*) or don't know what to say I guarantee a single emoticon or a string of disordered letters symbolising incoherence will make the creator's day all the same. Getting feedback is so important and motivational for creators and also a great way for fandom members to keep in touch and support each other.
Additionally, if a person would like more of a certain type of content here are some healthy actions they could take: a) commission a creator and pay for it if they can; b) politely make a suggestion to a creator with an open ask box; c) post a prompt publicly for possible interested creators to use; d) do it yourself and share it with others!
This turned out into more of a "behavioural guidelines" thing than I'd have liked. I am not in any way whatsoever telling anyone what to do. This is what I do, and it works wonders for me. I stay completely out of toxic arguments and in on all the goodies. I'm able to fully enjoy my fandoms. And isn't that what we all want?
Thank you again for sharing your thoughts with me. And I apologise for the long rant!
Of course, this is only my personal stance on the issue. I did go for a survey first exactly for this end, to get their opinions on the subject and see if it would be worth a shot. I shall hope many other people will think as I do, but I will wholly respect those who don't.
#answered asks#19 tian#19天#19 days#old先#old xian#zhanyi#qiucheng#tianshan#jian yi#zhan zheng xi#he cheng#qiu#brother qiu#he tian#mo guan shan#she li#cun tou#xiao hui
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VALLL!! congrats on your 500 🥺 and i’m so very happy you’re in my discord you’re SO FUNNY ND I LOVE TALKIFN TOOO YOUUUUUU
my fave song; cherry wine by hozier
c-can i request bokuto 👉🏼👈🏼
nsfw or sfw is fine :3 heheh
and a description of myself is! i’m pretty shy! but i love talking to ppl once i get to know them :3 kinda chaotic once i’m out of my shell more ! but it takes a bit for me to trust ppl :3 i love loving on people and am,, clingy hehhe very much an attention whore™️ and am kinda scatterbrained, forget about things a lot i write on myself to remember things, and set reminders/alarms bc of it :> oh i’m really easy to fluster too, very much an excitable person :3
dasknfakjs im funny??
Thrown at me so powerfully
It's a crime
That she's not around most of the time.
And it's worth it, it's divine
The way she shows me I'm hers and she is mine
Relationship hcs
Pls you had to confess to him multiple times (your poor heart), before he understood what you meant
Thinking i like you meant meant as friends
Luckily akaashi dragged him to the side one of the days you tried to express your feelings, almost crying cause he didn't understand.
And after kashi told him he ran back up to you and was like “you want to be my girlfriend?” turning his head to the side genuinely confused.
And askkasi slapped him in the back of head saying “yes, now apologize for stressing her out”
And he apologized, not exactly knowing what for asfnaskj pls forgive him, he's actually sad : (
So you two have been together for a few years now, everyone laughing at the story of how yall got together.
You now being his koala bear everytime he was home clinging onto him, while he didn't even notice you, like you were a feather. Love strong daddy bo
Him smothering you in kisses every time he saw you, even if it was just from coming outside to get the mail.
He posts daily on his story too, drawing little scribbles and hearts in the background 🥺
You two squeal together when a new episode of an anime comes out, immediately getting snacks and him curling up in to your chest (yes little spoon bo is my fav)
When you fall asleep he moves out of your arms for a second, using his big brain to remember that you forgot to set your alarm, doing it for you with a smile appearing in his face, before snuggling back into your boobs falling asleep himself.
He sets it an hour late but its the thought that counts.
Nsfw hcs (bc how could i not)
Yall grab each other's titties just cause, him saying yours are comfy and like a human stress ball pls bby, while you just said they were hot, having no shame.
So now he always walk around with no shirt on, as if he wasn't doing that before, giving you a free show
He is a pussy fienddddd
Will live and die for your pussy. Would legit suffocate while you rode his face if you didn't pull off. Love that
Legit gets turned on by anything, thinking it means you want to fuck. Whether it's wearing his shirt, or accidentally letting your towel fall down, seeing his smirk across the room.
And you'd never tell him no, so now here you are getting your pussy ate for the third time today cause you walked out of your room with just your bra and panties on, trying to get the laundry.
He makes you cum so quick, and its not just cause hes good at it, its cause he gets off to it, loving being a good boy, esp when you call him that, stg it would make him nut on the spot.
After he cums hes still hard, so you get to work and climb ontop of him, sliding down quickly cause you were already so wet.
