#/but i can say that its so wild how his history repeats itself in a way under this new lb

[darabeatha]

❛ Moctezuma Xocoyotzin (and referred to retroactively in European sources as Moctezuma II), was the ninth Emperor of the Aztec Empire (also known as Mexica Empire), reigning from 1502 or 1503 to 1520. The first contact between the civilizations of Mesoamerica and Europeans took place during his reign, and he was killed during the initial stages of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, when conquistador Hernán Cortés and his men fought to take over the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan. (...)

(...) Depictions of his person among his contemporaries, however, are divided; some depict him as one of the greatest leaders Mexico had, a great conqueror who tried his best to maintain his nation together at times of crisis, while others depict him as a tyrant who wanted to take absolute control over the whole empire. ❜ [s]

[redgoldsparks]

August Reading and Reviews by Maia Kobabe

I post my reviews throughout the month on Storygraph and Goodreads, and do roundups here and on patreon. Reviews below the cut.

Heavyweight: A Family Story of Holocaust, Empire and Memory by Solomon J Brager After listening to this excellent interview with the author on the Gender Reveal podcast, I was very excited to pick up Solomon Brager's hefty nonfiction comic about family history, Jewish identity, the Holocaust, and empire. This is an incredibly well researched and thoughtful book. The author grew up with outsized family stories of a Jewish boxing champion great-grandfather from Essen who punched Nazis, and a great-grandmother who carried her children across countries and mountains to escape to the US. But these stories became much more complicated when the author started digging for receipts. One factor is the immense financial privilege of the family which already had bank accounts and significant savings in New York. Another factor is the layers of violence and empire that build up the power of the countries fighting on both sides of WWII. The author's quest to research the family story is a major thread in the story itself and I am absolutely awed by the amount of work that went into uncovering and shaping this story.

My Dearest Patrolman vol 1 by Niyama As a delinquent teen, Shin was mentored and protected by a friendly patrolman, Seiji. Having one supportive adult in his life completely turned Shin's life around and he also decided to become a patrolman. Years later, Shin and Seiji meet again, and Shin decides to confess the feelings he's been nursing for a decade. Lighthearted dating hijinks ensue! Strikes a nice balance between silly, sweet, and spicy.

Go For It, Nakamura! by Syundei An extremely silly and cute high school rom-com. Shy Nakamura has a massive crush on his classmate Hirose. Despite the fact that they see each other every day, Nakamura has never introduced himself. What will it take to get him to finally speak up and try to befriend his crush??

Something Not Nothing by Sarah Leavitt In 2020, Sarah Leavitt's partner of more than 20 years, Domino, died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a rapid decline at the end of her life. Leavitt, a cartoonist and writer, tried to make sense of this decision through comics and abstract watercolor paintings. The result is a gorgeous, heart wrenching, deeply human meditation on love and loss. There were pages that lifted my spirits and pages that pierced me to my core. I sobbed through the majority of reading it, but couldn't put it down. Leavitt's mapmaking of the landscape of grief is a gift to us all.

Assassin's Fate by Robin Hobb read by Elliot Hill What can I even say about this, the final novel of a 16 book fantasy series, which I have been reading and re-reading now for twenty years, other than holy shit??? I can't believe I've reached the end of Fitz's journey at last. This book is SO long (nearly 1000 pages) and much of it is brutal to read; characters we love are beaten, abused, tortured, and left in pretty hopeless situations for much of the novel. I think Hobb's insistence on revisiting almost every single character from the Rain Wilds and Live Ship sub-series expanded the first third of the book more than needed; had I been editing it, it would have been shorter. And yet! And yet! I was riveted by this too-long book, devouring it in big gulps, scream-texting about it to several friends who were reading the series along with me. The ending hit SO HARD. Its PERFECT, TERRIBLE, WRETCHED, one of the cruelest endings for several beloved characters and while also giving them a kind of grace and eternity I did not see coming, but should have. This book fulfills the themes of the entire series so well, completing repeated patterns, showing cycles that ripple through three generations, while also leaving a door open for the future that I'm already daydreaming about. Literally how did Robin Hobb come up with all of this. Its flawed but its perfect. I am in awe.

BL Metamorphosis vol 1 by Kaori Tsurutani translated by Jocelyne Allen An older woman picks up a BL manga by chance at a bookstore and discovers a new fandom late in life. She ends up befriending a shy high school girl who works at the bookstore and also loves BL, but has no one to talk to about it. This is such a freaking cute premise and I love the loose sketchy art style!

BL Metamorphosis vol 2 by Kaori Tsurutani translated by Jocelyne Allen Unlikely friends Urara, a shy high schooler, and Ichinoi, a widowed calligraphy teacher, bonded over their love of a BL manga series. Now they're heading to a doujinshi event to try and meet their favorite author. This brought me right back to my early days of visiting cons and meeting authors for the first time!

BL Metamorphosis vol 3 by Kaori Tsurutani translated by Jocelyne Allen Urara has been reading and loving BL manga years, but it takes a push from her older friend Ichinoi before Urara considers the idea of possibly drawing her own. Can she find the time to write and draw a story around her cram school schedule? This series PERFECTLY captures the BL reader to BL writer pipeline, I'm so charmed.

BL Metamorphosis vol 4 by Kaori Tsurutani translated by Jocelyne Allen Urara applies for a table at a comics festival, so now she has a deadline for her first original comic. Can she get it done in time? Ichinoi is there to cheer lead and support in every way she can (finding a printer, sewing a table cloth, agreeing to work the table, packing their lunches) but only Urara can get the comic done. This book contained one of my very favorite exchanges of the whole series, when Ichinoi asked "Is it fun to draw manga?" and Urara responded honestly, "No. It's hard to look at my own art for so long. But it feels like I'm doing what I should be doing."

BL Metamorphosis vol 5 by Kaori Tsurutani translated by Jocelyne Allen Urara and Ichinoi struggle through a long, slow day of trying to sell an original comic at their first ever comic event. Unbeknownst to them, their favorite author is there as an attendee. This book felt like one of the most relatable portrayals of the early days of a comics career I've ever seen. I'm obsessed with this series and definitely want to watch the live action movie adaptation!

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez This complex fantasy novel weaves together a multi-strand narrative of violence, love, and the end of empire in an original world of old gods and talking animals. In the main thread, two warriors carry the corpse of an almost-dead goddess across the country in a five day dash from the mountains to the sea. The goddess was once the Moon, torn out of the sky by her own desire for immortality. Her children became the despotic Moon Throne, a cruel dynasty which has repressed and punished the people and elements. The Moon Thrones' heirs, three brothers with extraordinary powers, chase the warriors and hunger for the last dregs of the fallen Moon's power. In another thread, an unnamed protagonist watches this drama unfold as a play being performed in a dreamy underwater sleep realm, while recalling the stories their lola told of the old country before the war. This novel is often compared with NK Jemisin's The Fifth Season in terms of scope, literary prose, and ambition and I can see why. This novel employs some very creative and unusual writing choices that make it more rewarding to read in print than to experience in audio. I had a content warning for gore and cannibalism going in, so I was prepared for the violence of the middle section. I really enjoyed this novel and I can tell I'll be thinking about it for a long time.

Horse by Geraldine Brooks read by James Fouhey, Lisa Flanagan, Graham Halstead, Katherine Littrell, Michael Obiora This book follows multiple different story lines, some of which captured me much more than others. In Kentucky in 1850, an enslaved black boy watches a new thoroughbred racing colt's birth and begins a lifelong relationship with the horse, who will go on to be one of the most well-known champions in the history of American horse racing. In New York City in the 1950s, a gallery owner known for her modern tastes falls for an equestrian portrait of the great Kentucky race horse, Lexington. And in 2019, in Washington DC, a Nigerian-American art history student and a Smithsonian scientist dig into the mystery of an unlabelled horse skeleton in the museum's collection- and its possible connection with several paintings by a Civil War era equestrian artist. I admired the amount of research that went into this novel, and the way the paintings of Lexington tied the different timelines together. However, I really struggled with how the interior emotional lives of several of the Black male characters in this book were portrayed by this author. When Jarret, the enslaved Black groom, is separated from Lexington and forced into plantation labor temporarily, Brooks writes of him gaining a depth of spirit and understanding for the human condition from this experience. This felt deeply weird to read from a white author! I'm not really the right reader to say whether Brooks did a good job or not, but it put me on edge. When the final climatic moment of the novel read like a heavy-handed lesson in how Black men are still at risk of police violence even in 2019, I wondered who exactly that point was supposed to be for, and if Brooks is the one who needed to make it. So, I felt very mixed as I finished this book. There's a lot to admire craft-wise, and I can understand why so many readers were impressed by it. But I honestly I don't recommend it, unless you want to read it in a book club setting and have a nuanced discussion about what works and what doesn't in this novel.

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson A young girl named Sophie spends her summers on an island of the coast of Finland with her very present grandmother and her rather absent father. Each chapter tells of an incident experienced through the eyes of the very young and the very old- the growth of mosses and wildflowers on the island stones; boxes and bottles of flotsam and jetsam washing to shore; a great storm; an adventure in trespassing; an unexpected visitor; a night spent outside sleeping in a tent. Without much of an overarching plot this book is still a moving picture of living very close to and in tune with the seasons and elements in a very specific part of the world. It's brief and open ended but I really enjoyed it!

Delicious in Dungeon vol 14 by Ryoko Kui As the smoke clears after the explosive ending of the previous penultimate volume, our heroes gather themselves, check on the survivors, and set out on the most collaborative challenge: cooking and eating an entire chimera body. This is a satisfying and in some ways gentler ending than I expected from this series, but I really enjoyed it!

Notes from an Island by Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietilä translated by Thomas Teal  In the autumn of 1963, Tove Jansson, her partner Tuulikki 'Tooti' Pietilä, and their taciturn friend Brunström set about trying to finish a small cabin on a tiny Finnish island before the onset of winter (and possible legal delays of building permits). Tove and Tooti spent their summers on the island for the next 3o years. This book contains excerpts of journal and introspective writing on the nature of the island, the sea, the changeable weather, the futility of human efforts to shift the natural environment. These writings are paired with delicate prints Tooti made of water, stones, and ocean views. I read this directly after The Summer Book and after listening to a short biography of Jansson- this made a good companion to those other texts, but might have been a bit spare on its own.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Aita for not liking my brother's boyfriend?

I should preface this with the fact that I support my brother no matter what, I just have some concerns about his boyfriend.

My brother and I (m26, we're twins) have always been close. We've shared a small circle of friends for almost our whole lives, and in the past few years he's branched out. I don't have an issue with this at all, it's great that he's finding new friends, but I just really dislike his boyfriend(27).

I met my fiance (f27) in middle school, and she and my brother's boyfriend were close friends. My fiance and he started dating in high school and lasted until senior year when he started getting pushy, erratic, and sometimes physical. A little while after they broke up he got into some sort of accident, had to move in with his aunt, and we didn't see him for a while. My fiance still has lasting trauma from his behavior, which we now know was ptsd and trauma related in itself. Apparently he didn't have a very good home life- like multiple police calls levels.

A few years later he shows up again to try and make amends. My brother showed immediate interest, which concerned me, because we hadn't seen him in years and didn't know what he was like. He apologized to my fiance, explained his situation, and even congratulated us. (I'd like to mention that during the tail end of their relationship, he did NOT like me. He had asked her multiple times to stop being friends with me. So you can imagine how weird this is for me to hear.)

My brother could probably be considered a textbook gay stereotype, which, of course isn't a bad thing, but he likes to put himself out there. I don't see an issue with this and never really have, but it's when he started going on dates with the boyfriend is when I got concerned. My brother has a history of getting attached easily, along with periods of depression and even sometimes illness when things go wrong. Stress does wild shit to his physical health and its not fun for anyone.

My brother and his boyfriend have been dating for around a year now with no signs of stopping, and it's safe to say he's infatuated. They live together and everything. It looks like he's happy, but I know how well he is at hiding things, and will refuse to tell you if something is wrong. He says that his boyfriend has changed, gone through therapy, rehab, and the like, and even my fiance admits that she's seen a change.

My only concern is that this is some sort of repeat situation, where things start off fine and eventually get worse again

What are these acronyms?

[future-oscarwinner]

Don't worry about it I go through the same thing (me not sending you an ask for a whole week) I don't take it personal, you'll reply when you reply I can wait :)

Yea this will probably be a big one again so get comfortable.

Oh boy the whole cheating thing. It was back in Monaco, people saw him with this young girl and he cheated on his wife. Worst part of it all his wife had given birth to his child (idk if it was a boy or girl) a few weeks before. I don't remember all the details I just remember being disgusted and feeling sorry for his wife.

Don't apologize it already very cool that you got into this crazy ass sport <3 There is still al lot of carlando stuff on youtube, I really recommend wathing the McLaren unboxed from 2020/2019 and the challanges they did together if you want a good laugh. Yea this season ending is definetly one of the more crazy ones.

Reb bull in it self is a pretty good team, they just suck at managing more than one driver. Its something they struggled with since the beginning and I don't think that it's going to changes as long as Verstappen is there. They are to focused on him to give younger drivers any room to grow and it suprised my they still have Perez (but maybe they'll ditch him for Ricciardo who knows really) But even before Verstappen the whole Seb Mark thing was also a small problem.

I don't think Lando will be able to thrive there. But he is smart if what Horner says can be trusted. Every time Red bull approaches him he goes to sign with McLaren a day later. I think with George going into his second season and Hamilton saying he wants to stick around a bit longer a move to Merc isn't going to happen any time soon. Hopefully McLaren will be able to build a good car for the upcoming seasons. I really hope Charles wins the wdc next year or maybe Lewis.

Don't you just love it when men give unsolicited advice, like did we ask for your opinion?! Ugh the "when I tell you, you should listen to me" I would rather die than listen to anything told to me in that way.

That's so cute I love it when girls support girls, especially in this hypermasculine sport. It gives you something to do in the off season. I'm curently going over the seasons that I can't really remember from my childhood.

I think that combined with Pierre inviting the FIA to come look at his bare ass was just to much for them. They give him so many stupid penalties but honestly I didn't expect anything different from the FIA.

I was standing in the store with my mom when I saw the announcement, I got so excited. She was also very happy when I told her. She is the person that got me into the sport and she used to be a very big schumi fan. Now we get to enjoy schumini together it's kind of wild really.

Fred better go make some drastic changes in the strategy area because boy did they keep fucking it up every race.

To be honest I just don't like his face, and the fact that he was able to pull ginger spice like how?

Like you know my day and evening could have gone better :/ Have a good night as well (or more like morning at this point) <3 also now that I'm off anon I send pictues as well <3

Thank you for understanding 💖

Omg he cheated what a pig!!! And right after she gave birth!!!

Yeah, but I wish I was there to experience it even though I think living through Carlando break up, Yukierre break up would have been my last straw so I'm kinda glad I wasn't there but yk

Yeah, Red Bull as a team is pretty solid. I want them to ditch Perez just so Danny could be on the grid, but I don't think we'd see much difference, maybe even history repeating itself :/

Lando is smart and aware of himself and his abilities and will not move to a team that will not treat him as a priority so that's why he stays with McLaren (a spoiled little brat 😇) i think his contract is until 2024. Also he's been talking about McLaren being his dream so my theory is he wants to win with McLaren first before he moves <3

Yeah, too bad no one can really influence my opinion when I already fixated it

FIA is a joke, especially with the recent news

Omg your mom is an f1 fan that's so cute 🥺

Most are saying that Fred is going to favor Charles, what do you think?

Omg yeah when I found out he pulled a ginger spice girl I was like :ooo

And hey you're off anon! Nice to finally meet you!! I hope things got at least a little bit better in between these few days and that you have an amazing rest of the day <3

[oviids]

pls share some of your spn fic recs 🥺🥺

ok, a few things first:

followers and mutuals who do not have supernatural brainworms, kindly avert your eyes

i don’t normally rec or even read much fanfic any more but this is a CRISIS ok (cont.)

there is so. much. content for deancas out there and i have incredibly high standards, several ancient ao3 bookmarks, can speedread, and want to spare you guys the experience of wading through it all.

i also have a section for spn femslash since I was pretty into that back in the day (sadly a lot less fan content for this :/)

I don’t really like au’s or pure smut (I honestly usually just skim or skip those scenes) so if you’re mainly looking for that kind of thing this probably won’t be very helpful to you. jsyk.

i’m not great at describing stuff but i’ll do my best, i’ll also try and add tw’s when neccesary.

i wil try and keep updating this with any other decent fics i find, feel free to rec stuff too since i’m like 7 years behind.(edit 1/25/21) this is getting looooong so i’m going to start making another list on my spn blog rather than update this one

(edit 1/3/21) since this has gotten pretty long i’ve added rating/approximate word counts and marked my particular favorites with an asterisk.

Dean/Cas fic:

So Says The Sword*** - explicit/85k. FUCK its good...au/time travel where dean is not pulled out of hell by cas and says yes to becoming the michael sword. honestly could serve as an alternative to actually watching the show, if you want to get into dean/cas without actually doing that to yourself.

Fata morgana.*  - teen/6k, pst s9 finale. very bela centric and i love it, she finds cas looking for dean in hell.

Redemption Road -misc/600+k. an incredibly long fic from a collaborative writing group back in the day. canon divergent from the end of s6 on, has a cool take on godstiel and the leviathans, as well as the lovecratian mythos connection. ngl when i reread it i only made it about 28% in but imo the casual reader can actually stop around there, the rest concerns a lovecraftian apocalypse that is still good (i think i don’t remember it very well) but not required to enjoy the first half. if you prefer i have an ebook version i can send you on gdrive.

Someone Who's Feeling For Me* - mature/45k, s12. they run into lisa braeden and dean thinks cas is into her while cas thinks dean still likes her. treats lisa way better than the show ever did and the miscommunication is pretty funny rather than annoying.

a turn of the earth - mature/95k. time travel fic where cas from s10 keeps showing up in deans life from a few years before s1 to right before the hellhounds take his soul.  slow burn, good character study, and at one point cas punches the dad in the face and it rules.

On the Wings of War - teen/85k, canon divergent s5. dean accidentally becomes the Horseman of War. plays fun, fast and loose with biblical lore, michael has some rights.

Named - mature/95k, alternate s5. EXTREMELY blasphemous in a fun sexy way. manages to predict metatron almost to a T. there’s one major character death and its literally jesus christ, everyone is very sad about it and it sets the rest of the story rolling. an alternate interpretation of cas’ mission to raise dean from hell which had me on the floor. ngl its kind of misogynistic at points, but its from 2010 and tracks with late oughts-2010 spn (sorry anna the author did you dirty here:/).

The Girlfriend Experience - explicit/15k. uhhh i don’t normally rec or even read smutty stuff unless someone i know is specifically asking for it but this has stuff like sam trying to be a good ally and dean thinking holding hands with cas is ‘kinda gay :/’ minutes after having gay sex with him.

i crippled your heart a hundred times - explicit/19k, s8. cas confesses his feelings and dean spends a long time getting his head out of his ass about it. truly hits different after the actual confession, despite being written six years early it feels like its actually what could have gone down more or less if the writers weren’t talentless demons who hate us.

My Roots Take Flight** - mature/125k. reverse au where cas is a hunter and dean’s an angel...OR IS IT???? an alternate retelling of s4. tw for briefly being set in a psychiatric hospital/the hospital being mentioned somewhat frequently throughout the fic, plus more references to torture in hell and heaven than usual.

The One Thing You Can't Lose* - teen/4k.you know those posts about how cas is a super-strong super-tough ancient warrior but he just lets dean tug him around because he likes it? thats it thats the fic.

Hands, From Which All Things Are Built - teen/14k, post s8′s ‘goodbye stranger.’ cas is on the run with the angel tablet but keeps in touch with sam and dean by text, he and dean still manage to be terrible at Actual communication.

Autrement, Danger - or, The Account of an Exceedingly Long Day - mature/30k, post s11. a monster that takes the appearance of your soulmate leads to some wild miscommunications and dealing with years of repression, also dean gets to see cas’ true form which is always cool. tw for non-graphic mentions of underage sexual assault/sex work.

Down to Agincourt - mature/explicit/900++++k, endverse continuation. endverse!cas survives his encounter with lucifer and discovers another time-displaced dean from s7. i’ve only read the two of four parts but its really good, veeeeery slow burn, has a lot of fun oc’s and takes a rather surprising but (imo) entertaining and intriguing turn into Hellenic history and mythology. usual tw’s for endverse/endverse!cas but nothing graphic, it’s actually pretty light-hearted (relatively speaking of course).

