Coriolanus Snow's Visit to Dean Casca Highbottom + Highbottom's Death

—The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023)

Saw your posts about the inaccuracies of the gods and I was wondering if you had any recs/If you wrote any that feature the Gods that are more like the myths ? Or not as silly, I get why Rick wrote them as such considering its demographic but I would like something showing they aren’t human or good people.

// hope this isn’t too long I did try to shorten it I swear 😭

*squints* well uh- I do have a few recs where the Gods are actually treated respectfully... But uh- if you're looking for stories that villainize them this ain't the place for it. They are good, they are wonderful, they aren't *people* they're *Gods* but they're most certainly *good*.

If you're wanting ones where the Gods are treated right tho-

Continued below the cut

To Make a Legend Series- aka. ATLOP Verse by Me

Percy learned he wasn't a normal human on one ordinary day at the beach. First he thought he was a waterbender (like Master Katara), then he thought he was a demititan (why else would Triton be so worried about his parentage?), and then he was told he was a demigod. Now he's got to deal with the rising conflict and a war on the horizon while learning how to be a good prince of the sea.

This fic is a full fledged rewrite, including actual Hellenic practices, a pagan camp, lots of diversity, and properly treated Gods. I aim for accuracy as much as possible, and every chapter has quite a bit of research put into it. Latest chapter is very informative on funeral rites :)

Follows canon at the start, slowly snowballs away from canon.

Pray to the King, the Protector, the Murderer (Pray to Time) by Me

Kronos was a really interesting God, in Percy’s opinion. He was a Titan God who had killed his dad to take over, then ruled for a long time and created the Golden Age... before he ate his kids and they got revenge by cutting him up. Percy related to him though, not on the eating his kids part, but the part where Kronos murdered his own dad.

Percy very much wished he could murder Gabe. Kronos probably had loads of ideas for killing horrible (step)parents. And people prayed to Gods for help all the time, why not for help with murder?

Or: Percy starts worshipping Kronos as a kid, hoping for some advice on how to off Gabe. Kronos is happy to assist.

This one is more of a crack fic, but is also a love letter to Kronos (from me) lol. Percy worships Kronos, the Gods are mostly Rick verse but also not given much attention as the focus is on the dynamic between Percy and Kronos. Switching POV: Kronos and Percy.

Stories of the Futures Past by Me

The Fates have seen troubling times to come, and wish to correct wrongs before they are done. These wrongs are ancient though, and not even correcting the Gods could fix the crimes. Thus the Fates go back, to the times of the Titans. And with some hand-picked heroes, and a set of books, they hope to prevent the mistakes of the future from occurring again.

Titans read the books with the kids.

A read the books fic I desperately need to update. The readers end up in the Titans time, with no guarantee of returning home. Showcases as accurate as possible portrayals of the Titans and ancient practices (books are Rick canon and thus not proper to them but the Titans call it out).

You Will See Me Thrive by Me

Percy Jackson has struggled his whole life handling pain, having Rheumatoid Arthritis would do that to a person, but he's always had his mom there for him. Now he's been thrown into the world of the Gods, and his mom is gone.

Just when he thought it couldn't get any worse he got claimed by Poseidon, who's being accused of a theft. What a fun time proving him innocent will be.

While I will be sticking with a more canon esque portrayal of camp, Percy is a Pagan and worships the Gods and the Gods themselves will be portrayed properly. Showcasing a lot of the subtle ways the Gods act in ones life, and a disabled Percy struggled extra hard to deal with demigod life.

I may be a dumbass but I'm not stupid by @izzymrdb

Percy may be oblivious, but he eventually figures out that something up when the fish start talking.

And when the only available conclusion to all the evidence he's gathered is that he's the son of a god, what will he do?

Izzy is a classics major and while this fic is effectively on hiatus, it is one of my absolute favorites. Amazing portrayals of the Gods, further divergence from canon, exploration of Hellenic practices.

And I will swallow my pride (in hopes of a final goodbye) by IzzyMRDB

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep." ~Robert Frost

-

Rhea thought the fight was over when she handed Luke that blade. The war she fought for others was over. She was wrong.

Now a thousand miles and a thousand years from home, all alone with just the ghost of a curse to accompany her in her travels, she will only fight for the wars she chooses.

-

"I promise."

It tastes like a lie, but I know I’ll do my best to fulfill it. How am I to make the gods listen when they don’t even know who I am?

Fem!Percy time travel to the past AU. Fairly accurate to history and mythology in culture, with some liberties, very engaging and Rhea has a lot of interesting adventures. Perpollo, with misunderstandings abound (but in a very fun way).

Red Tide by @alicekumori

Red tide: A phenomenon caused by algal blooms during which algae become so numerous that they discolor coastal waters (hence the name "red tide"). The algal bloom may also deplete oxygen in the waters and/or release toxins that may cause illness in humans and other animals.

Olympians may be forbidden from interfering directly in their children's lives, but nothing is stopping them from dropping in on the rest. After losing to Percy Jackson on the beach in Los Angeles, Ares' reputation has suffered a downfall, so the War God figured that if rumors are going to spread, he was going to at least make sure they believed he lost to a mighty warrior.

Or an AU where Ares decides to train Percy Jackson into the warrior he was always meant to be because there is no way in Hades he's going to let people think he was taken down by such a scrawny twig.

A delightful fic all but dedicated to Ares which, while slow to update, is always a delight. Good portrayal of Ares, expected good portrayal of other Gods to come.

Here's some selections, most by me as I don't read a whole lot of PJO fics rn. I have a few others I like, but they aren't necessarily... True to the Gods. This is a nice variety of genres and styles of writing so you should find something to enjoy.

Hey! I hope you feel better soon

We haven't had a good long linguistics rant from you in a while!! How about you tell us about your favourite lingustical feature or occurrence in a language? Something like a weird grammatical feature or how a language changed

If this doesn't trigger any rant you have stored feel free to educate on any topic you can spontaneously think of, I'd love to hear it :D

ALRIGHT KARO, let's go!! This is a continuation of the other ask I answered recently, and is the second part in a series about linguistic complexity. I suggest you check that one out first for this to properly make sense! (I don't know how to link but uh. it's the post behind this on my blog)

Summary of previous points: the complexity of a language has nothing to do with the 'complexity' of the people that speak it; complexity is really bloody hard to measure; some linguists in an attempt to be not racist argue that 'all languages are equally complex', but this doesn't really seem to be the case, and also still equates cognitive ability with complexity of language which is just...not how things work; arguing languages have different amounts of complexity has literally nothing to do with the cognitive abilities of those who speak it.

Ok. Chinese.

Normally when we look at complexity we like to look at things like number of verb classes, noun classes, and so on. But Chinese doesn't really do any of this.

So what do Chinese and languages like Chinese do that is so challenging to the equicomplexity hypothesis, the idea that all languages are equally complex? I’ll start by talking about some of the common properties of isolating languages - and these properties are often actually used as examples of why these languages are as complex, just in different ways. Oh Melissa, I hear you ask in wide-eyed admiration/curiousity. What are they? By isolating languages, I mean languages that tend to have monosyllabic words, little to no conjugation, particles instead of verb or noun endings, and so on: so languages like Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai and many others in East and South East Asia.

Here’s a list of funky things in isolating languages that may or may not make a language more complex than linguists don't really know what to do with:

Classifiers

Chengyu and 4-word expressions

Verb reduplication, serialisation and resultative verbs

'Lexical verbosity' = complex compounding and word forming strategies

Pragmatics

Syntax

I'll talk about the first two briefly, but I don't have space for all. For clarity of signposting my argument: many linguists use these as explanations of why languages like Chinese are as complex, but I'm going to demonstrate afterwards why the situation is a bit more complicated than that. You could even say it's...complex.

1) Classifiers

You know about classifiers in Chinese, but what you may be interested to learn is that almost all isolating languages in South East Asia use them, and many in fact borrow from each other. The tonal, isolating languages in South East Asia have historically had a lot of contact through intense trade and migration, and as such share a lot of properties. Some classifiers just have to go with the noun: 一只狗，一条河 etc. First of all, if we're defining complexity as 'the added stuff you have to remember when you learn it' (my professors hate me), it's clear that these are added complexity in exactly the same way gender is. Why is it X, and not Y? Well, you can give vague answers ('it's sort of...ribbony' or 'it's kinda...flat'), but more often than not you choose the classifier based on the vibe. Which is something you just have to remember.

Secondly, many classifiers actually have the added ability to modify the type of noun they're describing. These are familiar too in languages like English: a herd of cattle versus a head of cattle. So we have 一枝花 which is a flower but on a stem ('a stem of flower'), but also 一朵花 which is a flower but without the stem (think like...'a blob of flower'). Similarly with clouds - you could have a 一朵云 'blob of cloud' (like a nice, fluffy cloud in a children's book), but you could also have 一片云 which is like a huge, straight flat cloud like the sea...and so on. These 'measure words' do more than measure: they add additional information that the noun itself does not give.

Already we're beginning to see the outline of the problem. Grammatical complexity is...well, grammatical. We count the stuff which languages require you to express, not the optional stuff - and that's grammar. The difference between better and best is clearly grammatical, as is go and went. But what about between 'a blob of cloud' versus 'a plain of cloud'? Is that grammatical? Well, maybe: you do have to include a measure word when you say there's one of it, and in many Chinese languages that are not Mandarin you have to include them every single time you use a possessive: my pair of shoes, my blob of flower etc. But you don't always have to include one specific classifier - there are multiple options, all of which are grammatical. So should we include classifiers as part of the grammar? Or part of the vocabulary (the 'lexicon')?

Err. Next?

2) Chengyu and 4-character expressions + 4) Lexical verbosity

This might seem a bit weird: these are obviously parts of the vocab! What's weirder, though, is that many isolating languages have chengyu, not just Chinese. And if you don't use them, many native speakers surveys suggest you don't sound native. This links to point number 4, which is lexical verbosity. 'Lexical verbosity' means a language has the ability to express things creativity, in many different manners, all of which may have a slightly different nuance. The kind of thing you love to read and analyse and hate to translate.

But it is important. If we look at the systems that make up the grand total of a language, vocabulary is obviously one of them: a language with 1 million root forms is clearly more 'complex', if all else is exactly the same, than a language with 500,000. Without even getting into the whole debacle about 'what even is a word', a language that has multiple registers (dialect, regional, literary, official etc) that all interact is always going to be more complex than one that doesn't, just because there's more of it. More rules, more words, more stuff.

Similarly, something that is the backbone of modern Chinese 'grammar' and yet you may never have thought of as such is is compound words. We don't tend to traditionally teach this as grammar, and I don't have time to give a masterclass on it now, but let me assure you that compounding - across the world's language - is hugely varied. Some languages let you make anything a compound; some only allow noun+noun compounds (so no 'blackbird', as black is an adjective); some only allow head+head compound (so no 'sabretooth', because a sabretooth is a type of tiger, not tooth); some only allow compounds one way ('ring finger' but not 'finger ring': though English does allow the other way around in some other words), and so on.

You'll have heard time and time again that 'Chinese is an isolating language, and isolating languages like monosyllabic words'. Well. Sort of. You will also have noticed yourself that actually most modern Chinese words are disyllabic: 学习，工作，休息，吃饭 and so on. This is radically different to Classical Chinese, where the majority were genuinely one syllable. But many Chinese speakers still have access to the words in the compounds, and so they can be manipulated on a character-by-character basis: most adults will be able to look at 学习 and understand that 学 and 习 both exist as separate words: 开学，学生，复习，练习 and so on.

I'm going to sort of have to ask you to take my word on it as I don't have time to prove how unique it is, but the ability that Chinese has to turn literally anything into a compound is staggering. It's insane. It's...oh god I'm tearing up slightly it's just a LOT guys ok. It's a lot. There are 20000000 synonyms for anything you could ever want, all with slightly different nuances, because unlike many other languages, Chinese allows compounds where the two bits of the compound mean, largely speaking, very similar things. So yes, you have compounds like 开学 which is the shortened version of 开始学习, or ones with an object like 吃饭 or 睡觉, but you also have compounds like 工作 where both 工 and 作 kind of...mean 'to work'...and 休息 where both 休 and 息 mean 'to rest'...and so on. So you can have 感 and 情 and 爱 and 心 but also 感情 and 情感 and 爱情 and 情爱 and 心情 and 心爱 and 爱心 and so on, and they all mean different things. And don't even get me started on resultative verbs: 学到，学会，学好，学完， and so on...

What is all of this, if not complex? It's not grammatical - except that the process of compound forming, that allows for so many different compounds, is grammatical. We can't make the difference between学会，学好 and 学完 anywhere near as easily in English, and in Chinese you do sort of have to add the end bit. So...do we count this under complexity? And if not, we should probably count it elsewhere? Because it's kind of insane. And learners have to use it, much like the example I gave of English prepositions, and it takes them a bloody long time. But then where?

Ok. I haven't had a chance to talk about everything, but you get the picture: there are things in Chinese that, unlike European languages, do not neatly fit into the 'grammar' versus 'vocabulary' boxes we have built for ourselves, because as a language it just works very differently to the ones we've used as models. (Though some of the problems, in fact, are similar: German is also very adept at compounding.) But as interesting as that difference is, the goal of typology as a sub-discipline of linguistics is to talk about and research the types of linguistic diversity around the world, so we can't stop there by acknowledging our models don't fit. We have to go further. We have to stop, and think: What does this mean for the models that we have built?

This is where we get into theoretically rather boggy ground. We weren't before?? No, like marsh of the dead boggy. Linguists don't know it...they go round, for miles and miles and miles....

Because unfortunately there isn't a clear answer. If we dismiss these things as 'lexical' and therefore irrelevant to the grammar, that is a) ignoring their grammatical function, b) ignoring the fact that the lexicon is also a system that needs to be learnt, and has often very clear rules on word-building that are also 'grammatical', and c) essentially playing a game of theoretical pass-the-parcel. It's your problem, not mine: it's in the lexicon, not the grammar. Blah blah blah. Because whoever's problem it is, we still have to account for this complexity somehow when we want to compare literally any languages that are substantially different at all.

On the other side of things, however, if we argue that 'Chinese is as complex as Abkhaz, because it makes up for a lack of complexity in Y by all this complexity in X' (and therefore all languages = equally complex), this ignores the fact that compounding and irregular verbs belong to two very different systems. The kind of mistake you make when you use the wrong classifier intuitively seems to be on another level of 'wrongness' to the kind where you conjugate a verb in the wrong way. One is 'wrong'. The other is just 'not what we say'. It's the same as the use of prepositions in English: some are obviously wrong (I don't sleep 'at my bed') but some are just weird, and for many there are multiple options ('at the weekend', 'on the weekend'). Is saying 'I am on the town' the same level of wrongness as saying 'I goed to the shops'? Intuitively we might want to say the second is a 'worse' mistake. In which case, what are they exactly? They're both 'grammar', but totally different systems. And where do you draw the line?

Here's the thing about the equicomplexity argument. As established, it stems from a nice ideological background that nevertheless conflates cognition and linguistic complexity. Once you realise that no, the two are completely separate, you're under no theoretical or ideological compulsion to have languages be equally complex at all. Why should they be at all? Some languages just have more stuff in them: some have loads of vowels, and loads of consonants, and some have loads of grammar. Others have less. They all do basically the same job. Why is that a big deal?

Where the argument comes into its biggest problem, though, is that if a language like Chinese is already as complex as a language like Abkhaz...what happens when we meet Classical Chinese?

Classical Chinese. An eldritch behemoth lurking with tendrils of grass-style calligraphy belching perfect prose just behind the horizon.

Let's look at Modern Chinese for a moment. It has some particles: six or so, depending on how you count them. You could include these as being critical to the grammar, and they are.

A common dictionary of Classical Chinese particles lists 694.

To be fair, a lot of these survive as verbs, nouns and so on. Classical Chinese was very verb-schmerb when it came to functional categories, and most nouns can be verbs, and vice versa. It's all just about the vibe. But still. Six hundred and ninety four.

Some of these are optional - they're the nice 'omggg' equivalent of the modern tone particles at the end of a sentence. Some of them are smushed versions of two different particles, like 啦. Some of these, however, really do seem to have very grammatical features. Of these 694, 17 are listed as meaning ‘subsequent to and later than X’, and 8 indicate imposition of a stress upon the word they precede or follow. Some are syntactic: there are, for instance, 8 different particles solely for the purpose of fronting information: 'the man saw he'. That is very much a grammatical role, in every sense of the word.

The copula system ('to be') is also huuuuuuugely complex. I could write a whole other post about this, but I'll just say for now that the copula in Classical Chinese could be specific to degrees of logical preciseness that would make the biggest Lojban-loving computer programmer weep into his Star Trek blanket. As in, the system of positive copulas distinguishes between 6 different polar-positive copulas (A is B), 2 insistent positive (A is B), 19 restricted positive (A is only B), and 15 of common inclusion (A is like B). Some other copulas can make such distinctions as ‘A becomes or acts as B’, ‘A would be B’, ‘may A not be B?’ and so on. Copulas may also be used in a sort of causal way (not 'casual'), creating very specific relationships like ‘A does not merely because of B’ or ‘A is not Y such that B is X’.

WHEW. And all we have in modern Chinese is 是。

I think we can see that this is a little more complex. So saying 'Modern Chinese is as complex as Abkhaz, just in a different way' leaves no space for Classical Chinese to be even more complex...so....where does that leave us?

Uhhhhhh. Errrrrr.

(Don't worry, that's basically where the entire linguistics community is at too.)

The thing is, all these weird and wacky things that Classical Chinese is able to do are all optional. This is where the problem is. Our understanding of complexity, if you hark back to my last post so many moons ago, is that it's the description of what a language requires you to do. We equate that with grammar because in most of the languages we're familiar with, you can't just pick and choose whether to conjugate a verb or use a tense. If you are talking in third person, the verb has to change. It just...does. You can't not do it if you feel like it. There's not such thing as 'poetic license' - except in languages like Classical Chinese, well. There sort of is.

The problem both modern Chinese and Classical Chinese shows us to a different extent is that some languages are capable of highly grammatical things, but with a degree of optionality we would not expect. Classical Chinese can accurately stipulate to the Nth degree what, exactly, the grammatical relationship between two agents are in a way that is undoubtedly and even aggressively logical. But...it doesn't have to. As anybody who has tried anything with Classical Chinese knows, reading things without context is an absolute fucking nightmare. As a language it has the ability to also say something like 臣臣 which in context means 'when a minister acts as a minister'...but literally just means...minister minister. Go figure. It doesn't have to do any of these myriad complex things it's capable of at all.

So...what does this mean? What does all of this mean, for the question of whether all languages are equally complex?

Whilst I agree that the situation with Classical Chinese is fully batshit insane, the fact is most isolating languages are more like Modern Chinese: they don't do all of this stuff. And whilst classifiers and compounds are challenging, they're not quite the same as the strict binary correct/incorrect of many systems. I'm also just not convinced that languages need to be equally complex. However.

