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abybweisse · 10 months

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What makes a soul more delicious for a demon?

⚠️ I end up going off on a tangent! ⚠️

Tasty souls for perverted gourmets

It might differ from demon to demon, but Sebastian seems to like putting his master through painful experiences. Not so much the physically painful kind but the emotionally painful kind. But he's seeking out flavors he's never tasted before -- or are at least still considered somewhat novel to him -- so perhaps his previous masters, who were all much older, lacked such experiences in their lives. Or perhaps they were just more superficial and didn't let things get to them, while our earl has very deep emotions. Judging by what the demon cultists asked for, like money and fame, those might be the more typical wishes people make. Not revenge for the sacrifice of his brother, the torture they endured, and the deaths of their parents and household.

Generally speaking, I'd say that demons who have given up on "messily sampling" souls have developed a palette of sorts and start to seek out the flavors they love best. And, like Sebastian, they might pick up the idea to manipulate the experiences of their masters, so that they can create flavor combinations that are new to them.

Young masters are best for this, because they are still learning about themselves and the world. Demons can therefore manipulate the souls of masters, especially younger masters, and create the souls they find particularly tasty.

Tangential information under the cut, including Undertaker's goals, as well as references to Jujutsu Kaisen and The Promised Neverland.

It reminds me of Mahito from Jujutsu Kaisen because that Curse can manipulate souls, changing the actual shapes of those souls and the bodies they inhabit.

Which is why I wonder if Undertaker got the idea of "aptitudes" for F. O. L. Orphanage from his dealings with demons like Sebastian. Perhaps specifically from watching Sebastian and our earl... and then taking real Ciel along to witness as much of his twin's doings as possible. This makes the twins' souls as alike as they can be. Similarly, forcing all these orphans to fall strictly into four categories that match their star lords -- Pomeranians to real Ciel, Corgis to Doll, Mastiffs to Polaris, and Collies to Layla/Al -- and seeing how well they match their "aptitudes", Undertaker will see which kid from each class ends up matching their respective star lord best. The top student from each class is likely to be used in experiments to see if their souls are the right shapes to be transplanted into their respective star lords. All the "failures" in each class are likely just the blood supplies... until each top student is deemed ready for harvest... when they will likely be bled out just before their soul is harvested.

Even Undertaker has vaguely hinted that his approach might be similar to Sebastian's -- that only their goals are different. At Weston, in ch84, Undertaker says:

And in ch141, Undertaker explains that he's been taking real Ciel to see what our earl has been doing. Real Ciel had a blank stare at Kelvin's Manor, was a bit mindless on the ship, and seems to have been a quiet viewer at Weston, but you can see how he was being "improved" over time. Real Ciel could only take in a limited view of the activities, but he retained them and committed them to memory. And it makes him claim to have been by his brother's side the whole time.

In ch155, Jane talks about the shapes of souls, but she apparently doesn't really understand it and thinks that Heathfield is talking nonsense. Unless she's lying about it not making sense to her....

In Jujutsu Kaisen, Mahito explains that souls are tangible to him, as if they are any other body part. And when he changes a soul's shape, the body changes to match it. We get this scene:

In s2 of the anime, Claude uses various techniques to deepen and emphasize the similarities between "Ciel" and Alois/Jim before putting Alois' soul into "Ciel's" body, despite the fact that "Ciel" still had his own soul. And I'm half expecting Yana-san to eventually let Undertaker give us a scene where he explains how he's been manipulating those children's souls to prepare them for transplant. Maybe she'll even let us have an in-story explanation for why Sebastian looks a bit like Vincent (or more like grown-up Ciel?). Though I'd be happy if she even just got down to the truth of it in a tweet or a future Artworks book.... I figure it's much as Mahito says: the body conforms to the shape of the soul. This could also be used to explain why reapers look the same as when they were human... if they are reborn, as I theorize.

Ch200 has The Promised Neverland vibes all over it, as does the entire F. O. L. Orphanage assignment. In TPN, some children are kept in orphanages until they are fed to demons. In Black Butler, these kids are possibly being kept in an orphanage until their souls are ready for a reaper to transplant them (instead of getting eaten by demons). But the concept is very similar. Sebastian would possibly applaud the basic idea in TPN, as if the orphanage could be used as a demonic culinary institution... or something. (I've also just realized the kids in TPN have tattooed or branded numbers on the fronts of their necks, much like Finny's "S-012" on the back of his.)

In ch200, Theo even says that some "pervert" is "manipulating" the children.

He might actually be talking about Undertaker and not even know it. It's quite possible that none of the kids have met him or even seen him, since orders are being sent by telegram. But they have to assume the person running the place is a pervert of some kind.

And we know that Sebastian and Undertaker are being depicted as foils for each other. Ch111 vs ch200:

So, if Sebastian is a "perverted gourmet", as Yana-san calls him, perhaps Undertaker is a perverted... physician? Perverted surgeon? It takes me right back to the parallels to Dr. Andonuts in the Mother game series... and Josef Mengele, the Nazi "Angel of Death" who had a particular interest in (obsession with) studying transplant technology on twins.

Though Undertaker might actually leave the medical side of it all to the Viscount of Druitt -- and we know how big a perv he is! -- or to someone else, now that Stoker is dead, the transplantation of souls would have to be attempted by a reaper.

Yeah, I definitely think Undertaker is using oddly similar methods to shape young souls -- by the experiences they are allowed/forced to have -- but just with different goals in mind.

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sundayswiththeilluminati · 1 year

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I apologize if this has been asked before, but is there any lore tidbits explaining why Rasputin speaks russian (albeit backwards) and is called Rasputin? Made sense when he was the Earth warmind based in Russia but now it seems a little strange Ana taught him in Russian

Nnnnnope! We have no idea why he’s named Rasputin, why he speaks Russian, and why he speaks upside-down Russian. My working theory is that he googled his own name, shrugged, and leaned into it.

Rasputin doesn’t seem to have selected his own name. The first Persona lore page implies that he was named when he was moved and made the focus of the Warmind project. By the time Ana comes on board the name’s established well enough that she doesn’t question it. No one seems to have asked Rasputin what he wanted to be named, but they also never asked if he wanted to be a Warmind either, so that tracks. Given that his two named subminds so far are also named after real humans elevated after their deaths into quasi-mythical figures, he might have elected to take the theme and run with it.

Personally I like to believe that before humans decided to use Rasputin, they tried to kill him (or at least “fix the weird anomaly in our space station’s monitoring systems”) and the bastard just wouldn’t fucking die.

As to why he speaks an upside-down version of a mostly-dead language, well...Rasputin sucks at talking to people. He genuinely seems to have major trouble holding a single-threaded face-to-face conversation, I guess because he’s a) distributed and b) thinking far faster than us. He’s much more likely to use recordings, quotations, music, or synesthetic colors/textures/sounds to communicate what he means. He even sends us on a whole scavenger hunt all around Hellas Basin following clues to figure out he wants to give us Sleeper Simulant and Ana Polaris Lance instead of just, y’know, handing them to us like a normal person. When he does talk, he tends to just declare stuff and let us deal with it rather than have a dialogue. So when he has a conversation with Zavala in the EDZ bunker back in Season of the Worthy, that’s a rare event, and even then Rasputin conveys his message through the map projection and Collapse-era radio broadcasts. Most likely the upside-down Russian is the game’s way of conveying the idea that Rasputin doesn’t speak in an easily-understood way. In fact I’ve heard that in the Russian dub of D1 they changed the language he speaks to something else (can’t verify this though). So it’s really there to sound alien to most listeners.

Golden Age space exploration and assets have had a bit of a Russian bent since the beginning of Destiny. The Cosmodrome was one of the first areas ever designed and the crashed Exodus ships all have the РФВА logo of the Russian space agency. At the very beginning of the Traveler’s uplift those nations that already had major manned space programs - the Americans, Russians, and Chinese - had something of a head start in using all that shiny new technology to start establishing themselves on other planets. Not that they tried to gate off space and take it all for themselves - they were just the nations that already had the infrastructure, so it was easiest to go to space through them. As a result the “standard” languages of off-Earth colonies became English, Russian, and Chinese. Hellas Basin and the New Pacific Arcology on Titan have signage repeated in all three languages. The Moon, as one of the earliest colonies and one that never expanded into a viable settlement, still has occasional direct references to said space agencies. Rasputin retained the РФВА branding for Cosmodrome vehicles up through the Collapse even though we don’t know if the agency itself still existed. He may have just thought it looked cool.

#Destiny 2 #Season of the Seraph #the Warmind Rasputin #can you believe he isn't actually Russian #this is one of my favorite silly Destiny facts #he just...leaned into it #output generated #this is the wager of existence

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a-casual-kpopfan · 2 years

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Our Twilight - Chapter 2

Previous Story: Part 1

Next Story: Part 3

~~~~~

A/N: Hello boos, it's me again with my fellow ghost writer here, posting up the next Haseul chapter in this series. (:

Just want to thank @ifeelsounsure0 and @gangplanksorenji for the edits and looking over <3

------

A few days later…

With their hectic Queendom schedule, Haseul has been constantly training over the past few days. Today is her first day off, and her first chance to find out who this mysterious MJ is. And to do that, she requires the help of a few people

Haseul is sitting in the living room with Hyunjin and Jinsol. Haseul stares intently at Hyunjin while the girl makes a phone call, and Jinsol just messes around with her laptop.

“Mhmm, mhmm, thanks unnie! Sorry for bothering you on your day off!” With that, Hyunjin hung up the call and turned towards Haseul “You were lucky unnie! Apparently, there was a ‘MJ’ as a trainee in Polaris back then!” “Really?” Haseul looks at Hyunjin, her face practically screams ‘tell me more’, which is quite adorable.

“Mhmm! He joined a year after our debut as Loona 1/3, and according to instructor unnie, he really had the talent to be an idol. In a few short months, he got the support of almost all the instructors after all.”

“How is there a trainee like that, are you sure you didn’t hear it wrong?” Jinsol chimes in on the side, seemingly unconvinced of the story. “Unnie! I swear I didn’t hear it wrong! You must have seen it firsthand at the show, right? His vocals were amazing!” “…...I didn’t pay that much attention…” Jinsol mumbles to herself.

“Hyunjin-ah! Get back to the topic please! If he was so talented, why didn’t he debut?” Haseul quickly steers the conversation back to the main topic, prompting Hyunjin to continue: “He would have debuted as a soloist the same time we fully debut as ‘Loona’, but suddenly, he decided to quit.”

“Quit?” Both Haseul and Jinsol ask at the same time.

“Yeah, according to instructor unnie, he said he ‘lost the spirit and motivation’ and decided to quit that very day, not to be seen again.” Hyunjin frowns slightly as she recalls the conversation, “Such a shame, he could have been as famous as us, maybe even more. Just look at how he’s trending right now!”

Hyunjin isn’t wrong, after that episode was broadcasted, social media exploded with posts about the mysterious ex- trainee MJ, some even made a poll voting to make him an idol. But like every mystery, he disappeared without a trace… Until now.

“Well, I don’t know how he did it, but that guy didn’t even register with his real name! just ‘MJ’ and that he worked at a library? Oh yeah, they did mention in the show that he’s a librarian right?” Hyunjin scratches her head, looking at Haseul and Jinsol.

“Pfft, just a library, how hard can it be to find a library in Seoul?” Jinsol says as she googles on her laptop. ‘300+ searches found’

“Oh….it might be hard to find a library in Seoul… Ehe” Jinsol says with a cheeky smile as she scratches her cheek, earning a glare from Haseul.

“Anyways, thanks for your help, Hyunjin-ah, as promised, I’ve already ordered bread for you” “Thank you unnie!” Hyunjin gives you a big hug before moving to her room, humming happily.

“Now…we should probably get started on finding that library?” Haseul looks at Jinsol “Oh no, you’re the only one looking for it, I’m just here to offer you moral support!” Jinsol replies almost instantly with a bright smile, leaving Haseul flabbergasted. “…. Didn’t you promise to help me?”

“Well, this is your journey to find your Prince Charming, so it’s more suitable if you search for him, correct? Besides, I already got mine~” Just as Jinsol says that her phone starts to ring with a “Hubby <3” ID. “Speak of the dev-” Before Jinsol can grab her phone, Haseul reaches for it instantly and answers the call.

“Oh, hi oppa, Jinsol is currently busy with helping me right now, so she’ll call you later, have a good day oppa!” And with that, Haseul hangs up and returns Jinsol’s phone to her with a mischievous grin. “Yah! What if it was something important?!” Jinsol angrily pouts, which honestly looks more cute than angry, only to see Haseul focus back on the laptop. “If it was important, he’ll ring the doorbell.”

~~~~~

And so, start the journey of Haseul and Jinsol into the depths of Google, exploring every nook and cranny of the map as they search for whatever hint they have about that mysterious library. Meanwhile, the Loona dorm is as lively as always…

“YAH, LEE GUNGJEON, DON’T YOU DARE RUN! GIVE ME BACK MY SNACK OR ELSE YOU’RE SLEEPING ON THE COUCH TONIGHT!” Sooyoung’s voice booms through the hallway of the dorm, showing her might as a vocalist although for an entirely different reason.

“IF GUNGJEON OPPA IS SLEEPING ON THE COUCH TONIGHT, CAN I SLEEP WITH YOU UNNIE???” Haseul doesn’t even need to look up to know whose voice it is. Only one person can be that daring in this dorm.

“W-wait! I was just kidding!” Of course, Gungjeon quickly voices his complaint and tries to give Sooyoung her snack back, but Sooyoung has already wrapped her arms around the younger member, puffs her cheek and scoffs at him.

“Too late, I’m sleeping with Jiwoo tonight. Have fun with no pillows and blankets.” And walks away with Jiwoo while the younger giggles in delight. Leaving Gungjeon standing there, looking like a lost puppy with a bag of snacks in his hand.

“He should have known not to mess with her snack, not to mention Jiwoo.” Jinsol can only offer sympathetic words before going back to helping Haseul.

Ding Dong

The sound of the doorbell breaks the concentration of both Jinsol and Haseul. Both turn to the door so fast, almost causing them to have whiplash from how fast they turned. Sweat starts to form on Haseul’s forehead as she remembers her previous words about Jinsol’s boyfriend as Jinsol herself glares at Haseul, preparing to stand up.

“Oh! It must be my bread!” Hyunjin bolts straight out of her room to the front door, like a predator chasing its prey, but in this case it’s bread.

After heading out for the delivery, Hyunjin enters with a piece of bread already in her mouth, and an opened pack of bread in her hand, only to be met with her two unnies’ stares. “Ish sumthin wron unni?” (Is something wrong unnie?) “Nothing Hyunjin, nothing at all…”

As Jinsol says that she glances at Haseul, who is looking up the ceiling in order to avoid Jinsol’s glare, then back down at the laptop, feigning ignorance. “Sorry, you were saying?” Jinsol only scoffs before turning her attention back to the laptop, leaving Hyunjin standing there, confused, but very happy to have her bread.

Haseul and Jinsol research tirelessly through the night. Mostly Haseul, Jinsol is still pretty salty about how Haseul didn’t let her call her boyfriend.

“Yah, Haseul! It’s already late!” Jinsol points to the clock on her phone, which clearly stated 11pm. “You can head to bed first Jinsol, I’m just going to look a bit more….” Haseul only spares a glance at her phone, then back to the laptop.

“Why are you doing this Haseul? There’s no need for you to go that far, just for a guy who you never met” Jinsol pouts slightly, worrying about her leader’s health as it’s been a while since she has seen Haseul this serious about something. “I-… I honestly don’t know, Jinsol-ah. When I look at him, I feel like…” Haseul stops a bit, trying to find the right word. “I feel like he can make me… Whole again.”

“Huh, what do you mean?”

“Ever since I joined you girls as Loona, it’s been the best time of my life, but somehow, it doesn’t feel… Complete to me, like something is missing, forgotten, and that guy might know about it.” Haseul hesitates as she sees Jinsol’s confusion clearly on her face “I know what I’m saying doesn’t make sense, Jinsol-ah, but I can’t ignore it, otherwise it will keep gnawing away my mind-”

Jinsol interrupts her with a gentle hug as she envelops her leader in her embrace, her arms hugging Haseul’s back and soothing it with gentle strokes. “It’s okay Haseul…. You don’t need to say anymore, I understand you….”

“Y-you do?”

“I do, because it’s the same for me and Daewon,” Jinsol smiles softly at Haseul. “The girls might be family, but I can’t imagine my life without him. I will never be the best version of myself without him by my side~” Haseul can see a warm gaze in Jinsol’s eyes when she talks about him. Her eyes look soft, incredibly soft, combined with the passionate love that she has for him, and a touch of longing.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t allow you to answer him earlier, I was too focused on my own things…” “It’s okay Haseul-ah, I promised to help, so I will, but probably another day, ok? It’s late now, and we need rest.”

“O…kay?” Haseul glances briefly back to the laptop in defeat, but right then her eyes catch a social media post: ‘Anyone know this librarian? I want to express my gratitude to him for helping me. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to catch his nametag, only a glimpse of his armband.’

Attached to the post was a picture of a young man, seemingly running away in a hurry. His back was turned to the camera, so his face couldn’t be seen but Haseul knew.

It’s him.

Jinsol, observing Haseul’s face ever since her eyes got glued on the screen, makes a comment “Are you sure that it’s him?” Only to be met with a firm nod from Haseul. “So, where does he work?” A quick stroll down the comments gave them the answer. “Silent Haven? It does sound like a library” Jinsol giggles at the name, but the same can’t be said for Haseul.

Her head starts to ache as if someone is pounding a hammer relentlessly against her skull. She suddenly remembers something….

A flashback plays out inside her mind, of a young boy and girl at a sitting area of a library.

“Yah, stop reading! Go out and play with me!”“… But I like reading….”“Pfft, you’re such an old man M̸̠̊̈̑į̴̥̈́̈́n̸̜̖͕̳͛̋́̃-̶̬̹͌̚J̷͈͂́͗͠o̵̡̢̰̐̽͌͛o̸̮̰̮̹͛̏n̶̛̦͈̈̀̾. Are you going to work here when you grow up?”“Maybe….? I like quiet places.”“You’re boring! C’mon, let’s go get some ice cream!”

