#<- They came up with this tag for when I post about them

[piper-2244]

the limit does not exist!

how spencer helps college!reader understand a little calculus and therefore understand how he loves her.

MDNI | smut word count: 1931 warnings & tags & stuff: fem reader, fingering, oral sex (f receiving), lil bit of overstim hehe, pure unbridled affection, LOVE, FLUFF, hugging, reader cries, this was in fact meant to be written for spence's birthday... sorry about that school is kicking my butt lets just pretend it's october! author's note: this one is for my folks who HATE their calculus class and want spencer reid to give them head instead <3 maybe this can help you romanticize it a bit. i think this is classified as self indulgent…like REALLY self indulgent… hah... anyway i hope you enjoy! let me know your thoughts if u have any, i loveeeee you!! have a great day my hands are shaking posting this smut is so scary!!!!!

You sat in bed, staring down your notebook, eyes narrowed. Limits stared back at you. You were just about at your own limit, if you were being honest. 

Your brain, however sharp and witty it may be, is absolutely not one designed for calculus. A literary analysis essay? Done in half an hour. In depth scientific research project? Easiest months of your life. But there’s something about finding the instantaneous rate of change of a curve at one point in time by finding the slope of a tangent line that hasn't clicked yet. 

A slew of other papers- notes, practice worksheets printed from obscure websites, and formulas- surround you, a sea of unfinished thoughts from the past month of the semester.

You bite on the end of your pen, the little hope you had for a good grade in this class slipping further and further away with each passing moment, like the last ember dying in the remains of a fire.

What you really wanted to be doing was celebrating Spencer’s birthday with him right now. A chocolate cake lay on the kitchen counter and pasta simmers on the stove, but you and your boyfriend had agreed to do a solid hour of work before the celebrations ensued.

You were never particularly strong willed when it came to following through on such agreements.

“Teach me calculus,” you say, a very impressive three minutes later, flopping down on the couch. Your head makes its way to its forever resting spot, Spencer’s lap. He raises his eyebrows slightly, thumb reaching out to trace over the slope of your nose. His eyes flit between you and the file to the side of him. 

“I thought we agreed on an hour.”

“Yeah. But it wouldn’t be a very productive hour if I didn’t know how to do what I have to do. And I missed you.” 

He sighs quietly, closing the file next to him. 

“What do you not understand?” You smile at that, loving how quickly you won.

“Related rates. Like, conceptually.” 

Spencer hums in response.

“It’s October. You’re not even supposed to know related rates yet.”

“Fine. Then let's open presents,” you respond, smiley. His eyebrows get impossibly higher, hand stroking your cheek delicately.

“No. I want our night to be a little more stress free when we celebrate, okay? How about you think about that lovely cake you made for me. What if I decided to squash it so that the diameter would get bigger, going from…let’s say, 20 centimeters to 26 centimeters in 3 seconds, and the height would get smal-”

“That wouldn't be nice. It took me like four hours,” you interrupt, grumbling. He cracks a smile.

“For the sake of the example, let's say I was an awful boyfriend and really wanted to ruin all the hard work you put in for me.”

You roll your eyes.

“Hey,” he says, hand moving down to touch your jaw softly. “Don’t do that. Don’t be difficult. I’m helping you.”

“Sorry. I guess I need you to zoom out a little. I don’t really get why I’m learning this as a whole.” Spencer’s eyes pore into yours, staring down at you adoringly for a small moment as he comes up with an answer.

“Calculus helps us begin to explain the unexplainable by harnessing what we can,” Spencer says simply. “Einstein once said that, ‘Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas,’ which makes it simple in practice, but I actually like to think about it as the opposite philosophically. Trying to find logic in the more poetic ideas.”

You cuddle deeper in his lap.

“Think he would agree with that?” you ask. “I do answer to Einstein before you, unfortunately.” Spencer bends down to kiss your hair.

“I think so. He also had a really nice quote where he remarked that, ‘Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.’ He said, ‘How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.’”

Spencer takes a deep breath.

“Math doesn’t explain how I love you. It can’t. But I love the fact that it tries to. It kinda makes you wanna learn it as best you can.”

You process that for a long second and nod. He keeps talking.

… 

Presents get opened, and cake gets eaten before dinner. Of course.

You’re now in bed, on top of the covers, forcing Spencer to give you a fashion show of the new sweater vest and tie you got him. He turns to you after putting it on, and you beam. 

“I really like it. You look great. Do you like it?” you ask. He nods, smiling back at you.

“I’m gonna wear it to work tomorrow.” 

You beckon for Spencer to come closer, sitting up in bed. Your hands go out to the tie, tugging at the knot softly. He stares down at you until eventually interrupting your motions with a slow kiss, hands cupping your face.

“You’re so pretty,” he mutters.

He pulls away and finishes what you started, folding the tie neatly and setting it in the drawer. Then comes the vest, and soon enough, he’s just in his boxers.

“You’re the pretty one,” you say quietly. “Come to bed.” He crawls on next to you, tugging you into his arms. “Happy birthday, Spence. I love you.” He dips his forehead to your shoulder.

“I love you.”

Before you know it, he’s shifted on top of you, moving down. Fast. You blink, hard, trying to rid your head of the hazy endorphins as you register what he’s doing.

“What? No, I was gonna do that. It’s your birthday. You don’t have to,” you protest.

“But I really, really want to, darling girl,” he murmurs back, kissing your knee and softly pushing it to the side.

You fluster and Spencer just looks at you, fingers tracing shapes on your waist, waiting for you to be ready. 

“Well. Um. Okay. If you insist. I can’t really deny the birthday boy.” Your voice is small, and a little giddy smile grows on your face. Of course Spencer Reid would want to give you head on his birthday. 

He smiles a little against the bare skin of your hip where your top meets your shorts. Then he meets your eyes. 

“You know you can, though, right?” he asks, voice a little more serious. You reach out to touch his hair softly. 

“Yeah. I know.”

Fingers hook your shorts, gently pulling them down. He presses a kiss to your thigh, and then he suddenly looks down at it. 

“Soft,” he murmurs, like he’s making a mental note. He presses another, and another, incrementally going closer and closer to your soaked through underwear. His eyebrows scrunch when he sees the wet spot. “All this from a few kisses?” 

You blush, unable to respond. 

Spencer’s fingers hook a centimeter of your underwear. “These?” he checks.

“Yes, please,” you manage. He tugs them down, silently noticing the slickness of your sex, and exhales shakily.

“How many times on average does it take for a guy to call you pretty on a given day before you get annoyed?” he murmurs, soft smile playing on his face. You smile too, head cloudy from his words, but it immediately drops when his lips press directly against your pulsing clit, kissing it softly.

“Fuck,” you say (Spencer would argue moan) softly (loudly). You let out a content sigh, and he moves to suckle it, actions becoming less and less delicate. 

It’s not harsh, but incessant. Spencer knows what you can take. He knows exactly what you can take. You’re both quiet for a bit, save for your breathy moans. 

“Spencer,” you say softly, ripping you both out of your individually hazy and dirty and distracted minds. “You’re too far away.” He looks up to you, face parallel to your aching core, hair beautifully messy and mouth glistening.

After a second, he grabs your hips, gently pushing you up against the pillows so you’re propped up at a better angle. He then shifts his body up wordlessly so he’s more above you, dipping his head down to give you a soft kiss. You taste yourself, tongue darting out to lick your lips.

His hand takes over where his mouth was, sliding in between your folds with a practiced ease. Spencer looks down at you, eyes wide and flitting between yours, searching for a reaction.

You reach out and wrap your arms around him, holding him close. “Holy shit, I love you,” you murmur.

His fingers lightly graze your clit again before one slides into you. “Angel,” he breathes out, so quietly. “I love you too. This okay? Are you okay?”