HOWEVER. In this essay/rant/lecture (?), I've raised more questions than I've answered. That's deliberate. I both think that a) the type of complexity Chinese shows is not 'enough' to work as a 'trade off' compared to languages like Abkhaz, and b) that this 'grammatical verbosity' and optionality of grammatical structures is something we don't know how to deal with at all. These are two beliefs that can co-exist. Classical Chinese especially is a huge challenge to current understandings of complexity, whichever side of the equicomplexity argument you stand on.

Because where do you place optionality in all of this? Choice? If a certain structure can express something grammatical, but you don't have to include it - is that more complex, or less so? Where do we rank optional features in our understanding of grammar? It's a totally new dimension, and adds a richness to our understanding that we simply wouldn't have got if we hadn't looked at isolating languages. This, right here, is the point of typology: to inform theory, and challenge it.

What do we do with this sort of complexity at all?

I don't know. And I don't think many professional linguists do either.

- meichenxi out

A List Of (Mostly TMA) Fic Recs Sorted By Vibe

Not an exhaustive list by any means, just a few favourites that caught my fancy. I shortened many of the summaries for space.

I’m going to pin this here and update it as I go.

Also, I’m pensivetense on ao3

MELANCHOLY VIBES

for when you want to feel comfortably muted

(sad but not utterly bleak endings here)

Hope, Etc. (Dickenson, et al.) by yellow_caballero

Jonathan Sims, six months after the Unknowing, wakes to find himself without a daemon - without humanity, without a soul. It’s a cursed half-life, but existence as a shell without a heart isn’t so bad: between solving the mystery of a persistent illusion cast over his friends and some light pseudo-cannibalism, a life as a monster is better than no life at all. At least, it would be, if it wasn’t for the fucking Owl.

A freaking. Amazing. Daemon au. Ties the lore of Dust with TMA lore very satisfyingly, but is mostly about Jon navigating what it means to be human, or, in the absence of that, a person, and doesn’t require prior knowledge of His Dark Materials. Cannot recommend highly enough.

after one long season of waiting by nuinuijiaojiao

Annabelle is not used to having nice things. or, Annabelle heads to Upton House, muses a little, and gets some well-deserved rest

I love survivalist Annabelle and also the concept of the Web as kind of a horrible Patron, actually.

i love you. I want us both to eat well. by SmallishWormMasterOfTheUniverse

At the safehouse with Martin, Jon decides it's time to quit statements once and for all. The Eye disagrees. Martin just needs Jon to be okay. It's quite possible that nobody is going to get what they want.

Scottish Safehouse Era, Jon and Martin coping with their respective Entities... really, really good.

the friend by doomcountry

He always greets a new spider when he meets it. It’s instinct, born in childhood, the same way he instinctively counts magpies, or flicks salt over his left shoulder. A little harmless superstition. A bit of politesse.

A great Martin character study with eldritch spider horror included. The imagery regularly haunts me (in a good way).

autumn’s rare gift by bee_bro

Annually, the two meet, renewing the binding ritual where it had all started. The procedure simple: a waltz.

Singlehandedly made me ship Gertrude/Agnes so there’s that. It’s so bittersweet and bee_bro’s writing is, as always, incredibly poetic. (I’d recommend everything they write, actually.)

smile, you’re trending by Goodluckdetective

During an encounter with another Avatar of the Eye, Jon faces his past, Martin takes a turn at playing Kill Bill and Basira has a second look at the monster she’s determined to see. For three people associated with the Eye, they could all use some perspective.

Features an original Eye Avatar character who’s a YouTube personality; she is infuriating and inspired and genuinely frightening and I cannot say enough good things.

Humility by The_Lionheart

have you no idea that you're in deep?/i've dreamt about you nearly every night this week,/how many secrets can you keep?

An OC centric story but don’t let that put you off, it’s amazing. Very heavily focused around Jonah Magnus and the other Avatars as they change through the years. Also, I’d die for the OC.

oh, for one sweet second without the eye series by faedemon

Beholding does not like in the way humans do, but it likes its Archivist all the same.

I’m just so fond of the way this is done stylistically. I have a great weakness for dialogue only/dialogue heavy writing, not to mention all of the wonderful character beats and interplay of humanity/inhumanity for Jon and Melanie.

Rewind by WhyNotFly

It takes eight days of forced confinement for Jon to start hallucinating. [...] It’s Martin, though, that his exhausted brain conjures, because of course it’s Martin. After all this time, of course it’s Martin.

Jon willingly allows himself to be confined rather than hunting for statements, and examines his relationship with Martin.

for a firmament series by supaslim

There is beauty in destruction. There is art in becoming. In which Jon becomes the Archive, and the Archive becomes Jon.

Part two posted this morning and uhhh. Good. Also if you’re here for weird eldritch body horror (I am), this one’s for you.

ONES THAT JUST HURT

for when you want to feel sad

(somewhat bleaker endings here/everyone is NOT okay)

Feste by yellow_caballero

If asked, Martin would say that he became the shadow director of the Magnus Institute by accident. But nobody ever asked, and nobody ever cared, and it was in this way that Martin stopped lying to himself. Or: break free, Martin. All you have to lose are your chains. And your sanity.

Oh, this one totally didn’t go the way I expected it to. A study in isolation. Could go into the category above, as the ending is not bleak, but the tone of the whole is somewhat more depressing than most there.

Ghosts of Love by RavenXavier

Nothing made Martin more grounded in the world than yearning for Jonathan Sims.

Lonely!Martin that really captures a sort of visceral ache. Hurts me and yet I keep rereading.

i do desire (we may be better strangers) by godbewithyouihavedone

For ages, it only knew how to worship, taking human bodies and living off the fear of those who remembered. It never knew love until it became Jonathan Sims. Now it must fight against every instinct to save Martin Blackwood. Archivist Sasha, Not!Jon/Martin, and the worst kind of Fake Dating AU.

Oh, this one just made me sad. The poor not!them, which is something I never thought I’d say.

Apple Of Your Eye by fakeCRfan

In which the Eye is fond of Martin. Perhaps a little too fond for comfort.

Somehow manages to be both sweet and horrifying—the characterisation of the Eye is incredible. ‘The Eye loves Martin’ is a scenario that’s so utterly doomed to failure and yet the writing is packed with so much pathos that I just want them all to be happy. A fantastic use of themes of agency and choice, and the single best use of Beholding as a source of horror I’ve read.

The Last Press by copperbadge

Jon Sims is awake, and has begun preparations for the Rite of the Watcher's Crown. Peter Lukas, who woke him, would be content to rule at his side. Martin is very upset about all of this, and the Lukases aren't thrilled with it either.

I really can’t say anything without spoiling the end and it’s so good. An alternate take on the Watcher’s Crown. Not a pairing that I ever thought would work for me, but this made it work.

watch the blood evaporate by 75hearts

It starts, like so many things in Jon’s life have started, with a nagging itch of curiosity. Jonathan Sims uses his healing abilities throughout s4. Read the tags.

Dear God please read the tags. But this is some high quality pain if it’s for you.

the lighthouse series by low_fi

Peter Lukas is a lighthouse keeper. One evening, he gets a call from a cryptic overseer tasked with monitoring his work.

This is such a vivid and yet subtle story—from the setting to the emotions portrayed, it creeps up on you slowly. The ending was like the gentlest possible gut-punch. The sequel just completed, and yeah, just as wonderful. This one is very much LonelyEyes but I listed it here because it is just exquisitely painful.

SATISFYINGLY HOPEFUL VIBES

for when you want to feel cozy

Clutching Daffodils by Gemi

Martin has always liked the idea of love at first sight. It’s such a romantic idea, the whole thing of it. Seeing someone and instantly feeling that strange, twisting feeling deep inside that every single media likes to obsess over. Of knowing you are in love within the day, petals falling from your mouth and warmth filling your chest as love burrows deep, vines twisting through your lungs. He always liked the idea of it. And then Jonathan Sims starts working at the Magnus Institute.

Somehow manages to be lighter and fluffier than most hanahaki fare, despite the setting. I’ve reread this one a lot.

the least he could do by Prim_the_Amazing

Martin should in fact not pick this man, specifically because of how attracted he is to him. It would be the responsible thing to do. Except he’s already following him. And he’s hungry.

Fluffy vampire au which everyone’s probably already read, but was too good not to mention.

rather interesting by bee_bro

Jonah Magnus realizes that, for some reason, when he comes in contact with weed, Elias Bouchard's consciousness will come into his life banging pots and pans.

Oh boy. So these are all favourite fics but this one is a favourite amongst favourites. The way Jonah is characterised (i.e. incredibly sensitive to scrutiny) is my favourite depiction of him, and the slow-burn between him and Elias is far sweeter than it has any right to be. Also, it’s hilarious.

The Magnus Records series by ErinsWorks

In a world parallel to that of the Archives and the Institute, a supernatural sanctuary stands against a cruel and uncaring world: A world of bureaucracy and tyranny, of murder and carnage, of loneliness and surveillence, of plague and death. But in this world of fear and misery, 14 entities born of the hopes of the world have emerged. And one of them has made their home here, at The Magnus Sanctuary. Perhaps, the employees within may lead happier lives than their counterparts did in the Archives.

This is just so goddamn pure. The author writes a really imaginative, fleshed-out alternate world and alternate Entities with engaging, well-written short statements. All of the character voices are absolutely on point, and it’s overall absurdly hopeful without ever feeling overly saccharine. I love this series so much, you guys, you don’t even know. I want to print it out and paste it on my wall. I love it.

HARD APOCALYPSE

for when you want to feel dark and angsty (and eldritch)

Most of these are shorts/oneshots because it’s just that kind of genre, y’know?

Ashes to Ashes by marrowbones

A conversation at the end of the world.

Oliver Banks is one of those minor characters that I am overly attached to. Love him here.

Employee Benefits by equals_eleven_thirds

The Magnus Institute offered some normal employee benefits: a pension plan, holidays, travel subsidies, free lunch on the last Friday of each month. Rosie makes it work.

This manages to hit that perfect sweet spot of satisfying and hilarious. Rosie gets to torment Elias, as she well deserves.

a rose by any other name by Duck_Life

Part of Jon blooms in Jared Hopworth’s garden.

This one was sad and honestly too gentle to really belong in this category, but I love it.

Eye to Eye by Dribbledscribbles

In which Jonah Magnus attempts a post-apocalyptic pep talk.

Unreliable narrator at its finest, and the implications are suitably horrific.

commensalis by doomcountry

The tower is endlessly, impossibly tall, but Jon’s work is taller.

If you’re here for the eldritch imagery, then this has some of the best.

SOFT APOCALYPSE

for when you want to feel gently triumphant

apocalypse how series by sunshine_states

Humanity adjusts. The Entities have Regrets.

Some nice vignettes set in a kinder apocalypse.

ceylon series by Sciosa

The one in which Jonathan Sims decides that no, actually, he isn't going to let the world just end.

I include this only for the sake on completeness, as everyone has no doubt already read it.

rituals by doomcountry

Martin is the first person to knock on the Archivist's door since it arrived, fully, into its little waiting temple. The Archivist saw him coming from down the hall, but decides to feign interest when the knob turns, and Martin—still a little bit smaller, a little more translucent than before—stands uncertainly just outside the room.

This one’s a little less focused on the world at large and more on JonMartin specifically.

we raise it up by savrenim

Jonathan Sims reads a book and saves the world; although maybe the real salvation is the friends he makes along the way; (although perhaps the world itself and the darkness that exists behind it isn't quite as out to get everyone as it seems).

More ‘soft revolution’ than ‘soft apocalypse’, but has the same vibe. A time travel fix-it. Incomplete but worth it if this is a mood that appeals to you.

Scarred Ground by DictionaryWrites

“You see," Elias said softly, "people always have this idea that only living things can be scarred - and they're right, of course. But a building is a living thing, Martin. And the ground can be scarred, too." "I don't have any scars," Martin said. "Yes, you do," Elias said. "You just need the right light to see them.”

Falls somewhere between ‘Apocalypse’ and ‘Soft Apocalyse’ but I’m putting it here because I feel like it. Also technically a LonelyEyes fic. I found it hard to follow at first but it’s worth sticking with; things will eventually begin to make sense and come together.

LONELYEYES

for when you want to feel lonelyeyes

marrying anguish with one last wish by procrastinatingbookworm

In which Elias isn't Orpheus, and Peter isn't Eurydice, but Elias brings Peter home anyway.

Lives in my head rent free forever. My favourite lonelyeyes fic.

ouroboros by Wildehack

“You know,” Jonah says, a muscle in his calf quivering agreeably where it’s slung over Mordechai’s shoulder, “it’s really quite--fortunate--that I don’t care for you at all.”

Oh, this one hurts in the best possible way. The endless cycle of their relationship, the way it comes full-circle... yeah, good. Actually, no, this one might be my favourite. It’s a tie.

Breaking all the Rules by Thedupshadove

Elias proposes a somewhat...unusual wager.

Soft lonelyeyes? In my recs? It’s more likely than you think. Short, sweet, and... sweet.

Threefold by Sprinkledeath

Peter Lukas breaks three rules.

I’m just a slut for mythology allusions I guess.

Luck Be A Lady Tonight by prodigy

In 2014, Elias Bouchard takes a rare trip outside of his comfort zone. Peter Lukas wastes a bunch of money. You'd be surprised how many things can go wrong for two beings of cosmic power.

I love the sense of the history of them you get while reading this.

love is just a word (the idea seems absurd) by kaneklutz

"Something's wrong. It's stopped hurting" An avatar of the Lonely and an avatar of the Beholding walk into a bar relationship. It was bound to blow up in their faces.

Short, sweet, painful. Excellent exploration of their priorities.

Victor by penguistifical

elias tries something with his powers that he hasn't attempted before

The one where Elias tries to raise the dead. Not incredibly LonelyEyes centric but that’s still the pairing.

Simon Says by penguistifical

“Peter asked me to drop by and have a word with you, and, so, here I am.” Simon chuckles at Elias’s disbelieving stare. “Well, he asked in his own way. He’s not a complicated man, you know. He either comes from your arms looking like a stroked cat that’s been given a dish of cream or looking like he’s been in that toy boat of his out in an unexpected storm. He was far angrier than normal, so I daresay you weren’t cream today.”

I mean personally I’d just go ahead and rec all of penguistifical’s LonelyEyes fics but this is a standout for me.

AROMANTIC AND ASPEC MOODS

for when you want to feel Seen

The Aro Archives series by WhyNotFly

These are all just really really good. From Aro!Peter to two different aro-spec versions of the Scottish Safehouse to a long and beautiful aro hanahaki fic, this series is uniformly wonderful. The two Scottish Safehouse ones (Torn Edges and Murky Water) are my comfort fics.

and now all fear gives way by j_quadrifons

Before he can think it through, he murmurs, "Is that what it feels like? Being in love?" Martin's hand stills in his hair and Jon's stomach drops.

This one just. Wow yeah this is how it be. Another absolute comfort fic of mine.

Sweet As Roses by Prim_the_Amazing

Jon takes Martin by the shoulders, leans up on the tips of his toes, and kisses him.

I’m going to be honest—I didn’t know where to put this one. But it ended up here because the real standout of this fic for me is the portrayal of Sasha, and especially her portrayal as an aro character. So I’m putting it here. Mind the content warnings with this one!

HUMOUR

for when you want to feel delight

The Torment of Sebastian Skinner by Urbenmyth

After the Eye's victory, the statement givers are trapped in their horror stories, living them over and over again. Naturally, this works out better for some then for others.

Premise? Delightful. Execution? Fantastic. I read this one to cheer myself up when I’m sad.

Unlucky by VolxdoSioda

Jon’s dice betray him

Short, sweet DnD au, and the reason I cannot get DM!Elias out of my head now.

Voracious by beetl

A bird hits the window. Jon experiences The Flesh's thrall.

“Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” but make it literal.

The Stupid Endings by Urbenmyth

There are a lot of very deeply thought out and creative AUs on this site. These aren't among them. These ones are how the story could have ended, if Jonny Sims was a dumbass.

These are just uniformly hilarious, I cannot recommend them highly enough.

PODCAST CROSSOVERS

for when you want to make one of those “if I had a nickel for every time...” posts

The Sabbatical by morelikeassassin

Nicholas Waters is in need of an all-knowing eldritch entity beyond the confines of human imagining to help with his latest ritual. He'll have to settle for Jonathan Sims, who happens to have nothing better to do.

Crossover with Archive 81 (s3, specifically). Both fun and bittersweet.

The City And Its Sorrows by cuttooth

“What makes you think your friend is in Eskew?” David asks. He feels he can risk the scrutiny of the city that far. “I read that this is a place people end up when they get lost,” says the man. “This is a place people end up,” David agrees./The Archivist comes to Eskew.

Contemplative piece, and I love the way it presents David’s relationship with Eskew, the way he finds it horrible and hates it and yet belongs to it, is almost proud in the way he shows to to Jon. Great little vignette of two people oppressed by eldritch powers, intersecting.

Hiatus by bibliocratic

My name is Jonathan Sims, and I am in Eskew. (Jon gets lost in a Spiral city. It is not as easy as escaping.)

This one is far more focused on Jon than David, and is honestly more Eskew-weird than Spiral-weird. In the best way. Told in Eskew episode style, and is very good.

Sweet Music by Shella688

Eskew has a music to it, if you know how to listen. The percussion beat of thousands of footsteps, the melody in the squealing of the trains overhead. Today, the music of Eskew comes in the form of nine musicians, playing outside my office. My name is David Ward, and I am in Eskew.

Not TMA, but since a lot of Mechs fans go here—this one’s a Mechs/Eskew crossover. Short and simple, mostly David Ward centric, just a little well-written one shot I had to mention because I enjoyed it but it doesn’t have much traffic. Nice portrayal of the Mechs from an outsider’s perspective, and how genuinely strange and frightening they’d come across (especially if you’re already being haunted by and eldritch city). If you like Eskew-style storytelling, check it out!

NOT TMA

...but good enough that I physically cannot make a recs list without including them. Here!

Sugar with a Side of Coffee Ch.5

Chapter 5: Technologically Inept.

The next morning, Cate was scheduled to work the cart. Upon checking her phone, which she had done compulsively the day before, awaiting a text from Spencer, and there was still no reply. After feeding Shrimp and showering, Cate was on her way to The Empty Mug. Miranda and Marcus were waiting at the counter with Marta as Cate came inside.

“Your baking has been such a big hit, Cate!” Marcus was stocking the register as he spoke to her. “You’re doing a great job with the cart, too.” Both Miranda and Marcus smiled at Cate. 

“Thank you, I really appreciate that.” Cate put her apron over her head and adjusted her nametag and was ready to get to work. She went to the back to put her things away and grab the cart. Saying her farewells to Marta’s parents and Marta, she was off for the morning on the cart.

Setting up in the usual spot, Cate set out the chalk menu and positioned her baked goods on the counter. A few customers lined up, and Cate was so busy serving them, she didn’t notice Spencer get in line. When he approached the counter, to say it was awkward was an understatement.

“I’m sorry, I-”

“I’m not good at-” They both spoke at the same time. Spencer and Cate let out nervous laughter. “You first.” Spencer told Cate. She nodded and took a breath.

“Um, sorry if I was a little harsh with the whole Kate and Cate thing.” Spencer’s eyes widened.