And with that Haseul suddenly snaps back to reality, with her hands still clutching her head, and Jinsol looking at her with worry.

That girl… Was I… Then what about that boy??? Haseul starts to analyze what she just saw remembered . Could it be? Haseul is deep in her thought when Jinsol snaps her out of it “Haseul, I think that’s enough for today, we have schedules for tomorrow”

“Yeah, you’re right, we should get some rest….” Seemingly satisfied with that answer, Jinsol slams the laptop shut before pushing Haseul towards the bedroom, making sure that both will get some rest. Although for one of them, sleep might not come anytime soon…

“I will find you, and I will find out what is wrong with me.”

To Be Continued.

#loona #loona fic #haseul #jo haseul #fanfic #loona haseul #male reader #kpop fanfic #MoonVerse

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theanathemans · 1 year

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The stars twinkled above the Only City. The sun shone on the other side of the earth, but there was no doubt it would return in a few hours to warm the City. The sun is a constant to humanity, always has been.

Roque had gone to bed at the same time as the sun, exactly eight o'clock pm, a firm believer in Benjamin Franklin virtuousness. Around midnight, his leg had started to ache. As he'd done many times before, he strapped the brace to his twisted limb and hobbled downstairs for painkillers, trying not to put pressure on his throbbing calf. He didn't normally have to limp, the brace made it so both legs were the same length and it didn't hurt most of the time. He'd had the deformation since he was born so naturally, he'd learned to live with it, and not to let it slow him down. People weren't going to wait for him to catch up if he fell behind because life, unfortunately, dictated the survival of the fittest.

As Roque made his way downstairs to the kitchen, he noticed a faint golden glow from the bottom of the stairs. He dismissed it as the streetlight outside the kitchen's picture window. It wasn't the streetlight.

He nearly had a heart attack when he turned the corner to the kitchen and saw a young woman sitting on one of his stools at the kitchen counter. She glowed the color of sunset, having the unsettling appearance of molten lava roiling like a nest of adders beneath clear skin. Like a lava lamp, he thought. Her molten eyes turned on him and their piercing gaze was almost physically painful. Roque made an inhuman sound. They stared at each other for what felt like hours until Roque remembered he possessed the ability to speak.

"A-are you an angel?" Roque asked stupidly. He didn't know why he wasn't running right now. Calling Thea or his dad. Of course she wasn't an angel. What even.

"Not really." The woman replied. Roque almost relaxed a little, because she had a beautifully comforting voice. She sounded like she could be a mother.

"Am I dead?" Roque asked, half to himself.

"Do you smell almonds?"

"What?"

"When I died, I recall distinctly smelling almonds."

"So you're a ghost?" Roque was dreaming. He was dreaming all of this. That was the only explanation.

"Can I help you with something..? Do you want tea?" He babbled. This was probably a hallucination. Why was he offering tea to a figment of his imagination? Roque strove to be a polite host in all situations but this was too far. This was a kitchen ghost, for Saint Peter's sake. She shook her head, declining the offer. He noticed that her hair floated slightly longer in the air than a gravity-obeying object should. Of course her hair didn't obey physics. Why would it.

"I look strange to you." The woman-creature stated.

"Yeah, a little." Roque replied in wonder.

"I came to ask you a question."

"Okay? Go ahead, I guess."

"I would like to tell you my son's story, if you'll listen. I thought it might be helpful to you."

"I would, but I have to go back to bed. I have to work tomorrow." He was not going to waste his night talking to someone who was probably not real. His leg hurt still. And he was so, so tired.

"It will take no time. Please, I don't have many hours left on this plane of existence. And I leave joyfully, so I will be glad to make it short."

She seemed to be sincere. Roque's conscience wanted him to stay as well. The woman may be just a figment of his imagination, but she looked almost desperate to tell her story, and if she was about to die, the least he could do was be with her in her last hour. He didn't see anyone else around to comfort her. And death was terrifying.

"Alright, I'll listen."

She smiled softly. "My name is Astoria. I was once a star. I believe your kind called me Polaris. And your name is Roque Saphelt Harrelle. A true mouthful, but a pretty name in my opinion, and it honors your heritage well."

Roque's jaw seemed to forget that it could close. "How did you know my name? You were the North Star?"

She merely smiled at him, and again he thought how much like a mother she looked. Kind eyes that crinkled at the edges. Short, lovely, but practical hair. Eternal wisdom hidden behind young features.

"Come." The woman, Astoria, did not answer his questions but instead gestured for him to follow her. Roque had no idea why, but he obeyed. He let her lead him out the front door of the duplex he called home into his front yard. Only it wasn't his front yard any more. He gawked at the new surroundings. Ruined, smoking buildings crumbled like dying giants in the distance. The sky was a hazy yellow-red and the air smelled like death. It looked like the Only City, just, well, utterly devastated. What had happened here? He turned to stare at where his home had been moments ago, and saw a building that was still relatively intact. A school. The sight of a learning institution in the midst of the desolate, groaning surroundings was jarring. Astoria walked lightly to the window and peered in to one of the classrooms. She motioned for Roque to join her at the window, and he made his way across the grey-grassed schoolyard, avoiding broken glass.

'There he is." She pointed to a boy, sitting in the back of the classroom, peering out the window. The boy seemed to stare directly at Roque and he stepped back from the window hastily.

"It's okay." Astoria assured him. "They can't see us. We are merely accessing the echoes of the past that still reverberate through the plane of time."

"Oh." Roque was too overwhelmed to say anything else. He returned to the window to get a better look at the boy. He was wearing a red sweater, carefully patched black jeans, and looked cleaner than most of the other thirty or so kids in the room. He looked like he was taken care of.

He had thick black hair and deep blue eyes that seemed to reflect the very universe back at Roque. He looked lonely.

"That's your son?" Roque asked Astoria. She smiled and nodded.

"He doesn't look like you." Roque stated. Obviously. The boy wasn't a glowing yellow kitchen ghost.

"I didn't always look like this." Astoria sighed. "Before I died, I looked very much like him. He had my eyes, and his father's face."

"What's his name?"

Astoria took a deep breath.

"He was Junius Remus, named for the month of his birth. He saved your life."

First | Next

#ta #the anathemans #idk what this is #not very good #but nobody except jess will see this so #hi jess #oc #my ocs #our ocs #that ones for you jessie #cringes #so hard

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fitz-higgins · 2 years

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A Gentleman’s Guide to the German Vice: How to Recognise a Fellow Gay Man in the Early 20th Century

So, you’ve met a very nice man who you like a lot, but you are not sure whether he is, well, you know, *limp wrist*. And neither of you wears a green carnation, because it is a bit outdated. Worry not, there are plenty of other ways to signal one’s sexuality!

• Start a conversation by asking him for a cigarette. Eye contact when he gets you a light works as a signal in many countries, including Russia.

• Ask him if he speaks German. If he simply answers “yes” he might be just a linguist, but do not give up, linguists can be homosexuals, too!

• If he knows French, or is French, ask him what he thinks of le vice allemand (the German vice). These two tricks would work after the Eulenburg affair of 1907, the biggest homosexual scandal in Germany of that time.

• Mention “nameless love”. If he read Alfred Douglas’ Two Loves he should know what love that dare not speak its name means.

• Listen to how he describes himself. He might call himself Oscar, which is an euphemism for a gay man that appeared after Wilde’s trial, of course, or a lavender lad or a man with a dash of lavender. Effeminate men were often associated with this flower’s scent. Also, the colours of lavender (violet, lilac, purple, mauve) symbolised flamboyance and same-sex desire. Worth paying attention to other types of flowers as well, like hyacinth, lily, daisy, buttercup, narcissus.

• Alternatively, describing himself, he might use certain words like different, a bit funny, earnest, invert, indorser or even finger-twirler.

• If he is a Brit try inserting Polari words into your speech and see how he reacts. If he understands what drag, bona, camp or lily mean then this dolly omee (pretty man) is probably an omee-palone (gay). Or he works in theatre. But, as we know, one does not exclude the other.

• Look at him. Naturally, you will be looking at him, yes, but you should pay attention to some details. For example, note if he has a red tie, cravat or any other red accessory (like a handkerchief). This is a good signal in big cities both in the States and Russia where red cravats or handkerchiefs were like a “homosexual uniform”. A tilted straw hat with a colourful ribbon or feather, or a sailor’s outfit can also mean that the man is homosexual, but be careful here: straw hats are common. Just as sailors who are not gay, apparently.

• Note how he moves. Mannerism is a stereotype, but some men do adopt it to signal their sexuality. So, yes, limp wrists are a go. One or both hands on hips work as well.

So there you have it, several signals that can help you. Good luck and have fun!

Sources: The Gendering of Men, 1600-1750, Vol. 2, Thomas Alan King (2004) / A history of Homosexuality in Europe, Vol. 1 & 2, Florence Tamagne (2006) / Reconsidering the Emergence of the Gay Novel in English and German, James Patrick Wilper (2016) / On the Offensive: Prejudice in Language Past and Present, Karen Stollznow (2020) / Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: Public and Hidden Transcripts, 1917-1941, Dan Healey (1998)

#lgbt history #gay history #edwardian era #1910s #queer history #blog: history

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nagiru · 2 years

Note

You know, for the P5 and Devil survivors crossover, it could totally work. After record breaker, the team share the administration ability to every human, which is to alter reality. The meta verse is a reality created by the mind and heart of people. It could totally count as the result of sharing the authority.

Yeah! When I first started planning this story, I didn't actually think of an. Explanation for things. But, at one point, I was suddenly hit by "wait IT'S THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE" and wrote a piece on it. You know. Saiduq being a sweetheart and also my quick "explain the stuff that I don't know how to show". If you're interested...

“You said the Metaverse is the Cognitive given form, yes? And that the underground Metaverse… Mementos… is the Collective Cognitive. The cognition of the people, instead of a person’s.”

“Yeah, that’s what Mona told us, at least.”

“Well… then I think I know what this is, yes. From time to time, something like this happens. Something comes around, aiming for the Throne, and they create chaos in their fight for it. For long, it was a fight against Polaris, seeking to undermine Her control and assert their own. Now, however… I suppose this is the only possible way to get control of the Throne.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Administrator’s Throne. I suppose you would call it God’s Throne? Whoever stands in it has control over the very fabrics of this universe and, as such, controls everything here. The world. Every single life in it. Your… our history and fate. Everything at the tip of their fingers. It is… a highly desired position, as you can imagine.”

Oh, wonder why, he thought wryly. He could think of even some humans who would like to become gods. Creatures beyond a human’s power, as Saiduq seemed to be talking about? Yeah, he could see it.

“Yes… however. It is no longer a matter of simply stepping up and taking it. A while ago… Oh, some 10 years, almost… there was an Administrator that… wanted to wipe everything. And it had to be stopped. So, ever since, the power no longer rests in the Throne itself; instead, it is now spread among humans. For it was necessary to give power to every single human to change this method of control, and as such… a human’s desire gained power.”

“The Metaverse.” He realized. “Mementos is the representation of… what? All this power given form?”

“Perhaps. What is more curious, though, is that you speak of Ruin…” Saiduq seemed not to be speaking to him, simply wondering out loud. “If I am right… and I hope I am not… I think someone might be aiming to control this power. If someone manages to convince the Collective to seek a God… if the Collective seeks for someone to control them… guide them, perhaps… then whoever they so desired would have the power to take the Throne and start the reign of the Administrators all over again.”

#my fics #devil survivor 2 #persona 5 #desu2 x p5 au #al saiduq #fic ideas ig #akira kusuru

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starlightshadowsworld · 3 years

Text

Son of none

Based off this post: Aka Percy Weasley was abandoned by his family and I don’t think they realised just how much danger an 18 civilian blood traitor son would be when stuck behind enemy lines. Well never fear, a fic is here as if I don’t have any other drafts...any whoooo

@transparentfreakpursepanda

Warning for blood, torture, self loathing. Mentions of bullying and neglect. Cursing.

(Also while writing this I was listening to Polaris by Natewantstobattle and...yeah if you want more angst while reading this listen to them and think of Percy :) )

Percy deserved this.

Knowing that didn't change things. It didn’t make it easier to make it duck past the office that had once belonged to Barty Crouch Sr without feeling dread and greif. As harsh as the man could be and that he had not bothered to learn Percy's name... Percy still mourned his loss. For all that he was, Barty Crouch Sr had been a good man.

Life at the ministry taught him quickly, that kind of wizard was few and far between.

He wondered if the look Barty Crouch Sr had shared with his son before his death wax the same his father had shared with him the day he left.

Maybe it wasn't wise to compare yourself to a deranged murderer, but if that's the kind of wizard his family thought he was...

"Weasley"

It was stern, drenched in spite that was not unlike his old potions professor. But sadly even Snapes treatment of him in class did not hold a candle to what was happening now.

Percy lifted his head, it felt heavy. Infact all of him felt that he was on fire. The figure infront of him came into focus, not that Perch could quite recall his name. Edward? No that didn't seem right. Not Edward was his wand in hand and looked very annoyed, his dark mark was on full display.

Percy became very well aware in that moment that he couldn't move. He was bound to a chair in a room that looked very much like a cellar. He was still in his ministry robes, though they were dirty and tattered and stained in something.

It took Percy longer than he should've to realise it was his own blood. Not that he knew where he was bleeding from. "You Gryffindors and your bloody stubbornness" sneered Not Edward, he was a broad man, towering over Percy.

"You're wasting my time, and yours of you don't hurry up and tell me where your family is hiding." Percy shook his head, defiantly even if his body protested at the sudden movement. "Like I said before, even if I did know, I would never tell you."

And than Not Edward would shout profanities all the while using his subordinates to use Percy as target practice till he passed out. That had been the cycle for... Well he wasn't sure for how long. Apart from the first time when Percy had weaved a convincing story about the family heading to Romania to hide away with Charlie...a whole false hunt that ended with the brand he now had on his arm.

But this time was different.

Not Edward smirked "thought you'd say that, no matter. We've found out how to get there attention, and they'll hand themselves over." Percy laughed, it was a strangled and it sent another wave of pain through his body.

Not Edward was still smirking, in fact if anything his confidence grew. "And better yet, you're going to the bait that brings them here." And that stopped Percy laughing at once, he was quieter. "What makes you think they'd come" the words were barely above a whisper that echoed throughout the room.

Not Edward (Percy really needed to learn this man's name for his own internal monologue's sake) rolled his eyes "don't pull that on me, you Weasely's are more attached than a bunch of grapes. Rest assured, they'll be coming one way or another."

With that he left. Percy tried not to think about the fact a death eater had more confidence in his families arrival than he did. His mind wandered to the day he left, guilt pooled in his stomach. No amount of head trauma would erase the disgust and rage in Arthur’s eyes, Percy knew at that moment he had lost all right to call the man father.

He could never look him in the eye again, he couldn’t even look himself in the mirror without seeing him staring back. His mothers eyes haunted him, she’d been the only one to try to reach out but he had slammed that back in her face. Not that Percy should have been surprised, he’d always been a parasite.

If anything they must’ve been relived to be rid of him.

They wouldn’t come, he knew that. Than why did his heart race, did tears threaten to fall and his stomach churn at the thought? Percy thought of his siblings, young and old...they wouldn’t have given him a second thought. Fred and George would mourn the loss of their favourite target, but they would move on they all would if they hadn’t already.

For Percy though, this was the end of the line.

_______________________________________________________________

Weasley family dinners were always something else, Bill knew this better than most. He smiled to Fleur who sat at his side, amusement on her face as they both watched Molly do as she does best. It was organised chaos at its finest, and while Shell cottage was a far cry from the Burrow, somehow it all came together. Harry was laughing at a story Ginny and the twins were telling, Charlie and Hermione were actually helping Molly along with Arthur.

But even with how familiar it was, it was missing a certain brother rolling his eyes at the story and telling the true ending to the annoyance of the twins. Who would than direct the others to helping out with dinner to there mothers amusement.

Percy.

Ever since the watch, a muggle watch at that had arrived on his wedding day, with no name for the sender but only Bill’s name signed by an all too familiar handwriting...Bill hadn’t been able to take his mind of his little brother. His absence at his wedding and just seeing him around the house stuck out like a sore thumb to Bill. He wasn’t the only one either, he could see how his Mum would pause her eyes searching before looking down and moving onto something else.

Much like now when she put down the plates and realised that she’d left a little extra to the side. “Mum, I get that you miss him but you can’t keep doing this. Percy’s not coming back” the first to say it was Charlie, his voice soft like he was talking to an irate dragon. “Good riddance” that came from Ginny, in that whisper that wasn’t even trying to be quiet.

Instantly Molly became much like a dragon. “Ginevera Molly Weasley, don’t you dare speak about your brother like that!” She yelled, hot tears burning in her eyes. “Molly...” Interjected Arthur, putting a calming hand on his wife’s shoulder “you can’t blame her for her anger. Come on, let’s dig in.” And that should have been the end of it but Molly turned to him, her own temper boiling.

“Don’t you start, Arthur. Don’t you tell me I should be sat eating dinner while my son is out all alone.” She spat. “Mum, it’s fine Percy’s probably having high tea with the new minister, talking about the importance of cauldron bottoms” snickered Fred, “pfft yeah, just sat around telling the dark lord about his book report” agreed George. Bill frowned, as did Fleur but that was nothing compared to Molly.

Her gaze hardened and the twins shut up instantly, they’d never seen her this mad. “I dont care if you hate him, I don’t care if this isn’t my home...you speak of my son following HIM, get out of my sight now.” She said, slumping into a nearby chair. Bill stood up, putting his own hand in his mums which she took gratefully. “Percy may be the most ambitious lion around, but he wouldn’t join you know who. He left to join the ministry because that's what he believed in, death eaters isn’t even in the equation.”

And Bill meant those words. More than he ever thought he would.