You nod feverishly and lift your hips to meet his hand, always in a perpetual state of wanting more, to be closer. Your bodies are melded so close together, barely giving him room to push his hand into you. He doesn’t even bother to ask you to use your words or keep your hips down, like he might on a regular night.

He pulls his head back to watch as he pushes another finger into you, stretching you just a little. “There we go. You always feel like heaven around me.”

Your eyes flit up to his face as he says those words, now having a little more room to observe him. You focus on the slope of his nose and curve of his mouth. 

“You’re so perfect,” you say quietly, adoringly, before you even realize it was true.

You blink at that thought. Spencer Reid is perfect, despite whatever universal odds deeming that impossible.

Those graphs, those formulas, now laying discarded & crumpled on the ground. They click, a little bit. You understand why Albert Einstein wanted to spend his life developing theories of relativity.

This is how Spencer sees you? What he was talking about earlier?

This is how he sees you?

The thought is almost too much.

Spencer sees your face, and not knowing what's going on in your head, slides down his free hand from your cheek to your carotid, feeling your racing pulse. “Take a deep breath for me, okay? You're about to come, huh?”

You inhale and are met with peace. Then your orgasm hits you like a wave. You clench hard around his fingers, and he just watches it happen, fascinated. “Baby,” he coos softly at you.

It wasn’t just your sensitivity he’s currently maximizing on or the little kisses he dips down to leave on your neck that sealed the deal, but the very thought that you could be loved in a way that is so perfectly impossible.

You exhale breathily as Spencer pushes you through the last trails of your climax, fingers not caring one bit that you just had your world tilted on its axis. 

“Spencer. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod,” you say eventually, overstimulated.

“You’re okay. Did so good.” he murmurs, fingers slipping out of you. 

His thumb brushes your cheek, wiping away a tear you didn't even realize was dripping down.

“Don’t cry, you always cry. It’s my birthday. Don’t cry on my birthday,” he whispers soothingly, affection lacing his voice.

“I’m not.” 

Another one falls. 

You reach and press out that perpetual little slope between his eyebrows with your thumb, gentle, like you might break him. “I’m not crying.”

Spencer lets you lie.

[rosemariiaa]

𝙃𝘼𝙇𝙁𝙒𝘼𝙔 𝙎𝙏𝙍𝘼𝙉𝙂𝙀𝙍𝙎

00 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙡𝙤𝙜𝙪𝙚, 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙨𝙞𝙙𝙚.

a/n: long awaited pazzi series.. let’s hope I can be consistent with these chapters and not forget about after a few weeks.happy ready lovelies ⋆·˚ ༘ *

warnings: none!

`✦ˑ ִֶ 𓂃⊹

“I’m afraid to see what’s in my head ,

So I lock it up in my heart”

I’ve never been great with people. Sure, I can hold a conversation, crack a joke, make some friends. But there’s always this weird distance—like I’m just performing, pretending to be someone I’m not. The truth is, I’m not as confident as people think I am. I hate being vulnerable. But she made it easier.

I still remember the first time she reached out to me. Her message popped up on my computer late one night, while I was scrolling through my Blogspot—my little corner of the internet where I could just… breathe. No one knew who I was on there. Just a girl venting about life, school, basketball, and the tangled mess that was my head.

She said she’d been reading my posts for a while and liked them. She said she didn’t have anyone else to talk to, and honestly, I didn’t either. So we started messaging. At first, it was just random stuff—homework, teachers, the usual teenage nonsense.

But soon enough, she started opening up more. Things I never expected to hear. About her family. Her stepdad. The kids at school who made her feel invisible. She told me how her mom remarried, and how everything felt off after that. I didn’t know why she was sharing all this with me, someone she’d never met, someone who was practically a stranger. But there was something about it. Something that made it feel right.

We got into the deeper stuff too—the insecurities, the self-doubt, the anger at things we couldn’t control. And yeah, I shared my own stuff too. It wasn’t the same, but it was close enough. My parents getting divorced. Moving from place to place. The pressure to be perfect all the time. I guess it’s easier when you don’t have to show your face. She wasn’t some random person to me anymore. She was… real.

She called me “her safe space.” And for some reason, I was okay with that. I think I needed her as much as she needed me, even if I couldn’t admit it back then. It was like she understood me in a way no one else did.

But the thing is, I never told her who I really was. She didn’t need to know I was Paige Bueckers, the basketball player everyone at school thought they knew. She didn’t need know I was just a girl trying to figure out where I fit in all of this.

It was just us. She and I. We could be ourselves without pretending. And that felt… like a goddamn relief.

But that was the thing—she was just an anonymous name on a screen. I didn’t know who she was either. Not really. I only knew what she shared, what she let me see.

Then came that night. The night I saw her name pop up in the chat, just like always. But this time, it wasn’t just her usual message. It was a question. “What if we could meet? Like, in real life?” Oh.

I froze. And my stomach did this weird flip.

I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t even know if I wanted to. What if she was someone I knew? What if she was someone I was supposed to hate? What if… it was her?

————

tag list ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

@thaatdigitaldiary @patscorner @sierrale8ne @ohbueckers @juspeaks @mrsarnold @d3arapril @authentic-girl03 @absolutelydreadful

[firstkanaphans]

Don't you think this all comes down to the fact that people watch fiction, romance or anything else, for different reasons and so, they also engage with it in different ways? Criticism is just a way to engage with something. Just like giffing, fanart or writing any kind of meta, positive or negative. People will engage with media in their own way. If they didn't like the genre as a whole, they wouldn't watch it at all, much less take the time to write a post about it.

I think you’re underestimating how many people on the internet get joy out of ruining other people’s fun. If they say they’re doing it out of love for the genre, I’m certainly not going to argue with them—even if that relationship does seem a bit abusive to me. People can interact with media in any way they wish to do so. It only becomes my problem when these blatant lies and delusions start popping up in the main tag, presented in a pseudo-intellectual format that makes them seem like facts instead of opinions. Since these people have chosen to expose the whole fandom to misinformation by putting it in the main tag, I’m going to start saying something about it because I think people deserve to see a counter-argument written in good faith by someone actually enjoying the show, the genre, and the production company making it.

This ridiculous argument about how CPs are ruining the genre has persisted for over a year now and I’m tired of just sitting back and letting misinformation go unchecked. There are plenty of meta writers on here that present their criticisms in such a way that even if I disagree, it’s not offensive. There’s just a certain segment of this fandom that not only criticizes the show, but comes up with conspiracy theories to support their dislike instead of simply saying that it’s not to their taste—and then continues to do so every week for 12 weeks. It’s absolutely exhausting having to spend time blocking people being rude in the tag instead of just enjoying what I came there to enjoy.

And I also think these people should take some time to examine their own biases and ask themselves why it’s only Thai shows they’re criticizing? Why it’s only romances? Why it’s only certain actors or certain production companies? Because it is.

[kaidynsarell]

Sebastian Sallow and the Day his Daughter Abused her Library Privleges.

🍁🌼🍁🌼🍁🌼🍁🌼🍁🌼🍁🌼🍁🌼🍁🌼🍁

Pairings: Sebastian Sallow x Female OC, Female OC x Male OC.

Rating: Sexual content is referenced/implied

Tags: Seb is smart but also kind of dumb, cannot compute his child growing up, dating and *gasp* Book Violence (Seb insisted on that last one)

The full fic can be found below(5k words)

One shot (unless the gremlins force me to add more. I am at their mercy😅)

The “rug” had been yanked out from under Sebastian approximately three times in a matter of a few minutes. Each displacement worse than the last, and only compounded by the growing smirks plastered across both his wife’s and sister's faces. They'd not even done him the decency of trying to hide their satisfaction. Even Ominis had failed to stifle his mirth and now sat attempting to suppress waves of silent giggles Sebastian knew only too well came at his own expense.