“Oh, god, no! Not harsh at all. I, um. I’m terrible with texting. And I felt like I had already messed up, so I didn’t answer for the rest of the day, which I’m realizing sounds so stupid right now.” As his ramble went on, he trailed off. Cate gave him a soft smile.

“I should start making your coffee.” Cate noticed the growing line of impatient business men and interns. 

“What time do you get out of work today?” Spencer asked as she turned her back. Cate turned back around after a few with his large hot cup filled three-quarters of the way in one hand and her sugar pourer in the other. 

“The cart shift ends at 4 today but after I help finish cleaning up the shop I’ll be officially done at 5.” 

“Would you mind if I come by?” Spencer looked at Cate nervously. Cate felt her stomach do flips.

“Yeah, that would be totally fine!” Cate mentally facepalmed for being so eager. 

“Great, I’ll see you then.” He smiled at her and Cate smiled back. She watched him walk off, glancing at him up and down. 

Cate noticed Brooke a few people away in line. She briskly made her way through the next few customers. In between orders, she prepped Brooke’s usual order for her graphics design team. 

“Long time no see.” Brooke greeted with a smile. “Been busy?” She quickly texted on her phone while waiting for her order.

“Yeah, this cart has been keeping me busy. What about you? Haven’t seen you in a while. New projects?” Cate handed her a cardboard tray with her team’s orders. 

“Tons. I’ll try and catch you on my break!” Brooke shouted over her shoulder. Cate shook her head at the busy girl and got ready for the next customer. 

Cate’s entire shift seemed to go in slow motion. The hours dragged and it felt like the line of customers never dwindled, only grew. Cate was excited yet anxious about seeing Spencer tonight. Her apartment wasn’t clean, but that was assuming they’d go back to her apartment. Was he going to just visit after hours at the shop again? Cate let her mind wander of the night’s possibilities. 

Her mind reeled with different scenarios she envisioned. Did he expect to try her baking again? Did he want to have another after-hour coffee? Maybe he planned something? She didn’t have clothes to go out after work. As Cate was thinking ahead of herself, she realized that it was nearing 4. She walked around her cart, grabbed the chalk menu and was getting ready to close up the cart and head back to the shop. As she gathered her items on the counter, the baked goods, cardboard cup sleeves, and jar of stirrers, she saw Spencer approaching. 

“Hey,” Cate straightened up. “right on time.” She wiped her sweaty palms on her apron, hoping it was discreet to the agent.

“Yeah I uh, snuck out a little early.” He smiled, adjusting his brown leather satchel over his shoulder. Cate looked at him, probably a bit too long. She looked at his red cardigan, his patterned button up, and his black tie. 

“Well, everything is all packed up here.” Cate unlocked the wheels of the cart to allow them to roll. “Walk with me to the shop?” Cate grabbed the handles of the cart and began pushing it towards the shop. 

Spencer walked by her side, and tried to maintain the same gait, despite his long legs and her pushing the cart. He wondered if he should offer to help her push, but ultimately decided against it. 

“So,” Cate started, glancing at Spencer while she pushed the cart. “What do you do as an agent?” Out of the corner of her eye, she could barely see Spencer Look at her every so often.

“I work in the Behavior Analysis Unit at the Bureau. We study crime scenes and other forensics to create a profile of what the unsub is like. We present it to the police, and we help catch the serial killers.” He noticed he was talking with his hands, so he shoved them in his pants pockets.

“Wait, back up. What is unsub?” Cate asked, scrunching her face.

“Oh, that’s a shortened slang we use for Unidentified Subject. It’s like the suspect before we know who it is.” He tucked his long hair behind his ear. Cate nodded.

They arrived at the shop sooner than Cate realized. Spencer held the door open as she pushed the cart through and Cate maneuvered it to the back. Spencer took that time to look around the shop again, deciding which armchair to sit in. He spotted an old green one that was in front of a chess table. He decided he could pass the time waiting for Cate by playing himself. Cate came out of the back, and was assisting Marta clean the display shelf for the bakery items. 

“So I see Mr. Sweater vest is back.” Marta whispered to Cate without looking up. Cate let her gaze wander to him upon hearing his name. He was sitting in one of the armchairs, one hand holding his chin while the other was hovering above the shop’s chess board, deciding which piece to move.

“Yeah.” Cate smiled, not knowing what to say. Cate looked over to see Marta giving her a knowing look. “What?” Cate breathed out. “Can’t two single adults be friends?” Marta mimed zipping her lips and the girls continued cleaning. 

Once that was done and Marta said goodbye to Cate and made her way upstairs, Cate finally got to take the smarchair across from Spencers. Cate looked at the chess board, watching which pieces Spencer moved. Spencer was taking out of his trance of the game, and looked up at her.

“Do you play?” He asked. 

“A bit. I’m not good though.” Cate chuckled at how bad she was at chess. Spencer started to rearrange the pieces on the board. Cate went to help and they both reached for the same pawn. Their hands brushed together. They both flinched, but did not move their hands too far. Spencer took the initiative and moved the last piece. 

The pair barely spoke during their game. Spencer tried to make small talk, but Cate could barely focus on the rules of the pieces and talk at the same time, not to mention being sat across from an attractive man all the while. The game didn’t last too long. Spencer was always thinking three moves ahead and had Cate’s moves predicted to a tee. She fell for obvious traps and he could’ve checked her within the first five moves of the game, but wanted to play a little longer with her.

“I know what you’re doing.” Cate laughed as she purposefully lost one of her pawns. “Don’t let me win just because I’m a girl.” Spencer laughed.

“Trust me, I’m not letting you win.” Spencer moved one of his pieces. “Prolonging the game? Yes. Letting you win? Never.” He watched Cate’s face as her eyes darted around the chess board. He watched her move her rook. He picked up his bishop and took out her king.

“Alright, you got me.” Cate raised her hands up. She looked out the window, it was already dark out. “I still have to walk home.” Cate tried to excuse herself. Spencer stood up at the same time she did.

“Let me walk you home?” He saw her think to herself, “I’m a federal agent so I’m armed and trained to protect.” He saw her face change. He successfully persuaded her. 

“Okay, let me grab my things.” Cate went to the back, grabbing her bag and her earnings for the day. Spencer led the way out of the door, and stood watch as Cate locked up the outer door to the shop. 

They trailed down the sidewalk side by side. The usual crowds of the city had died down and the lamp posts lit up their way. It was a nice silence, comfortable, but Cate was the first to break it.

“So you’re not one for texting, huh?” Cate bit her lip. 

“No,” Spencer smiled. “I’m not one for texting. It’s easy to misread, or misinterpret messages and tones.” His walk led him closer to Cate’s side. 

“Have you ever tried the talk-to text?” Cate wondered. “Or the voice message feature?” Spencer shook his head.

“It’s not really the texting itself, I just prefer calling.” Cate pulled out her phone.

“Watch this, it’s kind of like a walkie talkie.” She pushed a little blue button over the keyboard and brought the phone closer to her face. “Hi.” She said to the phone. Spencer’s chimed. He opened it and pulled up their text messages, where a little blue text showed up, but instead of letters, it was an audio recording. He pressed it and out of his phone speaker was Cate’s voice message. 

Cate showed him again the buttons to press to send an audio message. She didn’t realize someone so young could be so technologically inept. The two were huddled over her phone, Spencer was observing carefully, so his memory could help him remember how to do the voice message. Their feet inched them closer and closer together until their hands brushed for the second time that night. Just as the walk to the shop had been quick, the walk to Cate’s apartment went by fast. 

Spencer walked her into the building, and up the stairs, all the way to her door. Cate leaned against it, searching her bag for her keys. Spencer stood next to the wall. He could hear a cat’s meow coming from inside her apartment. 

“Thanks for walking me home, it was really sweet.” Cate smiled up at the tall agent. 

“Oh, no problem.” Spencer said. “I’m glad you got home safe.” Cate couldn’t wipe her smile off her face, and neither could Spencer. Keys in hand, Cate opened her door. To Shrimp’s surprise, there was a new person outside of the door, and he ran and hid deep inside Cate’s apartment. 

“I’ll see you around?” Cate sounded hopeful.

“Of course. The Empty Mug is the best coffee we’ve had at the bureau.” Spencer played with the watch on his wrist. He’s missed the bus back to his apartment. He watched as Cate entered her apartment, softly shutting the door behind her. 

Cate rested her back against the door, feeling like she could finally breathe again. Her mind was spinning, thinking of everything that had happened that night. Shrimp hadn’t heard anyone else enter the apartment, so he came out of his hiding to rub against Cate’s legs. She bent to pet him. He mewed, signaling his bowl was empty. Just as Cate had reached the kitchen and filled Shrimp's bowl, her phone chimed. A new voice message from Spencer. She smiled and pressed play to listen to it. 

“Uh hi Cate, it’s Spencer. I just wanted to say goodnight. So uh, goodnight” Cate held the phone to her chest, smiling. 

Goodnight :) 

She typed back.

jjba social media/tiktok au!! (hcs)

there’s a lot about josuke im so sorry sfjlesfejk,, it started out as just him and then i was like “”,, what about other people?”” other’s are at the very end

it’s pretty fuckin long i,, im so sorry hh,, also my thought process was kinda Everywhere with this so like,, hope you can still enjoy this haha

[ edit ] this’ll be like,,, a masterpost or something for my hcs so this is,, very long,,

- you CANNOT tell me that Josuke isn't the kind of person who'd make thirst traps n him just being confident in his body like!!!

- tiktok josuke would be a blessing for me

- he'd make the thirst traps but in the caption be all embarrassed about it and like???? hOW ADORABLE!!!!

- i also feel like he'd make some gaming jokes,,,

- then ppl see jotaro a couple times and are like 👁️👄👁️💦

- OH MY GOD

- WHAT IF HE GOT OKUYASU N KOICHI TO DO SOME DANCES WITH HIM!!! or just them generally being dorks n they have a whole fanbase

- AND THE GIRLS AND THE GAYS GO BATSHIT LMAO (he's on gay tiktok, period. and like, other niche n weird spaces of tiktok)

- josuke's making a tiktok and it starts off in his room. he points up n text appears, "you guys wanna know how joot and i are related?"

- then he does a basic transition to where he's at jotaro's hotel room, having him and jotaro in frame with an arm wrapped around his shoulder.

- josuke's grinning

- jotaro has no fuckin clue whats going on

- a text appears above them, "say hello to my little nephew"

- i can see josuke doing povs, not the cringey kind but some that would be comforting for others;; who really need it.

- for his username my brain came up with starboy99 but he would definitely have his full name at the top of the screen

- probably part japanese to shorten the amount of characters he has to use (what i should've said is part KANJI n part romanji but hhh)

- i feel like he uses they pronouns too

- i have to think of his bio 👀

- definitely have his pronouns

- maybe a small quote? "just here to have a bizarre adventure! 💫"

- maybe something like that

- DEFINITELY have that he's a minor cause when he didn't have that,,, a lot of adults were simping for him and i feel that would make him Uncomfy

- he's adequate at transitions, but doesn't take too much time to learn them tbh. he's definitely the person to have vloggy type of tiktoks where he just shows a minute of his day

- absolutely would have okuyasu in his tiktoks with them doing dumb shit (like pranking rohan hehe) and them just being DORKS. a lot of ppl would think they're dating or just have a really good bromance

- he got a second of jotaro with his hat off and everyone died that day

- jotaro's in his tiktoks but very rarely

- when he is, people go BATSHIT with the simping

- i can see his following being fairly decent, and him getting decent traction but would also get shadowbanned a couple of times

- he definitely talks about retro games a lot and makes memes centered around them

- i can't say for certain what side(s) of tiktok he's on except for the obvious gay tiktok

- the more wholesome side, definitely activism, some povs, splash in some diversity, maybe japanese tiktok?? im sure that exists

- idk the more obscure sides,,

- he's a casual tiktoker for sure, maybe posting twice a week

- when he's especially bored he might post a couple times in a day, maybe an hour :'))

- i take that back, maybe three times? three times sounds fair

here’s a little break for your eyes lmao, there were a Lot more than i thought holy shit,,

-  JOSEPH (P2!) WOULD DEFINITELY HAVE TIKTOK SJSNS

- rohan makes two tiktoks

- they both blow up (and act like they don’t know nobodayy HAHAHA)

- he has a large following (mainly jap)

- but he barely uses tiktok after that

- i can't see giorno having social media tbh

-  he'd try to predict the algorithm based on the stuff he posts when he first gets the app.

- its mainly just him being a goof with a couple thirst traps thrown in there once he realizes "oh shit, i have simps?"

- caesar is featured once n already has a fanbase under joseph's acc (joseph's not jealous or anything,, nooo,,,,)

- like he's in the mafia,,,

- wait

- or maybe he just takes really good pictures of nature,,, i can see that

- a lot of people ask "where is this dude's parents,,,"

- narancia,, is the one who has tiktok (in bucci gang)

- mista would always (not ALWAYS but very. often.) find ways to be in them/photobomb

- i can see his (narancia’s) fyp being like super wholesome with some dumb memes but also popular music covers

- like rock covers or sumn similar

i deadass thought i had a couple for johnathan and erina too but!! can’t find them so,,

-  so one day he makes a tiktok, inside the turtle lmao

- at first he's like "why are you guys asking where my parents are;;"

- the camera flips to abbacchio and bruno

- "they're right here"

- cue a chuckling giorno and a laughing mista

- they do all the couple tiktoks together,, all the cute ones at least. i can see them doing the more wholesome dances too! they would all around just be the cute couple everyone else aims to be

- also thought i had some part 3 hcs saved?? wtf my saving skills are terrible,,

- polnareff is the one with tiktok. he would go around filming small snippets of stuff that happens with the crusaders (ignoring that,,, tiktok Did Not exist at the time haha)

- jotaro and kakyoin were definitely featured in his tiktoks!! i can see avdol with his arms folded being like “...we have better things to do--”

- but pol is like “but the fans, avdol! think about the content they’ll be missing out on!!”

- he’s hopeless LMAO. but honestly?? he'd make a good vlogger too!! his charisma would definitely be to his advantage

- you bet your ass that oldseph photobombs any chance he gets lmaooo he’s also the guy that a small part of polnareff’s fans simp for. 

- actually, each crusader has their own small fanbase within pol’s tiktok account. i feel the majority would be fans of jotaro and polnareff (it is his acc,,)

- jotaro’s fyp, when he reluctantly gets tiktok, consists of animals,, animal facts, funny animal tiktoks, ocean tiktoks for sure, just a lot of naturey stuff!! but he barely uses it though haha

- kakyoin uses tiktok every now and then! i feel he would prefer instagram more. he mainly posts his artworks, and the occasional retro game case hehe. he does the Dumbest shit on his “close friends” story, it’s great. i feel that’s also where he goes to ramble about whatever’s on his mind

- avdol definitely has a work instagram, only using it for his fortune telling business and trying to network with different tarot readers and fortune tellers. he likes the small community he has,, hehe,,

whoever read all this I'll cry in your arms

Axolotl 101

This is going to be a semi-long, informative post about Axolotls. You will find a Table of Contents with everything I will be covering. All facts have been checked and I will provide references as well. Any questions feel free to submit or send an ask, or even message me directly!

★ Please note this is not a care guide (TBA), however, it does have some care facts as well within it. ★

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Brief History & Habitat

Description

Appearance

Metamorphosis (please read carefully)

Age/Length/Gender

Diet

Axolotl Type (coloring)

Regeneration

Facts

Resources & Sites

BRIEF HISTORY & HABITAT

Axolotls have only ever been native to Lake Xochimilco and Lake Chalco, both found in the Valley of Mexico. Lake Chalco no longer exists whereas Lake Xochimilco is barely considered a lake. Numerous factors such as non-native fish, industrialization, and pollution have all contributed to the rapid decline of the axolotl in the wild. Because of their decline in nature, the IUCN has listed them as a Critically Endangered Species. 

In the wild, axolotls who live in Lake Xochimilco live in colder waters; which have shown to rarely rise above 20 C / 68 F. And becoming even colder in the winter. This also remains true for captive axolotls; said to thrive between 15.5 C / 60 F to 18.3 C / 65 F. They also live in freshwater.

Notes

While having trouble in the wild, they have been thriving well in captivity! 

They are also being used in research due to their regeneration abilities.

“Meet the nuns saving a sacred species from extinction - BBC News” an interesting video to watch imo.

DESCRIPTION

The axolotl is an amphibian that resembles salamander larvae with a bit of difference; sporting their signature gills, a caudal fin, wide heads, lidless eyes, underdeveloped limbs with long, thin fingers. Unlike salamanders, which grow out of this stage and become terrestrial, they continue to live under the water for the rest of their lives and keep their juvenile appearances even as adults. This is called Neoteny. 

Metamorphosis

In some cases, axolotls have been known to metamorphosis for a couple of reasons:

In a lab setting where iodine is injected into the axolotl to encourage a metamorphosis.

Poor water/living conditions that force them to morph to escape said conditions.

I do not have enough reliable information on this, however, some owners claim that Tiger Salamander genes have been bred into their specific axolotl and has encouraged a metamorphosis in them.

Please understand that once an axolotl undergoes the metamorphosis, its lifespan is shortened and it will likely die within the next year or two. Even if there are a couple success stories; no matter what the axolotl isn’t meant to undergo this. This may be a personal and moral opinion, but I hope you agree as well.

REMINDER: PLEASE NEVER TRY TO MORPH YOUR AXOLOTL. JUST BUY A TIGER SALAMANDER.

Age / Sex / Lifespan

Axolotls will reach sexual maturity around the ages of 18-42 months. Although some sources claim it can be as early as 5 months depending on living conditions and food. Their sizes range anywhere from 15 to 45 cm / 6 to 8 inches. The average size is around 23 cm / 9 inches. Axolotls have been known to live from 10 to 15 years when kept in a good environment.

Male and Female axolotls are more easily sexed once they have fully matured. However, I was able to sex my own male axolotls after roughly 9 to 12 months of owning them. One tip I can give every axolotl owner for sexing their axolotl is to be patient. Especially when they are very young or have not reached their adult length it can be very difficult to tell.

Males will have a noticeably enlarged/swollen cloacae. Their bodies will be slimmer than their female counterparts, which is easier to see when looked at overhead.

Females do not have an enlarged/swollen cloacae. Sometimes, the cloacae might ever so slightly give way to a bump as you can see in the second pic. Females will also always be rounder, as their eggs are stored on the sides of their bodies.

Breeding

Upon reaching sexual maturity, which will vary from axolotl to axolotl and shown above, they will be able to breed. Females are said to mature a little slower than males. 

For captive axolotls the breeding season isn’t too peculiar; as sources claim December to June is when they’re most likely to mate. However, due to being in captivity it is possible to encourage mating at any time of the year.

If you are planning on breeding your axolotls, it is advised to wait until your axolotls are of at least the ages of 18 months. That gives them time to grow and develop into their adult bodies. Especially for females, as the breeding and laying egg process can be very stressful on your little lady. For males, it is less strenuous, and in personal experience happens very often even without a female between my two males who are homed together. 

Diet

In the wild, they eat worms, insects, and small fish. In captivity earthworms and nightcrawlers are well regarded as a primary source of healthy axolotl diet. People argue that bloodworms. Here are some nutrients facts and such for three different worms. Credit to Caudata.org. Click the link for the full list and other facts on nutrition.