Nothing Equals the Splendor** - explicit/8k, THEE finale fix it fic you’ve been waiting for! posits that the entire final episode was just a (very bad and lame) djinn’s vision.

like moses and batman and james dean - explicit/31k, post s8. explores dean’s trauma and internalized homophoba from his technically canon experience with sex work and its impact on his relationship with cas. the sex work itself isn’t really shown in any detail but it’s still a relatively heavy fic.

Crazy Diamonds - explicit/25k, s4/alternate s14. fresh-out-of-hell dean and dean from 10 years in the future are displaced from time and sent to each other’s present.

where the weeds take root - explicit/30k. au where the men of letters kick them out of the bunker and they accidentally move out into the country, get over their codependence and semi retire. featuring chicken coop building, sam volunteering at a dog shelter, gardening, and blissfully mundane domesticity.

No Resting Place - teen/6k. djinn dream fic, switches back and forth between cas’ dream of being married to dean and retired from hunting to the aftermath when he wakes up. tw for brief mention of suicide since, y’know, djinn dream.

any port in a storm - mature/52k. post s8 finale. cas and dean have to pose as a couple going through a rough patch for a case and actually deal with their emotional baggage, cas struggles with being human and metatron is up to stuff.

all this and heaven too* - explicit/7k. in the author’s own words ‘...a love letter to every trans person who ever projected onto Dean Winchester.’ absolutely unzipped me emotionally and theologically, its just. so good. tw for very brief mentions of internalized transphobia/dysphoria.

Because it is* - mature/6k, finale fix it. killing chuck does not bring back anyone back and the winchesters spend a very long time dealing with what they’ve lost, cas and dean SOMEHOW still manage to have signifigant communication issues even after the confession. tw for suicidal thoughts/brief attempt.

Vena Amoris and Other Old-Fashioned Bullshit* - teen/4k, s6. when cas fell for dean it automatically soulbonded/angel married them, shenanigans ensue when dean finds out during the angel’s civil war. funny and actually written back when s6 was airing so cas is still (or at least pretending to be) kind of an OP asshole which is fun.

Rinse, Repeat - teen/3k, s8. angsty character study of cas as he’s reprogrammed and trained to kill dean. not really dean/cas since its just cas’ pov of canon events but its beautifully written and ends with him snapping out of it through the power of love (also now a canon event!).

Emergence - explicit/59k, canon divergent after s11. dean meets a hunter he only recognizes as their friend claire novak’s missing father, but soon realizes he might be the answer behind the mysterious void in his memories and feelings (aka everyone’s memories of cas are completely wiped away for three years).

Cuckoo And Nest - explicit/10k, early established relationship/character study, cas tries to figure out how he fits into dean’s life and space in the bunker.

Build a Home* - teen/20k, canon divergent s12. sam and eileen are cute and turn the bunker into men of letters/hunters hq and everyone but cas moves in, mutual miscommunication issues and pining ensues.

Down in the River - teen/5k, early s8, cas prays to dean in purgatory while sam and dean try to figure out a way to get him out.

Teaching Poetry to Fish* - mature/52k, ?? BC through the entire series/canon divergent s14 and 15. retelling of crucial scenes throughout the shows timeline from cas’ pov, feat. actual fish and poetry.

the minor fall, the major lift - gen/4k, post confession/finale fixit. dean goes into the empty to save cas and runs into several old friends (and enemies).

With the Kisses of His Mouth* - teen/3k, gen later seasons. dean and cas keep kissing by accident.

Remaining Grace - explicit/109k, alternate s6. au where cas asks dean for help with raphael and dean, of course, does. tw for temporary major character death/semi-graphic depictions of alcohol withdrawal.

The face of heaven.* - teen/10k, au, dean is a regular guy and cas is a fallen star (think ‘stardust’, kinda).

Stories Are Made of Mistakes*  - teen/5k. newly human cas has trouble getting used to a human body and humanity in general, but still figures out that he and dean are A Thing before dean does.

Hurry Up And Wait - mature/21k, canon divergent s12. a fairyland and quite possibly LOTR related case comes up and dean goes full fanboy, mary is introduced to the wonders of the peter jackson adaptions, many references and comparisons (including between cas and dean’s ‘friendship’ and arwen/aragon). also charle is still alive and has just been doing fairy stuff this whole time.

There Are Many Things - explicit/28k, s9. cas is extremely lonely/touch-starved and trying to figure out this whole human thing, as well as where he and dean stand after being kicked out of the bunker.

It's A Long Life to Always Be Longing - teen/40k, post s11 finale. amara helps dean by putting him in a magical coma so he can finally get some much needed rest and show him possible futures for him, sam and cas. meanwhile sam and cas go on a roadtrip (or several) to find componets for a spell to wake dean up. really good sam and cas friendship, they actually talk about their shared lucifer trauma and stuff.

Non-Photo Blue - gen/2k, s4/5/alternate s5. fifty moments from cas’ memories of dean.

Tall Grass - explicit/57k, canon divergent post series. cas becomes the ultimate plant dad. feat the wayward sisters gang, cathartic character growth, fun oc’s, domesticity, and lots of actual botanical info-dumping.

on vessels - no rating/gen/2k. established dean/cas, cas tells dean about how he used to imagine what it would be like to have him as his vessel.

search for tomorrow on every shore* - teen/11k, post-finale (extremely derogatory). some angels in jack’s new heaven act out and dean gets temporarily resurrected in 2003 and runs into his younger self.

Architecture of the Minotaur’s Heart - explicit/45k, very canon divergent post s1. dean’s new house seems to have a life and mind of its own, while in his dreams he sees glimpses of a world and apocalypse that never came to be and an angel that looks strangely like his mysterious neighbor, cas. loosely inspired by the book house of leaves (which i highly recommend for fans of weird horror).

The Distance Of The Setting Sun - explicit/17k, post s5. established dean/cas relationship, team free will finally takes advantage of cas’ abilities to go on vacation around the world.

diamond star halo - teen/5k, s11. dean lets cas use him as a temporary vessel while he recovers from rowena’s spell, sam is a long-suffering third-wheel.

Make Known** - teen/16k, s6/7. dean struggles to understand how cas could have become his enemy and whether he ever truly knew him in the first place.

blunt little instrument* - mature/1.4k, post finale. dean finally confronts his father in heaven, very cathartic.

my heart a compass*** - teen/10k, post confession. the empty forces cas to re-experience his most regretted moments while dean tries to snap him out of it and bring him home.

A Crash Course in Someone Else's History - teen/11k, s6. cas from the very start of s4 is brought forward in time by s6!cas to distract the brothers from his and crowley’s plans.

The Cuckoo Father - mature/8k, s7 au. the woman who found cas in the river post-leviathans does not marry him bc he was sent to her by god or whatever, but actually identifies him as jimmy novak and sends him back to claire and amelia.

The Dead Dean Clause* - teen/5k, post alt s5 ending. team free will celebrates surviving taking down lucifer by getting blitzed, cas lies to a cop and gets an impromptu driving lesson. title/description sound dark i know but it’s actually very funny and light.

Suck It, Judy Garland - mature/20k, s12 (after the ‘i love you...i love all of you’ episode). cas and sam have to pretend to be a couple for a case and dean is NOT happy about it.

By Daylight and In Dream - teen/16k, s5. pre-dean/cas, dean invites cas to use his dreams to hide from the other angels. tw for very brief mention of a memory/dream of alastair sexually assaulting dean.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven - mature/22k, post-canon. an actually happy (if sometimes bittersweet) heaven endgame written several years ago, though some details are rather eerily similar to the show’s ending.

heaven is a place on earth* - teen/2k. dean’s pov of some of the times cas left him behind throughout the show, and one alternate ending where he finally gets to stay.

I Cleanse The Mirror - teen/20k, alternate s6. dean’s body is stolen by an ancient elemental and his soul has to hitch a ride in cas’ vessel.

an exploration of gender; angelic*** - mature/4k. *oscar isaac voice* lets get into angel gender politics!! aka cas is trans.

Zenith - explicit/33k, s9. after 9x06 an angry witch curses cas with the ability to see supernatural beings and human souls.

La cucina. - gen/3k, alt s9. dean goes wild helping a newly-human cas find out what kinds of food he likes, or the early s9 domesticity we deserved!

Dean Winchester, Cocksucker at Rest***** - teen/7k, post-finale. john and mary finally come over for dinner and john reacts to dean/cas in a rather predictable fashion. SOOOOOOOOO good omg, its so funny and a little sad and very very cathartic. part of a series that has a few other really good short fics.

The Way You Didn't Go - teen/5k, s15. coda to 15.09, dean has nightmares about the moc!cas timeline.

On Drowning - teen/28k. dean saves cas after he nearly drowns, they both try and deal with the physical/mental fallout (aka the fic where thee iconic “you only touch me when you think I’m dead or dying” originates). tw for realistic depictions of drowning/triage/misc medical information.

The Thirty-Six Questions That Lead to Love* - mature/13k. claire has dean and cas pretend to be her gay dads for a case and they play the titular 36 question game, get mistaken for swingers, and birdwatch, among other things.

Assorted F/F stuff:

Deep Breaths* - mary/ellen, au where mary said no to azazel’s deal and let john stay dead, still becomes a milf.

Like Rebel Diamonds - krissy/claire, they become hunter gf’s on the hunt for cas to kick his ass for taking jimmy. not-so-stealth dean/cas as well.

To Ash and Bone - anna/ruby, same author as the previous fic (p much all of her stuff is good from what i recall). au where ruby is a witch and helps anna when she’s cursed.

Holy Clockwork Angels - jo/ruby, STEAMPUNK au with very cool worldbuiilding.

At Day's End - jo/anna (my fucking KINGDOM for more jo/anna content, the dean/cas parallels are allllll there), au where they are both at the camp in the endverse and gfs.

these posts - ok so not actually a fic but i’m now obsessed with this hannah/meg dynamic.

Tagelied - mary/ellen, the true story of how ellen got into hunting before angels interfered.

Hell's Bells** - meg/abaddon, alternate s8/9 where meg survives crowley’s attack with sam’s help and teams up with abaddon (who she has a sk year old crush on) to take back hell.

The Ecstasy of the Rose - anna/ruby, anna travels back in time to escape heaven and becomes a signifigant part of ruby’s old human life.

Angel Underground - anna/jo, kind of an urban fantasy au with a very intriguing premise (sadly its very short, i’d love to see more if this ‘verse).

Clover, Flame - billie/mary, billie was always the reaper that showed up to take mary after her death(s) over the years.

Drag Me To Heaven - anna/ruby, a variant on the ‘last night on earth’ thing with dean.

Come Home* - jo/anna, canon-divergent au where anna is the new waitress at the roadhouse and helps jo set up a (probably not really) haunted house for halloween.

[hd-wireless]

🎶 HD Wireless 2021 Reveals! 🎶

TAKE A BOW, CREATORS!! 

The day has finally come, and we can’t wait for everyone to see who created all the wonderful Wireless works that we had the privilege to present to you this year!!

Before we do that, the results of our Guessing Game! The winner, with 43 correct guesses (which gave her 260 points - please don’t question our scoring system) was @sweet-s0rr0w!! Kudos to your super-sleuthing and powers of recognition!!

All the wonderful authors, artists and podficcers who took part this year can be found below the cut. As the mods, we want to extend our thanks to every single talented one of them. Please show them all your love and appreciation!!

🎶 H/D Wireless Animatic and Fic 🎶

📻 rather a lover than a fighter [T, 15k] ✒️ Author and Artist: @parkkate & aceveria / @aceveria-art

🎵 Summary: When Harry loses his voice and his magic, it’s up to Healer Draco to save the day.

🎶 H/D Wireless Art 🎶

📻 The Road to Somewhere [T] 🖌️ Artist: @rainsoakedhello 🎵 Art medium: Digital Art

🎵 Summary: In the end, all roads lead home.

📻 Don't care what they say (I would be stupid to be not on it) [Gen] 🖌️ Artist: @digthewriter 🎵 Art medium: Digital. Photoshop.

🎵 Summary: Harry finally has a chance with Draco and he's not gonna let it go.

📻 Start Over Again [Gen] 🖌️ Artist: milkandhoney / @fictional 🎵 Art medium: Digital Art

🎵 Summary: Do you feel like a chainstore? Or in which one is Graham Coxon and one is Damon Albarn.

📻 Down for What You Want [Teen] 🖌️ Artist: @sugareey 🎵 Art medium: Digital

🎵 Summary: After the war, finding refuge in the clubs of Muggle London is easier than dealing with the shambles of the wizarding world. When Harry and Draco keep running into each other at Apollo's every Saturday night though, they follow their gut instincts to get on the dance floor and discover something they both have been craving for a long time.

📻 What do I do? With a Love That Won’t Sit Still [Gen] 🖌️ Artist: @cambiodipolvere 🎵 Art medium: traditional (graphite)

🎵 Summary: Italian Greyhounds are small and fucked up, but Draco is a big fuck up and that requires scaling.

🎶 H/D Wireless Art and Fic 🎶

📻 A Halo of Fairy Orbs [E, 20.6k] 🖌️✒️ Author and Artist: vivi1138 / @penguinanimagus & Fae_vorite / @faevorite-main-blog 🎵 Art medium: digital art

🎵 Summary: Draco Malfoy has been dead for fifteen years, but the Black Family tapestry doesn’t agree. Upon returning from long years abroad, Harry discovers that his old rival might still be alive, and his revived obsession leads him to Malfoy Manor. There’s a mystery to solve, and Harry is chasing a thrill he hasn’t felt since sixth year. He needs to know.

📻 Oh, Sinnerman [E, 40k] 🖌️✒️ Author and Artist: @lou-isfake and @babooshkart 🎵 Art medium: digital

🎵 Summary: “I’m serious, Potter,” Malfoy said quietly. “That was some real bad luck you had, being there last night. They will come after you, and they will kill you—after torturing you for information on my whereabouts.” He pocketed Harry’s wand, but held on to his knife, twirling it between his fingers. Harry was distracted by its movement, the reflections of the bright, dawning sun on polished silver. “I’m not happy about it, either, but you’re stuck with me for the foreseeable future.” He watched Malfoy’s face for a long time, in a staring contest he wasn’t sure he’d signed up for. Stuck with Malfoy, for the foreseeable future, on the run from a massive crime syndicate that had infiltrated the Ministry and was out for their blood. It was all very familiar, except for the Malfoy part.  

📻 The Crane Lord of Gringotts [E, 31.1k] 🖌️✒️ Author and Artist: @vukovich and @crazybutgood 🎵 Art medium: Origami, photography

🎵 Summary: Harry is fine. Being an Auror is fine. Living with Ginny is fine. It's all fine. But it used to be a lot better.

📻 The World Is A Violent Sky [E, 60k] 🖌️✒️ Author/Artist: writingsbydestiny / @starlitsilvereyes 🎵 Art medium: Digital Art

🎵 Summary: Harry Potter wants to die; Draco Malfoy wants to live — a story of life and death, everything in between and beyond — in the form of scatters of love and hurt like freckles of stars forming into constellations. — Alternative Summary (And Significantly Less Poetic): Four years after the war, Harry remains grief-stricken. In an attempt to discover the parts of him that haven’t died in the Forbidden Forest, he drops off the face of Scotland to travel the world by himself. Along the way, he finds his old enemy, Draco Malfoy, in a Muggle country, looking positively dashing even with a slash of scar decorating his face. As always, Harry’s curiosity leads him to (un)fortunate places.

📻 The Stars Have Courage [M, 85k] 🖌️✒️ Author/Artist: @fantalf 🎵  Art medium: Digital painting

🎵 Summary: Draco can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t move. He can’t hear anything besides the buzzing in his ears. The walls are closing in. The world becomes smaller, narrowing itself to the pain in his chest, and it becomes the only thing that makes sense. He tries to cry. Maybe he is crying, but there are no tears anymore. Luna’s words echo endlessly in his brain. Harry doesn’t remember. Harry doesn’t love Draco. Repeating ceaselessly. Infinite, Harry used to say. No. No. No. Draco can’t lose him again. But he doesn’t know who you are now. He doesn’t love you. He hates you. You are no one. His world turns into an overwhelming pain. And that pain is all that he is. — Draco waited five long years to watch his husband wake up from a coma. He's not ready to meet a Harry with no memory of anything that happened after he died at The Battle of Hogwarts, twelve years ago.

🎶 H/D Wireless Fic Collab 🎶

📻 'Til Your World Burns [E, 25.3k] ✒️ 🖋️Authors: @ladderofyears and @iero0

🎵 Summary: Draco Malfoy is raped and watches as his world falls apart. Harry Potter is the quiet, unassuming wizard who finally listens to him.

🎶 H/D Wireless Fic 🎶

📻 Inside These Walls [M, 5.6k] 🖋️ Author: @jackvbriefs

🎵 Summary: The year before Draco moves to Los Angeles, Harry Potter disappears. Draco doesn't mean to find him. He's just doing his job.

📻 Drive a Little Slower [Gen, 1.6k] 🖋️ Author: bluefay / @thesleepiesthufflepuff

🎵 Summary: He silently willed Harry to drive a little slower. To let him pretend a little longer.

📻 Two Zinnias and the Scent of Lemon [T, 16k] 🖋️ Author: thestarryknight / @the-starryknight

🎵 Summary: The Ministry didn’t turn bad overnight. Harry didn’t suddenly turn rogue either. Between covert Legilimency links and Polyjuice disguises and running and running and running, Draco has forgotten what it is like to have a safe harbor that isn’t a person. If there’s an art to fighting back, then they’ll find it hand in hand.

📻 Two Starts, One Finish [E, 5.5k] 🖋️ Author: @lqtraintracks

🎵 Summary: I feel him before I see him. Nobody stands this close to me while I’m playing, and I’m about to turn to tell him so when he says, “You’re a tough bloke to track down,” and then leans against my baby grand.

📻 Never Gonna Give You Up [E, 5k] 🖋️ Author: InnerLilith

🎵 Summary: Five times Harry rickrolls Draco, and one time Draco gets him back.

📻 Alone Together [T, 3k] 🖋️ Author: @iero0

🎵 Summary: He felt like a spectre, roaming the treeless grounds, the deserted streets of Hogsmeade. It was only the train station—of course it was, Harry thinks—that harboured another sleepless soul that night. They were found as though they had been looking for one another; freezing to the ground at the sight of an unmistakable silhouette in the distance, before wordlessly meeting on the platform. They stood there, side by side, faces to the sky.

📻 Nothing Left to Burn [E, 5,1] 🖋️ Author: skeptique / @skeptiquewrites​

🎵 Summary: Over ten years after their fling crashed and burned, Harry runs into Draco and finds embers still burning bright. Sometimes your ex-lover is (metaphorically) dead. And sometimes it's summertime in Montreal and the past won't let go.

📻 The Isle of Discussion [E, 21.6k] 🖋️ Author: @shealwaysreads

🎵 Summary: Harry and Draco arrive at the shores of Loch Leven to record the magical history of the land. They’re friends now, but up there in the Highlands, amidst the trees and sky and that wild expanse of water their own past is more present than ever; a gap they still can’t bridge. Magic illuminates the truth, but it is Harry and Draco who have to speak it. Happily, it turns out that honesty is, in fact, the best policy.

📻 (You Should Have Been My) High School Lover [T, 3.9k] 🖋️ Authort: @aprofessionalprotagonist

🎵 Summary: After years of carefully avoiding running into Harry Potter, Pansy tricks Draco into attending a party at Grimmauld Place. How is he supposed to deal with a very attractive Potter trying to talk to him?

📻 Both Hands [E, 10.4] 🖋️ Author: @sweet-s0rr0w

🎵 Summary: It’s been over a decade since Draco packed up his belongings and left, and Harry’s doing just fine. Really, he is. So when he spots the For Sale sign outside their old flat, he doesn’t think twice about arranging a viewing. Curiosity is only natural, right? And what harm can come from a quick trip down memory lane?

📻 His favourite piece of art [E, 1.3k] 🖋️ Author: @gnarf

🎵 Summary: Six years after Malfoy had left, Harry suddenly spotted him on the dancefloor of a Muggle club in London. He couldn't let this opportunity slip…

📻 I'll Try to Keep the Walls From Falling Down [M, 14.9k] 🖋️ Author: @drarrelie

🎵 Summary: It’s OK. Love is only meant for some; Harry knows that. Besides, he wouldn’t want to risk this new, amazing friendship he has going on with Draco for anything in the world. Keeping his walls from falling down is the least he can do.

📻 Learn to Fly [T, 11k] 🖋️ Author: @janieohio

🎵 Summary: Harry’s suffocating under all the expectations of the wizarding world, but he’s fascinated at Malfoy’s sudden ability to flaunt his true self to whoever cares to watch. And Harry? He might like to do something more than watch if he can ever get up the nerve.