“Though is there any difference between the death eaters and the ministry anymore?” Asked Harry, the place was filled with them after all. “Yeah? Might be but they’ve kept the employees, not that I know what’s going on in there anymore.” Said Arthur, adding his 2 galleon’s into the mix. “And there not going to take kindly to a Weasley” Said Hermione, making everyone look down as if they hadn’t just realised that.

It didn’t matter if Percy had disowned himself, his family was very much publicly fighting the people he was now stuck with.

And that was when fate decided to be extra cruel and the radio burst into life.

“Greetings from the Ministry. Our daily transmission has already been received today but we have an exceptional treat for the wizarding public. We will be instead hosting an interview with one of our newest employees, give a hand folks to Percival Ignatius Weasley.”

Everyone in the room froze, and yet Ron who was the only one of the family minus Fleur not to speak, ran to the radio and put the volume as loud as he could.

“Say hello your family, Percival.” Taunted the voice, it was very gleeful as it spoke. No response was heard. “Oh, silly me I forgot how many hours you young people work, not to worry let’s get him up boys.”

A splash was heard and a shuddering scream. “Morning Percival, sorry do you prefer Percy? Don’t care, lets start the interview. So Percival, how are you finding the ministry?” Everyone sat with baited breathe.

And yet it was there Percy who, through shuddered breaths managed to whisper a “fuck you...fuck you and your ministry”

“Well that is very rude, and here I thought your mother would have taught you manners” “don’t...don’t you talk about her.” Said Percy, Molly broke down into tears and Bill held her close. Unable to tear his gaze from the radio, no one could.

“What do you want to say them? I’m sure they’ve missed you. In fact, just for you we’ll be hosting a party. And there all invited to the ministry, so long as they bring a certain Mr Potter.”

There was a silence before “don’t come...don’t. Whatever you do, don’t... it’s fine. I’m fine, I love it here.” He laughed, everyone cringed at the sound he made, as if he was choking. “It’s fine, don’t come...parties are overrated yeah.” The transmission started cutting off, Ron frantically along with the twins tried to get it working.

They heard “too busy. Don’t come, Harry don’t...stay where you are!” Before the transmission cut off.

No one could speak, horror was etched into all of there faces. The twins were scrabbling over themselves with wand in hand to track where the transmission had come from.

The Ministry.

“We’re going...now” said Molly, standing up. Her tears were gone, grabbing for her wand and coat. “Molly...be rationale, we need to plan this.” Said Arthur, Molly spun on her heel and glared. “I am not going to sit here while those...monsters torture MY son! Planning will take to long, did you hear him Arthur?! Did you hear your son crying out in pain...he doesn’t have long left...” Arthur looked down, unable to respond.

Molly looked at the rest of the family, her gaze saying it all: You can come with me or you can stay. The first to stand was Bill, closely followed by Fleur who met his thankful gaze with a determined smile. Charlie and Ron were next, grabbing there wands with Harry and Hermione following. Ginny and the twins exchanged guilty looks but stood. Arthur couldn’t look at any of them, he simply picked up his wand.

“Harry, I understand if you wish to stay” said Molly, he shook his head. “I might not know him well but Percy’s family 2...I cant sit here while you guys go even with the danger.” He replied, and somehow that was all it was, Percy was family...enough said.

And so the family of lions got up and left, to find the one they left behind.

_______________________________________________________

Percy was terrified.

A part of him argued that he should be grateful they came at all for him. Maybe it was out of pity, out of ensuring that he wasn't able to be used against them.

Yes, that's all it was. He was nothing afterall, he was merely a civilian in a war.

And yet hearing Molly tearfully and frantically whisper his name. Hearing Hermione yell the counterspell to his imprisonment to Ron who did so perfectly. Seeing the light of spells cast by Ginny and the twins to stun Not Edward... (Who was apparently called Edgar... Eh close enough.)

Feeling Charlie carry him in his arms, mumbling curse words. Smelling Arthur's cologne.

It all felt right. It was warmth that he couldn't remember experiencing. It was enough to lull him to a facade that everything was fine.

But when his wounds were healed and he saw them all looking at him... Percy knew he had to shelf that dream. "I told you not to come" was the first thing he said, averting his gaze. (Couldn't look them in the eye)

"And you must've lost a few screws if you thought we wouldn't" said Bill, meeting Percy's gaze. "You shouldn't have" is all he replied. "And what, let you be killed by the ministry?" Gaped Ginny. Percy shrugged "wouldn't have made much difference, you've only gone and put yourselves in more danger."

"Are you... Are you fucking with us right now?" Asked Fred, incredously. "No, im too busy ranting about cauldron bottoms to do that." And if Fred paused, Percy didn't see it.

Seeing as no one was getting anyway, Bill sat beside Percy who immediately felt on edge. "Thanks for the watch" he said simply. Everyone blinked in confusion and than realisation as no one has known where Bill's new watch had come from. Percy smiled faintly "You're welcome, reminded me of you."

"Although, I do wish you could've gave it in person" continued Bill, testing the waters. Percy surprised him by shaking his head "no you wouldn't have. It was your day, I wasn't going to ruin it." Bill frowned "is that what you think?" Percy shrugged again "it's what I've been told."

"You are way to chill after being tortured" said Charlie, Percy looked at his bandaged arms and snorted. "Eh? It's nothing new. That guy was just there for the theatrics, sadist if you ask me." Charlie raised an eyebrow "nothing new?" Percy nodded "yeah, what you think the ministry that's so far up Voldermorts ass would allow me to work there without some 'interviews'."

Everyone paled.

"But than why stay there?" Asked Arthur, Percy froze. Steeling himself, switching from calm to panic to calm in an instant but they all saw. "I've got business there, things I need to get done and ensure are done. Speaking of which, thanks for the rescue but I should be off."

He didn't belong here. Not anymore.

"Percy, you can stay." Said Molly, already standing up to get his room prepared. "No, I can't. I have work, I have a duty... And I'm no longer part of this family." When he said that, Percy felt like the wind was knocked out of him but stood his ground. "Percy... That's not true.."

Percy met Arthur's gaze, his father's eyes. "Really? Than pray tell why did no one tell me you were all in hiding... Or a warning? And don't say it was impossible because I managed to send a parcel to a location I didn't even know about nor knew existed."

No one could answer that.

"I'll be off, and don't worry I won't tell them anything. Just do what you do best, and leave me alone." Arthur managed to grab Percy's wrist though he hissed in pain and pulled his arm back like he'd been burnt. "Don't.. Touch me, Arthur Weasely."

Arthur recoiled, Percy looked away. "I spent my whole life wanting to be someone you could be proud off...I listened to all the critism and yes I was a prat. But the moment I made my own choice you already made me aware I didn't belong in my own house. I’m sorry...that I’m not athletic like Ginny, I’m not smart like Ron or as successful as Bill and Charlie, I’m not a hero like a Ron or fun like Fred and George. That I’m just plain ol prat Percy.”

He began to walk away. Just like he did before.

"That choice was against following Dumbledor, turning against the light." Said Molly, wanting him to understand. Percy laughed, with no humour at all but glaring hard. Rage emanated from him.

"I'm sorry if I choose not to stand behind an old coot who routinely sends an abused boy to his abusers, who nearly got 3 11 yearolds killed because he wanted to weed out a possibility. Who nearly got thousands of children killed and did nothing to save Ginny with the chamber. The man who wouldn't give an innocent man a trial and got him sent to the worst prison for 12 years... Who put teenagers in a death game and let an underage kid join because why not. That man is a monster and I refuse to follow someone like that. But no that means I'm blindly following authority." He sneered, staring at them all.

"And the ministry? Because as corrupt and fucked up as it is I know I can do something. That changes can be made in the systems to benefit everyone, Dumbledor is someone who breeds child solider’s and let's a known abuser teach at his school and somehow I’m the only one who isn't okay with that."

And with that Percy left, no one knew what to say. They simply sat in silence, absorbing everything they just heard. Ginny thought about how Percy had profusely apologised after she was free from the chamber, how he’d made time for her since than. Ron thought of all the times they’d have an adventure and Percy would watch over them like a mother hen.

Bill and Charlie recalled when Percy would still come to them for help before he started Hogwarts. When they found him bruised and broken from bullies except this was because of them. “He really thinks that doesn’t he...?” Said Fred, George nodded. Neither could smile, guilt pooled in their hearts that they didn’t think he felt like that.

Molly sobbed for her son who was once again lost and Arthur wondered where he had gone wrong to lose his son all over again.

________________________________________________

Meanwhile Percy entered a muggle flat in London. Alone again just like he belonged, laying on his bed and looking at the brand on his arm.

'Son of none'

And if that didn't hurt most of all.

Suffice to say they all things to think about for when they’d meet again.

#percy weasley #Percy Weasely deserved better #angst #self loathing #depression #Percy Weasely needs a hug #blood #Torture #swearing #Sorry if it's rushed

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mediocrevideopodcast · 3 years

Text

Infinity

Summary: You look at the stars with your boyfriend, Donatello.

Pairing: Donatello/Reader

Content Warnings: None! Unless you get freaked out by the concept of infinity. It’s honestly just a lot of space talk <3

Word Count: 1103

Infinity: It’s a concept that mortal minds can never truly grasp. The sheer size and quantity of infinity is incomprehensible, and for good reason. It’s a word that should not be applied lightly, considering how grand it is. So, when one considers our known universe and its nature to constantly and infinitely expand, one should have a healthy respect and admiration for it’s magnitude. Stars, living and dying in radiant throes billions of light-years away, litter the night sky like paint on a black canvas. How loving the stars must be, to share their light and love with us, so that we might admire their beauty from galaxies away. Do creatures from neighboring galaxies look up at their own night sky and see our sun? Do they value our star as much as we do theirs? Do they write myths and legends about the night sky with as much love as our ancestors once did? You smile to yourself. The universe is so vast, so uncountable, and… gorgeous.

The chilly wind of New York bites at your exposed skin and you instinctively curl further into your lover’s side. Although, you grin to yourself, it probably benefits him more than it does you. You pull the thick woolen blanket up a bit higher as you allow your hand to dance over the scratches and grooves in his plastron. A scar here, a scar there, and countless natural faults and ridges. You wonder how many scars are from battle and how many are from accidents in the lab. He hums quietly to himself as he looks up at the infinite stretch of sky, and you feel a sense of wonder and love for the man beside you: you've never felt so at home.

"See that little cluster, next to Draco? It has one really bright star, but the others may be harder to find." Donatello asks, pointing up at the sky. You search the sky for the cluster, gazing through his hand. You hum affirmatively when you find it: It sits just under Ursa Minor and next to Draco. Seven primary stars twinkle dimly in the constellation, making it somewhat hard to make out. One star, however, shines brighter than most every other in the sky, which makes it easier to find.

Donnie traces little patterns on your shoulder as he starts to speak once more. “That’s Cepheus. It’s one of my favorites.” His voice is uncharacteristically soft, almost as though he were afraid of shattering the silence.

“What’s the story behind it?”

“Well, the myth says that Cepheus was once the King of Aethiopia. He was married to Cassiopeia, which is to his left, and was the father of Andromeda, who is also immortalized as a modern-day constellation. I’ve always preferred the myth of Cassiopeia, but the stars in Cepheus are what makes it one of my favorites.”

You smile: That’s your Donnie, alright. You look up at him with a grin and a twinkle in your eye. “Tell me about them, babe.”

He chuckles, “I was really hoping you would say that. God, where do I even start?” He kisses your forehead quickly, thinking of what to say. “Alright,” he begins, “See the brightest star in Cepheus?”

“Mmhm.”

“That one’s called Alderamin, or Alpha Cephei.” “Sounds like a wizard name.” “I know, right?” He chuckles, “It’s about 49 light-years away, and it’s one of the brightest stars in the sky. It’s a white class A star currently evolving off the main sequence into a subgiant- probably on its way to becoming a red giant right about now. It’s much bigger and far brighter than our own sun, and it rotates incredibly fast. What I find most interesting about it is the fact that it’s a source of X-ray emissions, which indicates significant magnetic activity. And that’s not really typical for rapidly rotating stars. Oh, and in a few thousand years, it’ll be the new North Star.”

“Our North Star changes?” He hums, “Yes, but not in our lifetime. The last time Alderamin was the North Star was… around 20 thousand years ago? Don’t quote me on that. But right now, it’s Polaris.”

“Oh, cool.”

“Mmhm,” he yawns, blinking his eyes firmly. He rubs at his eyes with his free hand before putting it back behind his head.

"Sleepy?" You whisper.

"Nope," he says, popping the P. "I never sleep."

You giggle, "Uh-huh, keep telling yourself that, D."

"Shush. Anyways, the stuff inside Cepheus is even cooler: Alderamin is just an… important feature. NGC 188 is an open cluster, and it's the closest open cluster to the north celestial pole. One of the oldest-known open clusters, actually. But you know what the real 'star' of the show is?"

You snicker. "Shut up. What?"

"S5 0014+81. It's a distant, compact, hyperluminous, broad-absorption-line quasar, or as I like to call it, a blazar.” He pulls his free hand out from under his head for a moment to wave it around - presumably for emphasis. He’s always been one to talk with his hands, after all. He continues, “In layman's terms, it's a supermassive black hole. It’s 40 billion times the weight of our sun, gives off light 25 thousand times brighter than every star in the Milky Way combined, and is undeniably one of the most powerful objects in the observable universe." He finishes his sentence with a quiet breath, leaving you with a sense of wonder.

You breathe a sigh of awe, staring intensely at the center of the constellation. The universe is… incredible. You absentmindedly trace patterns on your lover's chest as you let the information sink in, and unbeknownst to you, he takes the time to look down at your form, smiling at the way you subconsciously seek out contact with him. And in return, he traces his own patterns along your back, tracing a map of the universe in sensations along your spine. When you tear your eyes away from the cosmos to look at him, you smile.

His face is lit by the light of the moon, casting an almost heavenly glow upon his features. His eyes shine beneath the all-consuming cosmos, as though they were lit by the light of an entire galaxy. Perhaps he’s descended from the stars themselves, you muse.

“Hey,” you whisper, “I love you.”

“I love you too, hun.”

And when your lips meet, you swear that you can understand the light given off by a supernova, and the radiance, light, and love that comes with it. For if there’s anything truly infinite on this small, infinitesimal planet, it is the love that binds you together.

#tmnt donatello x reader #rottmnt Donatello x reader #rottmnt x reader #TMNT x reader #rottmnt imagine #donatello x reader #donatello hamato x reader #tmnt imagine #an open love letter to space to turtles and the incomprehensible concept of infinity. donatello if ur out there..........MUAH <3 a lil kissy

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pastelpaperplanes · 3 years

Text

Part 5

Optimus had never worn as little as he was in that moment, and considering the situation, he would normally be a lot more anxious about it, but when you're suspended this high off the ground with only two thin strips of fabric holding you up, that was the least of your worries at the moment.

Jadarite, Eion and Calipso were all on the ground, calling up words of encouragement to him as he managed to get the wrap around his torso properly.

Unverlo was up in the rigging alongside some of the workers who maintained said rigging, mostly there to let him know if something got tangled and they’d have to drop him onto the massive padded mat directly under him on the stage.

He took a moment before he began the next stunt to question how Jadarite had even got him into this.

Something about his upper frame physique and how the crowd would love it?

After that thought was done, he let himself go, letting the flow of the fabrics let him spin around and around and around.

Just as he was about to hit the mat, he shifted, and the roll stopped, leaving a perilous amount of fabric left underneath him and his optics having to recalibrate to adjust to the sudden change in depth.

There was a round of applause from those around him as he put his servos and knees to the mat and untangled himself from the fabrics.

Once they were free hanging again, Unverlo and the mechs up in the rigging started to pull it all back up for storage, that had been the last trick he had wanted to get right, so the session was over.

Jadarite offered her servo to him, which he took as she helped him off the mat. “You’re a natural Pax, the crowds gonna love you even more when you get up the confidence to do it in front of them.” She praised, shifting to walk with him off the stage and down to where the tables and chairs were for the guests, a servo resting on his opposite shoulder as the predominantly white femme led him down and around to the doors that led to the network of workers only corridors that would in turn lead to the dressing rooms.

He chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck. “You sure Boss? I’m still feeling pretty wobbly.”

Jadarite chuckled with a lot more conviction than his own. “How many times do I have to tell you I’ve got an optic for talent Pax? Everyone is wobbly to start with! Why when I was at your level of experience I ran face first into a pole in the middle of a performance and knocked myself out!” She exclaimed, whacking her forehelm with her palm to emphasise the incident.

He gave her an awkward chuckle. “Hopefully I don’t do that…”

She went to reply back when the ships intercom came to life, and one of the Captains, it wasn’t easy to tell which with just the voice, started to speak. ::Attention all Passengers and Crew, we will soon be arriving at the Intergalactic Port, Galvara-5, if this is your departure call, please make sure you have everything you have brought with you packed away, as we will not be turning around for an errant data pad. For those who are not departing us at Galvara-5, we will be docked for two cycles, if you are not back on the ship exactly two cycles after we arrive, we will leave without you.::

He made a face. “That’s a bit harsh…”

Jadarite shrugged. “Think of it from their perspective, The Polaris is a literal city, does a city stop for one data pad?”

“No?”

“No, plus, being blunt about this and having it as part of the policy prevents grounds for lawsuits… it’s been company policy since the time of their Grandsire being in charge of the fleet.” She explained.

Optimus nodded. “That makes sense… so… Galvara-5? What’s it like? I’ve never been off Cybertron before.” He explained.

“Oh it’s hectic, because The Polaris and the rest of the fleet have it as their first docking spot after Cybertron, there’s always at least ten companies fighting and throwing money to have their cargo to get the fast track treatment.” She explained. “That’s something the Captains handle though, everyone else gets two cycles to hit up the clubs and tourist traps that have sprung up since the Fleet started using this place, before the Fleet took it as their first landing spot, it was apparently a pretty standard space port, now, it’s supersized and handles everything coming through this Quadrant, The Polaris is still the largest docking ship by leagues, of course.” She puffed up a bit as she stated that.