Coloration & Types

According to most resources, there are 4 to 5 common morphs/types of Axolotls. This is because Albino’s are sometimes classified between the golden and the white kind, making it either 4 or 5 in the eyes of the individual. Section Source Section Source II

Wild Type

The most basic type.

They can have a combination of black, grey, green, and olive.

They are known to have golden/iridescent specs all around their body that will cause them to glitter and shine in bright light.

The center if their eyes are black with a golden/shiny ring around them.

Their gills can be greyish or purplish.

Leucistic

Also known as a Lucy, or a “pink” axolotl. Arguably the most well known and seen axolotl among those interested or not in the hobby and animal.

Known for their light, pale pink color.

Their eyes are darker (black or brown), making them different than an Albino.

Dark red or deep pink gills.

“Dirty Lucy’s” are the same as a regular Lucy, however, they have numerous amounts of black spots/dots around their face or body. Or both. 

Albino

White Albino

They basically look like a Lucy but without color in their eyes, as they have no eye pigment

Gold Albino

Golden or peachy colored body, noticeably shiny patches also called iridophores.

Red/pink gills.

No eye pigment. 

Melanoid

Often mistaken for a wild type and vice/versa. Melanoids are actually quite different.

They have increased pigment in their skin. Making them very, very dark brown or black all over.

Unlike Wild types, Melanoids cannot have shiny specs on their bodies.

Their eyes are solid black with no shiny ring around their eyes like Wild types.

Other Types & Morphs

GFP

“Green Fluorescent Protein” gives the axolotl with this gene the ability to glow vibrant green under UV or Blue lighting. Less pigment in the axolotl makes it easier to see. It can be in any morph as long as it is passed on by the parent.

Copper

A variation of the albino. They may have red-tinted eyes, with a brown/pink body color with darker spots along the body.

Chimera

“Chimerism in Axolotls is said to be when two eggs fuse together in development, and each side grows according to the egg it came from, often resulting in a split-down-the-middle appearance. One side can often grow at a slightly slower rate than the other.

Chimera cannot be duplicated in breeding, it is caused by an accident during development. The chances of an Axolotl being a chimera and surviving is a 0.00001% chance. There is also the argument that chimerism in Axolotls don't actually exist, but are actually mosaic and the color variation just happens to be split.”

--Axolotl City

Mosaic

The result of two cells forming in development, showing the phenotype of both the cells.

Piebald

“Piebald is when an axolotls pigmentation goes all down the body and sides, not just along the head and top, like a leucistic.”

-- Axolotl City

Sometimes heavily spotted Lucy’s are mistaken to be a Piebald. However, Piebald’s are very rare.

Firefly

“FireFly Axolotls are literally one of a kind. These Axolotls were produced by Lloyd Strohl II from Indiana USA in 2016. These one of a kind Axolotls are not genetically modified. They are produced by embryonic graphing. The reason for these Axolotls being produced is because Lloyd Strohl II is conducting a preliminary investigation into the distribution and activation of melanocytes in leucistic axolotls and, in particular, in mosaics. More can be read on his Facebook. “

-- Axolotl City

Regeneration

The distinct and unique feature the axolotl has is its amazing regenerative properties. Axolotls, unlike humans, when suffering the loss of a limb, will completely grow it back to normal as if it hadn’t been cut off. 

Axolotls are known to regen limbs, their brain, spine, and the heart and other organs.

Picture Source 

Facts

They’re super cute!

Unlike other animals, the axolotl is resistant to cancer by over as much as 1,000 times!

Mexico is the ONLY place they can be found in the wild.

To feed, it suctions up its food like a vacuum. 

Axolotls can lay between 300 to 1,000 eggs!

They are illegal to own in California, Maine, New Jersey, and Virginia. In New Mexico, they are legal to own but illegal to import to other states.

According to many resources, Axolotl translates to Water Dog!

The Axolotl actually has some mythical background! Xolotl was known as a dog-headed god in the Aztec mythos. Apparently, Xolotl got mixed up in some affairs that made him concerned for his life, thus, he jumped into the lake and became an axolotl.

Resources & Sites

Axolotl.org is a well-developed site just for the axolotl. They have Housing, Feeding, Requirments, Breeding, Biology, and Books & Links for you to check out.

Caudata.org is another site/forum. They have many good, knowledgeable breeders/owners of different newt, salamander, and even axolotl species! Their axolotl forum is very active and can prove useful: forum link.

[02:12 am]

You stumble over a few moving feet, that got on your way to the sound of the music playing loudly. The intoxicating smell of alcohol and tobacco hovered in the air, consuming your body as you pushed through every body that came to vision.

You felt your phone vibrating on your hand as you walked. You looked down at it, the dimming light hitting your lush-like eyes. You smiled lazily and took it to your ear as you answered.

"Yes?" You tried to speak loud enough for him to ear.

"What's taking you so long? Are you okay?" His voice was clear, but as you pushed through the people their voices started to interfere so you took your free hand to the other ear and covered it, trying to focus on Shawn's voice only.

"I'm fine." You giggled; the alcohol speaking for itself. You heard him mutter something on the other side of the line, which you obviously couldn't understand. "'m juz having a hard time finding you." You confessed, looking up.

You were being crashed by dancing bodies. Your eyes tried to move fast around the room but it was impossible. The faster you rounded your body, trying to spot Shawn, the blurrier your vision became.

"I'm outside." He informed you. Your head quickly moved to the glass door. "I have my hand up, can you see it?"

It was honestly easier for you to meet him than the other way around. The crowd was relatively bigger inside, where you stood, than where he was with his friends and, honestly, you could use some fresh air.

You started pushing through people more abruptly than before, desperate to get outside. Your head was up, gaze going from side to side, trying to find him.

You spotted his large bicep, slightly covered by his dark blue t-shirt's short sleeve, which slid down his skin slowly as he extended his arm upper, trying to make it easier for you to find him. If you weren't that drunk, you would have told him there was no need for him to try so hard due to the height difference between him and... anyone else, to be fair.

"You're standing so far!" You whined, standing on the tip of your toes, your chin up, seeking the best way to walk through that crowd to reach him.

"Come on, you've walked longer!" He insisted, still holding his hand up.

You breathed out. You let your head down, staring at the ground to see what you stepped on and started walking the way he had indicated you to.

"I'm coming." You assured him. He mumbled something, but you were quick to end the call.

You held your phone in your hand tightly, using your forearm to press against anyone who got in your way and walked tipsily to the backdoor.

Once you reached it, you thanked God it was already opened. You felt like you'd been walking for hours and you couldn't bear to push a door open if that was the case.

The fresh air hit your bare arms. Your hands went down to your waist, adjusting the sleeves of your jacket, which you had tied earlier when you left the bathroom. You pushed the sleeves strongly, feeling them tightening around your waist as you made your way to the spot Shawn was.

You didn't have to look again to know where he was, since his laugh could be heard from where you stood.

As the bodies moved away from yours, while you made way through them, Shawn instantly stopped talking to his friends, looking directly at you and sending you the sweetest smile.

He had his hoodie loosely tied to his waist as well. He was holding a beer in his hand, using his other free hand to push one of his friends away as he opened his arm, ready to hold you. He said something to his friend but quickly looked back at you. You extended your arm and held his hand. He took it and gently pulled you slowly into his embrace, eyes never leaving your figure.

You looked up at him, letting go of his hand and wrapping your arm around his back as he did the same, holding you close to his side.

"Finally." He murmured. "I was already getting annoyed with their girl talk." He said, taking his hand up to point at their friends, still holding the bottle, but never moving his gaze away from yours.

"'m sorry." You slurred and smiled. You unconsciously placed your hand over the hoodie on his waist, making him turn his body a tad more to face you. "I was teachin' this girl I met how to squat correc'ly" You frowned at your own words.

Despite your inebriate state, you knew that there was no logic explanation for the figures you had just made in the bathroom.

Shawn rose his eyebrows at your words, moving his head back a little in surprise.

"You were what..?" He asked, letting out a chuckle.

You shrugged. "I don't know..." You started, trying to find the right words to explain the scene to him, but you were starting to feel the alcohol replacing your brain liquid. "She was like..." You started, removing your hand from his waist as you gestured. "...screaming to my face that I had a nice ass?" You frowned, looking away from him as if the explanation was somewhere around for you to look at and just read. "Like, I dunno if she was angry or..." You nodded; your acting earning a few giggles from Shawn. "... 'n then she asked me what I did, and I tried to show her, you kno'?" You looked back at him.

Shawn was nodding, eyebrows rose in surprise as he smiled, trying to hold back his giggles. He was happy you were having fun, but, then, he was just hoping there were no 'personal trainer' kind of videos of you in the bathroom, especially squatting in the tight jeans you had on, that you knew he loved to death.

"Do you even do that?" He asked, letting out a chuckle as he observed a frown forming on your features again.

"Pfft..." You rolled your eyes, nodding at him. He cackled muttering a 'Jesus' under his breath, his hand unconsciously holding you closer to his side. "Everyone knows the secret." You got his attention.

"What is it then?" He looked down at you and smiled, feeling your body tense under his touch and your hand gripping his t-shirt in his lower back.

"Good sex, obviously." You slurred, raising your chin teasingly like you were stating the obvious.

He nodded in disbelief, his smile growing as he lowered himself, leaning in to peck your lips. You moved your free hand to his chest, feeling him deepening the kiss, and slowly started moving it up to his neck until it was resting softly on his cheek. You felt his jaw moving under your thin fingers, causing your body to move closer to his, pressing your torso against his side as his arm wrapped you in a secure embrace.

"Hmm." He hummed as the kisses shortened to a few pecks. "You should have introduced her to your boyfriend then." He remarked.

You were quick to use your hand that was placed on his cheek to push his head away from yours. You rolled your eyes, causing him to laugh loudly as he tried to force his head to lean in to where it was, fighting against the strength you were putting on your hand to keep him away.

"Unbelievable." You muttered.

You felt his arm tightening around your waist, holding you firmly against him as you kept on attempting to move away.

"I'm absolutely joking..." He said in between his small guffaw. "Honey." He called out softly, leaning in only assuring you that there was no chance you were stronger than him.

He placed his hand on your upper back to pull you closer to him, when he noticed your smile growing.

You didn't remove your hand from his cheek when he leant in and kissed a random spot of your face abruptly. You started laughing once he began pecking your face intensively, in any spot your hand didn't cover and stopped him from doing it somehow.

"You kissed my nostril." You laughed, leaning into his chest, trying to cover your face from him, but he wouldn't stop. Even if he wasn't kissing you, he just rubbed his face on yours strongly, only getting you to laugh louder.

"Hmm-mm." He assured you, rubbing his cheek against your head, messing up your hair completely. "You have a bit of snot, by the way." He joked. You whined in response, laughing harder only to keep on being showered with love, almost literally.

A/N: It’s very lame and cringy. I call it: Shawn Mendes soft hours. It will never be posted according to the current hour. It will be whatever pops in my head and... it’s a thing. I hope you like this.

quite fetching

2.2k words, meet-cute, fluff

Phil likes to take his dog on walks around the neighborhood. Dan works at the local elementary school.

read on ao3 

Phil spent long days at university and the workload, while enjoyable, was thoroughly exhausting. So the part of his day that he loved most was walking his fluffy golden retriever, Mister, around his neighborhood, switching off his brain and enjoying time with his dog. It was a Tuesday, and Phil was yawning loudly as he attached the leash to Mister. Daylight savings time had hit him hard, his normally atrocious sleeping hours shortening even further. But he still felt an obligation to his dog and to his own routine to walk a bit every day, so he didn't resent the decision to walk out the door at 4 that day. After around 15 minutes, his usual walking time, the sun was still high in the sky, so he decided to walk further than usual. The local elementary school near his home had a nice track that he remembered vaguely and he hoped there wouldn't be many kids left playing outside. Phil's dog loved people, but sometimes he got too excited around hyper children and Phil wanted to avoid any uncomfortable situations. So, he rounded the corner into the long path outlining the playground. Luckily, there were only a few people still out playing. He heard a bell clanging and watched as the children walked inside, guided by some college students who helped out there. There were only two people left: an obscenely tall man with dark, wavy hair, and a young girl in a big coat, both on the swing set. "Mr. Dan, can we stay out longer please?" Phil overheard the girl say. "Of course, Ari. Like usual," Dan replied easily. They seemed to drift into an easy silence and Phil smiled. It was small, pleasant moments like those that made him enjoy walking around town. Phil walked around the path away from the playground, so the two stragglers didn't see him and his dog until a couple minutes later, when he had completed the lap around the small soccer fields. He saw the little girl notice him and immediately tug on the older guy's jacket, saying something pleading. Dan then turned and noticed Phil and his dog as well. He smiled. "Let's ask the man, first." He walked boldly to Phil, who stopped in his track and smiled amicably. "Can we pet your dog? He's so cute." "Of course!" Phil responded. Dan squatted next to Mister's face and pet his back softly, while Ari pet him on the head with robotic, child-like movements. "What's his name?" The man's face looking up at Phil was so pretty and soft. His smile dimpled his cheek and a light blush dusted his nose. "Mister," Phil answered, immediately scolding himself for sounding (and probably looking) stupidly smitten. But hey, he was a cooped up university student who rarely had time for any romantic or sexual interactions, so who could blame him. "Oh my God," Dan exclaimed, and Phil was worried that something bad had happened because of the urgent tone, but he followed with, "that is the best name for a dog I have ever heard." Phil beamed with pride. "Thanks, I came up with it myself." "It's so cute," he muttered. "What's your name, then? Is it better than Mister?" "Phil, so unfortunately not. What about you?" "I'm Dan," he said with a smile, shaking Phil's hand. "I work here after school in a weak effort to pay off my student loans." Conversation. Okay. Phil didn't expect to get this far. "I'm at university as well! What are you studying?" "Philosophy, at the moment. It's fascinating, but it's kind of guaranteeing me to a life of pretentiousness and poverty, unfortunately. What about you?" Dan's tone was light and easy and he was effortlessly funny. Hot and funny and good with kids and dogs???? Phil needed to pinch himself to confirm he wasn't dreaming, but then he might wake up, and he didn't want to do that when this was far sweeter. "Post-production in film. Also something that will probably end up completely useless, but it is really enjoyable. It's nice to be doing things that I'm really passionate about, although the workload is super tedious. I've got this massive project at the moment, and I love it, but it involves a lot of boring computer stuff and not much actual creativity." Dan nodded. "Oh yeah? What's it about?" Phil didn't have time to respond before Ari was tugging gently at Dan's jacket again. "Mr. Dan, can we go inside?" she said softly. "Of course, Ari!" Dan replied, turning back to Phil and smiling apologetically. "Hopefully I'll see you and Mister around?" Phil nodded (a bit too) enthusiastically. "Totally!" He planned to make good on his word. For the next two days, Phil forced himself to turn in early from his walks to work on a massive project he was working on involving horror films. It felt like torture to turn away from the elementary school and possibly miss seeing Dan again, but he had greater responsibilities. However, on Friday he was unable to resist the temptation anymore, and he turned around the corner and down the path that would eventually (hopefully) lead to Dan. There were still quite a few kids out today, since Phil had left earlier than last time, so he didn't see Dan immediately, but he was significantly taller than everyone around him, so Phil was able to find him on the swings again. Still, he tortured himself with a walk around the entire path before he passed the playground and Dan saw him and Mister. "Oh, hey!" Dan called, standing up from the swing and walking over to Phil, Ari not far behind him. "You came back!" "Yeah, I figured I could swing by the playground again," Phil said, feigning nonchalance despite the fact that Dan recognizing him made butterflies erupt in his stomach. "How are you and Ari here?" Dan was already kneeling next to Mister. "So good!" But it seemed to be mostly directed to the dog as he said it in a baby voice and kept all his attention on Mister. Ari began to pet him as well and Phil smiled. This time Dan was wearing a soft-looking brown sweater and his wavy hair was fluffier, the wind sprawling it across his forehead. He looked simultaneously incredibly cute and intimidatingly hot, and Phil might actually be developing a proper crush. Dan stood up abruptly and said, "So how's that project going?" "Oh! You remembered that?" Phil said, astonished, before realizing he was putting Dan in a pretty awkward situation. Dan seemed flustered and Phil felt completely socially inept. "Yeah, I guess. I don't meet many cool guys with amazing dog-naming skills who are also in film at university." "Really? Clearly you need to get out more," Phil joked. "Honestly, I know you're joking, but I seriously never leave the house. It's an actual problem. Unless I'm in class or making money, I'm in my dorm 24/7," Dan complained. "That's the best thing about having a dog. You have an immediate obligation to another living creature. Plus, you get to meet cool guys who study philosophy and work at elementary schools in their free time," Phil ventured. Blushing! Actual blushing! Phil was undoubtedly reading too much into this whole conversation and Dan was probably straight anyway, but again, he was a cooped up university student. He was allowed to have fantasies about hot guys he met. "How many of those do you know?" "They're a dime a dozen in this neighborhood," Phil said with a sly smile, and Dan giggled. Before Dan could respond, Phil felt an abrupt pull on the leash. He muttered expletives under his breath as he realized he was being pulled by Mister, who was chasing a squirrel across the empty soccer fields. "Gotta go!" Phil managed to cry out before he chased Mister (who had managed to break the leash free from Phil's grip) across the grass. When Mister finally ended his impromptu high-speed chase, Phil gathered him in his arms and pet him before standing again and sighing. "Mister, we might have been actually flirting, and you ruined it!" Mister wagged his tail obliviously, and Phil gave another sigh. His dog was unfortunately very hard to hate. For the weekend, the elementary school was completely empty (trust Phil. He checked.) and Phil was forced to wait two whole days before he got to even hope to see Dan again. On Monday, he was raring to go, but he still waited until 4 to leave, hoping to catch Dan more alone and without the fear of overwhelming kids trying to pet Mister. Dan caught him before he was able to walk the whole lap around the playground, though. He was at the small basketball court, which was right next to the entrance Phil always took, and he waved him down before Phil could continue his walk. "Oh, hey," Phil said when he saw Dan sitting on the bench. "How's philosophy?" Dan sighed. "As ever. We're currently studying free will and it's a total mind fu-" he cut himself off, dramatically glancing around. "Fumble?" Phil offered, laughing. "Yes, exactly!" They shared a laugh and Dan continued. "I'm kind of guaranteed constant existential crises, and adding that onto the college crisis I'm already having, it isn't a great time." "I don't really have that problem with film projects," Phil responded, sitting down on the bench next to Dan when he patted the seat. "Although the project I'm currently working on is about horror. I'm not a scaredy-cat until it's 2 in the morning and I'm sitting in a dark, empty flat after spending 7 hours watching clips of horror films." "Empty? No girlfriend or endearingly strange flatmates?" Dan inquired. "Neither, although considering how high rent is I should probably get a flatmate at some point so I don't start living off Ramen noodles again," Phil mused, hoping Dan caught onto the no, but I could use a boyfriend he was sure he worked in at some point. "That's a dark period," Dan responded, nodding. "I'm almost to that level at the moment, and - " Dan was cut off by another college student running towards them and calling his name. "Dan! Do you know where Ari is?" she said breathlessly. A look of concern immediately crossed Dan's features. "No idea, I thought she was swinging?" The woman shook her head, and Dan stood up. "I know most of the places she likes to hide out in, so I'll check those out. You make sure she isn't on the playground somewhere, okay?" The woman left and Phil stood up too. "Can I help?" Dan's features softened. "That'd be wonderful. Could you check the bushes through there? Sometimes she hides out there." He pointed toward the school and Phil nodded, jogging towards the shrubbery. Thankfully, he found her pretty quickly. She was sitting behind a bush, crying softly and picking at the grass. "Ari! Are you okay?" he asked, kneeling. Mister sat down next to Ari and she immediately began to pet him gently. She blubbered for a moment before saying, "the other boys and girls were being mean. They were calling me names." "Oh, I'm sorry. It's all okay, now," Phil soothed. She seemed to be calming down as she pet the dog. "Those kids were being mean and I'm sorry. But it's over now and you're going to be okay." "Thank you," she said softly, wiping away her tears. "Do you want to go see Mr. Dan?" She nodded and they stood up. Dan was searching around the playground when he saw them walking together, and there was immediate relief on his face. "Thank God you found her! I was so worried!" "She was sad because some kids were calling her names," Phil explained. Ari nodded, sniffling. "I'm so sorry," Dan said to her. "Who were they?" They talked quietly for a moment before Ari ran off, towards the school (apparently according to Dan's instruction). Dan stood up and muttered, "I'm going to teach those kids a sodding lesson," to Phil, who grinned at Dan's passion. "Thanks for finding her." "Happy to! I think Mister probably helped out a bit too. Dogs are often a calming presence." "Quite so," Dan said softly, nodding. Suddenly he looked at Phil with a face of determination, before saying, "do you want to get lunch together, tomorrow?" There was an immediate blush on his face before he followed up with, "Sorry, I know you probably don't swing that way, but I figured it was worth a try. I'd hate to keep seeing you and never follow up with anything, but if you don't want to it's completely - " "I'd love to," Phil interrupted, before Dan rambled himself into a hole. "I was worried I was giving off straight vibes and I'd have to be the one to ask you out." "Oh." He laughed and blushed vibrantly, and then the look of determination returned. "Well, I never thought you were straight." "Oh yeah? What gave it away?" Dan grinned. "Probably the massive tattoo on your forehead that says 'I love cock'." "Dan!" Phil protested, swatting lightly at Dan's arm. "Think of the children!" "Oh don't worry, they don't care. I curse all the time and they don't hear it," Dan assured him. "Wow. Childhood truly ruined," Phil said with a dramatic sigh. Dan smiled. "I should get back to the kids, but can I give you my number first? For the sake of coordinating a future lunch date?" "Definitely." Phil smiled as they exchanged numbers and then Dan returned to the playground with a soft wave goodbye.