📻 Restless Dreams (Stay With Me) [T, 5.5k] 🖋️ Author: wanderingeyre

🎵 Summary: At first, Draco thinks the common room is empty, but then he sees Potter sitting on the floor, back to the wall on the far side of the fireplace. His head is thrown back, exposing the brown column of his throat. The curl of his hair looks soft in the firelight. Potter’s glasses are off and there are tracks where tears have wet his cheeks. He looks naked in a way that stabs at Draco, right between the ribs where everything is already bruised.

📻 Letters From Home [T, 1.1k] 🖋️ Author: @articcat621

 🎵 Summary: Writing to each other is all that's getting them through this war.

📻 so lie to me tonight [T, 5.3k] 🖋️ Author: M0stlyVoid / @bonesliketambourines

🎵 Summary: Ginny thought it would be different, after.

📻 Mortal Frame [M, 6.6k] 🖋️ Author: tackytiger / @tackytigerfic

🎵 Summary: Draco’s on a mission, and this time it's personal. But it's not easy to track down something that no one wants to talk about, especially when Harry Potter keeps popping up everywhere Draco goes. Though at least he’s on Draco’s side this time, and if he happens to be useful, and kind, and great in bed—well, Draco’s not exactly complaining. The story of three pubs, one Horcrux, four overpriced sandwiches, and two damaged men just trying to make sure that Bellatrix Lestrange stays dead.

📻 Prologue [T, 4.5k] 🖋️ Author: adavison / @aedwritesfic

🎵 Summary: Ten years after the war, Harry stumbles across Malfoy in a Muggle club. What could have been an awkward encounter might just be a new beginning.

📻 A Care To Fill The Vessel Of Your Heart [M, 2.5k] 🖋️ Author: @onbeinganangel

🎵 Summary: Draco doesn’t care for atonement. Why should he? Forgetting is easier than forgiving. Or it would be, if fate just left him to his own devices. Fate, as per usual, has its own plans.

📻 Like a Dream I Can Reach (but not quite hold) [M, 19.4k] 🖋️ Author: Cassiara / @cassiaratheslytherpuff

🎵 Summary: Harry spends his life waiting for something he isn’t entirely sure he wants, and looking for something he doesn’t know exists. Everything feels ill-fitting until Draco Malfoy enters his life and shows Harry he doesn’t have to want the expected things, and Harry learns happiness doesn't have to look a certain way.

📻 Sun and Rain [M, 4.7k]

🖋️ Author: @isamijoo 

🎵 Summary: Draco Malfoy thinks that being in a relationship with Harry Potter is anything but easy, but then again, what's the sun without the rain?

📻 In Pursuit of Lost Marbles [T, 22k] 🖋️ Author:  Theartfulldodger / @graymatters 

🎵 Summary: Every night after work, Healer Malfoy follows the same routine, beginning with a familiar flight of stairs that leads to the Janus Thickey Ward at St. Mungo's. With an air of professionalism, he introduces himself to Harry, his husband of seven years, when a memory curse makes Harry look at him like a stranger. He tries not to flinch when Harry calls him sir, but he smiles when bits of the old Harry emerge. Eventually, Draco leads Harry to the Pensieve where he shows him pieces of the life they've built together, what Harry will come home to, one day, when this is all over. Then, Draco waits. He waits, and he hopes.

📻 Requiem [T, 1.8k] 🖋️ Author: EvAEleanor / @evaeleanor

🎵 Summary: Requiem — A song of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person.

📻 Changes With The Moon [Gen, 1.6k] 🖋️ Author: @missdrarrydawn

🎵 Summary: Draco takes a stroll to try to settle his turbulent thoughts, plagued by who he was, who he is and who he could be. A friend offers him a whole new world and Draco struggles with the idea, for there is too much at stake, it isn't worth it. Or—is it?

📻 Chasing Dragons [E, 89.9k] 🖋️ Author: The_Sinking_Ship / @the-sinking-ship

🎵 Summary: Draco can think of only one way to outclass his pleat-front-khaki-wearing politician ex, and that’s by making headlines with an obvious upgrade. And who better to upstage the cheating bastard than the Saviour of the World, Harry Potter himself? Sure, Potter is a little rough around the edges in ripped jeans, a rumpled tartan shirt, and a permanent scowl. Draco reckons a haircut and a shave wouldn’t hurt, either. But Potter is also in need of a Healer willing to keep his secrets, and Draco is just the man for the job. It’s a perfectly reasonable exchange. They need only attend a couple parties arm-in-arm, smile nicely for the paparazzi, and tolerate each other long enough to convince everyone they’re smitten. In return, Draco will keep Potter alive and in one piece. But it isn’t long before Draco realises he might be in over his head, because Potter is ten tonnes of trouble packed into a leather jacket, and seems keen on hurtling himself towards death on the back of a flying motorbike. And that says nothing of Potter’s penchant for fire-breathing beasts and things that bite. Ah well, at least they’ll have some fun while it lasts. After all, Draco always did like a bit of danger.

📻 Drive, Draco [M, 2.4k] 🖋️ Author: Erebeus / @erebeus-roxy

🎵 Summary: got my driver’s license today, but you're not around to see. Can't drive past the places we used to go to 'Cause I still fuckin' love you, babe

📻 Fire [E, 10k] 🖋️ Author: GallifreyisBurning / @gallifrey1sburning

🎵 Summary: Draco Malfoy has never had trouble getting boyfriends. The problem is getting one that doesn’t leave him feeling cold after the first few months. He’s looking for something specific: passion, excitement, someone to keep him on his toes. He just doesn’t know how to go about finding it. After kicking his latest boyfriend to the curb, Draco’s at a loss for what to do next, until it occurs to him that a relationship with his fiery (and hot) Gryffindor colleague might not burn out so quickly—if he can just convince Harry to try it.

📻 Into the Unknown [M, 4.5k] 🖋️ Author: @drarrelie

🎵 Summary: It’s been echoing within him for months, like an annoying song that gets stuck in your head and refuses to let go. A nagging feeling in his core, telling him to say something, to do something, to go somewhere. Last night it finally happened. He did it. And it felt good; right. “I can’t be sure.” Four words, easy as that. It had been almost impossible to smother the sudden burst of joy rushing through him as that deep-seated urge rejoiced his unexpected act of rebellion. You’d think the Dark Lord’s punishment would’ve taken the exhilaration out of him, but no. Here he is, countless Crucios later, beaten and bruised, and never has the voice sounded this clear. He’s said something. He’s done something. And now he just has to go somewhere. He has no idea where, but he’s certain it will come to him. All he has to do is get out of here, then trust magic to do the rest.

📻 Home is What We Make of It [M, 20.3k] 🖋️ Author: @monsieur-hadrien

🎵 Summary: "There was a blistering draft from the child’s bedroom on the opposite side of the hallway. The door’s handle was icy to the touch as she wrapped her hand around the metal. Unlike the rest of the house, the door gave her resistance in her effort to open it. Unlike the rest of the house, when she opened the door, she couldn’t imagine anyone ever living there. Unlike the rest of the house, there was neither love nor warmth nor any semblance of life that seeped from the rest of the house’s walls. It was cold and hard and chilled her to her bones. She shivered. However, her sense of dread was not just from the cold. Perhaps it was the gaping hole in the wall." Harry and Draco want to start a family, but time loves parallels.

📻 Move, move [M, 9k] 🖋️ Author: @maesterchill

🎵 Summary: She grabbed Harry’s hand, slipping something small into it and pressing his fingers around it. “Dilectio. It’ll cheer you up. Make you feel like dancing.” Harry gaped at her. Drugs. Ginny’s fucking giving me drugs? At Stasis nightclub Ginny does indeed give Harry drugs. But it's all good: Malfoy looks after Harry, and Harry grapples with newfound enlightenments, not to mention a newfound fascination with all things Malfoy—one which persists, even when he finds out what Malfoy's up to.

📻 Euphoria [E, 66k] 🖋️ Author: @iero0

🎵 Summary: Driven by trauma, Harry cuts ties with friends and family. From crowded nightclubs and enthralling live shows, Harry finds himself stumbling into a superficial world where he's lonelier than ever. When even the constant blithe of substance-induced highs can't prevent things from becoming what he ran away from, Draco Malfoy finds Harry. Draco, who’s wearing Muggle jeans and who’s listening to Muggle music and who suggests having a nice little chat on mephedrone. And whose nose crumples beautifully when he laughs. Or: A story about Harry trying to cope with the help of drugs until he finds a new addiction. Draco likes to mend things.

📻 Your House [E, 2.9k] 🖋️ Author: @tontonguetonks

🎵 Summary: Draco tries to serve Harry divorce papers, but Harry isn't home.

📻 Misery Loves Company [E, 22.9k] 🖋️ Author: vivi1138 / @penguinanimagus

🎵 Summary: Stuck in his own head, misunderstood and lonely, Harry would love nothing more than to stay hidden in Grimmauld Place until the end of time. Malfoy won’t let him, and that's just what Harry needs.

📻 You Sexy Thing [E, 10.6k] 🖋️ Author: shortie990

🎵 Summary: As Harry began to tap his foot along to the music, the lights flashed like lightning in the middle of a summer storm, and his eye went straight to the middle of the dance floor. His eyes zoomed in on Draco. The blond looked striking as he moved his slender hips to the soulful beat. Harry watched, captivated as he pressed himself up to Pansy and began to sing to the song.

📻 A Love Story of Less-Than-Epic Proportions [E, 39k] 🖋️ Author: InnerLilith

🎵 Summary: Harry and Draco are just friends. Sure, they work together, and live together, and go to gigs together, and do pretty much everything else together—so what? That’s just what friends do. And Harry has no interest in messing with their friendship. He certainly doesn’t need everyone else constantly meddling, pestering them to just get on with it and get together already. He’s having a hard enough time as it is, trying to come to terms with the fact that he probably isn’t ever going to find love. But who needs love, anyways, when you’ve got a best friend?

📻 Cup of tea, Love? [E, 15.1k] 🖋️ Author: shushu_yaoi_lj / @orange-peony 

🎵 Summary: Things between them are easy, so much easier than Harry expected. The problem is the outside world, which grows increasingly and ridiculously difficult. “We could leave,” Draco suggests. Harry has always wanted to travel.

📻 holemate [E, 18.9k] 🖋️ Author:  @vukovich

🎵 Summary: 'Cause I'm sick of losing soulmates So where do we begin? I can finally see you're as fucked up as me So how do we win?

📻 Home is Wherever I’m With You [Gen, 2.6k] 🖋️ Author: persephoneapple

🎵 Summary: Harry plans on proposing to Draco tonight, but it takes a Prophet article and a conversation between Draco and Pansy to realise how much Draco means to him.

📻 When the remembering is done [E, 24.8k] 🖋️ Author: Sassy3 / @sassy-sassy3

🎵 Summary: “–and we’ll make sure that you can stay at home as long as possible before it will be too hard to manage,” Potter finished. Draco could only blink, trying to make sense of the words he had heard before and after he zoned out. He cleared his throat before speaking. “I’m sorry, Potter. Why wouldn’t she be able to live at home?” Draco Malfoy leads a quiet life. Sure, he doesn’t really like his job, and he never imagined he’d have to move back in with his parents at the manor, but at least he has his lovely son Scorpius to dote on. The only problem is that it gets… a bit lonely. But when his mother starts behaving strange and forgetful, he finds himself in need of help from the one person he never reconciled with after the war.

📻 If you smile at me again, I may do something stupid [M, 6.9k] 🖋️ Author: @emilattes

🎵 Summary: Draco made his peace with Harry Potter and their failed relationship two years ago. He's happy with his new boyfriend, but when Harry becomes the man Draco needed him to be, he finds it's much harder to ignore their history.

📻 smoke break [E, 4.3k] 🖋️ Author: saltwatergarden / @talkingtravesties

🎵 Summary: The first few times, they hovered a bit; Draco offered wine and they sat there and sipped and made small talk, until finally Potter would snap and say, “this is stupid,” and reach out to pull Draco into a kiss. After a while, they fell into a rhythm. Sometimes Potter would be in a rush, and he’d just throw himself at Draco the second he was through the door. Other times, he seemed intent on torturing Draco with his slow and teasing kisses. Potter rarely stayed the night, typically Flooing home after they were done, and they never went out, or, for that matter, met at Potter’s place. Draco was very aware of what he was to Potter—a convenience—and despite his pride, he accepted it, because he knew it was the most he was ever going to get from Potter, and far more than he deserved.

📻 4th Day of the New Show [M, 6.2k] 🖋️ Author: @meandminniemcg

🎵 Summary: Lucius, freshly released from Azkaban, shows up at Draco's show. And Harry has been nervous all day. How does Draco handle the situation?

📻 I Want More? [E, 10.7k] 🖋️ Author: @drarryismymuse

🎵 Summary: Draco had successfully avoided British wizarding society for eight years, until necessity drove him to attend a swanky Ministry event. A chance encounter at that event sparks a passionate affair that just might change the course of Draco’s entire life.

📻 Until It All Comes Undone [E, 38.5k] 🖋️ Author: @mystickitten42 

🎵 Summary: Following his confrontation with Voldemort, Harry returns from King’s Cross Station completely changed. He wakes up at Privet Drive with no memory of his past, the war or magic. Petunia, widowed and suffering from empty nest syndrome, is only too happy to turn Harry into Dudley 2.0. But something’s not quite right. Plagued by recurring nightmares, Harry can’t help but feel something is missing. A bottle of his cousin’s LSD helps him to forget his worries… Magic may not be real, but the hallucinations and the hot blond he meets all feel pretty magical to Harry. Having turned his back on his family, Draco is determined to start over and do the right thing. But he’s never made good decisions when it comes to Harry Potter. When Potter—presumed dead, but very much alive—unexpectedly returns, Draco will do anything for a second chance. Even if it means pretending not to know who he is…

📻 When the Day Met the Night [M, 5.7k] 🖋️ Author: Albuss

🎵 Summary: When the day met the night, all was golden in the sky. In the middle of summer. The Battle of Hogwarts is through, and Harry, somehow, isn't. Draco isn't either. In rebellion against all they have endured, the two embark on a summer of adventure, seeking an ember of hope in the darkness. What they find is unforgettable.

📻 Born to Drown [M, 3.2k] 🖋️ Author: @floydig

🎵 Summary: Draco drives a Knight Bus in the slums of Paris. Sometimes his passengers remind him of Harry. But Harry left years ago. Now, Harry is married to Ginny, and Draco drives a bus. You laugh. “Sorry, I don't know why I’m laughing. It’s really not funny—your dad being dead and shrivelled.” “Fuck off.” I turn to face you. Your eyes are red, your pupils almost blown. Your skin is grey-tinged and sallow, and you're not the one who’s dead. “Merlin, Potter,” I say, hoarse. “How much bloody Dreamless did you shoot up this time?” “Enough for me to live.” You grin wide. “You want me to be alive, don’t you?” Your raw-bitten lips, your chipped teeth, your fucking mouth. I hate all of them, but really I don’t.

📻 Stop And Stare [T, 36.5k] 🖋️ Author: devilishcries

🎵 Summary: After surviving your everyday war-torn childhood, Harry had found a constant rhythm to his life. The thing is, he didn't quite like it. It was repetitive, dull, and he badly wanted to switch it up. So, when he stumbled upon Draco Malfoy on the verge of committing arson in a muggle library, he proposed a deal neither could refuse. (Well, Malfoy was desperately trying to refuse it. But that wasn't the point!) What he failed to factor in was how pretty Malfoy's hands were. One thing led to another, and suddenly, he was obsessed with the idea of holding them.

📻 Wicked Game [E, 20.9k] 🖋️ Author: @cassiopeiasshadow

🎵 Summary: Harry and Draco fall into a spring that allows them to enter into each other’s dreams - but Harry doesn’t quite understand what’s happening, not at first. Why does he keep seeing Draco having kinky sex with a dream version of Harry? And furthermore, why does he like it? Morpheus’ tail twitched irritably. “I warned you away from the poppies. The blame lies with you.” “Me? Potter’s to blame for this, he’s the one who dragged me out to this miserable -” “You would do well not to insult the home of those whom you ask for help,” said Morpheus coolly, though Harry saw a bit of detached amusement in his expression. Malfoy had no self awareness. It’s adorable how stupid he is, Harry thought, and then caught himself thinking Malfoy was adorable and became deeply troubled. “I’m…” Malfoy closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. “Sorry. Please - I need advice. I can’t keep him out of my dreams.”

📻 Dedication and Desperation [T, 6.1k] 🖋️ Author: meditationsinemergencies / @meditationswrites

🎵 Summary: Diagnosed with a rare and serious illness, Draco has mostly given up until Harry comes to visit.

📻 Famous [E, 23.9k] 🖋️ Author: fwooshy / @fw00shy

🎵 Summary: It's a couple of years after the war, and Harry's bored of models now, the same way he's bored of Ron's constant nagging, bored of his Weasley monogram knitwear, bored of the same fucking grin that greets him when he hands his fire-truck red Bugatti over to the valet every night. He wants to find—well, he isn't sure what he wants. Anything but models. Harry is in the mood for...messy. And Draco Malfoy's looking like a walking disaster in the making.

📻 stitched and sewn [E, 7.9k] 🖋️ Author: @wheezykat

🎵 Summary: Harry shudders, fingertips pulsing against Draco’s thighs. He can feel the sharp, metal edge of Harry’s wedding band digging into his flesh, knows he’ll have a bruise there in the morning, a small imperfection that only he’d be able to see. It’s one of the only marks he’ll vanish, not wanting to think about its implications; the rest he’ll keep for himself. Slowly, Harry relaxes, shoulders sinking, breaths changing their cadence to a new tempo. Resigned, surrendered to this dance they do.

📻 Watch the Castles Burn [E, 21.3k] 🖋️ Author: @moonflower-rose

🎵 Summary: Draco Malfoy knows better than to get involved with Harry Potter. If only someone would have reminded him of that six months sooner, then maybe he wouldn't be in quite such a large mess.

🎶 H/D Wireless Podfic 🎶

📻 Modern Love [E, 61k, 5h29m] 🎙️ Podficcer: @lastontheboat 🖋️ Author: tackytiger

🎵 tackytiger’s original summary: Harry Potter, of all people, knows that life isn’t always fair. And no one gets to be happy all of the time. But surely there’s something more—something better—than a rubbish Ministry job, and a lonely old house, and that feeling that everyone out there is doing a better job of living than Harry is. And it really doesn’t seem fair that Draco Malfoy is back in Harry’s life, all of a sudden, and even though he’s wandless, and living with Muggles, and making his mother cry with his lifestyle choices, he’s happy. So what’s he doing right, that Harry isn’t? Because things don’t really change, do they? And if Harry can’t be happy, he’ll settle for a good night’s sleep, some posh antiques, and the opportunity to find out what Malfoy has been up to for all these years. And that’s what starts it all.

📻 [Podfic] How Can I Live Without You? [Gen, 2.2k, 15min 29sec] 🎙️ Podficcer: Static_Whisper 🖋️ Author: ununquadius

🎵 ununquadius’ original summary: After Draco's death, Harry wonders how can he live without the one he loves when he's so far away.

📻 [Podfic] Keep Holding On [M, 33.3k, 3hrs 37min] 🎙️ Podficcer: @thunder-of-dragons 🖋️ Author: gnarf

🎵 gnarf’s original summary: After the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry and Draco both fall into their own battles with their mental states. Draco is sent to Azkaban, and Harry turns to drinking, hoping to forget. Months later, Harry visits St Mungo’s new ward on the request of a friend, only to find Draco in a deep vegetative state. Not willing to give him up, Harry stays by his side, while simultaneously dealing with the Ministry's newest grand idea to make everything worse. Making new allies, and losing old ones along the way, will hopefully be worth it in the end.

📻 [Podfic] Kill, Fuck, Marry [E, 12.7k, 1:27:55] 🎙️ Podficcer: @timothysboxers  🖋️ Author: lettersbyelise 

🎵 lettersbyelise’s original summary: Malfoy leans toward him with a baleful look. “I do believe Pansy Parkinson, my best friend, paid you to spend the evening with me. It’s my birthday, Potter. So you’re going to get off your Gryffindor arse, and you’re going to dance with me. I want to dance. I want to win. I want that bloody trophy on my shelf before the end of the night.” Harry and Draco unexpectedly meet again on Draco’s birthday, years after their last encounter.