And you get tired after like 3 times of humping him, so he just holds you close and fucks the absolute shit outta you.
Then after you've both cum for the nth time, he washes you two up, remembering that you said you hated being dirty.
And tucks you in bed, sliding his dick back in you as part of your nightly routine < 3
-
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find the event right here
#yes I went off again#bo just does that to me#I need to learn how to express my thoughts without writing a whole novel#event500!#introloves
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a hiatus or something
I didn’t want to post this. I told myself to give it until morning and sleep but I’ve been laying here for over an hour and I can’t sleep and I know I’m not going to sleep until I get it out. And I decided I’m not going to do the pretend things don’t bother us mentality that tumblr likes, the don’t show emotions on the dashboard, don’t let people know you’re hurt or angry out of fear it’ll be seen as ~drama or whatever thing stop me from just saying how I feel. Because I feel pretty shitty? I’ve been feeling shitty for a few days now. Maybe more. Last week I told myself that the drama that had randomly cropped up was just too much and I wasn’t going to let tumblr be something that made me cry or panic or kept me up at night over bullshit like arguing with someone over things that happened years ago. So I set my focus on my friends, on my dashboard, on reminding myself why I love RP and why I’ve been in it for this many years, for so long, with all of these people. Those Valentines I posted were part of that project for me. It was a reminder, for myself and my dash about all of the human connection that happens here, all the people we meet, all the little pieces of each other we take on and take with us, all the ships, all the conversations, however brief. From the people we just see on our dash to the ones we talk to about all our fears and insecurities. And how all of it matters.
I know how much we all love to say calm down gregg, it’s tumblr RP. I know how we all loathe this hellsite when we’re being our worst. I know how we all talk about how we’re too old for this now or we’re tired. We’re just here to write. I’m just here to write. I love writing. But what brings us all back time and time again, what keeps us here is the fact that it’s not just tumblr RP. It’s a community. Whether you have a real life that keeps you busy or your whole life is here, whether you have plenty of friends offline or all your closes people live on discord, we’re all people. And we all take this with us. We make friendships and we talk to each other. We open ourselves up to the constant trust and fear of interaction, of plotting, of who is going to reach out or send the meme. We build friendships based on that, we care for each other, we see each other’s bad days on the dash, and great days and inspiration. And it means something. It may just be tumblr RP, but it matters to us. Because of the people here, because we give a fuck about each other. Or at least I’ve always liked to hope we do. I have friends on this website I’ve had for ten years, some just for 3, and others just a few months. It always floors me how we can always come back to it, how we stick with each other or don’t, how we see the good and the bad and the ugly.
So to get on with it, I wrote those Valentines. I hit refresh on my blog and put the weird random drama in the past and moved forward. I made this blog for JJ only about 3 months ago. I don’t know how I got 500 followers in that short time but I did. And it’s. been the wildest experience I can possibly explain, having that happen so quickly, finding so many people out in the RPC that I hadn’t before on my other blogs. I felt fucking good. I was excited. Not just to write a character I had wanted to and loved for years but to find so many people who I vibed with. I remember writing a post about a month in and being so fucking ... floored. By how much I loved you all, by how amazing it was to be received like that still, to find people my age and who wrote things I liked and loved their female characters. I fucking love JJ. I LOVE THE SHIT out of my partners on this blog, even the new people I’m still itching to write with. And yet, I did that little refresh, posted my valentines , got ready to go and felt .... sad.
I tried to explain it. I tried to tell myself it was a bad mood. I hoped maybe it was medication. But I couldn’t shake the weird funk. And everywhere I looked it seemed like things were .... not good. My friends taking breaks, people feeling sad too, relationships splitting, people I liked and respected separating themselves. Tonight, one of my closest friends I’ve made on this blog blocked me. Someone I adored and trusted and absolutely loved to write with. Tumblr says we’re not supposed to care. That we’re supposed to let people draw their lines in the sand and take their leave and maybe we are. Maybe it’s important to let people make their choices. But I also think it’s important as fuck to talk to your friends, to mean what you say when you tell someone they’re important to you. I think it’s important that we remember on the other side of every blog and discord user is a person. Who has bad days and bad feelings and cries and feels insecure and tells themselves it’s just tumblr RP even when they know somehow it feels heavier when it’s bad. This was a friend I had talked to at length about all of those exact things, about how personal the community can feel sometimes, about feeling replaceable or invisible, even for the toughest most confident most take no shit people. I’ve always considered myself a pretty tough, confident, take no shit person. I think anyone who has known me for as many years as I’ve been around has seen that first hand. I don’t like how sad I’ve felt lately. I don’t like the insecurity that’s making me want to know why things feel way or why people vanish without so much as an explanation. I had to block a mutual last week I saw making fun of me on their twitter. A mutual. Someone who chose to follow me and on a public place where my other friends could see it made fun of what I posted. And I just don’t know what we’re doing anymore. It didn’t bother me. I don’t have hurt feelings over it. That’s the kind of stuff I definitely know I’m confident about. But .... it did really fucking floor me. Because here we are, on a sight where users talk about positivity and not sending anon hate, and we can treat each other like that.