Eddtober Masterpost: About, Rules, Boundries and Prompt Lists.

I hadn’t done anything about it until now due to no response - however the wonderful @ldhenzel​ suggested that I do it this way for mobile users. 

About Eddtober

Eddtober is a list of prompts made in an effort to encourage the Eddsworld Fandom to spread their wings of creativity beyond the norms that they are used to, during the month of October.

It is all without harming others or causing drama, a neutral ground for all fans of Eddsworld to come and have fun, no matter what side of a discourse they’re in.

It hopes to promote inspiration beyond the usual angsty and over-dramatised content, to revive a spirit in Eddsworld that hasn’t been seen in many years, and to stretch the invitation to all who can create.

Eddtober calls not only the artists who have a talent for drawing, painting and so forth, but also: the authors (fanfics, journalists, essayists, diarists, poets, ramblers), the cosplayers, the video-makers (animators, video essays, memers, youtubers) and all those who want to be inspired with unconventional creativity.

Eddtober’s motto for the fandom it came from is this: To come forth, be inspired and break from the old and the mold!

With that out the way, buckle up. This post is gonna be a long one under the cut.

RULES 

Base Rules need to be set so everyone can participate in Eddtober safely and in a fun way. Please read them carefully!

Always tag it with #eddtober. Gore and related NSFW is allowed in the challenge, but please tag it as #Eddtober gore, etc. Also, no shortenings or reimaginings of those tags, so the minors on this site don’t find it on accident. Though many of us may be over 18, please keep these things in mind.  

Be Sensitive and Respectful to Others. I know many of us here in this fandom can take easy offence to certain types of art, so please consider and think on your creative piece before you post.

Credit Where Due. This should be blatantly obvious right now, but please, please don’t steal other’s creative fanwork or post it without credit. Always have permission from the creator to post something of their’s, and always have their username when you post it, not just ‘credit to the artist’. If you do not follow this, actions will be taken for your consequences.

Keep yourself chill. You can do one prompt for Eddtober, some of the prompts or all of them - up to you! It’s understandable if life gets in the way. The goal of Eddtober is not to do every prompt, but to be inspired to create fan-content in a way you usually wouldn’t have.

Spread the word. This is less of a rule and more of a personal request from Admin Panda, but since she doesn’t have many social media accounts you’d expect, spreading word of Eddtober would mean a LOT, so they can join in the fun too!

Sharing is caring. Reblogging and sharing from your fellow creators doing Eddtober would be great to give them a motivation and confidence boost!

Go Beyond the Boundries of Your Imagination. The whole purpose of Eddtober is to promote new, fresh things to come up in the Eddsworld fandom and break a cycle of the same old that’s been there for a while. Take a leap, spread your wings, do your best, and go have fun.

BOUNDRIES

Most of this list will be related to Rule Two of Eddtober:

Be Sensitive and Respectful to Others.

Quote:

‘I know many of us here in this fandom can take easy offence to certain types of art, so please consider and think on your creative piece before you post.‘

Whilst Eddtober is a fun, neutral place to spread our creative wings, there are boundries that need to be taken in order to keep everyone safe. Which means certain parts that are usually seen as ‘common’ within the Eddsworld Fandom will not be acceptable in the challenge.

Edd Gould’s death. Admin Panda wishes to make it clear that creative pieces that draws clear lines to Edd’s passing IS NOT okay. This includes Edd in hospital for cancer, Angel Edd or any AU that depicts him as a divine being of any sort (including Blessworld) unless Tom, Matt and/or Tord are also similar divine beings in the AU. Here at Eddtober, Edd's life is something to be celebrated, not his death. While Admin Panda isn’t 100% offended by this, many others are and it should be more recognised as such.

Sinsworld. Believe it or not, the sinsworld tag was specifically made back in the day to keep the porn out of the main. But due to a certain in-fandom event, this intended action has been long-lost. Because of all of these events, any sinsworld (porn, lewds and related NSFW) that’s Sinspired by the Eddtober prompts WILL NOT be accepted into the event by any means. This is because many in this fandom are minors/underage and more who are 18+ are repulsed to porn and such (Admin Panda is part of the latter group). So please, it is fine to be sexually inspired by the prompts, PLEASE keep your Sinsworld content away from the Eddtober tag - don’t put both tags into that post, essentially.

Abusive/Self-Harm Creative Content. No. Just. No. Death or pain like this isn’t allowed to be depicted in the challenge and should never be romanticised or supported. Eddtober aims to be a safe and uplifting space for all creative people, no matter what their space is at the moment.

More sensitivities and boundries will be added onto this list as Admin Panda recieves questions and requests for this area through the askbox here.

PROMPT LIST

Quick reminder: when this list says ‘create something for’, it’s not just referring to fanart - it refers to any medium, digital, traditional or unconventional, that can be used. The challenge here is to be creative as possible, not to stay conventional.

The List features Admin Panda’s Commentary. Some useless, some useful.

Create something for Edd. (Not his real-life counterpart, but the character. That needed some clearing up based on 2017’s results.)

Create something for Tom.

Create something for Matt

Create something for any pre-legacy season episode, except WTFuture. (You can do WTFuture if you want, but seeing that much of this fandom is currently made of people who came in after The End… It’d be worth having a crack at pre-legacy episodes.)

Create something for the crew’s symbols.

Create something for Superhero Alter Egos! (It doesn’t have to stop at PowerEdd’s canon either! Go nuts! Give Edd and his friends new superhero alibis and outfits!)

Create something for Supervillain Alter Egos! (Reminder that it doesn’t have to stop at the ‘Green/Blue/Purple/Red Leader scenario! Again, go nuts! Get wacky if you must!)

Create something for Minor characters of the show. (Except the Neighbours - they already have their own prompt.)

Create something for descendants of the main four guys. (Sure, you can make it about the love children of your favourite ships, but the point of this prompt specifically is to not be ship-related. See if you can come up with descendant characters from the bloodlines of the main four.)

Create something for Tord. (He’s late in this list for a reason. Trust me.)

Create something for the neighbours of 29 Dirdum Lane. Are Kim and Katya still there, or are there newbies in the street?

Create something for the neighbours of 25 Dirdum Lane.

Create something for unlucky things happening to the guys, or one of them. Feel free to go as dark or as humourous as you like!

Create something for genderbends of the guys, maybe as if the Ellsworld we know never existed. Or you can stick to canon, up to you.

This prompt is a wild card. Do with it as you wish. (In 2017 everyone was told to quote: ‘go whole hog on this’. The next thing we all knew, everybody literally drew pigs with the guys. That wasn’t supposed to be literally taken, but by god it was hilarious.)

Create something for your crew. Whether you’re the main character with your friends or have OCs taking that place or a mix of both is up to you.

Create something for an AU of Eddsworld. You can make one up on the spot, or even fan content for an AU that already exists is cool too. (As of rule number two of Eddtober, the Blessworld AU will not be accepted for this prompt. I know it is a popular AU, but if you have any issues with this, please contact me in the blog asks myself.)

Create something for Eddsworld as a video game. Whether it’s concepts and covers for your own ideas or fanart for games in the making such as Eddsworld Armageddon, up to you.

Create something for Todd, or whoever the ‘Tord’ figure is of 25 Dirdum Lane.

Create something for a Saloonatics-WTFuture Crossover. (What? Shenanigans could be made here, guys. Just take it!)

Create something for the future selves of the guys. Or if you want to take it up a notch, make your own versions of them! Have them all be hobos (#HoBrosforlife), or have cola not be banned in the future… up to you!

The End who? Create and elaborate on how you would finish off the Eddsworld Legacy season. (For the purposes of this prompt, I can accept an angsty end for this, but I personally do not recommend it. The Eddsworld fandom has had enough unnecessary angst already.)

Create something for Zanta. (I guess you could call him a Nightmare Before Christmas, then.)

Create something for an Eddsworld movie. Whether it’s stuff for the Eddsworld Fan Movie or your own ideas, up to you!

Create something for the deal with Tom’s eyes. If you want to call them that.

Pick a song, any song, and put that on repeat. Use it as inspiration to create something in relation to Eddsworld.

Create something for Edd Gould himself. Not his character in Eddsworld, the real-life person.

An obligatory prompt without Eddtober in the beginning: create something for Edd’s birthday. (This was made into a prompt and will permanently remain as one as Edd’s birthday shouldn’t be taken away from today.)

Create something for someone/multiple someones in the fandom who inspire you - even the small artists and writers and such who are just starting out!

Are you afraid of the dark? Are you getting goosebumps? Create scary/monstrous/terrifying things happening to the guys. Interpretation and how far you go with it is up to you.

Happy Halloween! Create something about the guys on this special spooky day. Interpretation is up to you.

If you have any questions, concerns or queries as to all of this, don’t be hesitant to come shoot an ask through this blog. Have fun and a safe Eddtober!

oh my god it’s a bad idea someone has probably already done before with terrible results. but that’s my sim secret, i’m always terrible, so here we go.

when i posted that thing the other day, or last week or whenever, this is the post i wanted to make. i had written most of it and saved it in my drafts, but i thought maybe it wasn’t a good idea. thinking about it today, i’ve realized i don’t really care. i may still delete this post or hide it later, so get your looks in now.

there’s basically 4 hate secret archetypes:

you’re shit

your cc is shit

your sims are shit

and my favorite,

you did this thing unrelated to sims, don’t do that, it’s shit

some people who receive these secrets don’t deserve them. i can’t say whether or not i did, since i am biased, as i am me. but there are a lot of people i’ve seen get picked at who really don’t deserve it and cannot take that kind of rejection from the community. everyone who has ever gotten a hate secret that they felt was unfounded needs to remember: you don’t just have to take shit your entire life from people who treat you like trash. you can also rare back like a horse and hoof them in the face.

so what i’m going to do in this post is go back through all the secrets i have saved that were directed towards me and critique them on how founded they were. and perhaps how nice they looked. 

at the same time, i’m going to tell you exactly what i felt about them when i first saw them and exactly what i feel now. and i may not be very nice. in fact, after having written the rest of this post, i wasn’t nice at all.

chances are, the people who made the secrets did the right thing and stopped following me or looking at my blog a long time ago. and that’s a very healthy thing to do, i’m proud of them. however, possibly, the people who submitted these secrets might be people i know and have talked to, or still talk to. the problem with simsecret is, you never fucking know. maybe i submitted one of these and don’t remember. that’s right, i was me all along.

now, first of all, i must commend this person on making an aesthetically pleasing secret. i mean, the part that they added actually matches my old blog theme a little bit. however, i have to dock points for lack of consistency in that second pooklet. i’m not going to give grammar too terribly hard of a time, because i’m not going to complain about people who may not be native english speakers. i have no way of knowing. but consistency? you get an 8/10.

let me explain you a thing. when a lot of people start posting in any community, it’s easy to be nervous about people critiquing your personal choices. for me, this was a big stumbling block. i emulated pooklet and azaya because their games looked good. they were two people in this community that fanned the flames of my love for ts2 into a fire that will burn for centuries.

this was also when pooklet had just released their lovely templates, which i still use, and they are likely to be the only templates i use until the day that i make my own. milkshape consistency is important to me and diverse facial features are important to me (keep in mind, this was before custom sliders). i would like to think that i evolved as someone who can make sims that look distinctly like my own, despite being based on someone else's templates, but everyone is entitled to their opinion.

nothing is ever going to please everybody. i could release a lovingly crafted piece of cc every day for the rest of my life and someone would complain about me clogging up their dash instead of unfollowing me. but to someone who is new in the community, criticism like this is much more harsh than you may intend it to be and may have an amplified effect. derivation is common in the start of new hobbies, even you probably derived at some point.

the second secret that was specifically aimed towards me is so low effort, i would give it a 3/10. or a 6 out of 9, you somehow fucked it from both ends by making this shit off-center.

first, if you have a similar opinion, you may need to learn the fact that i may prefer to view different things with my eyeballs than you do. since i only have my eyeballs, and not yours, i tend to pick colors i like.

you may think to yourself, “well, why did you make that top area of shirt a different color to the bottom area of shirt??”, and i will tell you, they are not both shirt. the top part is a jacket overlay or some shit. it was a different color on yuxi’s original as well. as for the color choice, i just liked them. especially the middle one, which i tested colors on for half an hour because i knew i wanted to keep that minty jacket and i had already used too much purple.

what does using colorblind as an insult accomplish in this context? you are criticizing something that, if i actually had it, would be a type of disability i could not help. say it’s shit, and say it’s shit to my face so that i know not to share these things with you.

at least use better colors. my colors are notoriously eye-searing but that red is about to give me a goddamn aneurysm. 6/10.

i don’t know how to break it to the original maker of this secret, but much like the tooth fairy does not exist, perfect humans also do not exist. why are you holding me to a higher standard than other people and then discarding me the moment i do something you personally do not like? you liked me. i fucked up. you liked me less than if someone you disliked did the same fucking thing?

in 2015, adfuck was a shitshow, but it is nowhere near the shitshow it is now. i also always provided a secondary link without adfly. i did that shit where i made it smaller for a couple of posts. i did the scum thing. i thought it would be lucrative and help my situation a tiny bit. a dollar earned from adfuck was a dollar i did not have before, and if you’re dying from starvation a dollar will save your life.

the subtext is, if you were afraid of viruses, you should have used the non adfuck link every time. if you were like me, and you had downloaded a thousand things from behind mandatory adfucks with your block disabled before the skipper (the adfly skipper, not like, a sea captain or anything) and hadn’t had a problem, you could very easily toss 1/1000 of a cent to a creator whose work you liked.

my stance on adfucks have changed drastically since 2015. i would never do it again because of its more clear association with viruses and the fact that i do not enjoy knowing that i could’ve made other people’s lives immensely shittier by being complicit in fucking up their computer. but i did do it, and no amount of apologizing is going to change that.

for future record, if you ever find one of my old, reblogged furbyq-sims posts, never click the shortened link. use the non adfuck one. i would have to push link shorteners every single nanosecond of my entire life for it to ever pay anything of substance, and i refuse to promote shorteners anymore. i will never cash it out, so clicking the links is a waste of time. since i deleted furbyq-sims, i cannot edit the links out. do not click them. 

do note that during my run with adfuck, i received 579 total clicks that registered as ‘valid’ or what-the-fuck-ever. those clicks amounted to $1.53 USD. when people use adfucks, be aware that they are doing so to make, probably at most like $5 USD a month if they get thousands of non-blocked clicks. it is the definition of pointless. the danger element is enough to put most people off, the shitty pay should take the rest of them, and yet.