📻 [Podfic] You Still Look Like a Movie / You Still Sound Like a Song [T, 3.2k, 19:43 min] 🎙️ Podficcer: bluedreaming / @blue--dreaming 🖋️ Author: shilo1364

🎵 shilo1364’s original summary: Harry Potter doesn't want to attend his ten-year Hogwarts Reunion Ball. He doesn't want to dance. And he *definitely* doesn't want to remember his former lover, Draco Malfoy. Of course, his life has never really been dictated by what he wants.

[wolfstar-in-color]

July Colorful Column: Remus is a Crip, and We Can Write Him Better.

There is one thing that can get me to close a fic so voraciously I don’t even make sure I’m not closing other essential tabs in the process. It doesn’t matter how much I’m loving the fic, how well written I think it is, or how desperately I want to know how it ends. Once I read this sentence, I am done.

It’s written in a variety of different ways, but it always goes something like this: “You don’t want me,” Remus said, “I am too sick/broken/poor/old/[insert chosen self-demeaning adjective here].”

You’re familiar with the trope. The trope is canonical. And if you’ve been around the wolfstar fandom for longer than a few minutes, you’ve read the trope. Maybe you love the trope! Maybe you’ve written the trope! Maybe you’re about to stop reading this column, because the trope rings true to you and you feel a little attacked!

Now, let’s get one thing out of the way right now: I am not saying the trope is wrong. I am not saying it’s bad. I am not saying we should stop writing it. We all have things we don’t like to see in our chosen fics. Maybe you can’t stand Leather Jacket Motorbike Sirius? Maybe you think Elbow Patch Remus is overdone? Or maybe your pet peeves are based in something a little deeper - maybe you think Poor Latino Remus is an irresponsible depiction, or that PWPs are too reductive? Whatever it is, we all have our things.

Let me tell you about my thing. When I first became very ill several years ago, there were various low points in which I felt I had become inherently unlovable. This is, more or less, a normal reaction. When your body stops doing things it used to be able to do - or starts doing things you were quite alright without, thank you very much - it changes the way you relate to your body. You don’t want to hear my whole disability history, so yada yada yada, most people eventually come to accept their limitations. It’s a very painful existence, one in which you constantly tell yourself your disability has transformed you into a burdensome, unworthy member of society, and if nothing else, it’s not terribly sustainable. Being disabled takes grit! It takes power! It takes a truly absurd amount of medical self-advocacy! Hating yourself? Thinking yourself unworthy of love? No one has time for that. 

Of course, I’m being hyperbolic. Plenty of disabled people struggle with these feelings many years into their disabilities, and never really get over them. But here’s the thing. We experience those stories ALL THE TIME. Remember Rain Man? Or Million Dollar Baby? Or that one with the actress from Game of Thrones and that British actor who seemed like he was going to have a promising career but then didn't? Those are all stories about sad, bitter disabled people and their sad, bitter lives, two out of three of which end in the character completing suicide because they simply couldn’t imagine having to live as a disabled person. (I mean, come on media, I get that we're less likely to enjoy a leisurely Saturday hike, but our parking is SUBLIME.) When was the last time you engaged with media that depicted a happy disabled person? A complex disabled person? A disabled person who has sex? No really, these aren’t hypothetical questions, can you please drop a rec in the notes?? Because I am desperate.

There are lots of problems with this trope, and they’ve been discussed ad nauseam by people with PhDs. I’m not actually interested in talking about how this trope leads to a more prevalent societal idea that disabled people are unworthy of love, or contributes to the kind of political thought processes that keep disabled people purposefully disenfranchised. I’m just a bitch on Tumblr, and I have a bone to pick: the thing I really hate about the trope? It’s boring. I’m bored. You know how, like, halfway through Grey’s Anatomy you realized they were just recycling the same plot points over and over again and there was just no WAY anyone working at a hospital prone to THAT MANY disasters would stay on staff? It's like that. I love a recycled trope as much as the next person (There Was Only One Bed, anyone?). But I need. Something. Else.

Remus is disabled. BOLD claim. WILD speculation. Except, not really. You simply - no matter how you flip it, slice it, puree it, or deconstruct it - cannot tell me Remus Lupin is not disabled. Most of us, by this point, are probably familiar with the way that One Canonical Author intended One Dashing Werewolf to be “a metaphor for those illnesses that carry stigma, like HIV and AIDS” [I’m sorry to link you to an outside source quoting She Who Must Not Be Named, but we’re professionals here]. Which is... a thing. It’s been discussed. And, listen, there’s no denying that this parallel is a problematic interpretation of people who have HIV/AIDS and all such similar “those illnesses” (though I’ll admit that I, too, am perennially apt to turn into a raging beast liable to harm anything that crosses my path, but that’s more linked to the at-least-once-monthly recollection that One Day At A Time got cancelled). Critiques aside, Remus Lupin is a character who - due to a condition that affects him physically, mentally, emotionally, and intellectually - is repeatedly marginalized, oppressed, denied political and social power, and ostracized due to unfounded fear that he is infectious to others. Does that sound familiar?

We’re not going to argue about whether or not “Remus is canonically disabled as fuck” is a fair reading. And the reason we’re not going to argue about whether or not it’s a fair reading is because I haven’t read canon in 10-plus years and you will win the argument. Canon is only marginally relevant here. The icon of this blog is brown, curly haired Remus Lupin kissing his trans boyfriend, Sirius Black. We are obviously not too terribly invested in canon. The wolfstar fandom is now a community with over 25,000 AO3 fics, entire careers launched from drawing or writing or cosplaying this non-canonical pairing. We love to play around here with storylines and universes and races and genders and sexualities and all kinds of things, but most of the time? Remus is still disabled. He’s disabled as a werewolf in canon-compliant works, he’s disabled in the AUs where he was injured or abused or kidnapped or harmed as a child, he’s disabled in the stories that read him as chronically ill or bipolar or traumatized or blind or Deaf. I’d go so far as to say that he is one of very few characters in the Wide Wonderful World of media who is, in as close to his essence as one can be, always disabled. And that means? Don’t shoot the messenger... but we could stand to be a tiny bit more responsible with how we portray him. 

Disabled people are complicated. As much as I’d like to pretend we are always level-headed, confident, and ready to assert our inherent worth, we are still just humans. We have bad days. We doubt our worth. We sometimes go out with guys who complain about our steroid-induced weight gain (it was a long time ago, Tumblr, okay??). But, we also have joy and fun and good days and sex and happiness and families and so many other things. 

Remus is a disabled character, and as such, it’s only fair that he’d have those unworthy moments. But - I propose - Remus is also a crip. What is a crip? A crip - like a queer - is someone who eschews the limited boundaries placed on their bodies, who rejects a hierarchy of oppression in favor of an intersectional analysis of lived experience, who isn’t interested in being the tragic figure responsible for helping people with dominant identities realize how good they have it. Crips interpret their disabilities however they want, rethinking bodies and medicine and pleasure and pain and even time itself. Crips are political, community-minded, and in search of liberation. 

Remus is a character who struggles with his disability, sure. But he’s also a character who leverages his physical condition to attempt to shift communities towards his political leanings, advocates for the rights of those who share his physical condition, and has super hot sex with his wrongfully convicted boyfriend ultimately goes on to build community and family. Having a condition that quite literally cripples you, over which you have no control, and through which you are often read as a social pariah? That’s disability. But using said condition as a means through which to build advocacy and community? Now that’s some crip shit. 

Personally, I love disabled!Remus Lupin. But I love crip!Remus Lupin even more. I’d love to see more of a Remus who owns his disability, who covets what makes him unique, and who never ever again tells a potential romantic partner they are too good for him because of his disability. This trope - unlike There Was Only One Bed! - sometimes actually hurts to read. Where’s Remus who thinks a potential romantic partner isn’t good enough for him? Where’s Remus who insists his partners learn more about his condition in order to treat him properly? Where’s sexy wheelchair user Remus? Where’s Remus who uses his werewolf transformations as an excuse to travel the world? Where’s crip Remus??

We don’t have to put “you don’t want me” Remus entirely to bed. It is but one of many repeated tropes that are - in the words of The Hot Priest from Fleabag - morally a bit dubious. And let’s face it - we don’t always come to fandom for its moral superiority (as much as we sometimes like to think we do). 

This is not a condemnation - it is an invitation. Able-bodied folks are all but an injury, illness, or couple decades away from being disabled. And when you get here, I sincerely hope you don’t waste your time on “you don’t want me”ing back and forth with the people you love. I’m inviting you to come to the crip side now. We have snacks, and without all the “you don’t want me” talk, we get to the juicy parts much faster. 

Colorfully,

Mod Theo

[rumblelibrary]

The Diary of Doctor Laszlo Kreizler

Chapter 1

Synopsis: Alienist’s notes are private, sometimes gruesome, secrets of others and of himself.Those pages belongs to secrecy and decadence, have a glimpse to this world made of drafts, notes, accidents and reflections. Or maybe it is you the only person that should ever reach for it.

While you read this imagine Laszlo mostly at the end of his day, scraping the ideas and the thoughts, adjusting previous notes with additions, closing the day behind himself with a couple of sentences while sitting in his evening robe, a good glass of whiskey and his glasses bridged almost at the tip of his nose. Or maybe imagine yourself, you sneaky thing, reach for it from a far shelf.

Word count: 3k

Warnings: listen, this is the set of ideas and confessions of a man living in the 1890’s. Most of them will be outdated, rough, even deprecating in some analysis of the roles of men, women and social status, religion, etc.So be prepared, my point is to make Laszlo reflect upon those topics, but to be as faithful as I can to his time. Mention of death, mutilation, self harm and a minor depiction of a fight. Psychologically troubled young children ahead! Author’s note: I am a nerd for a good Victorian novel and a sexy Alienist.I have always been charmed by Laszlo’s mind and inner conflicts. So I took the chance and tried to have a run into that rollercoaster.  The story is placed between season 1 and season 2.

Diary belonging to Dr. Laszlo Kreizler.  This is a professional book of annotations over medical treatments of an alienist toward his patients. Do not disclose and send it back to the address if found: Kreizler’s Institute, xxxxxx, New York City (NY) L.K.

Samuel Griswold Goodrich, Illustrated Natural History of the Animal Kingdom (c1859). Contributed for digitization by University Library, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Schiller in his “Die Weltweisen” wrote: So long as philosophy keeps together the structure of the Universe so long does it maintain the world’s machinery by hunger and love. From the philosopher point of view sexual life takes a subordinate position in human’s life, from recent studies pushed by European philosophers, everything is about sexuality and its development. I like to think of the experience of being an alienist as the process of Queen Penelope that, while waiting for her husband Ulysses return, undoes her craftwork every night. I undo the fabulous constructs of people’s beliefs to go back to the rough sketch that stands at the beginning of their loss, their complex, their pain. Maybe that’s why working with children is so motivating and fascinating. They can be saved and yet, I am well aware, some of those sketches already traced in their young lives equal to scars that not even the most advanced theories could cure. But I can sooth them. I can prevent them the torment, the anguish, the recollection at night of those monsters. I feel like a poet would be a better alienist than a philosopher, but I have got no poetry nor philosophy in my veins, but the cold experience of the razor blade judgment of Life itself.

Today I observed a fight among the children at the Institute. Age range between 10 and 12. Boys. The fight was over the possession of a side of the playground, the territory of a pack  of youngsters formed under the name of Steven. Peculiar lad, coming from a military background finds comfort in replicating the schemes he lived in his family. He takes the role of the Father/Captain of the team and subjects children that come from a similar background story, but do not posses his same attitude to the command. All quiet on the front, until the space he declared is own spot got affected by the presence of others.  Intruders. I knowingly let the events unfold to see how Steven would react to his challenged authority. His reaction was, at first, worded, a sketch, a stage-play of an action he witnessed over and over, and he knew the part so well that some of the contending kids lowered their stance against him. Among considering to mildly intervene into this pyramid scheme of authority, another boy, Jan, calls himself on the role of the educator and hero of the masses and proceeds to unfold a wild and well assessed punch on the newly declared dictator face. Balance is established again. No need for me to arbitrate, once more the laws of nature seem to apply to children as in a state of nature.

Meet John Moore over lunch. His job at the newspaper is picking up, he is charmed by the spirits and the wits that he finds in his shared office with all the other writers. He mentions many, goes on and on over qualities and troubles, gossips and tendencies, and even little scandals here and there. To be aware of all those details gives me no interest, but to see a dear friend so invested clearly gives me something to pick up. To consider also the amount of details and the way he describes this or that member of the journal, I can do a small exercise of analysis. It is almost too easy because John is painfully genuine, even some of the kids at the institute would beat him hands down in a battle of lies. The more he likes somebody, the more he goes on about all the details and the characteristics, often letting aside the physical appearance. When he doesn’t like somebody he has a couple of adjectives for the wits and around four or five for the physical aspects that usually indulge on some repulsive idiosyncrasies.  John is a man that painfully fits in the storyline of The Picture of Dorian Gray: to him physical beauty is spiritual beauty and, of course, the other way around. This part of him surely intrigues me, makes me want to tease more from him. But, as a friend, it concerns me as John is way too prone to purposelessly decide that somebody with good eyes is also a good human being, which is a very romantic and admirably naive way of judging matters. I noticed some names that keep repeating in his narration. I dread that it is synonymous of a soon encounter from my side with the objects of his admiration. Fetiches, I dare to say, that I will have to annihilate before they sediment into his mind, perpetuating a narration that soon sees John being mislead by others.

Reserved: Tickets for the Eroica, Symphony n. 3 by Ludwig van Beethoven. Thursday evening.

Note on the show: the first movement lacked the pathos needed to begin with, I am not sure that the guest orchestra really managed to portray the wider emotional ground needed to withstand the whole representation. As the evening progressed there were some outstanding performances by the cellists. Still not approving the choice of reprising the early quick finale movement against the lengthy set of variations and fugue that we are used to in presence of the Eroica. Underwhelming the performance of the horn and oboe, vital in the comprehension of the genius of Beethoven. 

Niki is a new addition of the Institute, quite old for the standards. He is already 16, he will leave when summer ends to some expensive college his family meant him to stay. His parents expect me to make him “normal” in the time we are allowed together.  He is Austrian and I let him act it out like I don’t understand German for the first week of hist stay until today. I believe I hit his pride, which is good, in the moment I answered back to one of his sneaky comments. Now he knows. He is not safe from me, he doesn’t like it. The young man has a tendency to danger, risky tasks and edgy situations. In his mother’s own words “Niki is not afraid of anything”. The phrase didn’t raise any excitement in the father, rather some sort of painful acceptance that is role as the alpha male of the house is probably not only being challenged, but  already diminished, if not abolished. I have taken in consideration that Niki will break himself a bone or two in the process of the therapy, probably out of the spite of boredom or rebellion. It took him less than few days to turn himself into an outcast among the outcasts, which only drives me closer to analyse the complexity of his narcissistic wall of self defence. I gave him a physical challenge to lift a certain weight, he is a pretty skinny one, he didn’t like the challenge, but I am sure he will take it. He is a brainy guy, he hates to be questioned on unfamiliar ground. He won’t sleep at night thinking about it.  A challenge, in this first phase, can only bring me closer to the ease of his pains. To continue the observation.

It is a sad privilege of medicine, in particular the one I practice, to be able to witness the weaknesses of the human nature and the reverse side of life. Nevertheless, I oblige this same privilege of the study as life moves into shades of darkness. To be aware of it gives more solace to my soul than to be victim of patiently waiting for the inevitable unfolding of the events. To be able to understand more about psychology would bring more comfort and elevation to any human being, the times might not be there yet, but eventually something will move into the direction of a more wholesome approach.

Dinner meeting with Sara Howard, at the restaurant Jardin Des Cygnes, 7 pm sharp.  Do not expect to reach the dessert. Do not know if John will be participating due to undeniable tension among the two and the fatal despise of John over French cuisine.

The case that Sara unfolded tonight to my ears feels more and more like pulled out from some gothic book or from the mind of a Roman historian that needed to justify the godly origins of an Emperor. One killing, apparently random, a very constructed iconography over the body. Signs and insults, shapes and drawings. Is this a work of art? Does the killer wants his victim to be his Mona Lisa? His David? I am charmed and destabilised. If this was a murder like any other, then why to spend so much time into it? Based on the description the act of killing itself was quick: a sharp cut over the throat, almost like not wanting to ruin too much the surface to use as base for, what? I keep rerunning those symbols over and over as Sara described them to me, my mind is flooded with the designs of greek philosophers that needed to explain themselves why the sky is above our head and never collapses on us. Hilarious how, no matter the science advancement, in the mind of many the sky stands inevitably overt their shoulders, suffocates them, brings them to a death of the soul and not of the body. Is all this graphic charade indeed only a form to scream for attention?  To stress the eyes of an unaware viewer? It seems ridiculously elaborate, a scream for attention would be quick, it would be like guided by instinct, not reasoning, craftwork. Any man with a knife can paint in blood red the walls of a room and that’s asking for attention. That is the primal howl: look at me! I am here! But this one.  I don’t know yet.

Spent the early morning reading anew my copy of The Metamorphosis by Ovid. Didn’t touch it in a long time and I got bedazzled by the world of terrible sensuality, anger and selfishness of those gods and mortals. I think back at all the deviances and weaknesses of human kind and I try to relate it to all of those humanoid figures. Niki would be a minotaur, the lonesome son left in the labyrinth and his strive for success is his bull’s head. Or maybe a centaur, because of his wits and strategic thinking. I might keep up the process, maybe this is the way to understand my patients better, to understand the killer better. Must remember not to romanticise it. Greek gods were probably the first form of self indulging of a society that needed gods to be forgiving and allowing favours and punishments, but only in exchange of sacrifices. But the sacrifice never comes from the God’s will, but from the will of the man that perpetuates the act of killing. To sacrifice someone or something is the sadistic response to a lack of love deeply inherited in human mind that becomes neurotic. Is the killer giving the God of his own neurosis a body to feast upon? 

I talked with Jan this morning. The young boy is about 10, but he acts like a full grown adult. I could easily asses that’s the reason why he could challenge Steven in that fight. Two children mimicking adults situations they know too well. Jan is son of an industrial man, but he is also son of the dialectics of the industrial revolution. He sounds like he swallowed some of those books about working class rights and communism, probably pushed by a resentful surrounding (mother?uncle? the midwife?) over the social role of his father. As much as incredibly smart and lectured, Jan lost most of his early occasions in life by spending a considerable amount of time using his fists. The anger ever present in the young boy always surprises me, he seems to be holding a power, a strength of a full grown man in those tiny arms. Nevertheless, he is already the tallest of the group. He is surely an idealist, which makes him also tragically fragile. His strength mixed with his heart of gold can make him the best of the heroes or the worst of the villains. He apologised for the fight, he specified how he didn’t like the sound of Steven’s voice, more than the sound, the level of pitch.  I can’t stand somebody shouting orders, I just don’t listen anymore. He is so mature even about his own feelings, almost a gentleman in his chivalry toward the weaker children, honest with his open heart and resentful against any form of injustice.  I am not spared by his ways, he would come at me whenever he feels like I was being partial over some of the kids, his sense of justice blinds him and transform a perfectly balanced boy into a ranging animal.

Ordered book, to be delivered around tomorrow evening: Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci by Paul Valéry. Suddenly feeling myself as a gross ignorant in art themes. I always regarded myself aware of the artistic personalities and tendencies of present and past, but this new amount of perceptions over the human figure and the human body leads me to document myself more. I could ask John for advice, but he wouldn’t take things at matter that seriously. I can almost hear him say how I can make gruesome a pleasant topic such as art. I should probably wait to see the body to push any further aesthetic study, but I find myself not being able to stop. I reckon, I can allow myself a vice or two.

Today I saw the body of the killed man, courtesy of the Isaacson's. To be fair, I had underestimated it. In Sara’s descriptions, probably due to her more analytic mind, all the charm of the representation got lost in favour of a less cryptic and reasonable understanding of the act. Sara got what some alienists will call a masculine mind, which I don’t perfectly agree on. If I apply that same approach John would be a very feminine mind, all wrapped up in romanticising even the ugliest. I guess that dividing the world in “fragile and gentle” and “strong and powerful” is just easier to explain the fluctuation of something that doesn’t need a real name or a category like human inclinations on thoughts.  I got a feverish sense of patience by looking at the body. Each symbol traced with sapient slowness, dense of the time that the killer spent with the body. That is a work of hours, he had time and meaning. He had resources and was able to spend not less than the time he needed to reach, a vision? An ideal? A message? Is it the message meant to be understood? Am I supposed to unravel it or it is maybe just the way the killer communicates within himself? And if I do decifrate the code, will that bring me closer to him? Or to his next victim?