I’ve been sitting up in bed for hours trying to figure out what to say or what to do. That’s what I do I guess. I try to figure out what to do, how we fix it, like somehow there’s some unified we and some responsibility to make things better. A lot of you have only known me for a few months so this probably sounds all kinds of nuts. And you’re probably going JJ you’ve been an emotional mess since the moment we met you. Because I feel like that’s how it’s been for the last few months. But that’s not how it’s always been for me. That’s not who I am. So for now I guess I’m just trying to figure out what I do. Instead of sitting here and spinning and trying to figure out how we as a community fix these gaping holes and the way we talk about each other like we’re disposable and treat each other like names on a list instead of people.
For now, I think what I do is take a little break. It’s the very thing I don’t want to do. Because it feels like quitting and it feels like being scared away. So I feel the need to promise whoever has read all of this and myself that that’s not what it is. Maybe I’ll be back in two days, maybe two weeks, who knows. But I need a break. From whatever this feeling is that seems to have come over things lately. I’ve loved these few months on this blog so much. And maybe that’s half the problem. Maybe I got spoiled and this is the come down. Maybe I’m just an idiot who thinks what we all want on this website is to find people and love each other and write together. I never knew that me -- the person often accused of being aloof and feelingsless and distant would somehow turn into the emotional bitch on this website but here we are I guess. I just don’t know how to navigate this anymore. I don’t know how to put my heart into relationships and friendships that can just be switched off like we can just stop caring about people. I don’t know how to ignore people who say horrible things and do horrible things to each other just because we don’t want to see it on our dashes. I don't know how to give enough of everything to everyone so that every single one of my mutuals and partners knows they’re valuable to me. I don’t know what I hope to accomplish. I don’t know when I got to be so much of a raw, frayed edge on tumblr dot com but that’s how I feel. And I hope in a few days or sometime soon I’ll have an answer or at least get my hard shell back.
I want to keep writing. I want to keep talking to you guys. I don’t want to lose anyone. I truly mean what I say when I say you’re all important to me. I plan to still be around on discord. I’ll write on discord if anyone wants to keep writing. If we aren’t discord friends yet and you want to be, send a message. I plan to come back. I don’t want to abandon anything. I’m so deeply fucking sorry for this rant, for all the overflow of feelings lately, for anyone that’s had to listen to them, for putting them on your dashes, for fucking all of it. Please be good to each other. Please talk to each other. Please remember that if we’ve crossed paths at any point on this blog, I value you. I value all of your friendships, your writing, your shitposts, your dash commentary, your tiktoks you dump at me on discord. I love you. Every last fucking one of you.
#💛✌🏼💛✌🏼💛✌🏼💛✌🏼💛✌🏼✌🏼✌🏼💛#i am dead fucking serious please feel free to stay in touch i just#need my dash closed for a while#message me if you want my discord
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Hii!!! Welcome to the adventures of Carl and Vera!
So, this somehow grew into an AU of sorts featuring Carlbot from the @bob-events Discord, and Vera, a worm OC that was created. All of the art is done by the lovely @lyselkatz and the writing is done by me, @kmorecoffee.
Feel free to send asks or prompts and contribute your headcanons and creations.
They are both in Easy Company. Vera Annelida Lowly is a nurse with and Carl Abbott Testu is a medic. They time travel together and cause chaos while fighting the war with Easy Co. Vera and Carl met at Bastogne Nuts weekend festival.
Carl likes to hoard sugar and anything else he can get his hands on.