“hey, stop spamming” “hey, to resolve this, spam more” what do you fucking want from me?

again i’m pretty sure this person is not a native speaker, so i’m not going to poke at the grammar more than to mention that contradiction. you got your point across very well. remember to add a white outline to your text next time. 7/10.

let me tell you, desperation will make you do things that may not make sense to anyone else at the time.

think about this: my mom has serious lymph node deficiency that contributes to her getting pneumonia frequently. she’s on an oxygen concentrator at this time. now, oxygen concentrators are the thing that you get when a person needs nearly full-time oxygen. you don’t get a million tanks, you just get a single concentrator, which requires continuous electricity to work. ring ring it’s the electric company, your power is getting turned off tomorrow. you call hospice, hospice is like “well we can get a notice to them in like, two days” so you panic. you scramble for what you believe at that moment is the most important thing, regardless of whether or not you are right.

people who are in need will generally get help to some extent on the internet if they are brave enough to ask. but when it is a dire thing, you will reblog the post as many times as it takes to soothe your profound panic. every time you reblog, maybe one more person will see it. maybe that person will reblog, someone will see that and send $5 your way to help. you have got to keep things like this moving, if you do not ask you will not receive anything and dead posts are as good as not asking.

i don’t mean to sound overly terse, but i do sound that way for a reason, because some things are worth being terse over. and i hope, i hope to whatever deity may actually exist, that you never have to be in that position, where you know exactly why i did what i did. because it means you’re living in hell and it is no place to be.

i know this is an undertale reference of some kind. i don’t understand it, i haven’t played the game. if you’re going to say something mean to someone, maybe you should use your own words instead of formatting cryptic bullshit that includes the word 'garbage’. 3/10.

if you’re going to insult someone, be specific. because when you insult someone, you wield a sword. when i get stabbed, i want it to be a killing blow to my heart and not some lukewarm stabbing about in my midsection. fucking kill me or leave me alone. those are the options, pick one.

people in the sims community make custom content. and some of it is great, and some of it is shitty. and sometimes, both of those things can come from the same person, because everybody in the entire world has off days. i’m not going to say my shit is great, but i have made things i am proud of. proud that i took the time to make something and it paid off, and i realized a creation that would not exist without my existence and efforts. 

other times, my stuff has been shitty. you are not obligated to download what you don’t like, and i’m sorry that me taking up 500 megabytes of the entire internet to host my shit on impacted your life so much back in 2016 or whenever the fuck.

after some angry secrets, it’s good to end on this one. it makes me laugh every time i see it. 9/10.

i’m going to address three points in this picture, but i’m not and have never been mad at this one. whoever made this secret, inbox me. you’re my favorite motherfucker.

when i made the phantom rage skin i had a picture of a man who had very speckled vitiligo saved as inspiration. i lost that picture when i cleared out old files, but this model, genesis castillo, is very similar to the vitiligo pattern that man had. there are a hundred winnie harlow skins. there were none like this where the vitiligo was not evened out with makeup. i then paired tones 1 and 10 and 2 and 8 for contrast, but the 1 and 10 one looks much odder in the low opacity parts, like camouflage, someone said once.

as someone who has a skin condition, i know how emotionally traumatic they are when they change your appearance drastically. i cannot empathize with any traumas of vitiligo that are directly tied to people of color being affected by it because i am not a person of color. 

if i offended anyone who has vitiligo, i am genuinely sorry. my intention was not to make a ‘costume’, it was to make a virtual representation of a type of human being that actually exists. i hope that learning from this experience and using that knowledge to the best of my ability in the future is enough to undo even an iota of damage that was done.

point two, what is wrong with the middle sim? what is wrong with the middle sim? what is wrong with them? they have a mole? they’re wearing two head accessories? what is wrong with them???

point three, the bebebrillit hairline conversions weren’t terrible. fitting shit to the different hairline shape is difficult, so it can lead to some weird edges. at the time i took the previews for the hairlines, i didn’t have a ton of hairs in my folder. i just started doing nouk hairs. i needed to take a picture of the high fashion ponytail, so i killed two birds with one stone. this is not a combo that i played with, thinking they fit together like jigsaw pieces. it was a preview and it even showed that the hairlines did not work with every hair.

also,

there was a mythical 8th secret (yes, there were actually fucking 8 of them, i’ve averaged 2 hate secrets a year which i consider a life achievement). it was a picture of my first ts4 skinblend with the word “hideous” or “this is hideous” or some shit on it. it had the word hideous in it. that secret was deleted before i could save it, but i still remember it. and i can’t even be mad, i mean, they’re right. 10/10. best secret. it wasn’t a secret at all.

i actually can’t remember why it turned out so shiny, i think it’s because there were like no skins close to what i wanted and i tried handpainting before i knew how to.

in conclusion, please, in the future... stay salty, stay mean, continue hiding behind anonymity, but either grow a sense of humor or commit to what you’re doing instead of hurling balls of infernal bitching gently at my face. 

Sineala, hi! (Is there a shorten form to call you?) I always see people talk about Civil War - Avengers Prime - Hickmanvengers being big points in Tony&Steve's relationship, fanfiction-wise. But what about Avengers vol 4? How's their relationship there? Is there any material for shippers? I hope this ask makes sense

Hi! (People usually call me Sine, by the way.)

Avengers volume 4 is, in my opinion, awfully underrated in Steve/Tony fandom. I actually didn't read it when I was getting into the pairing, because I figured that reading it after New Avengers + Mighty Avengers + Secret Invasion + Dark Reign + Siege would be too much of Bendis' writing to take all at once. No one ever really talked much about it, so I figured I could wait because it probably wasn't that good if no one talked about it. But then several months ago I ended up needing to read it to write a remix and I was surprised by how much fun it was. It's not my absolute favorite run, but it's a good solid read and there are a few really nice Steve/Tony moments, in both angsty and fluffy varieties.

More under the Read More!

The thing you should know about Avengers v4 is that the beginning is coming in hot on the heels of Steve's return to life after Civil War, so this is really the first time Steve and Tony have interacted since then. Tony doesn't remember Civil War (Steve does, though) but that doesn't mean they don't still have a lot of... issues. If you're going to read v4 you need to start with Avengers Prime, which features Steve and Tony healing the worst of their Civil War wounds. Also naked Tony. Also hugging.

Steve and Tony's relationship at the beginning of Avengers v4 is characterized by them really just trying to figure out how to have a relationship again and what that relationship should look like. And, frankly, I think they have either forgotten how much intensity normal people have in their friendships or they just don't care what normal friendships are like because it's just 1000% feelings all over the place and most of the feelings are weird and awkward and they're going to have ALL OF THEM anyway. Loudly, messily, and in public.

Like, okay, take Avengers v4 #1. This should be your standard "yay, hooray, let's put a new team together" kind of issue. Except it isn't quite so easy, with Steve and Tony. Steve wants to put Tony on the team and Tony... pulls Steve aside and tries to refuse. "We don't agree on just about anything anymore," Tony says, and Steve tries to disagree with him. And then there's this glorious panel:

"When I look at you, all I see are all the mistakes."

I mean, wow. Tony. What the hell. What is anyone supposed to say to that?

You see what I mean about all the feelings, yes?

Tony ultimately ends up agreeing to be on the team -- but the thing is, at this point in time, Steve isn't on the team, and I honestly kind of think that's why Tony agrees. Steve shows up in a few Avengers issues but officially Steve at this point is off doing black-ops work as the leader of the Secret Avengers. (He's Commander Rogers, yes. Bucky is Captain America.)

But the real fun -- and by fun I mean "massive amount of angst" -- happens in the arc that takes place in Avengers v4 #7-12. This is the arc where the Hood steals the Infinity Gems from the Illuminati. At this point, Tony is one of the Illuminati and Steve has no idea the Illuminati even exist -- until he finds out. And then, boy is he pissed that Tony has been keeping this from him. Tony and the rest of the Illuminati are in the Himalayas looking for one of their Infinity Gems when Steve shows up, bringing with him what looks like basically every superhero they both know, and they proceed to have a screaming match in the snow while surrounded by all of their friends.

Their friends know they love each other, at least?

It is, if you actually read the panels -- and I recommend you click on the link above and actually read the whole thing -- a weirdly intimate argument to be having while surrounded by everyone they know, given that this is pretty clearly about their feelings. And you'd think maybe they wouldn't want to just stand right here and scream at each other, but I guess that's what they're doing. Okay, then. This is clearly how regular friendships work. Sure.

It is at this point that Peter Parker then analogizes their relationship to “mommy and daddy fighting:”

I mean, okay, fair enough. I guess. You know, I think at this point the emotional beats of Steve and Tony's relationship would make way more actual sense if they were canonically romantically involved, but no one at Marvel asked me.

Anyway! They get to be friends again because they save the world and Tony lets Steve onto the Illuminati and I guess Steve is cool with Tony having secrets as long as he's in on them. (It is one of the weirder aspects of Steve's character that he has a lot of massive issues basically boiling down to him wanting Tony's absolute and complete trust with no secrets from him ever -- about this, about the SHRA, about the incursions, about the Guardsmen, and so on -- but as far as I can tell he doesn't demand this of anyone else. Just Tony.)

Then what happens is Fear Itself, an event that doesn't get a lot of play in fandom. It's not the best event ever, but it's not, you know, absolutely rotten. Definitely not the worst thing Matt Fraction has written! Bucky dies and stays dead for almost no time at all but Steve takes the shield back from him. (And breaks the shield. And gets the shield fixed at the end. They hit the reset button really, really fast at the end of Fear Itself.) Tony also starts drinking again, and he drinks for the duration of the event -- the deal is that he needs Odin to help him out, so he needs a sacrifice, so what he sacrifices is his sobriety.

So you'd think that even though it's Tony drinking in what is basically a cheap ploy to up the narrative tension, that fandom would be all over that the way fandom is all over Tony's other drinking arcs. (Well, okay, fandom's not all over Disassembled, but (1) it's Disassembled, and (2) that one wasn't even his fault.) But this was Tony's choice! We can make something out of that, right? (There is a bit of fic. Not a lot. And not, I think, anything really long.) You might think, perhaps, that the Iron Man run would address the fallout of Tony drinking.

The thing is that the Iron Man run at the time is Fraction's Invincible Iron Man. So, uh. To his credit, he does attempt to address how this loss of sobriety would make Tony feel and how it would affect the people around him. Including Steve! Unfortunately, his ideas about characterization are such that it happens like this:

Because Steve would absolutely respond to Tony's obvious distress by threatening to break his bones, right? Right? Absolutely an in-character thing for Steve to do! Good! Glad we all agree on that!

(Seriously, when I read this I was completely certain it had to be some kind of dream sequence and I turned the page expecting to see Tony wake up. It is not a dream sequence.)

Right. So after Fear Itself, Steve is Captain America and an Avenger again. By this point, Steve and Tony have figured out how be friends (or whatever the hell they are, I give up), and they put a new(er) team together and we get some adorable moments in which Tony calls the press and doesn’t tell Steve:

Seriously, if there is an exchange that better illustrates these two in modern canon when they're getting along than "You should have asked me first" / "You'd have said no, so why would I do that?" I don't know what it is. They pass the Broccoli Test for sure. (I think they alternate between passing the Broccoli Test with zero difficulty and causing the entire supermarket to explode. It's hard to tell.)

Then we head on into AvX, which is an event I did not bother to read because my impression from the panels I have seen is that it is about Steve Rogers and Scott Summers competing to see who can be the biggest asshole and I figured I'd skip it. The Avengers tie-ins are pretty decent, though.

I just have to give a shout out to the last arc of Avengers v4 because, though it is not going to make the slashy moments list, it is A+ on that old-school Avengers feel. Because, you see, Jan -- whom they all thought was dead -- has really been trapped in the Microverse, and the founding Avengers band together to rescue her. And when they find her, this happens:

She kisses Hank! She kisses all of them! She kisses Tony right on the faceplate! I love Jan!

Then they go fight a centaur wearing plate armor (the centaur, not them) (okay I guess technically Tony is wearing plate armor) and it is the very best COMICS.

And then they get home and everyone has a party for Jan and we have some more Steve and Tony bonding:

The run actually ends on them agreeing that the team needs to get bigger, which if you remember is where Hickman's run opens.

If v4 has a downside, for me, it's that it has too much Wonder Man, although I tend to believe that the ideal amount of Wonder Man is zero Wonder Man, so obviously your mileage may vary.

So, yeah, v4 is fun and slashy and it's only 34 issues plus a few annuals and so on. It's a quick read! Give it a try! And then someone can write me some post-Fear Itself fic about Tony drinking because for God's sake we can do better than canon.

How We Use Dystopian Landscapes to Tell Very Human Stories

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This guest post was written by Caroline Hardaker, author of Composite Creatures, a character-driven science fiction debut about the burgeoning relationship between two people set in a melancholic and mundane near-future climate change dystopia.

When we think, we escape our biological bodies. We hardly ever reflect on it, but from the day we’re born until we collapse into ash – that’s all we are. Organic machines, birthed in balance with an environment we spend our lives harvesting. No matter how much we sometimes take it for granted, we can’t survive without the land, sea, and sky working in perfect harmony, yet we all likely face a problematic future where the world will look quite different.

Writers and filmmakers are obsessed with imagining this speculative future. And not only how it’ll look, smell, or feel, but also how humans will engage with it emotionally. If the earth transforms into a different planet, will we transform into different people too? Modern books and films depict the future of environmentalism in a whole host of ways, from burned-out deserts to boots burning upon a toxic wasteland. In each, often it’s how humanity engages with nature which is the most interesting aspect of the storytelling. Yes, there are aesthetic changes to the sky, sea, and soil, but often it’s humans who’ve changed the most.

It’s something I wanted to explore on a domestic level in my novel, Composite Creatures. Set in a very near future, many of the changes are subtle – creating an uncanny eeriness that it’s hard to shake off. A lilac-tinged sky, a metallic taste on the air, and mice that scurry up trees just slowly enough for you to spot the stitches holding their limbs together.

Credit: Angry Robot

But, sometimes, dystopian landscapes are revealed as alien worlds, almost unrecognisable to our own…

Perhaps the landscape that first comes to mind when imagining a typical, desolate future is the sort of barren sandy stretches in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road—an environment in which humankind has reverted to a mechanical way of life in order to survive the heat and brutal stretches of ‘nothingness’. Survivors continue only by embracing sex, drugs, racing, fighting and looting. Every minute in this world is a struggle, a fight against the elements. Sand clings to skin, blinds the eyes, and rattles in the lungs. The sun mercilessly burns everything beneath it, and the characters can only watch as the planet disintegrates and blisters into a dead, dusty flatland.

The dead landscape and emotional ‘nothingness’ are taken to the extreme in Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Road. A story about a father and son travelling across a cold, dead landscape stripped of all colour and life, this haunting, post nuclear landscape is frequently hailed as a terrifyingly realistic depiction of what will happen in the event of environmental collapse. McCarthy never shies away from the future’s bleakness, and frequently making the connection between a dead world and a dead emotional state. Survivors live as scavengers and cannibals, their humanity burning away with each day. Even the father and son kill to survive, prompting the son to ask his father if they’re still the good guys. When it’s kill or be killed, where does this leave morality?

Set in England in 2027, P.D. James’ Children of Men has become another classic depiction of environmental apocalypse. Here, an unknown catastrophe has rendered humanity infertile. The planet is in a state of collapse and the youngest person on Earth, we are told from TV reports, has just died at the age of 18. Britain exists as an authoritarian state, attracting migrants fleeing plagues and nuclear devastation. But they arrive to find a hostile environment of xenophobia and societal paranoia. London is a grim landscape of terrorist bombings and security checkpoints; of prowling military, sealed-off spaces, grey buildings, barbed wire, filthy streets, and armed police. Life is cruel, and humanity has turned away from nature and into itself. Individuals keep their heads down and look out for themselves, stumbling around their neighbourhoods as if drunk on life’s bitterness. Unlike Mad Max, there are no technopunk gadgets to help communities surf this new landscape. War, isolation, and a lack of hope has sapped any energy and left humanity in a fog of its own misery. The only thing holding society together is the desperate desire to pretend everything is normal; to continue, to keep breathing, to keep calm and carry on.

Credit: Envela Castel

This ‘turning a blind eye’ is also seen in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, which explores the consequences of biotechnology on nature and society. Atwood describes a world where humans are the cause of environmental destruction, and even in the realisation of this they don’t stop. In fact, they continue to develop new ways to manipulate the natural course of the world. In Oryx and Crake, scientific corporations with the scientific know-how to genetically alter animals run the world, and nothing is quite as it seems. All ‘natural’ aspects of the planet’s biology are now extinct, and the environment has become the petri dish for one long experiment. Here, humanity doesn’t learn from its mistakes.

Regardless of how the environment arrived at its ruin, these dystopian landscapes frequently become the main antagonist. It doesn’t matter if we’re to blame for polluting the soil or for melting the ice caps – humans frequently battle these new wildernesses to survive. Picture the endless, dangerous seas in 1995’s Waterworld, for instance. Kevin Costner embodies the only character we see whose body has adapted to the environment, and this causes him to be ostracised. Does having gills and webbed digits ally him with the enemy water, perhaps?

Similarly, in The Girl with All The Gifts by Mike Carey, it’s the moment when Melanie partners with nature to deliver an ending she believes will provide the young with a future when we (as the reader) are left questioning the morality and finality of her actions. Poor Miss Justineau, the only remaining central character to which we can relate, must live in a bubble, forever disconnected from the air. 

These aren’t the only worlds that condemn those who are more engaged with the environment. In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, those who do not have a use or place in Gilead are sent to the outposts, to spend the rest of their shortened lives cleaning up toxic waste. Those in power have split Gilead into two halves – a heaven and a hell – a religious utopia balanced by a polluted, poisonous nuclear netherworld. Unlike many other dystopian landscapes, here those in power have deliberately done everything they can to shape a heaven from a broken, polluted America, in which fertility rates are dropping and religious radicalism is on the rise. They brainwash citizens into believing that Gilead is exactly the new land that God would want, shining up their constructed utopia to hide the reality of the man-made nuclear wastelands their new world is built upon.

Dystopian futures routinely feature landscapes shaped by mankind’s poor decision-making. Mankind’s blame for environmental deterioration is often only a little mentioned fact aside from the main plot. In 1999’s The Matrix, we’re shown a jagged horizon lit by an angry storm as Morpheus explains to Neo that humans deliberately scorched the sky to strike a blow to the solar-powered machines. Ironically, this decision meant that the earth’s surface became uninhabitable, and in a cruel twist of fate, human bodies become organic batteries, photosynthesising energy to fuel the machines we created. And just like with Gilead, the remaining humans create a new ‘heaven’ under the earth’s crust – Zion – to escape the horrors of the world they’ve poisoned.

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Perhaps it’s not so ironic that – regardless of the particulars of the dystopian world – in depictions of futuristic environments, it is humans who regress. As the world moves forward, we devolve and take on animalistic or primitive behaviours. We become batteries, scavengers, cannibals. Even when the horizon is dark, and the stretches of ‘nothingness’ reach on as far as the eye can see, we adapt with a kind of stubborn resilience. We build new technologies to survive however we can, and build emotional walls to stop the terrible truth from sinking in.

Composite Creatures is out today, and is available to purchase wherever books are sold. You can find out more about Caroline Hardaker and her work here.

In celebration of Composite Creatures’ launch, Angry Robots is hosted a free digital launch party at 7pm GMT/2pm ET.

The post How We Use Dystopian Landscapes to Tell Very Human Stories appeared first on Den of Geek.

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Just for the Record: COVID

This is what any well-trained virologist will tell you:

My advice: Ignore it at your peril. To quote from the Conclusion below:

When one follows the science, and nothing but the science, it becomes extremely difficult to not label ongoing mass vaccination campaigns as a crime, not only to public health but also to individual health.

Thus, it will soon be clear whether “politicians” are taking notice of medical knowledge or have a hidden political agenda driving their behavior.

We must halt all ongoing Covid-19 mass vaccination campaigns as a temporary health benefit to the most vulnerable groups does not justify a public health disaster of international concern.

Geert Vanden Bossche, DVM, PhD virology, independent seasoned vaccine researcher, previous SPO at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and SPM at GAVI is urging WHO and world political leaders to immediately halt all ongoing Covid-19 mass vaccination campaigns as there is compelling evidence that they will soon dramatically worsen the consequences of the current pandemic.

Attached to this letter, you will find a summary of the manuscript I am currently in the process of finalizing. I initially intended to attach the manuscript in full to my letter. However, given the exceptional urgency of my call, I have no choice but to send you the summary (+ conclusion) in advance. I will post the manuscript in full on LinkedIn as soon as I can (presumably in the course of next week).

In the upcoming manuscript I will share my insights on the immune pathogenesis of Coronavirus pandemics. Those are based on an in-depth analysis of Covid-19-relevant scientific literature (key references will be appended) and backed by my deep vaccine knowledge and relentless perseverance in unraveling the host’s immune defense mechanisms and strategies viruses have evolved to escape those. Understanding the interplay between the virus and the host immune system is a prerequisite for designing vaccines able to counter the immune subversive strategy of infectious pathogens. I do not think that it is reasonable for WHO or any other health authority to approve ‘emergency use’ of vaccines aimed at conducting mass vaccination campaigns in the very heat of an infectious pandemic without having gained an in-depth understanding of how this may impact on the outcome of the pandemic.