That was something he noticed, all the mechs and femmes who worked on this ship seemed to hold a great deal of pride, especially those like Jadarite, who felt like someone who knew the ins and outs of the ship better than she knew how to dance, which was saying something, he’d seen her during some of the shows, she could cut a rug and make artwork out of it.

“So, want to see Galvara-5 for yourself?” Jadarite offered. “We don’t have to put on shows during docking periods, it’s expected most bots will get off to take in the scenes and sights instead.”

He shrugged. “If that’s the case I certainly don’t mind.”

Jadarite beamed. “Wonderful, we can all go as a group and do a bar crawl! How does that sound?”

He chuckled. “Sounds good… so long as I’m not the only one carrying everyone’s drunk afts back to the ship. Especially Drakus, I don’t know about you, but I might need to go see Dust for a thrown out back strut if I tried to carry him!”

Drakus was the ‘big mech’ of the entertainment department, and was apparently very good at tossing the smaller bots into the air for more dramatic stunts, luckily Optimus was just above the weight that Dust allowed the mech to toss.

Jadarite chuckled in turn. “Ah’ll remember that kiddo! Now how about you go and get changed out of that get up? Hmm? Before a lost passenger sees you and catches feelings!” She jested, nudging him ahead of her and into the changing rooms.

Suddenly reminded of just how little he was wearing, Optimus yelped and tried to cover himself up, earning another truly raucous laugh from Jadarite.

Cybertron

Megatron had to admit, he was having a hard time paying attention to what he was doing.

He had the star map for the Trans Galactic fleet folded up on one side of his desk, if the Polaris was making good time, they’d be arriving at Galvara-5 soon, and hopefully one of his friends would have the chance to give him a call.

He was itching to hear about Orion, make sure the dancer was doing alright.

He’d sprung the change of employers so quickly on the mech, he’d wanted to give him time to pack and the like, but his concerns over Shockwave pulling something had overruled that wish.

A knock at his door drew his attention away from the paper work he’d been looking at without actually reading. “Come in.” He spoke.

The door opened and he would admit to himself, he was surprised to see who walked in. “Blackarachnia?” He asked in surprise as the femme walked in.

The femme, known infamously as the Queen of the Insecticons, looked murderous, melt a poor soul into the sidewalk for being within her vicinity murderous, he was surprised Lugnut let her reach his office with that expression. He might need to go and check for his body...

“What. The frag did you do?” The femme hissed out.

“You know full well your going to have to be more specific than that.”

“Optimus. What the fuck did you do to him!” She snapped, lips pulled back in a snarl.

“Who?” He asked, he’d never heard of a mech called ‘Optimus’. He had a feeling BlackArachnia was misplacing her anger. “BlackArachnia, if one of your… associates has gone missing, I am not the one responsible.”

She blinked at him dumbstruck for a moment before snarling again. “Don’t pull that slag with me! You’re in deep slag you idiot! The Elite Guard’s started a murder investigation on you!” She snapped out.

His optic ridges shot up. “...What…”

She nodded. “You killed their informant. I knew him… he… he used to be my friend… before… this…” She gestured to herself. “Words spreading fast… surprised you didn’t hear about it before me… So… what the frag… did you do… to Optimus?”

He shook his helm. “I’ve never met a mech by the designation ‘Optimus’.” He tried to explain.

She sighed. “Baby blue face, bright blue helm piece with finals, waist that should not be supporting a chassis as broad as his?” She began to list off.

That was all he needed to hear for his attention to go to a black and white photo on his desk, framed in a quaint wood frame, he slowly turned it to face her. “Your… Your describing Orion.”

“Orion? Frag… he used a cover name… wait… you didn’t know he was an informant?”

Megatron felt something in his spark drop. “No… I didn’t…”

She looked at him confused. “Then… why did you kill him?”

“I didn’t!” He exclaimed, affronted at the very idea of him being responsible for Orion… Optimus… Orion’s death. “He’s not dead!”

“Then where is he?! He was Magnus’ favourite once upon a time! And he’s using the fact that he’s not been seen in weeks to build a murder case on you! They’ve had ships trawl the docks for his body!”

He froze then. “What… wait… the docks?”

She nodded. “Yes! Everyone knows you took him to the docks with Lugnut and Shockwave! Everyone… came to the conclusion you… put him in the Docks… you didn’t… put him in the docks…”

He shook his helm. “No… I had his contract changed from being in my name, to the name of an old friend. He’s on their ship as we speak.”

BlackArachnia’s shoulders dropped in relief. “He’s not dead…”

He nodded, but his expression soured. “Now that we’ve established that… what’s this about him being an informant?”

BlackArachnia made a face. “That I don’t know much about… but what I do know is… it’s a scandal in the Elite Guard… Magnus apparently never cleared this… Sentinel Prime went behind his back and made Optimus work as an informant for him… Optimus wasn’t part of the Guard… he was a civilian… that it seems… Sentinel strong armed into getting information on you for him… That’s all that’s gotten out into the rumour mill so far…” She explained.

He hummed and intertwined his digits. “The ship with… Optimus… on it… is soon to arrive on Galvara-5… I will address the Captains and see about getting proof that he is alive and well on the ship… that will hopefully enough to clear me of murder when a trial comes… Thank you BlackArachnia… for bringing this all to my attention… Now I know to be prepared...”

BlackArachnia nodded and took that as her que to leave.

It would seem, it was more than just Sol and Neb that he would need to speak with on the Polaris… directly.

The Polaris Bridge.

Nebularburst yawned as she watched the bid prices roll in, Solarstorm was handling the auction itself in Galvara-5’s trading hall, everytime they flew through here, wealthier and wealthier companies and syndicates were throwing more money at them to get their stuff along the flight path they had.

A chipper autotone voice pipped up from the main console. “Tired Pilot?”

Nebular snorted. “Me? Tired? Child who do you think you are suggesting that?”

The voice snickered through the speakers. “This child~ Who knows you haven’t recharged in four cycles.”

“You’ve been using the security cameras in our quarters to spy on me again… haven’t you?”

“........... Fraggit…”

“POLS!”

“Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!” The voice yipped.

Nebularburst sighed, rubbed the sides of her helm. “No… no… I’m sorry… I know it’s pointless thinking we can have you keep some of your innocence… what with what we have you do on the outer rim…”

“What I do on the outer rim is my duty… I’ve known my duty since the cycle you brought me online… I should still try not to swear like those who work in my engines...”

She patted the console gently. “It’s okay… HOLY FPPPFTTT…” She suddenly exclaimed, puffing out her cheeks to stop herself from cursing as she pointed at the sudden spike from the Auction count. “Someone just bet a brand new mining colony filled with rare ores!”

“WHAT?!”

“... Looks like we’re going to be even more busy now…”

“Think there will be useful stuff to be found?”

“I don’t know… but it looks like that plus a whole warehouse full of credits is the winning bid… the others are declining raising the stakes… Looks like the Prince of the Empire of Falgranum… Wonder what he wants us to ship for that much…” She mumbled.

She didn’t get anymore time to ponder as the bridges com-link was pinged by a familiar number.

Nbbularburst beamed. “It’s Megzy!” And sent the clearance for the call to go through.

:We need to talk.:

Her optic ridges shot up. That didn’t sound good.

#CiaF RETURNS!!#I’m screaming at the nickname #cops and mobs creations #submission

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manicr · 3 years

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X-Factor: Daken

Since I did a development analysis on Daken in X-Men Blue, it feels only reasonable to do one for X-Factor, especially considering the the latest issue (#8). I had thoughts that I articulated in the tags, but I think I should try to put them together and look at Daken as a character in the whole of X-Factor.

Firstly, Daken isn’t recruited into the team, he persistently volunteers despite the objections of the team. He is presented passed out on the bar floor, drinking to deal with his feelings. Word of God states he’s depressive again and Laura being in the Vault is a big factor in that. Daken later confesses that he’s been “playing nice”, implying what he did was trying to be good and finding it a role, rather than natural. His drive to join the team seems to be desperate to distract himself from his negative feelings, needing purpose and preoccupation.

However, very in-character, he excuses himself with flippant commentary, and the fact that he finds Aurora attractive:

He, as in XMB, makes himself useful to the team with his powers and instincts, despite them not being welcoming of his presence. He persists and tries to reach out to them, even if only a little, like he’s learned to do with his sisters and what we saw in XMB. He even calls them out on their bullshit against him, and tries to “be good”. The team still doesn’t trust him, and are bothered both by his flirtatiousness and his past villainy.

He actively pursues Aurora and gets himself thrown out of Mojo-verse, however his interest isn’t just romantic/sexual, but he wants to solve what happened to her when she died. He knows she’s not telling everything. He tries to be kind and reach out to her, not forcing her to say, but curious -- maybe having his own hypothesis on what happened. He knows something is off, and can’t let it go. Seems to care enough to want to help her.

Now were three issues in and Daken has been trying his best to help, reach out and fit into a team that is not very welcoming or accepting of him. Aurora is a fixed point of interest for him, and he tries especially with her. She seems flattered by the attention at this point.

Then the X of Swords event happens, essentially without Daken though he fights in the background, and we get our first major time-jump. That jump seems noticeable in text, as there seems to be a greater comfort and trust in the team as a whole, not just towards Daken.

At a party in the Boneyard, Daken talks with Polaris, trusting her enough to ask her if the kindness he sees is real It is, and it’s a bit of an alien concept to him still. He equates it with lack of intelligence “simple-mindedness” or faking it as an act to get ahead/mask whatevers beneath. Polaris mentions his childhood trauma.

Daken also takes some ribbing from Lorna regarding his past and glum attitude, but laughs it off, but we get some foreshadowing through it. Daken’s trauma regarding snow is tied together in XF, harking to a Dark Wolverine era trauma of him as a child being forced to ‘train’ in snow by Romulus. It’ll repeat itself in XF again.

We also get to see a little of what Daken does on his spare time, drawing with charcoal: having finally found some other outlet than fighting, fucking and drinking for his feelings.

He also reaffirms his interest in Aurora, as well as his familial affection for Polaris. He shows off growth in being able to have different types of affection, to have family that he cares for when back in his own series he refused social bonds like family (in ref. to the Fantastic 4) and saw them as based on fear, social obligation, and naivete.

Themes of being trapped, trauma and abuse are repeated in XF by different characters -- it applies to all of them in different ways. The letter “Why didn’t you just leave?” that speaks of this.

It echoes trauma that Daken needed to deal with himself under Romulus control -- even when he was physically away from him. His character arch has been to find himself, and not just flippantly in his eat-prey-killing comment, but also a way out of the trauma of abuse and making himself ‘smaller’ lesser to fit with the living weapon Romulus wanted. To find and dare to feel, to feel worthy, and not fear some punishment from his abuser. Of course, this applies to so many characters in X-F, both sub-textually and directly like with Siryn and Shatterstar.

One of the major relationship changes now in the book is Daken and Northstar’s relationship. Northstar confides and trusts in Daken as a team-mate from previously having refused it. Daken in turn takes his orders and seems to want that trust:

This culminates in Northstar rescuing Daken when he was trapped and beaten by the Morrigan. And according to Aurora, Northstar is behaving towards Daken as a person he doesn’t want to lose, by yelling for him and checking on him. He explicitly cares for Daken now, even with the protectiveness he still feels for Aurora. The dying in the snow theme repeats it self.

Then there is Daken and Auroras long conversation about his powers, her feelings and his feelings. He reveals the limits of his skills and she insists on understanding, which seems to make him feel better about it. She empathizes with the burden of his skills, seeing the drawbacks.

There’s a lot of subtext regarding his relationship with his own powers, he outwardly uses them shamelessly but at the same time this implies that it’s far more fumbling, uncertain and emotionally harrowing for him. And that he’s willing to see that and feel that rather than see it as his right to do whatever or refuse his powers utterly.

The Morrigan fight is overlayed with a speech about trauma, highlighting how it directly relates to Daken. He’s traumatized. He’s been abused. He’s been rewired to be dysfunctional, to hide his pain and the suffering. And it makes him feel worthless, unloved, and that no one cares, has never cared.

Later, Daken acknowledges how poorly he felt, how helpless, and how suicidal it made him feel. Even if he thinks its hypnosis rather than his own real feelings. His description fit in with depression and trauma-related issues, the feeling over never reaching shore, of drowning, and helplessness combined with the negative-self talk, that no one cares, loves him, or will be there for him since he’s worthless and a burden. But also how he looks to Aurora for comfort to deal with that.

Generally this issue irons out issues of consent, the genuineness of both their feelings as well as Daken being more like a real friend and family member to the team, but also about revealing his trauma. To show that he is not alright, despite his flippant flirty exterior. He struggles with his past, his trauma and his feelings about himself, and the belief that he deserves to be loved, cared for and to belong. This is repeated in issue #8 which hammers these themes home once more. Daken is not alright, but he wants to be.

This is growth from early Daken who didn’t even want to admit to himself that he was abused and molded by Romulus, and using rage and hurting others as a way of dealing with his own feelings, as well as using others and himself because it didn’t matter, he didn’t and no one else did either.

The in the snow theme is repeated and his fervent desire to be saved, from everything, himself as well as everything and everyone that might harm him. He seems to believe that being loved by Aurora will save him. Which is not the healthiest approach to dealing with trauma but a very common one, latching onto other people, because he doesn’t yet have the sense of self or self-worth to believe in it unless someone else does too. This for most people a necessary step towards growing and getting better.

He also is still stuck in the abuse-trauma-victim cycle and blaming himself for being harmed, seeing that he’s somehow not being good enough and that’s why he’s being hurt. “I’ll be good” are the words of someone who has been hurt over and over again by someone who made them believe they somehow deserved it. That they were ‘bad’ and needed to be punished.

...then he is faced with the fact that he truly does believe this about himself, that he’s not over it, that he’s not yet free or saved from the feelings that the trauma left behind.

But then... he dies, self-sacrificing to save his team mates and the information they carry, knowingly risking up to a week of his memory and experiences. He uses Aurora as a morality pet, to prompt himself into action, excessive such even.

He is resurrected without the memory of any of this to the point BEFORE Northstar came for him. He knows he lost that. He knows from reports that he lost things, even if not the extent of it, and now the hurt and pain from DAYS in the snow is fresh again, without any help from Aurora to process it nor knowing for certain that she loves him, without being proved that his team cares and came for him in the end. He might now the latter in paper, but that’s not the same emotionally speaking.

So, he’s angry. He knows he’s lost things, he’s been hurt and killed. But he doesn’t have the comfort of resolving these things with his team like he did, not with his habit of hiding his pain, and feeling like a burden. So he fights instead.

So, where have we ended up at the end of issue #8 of X-Factor?

Daken has been accepted by his team, because of all of HIS hard work, reaching out and kindness

Daken has opened up about his powers and his suffering (though lost half of it to the mind transfer time gap)

He has established a relationship with Aurora with clear consent, affection, but not yet full transparency of their mutual pasts (again some lost from his perspective)

He is starting to realize that he’s not yet ‘over’ his own trauma and that he’ll need to continue working on it (some lost)

Daken isn’t a perfect character nor perfectly written, he was abused and shaped by that abuse and trauma into something vicious, that he didn’t dare change from for a long time. Instead he tried to enjoy it, to revel in it, rather than face the pain and grow. He hurt and killed a lot of people, including himself, and it’s takes years of development for him to start to grow past that old self. Getting away from Romulus was only the first step.

He needed people to make him see how fucked up he was and to motivate him to be better, from Johnny back in Dark Avengers, then Laura and Gabby, and then trying on his own, attaching to Donna for a while, before teaming up with the X-Men and then X-Factor and Aurora as support for himself. It’s pretty clear that on his own, he can’t do it, he needs help, support, structure and purpose -- as do the majority of people. I’d also recommend therapy, but he’s not there yet.

One day he might stand on his own feet when it comes to feeling good about himself and managing his own life. But right now he’s in a place where he needs a strong support system, not just his family and lovers but also friends.

#daken #daken akihiro #marvel #long post

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the-voltage-diaries · 3 years

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Το Βόρειο Αστέρι μου - Lucifer x Diavolo

AO3 Link

Το Βόρειο Αστέρι μου: Greek for ‘My Polar Star’

Word Count: 1859

A/N: I don’t know what this is. All I know is that @simpingw0lfi3 refused to do it, so I did. Of course, please don’t expect this to be perfect because... it really isn’t.

Vote of thanks: @akaiiro-yume for checking and correcting all the grammatical fuck ups I did, making sure I didn’t stop writing this halfway and going through any mental breakdown I might have had instead for me. And, of course, @some-ikemen-snob for making sure this SCREAMED Lucifer energy this way and that. only for now, but ily both.

Devildom 14th February, 20XX Saturday, 7:57 PM

Dear Diary,

I suppose I've never written a journal entry such as this in the past, for I haven't found either the desire or the will to task myself with writing my thoughts down in a manner wherein I speak to an inanimate object. That said, I have been told writing is, in a manner of speaking, therapeutic, and I believe I could do with some of that right now. It would be false to assume I don’t still harbour any inhibitions towards using my time in this manner, especially when I'd much rather be by Diavolo’s side. The very same Diavolo who, as a matter of fact, happens to be the subject of this writing session today. Strangely enough, and if I recall correctly, he was also the one who introduced - which is putting it rather mildly - me to the “art” of journal entries. I admit, I haven’t given this activity the kind of gravity which was probably expected out of me, but then again, today is a little different from the rest. I'm not entirely certain as to where to begin, but I do believe I have been told in situations like these, one should do whatever... feels right.

Diavolo is... well, where do I even begin? He is the future of Devildom, as a few might call it - myself included. While he does appear to be quite the cheerful and at times careless lord, it’d be a lie to deny that he is just as wise and compassionate underneath that wave of buoyancy radiating off of him. Honest to a fault, but with his moral compass always pointing towards the best interest of those around him. I’ll admit, sometimes it proves to be rather difficult to believe that he indeed is a demon. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to compare him to the Polaris considering he does quite radiate the charisma from himself, shining admirably amidst a dark sea of onlookers. While in name he rules over all the demons in the land of Devildom, the right set of eyes won’t take too long to deduce the eloquence with which his fingers reach out to the soul of every single resident of the land, holding them together better than gravity ever bound humans to the earth.