Sobel took a liking to Carl immediately and feeds him sugar whenever possible. When Sobel is transferred, Carl finds comfort in Nixon's footlocker. Nix knew something was off about Carl from the beginning, but couldn't prove it.
Carl occasionally also smuggles Vat 69 for Nix throughout the war. His favorite magazine is Titter, which he snuck in. Everything stays hidden in Carl's shell, of course. (Where else would he hide it?)
Muck and Penkala also take a liking to Carl as does Babe. Babe will carry Carl around in his pocket while Carl's scouting for snipers. And while running Currahee, Carl enjoys the view from Skip's pocket.
#welcome to carl and vera's adventures!#carl abbott testu#vera annelida lowly#band of brothers#band of brothers oc#discord chaos!
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The Dreaming (2018) in a nut shell
Full plot of The Dreaming (2018 run). This is copied and pasted from a Discord conversation because I didn’t feel like repeating myself... That’s also why it’s a bit disjointed.
I'll explain the whole plot as best I can, bear with me.
There's this monstress named Dora living in The Dreaming, and she's got a chip on her shoulder since Morpheus had once promised her she'd never have to be afraid ever again and that was shortly before The Kindly Ones. Anyway, she's been haunting the dream of this woman dying of throat cancer (revealed to be Rose's mother). Daniel goes MIA and doesn't seem to want to be found.
Suddenly these "blanks" generic looking humanoid enterities start pouring in from cracks in the dreaming. Mervyn invents a racial slur for them of Soggies (totally not "wet backs").
While Daniel is gone Judge Gallows (another old DC horror host) takes over The Dreaming and promises to make The dreaming great again.
Dora befriends one of the blanks who is very child-like and names him Ziggy.
Merv starts penning them up on behalf of Judge Gallows and even attempts to lynch Ziggy.
Merv has a grudge. Shortly before Judge Gallows took over Lucien used the helm to un-create Merv's friends right on the steps of the caslte and it was implied to be out of spite
("I did warn you." - said by Lucien). It's a "They took our jobs" thing, apparently. The blanks are more efficient. No immigration metaphors here, nope.
Lucien is apparently slowly losing his mind / going senile. He can't remember anything. Eventually Judge Gallows gets defeated and replaced with this weird AI, yes an AI named Wan. WAN, as it turns out was created by this character who looks suspiciously like Steve Jobs. Actual character name: Hyperion Keter.
Totally not Steve Jobs had a nightmare decades before where Dora was attacking him. he had confronted her in the dream and told her she's not real. This caused her to have an existential crisis and flee into The Dreaming where Morpheus had tended to her and sealed her own memories to protect her mind. He also hid the newly re-created ruby dreamstone inside her to aid her until she no longer needed it.
Steve Jobs-Knock-off guy creates Wan with the intention of invading and conquering The dreaming. He thinks all the ills of humanity come from dreams. Greed, superstition, religious zealousness. Oh, by the way, Judge Gallows heavily indicates that Morpheus caused the civil war and holocaust by creating him (Judge Gallows) to prey on man's fear of "The other".
So anyway, while that was going on Daniel was playing human and dating Ivy.
Steve Jobs sends some occultists to steal a lock of Ivy's hair to control her. Ivy gets upset when Daniel won't let her tattoo him since she's a tattoo artist. (that's where I grew to hate her). She doesn’t accept no means no with his bodily autonomy. Daniel apologizes to her and proposes marriage. He gives her an emerald ring.
The occultists (working out of Fawny Rig) control Ivy and she gives Daniel a dream catcher / tree of life tattoo that works as a geas to bar him from The Dreaming and prevent him from calling out for help.
Ivy tries to "apologize" by giving him a cup of tea but it turns out to be poisoned. Desire (or what appears to be Desire, it might be posthumous Morpheus in disguise, the face is always partly hidden and he's very thin) warns Rose of what's going on and Rose slaps the drink from Daniel's hand but he's already had a taste. Daniel, freaks the f--k out.
A dog walker eats his own fingers right there on the beach. Someone screams until their vocal chords burst in their throat. Daniel is maming and mutilating right and left (and this is NOT where those partiers were killed, that was earlier and said very nonchalantly during the dating montage. Daniel made some drunk bachelor party guys who cat called Ivy walk into the ocean and drown... I think he killed the entire party...)