The whole terrible ordeal had started only fifteen minutes prior when he’d Floo’d back home from his office at Hogwarts.

The position of Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor had come as a surprising offer nearly eight years prior.

Dinah had been stepping down from the post and had, to Sebastian’s surprise, felt he would be the most suited for the position. He'd almost wanted to decline it, given his own dalliances with the Dark Arts.

Really, he'd thought, he was the furthest thing from appropriate for that job.

If only they'd truly known the history he'd left behind in that catacomb. He couldn’t imagine any of them would be singing his praises if they caught a glimpse of the marks he’d raked through his soul. But his wife had always had this uncanny way of reminding him, convincing him really, that he was a better person than he gave himself credit for.

That, and she’d never been terribly infatuated with the secrecy required by his work with the Department of Mysteries. The “Unspeakable” job title came with about as much useful information outside of the department as the title offered, which is to say, nothing.

So, with his wife's less than secretive encouragement, he’d left his work with the Ministry and set foot in Hogwarts to assist his former DADA Professor for the remainder of that school year.

He’d have been lying if he'd said he’d never thought of teaching before. That he'd not nearly written that as one of his interests on his Career Advice form in his Fifth year and imagined the slight possibility of following in his parent’s footsteps.

Though, that particular thought had twisted in a far more vulnerable place than he ever cared to admit to.

Months later, the 1st of September had seen his official first day as the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor and his eleven-year-old daughter's first day as a student.

He'd watched her small frame perch on that stool at the center of the stage that day, her legs still too short to reach the ground as the sorting hat slid over her eyes and called out the name of his old house.

He'd known his Love would call him too sentimental when he blinked away tears as he'd watched his little girl with the wavy brown hair and the freckles that so matched his own hop down from the stool and scamper away to the Slytherin table without so much as a backward glance at him.

Professor Weasley had looked at him from down the staff table a little too long then, and he'd quickly swallowed several gulps of pumpkin juice in what he'd hoped was a convincing enough display to not let anyone think he'd just been crying over what was still his baby girl being sorted.

He'd deny it in any case.

Had it not been just yesterday, she'd been two years old and babbling incoherently while he balanced her on his shoulders?

Surely, she'd not actually been eleven yet.

Then, she'd joined the Slytherin Quidditch team as a Chaser in her third year, and his apprehension had tangled so closely with his pride it had been impossible to separate them. Each match had been met with both white-knuckled fear she'd be hurt and joy in seeing how she lit up with each goal she maneuvered past the Keeper.

Until the last game of that season had Slytherin facing Ravenclaw for the house cup.

He'd only just seen the Bludger before it hit her.

She'd not seen it at all, and there'd only been the collective gasp of the crowd as she'd crumpled the last twenty feet to the pitch below.

He would have bet galleons apparition couldn’t have moved him faster that day as he'd scooped her limp, unmoving form into his arms and carried her back to the Hospital Wing, ignoring the shouts of his wife and Nurse Blainey alike.

Hours later, she'd still not opened her eyes, and even the Hogwarts Matron’s reassurances that it was most likely due to the myriad of healing and calming spells placed over her had done nothing to stop the path he'd worn into the stone with the ferocity of his pacing.

She'd looked far too small and pale lying there.

Too much like...

But he'd shoved that particular thought away.

It had taken Anne, Ominis, and the witch he'd fallen for at sixteen to calm him enough to be convinced not to send his daughter to Saint Mungo's for further treatment.

"You need rest, Sebastian," his wife had said when she'd glanced up for what must have been the umpteenth time from her place in the squashy armchair she’d conjured beside their daughter’s bed to find him pacing again, book in hand. "You heard Nurse Blainey. It's a common Quidditch injury. She'll be good as new by morning."

Sebastian had only muttered a halfhearted acknowledgment before her fingers pulled through his, and she’d tugged him over to where their thirteen-year-old slept.

“This isn't like Anne, Seb.” She’d whispered so low he could just feel her breath along his cheek. “Little One is going to be okay. Her body just needs to rest.”

“I know that.” He had; it had done nothing to stop the icy lump forming in the pit of his stomach.

Somehow, he'd let her convince him to return to the large armchair. He’d pulled the woman down on top of him and buried his face into her neck.

Still, sleep never truly found him that night, and if his wife’s much too quiet breaths had been any indication, she'd slept about as well as he had.

Hadn't it only been a few days ago their daughter had turned seven and opened her first real broom--not one of those that skimmed a foot or so off the ground—but one slightly smaller than regulation that soared high into the tree tops? They’d spent hours above the back garden that day tossing an old Quaffle back and forth until the sun saw its last gold fade to ruby along the distant peaks and vanished below the skyline.

When she’d woken in the Hospital Wing the following day, the freckled girl had barely opened her eyes before asking about the match’s results. When Sebastian had gently suggested she might drop Quidditch to prevent further head injuries or, Merlin forbid, save her father a few sleepless nights, she'd looked so affronted one might have thought he'd asked her to kick a niffler.

Only two years ago had seen her sit her O.W.L.S and her career advice meeting.

With Aesop having retired at the end of the previous year, Sebastian had taken over as Head of Slytherin and sat with his little girl, for she would always be his little girl, while she'd prattled on about a list of careers she’d taken an interest in.

An Auror

A Curse Breaker

(And he’d made a mental note to have words with Poppy Sweeting, for this was clearly his daughter’s top choice for a career, and only the former ferocious little Magizoologist could have been behind this particular suggestion) A Magizoologist specializing in Dragons.

When Sebastian had dared offer the suggestion she might work for the Wizengamot or as an Archivist or study something as benign as Kneazles rather than Dragons or aim for a career with even a modicum of safety involved, the then fifteen-year-old had wrinkled her nose at him in that same way her mother always did.

"Ugh! Those are all boooorrring, Dad. I want to work with dragons."

"Absolutely not."

"But Mum and Aunt Poppy helped release a dragon from a poacher camp and returned its egg, and they were the same age as me.”

Sebastian had run a hand over face. "That was different."

That was when she'd settled back into her chair, folded her arms across her chest, and scowled at him in that way that reminded him too much of Anne, of himself if he were very honest about it. "I don't really see how."

She was more stubborn than both he and her mother combined, and Merlin help him; he'd be entirely grey before he was forty.

Hadn't she just been nine years old and still small enough to demand bedtime stories? Where had the time gone when she'd been satiated by the retelling of his and her mother’s adventures? Now, she craved adventure of her own, and he'd known he'd be a hypocrite if he stood too much in her way.

Still, the past fifteen minutes spent in the comfort of his own sitting room might have thrown him more than anything else he'd faced in the past seventeen years.

His first clue something was amiss had come only minutes before he'd taken the Floo home.

It wasn't often his daughter accompanied him back to their house in the evenings, but perks of having a parent as a professor, would occasionally return home with him once a month or so for ‘family weekends’. Sebastian would deny it if anyone suggested having his little girl home for the weekend was more for his own sanity than any amount of homesickness his daughter might have had.

Though, rather than finding her waiting for him in his office that day as he so often did, he'd found the room empty, and even a few minutes of waiting had not procured her.

It wasn’t terribly alarming. It wouldn’t even have been the first time she'd snuck home before him, ready to pounce out when he arrived home with some prank or another.

But when he’d stepped through the fireplace, she'd not been there either.

Anne, Ominis, and his wife had all been there, sitting in the living room. But there'd been no sign of his daughter.

He'd waited, still dusty from the fireplace, ready for whatever prank he was certain Anne was already in on, given the barely contained smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.

He must have stood there a beat too long because his wife had tilted her head at him. "She's not coming home this weekend, Seb. Matilda’s just written. She's gotten detention for sneaking into the restricted section and for being out of bed after curfew last night."