Saying that is all there is to him would be a lie whiter than the wet snow, making its way to the tips of my fingers and sliding off gently onto this page. That, of course, doesn’t mean describing how I feel towards him is no herculean task. There are some cases when a language - no matter the plethora of vocabulary it offers - just isn’t sufficient enough, and this certainly is one of those cases. For the time being, let’s just owe my lack of articulacy to the bond of mutual respect and trust Diavolo and I share, built over centuries upon centuries, braving the ravages of time, and even perhaps the less than pleasing antics my brothers tend to pull. But while the impression the ruler of all demons and I tend to emit may seem to be distanced by a careful degree of professionalism, I don’t believe anybody knows that that might not be the case. Even Diavolo himself. Doesn’t come as a surprise, really, for they simply can’t know.

Why do I believe that to not be the case, then? Well, I would wonder why I felt so strongly about it had I not known the reason myself. The very same reason which is now a secret so surreptitious that I can’t help but consider burning this piece of paper once I finish writing to ensure it is never revealed to another set of eyes. Such dastardly is the nature of this emotion, tricking one into its delusive warmth, encompassing them with the belief that nothing truly is impossible, that what they feel might just be true and meaningful enough to be returned by the other they feel for, only to cackle with glee and turn away when the reality doesn’t match the fantasy it was believed to turn out to be. The very same emotion which in layman’s terms is apparently called... love.

I’m not entirely certain I understand the extent of its exquisite existence myself, to be truthful. All I know is no matter how intensely I try to shut the door on its escaping fumes, it turns futile the second I lay my eyes on the man in question. While the rest of the known universe sees an omnipotent leader binding everyone together, making them sing the same tune in harmony, I see what I can only consider an anchor, grounding me, making it so that I can’t ever fall into the abyss of the darkness that breathes inside of me and float away. He is the quintessence of the best of what the world has to offer, with his golden eyes sparkling like stardust, weaving their ever-lasting magic into the hearts of whoever they come across - be it human, or demon, or angel - wrapping them in their never-ending warmth, letting them sink into the depths of benevolence they promise. His hair are the cerise of a raging inferno, sheltering beneath their canopy a quick, sensible, erudite mind. His smile is but a warm culmination of everything optimistic and positive, like a flame inviting moths to it, reaching out to give their innermost yearnings a hand to grab on to and never let go. Simply divine. And this is where the paths diverge, I suppose.

They see a to-be Demon King, I see Diavolo.

But alas, love is a fickle mistress. Getting too lost in the charm of her alluring arms will only result in a doom of them wrapping around your neck, enticing, until you realise their hold is tightening. Not to hold on, but to suffocate. I might have gotten so lost in that fiery gaze that I didn’t notice it start to crawl along my skin, leaving a charred, burnt path in its wake. The very anchor which I believed to be the one to ground me and hold me close etched itself deeper into the oceanic floor of delirium, drowning me. The threads of his stardust wrapped themselves around me and clutched hard enough to strangle. Before I knew it, the symphony of something meaningful became the cacophony of a nightmare.

This red thread strung through itself earlier today the series of events I’d rather forget. I’ve known how I feel towards Diavolo for a while now, and I had been searching for an opportunity to come clean and let him know about it for the last few days. Not to say I hadn’t gotten said opportunities at all, but one could owe it to me being too prideful to admit I was finally opening up to the idea of accepting feelings and... emotions. Around that time was when Solomon let slip a few details about the significance of Valentine’s day in the human world as an annual occurrence to celebrate romantic love, friendship, and admiration, and with enough persistence, Asmodeus managed to convince Diavolo to declare the day as an official holiday. Just a few hours ago I walked along the empty hallways to Diavolo’s office, knowing him, Barbatos and I to be the only ones in the building, still choosing work over any form of inactivity. By then, I had talked myself into finally telling the most powerful of all demons about the feelings I harboured towards him. I am a little embarrassed to admit that I was indeed a tad hopeful, wishing for the feelings to be returned. Once I reached the door to his private office, my hand settled above the smooth hardwood to give it a knock. And that’s when I noticed that the door was already slightly ajar. I heard a voice inside, other than Diavolo’s, and I took the liberty to glance inside, only for my hopes to come crashing down when the realisation struck me: I shouldn’t have done that.

Inside his office, Diavolo sat in his seat with his mouth pressed against another, a hand trailing across the small face with dark green locks framing it with elegance while the other held on to the person’s waist, pulling him closer. My eyes widened when the smaller man of the two let out a muffled whimper, perched on Diavolo’s lap. Barbatos. I felt my heart squeeze out a pained croak at the sight, and even though every single nerve in my body begged me to move away and forget I ever saw anything, my legs didn’t move. They stayed glued to their spot on the floor even as I felt it crumble beneath my feet, just the way my eyes stayed on Diavolo. My lip trembled with a longing I never thought I’d experience when Barbatos intertwined his fingers with Diavolo’s, smiling into the kiss they shared, like the perfect harmony which was always meant to be. It was when Diavolo broke the kiss, eyes meeting the other’s and whispers of love and confessions floating across the room until they settled on my ears, that I finally felt the mask crack. The facade I had worked on for centuries to lay the foundation of crumbled as my fists clenched, letting myself have a moment of weakness when a lone tear of frustration, delay, anger, and self loathing dripped down my cheek. I looked up at the ceiling, a voiceless laugh tumbling across my lips at the cognisance that the Polaris I was reaching out for, shining proud in the middle of a dark, cloudless sky, was beyond my reach, and... never supposed to be mine. How far I could stretch, how willing were my fingers to make one last attempt to touch it’s light and bask in it - all of that didn’t matter anymore.

I exhaled a shaky breath, blinking once as I tucked away whatever it is I was going to tell Diavolo in some corner of my mind, crushing the key with a hard snap of my fingers. My eyes found Barbatos again, glazing over with a heartfelt wish for him to find his happiness, at least. It was with one last aching smile towards Diavolo and a euphoric laugh spilling from Barbatos’ lips that I turned on my heel, shaking my head at the fate I was handed. Needless to say, I hold no malice towards either of them - they’re both precious to me, as much as I dislike admitting it.

I believe I have shared more than what was required, and I shall burn this piece of paper lest anyone finds it. One might call it wishful thinking on my part, but I do pray that watching the last signs of anything I harbour towards the one who wasn’t meant to be mine from the start burn as the embers of the fire consume it whole makes me put a lid on my feelings once and for all, for they were never supposed matter. They weren’t supposed to exist to begin with.

After all, only a prince deserves a fairy-tale with a happy ending, and I am no prince.

Lucifer.

#Obey Me #obey me shall we date #obey me lucifer #obey me diavolo #obey me barbatos #diavolo x lucifer #diavolo x barbatos #dialuci #obey me swd #obey me... fic?#letter?#diary?#idk what this is #a measly attempt at angst #obey me angst #dialuci angst #FIRST OM FIC JFC

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dakt37 · 3 years

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Avengers Assemble - Feral Outlaw Stony

So I've been expanding on this concept I doodled before Christmas, where Steve goes with Tony into the no-tech dimension at the end of season 3. Probably a lot of stuff isn't canon-compliant (beyond the obvious change that is), but "It's an AU so I do what I want" rules apply. Anyway.

The tl;dr is: The two of them spend a little time puttering around the weird no-tech dimension, and then get absorbed into Battleworld. They become explorers, helping people out and falling in love along the way.

(Once again, I feel like someone must have had this idea already, but I’ve never looked.)