Daniel finds the occultists and traps them all in terrible nightmare half-concious states but still weakened and unable to return to The Dreaming he goes to apologize to Ivy, knowing she was being controlled but it's too late, she's ODed and brain dead.
He takes her soul with him to flee to another universe.
Dora, meanwhile, gets a hold of Destruction's sword, briefly meets up with Nuala (who has learned Titania's true name thanks to Daniel stopping by for help with the fae). Daniel gets the egg that Titania has from back during the original Books of Magic, this is the "Mundane Egg" able to open or create another universe.
Anyway, back in The Dreaming Wan (the AI) is trying to run things and doesn't know it has a secret dark side programming to destroy the place.
Wan legitimately wants to do good and blacks out when the other side takes over. An AI with a split personality. Wan talks Abel into taking the initiative and kill Cain...
Cain does not revive.
Wan also digitizes the entire dreaming library because of Lucien's memory problems. Lucien decides he wants to die.
Abel scooped out Matthew's eyes with a spoon and gives him his own eyes so Matthew can see what he sses, the secret that Wan is destroying The Dreaming.
Matthew with giant human eyes sticking out of his tiny raven head, Abel (whose eyes grow back), and Dora, head out to save the dreaming.
Cain, meanwhile, his soul was uploaded into an AI at the home of Not-Steve Jobs. So he's there. The heroes make their way there and learn the story of why things are happening. Poor not-Steve Jobs was dying of cancer (this was really tasteless to model him after Steve jobs). And Daniel briefly came to him, showing him what he was destroying in destroying The Dreaming, Hyperion tried to set things right but his own minion stopped him.
Dora shows up and accidentally shuts down Steve's life support system.
Rose gets told more exposition dump from "Desire" (I'm telling you, there are clues it's actually Morpheus)
She hijacks a bus to get to Steve Jobs' place.
Here we discover the re-created ruby dream stone was inside Dora the whole time. Lucien, meanwhile, had tried to be re-abosrbed into The Dreaming with the help of his dream friends (eve, Merv, etc). And he has a brief visit with Death who introduces him to Steve Jobs and gives him a special book that has all of Lucien's lost memories.
Dora returns to The dreaming with the dream stone, and her, Lucien, and the other dream folk are able to summon Daniel back, breaking the geas spell he was under (Ivy is left behind).
Dora is a Night Hag, by the way. That was her big secret besides having the ruby in her. They kept harping on how special she was, that she wasn't like the others in the Dreaming. ...she was a Night hag, that's it. They kept going on about her being special, this big secret, she's a night hag. Eve delviers a line I cannot forgive. She says something like "We were worried he only kept us around out of laziness or loneliness. We were wrong." They were HAPPY they were there as a failsafe, as tools in case he got captured again in the waking world. They would rather be tools than for someone to want them around out of loneliness?! Daniel uncreates Wan but as Wan begns to fade the good side of Wan helps Daniel set things right and apologizes for its other personality. Daniel erases Rose's memory of the entire adventure (which I think is bullshit). She lost her f--king daughter, you asshole! And Lucien learns to be 'More assertive" and when Daniel requests he come to the throne room so he can thank them formally Lucien says no, because he's drinking with Dora.
"character growth" TM
hated Simon's run of The Dreaming but not as much as I hate Caitlin R. Kiernan's.
Dreaming Waking Hours is about a Nightmare named Ruin who escapes to the waking world because he's fallen in love with a mortal. It's so much better but all the events of Simon's Dreaming are still canon so that's a problem.
The villain being modeled after Steve Jobs even if he sees the error of his ways in the end was totally tasteless.
My hands ache from writing all that out...
Oh, and Cain is back to normal (for him) he and Abel took turns in a sort of tag team tormenting the tech support for Wan, via nightmares. So they couldn't intervene in stopping the destruction of the AI. That was actually a fun scene. "There will be no tech support today." Cain shows up with a chainsaw.
Also the reason "not Steve Jobs" knew about Dream was because he found a journal from an occultist at a garage sale that described Morpheus' capture.
I think I'm still traumatized from reading it, especially the early issues where Merv was used as a Trump supporter allegory.
And Abel did give Matthew back his normal raven eyes while they were in Steve Job's house. Though don't ask me how Abel even did the initial eye surgery of putting his eyes in Matthew while he was blinded.
Someone tried telling me Simon Spurrier wasn't trying for a Republican metaphor, he was making a commentary on the Tories
How is that better?!?