Reminder: ask John to replicate all the symbols on the bodies in the correct measure and order. It might be needed some hard convincing. Addition: scheduled meeting, his house, 3 pm.

It wasn’t a day like any other when I met you. Or maybe it was, and that’s why I got so struck by it and now I am here playing it over and over through what my memory clung on so desperately. In my own experience, life was often similar to swimming in a lake. Those rich, dense lakes in the north of (illegible cancelled word) were my father used to bring us during summer. I still feel the pull, the draw down toward the abyss. It ashamed me, in a way, the fear that such a simple feeling aroused in my young mind, unaware nevertheless, that such a feeling would follow me through all my existence. It was a prophecy and, like most of the prophecies, was a riddle. I cradle in my heart the charm of those days, the mindless happiness. The foolish feeling of freedom. Little I knew that freedom would be taken away from me that soon, that the body that used to navigate me over the dense waters, helping me to fight the haul toward the unknown, would become my own cage. That day. Today. The day where I met you, the day I was afloat.  The child gasping for air felt the wrench become a gentle push and now he is floating on his back over the scary waters of reality and malice. It gave me relief and it gave me terror, because since that very moment I knew that I would never be able to move on from the sight of you. From the feeling of your eyes lingering on me. From the smile you so easily shone upon me. From the whiff of imported perfume that hit me when you turned on side exploding that swan like neck. And nothing, not even my stern look, could dim that wave of hope that your sole presence washed over me. The abyss roars, calls me to a home of damnation and terror and curses my name and yet you repeated that hell-bound name of mine after me and I felt safe.

John told me so much about you, it feels like I have always known you.

The rope is gone from my neck, the guillotine won’t fall on me, I am spared, I am free.

I have read your latest article, I am thrilled to help with the case.

I am in disbelief.

Your voice.

Dr. Kreizler

How dare you? How dare you to come into my life, to appear, like a vision, mystical, in a way I despised at University when all those theology students talked about the divine. In this very moment I can’t recollect much of what you said, something about the case, about going with John at the obituary. It feels confusing, I feel overstimulated, my memory fails me, I am not sure anymore. I write these few lines and it is passed the hour of the witches and I wish, I demand, to never see you again, because life should never grant hope to a condemned man. 

[the-last-cuddlebender]

I straight up check your profile daily for the southern raiders analysis you’re working on. 👀👀 where IS IT 😩

bRUH I am so excited to drop this analysis you have no idea (It’s creeping up to 22k+ I am gonna cryyyyyyyyyyyy). The only problem is that my TSR analysis and “Moon theory” are so incredibly hard to structure and articulate. I’m happy you’re so excited for it, though!!! Truly, it’s an honor. I’ll give you a taste of my madness and what’s to come, but be warned: it may be a bit hard to follow because TSR (from how I’ve come to understand it) is about the vagueness of beginnings, endings, and cycles, so there isn’t really a starting point for me to begin with. (So it may seem a tad bit like a ramble in some points that I haven’t fleshed out yet/am summarizing for this ask)

This analysis has me on trails like THIS brilliant nonsense, and I am 1000000000% here for it:

Roku: “The spirit's name is Koh, but he is very dangerous. They call him The Face Stealer.”

Katara: “We’re going to find the man who took my mother from me.”...“That’s him. That’s the monster.”

Lion Turtle: “To bend another's energy, your own spirit must be unbendable, or you will be corrupted and destroyed.”

Roku: “When you speak with him, you must be very careful to show no emotion at all. Not the slightest expression, or he will steal your face.”

Hama: “Congratulations, Katara. You’re a bloodbender.”

(If Katara had killed Yon Rha, she would be giving up her identity--her face. Not only would she have become a killer, but she would be killing what made her Katara)

Aang: “Let your anger out, and then let it go. Forgive him.”

Forgive him--approach him for what he is, not the faces your memories or your heart are having him wear. See him for the pathetic man he is in that moment right in front of you.

Aang’s forgiveness is seeing someone for the sum of their parts. It’s judging them and seeing through into their very soul, just like the Firebending Masters saw through Zuko being the Crown Prince and Aang being the Avatar. That meant nothing to the Masters. What did matter to them was who the boys were right there, right then, right in front of them.

“Why should I hold a grudge against you for something you did in a past life? After all, you’re a different person, now. You’ve come to me with a new face.”

But anyways...

If I can give no other take-away from my analysis and moon theory, it’s that Yin and Yang are not two entities; they are three. I think the fandom’s misunderstanding of it may be why the discourse on TSR (and Aang, Katara, and Zuko) is so black and white (pun intended lol). 

“But Yin and Yang are obviously two things. Don’t you know the symbol?” I hear some people already saying.

Wrong, sir.

It has never been just Yin and Yang. Yin and Yang have never existed as just two things.

They are Yin and Yang and Wu Wei.

(Aunt Wu has her name for a reason, and she has the mark of the wise in her hair for a reason, too...AND she is at odds with Sokka in The Fortuneteller for a reason, too!!!...but that’s for the analysis😉)

Balance isn’t good triumphing over evil. Balance is good and evil. Balance is standing on the flow between two opposites--it’s the compliment that connects them. (The koi fish live in an oasis for a reason.)

I’ll explain what Wu Wei is later in the full analysis (like many things in here), but here’s some of my evidences and proofs for the “Yin Yang trio”:

The Tibetan “Wheel of Dharma”

(I’ll also explain the Wheel and Dharma and etc. later because it has everything to do with Koh and the moon) Long story short, the wheel and its spokes are representative of the 8 steps to enlightenment and the cycle of rebirth. 

Look at the hub of the wheel. It’s a swirl made of 3 parts.

It is also a white lotus

Here’s the colored version of the wheel (as an alter):

Recognize the colors?

BLUE, WHITE (or gold, depending), & RED

These are the “THREE TREASURES” OR JEWELS.

They symbolize DHARMA, BUDDHA, & SANGHA respectively. 

KATARA, AANG, & ZUKO

water, air, & fire

T H R E E

Bato: “Ice dodging is a ceremonial test of wisdom, bravery, and trust.

Bato: “The spirits of water bear witness to these marks...”

Why does Bato say spirit(s) plural? The Ocean and the Moon are only two spirits. The Ocean can’t be two things. Right?

WRONG

Yue: “The legends say the Moon was the first waterbender. Our ancestors saw how it pushed and pulled the tides and learned how to do it themselves.”

The Moon--singular. The Tides--plural (push and pull)

Lion Turtle: “In the era before the Avatar, we bent not the elements, but the energy within our senses.”

The moon pushing and pulling the tide is the moon bending the energy of its world. 

Katara finding balance between “being too weak to do it” or “strong enough not to” is her bending the energy within herself.

It’s two solutions written as a question but said as a statement.

Yue: “Our ancestors saw how it pushed and pulled the tides and learned how to do it themselves”

THE SOUTHERN RAIDERS IS ABOUT AANG AND ZUKO LEARNING FROM KATARA. Katara had already learned from Aang and Zuko all leading up to TSR. That was her studying. TSR was her test.

TSR is Zuko’s and Aang’s studying. Sozin’s Comet is their test.

Bato: “For Sokka, the Mark of the Wise. The same mark your father earned. For Katara, the Mark of the Brave. Your courage inspires us. And for Aang, the Mark of the Trusted. You are now an honorary member of the Water Tribe.”

Aang - Wise (”you’re pretty wise for a kid”)

Katara - Brave (the same mark her mother earned)

Zuko - Trusted (”I was the first person to trust you”)

Sokka - Bato ("I am to have no part in this--you pass or fail on your own.”)

Yin and Yang are nothing without their dance. The Avatar and the Firelord mean nothing if they don’t have a world to rebuild.

The valley means nothing if there isn’t anyone to live in it.

Fighting is useless if there isn’t someone to fight for, otherwise it is “selfish and stupid”

Katara had to have a reason to return from Yon Rha. She needed to have Aang waiting for her. If she didn’t have a reason to stay, then she wouldn’t have a reason to go.

To have a reason to sleep, a person has to have a reason to wake up.

Katara: “Aang. He just took his glider and disappeared. He has this ridiculous notion that he has to save the world alone; that it's all his responsibility.”

Hakoda: “Maybe that's his way of being brave.”

(Bato: “For Katara, the Mark of the Brave. Your courage inspires us.”)

Katara: “It's not brave! It's selfish and stupid! We could be helping him! And I know the world needs him, but doesn't he know how much we need him, too? How can he just leave us behind?!”

(It was, in fact, not easy for Aang to ‘do nothing’)

Katara: “I understand why you left. I really do, and I know that you had to go, so why do I still feel this way? I'm so sad and angry...and hurt.”

Hakoda: “I love you more than anything. You and your brother are my entire world. I thought about you every day when I was gone, and every night when I went to sleep, I would lie awake missing you so much it would ache.”

(AND YUE IS ONE OF THE ONES TO SAVE AANG IN THE OCEAN FOR A REASON)

Thinking and missing: a matter of mind (who) and heart (want). 

Iroh: “Who are you? And what do you want?”

Sokka: “We need to go back. I wanna see Dad, but helping Aang is where we're needed the most.”

Mai: “I love Zuko more than I fear you.”

BUT YOU WANNA TALK ABOUT THE MOON FOR A HOT SECOND???

I’LL TELL YOU ABOUT THE MOON

I’LL TELL YOU ABOUT 2 MOONS

OH

OH REALLY???

OH REALLY, ZUKO

A FEW HOURS YOU SAY?

THEN TELL ME, ZUKO

WHY IS THE SUN GOING UP

WHEN IT IS THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT A FEW HOURS LATER

AND KATARA IS SLEEPING SO YOU CAN’T TELL ME IT’S BECAUSE YOU RISE WITH THE SUN OTHERWISE SHE’D BE WIDE AWAKE DURING THE FULL MOON THAT SHE USES TO BLOODBEND NOT EVEN TWO MINUTES LATER

THIS, MY FRIENDS, IS A HARVEST MOON

WHICH IS THE LAST FULL MOON OF THE SUMMER 

(and looks off color when it rises/falls because of the angle of the rise/fall in the atmosphere...it’s normal once overhead)

AND SYMOLIZES HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF

“We’re going to find the MAN who took my mother from me.”

“That’s him. That’s the MONSTER.”

8 spokes on the wheel

Katara was 8 when Kya was killed

8 steps to enlightenment (the “Eightfold Path”)

8 phases of the moon

8 faces of Koh

“One of your previous incarnations tried to slay me! Be it 8 or 9 hundred years ago” (but time is an illusion, so hundreds mean nothing)

THE OTHER TWO MOONS THAT ARE CONSUMING MY EVERY WAKING MOMENT???:

1.) The WOLF MOON--the first full moon of the new year (a love between the wolf and the moon in the harshest winters...connection is kindof obvious lmao)

2.) THE THUNDER MOON

The Thunder Moon is the full moon of July. It is also known as the Buck Moon--for when young buck regrow their antlers.

Yue: “My hair turned white.”

Zuko: *cuts and re-grows his hair*

Aang: “I have hair?”

The Thunder Moon--the full moon of July--is also the beginning of a certain Buddhist holiday.

DHARMA DAY

WHICH CELEBRATES THE BEGINING OF BUDDHISM AND THE FIRST OF THE 8 STEPS (the first spoke of the Dharma Wheel) TOWARDS ENLIGHTENMENT

AVATAR IS ALL ABOUT CYCLES

THE SOUTHERN RAIDERS IS ALL ABOUT BREAKING THEM

I haven’t even touched Jung, Koh, Hinduism, and Buddhism yet

or the fact that Katara and Kya are the only characters in the entire series to wear moons on their clothing and that, together, they form an actual lunar phenomenon

or why the spirit oasis isn’t a complete circle

or the fact that this thing that Aang is told to chase is just like Whaletail Island:

or how important the Great Divide and the Solstice are

AND I’M JUST GETTING STARTED

BECAUSE EVERYTHING IN THE SOUTHERN RAIDERS--RIGHT DOWN TO THE SOUND DESIGN--IS ABSOLUTELY MONUMENTAL IN UNDERSTANDING THE SHOW, ITS MESSAGE, ENERGYBENDING, AND LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE

TLDR: Idk how the heck I’m going to arrange or articulate this analysis because it is WILD. Be warned: There is literally no exact beginning and ending to this analysis because the whole point of Yin and Yang is that is has no beginning or ending (...kindof...), so you’ll have to bear with me once I’m done editing it into something that’s somewhat coherent.

These are just SOME of the things I’ve been able to answer with my moon theory and analysis of The Southern Raiders as it currently stands:

Why “letting go” isn’t really letting go (as we understand it...see: Aang’s confrontation with Koh)

Why Lake Laogai and the Spirit World are symbolically the same thing.

Zuko’s advice to the bullfrog is actually a summary of the show, energybending, the origin of bending, and the definition of Aang’s “forgiveness” I stg

Why “Sokka’s instincts” are the reason Katara yells at Sokka

Believe it or not, every time Katara mentions her mother, it is at specific times for specific reasons.

^^^same thing for the moon, lack of moon, moon positioning, etc.

Katara’s mother’s necklace is more important than we realize.

Who the faces of Koh are and WHY they are there.

The true meaning of Jet’s sacrifice.

Why Jet’s episode about the dam explains the entirety of TSR as it pertains to Katara (all the way down to the little girl who runs to get her doll after the dam breaks)

Why Katara actually DID forgive Yon Rha, and the fact that she doesn’t even know it is proof that she did

^^^^^Aang’s definition of forgiveness is completely misunderstood by the fandom, and the way he “forgives” is sososo much deeper than “moving on”, and it is DEFINATELY by no means “doing  nothing” or “excusing” past actions.

The importance of lightning, Zuko, Aang, and Katara.

The absolutely monumental and not nearly talked about importance of Jeong-Jeong like holy crap.

How Katara and Azula are just as much of a Yin and Yang as Zuko and Aang but not in the way we think they are

Why Koh has the Blue Spirit’s face

Why Koh DOESN’T have the Painted Lady’s face.

Who Ni-Ni from Katara’s campfire story in The Puppetmaster is 

How and why Iroh was able to learn firebending from the Masters even though he didn’t have a partner. 

How/Why Azula had her breakdown and why she saw her mother in the mirror

Why “Leaves from the Vine” and “Four Seasons” are the same song, explain Azula’s downfall, and explain the Yin and Yang of TSR.

Why Katara and Sokka are so often mistaken for parental figures.

Why Aang’s flashbacks to the Air Nomads are so important in understanding TSR.

Why Toph and Suki disappear after the campfire in TSR.

How Hakoda, Gyatso, and Kya are all connected.

Why it is so dang important that Azula shows up in the beginning of TSR.

The importance of the Spirit Oasis.

Energybending, healing with waterbending, Aang’s trauma, and Zuko’s scar.

Why Zuko gives Katara the exact opposite advise in TSR that he gave her in the catacombs. 

How everything could be predicted and read by the moon.

WHY YIN AND YANG ARE THREE THINGS AND HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THREE THINGS.

HOW ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL OF THIS TIES BACK TO THE MOON AND BUDDHIST BELIEFS--AND YEAH THE MOON AND BUDDHISM AND HINDUISM ARE MORE CONNECTED IN ATLA THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE.

AND HOW IT LEADS INTO OUR MODERN UNDERSTANDING OF THE SELF--BECAUSE JUNG TOOK GREAT INFLUENCE IN HIS DEVELOPING THEORY OF THE CONSCIOUS AND THE SUBCONSCIOUS FROM THE HINDU/BUDDHIST RELIGIONS 

^^^^AND ALSO THE THEORY OF THE SHADOW AND THE PERSONA 

The ocean is a deep, dark, unknown place with a lot of hidden monsters (like Yon Rah). Katara needed a light to find her monster, but she also needed somewhere she could breathe when she came back up for air.

If she didn’t have both Zuko and Aang, Katara would have drowned. 

I wasn’t kidding when I said this was a thesis, and what I’ve said and listed here isn’t even all that I have.

btw This all does line up on the traditional Yin Yang symbol we know and see in the show, but I don’t have enough space here for that lmao. That’ll be in the analysis

I hope you enjoyed this little taste, my friend, because I need to sit down for a hot second before my brain leaks out of my ears. Sorry for the ramble. I promise the analysis isn’t like this lol. This is just me trying to summarize as best as I can. 

***Disclaimer: My points are always subject to change since I am still researching. These are the facts as I’ve found and applied them to the evidences I’ve noted from in the show. I’m always open for friendly discussion or any directions to better sources on Buddhism/Tao/Jung!***

[ri-ahhh]

could you write a lil blurb or concept about gray having to shut you up while he fucks you? like, you’re moaning soooo fucking loud and he just says something cocky to piss you off before he kisses you hard or clamps his hand over your mouth. i love this shit it’s so hot

This literally made me clench i fucking love this.

I love the idea of it being in a hotel, too -- even though there’s nothing worse than being a stranger on the other side of that wall. But you’re encapsulated in this space where time has ceased to exist and it feels like you’re in your own little world, just the two of you. A stay-cation in Malibu in a giant, luxurious room with the ocean crashing 50 yards away and the sunset illuminating the walls a pale orange.

You and Grayson had come back from dinner with every intention of making the romance last with a walk on the beach until dark, maybe find some live music, and follow it with a nightcap in the form of a hot bath in the giant claw foot tub of your suite.

But you’d had two glasses of wine — a rarity, since you usually skipped drinks altogether with Gray — and your body is feeling loose and horny in that special way only that substance can make you. Grayson had nipped at your ear as you fumbled, giggling, with they key card to get back into the room, whispering how beautiful you looked and how sweet you smelled. The same could be said for him, and you do so with a pouty, seductive simper thrown over your shoulder as well.

And by the time you stumbled into the room together, you had already decided that there’s no way the two of you are leaving this room tonight.

Grayson seems to have been on the same page, because before you know it he’s hoisting you into his arms, your legs wrapping instinctively around his waist as he carries you to the bed. You wrap your arms around his neck, clutching your elbows in your hands as you pull his face towards your own until your smiles are melding together, sloppy and practiced and wonderful.

You squeak when he drops you onto the cloud-like mattress, shaking your disheveled hair out of your face with your the corners of yours lips turned up even though the lower one is caught tightly in your teeth. Your dress has ridden up around your hips from how he had held you just a moment ago, but you make no effort to pull it down or hide the now-exposed red lace beneath.

Grayson mirrors your smirk and follows you on his hands and knees as you scoot up the pillows, until you’re caged by his thick arms and hard body. He’s still wearing the white linen shirt he wore to dinner, and the way it billows out at his stomach but clings to the ridiculous breadth of his shoulders and chest makes you clench and moan a little.

“You’re... really sexy,” you sigh, unable to come up with a more sophisticated adjective that’s just as fitting for this man above you, but feeling like you just needed to let him know one way or the other. You slip your fingers past the open buttons at the top of his shirt so you can thread them through his chest hair, your other hand sliding up his forearm until your fingers are clutched around his bicep and squeezing.

Grayson grins and flexes his arm, and you catch the glint in his eye before you toss your head back with another laugh and a moan. “Fuck.”

“Haven’t even touched you, baby,” he reminds smugly, tensing his bicep again and watching, enthralled, as you let out a breathless huff and hitch your legs up around his waist.

Even Grayson can’t resist lowering his hips now, following the pressure you coaxed against him to bring his body closer to yours. He’s already hard himself, but you don’t have it in you to tease him about it, because the sensation of that bulge against your nearly-bare center is almost too much. You moan louder than before, sliding your hand up his neck until you’re gripping the hair at the nape tightly and dragging his lips back to yours.

The gasps and whimpers that pass your lips and into his are needy and whiny and almost foreign to your own ears in how loud and obvious they are, especially when you find leverage to drag your clothed pussy over the hard ridge of his dick behind the zipper of his forest green pants. Your hands fumble with his belt and fly as you suck on his tongue, your slim fingers trembling with desperation as you push them down his hips roughly.

“Fuck me,” you say, and it comes out more demanding and loud than you mean it to. Grayson doesn’t seem to care one bit, however, maybe even more turned on himself by how voracious you’re being as you suck wet kisses across his stubbled jaw. You tongue his lobe and nip it gently before pressing your lips right to his ear. “Please. Need you so bad.”

“Mm. Please. I like that,” he murmurs through a shiver, turning his head so that his nose nuzzles your cheek. “Wanna hear you say it all night.”

Again, maybe any other night you would have flipped him over and sucked his dick so good until that (no pun intended) cockiness would be wiped clear from his mind. But you’re ravenous for him and only in the mood to play into it right now. It usually yields good results, if history is to repeat itself, and you’re more than ready for him to show off.