Cut for excessive rambling.

~~~

Not all the areas we see in the show are present in Battleworld when Steve and Tony first arrive, so the boys spend most of their time traveling around, mapping the place out as it expands. A lot of my ideas rely on them still having little-to-no access to modern conveniences. Obviously someplace modern has to show up for them to get their hands on a pickup truck and a motorcycle, but I’m picturing a post-apocalyptic junkyard that’s been picked clean of anything obviously useful. They get the vehicles working by sheer force of “I’m Tony-fucking-Stark.” But like that fully functional NYC area is way too convenient, so it’s not around yet. (tbh I’m not even sure if it’s an alternate NYC or theirs, in which case it wouldn’t show up until the other Avengers do anyway)

They get the low-down on the "Battleworld" concept by eavesdropping on one of Beyonder's* welcome speeches. They realize that they are uniquely off the grid, because Beyonder didn't know they were in the no-tech dimension when he added it to Battleworld. They decide it's advantageous to maintain this secret status, but they're still Avengers™️ so they can't NOT help out wherever they can. But they don’t stick around any one place for long. Basically, they become vagrant vigilantes in addition to surveyors. They get a lot of their “stuff” (clothes, tools, toiletries, etc) as payment for odd jobs, or gifts from grateful locals they rescue. They get some food from populated areas as well, but also rely on foraging and hunting while on the lam. They have definitely eaten dinosaur at some point.

(*He doesn't get the nickname "Beyonder" until the other Avengers show up. In this AU Steve and Tony refer to him as "The Entity" or "Suspenders." You can probably guess who tends to use which.)

On top of the survival story, it's also a getting-together story. Steve and Tony flirt and pine and bicker and flirt some more, until a squabble turns into a confession and they finally start kissing. There’s plenty of time for “it’s cold in this wasteland and we only have one blanket, oh no,” but they’re firmly established as romantically involved by the time the other Avengers show up and they have the final showdown with Beyonder.

Anyway a lot of the AU notes I've been making are about the functional side of their Big Camping Adventure. So here's a bunch of lists about vehicles, gadgets, and navigation.

Vehicle stuff:

If Tony is riding passenger on the motorcycle, he can clip his repulsor boots into special footrests that reroute the energy and give the bike a speed boost.

The bike has a tow cable. Steve can harpoon things using a spring-action firing mechanism, including cliff faces to help him scale steep terrain. The cable can also be uncoiled manually, like when Tony takes flight while holding the end so he and Steve can clothesline hostiles.

Steve can stick his shield several places on the bike depending on what’s convenient. On the front as a windscreen/battering ram, on one side for easy grabbing, and even on Tony’s backpack so Tony can snuggle in properly while riding passenger and keep both their backs protected.

They probably don’t even need a ramp to get the bike into the bed of the pickup. Steve just picks it up and puts it there.

The evolution of Marsha (the truck) into a full Hulkbuster-style mech takes a long time. For the majority of their time in Battleworld, it’s just a truck with an ever-increasing number of weird add-ons.

Marsha can function as a tiny camper home. The cargo bed liner is a false bottom, which can be pulled up and rearranged to form a cover/roof. Underneath the liner, the actual truck bed is about a foot deeper, with most of that storage space taken up by a mattress and bedding.

Tony can pull a cable out of Marsha’s steering column and plug it directly into his arc reactor. This unlocks extra features and weapons. He generally has things balanced so that Marsha drawing power doesn't affect him any more than his armor drawing power would. But on rare and desperate occasions, he can overclock and hurt himself. Steve of course hates when he does this.

Turnabout is fair play though: at least once, something else damaged the arc reactor, so Tony plugged into Marsha to draw power from the battery for his electromagnet while he repaired the arc.

Gasoline can be difficult to procure, so both vehicles are hybrids. Tony just keeps adding new power conversion elements as they go along, based on what they can find.

F in chat for Tony’s armor:

Tony dismantles the armor he’d been wearing when they first went into the no-tech dimension.

Obviously he keeps skeletal versions of the repulsor boots and gloves in-tact enough to function.

He also keeps most of the helmet, for when he’s riding with Steve on the motorcycle. Mostly because Steve insisted. It's gutted of tech though, so if the faceplate stays as part of the design, the eyes are just holes (like in the classic comics).

The rest of the pieces are kept in a large packing trunk.

Tony repurposes some parts into useful gadgets for himself and Cap, plus the odd toy for other Avengers (like Widow’s new stinger gauntlets) because he’s optimistic like that.

Electronics use precious metals like gold and copper, so Tony scrapes some out to pay for things in certain areas of Battleworld, like the cowboy town or the pirate area. He might also barter with other general bits like wires and screws, but he avoids parting with any actual full tech.

Plug-n-play Gadgets

Since the power draw for Tony's electromagnet is actually fairly minimal, Tony makes use of the arc reactor as a charging station, mostly when he sleeps. It's not like there's a corner store they can drop by to get a pack of batteries. Things he charges include (but are not limited to):

Flashlight for Steve. The bulbs for it came from the eyes in the Iron Man helmet. Note: Tony doesn't need a flashlight himself because he can turn up his arc brightness apparently, lmao.

Camp stove. Steve questioned Tony building one for a hot second because hello we can build campfires to cook over? But then it’s raining and they're in a cave and Tony is like, "if you fill this space with smoke I will divorce you before we're even married." And Steve is like "camp stove wow yes okay." Also they had camp stoves in WW2 so honestly it was simply a Himbo Moment to disregard the virtues of one in the first place.

Walkie talkies. I know they had Avengers comms but I like the aesthetic of walkie talkies more. Maybe the comms relied on satellites that they obviously don't have anymore or something.

Navigation:

Speaking of a lack of satellites, the GPS in Tony’s armor is rendered useless. Steve is real smug about it and pulls out his old-fashioned compass. But Battleworld also doesn’t have proper poles, so it just spins wildly for a few seconds and then points at Tony’s electromagnet. Not to be deterred, Steve declares, “Well, you’re never lost if you can find Polaris.” They look up and realize that the night sky, despite having stars and a moon, is not at all arranged the way it is on Earth.

Tony takes this as a Challenge. He builds a sextant, then spends the next several nights in a row muttering math under his breath as he painstakingly creates a hand-drawn star chart. This, combined with landmarks, becomes the primary way they orient themselves as they roam around Battleworld.

Many nights, Steve and Tony lie in the bed of the pickup together and make up constellations named after other Avengers and friends. Steve makes a copy of Tony’s star chart and sketches artistic renditions of the constellations on top. To close this post with an interesting visual, here’s an example of what Tony’s star map might look like vs what Steve’s would more resemble:

#avengers assemble #avengers assemble AU #battleworld AU #Feral Outlaw Stony AU #stevetony #dakity yaks #Dakt rambles about Avengers stuff #long post

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bamfdaddio · 3 years

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X-Men Unabridged: Hellfire (1980)

The X-Men, those often stripsearched mutants that have sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them, are a cultural juggernaut with a long, tangled history. We’ve been untangling that history for a while, but sometimes, you really want a more in-depth look. Interested? Then read the (un)Abridged X-Men!

(X-Men 129 - 131) - by Chris Claremont and John Byrne

Since I think Scott, square extraordinaire, would also say: “I know squat about rap, but this Vanilla Ice dude is excellent,” I’m not putting much stock in his musical opinions. (X-Men 130)

Before we finally reach the apotheosis of the Phoenix saga, we’re going to take it a little slowly by focusing on the first three issues of 1980. They are basically the ramp-up to the end, putting all the pieces in place for the X-equivalent of the Red Wedding, the Bridge of Khazad-Dûm or the explosion of Alderaan. But, before smashing the board, Claremont introduces three new queens to the game. Here they are, in order of Awesome:

Emma Frost, or The White Queen; a telepathic HBIC with ambitions beyond dressing up in lingerie;

Kitty Pryde, or Sprite (Shadowcat, these days);

Alison Blaire (Dazzler), a disco dolly with light powers who unfortunately starts out as a relic of time gone by.

But before we can expand, Claremont shrinks the cast: Banshee, who sold his voice to a sea witch has injured vocal chords, stays behind on Muir Isle, retiring officially. (It’s gonna be a while before he returns to the X-Family in any true capacity - I think it might be the 90s?) It’s the first time since Thunderbird’s death that the core cast changes, and it’s not that surprising that Sean gets the shaft: Banshee, who has been positioned as the older, more experienced member of the team, has had very little to do (and Claremont has seemed reluctant to flesh him out the way he has the rest of the X-Men). Sean is essentially a decent, upstanding man who has mastered the use of his powers: there’s very little way to go without breaking him down or changing the course of his character. (If you’re a fan of him, go read the Phalanx Covenant and 90’s Generation X: it’s the best use of Sean.)

Polaris, Havok and Jamie also stay in Scotland, choosing a quiet life without superheroics. (For those familiar with X-Factor, this is where you laugh and laugh and laugh.)

Jason Wyngarde, meanwhile keeps fucking with the Phoenix, using his psionic fantasies to unleash her darkest self.

Jean’s darkest fantasies amount to little more than a Victorian bodice ripper, which is adorable. (To be fair, if I were trapped in a lusty prison of my own design, I´d probably dream up my own Downton Abbey soap opera where I was sleeping with all the hunky house boys, so…) (X-Men 129)

Scott, meanwhile, reveals the sheer depths of his repression by admitting that he never let himself feel the grief for Jean’s death.

If you think it’s weird that Jean falls for a sleezeball like Wyngarde, remember that the love of her life is a man who is so repressed that it took him 5+ years to tell his friends he had a brother. Her taste in men is questionable at best. (X-Men 129)

The whole “I accidentally picked up a stray thought” has to be such a bullshit. It’s like your sister claiming that she heard from a friend of a friend that you like someone, while she actually just read it in your diary. Telepaths are snoops, Jean, own it.

Speaking of telepaths without boundary issues, Professor X is back from space! He immediately slips back into a stupid, patriarchal role and treats this X-Men team the same he treated his X-Men in the sixties. Scott is like: dude, these aren’t the same dumb teenagers we were, but Xavier won’t listen. Their squabble is interrupted by Cerebro, alerting them to the existence of two new mutants! One in NYC, one in Chicago.

Somewhere else, the Hellfire Club is revealed to be listening in: they have bugged the mansion a long time ago. While most the Inner Circle is featured in some way in this arc - we finally get to see Sebastian Shaw’s face! - the main villain here is the White Queen. She’s coordinating the attack on the X-Men and is looking to recruit Kitty for her Academy in Massachusetts.

It’s kind of bizarre that it took so long for this plot - an emerging young mutant is an object of interest for two competing factions - to be a main plotline, considering it’s such a staple for the X-Men mythos as a whole. (See, for example: the New Mutants, Generation-X, the Young X-Men, but also Rogue in the first X-Men movie and the whole of X-Men: First Class. Hell, X-Men Evolution’s first season was practically built on this trope.) It is kind of fitting that one of the mutants introduced this way is Kitty Pryde, the first X-Man that would be completely Chris Claremont’s creation.

While teacher’s pets Cyclops, Phoenix and Nightcrawler can go to New York, Xavier takes Colossus, Storm and Wolverine to a suburb in Chicago (“to monitor them in the field”, fuck you too, Chuck). In the Windy City, we meet plucky YA-novel heroine Kitty Pryde, who’s being tormented by headaches.

The KISS-poster in Kitty’s room is fortunately the only crossover we’ll have between the X-Men and the KISS-comics published by Marvel. (X-Men 129)

Just after a certain Ms. Frost has pitched her Academy to the Pryde parents, the X-Men arrive. While Charles works the parents, Ororo takes Kitty to get some ice cream, letting slip the secret of the X-Men.

Wolverine reading a titty mag in an ice cream shop while both Ororo and Charles are trying to convince people they run a legitimate school is a hilarious mood. (X-Men 129)

Kitty’s appearance is supposed to have been inspired by a young Katherine Hepburn, which is particularly evident in these panels.

Anyway, they are promptly attacked by Hellfire droids, who spook Kitty into jumping through a wall. Finally, her powers are confirmed: Kitty can become intangible, ‘phasing’ through objects. When the X-Men defeat the droids, Emma Frost comes along to finish the job, psychically overwhelming Storm, Wolverine and Colossus. She abucts them, not realizing Kitty has stowed away in their… floating… hovercraft… thing. She also manages to abduct Xavier.

I love how Emma’s to-do-list was:

Abduct the X-Men

Strip them naked (X-Men 130)

The Inner Circle and their motivations are slowly fleshed out: they’re all in it for power, money, glory. (Emma would love Lana del Ray.) But they’re not a united front: Wyngarde considers Phoenix the road to power, Emma believes in raising (and controlling) the next generation of mutants and Shaw… Well, Shaw is a clever opportunist, not afraid to sell out his own kind. (It’s heavily implied the Hellfire Club helped fund Lang’s Sentinel program.)

Through Jason, we pick up the thread in New York, where Jean and Scott visit some shady club downtown. Nightcrawler is stationed outside. Inside, Jean enjoys the relative perversion of the clubbing crowd, until Jason shows up and twists reality, shunting her to ‘their wedding day’.

It’s never made explicit, but in between the lines, it’s highly probable that Jason seduced Jean, violated her body and mind. That, combined with the whole BDSM/Marquis de Sade atmosphere of the Hellfire Club where the men are fully clothed and the women prance around in lingerie amounts to a whole lot of ick, ick, ick. (X-Men 130)

In Chicago, Kitty skulks around the compound of Frost Enterprises. She manages to creep up to Ororo’s cage, who gives her a number to call. Before she can do anything else, Emma sees her, calls all her henchmen cretins and orders her to get that pigeon kitty. Kitty flees and manages to get a call in.

Kurt picks up the phone in their limo (which feels super swanky for the eighties!) and Kitty delivers her warning. Kurt is then promptly attacked, as are Phoenix and Cyclops. Together, they make short work of their attackers, with the aid of Dazzler. Introductions follow:

Dazzler’s “nope” tells you about 80% of what her character is about. (X-Men 130)

It’s funny to see how relatively unknown the idea of mutants still is. Kitty doesn’t even consider it, even though freaky shit is happening to her, and Dazzler hilariously doesn’t give a figgin where her powers come from. (Though she may just be in denial. Anyone who wears a disco ball around her neck can’t be accused of good common sense.) In ten, twenty years, I bet there’s tons of teenagers in the Marvel Universe who get headaches or weird growing pains and fear that one morning, they might wake up a mutant.

It’s odd how Cerebro picks up Dazzler as a ‘neo-mutant’, even though it’s obvious she had her powers for a while. It might have to do with the fact that Dazzler wasn’t created by Claremont and Byrne, but by Tom DeFalco and John Romita Jr. However, because editorial wanted to Dazzler’s debut to make a splash, so they added her to their best-selling book and she had to be shoe-horned into this plot. She was originally intended to be closs-platform - there were plans for albums, Bo Derek would star as her in movies - but since Marvel had the keen foresight to introduce her just as disco was dying all of this got shelved. After a solo series, she’ll become a pretty solid B-Lister X-Man in a couple of years. (Should I be covering her solo series? It’s only very tangentially X-Related. Sound off below!)

Cyclops, Phoenix, Nightcrawler and Dazzler Trojan Horse their way into Frost Enterprises and make quick work of the White Queen’s cronies while Emma is creepily making Storm her personal plaything. Kitty, meanwhile, manages to free Wolverine by phasing through the electronic lock. Jean recognizes the Hellfire Club from her (fake) memories with Jason, but doesn’t connect the dots quite yet.

Emma, frustrated that her plan is falling to pieces, takes out her ire on Storm, threatening to lobotomize her. Jean… does not take this lightly.

“I understand you call yourself something of a telepath” is absolutely the most badass line Jean has ever uttered. Fuck yeah. (X-Men 131)

With the White Queen defeated (rumors of her death are greatly overrated), the X-Men can briefly regroup. Dazzler does not join the X-Men, being too into the idea of becoming the mutant Madonna, while Kitty is delivered back to her parents. To prevent a nasty scene, Jean casually alters the memories of her parents, removing the memories of Kitty’s involvement with the kidnapping of the X-Men. This also neatly prevents her parents from realizing what a horrible idea it is for a 13 year old to join a superhero squad. (Even if she has a defensive power.)

This arc ends with the two people who love Jean the most voicing their concern:

When you look up ‘muhahahaha’ in the dictionary, this picture of Jason Wyngarde will be the definition. (X-Men 131)

Hold onto your butts, people. We’re almost there.

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nav-arre · 3 years

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Hang the Stars, and Name Them Too

Read on AO3

It was cold. It wasn’t winter, or he wouldn’t be here, but it put an anxious feeling in the pit of his stomach regardless. Three months until he left for Kaer Morhen, and yet there he was, bundled up in his bedroll, an extra blanket stuffed inside, letting the warmth of the campfire linger on his face for at least an hour longer than he would have normally. Geralt lay there silently.

Jaskier, however, did not.

The topic of conversation had moved from Roach, who earlier had snatched Jaskier’s last apple and eaten it in record time, to apples, to orchards, to the unseasonable weather, to …wind, maybe? To the moon, to stars, to the sky, and now to Jaskier’s Oxenfurt days.

“Really, though, I don’t think I should have earned half as good a mark as I did. I’m not knocking my abilities! Well, I am though, but only in Astronomy. I only did so well because Adrien let Essi and I borrow his astrolabe last minute. Pretty little thing, I think it was his grandfather’s; don’t you just love seeing little trinkets like that passed down through the generations?”

“Hmm.”

It was one of the nice things about traveling with Jaskier. It had taken Geralt a long time, years longer than it should have, maybe, to figure out what Jaskier wanted from him. The answer was nothing. Perhaps ‘nothing’ was a bit too simplistic, but Jaskier had really meant it when he’d said he just wanted to see the world, write some songs, travel the Path. He wasn’t after a conversation partner, or even someone to listen, necessarily. Frankly, Jaskier hadn’t even been looking for someone to be kind to him, which put a discomfort in Geralt that he didn’t bother addressing. So Jaskier would talk, and Geralt would allow it to wash over him, and if it happened to keep his mood up even when things got difficult on the Path, well, that was fine.

A wind picked up, strong enough that Geralt felt a chill run down his body, as wrapped up as it was. The fire flickered for a moment, bending against the wind and slowly climbing back as the air around them settled. He tossed a glance at Jaskier. After years of traveling with Geralt, the bard’s bedroll was a least sufficiently packed; warm, largely weatherproof, and, when they had time to stop by a market, scented. But even still, he could see Jaskier shudder against the cold with a small wince.

It wasn’t that Geralt didn’t think of Jaskier as human, it’s just that he preferred not to follow the line of thought. Early on, he’d pointedly remind himself every time they crossed paths; Jaskier was human, Jaskier was no different than any other human, Jaskier would either turn on him, or grow tired of him, or, at the very least, one day grow old, or get injured, and die. And Geralt would have to move on, without him. Years later, it had become more and more difficult, especially as they spent longer stretches together.

The thoughts of Jaskier turning on him had faded fairly quickly— if nothing else, Jaskier was loyal to a fault. It had taken years for him and Yennefer to get close, and longer still to not worry when she and Geralt fell back into bed together, time and time again. Geralt was grateful the two had moved on, even if they were an absolutely devious pair.

The thought that the bard would grow tired of traveling with him faded as well; much as Jaskier complained, Geralt had learned he needed to be a bit dramatic to let off energy, to not keep the frustration inside him. It was always surface level.

By the time the final options were all that was left, Geralt had just… stopped thinking about them so much. He didn’t like to think of Jaskier as a fragile thing. He didn’t feel fragile. He felt whole, and solid, and there in a way very few people had felt before. Most everyone felt like wisps of smoke, here and gone before Geralt had really registered them; his bard was not.

“…and, in any case, I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about anyway, but I wish I did know, just so I could write something scathing to have published in a journal. Maybe that’s what I’ll spend the winter doing, hmm? Learning about the stars just to tell Valdo fucking Marx his song is off. Is that awfully petty? I know it’s petty, but is it overboard? Before you answer, I want you to know I respect your opinion, but I may not care about what you say; this is almost certainly happening. But I do want the approval.”

Geralt snorted a laugh, and Jaskier gave a small giggle in response. All was quiet for a moment, and Geralt turned his gaze skyward. The clouds passed over the moon quickly, and a few bats flew to some nearby trees, wings flapping excitedly. A cricket chirped somewhere south of them, Roach was nibbling on some grass, and Jaskier’s heartbeat was pleasingly calm and steady. He still itched to pack up and start heading North, but the constancy of his bard kept him anchored. More clouds moved aside and then the sky was open above them, hundreds of stars glinting down.

“Wow,” Jaskier said, and that was enough. The night sky was irreplaceable, and even Jaskier knew when to let things speak for themselves.

“Hmm,” Geralt hummed again in response. They lay there in silence again. Geralt wasn’t really good at showing affection, and his gestures of appreciation were more often practical than frivolous. But the stars had given him an idea, and though Jaskier had never asked for kindness, Geralt liked giving it when he could. Time had softened him, a bit. “Come here.”

Jaskier looked over at him, bemused, but Geralt simply gave a ‘come here’ motion with his head.