It's still a very dated political reference.
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Wtf did I create. I can’t tell if this gets better or worse.
I- this this just the discord in a nut shell but I’m not going through the discord to find everybody’s tumblr that takes the effort I don’t have
Cover- https://youtu.be/9q2tLynR73w
Original song-https://youtu.be/FSXijk37oNs
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its 2:30am and i havent made much leeway on this paper but i just need to vent for a second yall
im sick of this shit
i had lower expectations for myself going into this year because of the [gestures vaguely] but man im sick of being the one whos expected to lower that because the system refuses to change or accommodate anything
what has online learning even been? i only have 2 classes that are actually synchronous,, the rest refuse to make accommodations for anything and essentially lay the blame on us if we cant basically teach ourselves the shit that we’re paying THEM to teach us
and what have we done, really? i havent absorbed shit. im too preoccupied with madly flailing in the ocean of bullshit that is online learning just to keep myself afloat to actually learn how to swim. you cant learn that safely without solid ground to retreat to and someone to pull you up in case something goes awry, and they just threw us in the middle of the pacific and blame us when we get saltwater in our lungs. My only goal this year academically is just to PASS, but its hard not to feel stupid when you have a prof who throws in 3 graded quizzes every week and refuses to give partial marks when you get SOME options on multi-option questions right. I’ll tick 3/4 of the options right, but it’ll mark the whole question as a 0. I’ve failed a lot of quizzes in that class that I would’ve done well on if he just gave partial marks. I got most of the answers right. Why are you perpetuating an all or nothing mentality right now? If you talk about how much you care about your students’ mental health in one more class email im gonna throw my whole laptop out the window. Fuck.
and that’s not an outlier. all of my classes are pulling this shit to some extent. Not that specific case, but... a million more assignments and readings than previous years and fuck all else. Total disregard of time spent per class per student because who gives a shit when it’s asynch, right? 60 pages of readings, minimum, screenings because I also study cinema, massive papers, and then 4-5 hours of lectures? All in one day? How many hours do you think are IN a day?! “noooo dont speed up your lectures you might miss vital points!” yeah and i cant get anything fucking DONE if i dont bump it to 2x speed. “make sure you get enough sleep!” on your schedule? 4 hours is my batting average. I closed my commission. I stopped my hobbyist writing, which is why y’all haven’t seen an AO3 update from me since August. I don’t draw anymore. I don’t read anymore. If I’m lucky I might have the mental energy after all this to play 15 minutes of Animal Crossing, but then I get a headache because it’s more. fucking. screen time. Don’t blame me for splitscreening my lecture and notes with discord or tumblr when you’ve consumed my existence to such an extent that I only get a reprieve when I sleep. God forbid I allow myself some fleeting sense of joy, for it may take away from the hammer slowly chiselling away at my psyche. I literally can’t afford to be burned out. But I am. And I’m tired, and I wanna lay down, and I wanna take a walk in a park again. I wanna sit down in the grass and read my book or listen to McElroy podcasts and toss nuts at the squirrels like I used to, and then forget about what I brought just to watch them for hours, like I used to.
Winter’s rolling in, though. Which means they’ll be hibernating until march. I really fucking hate the cold. I have 5 papers due in 2 weeks, all within 3 days of each other.
This isn’t even adding onto the fact that this is a psychologically damaging collective trauma that we’re all going through right now. This doesn’t even account for the mental shit I have that makes it that much harder to learn in standardized environments and that much harder to absorb material. I don’t feel like a person this year. I feel more like a shell.
How dare you charge me full tuition for this fucking bullshit. Take your fake concern about our mental health and shove it up your ass. If you really cared, you wouldn’t be charging me for memberships that are closed and slapping us with no-extension policies in the middle of a pandemic. Shove it up your ass. I should’ve gone to McGill
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Recipe Wednesday #41
Happy Holidays and Happy Recipe Wednesday!
These are real period recipes, taken from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a local newspaper that would have been accessible to Steve, his mother, and Bucky during their time in Brooklyn.
For the month of December, Recipe Wednesday is being extended to all month long with Christmas Treats!
The recipes come from the Saturday 18, Wednesday 22, Monday 27, and Thursday 30 December 1937 editions of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. For context, Steve would have been 17 (comics) / 19 (MCU), so these are recipes that Steve might have learnt/inherited from his mother or read himself in the newspaper.