Sebastian blinked but made no move to sit. It might have been a point of pride for him—the idea of his child sneaking off to obtain restricted knowledge— had he not already permitted her what amounted to nearly unlimited access to the Library anyway.

To any Library, really.

"But she doesn’t need to sneak into the restricted section." Judging by the looks on everyone’s faces, there was something he was missing, but whatever was had been proving frustratingly elusive. "She knows I'll write notes for whatever book she wants out of there."

That had been the deal they'd agreed to from the very first day their daughter had stepped foot into that school. Sebastian would sign for whatever book she wanted from the Restricted Section, so long as she kept him updated on what she was reading and, depending on the text, read the book at home or in his office where either he or her mother could keep supervision.

He’d never been one to limit his child’s knowledge.

Perhaps he'd taken that from his parents as well.

If his daughter had wanted to sneak anywhere, there were a plethora of other off-limits areas she could find. But the Library? That didn’t make sense.

Anne had giggled behind her hand. “She wasn't alone. She got caught there with a boy."

"What does she need a boy in the Restricted Section for?"

If his twin had meant to offer an explanation, she'd done nothing more than confuse him further.

His wife sighed. "I don't imagine they were there to study, Dear. Not books, in any case."

That had earned another round of barely contained giggles, and still, they'd all sat there looking at him like he was the butt of some great cosmic joke. Waiting for him to get it, but none of the information formed a logical conclusion. Even glancing at his twin had offered little in the way of answers, and he’d generally have been able to read her better than anyone.

"And here I thought you were supposed to be intelligent, Sallow." Ominis quipped from the place he'd perched next to Anne. “They let you teach? Merlin help the children."

That was when the pieces had snapped together.

"What?! No?!" He’d hated how high his voice had climbed and how much further it climbed as he’d held his hand out at his daughter's height, just about the height of his waist. “But…but she's only—"

Anne snorted. "Sebastian, she hasn't been that tall since she was about ten."

That was when he'd made his most devastating mistake. "Who?"

"I'm not certain it matters right now," His wife had started.

Sebastian whirled around. “It does if he's snogging our daughter."

"I think you mispronounced shagging" Anne chirped.

Sebastian had made an embarrassing, strangled, screeching sort of noise then.

Images had flooded behind his eyes of his little girl crowded against a bookshelf by some faceless man pressing lips against her neck in the throes of passion. Precious tomes toppled from their shelves; spines splayed unnaturally, pages creased. The faceless man's hands maneuvering into places Sebastian had never intended to let anyone near. Ever.

He’d be having nightmares for months.

"Who?" This had now become vitally important information. He needed to know whose fingers he would be breaking.

"Oh, he's sweet.” His wife had chirped. "He's one of your favorite students, you told me so just the other week—"

Sebastian had quickly run through a list of his students and immediately decided not one of them was worthy of his little girl. Not that anyone ever would be.

Really, now that he thought of it, touching his daughter should be tantamount to a life sentence in Azkaban. Did Onai still sit on the Wizengamot? Perhaps he could get it written into law.

"--Oliver Weasley."

"WEASLEY!?!?" His voice had climbed octaves into a territory that could only be described as screeching, but Sebastian had long since stopped caring.

His fingers had clutched around his wand so tightly it might have snapped had his wife not leaned forward and pulled it from his grip. Years since he'd used dark magic against another person, and fifteen minutes had him itching for unforgivables.

"Oh, aren't they adorable?" Anne, this time, and Sebastian had snapped his gaze to his twin. "You know, Poppy says they've been spending quite a lot of time together since she partnered them on that assignment with the Dirwicals a few months ago. That must have been when they started courting."

"Months!" It came out as a squeak. “This has been going on for months?!"

Make that the fourth rug.

He may as well stay on his ass while he was down here.

><><><><

The night was for stillness. Those quiet moments whispered between shooting stars or, in Sebastian's case, breathed against his wife’s hair as she sprawled across him. Her skin bare and tacky in the early summer heat against his own, her fingers tracing constellations between the freckles on his chest.

He tipped his head down to her again and brushed his nose against those soft strands still clinging to the scents of citrus and wildflowers. "Why didn't she tell me?"

"mmm?" The witch tipped her nose up to him.

"Why didn't she tell me she was seeing Weasley? I thought she told me everything." He'd whispered that last bit so quietly a part of him hoped she hadn't heard.

But the woman in his arms just slid her hand up his neck and into the short beard he'd kept for the past seven years. "Because she knows how much you worry, Seb.”

"I don't worry that much."

It was the second time she'd laughed at him that day.

"You stayed home from work for a week and threatened to send her to St. Mungo's when she had the flu last year."

"It was a bad case,” he muttered. Cool fingers stayed against his cheek. He closed his eyes and pushed his face against them. "What if Weasley’s pressuring her into things?"

"I really don't think he is.”

Sebastian scrunched his face at that. “How can you be sure?"

Another hand in his hair, and he thought he might melt into the mattress. "Because you've shown her how she deserves to be treated, Sebastian."

He wasn't prepared for his wife to be hovering over him when he blinked his eyes open again. Nor was he ready for her lips against his jaw

"Besides," she continued, “she's as brilliant and quick with a wand as you are, and I’ve already talked to her about it.” He was already brimming with a retort when his Love placed a single delicate finger over his half-parted lips. “Trust her.”

"She's still not old enough." It seemed the only thing he could manage.

"Sebastian," another trill of laughter, "She'll be eighteen next month, and she and Oliver will both have left school. We weren't so much older than them when we got engaged."

And that sent images of white dresses and vows and his little girl’s fingers on his arm as he walked her toward a tall redhead at the other end of a long aisle racing behind his eyelids.

And that

that.

He was not prepared for.

He wasn't sure he ever would be.

It was enough to pull his Love back against him and bury his face against her hair again. "She wasn't ever supposed to grow up."

He'd deny it if anyone said his voice broke.

><><><><

Now that he was aware of his daughter's relationship, he saw evidence of it in too many places. He'd curse himself for not noticing before, or maybe they'd just stopped being as secretive about it.

His daughter and Weasley holding hands in the corridors. His daughter and Weasley sitting together at meals. The two of them leaning over the same book in the library, Weasley attending all of her Quidditch practices. The both of them in the Astronomy tower, wrapped in blankets and sipping hot chocolate after curfew.

That last encounter had earned him such a ferocious glare from his daughter Sebastian was convinced she’d been trying to shoot fire from her eyes. His wife had floo'd into his office an hour later to drag him back home and demand that he ‘stop following them around.’ Whatever arguments he’d prepared about Weasely’s egregious crime of keeping their daughter out after hours had been brushed aside as she’d informed him the aforementioned would be joining them for dinner that coming Saturday.

Weasley.

His wife had been right. Oliver was ,surprisingly, one of Sebastian’s most gifted students. Where his father may have shone as a potions prodigy in their youth, Garreth's son had a remarkable talent and understanding of defensive magic. There was a natural cadence to his dueling Sebastian had seldom seen, and the creativity of his spell combinations had been nearly unmatched that year.

Sebastian, as much as it now pained him to admit to himself, had liked the boy.

Had being the operative word.

That was before Weasley had started running hands over his little girl.

><><><><

Saturday evening rolled around to slap him across the face before he’d managed to find a proper excuse to keep the young Weasley out of his house.

Sebastian had not missed how his wife had tugged his wand from his grip when he'd stepped out of the fireplace. Nor did he miss the conveniently rounded cutlery with their meal. A hearty beef stew with chunks of a thick golden bread she’d already sliced

No need for any sharp objects at the dinner table.

Pity.

Still, Sebastian prided himself on keeping his emotions level throughout the entire meal, even if it was partially owed to his wife digging her fingers into his knee with every twitch of his jaw.