Grayson gets you naked in seconds, and lets you whip his shirt over his head and push his pants down further until he has to stand off the bed to shed them. He climbs back on the mattress on his knees, his erection evident in his tiny briefs, but he makes no moves to free it despite your earlier request. His calloused hands brush up your silky shins, cupping your knees and pushing them apart so that he’s greeted by the sight of your pussy. Your arousal glistens in the filtered light of the sunset, and Grayson’s cock throbs hard as he settles between your legs like the last missing piece of a puzzle — right where he belongs.

You accept the deep, wet kiss he leans down to give you with a sigh, unable to resist the urge to cup him and stroke him through the tight material of his underwear. Grayson grunts softly and pushes into your hand, and your fingers curl around him as much as they can in the confines his dick is in.

Maddeningly, he scoots down so your touch is just out of reach when your fingertips start to inch into his waistband. But before you can complain, his lips are wrapping around one of your nipples, and your working brain is gone again.

He spends an inordinate amount of time ravishing your tits, relishing in the pretty sounds he elicits, especially when his fingers sneak down and thread through your pussy. He groans when he feels how wet you are already, murmurs something about how needy you are, and slips two thick digits inside you just to fill you up. Just to feel you soak and clench them, to get a literal first-hand reaction to how his lips and tongue and teeth above affect you below. It’s amazing in how good but unsatisfying the sensation is, and you can only grip his hair tighter and moan louder.

When he finally licks and kisses down your stomach, you’re a whimpering, writhing mess on the duvet as he wastes no time in swiping his tongue around your clit, then suctioning it into his mouth.

“Holy fuck, Gray!” you shriek, your thighs clamping around his ears of their own accord and your hands flying up to grip the pillow beneath your head.

Grayson growls roughly and pulls his fingers out of you so he can free himself. He looks up at you with dark, lust-clouded eyes as he pushes your legs out and up, following the rise of your hips so he can blanket your pussy with his whole mouth. His tongue swipes up your slit, dipping into your hole and dragging out the slick, swallowing some and pooling the rest with his saliva around your clit once again.

You don’t know if he’s ever eaten you out this good, and that’s saying something, because if there’s one thing Grayson Dolan can proudly say he’s more than accomplished at — it’s eating pussy. Maybe it’s the wine, or the setting, or just an overwhelming surge of passion for your boyfriend, but you’re crying out in all of a minute with your hands delved back into his thick hair and your thighs trembling like an autumn leaf in the wind.

You vaguely feel him slide off the end of the bed to get rid of his underwear before he’s suddenly hovering back over you, and he’s kissing your swollen lips as he hitches a leg high around his waist and slides into you.

He holds your other leg out and pins it to the bed, and you’re moaning instantly at the stretch of him, at the depth he reaches like this. Your arms wrap around his back and your nails dig into his muscled shoulders, but his hiss is drowned out by the high pitch of your cries as he starts fucking you for real.

Your vision is blurry but your eyes lock with Grayson’s, and the image of his slack-jawed face makes you clench involuntarily with a fresh rush of arousal. Grayson moans himself and kisses you swiftly before sitting back on his haunches and hauling your hips into his lap. His hands grip your waist tightly as he flicks his pelvis up into yours, and you lose sight of him as your eyes roll back into your head.

If you were in your right mind, you might have noticed how fucking loud you’re being, your shrieks echoing off the walls and probably reverberating down the hall. You don’t have two shits to give, though, as your fingers clench tightly in the white comforter and your voice rings out of its own accord, every sound fucked straight out of you by Grayson’s dick.

Grayson himself is so worked up, his expression is practically crazed as he watches the way he’s making you fall apart. His chest is sweaty and that sexy flop of hair dangles over his forehead and into his eyes as he gives you a few more powerful, expert thrusts before he has to slow down and collect himself.

“Jesus,” he groans, leaning over you once again after he pulls your legs over his shoulders. He supports himself on one forearm and grabs a tit with his other hand, letting out a wild, breathless laugh as he starts pumping into you again. “Are you trying to get us kicked out of this hotel?”

Shut up, is what your brain tells him in reply, but all what comes out of your mouth is a desperate, “Please fuck me!”

Grayson grunts and his hand leaves your breast in favor of clamping tightly around your mouth, muffling the volume of the sounds you couldn’t hold back if you tried. Sweat mingles on your skin that’s pressed together, eyes locked passionately as he gives you those hard, deep strokes that make you cum like a fountain around his cock.

And it’s Grayson’s turn to be loud, the hot, wet clamp of your pussy simply too much for him as he empties inside you with a guttural groan. Your arms feel like dead weight, but you manage to lift them up and wrap around him as he lets your legs go and cuddles up to you with an exhausted sigh.

The two of you fall asleep right there, blissfully unaware of the sharp knock and an obnoxious piece of hotel pad paper slipped under your door.

[yuichi-ro]

pls kisaki would go on his rant about how much of a simp his daughter’s spouse is and i’d be like “sit down” and he would almost subconsciously 💀 i love the funky smitten man omfg but god he is so hard to properly write for me its frustrating;;; he definitely insists to keep giving kiddo piggy back rides even if she is too big and he is too old… god thing we got all that money bc dumbass gets back problems from it.

can u imagine grandpa kisaki tho?? if u thought dad kisaki was bad w spoiling oh boy u havent met grandpa kisaki yet XD his wedding gift was prob some island too

oh but don’t give me ideas. soulmates with hunter but both of you keep getting reincarnated, one way or another. souls interwoven, dying at belos hands every time together, a history repeating itself again and again, waiting to finally be broken by hunter and the current incarnation of soulmate. they always meet the same in the general sense; tho the details are different.

two beings on opposite sides; starting as a witch and a human, now a wild witch and and the emperor’s guard. the slow burn, the hurt comfort, the inexplainable pull towards each other; a destiny needing to be fulfilled: to be together at last, something belos refuses to let happen ever again.

god what id give for hunter’s super awkward flirting;;; pls darius would help fix him up for a proper date but poor baby is just an anxious little mess and its so endearing.

being there when his world shatters for him, an odd sense if deja vu in the back of your mind while you hold him to calm him down, you; the only constant in his life, always has been, not even just in this one.

safe to say i am soft ugh. but yeah the collector is sooo interesting. so many fan theories. and yeah i was squinting at my screen pausing the episode just to look at every frame ahsjsj i hate disney for not giving us a third season. fuck em. also collector is such a funky little guy. dana said his pronouns were he/they and i honestly think it should’ve just been bastard/gremlin.

-🌌momo

the way Kisaki is trained like a dog 💀 Everyone knows it. You know it. Hanma knows it. All of Toman knows it. The only one who doesn't know he's a simp is Kisaki himself. All you do is give him a look and man is sitting himself down stopping his stewing. Another look and he's snagging your drink without even a word. Mind you running his mouth the entire time about people who are too desperate in love like he isn't the pinnacle of pathetic simp 😭😂

god the utter menace that man is to his grandkid(s) like he's buying them cars for the fifteenth birthday. Cars that match their favorite toy cars they liked when they were little. Oh my god he's constantly has sweets on him or buys them whatever the hell they want. He's a nightmare to anyone who's actually a parent but the grandkids love him ☠☠☠

pls red string of fate, hanahaki disease, tattoos on parts of the body part, inability to see color before meeting your soul mate asdfghjkl just the endless list of heart wrenching perfectness that could go with the Hunter/Grimwalker thing. God and not to mention the repeated gory scenes that could be written with each killing of the imperfect guard and his lover every time asdfghjkl

no matter what molding Belos does to this image of his brother, taking away any form of memories, filling his mind with ideas that don't make him question anything, all that work for nothing bc even at his hands death can't seem to fix the one problem always has. The reincarnation of a god awful thing that keeps distracting his brother. Dead a hundred times by his hand yet Belos is readying to repeat the process every time his precious golden guard brings up the dredges of a useless crush. Until Hunter that is. Keeps him so under lock and key certain that's the only way to keep the reader away. If he simply never meets you, then this could be the perfect model he's been striving to make.

just like all the attempts before though fate twists in ways even Belos can't predict or work with. You both meet. Without realizing it. Setting forth the same chain of events that has followed a hundred deaths beforehand. Even as awkward as he is and sheltered the soul wants what the soul wants. Bad pointers from Darius or Raine aside Hunter still finds himself feeling weird around someone he still regards as a stranger. No explanation until it draws both together again.

oh and the big reveal about the other golden guards. Oh does that sped up all the past interactions to come crashing down on you both in one night. Hunter bolting with nowhere to go but to you. Magicless sacrifice in the arms of a wild witch. Cracked Golden Guard mask tossed aside when he can't even form the words to tell you what happened. Maybe at some point he'll be able to tell you. Only seeking comfort in your touch though holding him close like it's all happened before. Hairs on the back of your neck crawling like there's an imamate danger but it's just the two of you, no one else knows you're here. Unsure of why you're minds telling you something bad is going to happen. Pushing it aside to comfort him and ignoring your mind screaming at you that this is a bad idea in favor of being close to the closest thing to home you've ever felt when you're wrapped around Hunter like this.

[boxboysandotherwhump]

Ilya at uni

Ilya’s first day at University. Let the murder mystery begin.

taglist: @orchidscript @ashintheairlikesnow @vickytokio

-------------

The university’s library smelled of dust and knowledge.

Silence had settled over its second floor and nested between countless bookshelves. Even Ilya’s footsteps were quieter here, muffled by the carpeted floor. Grey and stained by feet and time.

He hastened past bookshelf rows, head held high to scan the polished plates mounted to their tops, cultural history, social anthropology, philosophy and gender studies, until he finally found ‘academic studies of ritual and magic’.

It was a small section, consisting of only two shelves tugged away into a far corner at the end of the enormous room, but Ilya felt like he had discovered the Alexandria of magic itself.

Old tomes and new textbooks towered above him, nearly reaching the plasterboard ceiling on their overstuffed wooden planks. They creaked softly under the weight of wisdom and Ilya’s heart jumped at the sight. A little butterfly tingle unable to stay contained behind ribcage bars. The feeling prickled down his arm and made his fingers dance, like pianist hands playing the tune of his heart into the air.

Something close to a content hum escaped his lips and his dark eyes lit up, filled with questions that burned to be answered. His gloved fingertips traced over spines imprinted with the most wondrous titles.

‘Potions for dummies’, declared one, or ‘Candles and cauldrons’ read another. A deep green book titled ‘Coole ghoule’ made Ilya chuckle, but what really caught his attention was ‘queering magic’.

He was about to pull it from the shelf when a quiet rustle made him pause.

Hadn’t he been alone on the floor?

After risking an anxious glance into the corridor and finding it, indeed empty, Ilya turned back to the shelf and froze.

There, in the gap between two books, pulsed a glittering light.

A friendly spirit or a sparkling curse, what’re you gonna be?

Twitching fingers reached for one of the books and very nearly dropped it as a glowing moth-like creature emerged from the shelves depths.

Ilya’s heart hammered in his throat as he dodged the fluttering flurry of glowing wings and stumbled backwards.

“Lanet olsun! You scared her off.”

An angry voice shattered the silence like a pistol shot and sent his heart into a rabbit-quick frenzy. Blood rushed in his ears, leaving him light headed. Numbness prickled up his fingertips, spread over his palms. He rubbed the inside of his leather gloves, reassuring himself that they were still there, that he still wore them.

“Don’t let her escape.”

His feet followed the command, already three steps ahead of his brain as he raced down the shelf-row.

Ilya and the outraged voice owner bolted out the aisle simultaneously. His boots slip-slided over the smooth carpet. Reddish eyes widened. Flying wisps of black hair ghosted over skin. Black eyes caught his.

Collision. Tumble. Hands hitting hard ground.

Pain shot up Ilya’s tailbone. He hissed through clenched teeth.

“Are you alright?” The stranger's previous anger morphed into worry and Ilya dared to blink up, squashing down the instinct to cower, curl up, apologize or erupt into enmity, jump up and shove them away.

Instead, he found himself face to face with the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. Wild dark hair framed a pale face. Black eyes shimmered under prominent brows, furrowed with worry. One eye was framed by a port wine birthmark, spilling over her forehead all the way into her hairline. Full lips broke into a small smile at Ilya’s meek nod.

“Yeah. Yes. M alright.”

She sighed and her roman nose wrinkled as smile turned sheepish grin. “That’s a relief.”

She thrust her hand forward and the camera strap of an antique looking polaroid nearly slipped off her shoulder. Ilya got up, pretending to dust off his pants in way of refusing her hand.

“Sorry.” He started. “About that, uhm, about scaring off the-”

“Flasher.” The girl grinned. “And don’t worry. Won’t be too hard to find a flying flashlight flattering about a library hall. I’m Ranja by the way. You’re a freshman, right?”

“How do you- Is it that obvious?”

Her eyes flickered down to his feet. “The library layout fell out of your pocket.”

Ilya scrambled to pick it up with heating cheeks.

A burgundy ankle boot scraped it’s tip over the carpet. “Not to pry, Mr. freshmen, but are you starting in magical studies?”

Apprehension grew in him like rose thorns, pricked and pierced inside his throat. Words wanted to break out. To sting. All he let escape was a brusque: “What’s it to you?”

Ranja’s eyes held a knowing twinkle. She readjusted the camera strap without once looking away. “I merely thought getting to know a classmate would be nice.”

“Classmate?” Ilya breathed. Exhaling all wariness. “Does that mean- Are you a- Are you magic, too?”

A smile split Ranja’s rose-colored lips. “I was one of the first on campus. I started here last year.”

“Last? But this is this mayor's first ever semester. Or… isn’t it?”

“The first official, yes. Me and twelve other witches gave the Chancellor a, let's call it a hint, that the official establishment of this mayor was long overdue. And a proper library section. Most of those books were strewn all about the building. Self studying was a nightmare.”

Ilya stared, a little awestruck, down at her. Dust particles danced in the afternoon light, filtering through half closed blinds. One landed on Ranja’s cream colored sweater, tucked carefully into a brown plaid skirt. She quirked a bushy eyebrow. Expectantly.

It’s getting creepy, idiot. Stop staring. Say something! Something smart.

“That, uhm-” He unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Neat.”

Smooth.

Part of Ilya wished for the carpeted floor to crack open and swallow him whole. Deep deep down into the depths of hell, to self-deprecate in peace.

“Neat.” Ranja repeated, chuckling. “Neat indeed.”

The only thing keeping Ilya from turning on his heel right then and there was his insatiable curiosity, winning over his humiliation. Dealing with the latter came way more naturally to him than stomping out the former. It’d started to simmer and lick at his guts the second Matthew had shoved his phone with the university course offers under Ilya’s nose at dinner, last winter.

He inhaled, long and deep, in through his mouth and forced it out through his nose. Like Doctor Ahmadi had taught him. His face, almost, almost, stopped burning.

“So, uhm, you- Here- That means-” Ilya buried his hands in his pockets, hoping to conceal him pinching his leg. The short sharp stab of pain turned into a soothing warmth on its way through nerve pathways up to his brain, where it got his words in order.

“There are really so many of us?” he whispered, reverently.

“Fithteen and counting.” Ranja nodded. She stepped forward, tilting her head. Black eyes searched his. “You haven’t met many of us, have you?”

Ilya shook his head, unable to stand her gaze any longer. He felt like a fish, gutted and on display, squirming under the knife of sudden vulnerability, cutting him so achingly obviously open.

“Us.” It was a whisper, a grasp for reassurance, for realization, spilling from his lips.

Us. Us as in more than one. More than a solitary part. More than an outlying anomaly. Us. Us as in a part of a whole, a group. However small. He wasn’t alone anymore.

Only spoken into existence, did it feel real.

“Hey there. Are you okay?” That tender tone of hers startled Ilya back into his body. He felt the fluffy fabric of his t-shirt, the heavier grey cotton of the pullover over that, the heat accumulating between soot black skin and leather gloves, and rasped: “Yeah. Sorry. Just, uhm, just tired. Moving across the country and all, ya know?”

“I can imagine. Hey, I don’t want to hold you up. But- We’re searching for new course committee members, and-” She dug a small white notebook and a pen from her skirt pocket, flipped it open and began to scribble something down. Tongue between teeth. She ripped the page out in one swift clean motion. “If you're interested or need any help finding your footing here send me an email, okay? We sure as hell can use all the help we can get.”

“I’llthink‘boutit.” Ilya murmured, folding the paper carefully in half before pocketing it.

He turned, hastily waving goodbye and rushed down the stairway, all four floors of it, skipping over sets of free steps until he hit the bottom and ran out the building. A stupid smile plastered over his face all the way back to his dorm.

Who would have thought that something as light as a piece of paper could carry every hidden hope, every forbidden dream he’d dared to dream beaten and bruised and alone in the dark?

It sat, indescribably heavy, in his pocket, a tactile reminder on every step. For the first time in a long time, Ilya’s heart was weightless.

[aceofshitposts]

I saw that you like CATS the musical. What are your thoughts on the movie?

AAAAH AHHAHA oh man oh boy y'all should BUCKLE IN cuz it's a ride

my simple thoughts? it's entertaining if only because it butchered the stage show so badly in an attempt to idk modernize it? Well, modernization is one part of it I think. The other part I'll go into below lol. I don't necessarily hate some of the more modern renditions of the songs (mostly the ensemble sets like Jellicle Song for Jellicle Cats) but then others are just... so poorly done it's insulting.

I've said this at the end of this whole rant too but I'm gonna put it up here in case people don't (justifiably) wanna see me go on and on about it:

The movie wasn't made for fans of the musical. It was made to make money and I believe they choose, at least partially, to do that through making it the weirdest and worst possible adaptation they could so that people would want to go see the train wreck. Which, really, worked! It was all people could talk about for a good while so like... Goal achieved, I guess.

A MUCH MORE COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS UNDER THE CUT cuz i don't wanna. flood your dash with... this

ALRIGHT SO. Most of my friends know I'm actually a huge fan of new adaptations of things. I love remakes (provided the people making it are coming at it with some form of heart and not just... cash grabbing which is more often the case) I love seeing other peoples interpretations of characters, or changing settings. It's one of the reasons I like American comics so much, getting to see different writers takes is fascinating.

I think musical movies can be wonderful ways to introduce people to a stage show that might have been unavailable to them otherwise! Chicago, for example, is one of the BEST musical to movie adaptations in my opinion. It kept the heart of the show, it's funny and the song numbers are done really well.

There are of course other famous examples, such as Grease or Bye Bye Birdie. Hairspray was also a wonderful take. These are simply off the top of my head, there are of course more.

CATS in particular has a history. If you go through my CATS tag you may see a few posts from @catsnonreplica which posts photos from non broadway productions of CATS! It's a fascinating read and I love, love, love looking at the other interpretations of the characters! CATS is a musical full of fun and wonderful characters if you take the time to see past the ridiculousness haha and the Korean and Japanese runs of CATS especially have some of my favourites.

How does this relate to the movie, I hear you say well. As you might has noticed the movie's interpretations of the characters is........ lackluster at best and downright uncanny valley at best.

CATS is, at its core, a ridiculous thing. I will fully admit that! But it's fun, it's entertaining and if you pay a little attention you can actually get the plot. (Honestly I don't understand when people complain it has no plot but that's a whole other rant for another day)

The movie was... obsessed with this idea of like... semi realism? Like obviously, as a fan, I think they should have leaned into the over the top character designs but instead we got...w ell:

Bombalurina:

Demeter left and Bomba right. Demeter was actually cut! From the movie which is. upsetting lmao.

Macavity is one of the worst offenders for me:

Macavity was... I wish I could know what the hell they were thinking there cuz it's even in his song? Ginger cat??? THAT IS NOT... A GINGER CAT...... but I digress. I would show more examples but I think you get the point.

So. We've butchered the characters appearances. Okay that's fine but what about their personalities?

ALSO BUTCHERED.

There's... there's a lot to unpack here. Just for context: the Jellicle Ball happens once a year and the Jellicle leader chooses a single cat to be reborn into a new life. In the stage play all the cats who are nominated for this honour are on the older side (Jenny-Any-Dots, Bustopher Jones, Skimbleshanks, Gus The Theatre Cat, and eventually Grizzabella) AND are always nominated by another cat. Not themself, unlike the movie where they all seem to nominate themselves.

Jenny-Any-Dots went from a doting grandmother figure who's celebrated for her selfless volunteering and tireless work into a conceited, vain younger cat who is obsessed with fame.