A Holiday Eggnog
6 eggs
½ cup granulated sugar
3 quarts of milk
1 pint of cream
1 quart of whiskey
1 pint of rum
Beat the eggs in a chilled bowl until they are light and foamy. Add sugar, blending it in thoroughly. Add milk and cream and beat to a froth with a rotary egg beater. Then slowly add the whiskey and rum, beating continuously. Add a sprinkling of nutmeg. Place the bowl in a tub of ice until time for serving.
Fruit Punch
But you might not care for punch that strong. In that case make a fruit drink. Mixtures of the juices of several fruits are always good. Blend your own choices. Then give the concoction a little zip but filling the bowl with ginger ale or bubbling, charged water. Mix in pieces of fruit; they dress up the drink.
Egg Nog
Yolks of 6 eggs—beat until light. Beat ½ pound of sugar into eggs. Add 1 pint Victor Hugo Brandy (90 proof).
Stir continuously and add 1 quart milk. Whip ½ pint cream and stir in slowly. Sprinkle with nutmeg.
Decorative Ice Cubes
Whichever liquid you fill the bowl with, you should have a generous cake of ice floating on the surface. Use a plain chunk, if you choose, but arrange some sliced fruits, cherries and some green on top to dress it up. A better idea is to make your own cake of ice, freezing the decorations into it. You need a mechanical refrigerator for that.
Proceed thus: Take the cube partitions out of the large tray. Fill with cold water and chill it. When the water is half frozen, insert slices of candied fruits and preserved cherries, arranging them in some attractive pattern. Then when the block has frozen solid, float it in your punch.
Claret Punch
8 orange juiced
8 lemons, juiced
2 quarts pineapple juice
8 ounces granulated sugar
1 quart claret
2 quarts cracked ice
Combine fruit juices and sugar. Chill and add claret. Pour over ice. Garnish with cut fruits and mint.
Shrewsbury Cakes
½ cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1/8 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon lemon extract
½ teaspoon soda
2 cups flour
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon mace
½ cup buttermilk
Cream butter, add sugar, add beaten egg, and beat well. Sift dry ingredients and add alternately with the buttermilk to the first mixture. Add flavoring. Sprinkle with sugar and bake about 10 minutes in a moderately hot oven (400 F.).
To dress the cakes up a bit increase the buttermilk to ¾ cup. Spread dough on a buttered baking pan and bake as above. Then cut into fancy shapes, such as Christmas trees, stars and Santa Clauses. There are many recipes for Shrewsbury Cakes, but this is a particularly simple one. The cakes are delicious with milk or with hot chocolate, and they make excellent partners for ice cream.
Coconut Date Goodies
1 ½ tablespoons flour
½ cup sugar
1 cup shredded dates
1 ¼ cups shredded coconut
¼ cup cream
¼ teaspoon almond extract
¼ teaspoon orange extract
1 beaten egg white
Mix the flour with all but two tablespoons of the sugar. Stir in the dates and coconut. Add the cream and flavorings. Beat the egg white until frothy, add the remaining sugar and continue beating until stiff and dry. Fold this lightly into the mixture and bake on a well-buttered pan for 20 or 25 minutes in a slow oven (300 F.). Remove carefully while hot and place on rack to cool. These goodies may be called either candies or cookies. They are delicious with a glass of milk.
Holiday Apple Cups
2 cups McIntosh apple sauce
4 McIntosh apples
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 cup sugar
Mix 2 cups applesauce—the kind made from McIntosh apples has a lovely tinge—with 2 cups water, lemon juice, sugar, and freeze. Cut tops from McIntosh apples and scoop out as much plul as possible. Fill cups with frozen mixture, piling it in a mound. Decorate top of mound with green cherry and candied mint leaves or leaves of angelica.
Christmas Bread
1 yeast cake
3 tablespoons lukewarm milk
¼ cup sugar
½ cup butter
2 cups scalded milk
7 ½ cups flour
1 cup raisins
1 cup currents
1 cup candied fruit peel
3 eggs, beaten
Soften the yeast cake in 3 tablespoons of lukewarm milk. Add sugar and butter to scalded milk. Stir well. Cool to lukewarm. Add yeast and 4 cups of flour. Beat. Cover and let rise overnight. Add eggs and fruit to dough and add enough flour to knead (about 3 ½ cups). Knead dough until it is smooth and does not stick to board. Shape into buttered cake pans or buttered bread pans and let rise until double in bulk. Punch down lightly, sprinkle with sugar and let rise again. Bake in a moderately hot oven (400 F.) until the bread is done.