Despite all of it, Weasley had been perfectly polite and respectful. Perhaps that irritated Sebastian more as it gave him less space to cling to his newfound dislike of the boy.

Weasley had held the door for his daughter and offered his arm over the doorstep. He'd dressed practically enough not to over-emphasize his pureblood origins–not that the Weasleys were known for holding quite the same ideologies–but intentionally enough to show he'd taken the dinner seriously. He'd brought flowers for Sebastian’s wife and complimented her cooking. He’d pulled out his little girl's chair but otherwise kept his hands a respectful distance from her. He'd kept engaging conversation throughout the entire ordeal.

And why couldn't the bloke mess up just once so Sebastian could have an excuse to scream at him?

And then,

and this might have been the worst of all.

When they’d all finished their meals and retired to the sitting room for a drink, Weasley made his daughter laugh.

Not the small polite flutter through her nose he would recognize had she been trying to be nice, but hysterics that had the both of them snorting and doubled over, clutching their bellies.

Laughter genuine enough, his daughter had forgotten all pretenses of decorum and dipped her head against the boy's shoulder.

Then Oliver had looked at her.

In that gentle way, Sebastian recognized all too well, like he might have found poetry written across his daughter's skin.

And Sebastian was not ready.

Not for anyone to look at his little girl like that.

He couldn't remember what excuse he muttered when he left the rest of them in the sitting room and climbed the stairs to the small balcony just off the Study.

><><><><

The summer night was calm. Long faded past the last remnants of sunset and jeweled with the wide expanse of starlight.

Sebastian had already downed the rest of whatever amber-colored liquid his wife had poured into his glass and leaned his arms against the wooden railing. Still, even the delightful tilting buzz did nothing to distract from the patter of footsteps behind him.

"Professor?...I mean..Sir?"

Could he not have a moment's peace?

"What do you want, Weasley?"

He'd be lying if he said he'd not taken some satisfaction in how the young Weasley had flinched at his brusque response. Maybe Sebastian was still at least a little intimidating.

Even if he had needed to curl his fingers around the railing, pressed them against the wood until they might have fractured purple across his fingertips to stop his hands from shaking.

"I...well, I'd just hoped to talk to you about your daughter and...um...my intentions with her and—"

"A bit late for that, don't you think." Sebastian snapped.

"I...erm...right–" He heard the boy shuffle his feet a bit, but Sebastian made no move to turn around. He couldn't have in any case with the way he was bracing himself against the railing and fighting the dark spots in his vision. “–We...I mean, I should have insisted we talk to you first and–"

Sebastian slammed his eyes shut and forced himself to breathe. He had to breathe.

“–I apologize for getting her into trouble," the boy continued. "I'd just like you to know that I care for her deeply. She...she's...well, she means quite a lot to me, and I promise I'll—”

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Exhale.

“–and I wanted to formally ask your permission to–”

Fuck.

Not this.

He couldn't do this.

"Not...not right now, Oliver." He was certain he'd muttered something to that effect past the rush of blood in his ears, and still fighting his painfully blurred vision, he shouldered past the young man and back into his study.

><><><><

Sunday greeted late afternoon haze before Sebastian heard his daughter come up behind him.

He'd been given word that morning that she and Weasley would be spending several hours at the coast with his Wife and Anne. With that, Sebastian had suddenly felt the need to blister his hands over copious amounts of physical labor if only for the hope his aching muscles might be an adequate distraction from any thoughts of Weasley or his intentions.

She'd already settled herself on the grass beside him before Sebastian turned from the rose bush he'd been pruning. She hadn't even noticed he'd turned, engrossed as she was in plucking the wild daisies from the grass and stringing them together.

Less than five minutes and dirt had already smudged across her nose. She might have had his chestnut curls and sprinkling of freckles, but she looked so like her mother in every other way.

And that was his little girl

Except she wasn't really so little anymore, was she?

Not with her longer skirts and her hair artfully arranged on top of her head.

When had she started wearing her hair up?

As though he'd somehow given her permission to enter society and invite questions upon him about intentions, and courtings, and permissions. And hadn't she just been six years old and snarking at him because he’d plaited her hair the wrong way?

She twisted another daisy into place. "Oliver said he talked to you last night. Or tried to?"

"He did."

"He said you were angry–"

Sebastian tried not to look too pleased about it. So, the young Weasley had found him intimidating. The confirmation was good, given he'd only just managed to keep himself from collapsing on that balcony..

But Weasley didn't need to know that.

“–You shouldn't be mad at him," she added. "He wanted to talk to you a lot sooner but....but..I...."

Sebastian leaned over. "But what?"

Her fingers twisted against another white flower, but she didn't look at him. "I wanted to be sure he was worth telling you about."

"You know, you could have told me sooner."

A part of him wished she would have.

"Daaadd!" and that was when she looked up, her eyes alight with mirth. "I wasn't going to tell you about every single bloke I decided to–"

"There's been more than one?!" It was far too close to a squeak than anything else, and Sebastian decided his daughter was determined to send him to an early grave.

But when the laughter faded, her hands busied themselves against the little white flowers again. "It....it's different with Oliver, though."

Sebastian sighed. "You really like him, don't you?"

"Yeah, Dad. I really like him."

But her eyes spoke too clearly of another four-letter word, and Merlin help him; his daughter was in love with a fucking Weasley.

Another daisy twisted between her fingers. “He invited me to come with his family to the south of France this summer.”

“Oh?” It was the most noncommittal noise he could muster between clenching his fingers into the grass.

“Because of his dad. They…well, a lot of really good potioneers come out of Beauxbatons, so they travel there sometimes.” She paused a moment, and Sebastian could see the hesitation pinched in the corners of her face. “But I told Oliver I wouldn't go unless he got your permission first and—”

“Sweetheart, It’s not my permission he needs.”

It wasn’t, as much as he was loathed to admit it then.

It never had been.

“I know that it’s just—“

“Do you want to go to France with him?”

“I do!” Her fingers twisted the last white daisy of her crown into place. “But I won’t if you don't think I should.”

Was it that simple? Could he hold to the last of her kite strings? Keep her in this moment where the last of her childhood still clung to the daisies between her fingers and the smudges of dirt over her nose?

“The south of France is beautiful this time of year. You’re going to love it.”

She might have outshone the sun with how brightly she smiled at him.

“But,” Sebastian held up a finger, “ If I so much as think he’s hurt you–”

“Yeah, Dad, I know.” He wasn’t sure she could have rolled her eyes harder at him. “You’re well versed in magics that make the unforgivables look like something out of a children’s story, and there wouldn’t be enough left of the body to find.”

Sebastian couldn’t decide if he should be offended with how bored she sounded or proud she’d recited his threat so thoroughly.

He didn’t have much time to think about it before his daughter popped to her feet, dropped the crown of daisies onto his head, and bent to kiss his cheek.

There was only the softest. “Love you, Daddy”

breathed next to his ear before she was scampering off again.

And that was his little girl.

Always would be.

[xclowniex]

Thoughts on whereserpentswalk? I know they're controversial on jumblr and you seem trustworthy

Tagging them as whilst I will answer, I don't like talking behind peoples backs. I also did reach out to get the okay to post as it does deal with someone's identity. @whereserpentswalk

I'm not sure 100% why they're considered controversial as I have never heard of them before. I'm like 90% sure this is in reference to them being a pagan jew aka ethnically jewish and religiously pagan.

Because Judaism is an ethnoreligion, the topic of being ethnically jewish but not practicing judaism and instead another religion is a complicated and nuanced one. Each jew has their own opinion on this, two jews 3 opinions type deal.

Obviously, if you worship or idolize any deity or similar category, besides Hashem, you are not longer practicing judaism. They do not claim to be practicing judaism, so I and hopefully everyone else should have no issue with that specific bit.