In particular, lack of understanding of the consequences of immune pressure on highly mutable viruses has now allowed for the approval of a number of Covid-19 vaccines that are completely contraindicated for fighting a pandemic, regardless of the technology used. Although safe and efficacious and providing temporary relief to part of the population and to healthcare facilities, these vaccines will soon come with a heavy toll to be paid by the entire population if mass vaccination campaigns continue.

Again, given the urgency of my call, I will neither allow time for peer-review, nor for English proofreading, nor for fine-tuning the wording or for screening the manuscript for redundancy. As I merely seek to provide enough of compelling scientific proof for sounding this warning bell, I will not deal with relevant matters as exhaustively as I would normally do. Clearly, the upcoming manuscript is not meant to be submitted to a scientific peer-reviewed journal but to explain the scientific rationale behind my cry of distress and urgent wake-up call. May they for God’s sake draw the world’s attention to what I think is now likely to become the biggest and most tragic mistake made in the history of public health in general and in the field of vaccination in particular.

To support my wake-up call and credibility, I am not nearly as much relying on my credentials (which you can find at LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geertvandenbossche/) as I am on a diversified set of relevant scientific reports from the literature and on the evolution of the pandemic itself. The latter is now featured by the emergence of much more infectious viral variants.

Nevertheless, you may still opt for now to not believe the statements, conclusions and forecasts that will be made in this manuscript and which have already been summarized as attached. However, I have no doubt that in the days and weeks to come ‘doubting Thomas’ will have to admit that he was proven wrong. In the meantime, these disastrous vaccination campaigns will likely be intensified and even extended to younger age groups. Given the power, influence and blind ambition of the stakeholders driving these campaigns, it is going to be incredibly difficult to stop this act of complete madness. When all of them will finally have to admit the catastrophic consequences of this ‘experiment’, precious time and, more importantly, many more lives will have been lost. Eventually, complete lockdowns will likely be imposed for an indefinite period of time as a last resort.

Although largely based on direct or indirect scientific evidence, the views expressed in the manuscript will be my personal views. Of course, I take full accountability of what I am saying and I can only hope that those who’re in charge will be sufficiently convinced to take their responsibility and stop all ongoing Covid-19 vaccination campaigns immediately. There should be no excuse and certainly no complaints about lack of warnings by dedicated experts. I cannot emphasize enough that continuing these vaccination endeavors will dramatically prolong, instead of shorten, the current pandemic and take a much higher toll in terms of disease and fatality rates in all of the population. It goes without saying that a such enhancement of this crisis will come with unbearable socio-economic consequences for many years to come.

The manuscript will provide compelling evidence that – as far as acute self-limiting viral infections are concerned - the natural course (i.e., without human intervention!) of a Coronavirus pandemic is typically featured by 3 waves that ultimately flatten as the infection merges into a seasonal ‘common cold.’ However, it is difficult to predict how long it would take a natural Covid-19 pandemic to ‘downgrade’ to yet another kind of seasonal ‘common cold’ without human intervention. Maybe somewhere between 2 to 4 years, but that’s a personal guess. This is, of course, not to say that in the meantime one should not do whatever is possible to mitigate the disease in those developing severe symptoms. But first, “do no harm” (“primum non nocere”): Given the huge amount of immune escape that will be provoked my mass vaccination campaigns and flanking containment measures, it is difficult to imagine how human interventions would not cause the Covid-19 pandemic to turn into an incredible disaster for global and individual health.

I would have been able to put the appended manuscript together without having dedicated the last 10 years of my career to designing an entirely new vaccine concept that aims at enabling our immune system to kill a multitude of infectious (and even, noninfectious) diseases without allowing the pathogen, or any ‘variant’ editions thereof, to escape the immune response induced. In contrast, all of the current Covid-19 vaccines rely on strengthening adaptive (as opposed to innate) immunity in general, and humoral (i.e. antibodies) in particular. Hence, none of them will prevent immune escape and, for that matter, all will be subject to anti-viral resistance. Adapting the composition to the new circulating variants does not solve the problem as science tells us that this will even accelerate the rate of immune escape (in asymptomatic Covid-19 carriers).

Isn’t it surprising that while we have now become so well aware of all dramatic consequences and threats surrounding microbial resistance to antibiotics, we still don’t believe that fighting viruses in ways

that do not completely kill them opens the door to vaccine resistance? While we have been taught to always take the medication for as long as prescribed, even if we were already feeling much better, we still don’t seem to believe that viruses can escape to specific antibodies if antibody concentrations or affinity are no longer sufficient to neutralize the virus. Widespread use of antibiotics is generally acknowledged to raise a serious global concern about antimicrobial resistance, but nobody seems to bother about resistance to vaccines that are used in mass vaccination campaigns in the context of an ongoing pandemic. Since those are conducted against a huge infectious background, a multitude of vaccinees will be in the process of seroconverting while being exposed to circulating infectious virus. Prophylactic vaccines against viral or other infectious diseases are typically administered well in advance of a likely risk of infectious exposure. While this is ensuring full-fledged protection to the infectious agent, it is also preventing immune escape and hence, resistance to the vaccine. Aren’t we not already witnessing an increasing number of cases of Covid-19 vaccinated people who still shed virus and sometimes even develop mild symptoms? Aren’t these cases compelling enough in proving how easily Covid-19 viruses can escape antibody responses? How can we then be so excited about current Covid- 19 vaccines knowing that they allow immune escape and thus, enable the virus to select more infectious variants? And do we really think that going for a one dose shot (instead of the prescribed 2-dose vaccination schedule), as some propose, is not going to even expedite immune escape?

In our naïve and simplistic attempt to prevent the pandemic from running its natural course, we are in fact providing the beast with an even much better opportunity to escape host immunity than natural infection does. The only way to do better than the natural pandemic is to eradicate Covid-19 right away. To do so, there is probably no other way but to concentrate on vaccination strategies that allow DURABLE priming of innate immune killer cells (i.e., NK cells), the activation of which has already been shown to correlate with full viral clearance in asymptomatically Covid-19-infected subjects. As innate cytotoxic cells enable non-antigen-specific killing of the virus, they don’t drive immune escape.

By implementing immune intervention strategies that capitalize on empowering these innate immune cells to acquire immunologic memory, it must be possible to fully, broadly and durably protect human populations against all Covid-19 editions, and even against Coronaviruses at large. The ‘sterilizing’ immunity they provide would not only protect people who would ‘naturally’ become asymptomatically infected (but, unfortunately, only enjoy natural protection for as long as they keep their innate immune system well-trained through moderate but regular pathogen exposure) but also subjects who would ‘naturally’ develop (severe) symptoms or even succumb to the disease.

In conclusion, fostering the development of NK cell-based vaccines should become a public health priority. As will become obvious from the manuscript, NK-cell based hold great promise for stopping this pandemic at its source while also ensuring future preparedness to emerging pandemic threats at large.

Immediate cancellation of all ongoing Covid-19 mass vaccination campaigns should now become THE most acute health emergency of international concern.

Executive summary

The manuscript, which is in now in the process of being finalized, should shed some light on how the virus and especially its interaction with the host immune system determines the natural course (i.e., without human intervention) of a Coronavirus (CoV) pandemic. The interplay between host immune defense and viral immune escape determines the course of a natural CoV pandemic (including a natural Covid-19 pandemic).

In the clinic, viral immune escape is known to occur when the neutralizing capacity of serum antibodies (Abs) does not suffice to fully eliminate highly mutable viruses (e.g., CoV) for lack of their concentration or affinity. In a CoV pandemic setting, seroconversion occurs against a background of high infectious pressure and is, therefore, prone to promote viral immune escape.

The first wave of disease 1 (and mortality) primarily affects elderly people (or otherwise immunocompromised subjects). Selective (i.e., adaptive) immune escape is expected to cause this wave to transition into a more severe, second wave in younger age groups. Subsequently, non-selective (i.e., innate) as well as selective immune escape operated by increasingly infectious viral variants will trigger a third wave. The latter would primarily affect subjects who recovered from disease they contracted during the first wave as their seroneutralising Abs do no longer properly match the new circulating viral variants. This third wave of disease (and mortality) would come to an end when those who recovered from the disease will have mounted new functional Abs against these immune escape variants. As seroconversion in this population will now occur much faster (due to recall of cross-reactive T helper memory cells) and as the majority of the young and middle-aged population will either be seronegative or have seroconverted already by the time the third wave starts to expand, chances are slim for the virus to escape the host’s Ab response. Asymptomatic 2, seronegative individuals (i.e., the vast majority of young and middle-aged people) may spread virus upon (re-)infection and hence, constitute a relevant source of viral transmission. However, CoV infection in these asymptomatic carriers is abrogated after a short period of viral shedding. Viral clearance in these subjects is likely to occur through activation of NK cells. The latter are capable of recognizing CoV-associated, antigen (Ag)-nonspecific patterns on the surface of CoV-infected epithelial target cells. As killing by NK cells is, therefore, not Ag-specific and as seroconversion

1. For the purpose of the manuscript, ‘disease’ refers to severe Covid-19 disease with involvement of lower respiratory airways 2. For the purpose of the manuscript, ‘asymptomatic’ infection refers to CoV infection which does not cause clinically relevant symptoms or only causes a mild level of disease (i.e., only involving upper respiratory airways) in asymptomatically infected subjects is only short-lived, viral immune escape does not normally occur. Consequently, new, more infectious, variants are unlikely to emerge from this population as long as viral infectiousness does not dramatically increase.

At the point of ‘no immune escape’, the pandemic will be under control and merge into an endemic infection. However, as long as the point of ‘no immune escape’ isn’t reached, any additional immune selection pressure, for example as a result of suboptimal concentration or affinity of Ag-specific (e.g., spike protein-specific) Abs, will allow the virus to rapidly unfold more infectious, immune escape variants. Additional immune selection pressure, especially when exerted during the second wave of a CoV pandemic, is likely to precipitate and amplify viral immune escape. This might even cause the second and third wave to merge into a single huge wave of mortality and disease that affects all layers of the population (possibly, with the exception of small children).

Especially mass vaccination campaigns, particularly when conducted in the midst of a pandemic, are prone to exerting enormous immune pressure on circulating virus strains. This is because the vaccine is used in an increasingly infectious context (as escape variants are more infectious). Mass vaccination campaigns will accelerate the emergence of even more infectious immune escape variants. This because the number of vaccine recipients who seroconvert within a given time period will dramatically increase . In addition, Ag-specific, high affinity Abs induced by any of the current vaccines will outcompete natural, broadly protective mucosal IgM antibodies as the latter only bind with low affinity to the receptor-binding domain of CoV (RBD). This will particularly affect natural resistance of younger age groups which - thanks to a well-trained innate immune system- resisted disease during the first wave. The new circulating CoV variants may now even be able to escape the host’s CoV variant-nonspecific line of immune defense at the mucosal portal of entry. These age groups may, therefore, become more susceptible to symptomatic infection and shedding caused by more infectious variants.

But mass vaccination campaigns will also have severe consequences for those who got vaccinated first (mostly the elderly or people with underlying disease or those who are otherwise immunocompromised). In the highly likely event that mass vaccination will soon result in antiviral resistance (see below), these people will have no single bit of immunity left to rely upon. In contrast to the infectious circulating virus, current vaccines do either not contain any critical killer cell motif or fail to activate dedicated killer cells. It goes, therefore, without saying that vaccine-induced immune responses will inevitably result in a dramatic enhancement of morbidity and mortality rates in all of the human population (except for small children?).

Alike naturally infected subjects, vaccine recipients need time to mount a full-fledged Ag-specific Ab response. Further to all of the above, low exposure to circulating CoV strains (e.g., due to stringent containment measures) will increasingly weaken innate mucosal immunity for lack of training. Again, this is particularly relevant for those who - thanks to their sufficient and adequate innate immune defense – got away with asymptomatic infection during the first wave. Stringent and widespread infection prevention measures are now increasingly compromising their innate immunity and rendering them more susceptible to symptomatic infection. Especially the younger age groups may, therefore, end up with relatively higher morbidity and mortality rates, even regardless of the emergence of more infectious viral variants. This is to say that broadly implemented infection prevention measures will only amplify the already detrimental consequences of ongoing mass vaccination campaigns. It is reasonable to assume that the combination of non-selective and selective immune escape will cause morbidity and mortality rates in younger age groups to explode.

The more Covid-19 vaccination campaigns in the young and middle-age groups will be delayed (i.e., relative to their initiation in the elderly), the more they will enhance morbidity and mortality rates in this group: By the time mass vaccination campaigns are about to start in the young and middle-aged groups, a substantial number of these people will already have been infected with Covid-19. Enhanced rates of infection by highly infectiousness viral variants significantly has now increased the likelihood for them to become re-infected while being in the process of seroconverting. So, by the time vaccinations will be initiated, viral immune escape in this group may already be fueling a vicious circle of enhanced viral infectiousness resulting in more seroconversion and hence, more immune escape. Mass vaccination campaigns in this group will only dramatically deteriorate the situation as they will lead to a fast and massive increase in the number of asymptomatic subjects that are in the process of seroconverting against a highly infectious background. and, therefore, prone to promoting viral immune escape. As there is naturally no reason for them to isolate, there will be plenty of opportunity for the highly infectious circulating strains to replicate in the presence of suboptimal Ab titers and, therefore, to escape the host’s immune control.

Hence, the more vaccination campaigns in this group get delayed, the more selection of even more infectious viral variants will be expedited. The ensuing exponential increase in viral immune escape rates will ultimately enable viral variants to even break through vaccine- mediated protection in the vaccinated elderly. As their Abs increasingly mismatch the ever more infectious emerging variants, they will no longer manage to control viral replication and shedding and rapidly allow for massive viral immune escape. Because seroprotective Abs primarily confer protection through targeting Covid-19’s RBD, the virus will now increasingly select mutations in this particular part of the spike protein as those most readily enable the virus to escape vaccine-induced Abs. This will inevitably precipitate resistance to the vaccine. As a result of mass vaccination, people who got the vaccine first will suddenly no longer be protected and, despite vaccination, fall prey to a wave of catastrophic morbidity and mortality.

There can, therefore, be no doubt that current vaccination strategies are rendering the impact of mass vaccination campaigns even more catastrophic and only adding to the magnitude of a pending global health disaster. However, mass vaccination also harms individual health as vaccine-induced variant-specific Abs will outcompete natural variant-nonspecific mucosal Abs for binding to CoV variants and thereby deprive individuals from their broadly protective natural (life)line of immune defense.

As large scale vaccination campaigns combined with the sustained implementation of several containment measures will only expedite the occurrence of viral escape mutations, the illusory hope that current Covid-19 vaccines could generate herd immunity should once and for all be thrown overboard. Along the same line of reasoning, it is not unthinkable that Covid-19 will, once again, cross species barriers. One can definitely not rule out that with growing immune- mediated selection of virus variants, Covid-19 is ultimately going to be able to jump to other animal species, especially industrial livestock (e.g., intensive pig and poultry farms with high stocking density) as i) these species are already known to host several different Coronaviruses and ii) variability/ mutations in the very same spike protein, and particularly in the RBD, are known to be responsible for shifts in host tropism/ susceptibility. Similar to the situation with influenza virus, these animal species could then constitute a reservoir for SARS-COVID-2 virus. Depending on the prevalence of circulating animal CoVs in those farms (and hence, the level of trained immunity), those animals could now serve as asymptomatic carriers, thereby constituting a serious threat to humans.

Conclusion:

The combination of mass vaccination and infection prevention measures is a recipe for a global health disaster. Following the science, one has to conclude that all age groups (possibly with the exception of small children) will be heavily affected and subject to rates of morbidity and mortality that raise much faster and much higher than those expected to occur during the natural course of a CoV pandemic. This will particularly apply if the sequence of mass vaccinations following the first infectious wave parallels that of natural infection (i.e., immunocompromised people and elderly first, followed by the younger age groups).

No one, for that matter, should be granted a right to implement large-scale pharmaceutic and non-pharmaceutic immune interventions, especially not during a viral pandemic, and certainly not without an in-depth understanding of the immune pathogenesis of a viral pandemic. When one follows the science, and nothing but the science, it becomes extremely difficult to not label ongoing mass vaccination campaigns as a crime, not only to public health but also to individual health.

To substantiate the reasoning above, the manuscript will first explain how components of the innate immune system can protect against Covid-19 and render infections asymptomatic. It will then go on to explain in more detail why and how, in an immunologically Covid-19-naïve population, selective (i.e., adaptive) immune escape shifts the first wave of disease and death from the elderly (and immunocompromised) subjects to those who at the outset of the pandemic got away with asymptomatic infection (i.e., the younger and middle-aged population segment). Similarly, it will be explained how viral immune escape in the asymptomatically infected population finally shifts back the burst of morbidity and mortality to the elderly, and how the population eventually controls the pandemic by controlling viral immune escape. This will already illustrate the critical importance of desiccating the changing contribution of innate and adaptive immunity to the population’s overall immune defense against a viral pandemic. Understanding these dynamics helps to comprehend the sophisticated course of a natural CoV pandemic, how it eventually merges into an endemic infection and why human intervention has a highly detrimental impact on the refined interplay between the virus and its host. In regard of the latter, the devastating global health impact of ongoing mass vaccination campaigns and accompanying stringent and widespread containment measures will be explained in more detail as the global and individual health consequences could simply be unbearable for many years to come.

After the introductory section on innate immune defense mechanisms relevant to Covid-19, other relevant topics will be addressed in form of questions and answers. Last, a section will be dedicated to the scientific rationale for using NK cell-based vaccines that could provide sterilizing immunity and hence, wipe out Covid-19 and related variants all together.

The natural course of a CoV pandemic is controlled by the population’s innate and adaptive immunity and dramatically aggravated by antibody-based vaccines when used in mass vaccination campaigns conducted in the course of the pandemic and flanked by stringent containment measures.

NAC:

Natural asymptomatic carrier : for the purpose of this manuscript, NAC is defined as a subject disposing upon a level of innate immunity high enough to resist disease

nonNAC:

For the purpose of this manuscript, nonNAC is defined as a subject who is not endowed with a level of innate immunity high enough to be able to resist disease when exposed to infectious virus during the first wave

Author: G. Vanden Bossche, DVM, PhD; 26 February 2021

So I never caught your name?

Author's Note: So I had this idea for a while and I have finally decided to post it and I hope you like it. Also Kas-Iel's name is pronounced like Castiel just without the t. And this is a DC/Marvel crossover.

Word Count: 2389 (cool)

Warnings: Frustrated Bruce/Batman (yes, that is a warning don't judge), mentions of death and so, a bit of sass? Also tell me if I had missed anything

Characters: Kas-Iel (OC), Bruce Wayne/Batman, Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, Clark Kent/Superman, Dariyal (OC), Odin (mentioned)

Smoke filled the air and rubble fell all around me. People were screaming and running all around, trying to escape the clutches of death, but it was all in vain. Red beams cut the air, a golden whip shined though the cloud and black and silver blades flew across the smoke. They kept knocking the creature back but that didn’t do anything to even remotely slow him down. It always kept getting back up and attacking with even more force, hell, even Superman couldn’t do anything to it, he couldn’t even touch it.