Spicy Baked Apples
6 Baldwin apples
1 ½ cups sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter
Blanched almonds
Pare and core Bladwin apples. Cook sugar in 2 ½ cups water for 3 minutes. Cook apples in this syrup until tender, turning frequently. Drain apples and place in baking dish. To sirup remaining in pan add butter and sugar and surrounding space in baking dish with sirup. Dot apples with almonds (6 to 8 to each apple) and bake in 450 degrees F. oven long enough to brown nut tips. Cool and serve with whipped cream.
Savory Apple Salad
A simple and savory salad that’s bound to be popular with your guests can be made quickly and easily. Just slice apples—Cortlands are best because they stay white even after being cup up—into rings, leaving the skin on. Spread each ring with softened cream cheese and place on a lettuce leaf. In the center of each ring place a date—sprinkle with nutmeats and serve.
Chestnut Stuffing (Bureau of Milk Publicity, Albany)
3 cups bread, crumbled
¼ cup butter, melted
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. pepper
3 tbsp. parsley, chopped
½ small onion, minced
3 tbsp. cream
1 lb. chestnuts
Mix ingredients in order given. Prepare chestnuts as follows: Drop them in boiling water for a few minutes to loosen shells. Remove shells and inner skin. Boil until tender. While still hot, run them through coarse sieve.
Mashed Potatoes (Bureau of Milk Publicity, Albany)
1 tbsp. butter, melted
2 tbsp. cream
¼ cup milk, scalded
6 medium-sized potatoes
Salt and papper
When potatoes are cooked, remove skins and mash with fork or wire potato masher. when free lumps add above quantities of butter, cream and milk to each of mashed potatoes. Beat until light and creamy.
Sting Beans en Creme (Bureau of Milk Publicity, Albany)
1 lb. string beans
Salt and pepper
2 tbsp. cream
Cut beans in short lengths and cook. When done, drain off water and pour on cream. Put cover on pan and shake beans up and down until they are covered with cream.
Ground Meat Logs
1 pound ground pork
1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground veal
2 eggs
3 teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
6 slices bacon
Have beef, pork and veal ground together. Combine with eggs and season with salt and pepper. Pat into thin rectangular cakes about ½-inch thick and as nearly 3- by 5-inch thick in size as possible. Spread with bread dressing [see below] and roll. Place in a baking pan and cover with thin bacon slices. Bake in a moderate oven (350 degrees F.) until done, about 1-hour. These may be served with tomato sauce, if desired.
“The meat logs may be served with potato chips, tiny burr pickles might be included to add to the tart flavor of the meal. A piquant or crisp vegetable salad or an escalloped vegetable dish might complete the main part of the meal. For a luncheon, fresh fruit makes a good dessert for dinner, perhaps you will want a baked dessert such as apple dumplings, which may be baked in t[he?] oven along with. meat rolls.”
Raisin Stuffing
3 cups small bread cubes
1 small onion, chopped
½ cup chopped celery
½ cup raisins
Salt and pepper
Meat stock to moisten
Combine bread crumbs with finely chopped onion and celery. Add raisins ands season with salt and pepper. Moisten with meat stock, enough to make a quite moist dressing. Spread on ground meat rectangles.
I’d love to hear if you try out any of these recipes! Take photos and I might post them on the blog.
Visit the Recipe Wednesday Masterpost for the all the Recipe Wednesday posts, and the Indexed Recipe Wednesday Masterpost for all the recipes broken down individually!
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This post is the result of meeting a Patreon Goal. Thank you to all my wonderful Patreon subscribers for enabling the return of the Recipe Wednesday posts!
#Steve Rogers#Christmas#Season#Holiday#Recipes#Christmas Recipes#1930s#1930s Recipes#Vintage#Vintage Recipes#Depression#Great Depression#depression era#Depression Era Food#Depression Era Recipes#historic new york#historically accurate#New York#brooklyn#Brooklyn Daily Eagle#newspapers#Bucky Barnes#captain america#Captain America: The First Avenger#captain america tfa#CAPTAIN AMERICA REFERENCE#fanfiction#fanfic#fanfic writing#Fanfic references
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