In regards to whether or not they can still call themselves jewish.

Overall, I don't really care? Like there are so many other intracommunity topics which matter more than this in my own opinion.

The only thing which doesn't fall into this are messianic jews, because whilst a lot are lead to believe they are ethnically jewish, most aren't. And the religion wasn't started by jews. Like jews didn't start believing in Jesus and that's how it came about. It was started by non ethnically jewish Christians who decided they were the real jews, which is where the misleading of messianics as a whole being ethnically comes from. I'm sure there are messianics who have jewish blood as nothing is impossible when it comes to types of people believing in a certain religion, but the majority of messiancs do not have jewish blood.

But whereserpantswalk is pagan not messianic so like again, doesn't fall into that.

I'm going to be speaking very general here and not directed at whereserpantswalk.

Like besides messianic jews being the exception, I don't super care.

I myself dabbled in paganism when I was a teen and exploring religion. I don't really talk about it much not because I dislike paganism or think it's bad or anything. I just had religious psychosis surronding it as I am a diagnosed schizo so don't really like to talk about that point of my life online mainly for my safety as some people may use it to try to trigger an episode.

Drawing from my own experiences from that time which I am willing to share, my jewish culture was still important. I grew up orthodox and that doesn't all just go away. Same thing if you grow up reform.

I still participated in secular versions of the Jewish holidays. I still held Jewish values. I still did things certain ways because I was raised jewish, and that doesn't really just go away.

To give like a definitive answer, if someone born Jewish and converts out of Judaism, gets rid of all ties to Jewish culture, including secular Jewish culture. Because Judaism is an ethno religion, I personally don't see any point in continuing to refer to yourself as Jewish. It is a tribe. If you turn your back on the tribe completely and cut all ties, then you are no longer part of the tribe. If you still keep some connection then to me personally I do see a point in calling yourself ethnically jewish as you are still connected to the tribe.

Overall, I don't really care. Like I know I've said this a bazillion times already. The majority of jews are either religious or secular. I see no point in kicking up a fuss about a tiny group of jews.

I believe in inclusive judaism, where people with varying attachment to the tribe are welcome as long as they have some or want a connection to the tribe and convert properly.

This isn't like some hard, set in stone opinion I have. There are more important topics at hand right now like genuine jew fakers than someone with jewish blood who practices paganism.

[anghraine]

this is entirely unprompted on your end, but i love your darcy and faramir takes and wanted to get your opinion on aragorn/faramir as a ship.

i'm salivating over it and nobody. cares. but i just love how it can show the possibilities of book faramir being a "threat" to aragorn's kingship in a way that nobody else is...how they can relate through their shared ancestry but the entirely different ways it impacted them in their respective lives - something about aragorn being the heir of isildur, growing up surrounded by elves, arnor. something about faramir being distinctly aware of the legacy of the stewards, his numenorean heritage and how it's fading away in the world of men, gondor (my fav world in lotr, you are so under-appreciated, gondor.) i personally adhere to the stewards-were-most-likely-also-royalty headcanon because of that extra juicy tension. throw in the i-knew-your-father-as-a-young-man aspect, the whole steward-quite-literally-serving-in-wait-of-the-true-king aspect? it's everything.

i dunno. the natural cause and effect of "return of the king" & "departure of the steward" is so interesting to play with in a romantic context, especially if it keeps both of them in the limelight when naturally, it should only be one of them? i think it's the aragorn ship that pushes his character and ambition the most, and in the same way, it can push faramir to show more machiavellian traits, more of him utilizing his political power and/or personal strengths. especially since his canonical fate is extremely satisfying but also...very conclusively an *ending* if that makes sense.

i might just want to see faramir clashing with aragorn wanting to wage more war. let him cook! let the man speak about "queen among other queens: not a mistress of many slaves"!!!!

also must admit that it's my contrarian ass wanting to rebel against the fanon "aragorn never ever wanted to be king" + "faramir is a pathetic meow meow" headcanons. the existing faramir x aragorn fics i've read all adhere to it which is frustrating.

anyways, any thoughts on this ship i randomly latched on to?

Anon, this is my #1 Tolkien ship and actually one of the only m/m ships I've ever been super into. I used to guiltily sneak-read Aragorn/Faramir as a teenager because I grew up in a conservative community and hadn't come to terms with my own queerness at the time, and was still figuring out how to get by in that community just as a Democrat, much less a lesbian.

Anyway, I got a huge kick out of your ask because it's basically point-for-point my own feelings about them. If you haven't seen it, I even wrote a ship manifesto for them over ten years ago.

And unfortunately I do also agree that the (very PJ film-inflected) fanons around both characters have made it very difficult to find fic for the ship that isn't deeply OOC for the original versions of the characters (tbh the last time I looked, it was hard enough to even find F/A fics where Faramir had black hair, much less his deeper canon characteristics). Add in the fanon depictions of Gondor and the Stewardship, and a lot of what appeals about the pairing is lost for me. I read some good ones a longggg time ago, but wouldn't begin to know where to find them now.

(I know I should be the change I want to see and write some myself, but apart from the AU f/f and m/f/f versions, I think the closest I ever came to it was this post about a mostly-the-same-as-LOTR AU only with Faramir/Aragorn and this feeling explosion about "Faramir actually does accepts the dream-visions obviously intending him to be the one going to Rivendell but also it's Faramir/Aragorn.")

And if you haven't found it yet, my ship tag is #otp: love was kindled.

I hope you enjoy <3

[one-eternal-sigh]

yk what whenever I see a post about andy leaving it always gets me thinking about how much she truly gave up rejecting her family’s beliefs, and with how much she had to endure being sneered upon as a disgrace among purebloods but also how it probably made narcissa more bitter when she found it out and andy confessed/ was in a situation where she had to reveal her relationship because there was no way around it anymore. I think for cissa the fact that her sister had chosen ted over family, over her own sisters was probably the part which really stung.

I mean like I do feel like narcissa was extra dismissive of ted because she couldn’t comprehend the fact that andy chose some muggleborn over the assuredness of the life they already had with people who she believed would “truly” look out for her and protect her best interests. like, blood purity definitely was involved at some extent because they were literally raised in a family with strong ideals about it.

But also? I think at the core of it narcissa felt betrayed because of the gravity of Andy’s decision and the repercussions that came with it and how even despite that, andy had STILL gone through with the decision of throwing that part of her life away for another love (or in cissa’s eyes, over the love of her sisters the love that was supposed to be their one solace through the grim times of war) knowing full well what she was putting on the line.

and when faced with a choice she chose to leave that constant and doesn’t that just hurt much more?

Knowing she chose to leave. Knowing she chose something over them when they were each other’s safe space. Actively witnessing the war tearing them apart, the rifts in their previously unfaltering trust, when they were supposed to rely on each other to get through this. Witnessing what Bella was doing to herself in her thirst for power as a means to gain control, more autonomy, witnessing the cross fire between them and being trapped in this hateful middle place of still believing that they were the only ones who could look out for each other as purebloods but simultaneously just hating the extremes, still valuing the comfort that came with their bond

but then having that shattered with the knowledge that it wasn’t just bella’s tilting at extremes and inviting the worst parts of the darkness directly into their lives that was endangering their relationship but also that andy had lied and didn’t intend to choose them at all.

(continuing it into the tags because I need to yap 😭)

Family tree (intro) = Andromeda 

These crosses all over my body, remind me of who I used to be 

Andromeda always had scars, whether mental or physical, that she couldn’t heal. She didn’t know why, not even magic worked. Everyday when she looked in the mirror, she saw them, and in those scars she saw her family, and her old life. 

Jesus can always reject his father 

Andromeda escaped them, escaped their politics, their life, she had truly escaped them and rejected who she could’ve been. 