It's an incredibly strange dichotomy. I don't doubt some of it isn't the result of the uh people playing the characters honestly. I do think some of them did the best they could! I don't really blame Jason Derulo, for example, for Tugger. And honestly, Tugger was probably closest to his stage version (while being a trouble maker, he's shown to show Deuteronomy an immense amount of respect)

Speaking of Tugger! This will bring us to one of the biggest grievances with the movie and that is how they handled Mr Mistoffelees.

So... Ugh. So. We have Victoria as the pov character, which imo is like whatever in the grand scheme of things, and then we have Misto who they have decided will be get live interest cuz... Of course. Misto is shown throughout the musical to be awkward, unsure of himself and well. Really, kinda incompetent. Which is Wild cuz in the stage show he might be aloof but he's fairly confident in his powers.

So, Old Deuts gets kidnapped. In the stage show Tugger is the one to bring Misto forward! It's really quite sweet, imo, and I'm showing myself as a Tuggoffelees shipper here, but again Tugger is previously shown to be pretty conceited but then here he is boosting and hyping up Misto to bring Deuteronomy back. My friends and I have lovingly dubbed this the boyfriend hype song.

SOMEHOW. The movie manages to make this, easily, the MOST BORING number in the whole thing. Which, again, WILD. Misto awkwardly stumbles through his whole song, which again is... Boasting of his supreme magical powers which movie Misto clearly. Does not have or believe to have. The song, to me, feels super awkward and unnecessarily drawn out in the movie which sucks cuz it's one of my favourites in the show.

The declawing (heh) of Mr Mistoffelees actually reminds me strongly of how they changed Gaston in the live action Beauty and the Beast movie. He's gone from a beloved figure in the animated movie to someone so disliked in the town that Le Fou has to pay people off to say nice things about him. It's just. Wild character choices were made!!

Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat is probably my favourite in movie non ensemble number. It feels the most... Genuine? Compared to the other nomination songs.

Other problems include but are not limited to:

The inconsistent size scale of the CATS which throws me off constantly.

The weirdly overt sexual overtones added to MANY of the songs (Jenny and Bustopher being the worst)

This is just a personal gripe and opinion but I don't like that they used the UK version of Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer. The American version is both better known and tbh way more fun. Teazer's giggle? Adds ten years to my life every time.

Victoria's added solo song, Beautiful Ghosts, while I like the song as a song it doesn't fit the style of message of the musical. In the movie she's singing directly to Grizzabella who's being an outcast for years that she should be grateful she even has memories of being part of the tribe?? What?? But I know they had to add an original song to be able to be nominated for awards in like the Grammys n shit (which is why all musical movies will have an original song, fun fact!!) kinda funny they went to the effort though considering........... I don't think anyone could have genuinely believed CATS 2019 was gonna win anything but golden rhaspberries.

Movie Mr Mistoffelees has made repeated appearances as my sleep paralysis demon

The various cut characters, shout outs to Jemima, Demeter and Jellylorum especially

Bombalurina being a henchman to Macavity rubs me the wrong way

God I've written... So much. You probably get it by now haha. Like I said at the beginning, I try to go into any adaptation with an open mind but... Let's be honest, this movie wasn't marketed to people who are fans of the musical.

It was marketed, and made, to make money. And they choose to do that through, I think, intentionally making the worst possible version ever. Bad press is still press and the more outrageous people said the movie was the more people wanted to go see exactly what kind of train wreck it was.

Which is a disservice to the stage show, honestly, and all the people who've worked on it over the years.

But what can we do, right?

And besides all that, I do... Still own the movie version and I do still rewatch it on occasion. It is entertaining even if it's in a train wreck kind of way. I usually end up watching the 1998 version, then 2019 and then various tour runs that are on YouTube. (I highly recommend the 2016 tour, it's very good)

So in conclusion. It's fun (?) to watch. I enjoy picking things apart and doing analysis (if you couldn't tell!) so like... I don't hate it?

It did what it set out to do, I guess, and I can't fault it for that but. It's not a fair metre with which to judge the stage show imo. But I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, haha.

Jazz hands. I'm more than happy to elaborate or just chat about CATS if anyone wants! I grew up listening to the Broadway CD since I was a toddler so it's been! A very long standing obsession haha. Probably the only other thing on par with CATS is my obsession with Jurassic Park which I've also been a fan of since I was 3 (but that's a whole story in and of itself)

[perseusjackson-jasongrace]

Hi I dont know if you want jercy requests at the moment but i had an idea for one :

Dark percy murdering calligula as a revenge for jason

Hello angel! Whew this request was willldddddd and I had soo much fun with it. There isn't any jercy per se (in fact Annabeth and Percy are together in this) but Percy is furrrrrious about Jason and he exacts a very twisted sort of revenge for his friend's honour. Basically this was an excuse to write dark!percy and by gods I hope I delivered!

CW: revenge driven, grief, graphic depictions of violence

Burning Maze Spoilers

he used to be nice.

He used to be nice.

Percy had been digging around the weapons room when his name had been shrieked like a dying animal. He had been looking for protective gear to give to little demigods in his sword-fighting class, when a scream like broken bones cracked through his body. He had been starting another calm, routine-controlled day at camp half-blood when he heard the news that made him snap.

*Two hours earlier*

“Jackson,” Annabeth knocks at his cabin door. He hears her voice carry through the open windows, and over the continuous sound of the ocean. “Pers, we have breakfast in half an hour and you have a sword class to teach today.”

The event had been printed on her wall of “to-dos” so that neither of their adhd brains would have the chance to forget. But he groans at the reminder, not wanting to escape his warm bed, or the duvet that wraps around him like a hug, or the pillows that hold his head as if he is a god. Sometimes he wishes he was a Hypnos kid. Their whole thing is sleeping . The knock sounds again.

“Seaweed Brain, come on,” His girlfriend sighs, “You promised we’d talk to Chiron about the—"

The loud and obnoxious cry of a harpy sounds somewhere in the distance and whatever she says next is drowned out completely. He knows though. Knows what she’s going to say and what they have to do. So he drags himself out of bed, like the last sack of potatoes on the crate. Heavy and bruised and discarded for the most desperate of the lot.

“I’m up,” He manages to rasp. He doesn’t like talking to people till he’s brushed his teeth, and eaten something, and spent at least half an hour staring at an empty coffee cup. A New Yorker through and through he supposes.

“Okay,” He hears Annabeth call, “I’ll see you at the dining hall then.”

He makes a sound half way between a grunt and a yawn and hopes she understands because that’s the best she’s getting out of him. The morning routine is quick, even done at the speed of a stubborn toddler. Soon he is sitting at the Poseidon table, scarfing down eggs and toast, and washing it done with a second cup of coffee. The buzzing in his veins is completely normal. And he’s definitely not speaking at a thousand miles an hour. This is how he always talks. Why on earth they allow coffee in a camp full of adhd kids, he’ll never understand. But it works in his favour so he isn’t going to complain.

By the time him and Annabeth are done talking to Chiron about introducing therapy to the camp, he feels like his eyes are moving faster than his sensory receptors can process and his thoughts are moving faster than his ability to process at all. So when his girlfriend, smiling at him about something, stops outside their training room he looks at her with furrowed brows and asks, “What are we doing here? Are we training for something?”

She frowns, “How much coffee did you have this morning?”

“Only three cups.” He shrugs, and clenches his hands in his pockets as if she can see through the fabric to the shaking body underneath.

Her grey eyes widen as if she’s about to scold him, a petulant child being chided by their ever tired caregiver. It makes the part of him still attempting to function slightly wild. He squishes that part down with the force of a thousand ships. Someone calls Annabeth’s name so with a quick peck to the cheek she leaves him in front of the training room and jogs towards the middle of camp and out of sight.

He stares at the room, trying to get his brain to stop focusing on things he doesn’t need to focus on right now, like the three lines of a song he heard at the grocery store a week ago that he hasn’t been able to get out of his head.

He used to be nice.

Entering the training room he scans the schedule and sees he’s teaching a class of small people, campers younger than ten who are just learning the ropes but should disaster ever strike will be ushered to the Cabin 9 bunkers to wait out the storm. It is a rule that no-one under the age of twelve be subject to war if they need not be. And he will make damn sure the need never ever surfaces.

He gathers swords of various shapes and sizes, along with a few daggers, and the straw dummies that have seen better days. It boggles his mind that they’re at a camp for children of literal greek gods but somehow there’s no funding for basic necessities like extra cots in the Hermes cabin, and better dummies to stab.

Muttering to himself he moves aside metal and stacks of straw, trying to find protective gear in the pile dumped at the corner of the training room. When he doesn’t see any he lets out a long suffering sigh... he has to go to the weapons room, which is more of a broom closet with deadly devices than anything else.

The room smelt musty, and the reek of rust slams into his nostrils at dizzying speeds. It reminds him of blood, and it made his skin itch with the need to get out. But still he bends down and searches through the mess of celestial bronze, and gold and—

The scream cauterizes his happiness. He is panic and pain and death and everything brutal in a single awful instant.

“PERCY!” His name has never sounded so full of agony, each syllable holds the stages of grief.

He is running towards the anguish before he’s even fully realises what’s going on. But what he sees when he crests the hill is enough to make the warmth of his heart run burning cold.

Annabeth is curled on the ground, tears like rivers of woe streaming down her cheeks and a purple flag clutched tightly in her fists.

“What happened?” His voice is soft. If he hears himself too loudly he’s going to shatter.

Annabeth cries harder, her whole body shuddering. Grief is overwhelming. Grief is all consuming. Grief will make itself known like thorns in your thumb or bullets in your heart.

“What happened?” He repeats.

And someone, far away, right next to his ear, inside his head, says, “It’s Jason, Jason Grace. He’s dead.”

He used to be nice.

It takes him three days. Three days of non-stop travelling, by foot, and air, and sea, to reach Caligula’s home. A palace. A grave. It is three days too long. Too long for a murderer to be walking free as if there are no consequences to his vile actions. But still he is here now and he will see the fall of a great, and watch how he bleeds just like everyone else. Not gold, the colour of the emperor’s one true love, but red, the colour of his victims.

Percy's eyes are almost black with violence, green so dark it reflects the night sky. His hands clench and unfurl as if practicing to wrap around a throat and squeeze till the symphony of breathing plays its last note. His body is strung taut, a bow string waiting to release. He is murder. He is nothing. He is your worst nightmare.

“Caligula.” He scrapes. It is the exact sound of a sword sparking against stone. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Nothing but scared silence greets him. He can feel the fear coating the walls of this burial ground like a fresh coat of paint. He will make a playground of the blood he spills, will invite all manner of creatures to use it as a park. He will revel in the slaughter he is about to participate in.

“Caligula!” His voice is the sharp edge of a small knife. Unassuming but deadly. ‘“It is no use hiding. There is no place you could go where I couldn't find you.” He feels the earth sway underneath him, and he grins. Oh this is going to be fun.

“Fine Emperor, if this is how you want to do it.”

With a shrug, he flings out an arm and turns three columns to dust. He watches the stone crumble, feels the sand on his palm as if he was crumbling the columns in his hands like soft cheese. With a small stomp of his foot a crack rivaling the river Thames splits the marble floor in half. The entire structure shudders, creaks right above him. His grin only gets wider, more dangerous.

“I will level this place to the ground. I will erase it from history as if it had never been. You will not exist Caligula, because you will go with it. Will be crushed under the weight of your own wealth.”

“You’re a fool,” A voice, reedy and nasalled in a way that has his soul curdling, shouts from somewhere on the far side of the room. “You will crush us both."

Percy laughs. He laughs and the sound widens the cracks in the floor. It is deep, and wild, but in the way a wild thing is caged: snapping at it’s bars, hissing to be free. He laughs.

“You are a fool Caligula. A fool if you think i am not willing to die if it means you suffer. A bigger fool still if you think it will not give me great pleasure to spend my last moments watching the life leave your eyes,”

The distant sound of bubbling starts to fill the room. Percy wonders if he can make blood boil. His mother has certainly said so enough times.

“Leave now half-blood,” The Emperor spits. There is still something of arrogant, misplaced bravery in his voice. It amuses Percy. “Leave now and you will not face the consequences.”

“And pray tell,” He contemplates, “Who you think will deliver your consequences if i leave?”

A scoff that echoes into the pathways of his brain comes from the back of the room. “I do not need consequences dealt. I have done nothing to deserve them.”

The sound of bubbling is getting louder. He looks curiously at the cracks still spidering around the room. “Ah Emperor,” He tuts, “That is where you are wrong. People who deserve consequences hardly ever get them. It is those who don’t think they deserve them that become the unlucky bearers.”

“What are you going on about, boy?” He snarls.

The bubbling is loud enough now that Percy almost checks to see if a small brook has carved its way through the floor. There is nothing there except ever growing cracks, turning to rifts and canyons before his eyes.

He used to be nice.

“We can do this one of two ways Caligula.” He starts, honey bees with a sting a little too sharp to be defence. “You can apologise and I’ll kill you quickly, or…” His smile is sickening. “And this is my preferred method, I could watch you die slowly, watch the life drain from your body and into the soil of blood-crops that will grow here, and your dying words will be the mercy you will inevitably beg for.”

The bubbling spills over the cracks, leaking salty water onto the dying marble floor.

“Better choose soon oh dear Emperor,” He giggles, “I am the only thing holding this room together. As soon as I let go the floor will split like your loyalties. You will be crushed to death by your own greed. And if that doesn't happen you will surely drown.” To emphasise his point water starts gushing from the floor, no longer a bubbling stream but a raging river. His laughter is carried along the ripples that hit the walls, already leaking with the all encompassing ocean. “Wouldn’t it be a pity Caligula? To drown in your own home, surrounded by all the things you killed for, watching as they drown with you?”

“Shut up half-blood,” He screeches, “You do not have the power it takes to kill me. You are nothing compared to the centuries I have been alive.”

“Do you know who i am honouring Caligula?” He asks softly, a stark and terrifying contrast to his smile a moment before. “In all your centuries can you remember but one demigod, a dear friend of mine, but just another victim of yours?”

“Does it matter?” He scoffs, “They are all the same in the end. All bleed, and cry, and piss, and die the same.”

The grin Percy lets loose starts hurricanes. It is the absolute wrong thing to say. ‘“If it is all the same to you Emperor,” He becomes terror. “Then i think i’ll spill your blood at his altar.”

And before the doomed emperor could react an invisible hand wraps around his throat and he was being dragged to the middle of the room. His eyes wide, popping out of his head; hands clawing at his neck as if trying to remove the grip they cannot feel; feet flopping helplessly underneath him.

“Apologise for killing Jason Grace.” It is a command.

Caligula glares, attempting to spit at his feet.

Percy tilts his head and with a single crook of his finger he slams the emperor into the wall. The crack is deafening. It makes him grin.

“Apologise for killing Jason Grace.”

Caligula produces an ancient roman gesture, passed through time as if centuries cannot dismantle the insults of humans.

Percy twists his wrist and the emperor’s body contorts into something unrecognizable, bones snapping and shattering to fit their new mold.

“Apologise for killing my friend.”

“Fuck you,” He manages to choke out.

A wave of ocean water alarming in its beauty rises behind him. He is its god. And with a wink he shoves all of it down the emperor’s throat. The column of that pale neck bobs as if attempting to take the water down. He can see the body trying to retch it all up, unable to handle the sheer amount, the salt that comes with it.

“Watch Caligula,” He motions to the palace sinking under the weight of his ocean, “Watch as everything you have ever cared to love drowns.”

Percy grabs a shard of mirror, uncaring of the gash it sweeps across his palm. He holds it up to the ancient powerful Emperor, who is convulsing into nothing. “Watch.”

He used to be nice.

Sometime later when Percy Jackson walks up a hill, and into the fading sun there is nothing but content mania lining his features, and behind him where a grand home once stood, is a trickling river and a single spear carved with the words, “Neo Helios”. The only sign that Caligula, Emperor and murderer, ever existed,

He used to be nice.

Until someone killed his friends.

---------------------------------------

[image id: printed text that reads, "I used to be nice." end id]

[silverdragon-imagines-blog]

Counter Clockwise - Chapter 5 - Final Hours

[Here’s the final chapter of “Counter Clockwise” the second fic in my “Threatening Darkness” series. A friendly reminder to check the tags and warnings before you read this, just in case. And feel free to let me know if I tag something incorrectly so I can fix my mistake. I hope you enjoyed this fic, and I hope to start editing the third fic in the series soon. ^u^]

Warning(s): Character death

Read it on AO3

Fear rushed through Time's veins spurring him to run faster than he had in a long time, his old joints aching as he rushed through the front door of the Inn and heading straight for the room he and the boys had rented. The door practically slammed against the wall as he entered, startling the room’s occupants and abruptly getting their attention as he stood, panting heavily as the adrenaline wore off.

"We need to leave. Now."

"Time, what's going on?" Twilight asked, but Time didn't answer, only shaking his head.

“Old Man,” Time turned to see Legend and the rest of the group making their way toward him, out of breath and slightly concerned, “Why did you start running? What’s going on?”

“Just trust me, get your things together, we need to hurry.”

Four and Wild looked to each other, then moved to gather their bags and items. Wind soon joined them from where he had been laying down before Time arrived, rubbing at his eyes with his bag in hand. As they were leaving the room, dropping the key off at the desk, Time found himself looking at Anju, and the words left his lips before he could stop them.

“What day is today?”

“Hm?” she questioned, taking in the appearance of the group, gaze settling on Time, “Link? Oh, you must not remember, though it has been quite a while since your last visit.”

She smiled, slightly leaning over the counter.

“It’s the day of the Carnival. The Carnival of Time.”

And Time felt his stomach drop.

The group left the Inn just in time to witness Legend race through the entrance, a panting Hyrule and Sky at his heels, and Warriors looking concerned as he spotted Time with the rest of the group.

"What the hell is your deal, Time?" Legend yelled, only to stop his tirade when he saw the terrified look on the other's face.

"We need to get out of here." Time could practically feel the words shake as he spoke, pointing at the looming Moon, "That thing is gonna drop in only a couple of hours."

"But all these people..." Wind spoke up, worrying the hem of his tunic, "we need to warn them."

“It won’t work, they never listened-”

“What do you mean won’t work? We have to at least try!”

“You seriously expect us to just leave these people to die?!”

“What the hell Time!”

“Hey, quiet for a second will ya?!” the heroes grew silent, Twilight glaring at all of them before standing at Time’s side.

Time felt a hand slide into his grasp, Twilight standing next to him with a confident and determined expression, "You said you've done this before, right? Just tell us what you did last time. We'll follow your lead."

“There is a way to stop this, right?”

Time smiled slightly, turning to Hyrule and Sky, taking in their nervous expressions.

“Remember when I said I fought the Moon?”

“Oh Hylia, you were serious,” Sky’s genuine astonishment broke the tension, startling laughter out of the group. Time even breathed easier, the constricting anxiousness loosening its hold as a more genuine smile settled on his face.

When the moment passed, Time motioned for the group to follow, crossing under the entryway to the Clock Tower in the center of the town. It was strange though, no matter how much Time looked around, the town’s inhabitants barely paid the Moon any attention, ignoring it, unlike the terror they had before. People were wandering around, stalls with food and trinkets were set up around the square selling their wares. It was such a stark change that Time was almost convinced that nothing was wrong.

“We won’t be able to get up to the top of the tower until the gate lowers at midnight.”

“What do you expect us to do until then?”

Time looked over the group, knowing that they wanted this to be over as much as he did. There was no other way up to the top, and so they were forced to wait.

“Make sure you’re prepared. Stock up on potions and items. If this is anything like my previous quest, we’re going to need everything we can get.”

They nodded, dispersing and heading off to buy the necessary items. Time stood by the Clocktower, leaning against it as he watched the familiar faces of people he had helped save so long ago pass by. They seemed to be happy, carrying out their lives as though nothing was wrong, unaware that history may as well be repeating itself. He could feel the side of his face twinge from the familiar memory of crazed laughter and power that was not his own. The hours seemed to slow to a crawl, the heroes returning one by one as the sky darkened, stars leaving pinpricks of light in the void left behind.

As midnight drew nearer, the bell began to toll. The platform in front of the gate was low enough that climbing up was much less of a hassle and Time was able to help the rest on top as well.

It was a tense few minutes, waiting for the entryway to open. The sound of nervous fidgeting was almost deafening in the near silence.  Fireworks began to get launched into the air, startling a few of the heroes slightly, earning a few curses. When the gate finally lowered, Time practically ran up the stairway, the rest scrambling up after him.

From their new vantage point, they could see the town and the far-off locations that made up the land of Termina. Time, however, was not looking at the scenery, instead searching for the person who had been torturing the group for the last three days. There was no skull kid in a mask this time, and yet, he wasn't sure how else they could find a way to stop whatever nightmare this was. Finding and killing Dark Link, at least, was a step in the right direction.