“Alright, alright. Give me a second, and if it’s bumpy over there I’m moving right back, do you hear me?” and Jaskier shuffled over, head inches away from Geralt’s own.

Bracing for a moment before the chill, Geralt maneuvered his top half just out of his bedroll to point up at the sky. “Polaris, Sirin, Caph, Alpheratz, Hadar, Octantis, Elviran— you know where those are?”

“Oo!! Okay, a lesson on the stars, yes, let me see, ah—” and slowly, Jaskier pointed them all out one by one. “Got that, I think. Directional stars I remember, only way to figure out my way half the time.”

“Mmm. Do you know their constellations?”

Jaskier blinked. “I absolutely do not. I mean. Vaguely, maybe? They’re somewhere in my brain, probably.”

Geralt smiled and pointed up. “So, Caph—” Which was directly above them, “Is part of the Dragon constellation. It’s the eye, see it?” Geralt traced a rudimentary image of a dragon with his pointer figure, and Jaskier’s eyes followed dutifully.

“Alright so,” Jaskier said, wiggling a bit out of his own bedroll and a bit closer to Geralt’s, for warmth. He pointed up. “So that’s the eye, and then this— this is the neck?”

“The nose,” Geralt corrected.

“Neck, nose, all the same really—”

“The same? I feel sorry for your bed partners.”

Jaskier swatted his hand. “Oh, hush. Now— now so that’s the— oh, oh! Oh, this is the foot here, isn’t it? And that’s the wing and that’s the— Oh, Melitele I actually see it now,” he said softly.

“Mmm. Want the story?”

“The— the st— yes of course I want the story, Geralt, who do you think I am?! You’ve been holding back on stories from me, I knew it.”

“If you’d paid attention in your Astronomy class, you might already know it.”

“Yes, but then you wouldn’t be the one to tell it to me, and that’s far more fun.” He snuggled back into his bedroll. “Alright, Alright, Tell me.”

So, he did. Eskel had always been better at telling stories, and Lambert had always made them more exciting, but Geralt remembered the details well enough and made sure not to skip the parts he knew the bard would most enjoy. But nobody told the stories like Vesemir, who had read every version, studied every line, translated a few copies himself. He knew every detail, made sure to preserve them all in his library, but most enjoyed telling the version he’d been taught as a boy, before even his own trials. Those were the versions he'd tell his wolves gathered around a fire in the dead of winter, sipping on something warm, all kept close to him.

The story came to him more naturally than he had expected. Geralt figured it was easier to tell stories that weren’t your own— no need to hide the pain or the details that stung your eyes. No obligation to the truth, if you didn’t know it. Really, it didn’t matter if the stories attached to constellations had any truth to them, the only truth that mattered was that they had been passed down for generations. So, myths, legends— Geralt could enjoy those, to an extent. Telling his own stories— there was nothing to tell, was there?

When he’d taught the constellations to a much younger Ciri, she had always wanted to add in her own details, change the stories and make them her own. Maybe that was its own sort of tradition.

“…so, they shuffled around the stars, and made the constellation,” Geralt finished and then pointed to a small cluster of stars just below it. “There’s the apple.”

“You hear that Roach? An apple you can’t reach,” Jaskier said, muffled by his bedroll. “That was really good, Geralt.”

“Mm. My brother tells it better. And Vesemir tells it best.”

“It’s like—” Jaskier yawned. “It’s like the astrolabe a little then, isn’t it? It’s the thing you pass down. I know Witchers aren’t especially materialistic, but this, you have. It’s,” he paused, looking anywhere but at Geralt, “It’s nice. You can’t lose a story.”

“Mmm.”

“I think that’s really why I like writing songs so much,” Jaskier said quietly. “Nobody can really take that from you, can they? It gets remembered. Even if it’s changed, it keeps getting passed along. Not everybody even has to like the story, it’s just got to be someone. Anyone can tell you you’re going to be forgotten, but that way you really can’t be.” Jaskier shifted. So did his mood.

“Now, I don’t— I, I mean, a songwriter, a writer of any kind, a storyteller, really, that’s all you need, they’re going to be remembered more than many kings and queens and earls and duchesses and so on and so forth. You don’t have to be some powerful person to be remembered! You don’t! You tell a story, and really, it sticks there. In fact! The people who hear it don’t even have to know they like it or say they like it!” Geralt smelled Jaskier’s anxiety rising, tart, and sour, and his heart had begun to race.

“Jaskier.”

“I mean, really,” he continued, allowing no pause for Geralt, “Nobody will care about some obscure law or edict or whatever. This, this is the way you can be rememebered. You tell stories and you write things that make the world maybe a fraction of a kinder place to be, and that, that, you won't get forgotten like that. There’s always someone who will hear it, and remember, and tell someone else, and if it’s good enough, you know, really good enough, people care about getting it right, about remembering what you said, and how you said it. Right? Even—” he sped up a bit, the same nervous energy he got when he knew Geralt would reject his idea to stay at an inn, or when he asked to divert their travels to stop for a Bardic competition.

“I mean, even Yennefer once told me that at Aretuza the students stay up all night sometimes, telling versions of the same myth they heard growing up, trying to compare versions from all over the Continent and figure out how much could be true. What the original story was. Tracing them all back. Finding themselves, finding other mages, discovering feelings or experiences they thought they were alone in having. But the storyteller knew, or the characters knew, or someone, somewhere in the past, they knew. And you feel less alone and so you hold onto it. And then you remember the person who told it to you and then in some way you remember the person who told it to them, and back and back and back to the very first person who told it. I don’t know, it’s nice, right? Keeping someone else close like that, even if you never met,” he finishes, almost breathless. He waits a beat. “Even when you’re gone.”

There was a silence. Geralt’s hand had yet to retreat back to his bedroll, and Jaskier’s breath had begun to be visible right above his lips. Geralt closed his eyes. He knew Jaskier, knew he was waiting for Geralt to shut him down, even playfully. But he didn’t have the heart.

“Mm. You’re right, for once,” He said, voice gruff with tiredness. If Geralt had been expecting a playful retort from Jaskier, it never came. They lay there, side by side, and watched a lone cloud roll by.

The sounds of the evening fell around them. Roach let out a small huff, and Jaskier’s heartbeat slowed a bit. Geralt’s itch to move was still there, his thoughts still gravitating back to the halls of Kaer Morhen, but Jaskier’s warmth kept him steady.

“We should put out the fire,” said Jaskier softly.

Geralt just looked at him for a moment— his gaze was still skyward, his eyes a little lost. It didn’t happen often, but it reminded Geralt of just how little he knew about his bard, sometimes. He knew everything and nothing. Jaskier didn’t talk about his past much, save Oxenfurt, and Geralt was fine to leave it that way. And then occasionally Jaskier would look lost, like now, and he’d wonder.

“Mm.” Geralt agreed. The fire, he noticed, was dimming on its own. “…One more?”

“Hmm?” Jaskier asked after a moment, confused.

“One more constellation?” Geralt asked. “There are plenty.”

Jaskier blinked at him, once, twice. “You’re talkative tonight.” He’d been more talkative for ages now. One of Yenn’s more positive influences. Ciri’s, too. Ironically, Jaskier’s chattiness usually enabled his desire to keep silent. But there was something else in that moment that he wasn’t willing to name, easing his way.

Geralt shrugged. “Some nights it's easier.” He looked at Jaskier. “Some nights are harder. Just happens.”

“…Yeah. Ah, yes, yes please, another tale would be lovely. Bedtime stories with Geralt! Perfect way to end the night.”

“Elviran?” Geralt asked, and Jaskier was quick to pull his hand out again and point it out. “Good. That’s Lara & Cregan— it’s where their hands join.” He pointed to the left, “That’s Lara,” and to the right, “That’s Cregan."

“Ah! Yes, this one I actually know, I wrote a song all about them at Oxenfurt. It wasn’t terribly good— I should rewrite that one, actually, now that you’ve mentioned it. An elf and a mage, the bridge between cultures, all dashed to pieces… it’s a good story! I mean, tragic, I almost hope it’s not true at all, but a good story is a good story.” Many years ago, Geralt would have been fooled by Jaskier’s deceptively cheery tone, but he knew his bard well enough now.

“Mm. Sirin?” He asked.

Jaskier pointed the star out once again and said, “That’s the wolf one, though I’m afraid I don’t know more than that.”

“That’s the chest— the head is here—”

“Do you mean— wait, I can’t see. Is it the—”

Geralt took Jaskier’s hand and guided it along the unseen lines of the constellation. Both their hands were so cold it didn’t even register as such, and Jaskier’s head twisted to see the stars from another angle, hitting the side of Geralt’s neck. “Oh— oh! Oh, I see, so—” and then Jaskier’s hand, still gripped in Geralt’s own, had begun leading them both excitedly. “So, head, this is the head, yes? And then Sirin is the chest, and the legs go here, and then the tail is this way? Okay yes, yes, yes, absolutely, I am on board with the star dog, I see him now. Is this a special one for Witchers? Wolf Witchers like yourself, at least?”

“Mm,” Geralt hummed, and went to nod, but knocked his chin into Jaskier’s head a bit. He let it rest a moment in the soft hair, the breath from his nose hitting back at him, warming his face.

“He always caught what he hunted,” Geralt began, and let Jaskier’s hand warm his own. Or, maybe he was the one who warmed Jaskier’s hand, it was hard to tell. The two were truly huddled now, Jaskier’s head rested comfortably in the crook between Geralt’s chin and shoulder, and their bedrolls nearly overlapped. He used their joined hands to point out more of the constellations, more stars, and eventually, Jaskier made the simple but somehow stunning gesture of interlacing their fingers together. It was practical, it was easier to guide Jaskier’s hand around that way, but then, Geralt hadn’t needed to do that, had he. Just wanted to, he supposed. He continued the myth as Jaskier’s heartbeat slowed, and their hands got somewhere close to truly warm. It was just returning the favor, he reasoned; every day they had traveled together, Jaskier talked and allowed his words to hang in the air, not expecting a response or even acknowledgment; now it was his turn. After all, Geralt more than most understood the value in someone trusted filling the silence.

By the time he was finished, Jaskier’s arm had turned a bit heavy and they were both nearly asleep. Geralt let their hands come down to rest between them, though still outside the bedrolls, which was just too cold to maintain. But neither moved.

“You really are good at that,” Jaskier said eventually.

“Not like Vesemir. Or you.”

“Yes, well I’ve had lots of practice. You’re good at it, really.”

“Hmm.”

“Thank you, by the way. I’m sorry I— it just happens, you know—”

“Nothing to be sorry for.”

“Thank you, still,” Jaskier said, and a moment later he had untangled their hands, and it slipped away as though it had never been there at all. The itch the cold brought, to pack up and move on, head North, returned. He tried not to think about it. The cold settled around them, and Geralt put out the fire with a wave of his hand while Jaskier, head still nestled under the witcher’s chin, let out a soft breath. Geralt adjusted his arm back into his bedroll, and relished the warmth the fur inside brought; it was never the same as the contact with skin, but at least this was familiar, and didn’t promise to leave him one day.

“Geralt?” Jaskier whispered, as though they weren’t pressed up against each other. He felt the breath on his neck and tried not to think about the ghost of a touch. “Would you mind if I— You’re warm and— ah, fuck it,” he mumbled, and suddenly Geralt felt Jaskier shift his body to lie on his side. A warm, calloused hand slip between Geralt's bedroll and landed on his chest, sitting just below his medallion. “I’ll move if you mind, but your bedding has fur, and—”

He didn’t think about it, really. He just reached up and grabbed Jaskier’s hand with his own, kept it safe and warm between his own hand and his chest. For a moment, it was as if the night held its breath. Geralt thought about how rarely Jaskier’s fingers stood still, and waited for something to break.

Jaskier exhaled softly, and Geralt could feel his smile against his shoulder. “This is nice,” he said, not a whisper but still almost lost on the light breeze that blew past.

“It’s cold,” Geralt said, because it was all he could think to say. It was Jaskier’s turn to hmm a response, and soon Jaskier’s breathing had evened out, and sleep finally claimed him. Geralt followed soon after, the itch to move finally settled, a warmth blooming within him.

In the morning, they’d slid apart from each other as they always did after nights they’d huddled close. It wasn’t that unusual; sometimes it grew cold, even in nicer inns. Sometimes it was something else unspoken, the need to hold, or be held, and it had always just been allowed to exist between them, a quiet reality. This had been something else, and he’d feared the worst when he woke. But whatever existed in that nebulous space, whatever had been built the night before didn’t feel quite broken to Geralt, at least not yet. He had been braced for impact, even if it were small, and yet… the day felt… delicate, not fragile. Jaskier’s mood was lifted considerably from the night before, and was happy to go on about how all the talk of myths and constellations had him dreaming up a new song. And eventually, a new idea entirely.

“Alright! New goal,” the bard said as they walked the Path, the sun high in the sky, chill of the evening prior replaced by a pleasant breeze. Roach walked between them, soaking up the sun and setting some safe distance between the two travelers. Jaskier let his fingers dance over the strings of his lute as he spoke. “I’m getting you a constellation. It’s happening! Do they still make those, actually? When was the last time we got a new constellation? I think it’s far past time for a new one, don’t you think?”

Geralt’s brow furrowed. “That’s not how it works.”

“You know, people have been saying that to me my whole life, and I’ve never listened. And now look where I am!” he strummed a few notes. “Valdo Marx wants to write a song about stars, he can do what he likes. But I’m getting you a constellation. Another crown jewel in my legacy.”

“If it’s your legacy, why would I be the constellation?”

Jaskier waved him off. “Oh, you’re far more memorable. More adventures, more stories. Really, now that I’m thinking about it, if I really work at it I think I could write enough that they’d make a constellation for Yennefer, too. Maybe Ciri as well, but I think another bard might have to come and finish what I started with her. She’s so young! Do you ever think about that Geralt? I know she’s grown, but Melitele, she’s still so young.”

If a pit had formed in his stomach, he didn’t mention it. “I’m not sure you’d be able.”

“You doubt my skills, after all these years? Geralt please, my stubbornness is outdone only by your own. I’m a master bard. Crafting myth is my bread and butter.” Roach huffed, and Jaskier squinted. “I’m going to choose to believe that was an agreement, but you’re still on thin ice, miss. I haven’t forgotten your apple-related crimes.”

“You could manage all three,” Geralt allowed, hiding a smirk. “But you wouldn’t have time to sleep with anyone. So I don’t think you will.”

“Rude!” Jaskier exclaimed, “Rude, terrible, you’re so cruel to me. I write you songs, I make you famous, surely I’m allowed a dalliance or two!”

“Or ten.”

“How could you ever imply— I’ll have you know my reputation is impeccable, in many social circles—”

“Twenty. More in the winter.”

“This is— this is friendship treason. And here I was, thinking we had grown closer last night! Listen, I may not be alive to see it, but when you inevitably get that damn constellation, you better remember it was me that put you up there.”

It was all fun, really it was. But it was like Jaskier had shone a light on the delicate thing, and Geralt didn’t really know what to do with it. He tried to remember the truths about Jaskier he used to recite to himself. He’d grow old, he’d die. He’d be remembered, but Geralt would have one fewer constant in his life. And still, he’d spend his life hanging stars in Geralt’s honor.

“…with the way things are now,” Jaskier said as Geralt tuned back in. “See I couldn’t do it this winter, I don’t think, I’m fairly set on the course, and much as I love scrapping everything and starting again, I really am trying to get in the new headmaster’s good graces. Her name is Beatrice— have I mentioned her? — A goddess, truly, but she comes from the history department so she’s far more structured than we are. Actually, history, mythology, sort of the same almost, don’t you think? I’d have a good shot at convincing her to let me teach it next year. Wait! Let’s think of names. A good course must have a good name, it’s where half my colleagues go wrong. Okay, I go first, You’re second. Roach can go third if she likes. How about— how about, ‘Hanging the Stars: Crafting Your Own Mythology’. Is that something?”

“I’ll remember,” Geralt said.

“Hmm? I’ll Remember— actually you know what, that’s not half bad for part of the title at least—”

Geralt’s grip on Roach’s reigns tightened. Jaskier made many things easier, but this was not one of them.

“No. I mean. I’ll remember. What you were saying earlier.”

There was a pause as Jaskier muttered softly to himself, tracing the conversation thread. Geralt took the relative quiet to appreciate the rolling hills around them, and fought the urge to run for them. Jaskier made a small sound of realization. “Oh. Oh. Oh, Geralt, no, I know you would. You know I know you would, don’t you? I don’t worry about you remembering me, so much. I used to, early days, you know. But not now. No, I know you.”

“Mm.”

“Everyone else, well, we’ll see. Or, you will. I won’t. Ha. I mean, unless I haunted people, but I don’t think you’d appreciate if I turned into a ghost, would you? I’m certain you’d be cross with me. I’m not even sure I’d enjoy it, really. I like touching things too much.”

He meant to let Jaskier’s words was over him again, but he couldn’t. Jaskier wanted nothing from him; he didn’t even feel compelled to ask for kindness. It was stinging in Geralt now, hitting the same place the itch to return to Kaer Morhen had the night before. Instinctual, almost familiar. He thought of Yenn’s fear of being alone for too long, of Ciri’s hands gripped tight when something startled her, thought of his own need to soothe those worries, and the knowledge that had come with age that he couldn’t. Could only ease their way.

“You’d end up there too,” he said. “A constellation.”

Jaskier paused, and the sound of their footsteps against the soft dirt road sounded so much louder than they had even a moment before. “Well. Maybe. That’d be nice, I think,” Jaskier agreed.

And suddenly it hit him like a torrent. Like he had broken a dam he didn’t know was there, and all he could see and feel was that delicate thing that sat between them. “I’d want you up there. You deserve to be up there just as much.”

“Geralt—”

“I mean it.”

“Is there…” Jaskier frowned and kicked a stone from in front of him. “Is there something wrong? Can you smell me dying, or something? You’re not usually like this.”

“You’re not dying,” he said through gritted teeth.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate it! Really, Geralt, trust me, I do, I’m loving this, I’m just... I want to make sure you’re not saying it so that you don’t say something else, I suppose.”

Well, there it was again. “And if I am?”

“I’d prefer you just say it,” Jaskier said, though it sounded like a guilty admission. “But— I know you’re not one for words. Which is fine! It’s why I’m relishing this right now. But sometimes… well, I don’t think it’s surprising that a bard enjoys hearing words, really.”

It was true, Geralt knew he’d lap up any gesture, any token, but Jaskier lived on words. It had never been that words had been hard for the witcher, but words related to... emotion, to feeling, to himself, those never quite came. These, though, these were words he could give Jaskier. Ones he deserved to hear. Geralt sighed. “If I have to end up some… some constellation, some amorphous... thing, I’m dragging you with me.”

The silence was comfortable, at least. Jaskier played a short, wordless tune. Then; “You really would, wouldn’t you.”

“I really would,” Geralt replied. It wasn’t serious, he didn’t think a constellation could possibly have consciousness. But it felt serious, somehow. And he’d long since given up believing anything was impossible.

“Well! Well, to the stars we go, then. I’ll look forward to that.”

“Mm,” Geralt said, and gods, did he desperately want to leave it at that because saying anything else truly scared him, he was willing to admit that. But time had softened him, and if his child surprise had taught him anything, it was that sometimes the scary thing was the thing you needed to reach for most. “I will too.”

“Eternity with you doesn’t sound half bad,” Jaskier said, and if he blushed, Geralt didn’t look over to see. “You know, it sounds like a joke. ‘A Witcher, a Mage, a Child Surprise, and a Bard walk into the stars and become constellations.’ I don’t know what the punchline is, though.”

“‘And the sky was never silent again’?”

Jaskier barked a laugh. “Good! Get them all talking. Good, yeah, I could spend eternity with you, I think.”

Geralt swallowed. He would have to talk to Yenn about this. “I could too.” She would probably agree.

“Mm, and Yennefer? Don’t think she’d get sick of me?” Jaskier’s hands brush against the strings of his lute, and a few high notes ring out.

“You’re too fun to tease.”

Jaskier brightened with everything Geralt said. Surely at some point, he’d grow too brilliant to look at.

“And Ciri? Think she’d grow weary of me?”

“No more than she would of me and Yenn. Better make her a comet instead,” Geralt reasoned. “Don’t think she’d like staying put very long.”

“Mmm, you know that girl well. Oh! Roach. Dear girl, I haven’t forgotten you. I figure she’ll be in your constellation though.”

“Roach is her own horse.”

“Actually— yep, no, you’re right. She gets her own. We’ll keep her close to the Dragon constellation, so she can finally get some elusive starry apples. You’d like that, wouldn’t you girl?” Jaskier asked as he gave her a pat on the neck. She tossed her mane in response, before she gave Jaskier's shoulder a gentle nudge with her nose.

“You know, if we were up there together, you’d have to hear me ramble on and on and on. No breaks in the winter, or slipping out of the inn before I wake up and running off somewhere. I’d be up there watching the turn of the world with you forever. I’m certain you’ll both lose your starry minds over me eventually.”

For the first time that day, Geralt looked over at Jaskier for longer than a glance and waited until Jaskier had finally looked up to meet his eyes. “I wouldn’t. We wouldn’t.”

Jaskier flushed in the cheeks, and for once, Geralt didn’t want to wave it off as the sun, or Jaskier being a bit out of breath. Geralt had done that, had caused that blush. The delicate thing grew more solid, then, took root somewhere in him, and he let it. Jaskier swallowed, and Geralt watched the bob of his throat, and missed when they’d been so close he could feel that small movement against his own skin. (Yenn would have a field day with this.)

When Jaskier speaks next, his voice has that honest, soft quality Geralt had always liked, the kind Jaskier only had when he was saying something he’d kept close to his chest. Like he was offering something to you, hand out, knowing you could grab it, twist it, ruin it, and trusting you not to. And yet, still, bracing for impact.