But he cannot escape his mothers blood 

Yet Andromeda couldn’t get their stain off of her, they were always going to be with her.  Toujours Pur. She would still never be pure. In her own standards, and in theirs. 

He’ll scream and try and wash it off of his fingers 

In the first of weeks when she had escaped she could feel them everywhere, hear them everywhere. She tried so hard to forget everything she had been taught, and it wasn’t supposed to be that hard. She was stained by them anyways, she couldn’t just leave without some bits of them clinging onto her. 

But he’ll never escape what he’s made up of 

Andromeda could hear their voices, yelling at her. It was even worse because Bellatrix and Narcissa tried so hard to go up to her during school. At some point they had given up, just shit-talking her to others. She couldn’t ever escape them it seemed. Even years and years after, the Family Name still got to her. They didn’t know her as Andromeda Tonks, they knew her as the blood-traitor, Andromeda Black. 

The Fates already fucked me sideways

She would never get a normal life because of them. Andromeda had escaped their house, but not them. It had seemed like Fate was always destined to hurt her. 

He’ll laugh and say ‘you know I raised you better than this’ 

She became the example of ‘not pure’, the example of a bad person in their eyes. Regulus and Sirius were taught not to be like her, and for Sirius she was the example to look up to. Draco never knew of her, until later, and still then Narcissa told him not to be like her. 

Than leave me hanging so they all can laugh at me

Andromeda became the laughing stock of the Sacred 28, the one who tried to escape. She became the laughing stock of the Black Family too, they all laughed at her attempts to leave them, knowing that she would never truly escape them. She became the laughing stock of the school, every pure blood made fun of her, luckily it was only her last year. She lost all her friends, everyone. All she had was Ted.  —-

I know this is a bit wordy but I tried lol 😭 I’ve had this in my head for sooo long and I finally wrote it down !!

[the-pest1lence]

Jon has the Mint seal of approval

They’re gonna listen to 5 episodes per day so yay. (They have a self restraint I never could)

[introspectivememories]

was it casual when i sat in your lap in public? was it casual when i said "recently my heart is crying because you're leaving"? was it casual when we decided how your last name would fit with mine? ("yuki tsunoda-gasly" / "no tsunoda, only gasly" / "yuki gasly?") was it casual when we sang adele's "someone like you" together at your going away party? was it casual when i knew it was you just by touching your ass? was it casual when i knew it was you by smell alone? was it casual when "will you miss me?" / "for 2-3 minutes maybe" / "i'll take that. even if it's just 2-3 minutes, i'll take that"? was it casual when that bus was completely empty and we still sat right next to each other, all the way in the back? was it casual when i picked you up multiple times so you could dunk a basketball? was it casual when i begged to come over to your house multiple time and then you finally let me and we cooked fried rice together? was it casual when we played christmas twister together and i said "your big eggplant is touching my ass"? was it casual when we were pressed up against each other on a scooter going two miles per hour? was it casual when-

[front-facing-pokemon]

[acourtofquestions]

Kingdom of Ash Chapter 61

Chapter; Highlights (okay the entire chapter is a highlight)��

As requested @mysterylilycheeta I NEED TO SQUEAL IN WYVERN FANGIRL WITH YOU NOW CAUSE OH M GOODNESS THIS CHAPTER ON SO MANY LEVELS I JUST AHAKWIHUHFEJLZXBKEKA

Agony was a song in Lorcan's blood, his bones, his breath.

Every step of the horse, every leap she made over body and debris, sent it ringing afresh. There was no end, no mercy from it. It was all he could do to keep in the saddle, to cling to consciousness.

To keep his arm around Elide.

She had come for him. Had found him, somehow, on this endless battlefield.

His name on her lips had been a summons he could never deny, even when death had held him so gently, nestled beneath all those he'd felled, I, and waited for his last breaths.

And now, charging toward that too-distant keep, so far behind the droves of soldiers and riders racing for the gates, he wondered if these minutes would be his last. Her last.

She had come for him.

Lorcan managed to glance toward the dam on their right. Toward the ruk rider signaling that it was only a matter of minutes until it unleashed hell over the plain.

He didn't know how it had become weakened. Didn't care.

Still Elide kept urging the horse onward, kept them on as straight a path toward the distant keep as possible.

No ruk would come to sweep them up. No, his luck had been spent in surviving this long, in her finding him. His power would do nothing against that water.

The farthest lines of panicked soldiers appeared, and Farasha charged past them.

Elide let out a sob, and he followed the line of her sight.

To the keep gate, still open.

"Faster, Farasha!" She didn't hide the raw terror in her voice, the desperation.

Once the dam broke, it would take less than a minute for the tidal wave to reach them.

She had come for him. She had found him.

The world went quiet. The pain in his body faded into nothing. Into something secondary.

Lorcan slid his other arm around Elide, bringing his mouth close to her ear as he said, "You have to let me go."

Each word was gravelly, his voice strained nearly to the point of uselessness.

Elide didn't shift her focus from the keep ahead. "No."

That gentle quiet flowed around him, clearing the fog of pain and battle. "You have to. You have to, Elide. I'm too heavy-and without my weight, you might make it to the keep in time."

"No." The salt of her tears filled his nose.

Lorcan brushed his mouth over her damp cheek, ignoring the roaring pain in his body. The horse galloped and galloped, as if she might outrace death itself.

"I love you," he whispered in Elide's ear. "I have loved you from the moment you picked up that axe to slay the ilken." Her tears flowed past him in the wind. "And I will be with you ..." His voice broke, but he made himself say the words, the truth in his heart. "I will be with you always."

He was not frightened of what would come for him once he tumbled off the horse. He was not frightened at all, if it meant her reaching the keep.

So Lorcan kissed Elide's cheek again, allowed himself to breathe in her scent one last time. "I love you," he repeated, and began to withdraw his arms from around her waist.

Elide slapped a hand onto his forearm. Dug in her nails, right into his skin, fierce as any ruk.

"No."

There were no tears in her voice. Nothing but solid, unwavering steel.

"No," she said again. The voice of the Lady of Perranth.

Lorcan tried to move his arm, but her grip would not be dislodged.

If he tumbled off the horse, she would go with him.

Together. They would either outrun this or die together.

"Elide-"

But Elide slammed her heels into the horse's sides.

Slammed her heels into the dark flank and screamed, "FLY, FARASHA." She cracked the reins. "FLY, FLY, FLY!"

And gods help her, that horse did.

As if the god that had crafted her filled the mare's lungs with his own breath, Farasha gave a surge of speed.

Faster than the wind. Faster than death.

Farasha cleared the first of the fleeing Darghan cavalry. Passed desperate horses and riders at an all-out gallop for the gates.

Her mighty heart did not falter, even when Lorcan knew it was raging to the point of bursting.

Less than a mile stood between them and the keep.

But a thunderous, groaning crack cleaved the world, echoing off the lake, the mountains.

There was nothing he could do, nothing that brave, unfaltering horse could do, as the dam ruptured.

Rowan made himself stand there, to watch the last moments of the Lady of Perranth and his former commander. It was all he could offer: witnessing their deaths, so he might tell the story to those he encountered. So they would not be forgotten.

The roaring of the oncoming wave became deafening, even from miles away.

Still Elide and Lorcan raced, Farasha passing horse after horse after horse.

Even up here, would they escape the wave's reach? Rowan dared to survey the battlements, to assess if he needed to get the others, needed to get Aelin, to higher ground.

But Aelin was not at his side.

She was not on the battlement at all.

Rowan's heart halted. Simply stopped beating as a ruddy-brown ruk dropped from the skies, spearing for the center of the plain.

Arcas, Borte's ruk. A golden-haired woman dangling from his talons.

Aelin. Aelin was—

Arcas neared the earth, talons splaying.