A particularly loud howl made me snap my head up. The place was empty, save for the three figures fighting against a monstrous creature that just barged into the large ballroom. Batman landed right next to the pillar that I was hiding behind and his mask was a little bit cracked, showing parts of his face that seemed extremely familiar. His eyes turned to look at me briefly and something shined in them, before he turned back to the battle again. 

This creature was after me, I knew that. I just didn’t know if I had either the courage or power to take it on. My mind was reeling and it was driving a hundred miles per hour. Time was running slim and I knew that they wouldn’t be able to hold it back for much longer. So, deciding against my morals and instincts telling me to run as far away and as fast as my legs could carry me, I stood up and walked out from behind the pillar.

“Is it me you’re looking for Dariyal?” My voice resonated though out the room, silencing the three fighters. The two warriors turned to face me with shock etched into their features, but the vigilante just kept on staring at the monstrosity. The creature looked up and locked its glowing red eyes on my tall and broad figure. The dress that I had chosen to wear was a long dark blue dress with lace at the top along with lace sleeves and a midnight blue tulle covering the floor length skirt, topped with silver platform heels. The skirt was loose enough to fight in and to hide my weapons as well. The recorder was lying broken a few meters away from my feet but I didn’t pay it any attention. I was more focused on the slimy beast before me. His howl resonated throughout the ballroom and I took that as a confirmation.

“Well then, let us dance, shall we?” My voice was confident and a sly smirk graced my lips. Not even a moment later, silver metal cuffs had appeared on my forearms and my transformable bow was in my hands with the quiver filled with arrows strapped to my thigh. An arrow was notched onto the string and I pulled it back like it was made of feathers, which in fact could not be pulled by anyone who wasn’t worthy enough to do so. Thor gave me the idea for that one. I took aim and the moment he moved to attack, the arrow was released. It cut through the air and it lodged itself into the creature’s shoulder. Its shriek of pain shook the building but it didn’t give up. Instead, he ripped the arrow out of its shoulder and launched himself towards me but before it could reach me, it was shoved into a nearby table and then a pillar by a blue and red blur.

“A bow and arrows? Are you actually serious?” A robotic like voice spoke from about seven meters away and I straight assumed that it was the bat.

“Oh shut up Batsy, I’m not the one dressed up like its Halloweeen.” I could feel his glare on me but I didn’t care and searched for the little strap which I could button up on the outside of the dress so that my right leg would be visible. Locking it in place, the quiver strapped to my right thigh showed and I wrapped my fingers around another arrow. Notching it, I aimed and released. I released arrow after arrow but the bastard kept on coming back. By now my quiver was almost empty and I was growing annoyed. “You know what? Fuck it.”

By a silent command, green light encircled my hands and arms and I lifted them towards the infuriated creature. Gasps were heard from the three superheroes but I didn’t pay them any mind. I could feel my hair changing and my eyes lighting up a familiar ember green colour. Midnight blue tattoos appeared all over my arms, face and legs and my hair had turned a striking snow white colour. The creature lunged at me but I was quick to retaliate. Green light shot out of my palms and it hit the beast straight in the chest, sending it flying through one of the windows. The other three were gaping at me and Superman looked kind of sick and pale.

“How?” Wonder Woman’s question snapped me out of my focused state and I tuned to look at her. Her brown eyes were wide and her mouth was hanging open. Scratches littered her arms and legs and blood dripped from her lip and temple. Her whip was in her left hand and her sword and shield on her back. I turned to look at Superman and kind of pitied him a bit, guilt finding its way into my gut.

“Why don’t you take a guess?”

Another roar filled the air and my head snapped towards the source of it. The creature was up and it was more than furious. And I think that that’s steam rising from his ears...

“We need to get it out of here. There are civilians and as I remember creatures like him don’t like water.” Wonder Woman still stared at me but quickly snapped out of whatever trance she was in and motioned for Superman to help her. He shakily stood up and followed her towards the harbour of Metropolis City. I looked at Batman and he silently nodded, agreeing to drive me there.

We were halfway there when he decided to ask me a question: “So,” I glanced his way and immediately regretted asking of him to drive me. “What are you?” Deciding that it’s best to not let him in on anything I answered his question.

“Weren’t you the smart one, Mr. Wayne?” He snapped his head towards me and he saw the sly smirk plastered on my face. I knew I was riling him up and I knew that that wouldn’t end well. “The best kind of fun is when you can toy around with humans. Oops,” Batman screeched the Batmobile to a halt and I turned to look at him, “did I say that out loud? Well, anyway, thank you for the ride Mr. Wayne, I’ll see you around, all right?” And with that I got out of the car.

The battle was already going on and Superman and Wonder Woman barely had a grip on things. Sighing, I lit my fists up and I could already see Superman faltering in his advances. “Get Superman out of here. We don’t want him dying again, don’t we?” Wonder Woman was quick to act and pulled him away, the monster screeching.

Slowly rising in the air, I glared the monster down and if looks could kill this creature would’ve already spontaneously combusted. But knowing its heritage I knew that it wouldn’t have any effect on it if he actually did. So closing my eyes and exhaling, I got ready to do what I was born and raised to do. Snapping my emerald eyes open and spreading my arms, I called upon the ancient warrior and defender of the Kryptonians. Smirking, I aimed my hands towards the creature and Kryptonite green beams shout out of them, hitting the creature straight in its scaly and web looking chest.

The creature was one of the very few left Masmars of the universe. It would hunt for its next victim for millions of years and once it finally settles down on a rich planet, the only thing that could defeat it was kryptonite. Something that I had in masses, flowing though my veins.

“Aren’t you glad to see me again, Dariyal?”

“No, not really, ancient one. Or would you prefer Kas-Iel?” Growling I lunged at him and connected my fist with its nose, I hope. Hearing a satisfactory crack underneath my knuckles, I smirked.

“Don’t call me that you sick bastard.” My voice was ferocious and my vision was turning red. How dare he utter my name?

“Kas-Iel? I know that name… My mother used to tell me stories about a woman named Kas-Iel, protector of the universe and creator of the Kryptonite. The one who guards the gates to…” A solemn look Wonder Woman’s way confirmed her suspicions. “You’re THE Kas-Iel… oh my god, you’re my hero!”

“What are you even… You know what, never mind. I have a job to finish, so now if you are done with your little fanboy episode, I would like to get back to the task at hand. Thank you.” Turning around, I faced Dariyal. His large void like eyes held a dangerous gleam to them.

“But I did miss our fights. You were the one who was the feistiest out of them all. And that, my dear, was probably the key to your survival. The ancient warrior and the first guardian of the Galaxy. I’m sure that Odin would be proud of you.”

“Odin is dead.”

He fell silent but soon a smirk appeared on his old and burned face. The dangerous glint returned in his red eyes and he got ready. “Perfect.”

Seconds after, I was flung into a nearby container, denting the metal and breaking it. Groaning, I strained to stand up and after a few moments struggling, I was finally on my feet. But not for long. His hands grabbed me and threw me over the harbour and I landed in the water, knocking the air out of my lungs. It was like his force had suddenly returned and I groaned internally. Now I have to blast him again. You see, I’m not entirely immortal. Yes, I do live a  long, long life, but I am not a goddess like Wonder Woman or even Superman. I will die eventually, but I still got a long way to go. But the problem here is my ability. Every time I use the kryptonite flowing through my veins, it shortens my lifetime by a few days. And the longer i use it and the more power I add, it shortens my life all the more. It speeds up the process and I’ve been trying to lessen my usage of the power, but that seems to be going well. Anyway, back to the present. Strong arms pulled me up and out of the water. My eyes landed on long, black and wet hair. Wonder Woman let go of my hand and proceeded to run towards the monster and hitting it straight in the face, sending it flying into a red container. Shaking my head I stood up as well.

“Didn’t I tell you to stay with Superman?” I had a smile on my face as I coughed up some water and lit up my fists with that familiar green colour.

“You did.” She punched Dariyal again, but he just swatted her away like you would do to a fly.

“But you didn’t listen. Yes, I can see that, thank you.” I clicked my tongue and looked over to Dariyal. His nostrils were flaring and his chest was heaving. His nails had grown into talons and his teeth had become sharper than before, and his eyes glowed an even more menacing red colour, if that’s even possible. His glare intensified and he let out an ear splitting roar and lunged. His growls shook the ground as he jumped up in the air. Closing my eyed and concentrating on his atomic build, I pointed my palms towards him and with my eyes still closed I fired.

Green light shot out of my hands and flew towards the target that I had set in my mind. I could feel the power draining my life force, shortening it by minutes, hours, days, weeks. The more I held on, the more weakened I became. Dariyal finally crashed down on the ground, in a crumpled heap of slime, flesh and blood. Dirt exploded and the cement beneath him cracked under the force of his fall. Silently looking over to Wonder Woman, she nodded and rushed to pick him up and throw him in the water

As soon as Dariyal’s weakened body touched the water, it started burning and evaporating. Once his entire body was dipped in the water, a large cloud of smoke rose above the water and harbour, stretching all the way to Gotham city. Wonder Woman was by the edge, looking over the water with a thoughtful look on her face. Batman stayed in the background doing whatever he could to get Superman’s strength back, but the only remedy was time. Sure, he would grow weak whenever I used my powers near him, but when they were shoved deep down beneath the surface he would be fine around me.

Soon enough, the both of them joined Wonder Woman and me by our side and looked over the water. The damage in Metropolis City was large and the government would surely want compensation for it. I’m pretty sure that both Bruce and I would end up donating funds to ease up the damage and the governments hate for the group of meta-humans and vigilante. But soon enough, they would have a new addition.

“So, I never caught your name?” Batman turned his head to look at me, his calculating guess trying to find out the most he can about me. But I knew how to play his game, so I did just that. I played

“I never gave it to you, Mr. Wayne. So now if you’ll excuse me Miss Prince, Mr. Klark, I have a few things to get to.” And with a snap of my fingers I was gone in a puff of green smoke, leaving the three heroes dumbfounded.

Tags: @0000aj0000 @trashyhumanespresso @pinkfluffyunicorn394 @thinkwritexpress-official @becaamm

Say It*

An Erik Lehnsherr x Reader Request Fic

So this happened you wicked, wicked nonnie! A fic request I would like to dedicate to you, but you came to me as an anon, so I hope you see it. Based off this Ask.

Paring: Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto x Reader  |  Word Count: 1883 Warnings: This is the FULL SMUT people. Super smut, swearing, roughness. NSFW 18+

The cold and heavy weight of the metal wrapped around your wrists dragged you back and sealed you to the steel support beam before you could even offer a token protest. “Erik! What… what are you…?”

“Do you know what it does to me?” he asked, gliding slowly out of the shadows.

“What?” you asked, barely a whisper, taking in the vision he was in his tux, tie hanging loose, top buttons were undone on his shirt, a glass of dark amber liquid clenched in his fist. Ice rattled in the glass when he lifted it to his lips.

His eyes, more silver than blue in the low light, watched you intently. They drifted over the heaving form of your breasts, down the length of your strapless red dress, seemed to physically caress the bare skin of your legs before settling on your shoes and working their way back up. By the time they reached your face, locked in with your eyes, you’d started to breathe a little faster at how just the look and that slow sip had aroused you.

“To go on these missions where you dress like that, and I am forced to watch as you flirt and fawn your way through every man to get the information we need? Do you know what it makes me feel to stand aside as they paw at you? As they dare to touch what is mine?”

The harshness of the word made you gasp, and he moved closer, prowling across the gleaming marble floor of your penthouse apartment with all its streamlined surfaces and sleek floors, metal beams and industrial accents. The walls of windows showed the dark night and sparkling lights of the city beyond, but all you could focus on was Erik as he stalked you, body taut with the tension of keeping his hands to himself all night.

He lifted his glass again. The crystal had started to sweat thanks to the ice in his drink, and when he lowered the tumbler, he ran the wet bottom edge along the exposed flesh of your bodice, the strapless gown leaving a generous amount of flesh on display.

You gasped at the sensation, shivered with the coolness, moaned at the fire in his eyes. “Erik,” you pleaded.

The hand in his pocket came to rest on your waist. “Do you understand, darling, how crazy it makes me to know they touched you, looked at you, coveted what is mine?”

Fists clenching above your head, you whimpered when his glass continued to draw cool lines of moisture over your skin. “It was just a job. It didn’t mean anything.”

The glass shattered when he threw it across the room. “It meant everything to me!” he snarled, mouth coming down to ravage your throat, the slight stubble on his jaw abrading your flesh in such a way as to be a counterpoint to the sucking heat of his lips as he marked you, over and over.

Crying out, heat and wet pooling between your legs, you arched and moaned into the hardness of his frame, hands locked above you, unable to escape.

His big hands were suddenly dragging down the top of your dress, breasts falling free for his wild mouth. Nipping, licking, sucking lips and frantic hands, gripping and squeezing, almost punishing with his pressure, just the correct side of pain. Even at the height of his anger, he’d never hurt you, but oh the pleasure he could give when he was fixated and raging.

Another heady moan escaped your lips when his mouth and tongue went to work on your nipple. He’d palmed the one breast, but the other was at the mercy of his wicked lips. A soft near growl left him as he sank to his knees, rucking your dress up around your waist to find the tiny pair of underwear you’d put on.

“Tsk,” he scoffed, glaring up at you. “This is what you wore all night? What all those men kept getting close to? What they’d hoped to see?” He tore them from you, both hands simply snapping them apart.

“Erik!” you cried out, the lace leaving a sharp burn on your hip.

He kissed the reddening mark gently, apologetically, before letting his lips wander over your hip bone, along the length of your thigh to nudge his nose against the curls between your legs. “So pretty,” he murmured, stroking your thighs, “such a nice pussy.”

Your head fell back with the first swipe of seeking tongue, pressing up and finding your bundle of nerves with an accuracy you’d long come to expect.

Relentless in his torment, he spread you open, fingers and tongue working, playing, driving you up only to taper off, just to take you up again.

Your legs shook with the strain, thighs quivering, breasts heaving as you tried to catch your breath only to have those wicked fingers, slick with the arousal which coated your thighs, slide back over your folds and delved deep, thrusting to the rhythm of his mouth. The pleasure was building again, twisting, coiling, growing into a wicked sharp ache you were desperate to see released only to be denied. “Erik!” you screamed when the circling tongue pulled away, and those devil hands stopped their thrusting.

“Who do you belong to?”

Panting, chin falling to your chest, arms aching with the strain of holding you up, you peered down at him, the man on his knees, chin wet and glistening. He should have looked subservient down there, but he still retained the lord of the manor appearance, the powerful god, the master of all he owned, even on his knees. His fingers twitched, curled, stroked the spot inside you where it gave you the most pleasure.

Face flushed and covered in a sheen of sweat, hair curling at your temples and sticking to your nape, you couldn’t help but stare at just how beautiful he was.

“Tell me, darling,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to your thigh, never looking away from your eyes. “Who do you belong to?”

“You,” you whispered, voice hoarse.

His thumb slid over your clit, circled gently. “Who?”

“You… Magneto.”

Approval coated his features and made him smile. “Good girl.” His fingers slid out, thrust back in, dragged over your sweet spot as his lips closed over you and tugged.

A scream rent the air as you came hard and your knees gave out.

His hand slammed against your waist to steady you, his strength far greater than most people knew as he held you up, keeping you from dragging your arms from their sockets as he drew his fingers from your core and pressed his mouth to you. The feel of his tongue sliding up, drinking from you, sent a second round of pulsing quakes through your body.

Getting to his feet, all grace and flowing lines, he appeared as the cat who’d eaten the canary, face smug as he tore the buckle of his belt open with one hand, dragged down his zipper and let his pants fall. His thick and heavy erection fell against your thigh, and you shivered, moaned, knowing how good it would feel, how it would stretch you and push you to the very edge of your tolerance.

“Please,” you moaned, looking to him through half shuddered lids, body replete yet still aching for him.

His fingers undid the buttons on his shirt, leaving it hanging open, showing you the defined chest and abs you longed to touch. “Say my name,” he demanded, dragging your thigh up, not bothering to discard his shirt or jacket, simply getting the fabric out of his way.

“Erik,” you moaned.

His hand connected sharply with the cheek of your ass. “Say it!”

The other thigh was dragged up, hooked at his hip as he jerked you up the post, taking the pressure from your shoulders. “Magneto!” you shrieked when he thrust into you without pause, sinking straight to the hilt in one go, grinding his hips into yours and setting a hard pace.

A grunt left him when your body clenched at the intrusion, but he didn’t slow, fucking into you hard and fast, taking you to the edge in nothing more than a dozen strokes. “Who do you belong to?” he snarled in your face, lips so close but so far.

“You, Magneto. Only you,” you moaned, digging your heels into his flexing ass and dragging him closer.

The grip on your buttocks tightened as he leaned his weight fully against you, shortening his strokes into little more than a flex of muscle that drove him against your walls and had you seeing stars. “Say it!”

“Magneto.”

The metal around your wrists came free, and you sank your hands into his hair, ignoring the numbness as you dragged his head back and ravaged his mouth.

The punishing pace never slowed, the pressure of his body against you feeling like he was trying to meld the two you together, get as close as possible, form two opposing metals into one. Ripping your mouth away to breath, you were unsurprised when his fell to your throat, bit gently into your shoulder, holding on as moans became grunts and finally cries of bliss when the coil inside you snapped, and the fires of pleasure seared through your body, and your walls clenched down around him.

“Fuck!” he snarled, forcing his head back to look at you. “Say it, goddammit!”

“Magneto,” you moaned, loving the slam of his out of control hips. “I love you.”

A sound of triumph roared from him as he thrust hard a final time and emptied himself out inside you.

Panting, gasping really, he slowly collapsed, taking you with him, till he was sitting on his knees, still buried inside you, with your back pressed to the pillar.

A quiet snicker had him lifting his head from your shoulder to peer at you curiously. “What?”

“If this is how you get on missions like these, we should do them more often,” you teased.

Chuckling, he shook his head. “Minx,” he muttered, wrapping his arms around you so he could turn away from the pillar and lay you back on the floor beneath him. A roll of his hips made you gasp. “Who said I was done with you yet, anyway?”

Your legs clamped around his waist. “Say it.”

His brow arched cheekily. “Say what?”

Wind whistled through the room, and you disappeared from beneath him, causing him to fall rather unpleasantly to the floor. Rematerializing beside his groaning form, you pulled up your bodice and down your skirt. “Say it, Erik.”

“You’re a horrible woman. That was incredibly mean,” he growled, turning his head to glare at you.

“Say it, or sleep on the couch,” you threatened, hands on your hips.

“I love you, too, you Wind Witch! Now, get back here and make it up to me!” he growled.

Smirking, you shook your head. “You’ll have to catch me first.” Turning, you ran down the hallway, laughing the whole way.

“Witch!” he barked, dragging his pants up and throwing his hand out. Your yelp and undignified swearing when he pinned you against the wall of the bedroom made him laugh. “Caught you, darling.”

He had no plans of letting you go… ever.