When Jaskier speaks next, it sounds like every song he’d ever sung and a million more he hadn’t even written yet.

“Then I’m with you,” he said, “Til the stars run out.”

“And every day after that,” Geralt replied, and he let the words wash over him, and into him, and he kept them there, like a star to guide him and ease his way.

#The Witcher #Geralt #witcher fanfiction #Wiedźmin #Geraskier #Geralt of Rivia #Jaskier #From the Inkwell #Short Fic

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readyplayerhobi · 4 years

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Favourite Fics of 2019

So...I thought that I’d give you all a list of my favourite fanfic’s that I read in 2019! I’ll include the description that was given by the author and then give a brief commentary of my own! Please make sure to not only read the fic, but give it a like and reblog! Give it some of your own comments and too, and follow/tell the author!!

Authors - I’ve got some authors repeated so you might have more than one fic here!

Readers - ...there’s a lot of fics here lol

Welcome To The Underworld by @spookitokki

; Demon/Radio Show Host!Jungkook x Human!Reader

; Synopsis: In a dark little second-hand shop downtown, stuffed in an alleyway you only stumbled into because you were lost, you found a charming antique radio. When you turned it on, it began to play what would become your favorite radio show, “Welcome to the Underworld”

; My Thoughts: I rec’d this fic very recently but I still remember it well. Demon Jungkook is weirdly caring for her despite her being human and him being demon from the Underworld. The reader...well she has no sense of self-preservation honestly haha. I enjoyed everything about this; the smut, the world building, the characterisation and so much more!

Matters Of The Heart by @hobidreams

; Hoseok x Reader

; Synopsis: it seems not even the passage of half a decade can diminish the hold of Mr. Jung’s charms on your heart. but the rumors that welcome you home speak of his imminent marriage to an heiress, one who bests you in every infuriating, ‘ladylike’ fashion. just how, then, are you meant to interpret the undeniable sparks of desire in his eyes?

; My Thoughts: I maintain that I LOVE THIS FIC SO MUCH. I think it’s probably like...in my top list of fics all year. It’s just...amazing. The writing feels authentic to the era and the reader is a delightful rebel that we all love from Victorian eras after all. And of course...Mr Jung is just a ridiculously attractive man that I would like very much. Rain is apparently making a follow up drabble AND I AM EXCITED!

An Abundance of Scrunchies by @jhspetitegf

; Single Dad!Hoseok x Kindergarten Teacher!Reader

; Synopsis: ❝hoseok is a hot single dad and you’re the new kindergarten teacher that likes to piss him off❞

; My Thoughts: This series of drabbles has completely stolen my heart. Dae is adorable and the reader is delightful in how she loves her kids. And then there’s Hoseok, the grumpy businessman who’s incredibly rich yet adorably dotes on his daughter and doesn’t get mad at her. It’s just...fluffy and angsty softness. I love it so much, and the smut was...oof. I can’t wait to read more!

Polaris by @junghelioseok

; Hoseok x Reader

; Synopsis: somehow, someway, he always returns to you.

; My Thoughts: I MAINTAIN THAT I LOVE THIS FIC SO MUCH AHHH. It’s so unique and beautifully written, such a delight to read and I enjoy it every time I do. The mixing of the ages throughout the years and how Hoseok evidently has knowledge of their future together but doesn’t tell her. It’s so sweet and yet so organic how they come together. It could be weird and creepy given the difference in ages continuously but it’s not. He’s always a gentleman and it’s just...it’s just wonderful honestly.

Faded Love by @jamaisjoons

; Jimin x Reader

; Synopsis: he doesn’t need to say it. because you can feel your husband, park jimin, falling out of love with you.

; My Thoughts: Okay but like, I still feel the pain and sadness when I read this fic the first time :( the reader’s confusion and pain at being abandoned so thoughtlessly despite her efforts is so hard to read. I still hate Jimin for doing it, and I’m glad that he stopped and realised that he was making a mistake. But poor reader will never be able to fully trust him again and always be worried to some degree :(

Lost And Found 01: Tick Tock by @fortunexkookie

; Peter Pan!Hoseok x Captain Hook!Reader

; Synopsis: The only hope you had at ending your exile and earning your life back came in the form of an infuriating and uncatchable man: Hoseok. He seemed to love the endless game of cat-and-mouse you two played - so much, in fact, that you were unsure if you were the cat or the mouse. What he failed to realize was that there was a third player, and this one wasn’t after him. The Crocodile hunted you with an intensity that rivaled the way you chased Hoseok, but with one difference: the games he played were deadly.

; My Thoughts: Okay so like...a lot of my favourite fics ever this year have been Hoseok based. You’re not surprised, I know you’re not. But this fic is just...I cannot WAIT for the second and third parts of it. The world is so richly realised and the characters have such phenomenal characterisation and development in just this one chapter. It’s so...involving to read, you just get lost in it. It’s truly a beautiful work of art that I can’t wait to see how everything goes!

Jungle Park by @jimlingss

; Hoseok x Reader

; Synopsis: The equation is simple. Hoseok needs to hire someone. You need a job. Except like any actual equation, it’s not fucking simple at all! Not when you have to add the fact that he was forced to hire someone he doesn’t want in his office, he has little respect for your job in general, and oh yeah…once upon a time you might have—*CENSORED*.

; My Thoughts: I looooooved reading this fic. Jimlingsss is basically why I made Flower a once a week thing, because when I was reading Jungle Park, I was always SO EXCITED for Monday’s because it meant I got to read a new Jungle Park! It’s such a slow burn romance but it’s so delightful and rewarding watching this cold and moody lawyer warm up to his bright and bubbly HR person. And then you learn the backstory between them and...I just loved it all!

Magic and Mysteries by @jimlingss

; Jimin x Reader

; Synopsis: Everything’s okay….EVERYTHING’S OKAY, YOU’RE FINE. Look, you just have one tiny problem. It’s an itty-bitty issue. Not that big of a deal. So what if you don’t have a familiar and you’re about to take on the ENTIRE family business. Oh, you have a name to uphold? Everyone’s depending on you? Great. That’s just fantastic. But it’s fine. You’ll get your familiar and you’ll run the best damn potion shop the world has ever seen. Everything will be fine, right?

; My Thoughts: Again, another Jimlingsss story but honestly, they’re always golden. I particularly remember this fic because I read it when I was in Korea. It’s so delightful and fun, reminding me a lot of Kiki’s Delivery Service. Jimin is a little rascal but I love that he teases her because he genuinely cares. It’s all just a truly wonderful fic and story put together in one delightful package.

Love, Guaranteed by @gukyi

; Taehyung x Reader

; Synopsis: with the celestial ball quickly approaching, kim taehyung is horrified to find out that you, his best friend, are dateless. to remedy this, he initiates The Match Project, a matchmaking service designed to find the most optimal date. to you, it’s an opportunity to meet someone else so you can stop pining after your clueless best friend. to him, it’s an opportunity to finally, once and for all, tell you how he feels.

; My Thoughts: I do quite enjoy reading Hogwarts fics, and I particularly enjoying reading Hogwarts fics with BTS as students as long as there’s no smut in it. Gukyi’s Hogwarts series was such a delight to read and I remember reading this fic with a smile on my face. Wanting to scream at reader because POOR TAEHYUNG OBVIOUSLY LOVES YOU. Poor guy trying so hard despite everything :(

Lovers’ Fuck Rule by @prolixitae

; Jungkook x Reader x Hoseok

; Synopsis: jungkook is still new to your established relationship with hoseok, which means he needs a little help feeling competent sometimes. especially when it comes to sex. alternatively, the span of a poly relationship over inaccurate amounts of fucking.

; My Thoughts: Okay look, I don’t do shipping or anything but Junghope is one of the best friendships/combinations there is. And this fic encapsulates why. Jungkook is so nervous with her whereas Hoseok is just...so unbelievably calm and dominant about it all. He knows exactly what gets his girl off and it’s sweet how amused he is by Jungkook. You can feel the slight insecurity almost off Jungkook because Hoseok has been with her for years but you can also feel the genuine love the reader has for him, along with the friendship Hoseok obviously has too. I really enjoyed it all!

Get Wet by @prolixitae

; Hoseok x Reader

; Synopsis: sitting in on your boyfriend’s dance practice is probably your biggest kink. it’s also the reason you asked to be so shamelessly fucked in the locker rooms of his dance studio, in spite of the pending consequences. note: this is not an idol-verse fic

; My Thoughts: You know I love Hoseok, and this smut was just...oh my god wow. Bizarrely, I explicitly remember reading it while in the cinema waiting for a film to start haha. TNS Hoseok is amazing though and I really love him. In this fic he’s even more amazing though and I just...god I want him so badly. Urgh, 10/10

Eating For Two by @park-moomin

; Hoseok x Reader

; Synopsis: He’ll have a Large

; My Thoughts: ARGH GOD I REMEMBER READING THIS. URGH, what is it about Hoseok that makes the idea of oral sex with him just so...amazing? Actually just any sex. Any at all. I love the idea of him being so...eager and desperate to go down on his girl, particularly when she’s pregnant so that she can still get some pleasure and fun out of it. Also, him cumming in his pants is just...the cherry on top haha

The Devil In His Details by @park-moomin

; Jimin x Reader

; Synopsis: Evil comes in many forms. In this instance, it's a 5'8" pretty-boy with an even prettier dick. And you're the form you want him to come in.

; My Thoughts: Lawd, I remember this being one of the hottest smut’s I’ve read in a while and I still stand by that statement. It does make me laugh that this was supposed to be a 1k drabble cos...girl...this length reminds me of me haha. Still, I think Jimin got the blowjob of his life...probably every man’s life here. Well done Jimin, go back for more.

Hot Rod by @kinktae

; Greaser!Hoseok x Reader

; Synopsis: a 1950′s inspired fic where greaser hoseok can’t keep his eyes, or hands, off the new waitress at his and his boys’ favorite diner.

; My Thoughts: The whole Rewind series that Rose has been doing but you all know I’m a Hoseok hoe and HOOOOO BOOOOOY GREASER HOSEOK IS SOMETHING ELSE. Everything about this fic was just...wonderful and it felt delightfully 1950s. The lingo and outfits, the cars and everything. It was hot and Hoseok deserves everything. I still kinda hope there’ll be a drabble or something in the future but either way, read this as it’s soooo good!

The Boyfriend Concept by @kpopfanfictrash

; Pornstar!Jimin x Reader

; Synopsis: Win a Date with a Porn Star! You saw the sign when you walked in, of course, but you had no idea your friend dropped your name into the raffle. Fast-forward to later that day, when you actually win. You are horrified, of course, with no intention of accepting and setting yourself up for embarrassment. But then you meet Jimin, and decide this might be worth a shot.

; My Thoughts: Shanna always writes some of the best fics on tumblr and this is definitely one of them. You’d think with it being a ‘win a date with a pornstar fic’ that he’d be a little weird or something about it (there’s nothing wrong with pornstars but you can imagine it’d be odd) but Jimin is just...so sweet and kind and polite! He’s just...the perfect boyfriend honestly. It just so happens he does porn too...I honestly loved this so much!

Beneath The Boughs by @gimmesumsuga

; Dryad!Namjoon x Reader

; Synopsis: For almost as long as you can remember, the tree stood opposite your apartment has been a part of your life. Countless memories have been made under the shade of its supple branches, but when its existence comes under threat, you soon discover that your favourite tree is more special to you than you ever could’ve known.

; My Thoughts: I still maintain that this fic is just basically Steph gushing about her love for Namjoon all over the page. It’s just...so sweet and soft. Namjoon makes the perfect dryad and I can easily imagine him being one. He’s such a delightful character who you just want to protect and teach about the world because he has that kind of delightful innoncence. I loved it so much!

Sweeter Than Sweet by @gimmesumsuga

; OT7 X Reader

; Synopsis: You never would have expected someone like Park Jimin to notice you. As handsome and beguiling as he is deadly, you’re enthralled from the very moment you meet. Addicted to his kiss and his bite, Jimin opens up your eyes to a whole new world of love, lust and seduction.

; My Thoughts: This is like...the OG OT7 fic. The one that EVERYONE should read. It’s so close to finishing and I’m kind of mind boggled that it’s going to finish. It’s just...perfection. Jimin is delightful and Yoongi is sweet, it’s just so perfect, I love it all. Namjoon is still a dick, sorry Steph. I also maintain that I’m secretly marrying Hoseok. Everyone go read it and strap yourselves in for a long ride!

Bump In The Night by @fortunexkookie

; Hoseok x Reader

; Synopsis: You’d spent countless nights terrified of the beast that lurked in the shadows, but as it would turn out, the monster haunting your home wasn’t a monster all. He was just a boy, and the only crime he’d ever committed was daring to love a girl from a different world.

; My Thoughts: Arrrrghhhhonaeouthnoetahnouenth this fic is just....perfect. I love it SO MUCH. Hoseok is a genuine monster in this, not just someone who thinks he is. He looks like a monster. But he’s a monster who gets a best friend in the reader and who slowly falls in love with her. I SWEAR MY HEART DIED WHEN THE THING HAPPENED :( Poor Hoseok, my sweet boy. But then...the end! And I was like ‘waaah’ I mean, I don’t know how she’s gonna live there but...I have hope for this odd couple because their love survived a lot <333

One Thing Right by @hobios

; Jungkook x Reader

; Synopsis: “i’ve been wrong about a million times, but i’ve got one thing right.”

or, desperate to get your ailing mother into the best care possible, you ask your childhood friend turned enemy to marry you for his health insurance benefits. the only problem is it’s illegal. and he’s the sheriff. and you swore to hate him since the day he broke your best friend’s heart.

; My Thoughts: Ahh...this is such a well written fic and I enjoy it so much. Jungkook has such good characterisation in it and you can feel that the readers heart is in the right place! I really like it and it reads so well, like it actually reads like a legitimate novel tbh!

Wall To Wall by @winetae

; Pornstar!Hoseok x Pornstar!Reader

; Synopsis: Temporary popularity is the biggest threat to your career right now. Without a solid core fan base you’re doomed to be forgotten. If not now, then in a month or two, and if not then, surely by the end of the year. That’s how quickly the adult film industry cycles through their actors, especially when you’re a woman. Your agent comes forward with a proposition to help put you back on the map.

; My Thoughts: Okay look...this fic is just great. I’m eagerly anticipating the second part because the first was just written so well. It’s so unique in that the readers already has a boyfriend, Jimin, who is not only okay with her being a pornstar but is the one who films her! But then you’ve got Hoseok, the new guy on the block who’s ridiculously good. The sex is just...it feels so realistic and like it’s two people in a relationship having sex and not just being filmed on camera. God I want them together lol

Club Zombie by @floralseokjin

; Seokjin x Reader

; Synopsis: In a world overrun by zombies, you’d think everyone was a goner, but the reality is much different. A steady diet of brains lets a zombie exist as a fully functioning human. Just ignore the part where they’re technically dead… In fact, these days, the amount of zombies outweigh the humans. A lot jump at the chance to be turned. Beg for it.

Kim Seokjin controls the underground of Seoul. No one would dare cross him. That’s how most of the world goes these days. You wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of a zombie now, would you? However, you don’t quite see it like that. Spending most nights dancing at the club he owns, you catch his eye. It’s never the wrong side if you’re underneath him, right…?

; My Thoughts: Look...I still can’t believe I read a fic with zombie sex and that I actively WANTED to read a fic with zombie sex lol. But disregarding that, it’s still phenomenally written and the world is built up so well! I loved reading this and it didn’t feel as long as it’s word count. The characters were interesting with little tidbits being thrown out there that made you a little more interested in their history.

Defining Heaven by @akinnie75

; Hoseok x Reader

; Synopsis: “If I try to fly, will I make it to heaven, or will I fall straight down? But what exactly is heaven?” It’s a question that’s been in Hoseok’s mind a lot after cutting ties with his parents and ending his relationship with his ex-girlfriend. Dreaming is his fear, but you tell him that it’s not as scary as he thinks it is. Even in the depths of his own despair, you reach your hand out, but will he take it?

; My Thoughts: At this point, I think I just love anything by this author. But this fic was so...real and beautiful. The connection between two people who want more from life and deserve from life, who are both stuck. Hoseok’s story is heart breaking and getting to see him slowly come to life and learn to care for himself again was beautiful, while seeing the reader getting to care for herself by caring for him was just beautiful as well.

Florescence by @jincherie

; Hybrid!Taehyung x Reader x Hybrid!Seokjin

; Synopsis: Okay, so maybe you’re lonely, and maybe there is something missing in your life, a void that you maybe want to fill with a companion that may or may not be of human origin… You’re perfectly content not doing anything about it though, until your best friend calls you in desperate need for your help and you suddenly end up coming home with not one, but two hybrids that may or may not have been on the way to the chopping block had you not taken them in. They’re more than a little rough around the edges, and the situation is less than ideal but… maybe the best things don’t always come in perfect, shiny packages. Maybe they just need a little time to bloom.

; My Thoughts: I love this story so much :333 it’s such an interesting twist on hybrid’s in that there are ones who get discarded because they’re ‘defective’. It’s horrible to think about and I just want to love both of them. Jin is so...sweet and he tries so hard, being the one to put himself out there with the reader because Taehyung is just a sweet and shy bub. Seeing them come to life slowly is so rewarding!

Moon Magic by @jincherie

; Merman!Hoseok x Reader

; Synopsis: You’ve never paid much mind to the moon, but you quickly learn that even though you’ve never really thought of the her, she has always watched over you. What better to heal an grieving heart, than the luminous, rippling magic of the moon? And maybe a merman, or two. You know, for good measure.

; My Thoughts: I LOVE THIS FIC SO MUCH AND I KNOW THAT YOU WROTE FOR ME AND I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I STILL LOVE IT. Hoseok is such a sweetheart and it’s adorable that you can see he’s falling in love much faster than she’s falling in love with him :333 the world is so realised, even though it’s just an island and everything is just...so perfect!

We Float by @lamourche

; Massage Therapist!Hoseok x Reader

; Synopsis: Might as well get this over with. You sigh and raise your hand to knock, steeling yourself for patchouli and shell necklaces. The door opens. A face peers out at you. There’s no beard, no long shaggy hair. For a moment, you wish he did walk around shirtless. He’s handsome. He’s taller than you, with brown hair that almost falls into his eyes and undercut on the sides. Warm brown eyes and a cute nose. It’s fucking cute his nose. He’s wearing cargo shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and white crocs. Well, that’s better. He’s still handsome and his kind eyes make you want to confess some prior sin, but it’s easy to scowl at a guy in white crocs.

; My Thoughts: This is still such a wonderful and beautiful fic. Hoseok’s agoraphobia is dealt with tactfully and he’s not magically cured by the end, but it’s so lovely to see that he’s willing to try and combat it a little more because he loves her. And she loves him, accepting him as he is and not pushing for more than he’s willing to give!

Tip 143 by @minflix

; Hoseok x Reader

; Synopsis: Even though he is everything you find attractive in a man, your friend and co-worker Jung Hoseok is just exactly that - a friend and co-worker. For some reason, you have never found yourself attracted to him even though all the girls and guys around you go absolutely crazy for him.But that all changes for you one night while scrolling through Heart2Heart, a sex live cam website…

; My Thoughts: AHHHHHH I LOVE IT SO MUCHHHHH. THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVOURITE HOSEOK FICS ON THIS WHOLE SITE. It’s so wonderfully written and I adore reading it, even re-reading it. Hoseok is so funny and just...so light hearted. He’s not hugely bothered about anything and the way he goes along wtih the reader and even helps her to film her videos, even going so far as to...well going for her ;). And yet they both just think that they’re friends when nope, you’re idiots because you LOVE EACH OTHER. I genuinely love it so much, always a favourite and will remain close to my heart <333

See Both Sides Like Chanel by @minflix

; Namjoon x Reader x Hoseok

; Synopsis: You, Namjoon, and Hoseok are inseparable. Three best friends that grew up together since you were all in diapers.But lately, Namjoon has been drifting away…

So on his birthday, you and Hoseok remind him just how inseparable the three of you really are.

; My Thoughts: This couple...is perfect. I love them so much, they’re so well suited to each other. Rich brats who despite being rich and snobby, all genuinely love each other so much. Poor Namjoon when he felt like he’d been left out. <333 it’s okay Joonie, they both love you. I read this while I was in Korea and it just...made an impact. I want them all to live happily ever after with each other x-x

Euphoria by @btssavedmylifeblr

; Jungkook x Reader

; Synopsis: At the end of your life, you are given one day to live again with the man you loved. A lifetime’s love story told in a single day.

; My Thoughts: THIS IS THE SADDEST YET SWEETEST FIC EVER. Oh my god, it’s just...it’s so unbelievably bittersweet. Their love for each other and how she KNOWS that she’s dying and she’ll never see him again. How much she throws herself into the day with him and how much he clearly loves her. She knows they have their whole life set out for them and it’s just...wonderful...honestly.

Off The Deep End by @boymeetsweevil

; Merman!Yoongi x Reader

; Synopsis: Your new mermaid friend, Yoongi, helps you navigate the treacherous waters of love, sex, and National Geographic.

; My Thoughts: Ngl, the main thing I remember from this? It’s beautifully written and also fish dick lmao. But seriously, it’s a great fic to read and watching Yoongi get to experience the human world is a delight. It’s very unique in how it’s written and the biology and culture of merfolk. A definite recommendation for everyone!

#fic recs #fic recommendations #readyplayerhobi's fic recs #2019 fic recs

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