Glaring up at the Moon above them, Time could see shadows collecting in the air casting the top of the clocktower into darkness. Time gripped the hilt of his sword, waiting for the moment he could end this once and for all. A distorted child's laugh could be heard, Time flinching at the familiar sound as Dark Link hovered over them all taking the form of a Skull Kid. The mask that he wore was much too real to have been an illusion, and it was that thought that made Time grip his sword more firmly.

"Welcome, heroes," he spoke, voice distorted with that of Skull Kid's, but Dark's much deeper voice overlaid it, "I'd like to welcome you all to the Final Hours."

"What do you want with us, Dark Link?!" Wild shouted, a spear materializing in his hands, the blade pointed straight at the figure looming above them.

"Why, hero of the Wilds, you should know by now," he chuckled, removing the mask from his face to throw it in the air and catch it, "It's just so entertaining. Your desires, your lives, promising you those things only to watch as you suffer the consequences. What could be more entertaining than watching as you all desperately cling to whatever safety you find, only for you to be swept up into my game once again."

He cackled, clutching his sides and holding on tightly to the mask with one hand, his voice distorting more and more the longer it went on. The heroes all began to draw their blades, readying themselves for a fight. However, Dark just seemed to laugh more at the display, wiping a tear from his eye.

"Oh heroes, who said it would be me that you would be fighting?" With a snap, the light returned, the Clock Tower they were standing on once again visible as Dark stood before them.

A pitch-black portal opened up beside him as he smiled gleefully, his form mirroring that of Four. The smith sucked in a shaky breath, taking a step forward as Dark’s smile widened, growing sharper, with red eyes gleaming brighter.

Four's eyes widened as a dark figure emerged from the portal, purple hair familiar-looking with a black tunic, a mirror image of his own. He felt his chest constrict as their blue eyes opened, confused as they took in the sight of eight unfamiliar heroes until they locked eyes with Four, expression turning to shock and then fear.

"V-Vio?" he spoke, and Four lunged forwards, Time gripping his arm tightly before he could get too close.

"Shadow, move away from there!" Four called out, but Dark Link just smiled wider as he stepped in front of the disoriented Shadow, facing the other with an almost deranged grin.

In a split second, the mask was no longer in his hands, now slammed onto Shadow's face. With a scream of pain and surprise, the boy crumpled to his knees, and Four screamed along with him. Time could only look on in horror as the mirror of Four succumbed to Majora.

Dark laughed, and as he did so, Shadow began to stand. The deranged magic of Majora ran through him, his skin pulsing with purple light as he rose into the air. Raising his hands, the Moon opened its mouth, and the heroes were sucked into it.

=

They were in a field, a small hill with a giant tree in the very center, and Time could just make out eight mask-wearing children running around it. Wild pushed on, making his way forward and motioning for the others to join him, but Time stood back, unsure of the change from before.

Wild reached the hill first, watching as a small child stopped following the rest and turned to face him, the Sheikah crest on the mask almost shimmering in the false sun. The child approached him, and as they got closer, a chill ran down his spine leaving goosebumps in its wake, the need to grab at his sword grew until the child was only a few steps away.

“Those memories… are they really that important?” the child spoke, voice a near whisper yet loud in Wild’s ears, “What do you think… the others would say… if they knew what you did?”

Wild took a step back, the words the child spoke ringing in his ears and causing his skin to prickle. The child vanished with a flash of blue light, not unlike the teleportation of the Sheikah Slate. Wild stood there, holding himself as he breathed, trying to ignore the dread that began to settle in his mind.

==

Warriors walked past Wild, sparing a look of concern, yet not stopping to check on him. The tree in the center was his goal if only to satiate his curiosity. The seven children running around made an unconscious smile spread over his face, but he brushed off the feeling long enough to get to the very top of the hill, where another masked child sat huddled near the roots of the tree, wearing the mask that Dark Link had forced upon what looked like a Dark version of the Smithy. He didn’t get far, however, as a tug on his scarf had him halting to see a child wearing a hooded mask grip the bright blue fabric.

“Did you need something, little one?” he asked, facing them and bending down slightly, what he hoped was a kind smile gracing his face.

“Your friends…” they whispered, though Warriors could almost hear them echo in his skull, “I wonder… do you trust them? … do they trust you?”

“What?”

The child never responded, their body changing to a shadowy black, the eyes that were visible on the mask changing to a glowing red for a second before the child simply vanished. Warriors looked confused for a moment until the words began to sink in. His hand unconsciously reached for the small bag around his waist and he let out a shaky breath.

“It’s nothing… You’re overreacting.”

But even as he told himself that, he could feel his hands shaking as he watched the other heroes making their way toward the hill.

===

Sky kept his gaze on the children, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling as he watched them pass by. Something about them felt… unnatural, but he couldn’t place the feeling. His hands still ached somewhat from the burns that still marred them, but he still kept his sword arm ready to draw Fi if necessary. The area was just too calm.

One of the children slowed down as he got near the bottom of the hill, bending over as though winded. The opalescent mask they wore never left their face as they recovered, then turned to walk toward Sky. He flinched as they approached, hand reaching for the hilt of his blade as he expected an attack, but the child never got more than a few feet away.

“Your friends… do they know… the real you?” the child asked, Sky could feel his heart pounding in his ears, “If they knew the truth… would they still be your friends?”

Sky could only stare, the question echoing as the child tilted their head to the side. They stood still until white light began to envelop them, and they vanished as though never there to begin with. Sky looked around, relieved when he realized that no one else had heard or seen the child in front of him. He forced himself to let go of his sword and continue making his way up the hill.

====

Four had to admit he was curious about the area they had appeared in, but he refused to stop and admire it. Shadow was in trouble, and the fear that he was too late to save him kept him moving, ignoring the few questioning glances he saw from the other heroes. There wasn’t time to explain, and frankly, he didn’t want to explain anything. Not when there was something more pressing going on.

He paid no mind to the children running around, focused solely on the small figure he could see huddled under the roots of the tree. That had to be where they were supposed to go, there was nothing else that he could see that was important. A child wearing a leaf mask began walking next to him, and he refused to acknowledge them, at least until they stood in front of him.

“I don’t have time for this,” he mumbled and began to walk past them until a cold hand grabbed onto his hand.

“I wonder…” the child spoke, Four whipping around to face them, “what would they think… f they knew your secrets… are they really worth… that much to keep them hidden?”

The smith tore his hand out of the hold, the child shattering in front of them like glass. He took a moment, closing his eyes to fight the panic that began to set in. It was fine. He was fine. No matter the question they asked or how they departed... He needed to keep going.

=====

Wind had stayed with Time until the older hero started walking towards the center of the field. A few of the heroes had already gotten to the tree, waiting under it for the rest of the group. Wind wanted to run ahead, but the way that Time walked, all tense and focused made him think that there was more here than what he could see. Something dangerous, most likely.

The group of children had stopped running and just watched as the remaining heroes approached. He hesitated, goosebumps running up and down his arms as the children stood still. One of them seemed to spot him and began to come closer. Wind could see Time walking away, not noticing what he had, but the Sailor could admit that he was curious about these children. The fact that one of them was approaching-- even if it was creepy-- made him wait. The child had an odd yellow mask on, almost reminding him of a strange fox, and the quiet and careful way they walked made him think of one as well. They stood at a distance, close but not too close.

“Is it true?” they asked, and Wind tilted his head to the side, confused, “Are you a hero? Or are you lying… to everyone… including yourself?”

“Wh- I am a hero!”

The child laughed, a distorted sickly-sweet sound that sent shivers down his spine as they turned translucent and fell to the ground as a splash of water. Wind flinched, looking to make sure that no one had seen, and breathed a sigh of relief when no one was around. The sailor unconsciously rubbed at the faded mark on his left hand, trying to tune out the echoing of the child’s voice as he approached the rest of the group.

======

The Veteran refused to dwell on what had happened, what he had seen back in that wasteland of a boss room, despite the way his hands itched to move, to do something. He could picture the illusion perfectly because that was all that was, an illusion. A dream. But he knew that wasn’t quite the case. He shook his head, attempting to rid the fog that threatened to cloud his mind with memories and doubts that didn’t belong there right now. There were more important things to worry about.

The hill wasn’t particularly steep, which he was grateful for though not necessarily for himself. Sky was already under the tree, sitting down with his eyes closed, and he was secretly glad that he didn’t struggle to get up the damn thing. He glanced back to see the rancher and traveler keeping pace, the former watching the trio of masked children as they approached them.

He wasn’t planning on stopping, the kids were unsettling for one thing, but of course, he was curious. Time had ignored them completely when he walked past, but maybe it was because this wasn’t new to him. Still, it was new to him, much different than the masked people of the Dark World. Maybe that was why when a child wearing a black metal cage on their face stood in front of him, he stopped walking.

“Do you think… you can protect them?” they asked, Legend flinching at the question, “... Or is this another illusion… yet another dream… will you wake up this time?”

“That’s none of your concern, brat,” he responded, his hands feeling as though they were burning as he spoke.

The child laughed, high and airy as their body dissolved, drifting on a breeze that didn’t exist. The Veteran scowled, rubbing his hands on his tunic as though it would take away the feeling. He looked behind him, seeing the traveler looking back, the child that had been approaching him no longer there, leaving Hyrule looking at the others nervously. Legend looked away, cursing Dark Link under his breath as he fought the guilt threatening to choke him.

=======

Twilight liked to think that he knew the Old Man the best out of everyone, but as he followed him at a distance, he began to realize just how little he knows. This place was strange, a stark contrast to the world outside, and the way that Time simply marched onward was strange as well. He didn’t think he had ever seen him look so tense, though it was true that the rest of the group was in much the same state.

It really proved how little he knew about all of them, and in a way, that scared him. Everyone had secrets, that much was true, and he couldn’t judge them, but he liked to think that he was there for all of them when they needed him. He was almost positive that they’d do the same for him.

He could see a child with a gibdo mask stalking towards him, the image of a wolf settling itself into his mind. The child stood near him, watching him, and he could feel the unease growing the longer the silence lasted.

“What makes them… worth leaping into danger?... Why put your life in danger… for theirs?... Do they know?... Would they appreciate it?”

The voice was unnatural, distorted, and wrong for a child to have, but the words they spoke lingered in his mind. What did this… thing know that he didn’t? Of course, the child didn’t stick around, black particles starting from their feet spreading over them and taking them away in what looked like Twili Magic. It was unsettling but looking up toward the group and the veteran and traveler making their way toward the rest, he figured it wasn’t important. Not now at least.

========

The magic here was nearly stifling, a wave of darkness despite how bright the false sun above was. It felt wrong, but that was why they were here. To put a stop to whatever this was. It was strange though because outside of the heroes, there was another magic signature that wasn’t quite so dark. It had to have been the boy from earlier, that was the only guess he had. He found himself glancing at the veteran hero often, wondering if he could feel the magic as well, but besides that, he couldn’t help but wonder if he remembered what happened earlier…

He almost crashed into another person, pulling himself out of his thoughts long enough to stop just in front of a child, wearing a stone-colored mask and wringing their hands in front of them.

“Was what you gave up… worth the price?... Would it make… your friends happy… if they knew… how selfish you are?”

The traveler felt his breath stop, the child unmoving as their words settled and his thoughts spiraled. What did they know? Did anyone else know? Questions of his own repeated as the child faded away, as though never there to begin with. It did little to quell the guilt and fear of the others finding out, and as he looked up at Legend, he silently hoped that he, at least, understood. That he didn’t judge him.

=========

Time stood before Majora, hearing the rest of the group approach him. The scene was familiar, the child sitting before him with knees drawn up to their chest, Majora’s Mask sitting on their face with eyes staring straight into his soul. It was time to end this.

“So, we meet again…” the child spoke, getting to their feet and gazing up at Time, “We both know how this is supposed to end. But I wonder if you’ll be able to finish this. Good guys against bad guys… do you think you’ll be able to kill me this time?”

“I plan to.”

Majora laughed, the field changing into a room pulsing with colored light. The child was no more and standing before them was the boy Dark Link had forced the mask on, the wooden eyes glowing as it clenched and unclenched its fist. Time unsheathed his blade, watching the being in front of him carefully, waiting for it to make a move.

“Hm, this body seems to be much better than the one before,” it spoke in a voice that sounded much too similar to Four’s despite Majora’s distortion of it, “This second chance may be exactly what I need.”

Majora turned to face them, the mask glowing brighter as the wood fused to the boy’s skin. Its arms became longer, whip-like in appearance as the boy’s skin turned red, veins pulsing with dark magic. Its legs grew longer, muscular and the boy’s torso changed similarly. Time could hear as the other heroes changed into a fighting stance; swords poised to attack at the first opening. Majora’s Wrath stood before them, and the battle began.

“Move!”

Time yelled, pushing the nearest hero out of the way of one of the whip-like appendages. The others scattered to the corners of the room; shields raised in defense as Majora began its onslaught. Sky ran towards them, rolling into a dodge when a whip cracked where his head had been. The boys were pinned, stuck in the corners of the room, unable to move or risk the monster’s flailing limbs striking them down.

“You’ve fought this thing, what do we do?!”

The Chosen Hero blocked one of the whips aiming for Time, slashing out at it with his sword. The attack did little to damage it, Majora laughing at the attempt. Time could see Wild lining up an arrow across the room, Warriors covering him as he let it fly. Majora ignored the attack, the arrow flying through its head, yet leaving no wound behind.

“I think I may have an idea,” Time spoke, reaching into his bag for the accursed mask. A hand on his arm stopped him from withdrawing it, and he turned to look in Four’s direction.

“Please,” he begged, eyes flickering wildly, “Don’t kill him. This—this isn’t his fault.”

“I know it isn’t his fault, smithy, and… I’m sorry but I can’t make a promise I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep.”

Time tore his arm out of the other’s grasp, the Fierce Deity mask in hand. His markings burned as the mask came into view but watching his group—his boys—struggling to avoid blasts of dark magic and lightning-fast strikes decided for him.

“Sky,” he spoke, the hero snapping to attention, “make sure the others stay away from the middle of the room. Let me take care of this.”

Time didn’t wait for a response, letting the power of the mask run through his body. With the Deity’s blade in his grasp, he rushed forward, the demon the only one his vision focused on. He slashed once, Majora screeching in pain as its arm hit the ground. It retaliated, its other whip-like appendage wrapping around his leg, knocking him down and pulling him closer. The Deity slashed upwards, blade cutting through its chest and releasing its hold. The demon fell to its knees, and the Deity smiled. He rushed forward again and stabbed the beast through the heart.

He could barely hear the cry of the smith over the power he felt.

“Any last words, demon?”

Majora laughed, choking on its blood.

"You act as though this is over, old friend. No,” Majora stared into his eyes, "Your suffering, and that of those around you is only just beginning."

He laughed a moment longer, but with a single twist of the blade, he was silenced. Time pulled off the mask and watched as the corrupted magic of Majora left the boy in front of him, watched as he fell forward onto the floor.

He was pushed away, Four crashing to the ground and gathering the body into his arms. The smith pressed at the wound in his chest, as though stopping the blood would save his life. The rest of the heroes gathered near him, some looking at him with distrust while others watched the smallest hero crouched in front of them.

“Hyrule please,” he looked back at them, tears gathered in multi-colored eyes, “heal him. Please save him.”

The traveler made his way over, kneeling next to him with hands outstretched as though to start the Life spell, only to hesitate. He laid a hand on Four’s shoulder, tears gathering in his eyes.

“I’m so sorry.”

Four held the boy closer, tears streaking down his face as he shook his head.

“No, someone has to have a fairy! Anything, please!”

“Smithy…”

Time reached out to him, only for Four to flinch and move away. He held the boy close to him, protecting him from the man who had slain him, fear and anger twisting his face.

“Stay away from us!”

Time took a step back, his companions watching him with uncertainty. He could feel their gazes on him, Majora’s final words echoing in his mind.

This wasn’t the end. Everything was just beginning.

“Hey, there’s a portal,” Warriors broke the silence, drawing the group’s attention away from him. For a moment, no one moved. Warriors looked back at the smithy and traveler with pity, then to Time before leading the way through to the next Era.

Most of the group followed him, leaving Time, Hyrule, and Four behind. The portal stayed standing, the dark magic swirling inside almost mockingly. Time stood near it, watching as Hyrule comforted Four. The sobs tore into him, and his guilt only grew. This was his fault and truly he deserved whatever resentment the young hero held for him now.

He waited for them, waited until Four gently laid the boy’s body down and stood. Hyrule held his hand as they walked away, towards the portal with no emotion. And if Four lingered a moment longer at the entrance to the portal, looking back to the body of his friend, Time said nothing. Only walked forward, hoping that they could leave this land of painful memories behind them.

[arkon-z]

Flufftober Day 5 - Sunrise

Read it here on AO3!

Victory

There was little to say, now. A weary silence seemed to fall over everything as the world caught its breath. Central Hyrule was nearly in ruins, but the Guardian onslaught had finally been quelled. Riju, weary to her bones, took in the sight. The other Divine Beasts had arrived just in time; she hadn't been sure how much longer she and Lady Urbosa might have been able to keep fighting.

Riju felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up to see Lady Urbosa giving a warm smile.

"I couldn't have done that without your help," she said. "Thank you."

Riju fidgeted, still uncertain how to respond to direct praise from her hero.

"Not at all," she replied. She looked over the field again; with the towns and settlements in ruins, it more closely resembled the Central Hyrule of her time. The thought saddened her a little. At least the people here had been able to evacuate before the Guardian invasion. This Hyrule still had a chance, even if it didn't feel like it.

"I think it's going to be a beautiful sunrise," said Lady Urbosa, facing east.

The light of dawn was just beginning to tint the darkened sky to a gentle purple. It wouldn't be long before the world was shining with a new day, and Riju smiled at the thought.

Suddenly, a sphere of perfect golden light erupted from behind the Dueling Peaks. Riju felt her heart in her throat as she realized it must have come from Fort Hateno. If it meant what she thought it did, then Princess Zelda had finally unlocked her power.

But what about Link?

Was history doomed to repeat itself, even with the help of the four travelers from the future? Had they saved the four Champions, only to lose the fifth?

Before Riju could wonder any further, the golden light washed over her. Something gentle seemed to brush against her spirit, renewing her energy, soothing her anxiety. As it did, she sensed Princess Zelda's shock and wonder at her new strength. And in that moment, she saw what the princess saw - the sorcerer flinching in pain, Impa staring in astonishment, and Link, alive and well, with a ghost of a smile on his face. Then the vision was gone, leaving only hope and excitement. She turned to Lady Urbosa to ask if she had seen it, but the expression on her face was one of stunned disbelief. Riju reached for her, hesitant.

"Are you alright-"

Lady Urbosa raised her arms and threw her head back, letting out a wild ululation. The sudden noise startled Riju, but not nearly as much as Urbosa grabbing her and spinning her around, laughing and singing with joy, even as tears rolled down her face.

"She did it!" Urbosa cried. "She did it! I always knew she would!"

Poor Riju was utterly baffled at the sight of the dignified woman, this legendary hero, whooping and cheering like a loon. But she couldn't dwell on it for long; Urbosa's excitement and relief were contagious and soon Riju was laughing with her. They came to a stop to catch their breath, and Urbosa sighed happily.

"Oh, our little bird," she said, glancing up at the sky. "You would be so proud of her…"

She turned to look down at Riju. "I'm proud of you too, you know. You did very well."

The girl just nodded, still uncertain about what to make of the elder chief's display of exuberance. Urbosa noticed her hesitation and gave her a puzzled look.

"What is it?"

"I - it's a little strange to see you acting so wild. Isn't a Gerudo Chief supposed to be, you know, mature and dignified?"

Urbosa leaned in to better look her in the eyes. "We're allowed to have emotions, Riju. We may be leaders and examples to our people, but we're still human. We can cry when we're upset and we can cheer and shout when we're happy. Maturity is about good judgment, not holding ourselves back when we feel excited. Especially not when we have something like this to celebrate."

Riju grinned. "Yes! And this victory is something to celebrate!"

"That's right!" Urbosa straightened and planted her hands on her hips, grinning excitedly. "And what do the Gerudo say to victory?"

Riju copied her stance, squaring her shoulders. "Glory to our sisters, misfortune to our enemies, and may the next be even greater!"

They threw their heads back, ululating together. Vah Naboris rumbled under their feet and let out its haunting mechanical roar with them, and Riju sensed amusement. In the distance, each of the other Beasts roared as well, and the two Gerudo knew that the other Champions were celebrating as well.