Aelin hit the ground, rolling, rolling, until she uncoiled to her feet.

Right in the path of that wave.

"Oh gods," Fenrys breathed, seeing her, too.

They all saw her.

The queen on the plain.

The endless wall of water surging for her.

The keep stones began shuddering. Rowan threw out a hand to brace himself, fear like nothing he had known ripping through him as Aelin lifted her arms above her head.

A pillar of fire shot up around her, lifting her hair with it.

The wave roared and roared for her, for the army behind her.

The shaking in the keep was not from the wave.

It was not from that wall of water at all.

Cracks formed in the earth, splintering across it. Spiderwebbing from Aelin.

"The hot springs," Chaol breathed. "The valley floor is full of veins into the earth itself."

Into the burning heart of the world.

The keep shook, more violently this time.

The pillar of fire sucked back into Aelin.

She held out a hand before her, her fist closed.

As if it would halt the wave in its tracks.

He knew then. Either as her mate or carranam, he knew.

"Three months," Rowan breathed.

The others stilled.

"Three months," he said again, his knees wobbling. "She's been making the descent into her power for three months."

Every day she had been with Maeve, bound in iron, she had gone deeper. And she had not tapped too far into that power since they'd freed her because she had kept making the plunge.

To gather up the full might of her magic.

Not for the Lock, not for Erawan.

But for Maeve's death blow.

A few weeks of descent had taken her powers to devastating levels. Three months of it

…

Holy gods. Holy rutting gods.

And when her fire hit the wall of water now towering over her, when they collided —

"GET DOWN!" Rowan bellowed, over the screaming waters. "GET DOWN NOW!"

His companions dropped to the stones, any within earshot doing the same.

Rowan plummeted into his power. Plummeted into it fast and hard, ripping out any remaining shred of magic.

Elide and Lorcan were still too far from the gates. Thousands of soldiers were still too far from the gates as the wave crested above them.

As Aelin opened her hand toward it.

Fire erupted.

Cobalt fire. The raging soul of a flame.

A tidal wave of it.

Taller than the raging waters, it blasted from her, flaring wide.

The wave slammed into it. And where water met a wall of fire, where a thousand years of confinement met three months of it, the world exploded.

Blistering steam, capable of melting flesh from bone, shot across the plain.

With a roar, Rowan threw all that remained of his magic toward the onslaught of steam, a wall of wind that shoved it toward the lake, the mountains.

Still the waters came, breaking against the flames that did not so much as yield an inch.

Maeve's death blow. Spent here, to save the army that might mean Terrasen's salvation. To spare the lives on the plain.

Rowan gritted his teeth, panting against his fraying power. A burnout lurked, deadly close.

The raging wave threw itself over and over and over into the wall of flame.

Rowan didn't see if Elide and Lorcan made it into the keep. If the other soldiers and riders on the plain stopped to gape.

Princess Hasar said, rising beside him, "That power is no blessing."

"Tell that to your soldiers," Fenrys snarled, standing, too.

"I did not mean it that way," Hasar snipped, and awe was indeed stark on her face.

Rowan leaned against the battlements, panting hard as he fought to keep the lethal steam from flowing toward the army. As he cooled and sent it whisking away.

Solid hands slid under his arms, and then Fenrys and Gavriel were there, propping him up between them.

A minute passed. Then another.

The wave began to lower. Still the fire burned.

Rowan's head pounded, his mouth going dry.

Time slipped from him. A coppery tang filled his mouth.

The wave lowered farther, raging waters quieting. Then roaring turned to lapping, rapids into eddies.

Until the wall of flame began to lower, too. Tracking the waters down and down and down. Letting them seep into the cracks of the earth.

Rowan's knees buckled, but he held on to his magic long enough for the steam to lessen.

For it, too, to be calmed.

It filled the plain, turning the world into drifting mist. Blocking the view of the queen in its center.

Then silence. Utter silence.

Fire flickered through the mist, blue turning to gold and red. A muted, throbbing glow.

Rowan spat blood onto the battlement stones, his breath like shards of glass in his throat.

The glowing flames shrank, steam rippling past. Until there was only a slim pillar of fire, veiled in the mist-shrouded plain.

Not a pillar of fire.

But Aelin.

Glowing white-hot. As if she had given herself so wholly to the flame that she had become fire herself.

The Fire-Bringer someone whispered down the battlements.

The mist rippled and billowed, casting her into nothing but a glowing effigy.

The silence turned reverent.

A gentle wind from the north swept down. The veil of mist pulled back, and there she was.

She glowed from within. Glowed golden, tendrils of her hair floating on a phantom wind.

"Mala's Heir," Yrene breathed.

Down on the plain, Elide and Lorcan had halted.

The wind pushed away more of the drifting mist, clearing the land beyond Aelin.

And where that mighty, lethal wave had loomed, where death had charged toward them, nothing remained at all.

For three months, she had sung to the darkness and the flame, and they had sung back.

For three months, she had burrowed so deep inside her power that she had plundered undiscovered depths. While Maeve and Cairn had worked on her, she had delved. Never letting them know what she mined, what she gathered to her, day by day by day.

A death blow. One to wipe a dark queen from the earth forever.

She'd kept that power coiled in herself even after she'd been freed from the irons. Had struggled to keep it down these weeks, the strain enormous. Some days, it had been easier to barely speak. Some days, swaggering arrogance had been her key to ignoring it.

Yet when she had seen that wave, when she had seen Elide and Lorcan choosing death together, when she had seen the army that might save Terrasen, she'd known. She'd felt the fire sleeping under this city, and knew they had come here for a reason.

She had come here for this reason.

A river still flowed from the dam, harmless and small, wending toward the lake.

Nothing more.

Aelin lifted a glowing hand before her as blessed, cooling emptiness filled her at last.

Slowly, starting from her fingertips, the glow faded.

As if she were forged anew, forged back into her body.

Back into Aelin.

Clarity, sharp and crystal clear, filled its wake. As if she could see again, breathe again.

Inch by inch, the golden glow faded into skin and bone. Into a woman once more.

Already, a white-tailed hawk launched skyward.

But as the last of the glow faded, disappearing out through her toes, Aelin fell to her knees.

Fell to her knees in the utter silence of the world, and curled onto her side.

She had the vague sense of strong, familiar arms scooping her up. Of being carried onto a broad feathery back, still in those arms.

Of soaring through the skies, the last of the mist rippling away into the afternoon sun.

And then sweet darkness.

[coquelicoq]

what i love about the Famous Actor Natori Shuuichi of it all is that...it's not just that he's famous and therefore widely recognizable wherever he goes. like yes that is very funny because he was an exorcist before he became a famous actor, which means he CHOSE, on purpose, a day job that would make it harder to hide his double life/secret identity from the hordes of his adoring public, but it's more than that. it's not just that he's famous, it's that he's famous specifically for being an ACTOR, aka a person whose job it is to dissimulate, to make believe, to inhabit roles and emotions other than his own. like he decided he was going to become as visible as possible (which again was literally not necessary! he could have gone into any other career for his day job!!) but in such a way that everyone would see him but no one would see him - they would just see his various made-up personas, including the Famous Actor Natori Shuuichi persona. i can't decide if he's a genius or if he just made so many absurd decisions that they canceled each other out and circled back around to working out. he's either playing 9-dimensional chess or he's eating the pieces. too soon to say.

[arson-09]

How people are trying to change fandom (the rise of hatred against non-canon media)

This was inspired by the rise of backlash against the "Rhysta" ship.

Traditionally throughout the history of fandom spaces on social media, a very important factor has been creativity of course. Art and Fics by fans being the backbone of a fandom. Including non-canon ships, Aus, etc. And of course there was drama (when is there not drama?) BUT there wasn't as much hate because there was an understanding that it's not REAL. People in fandoms understood creativity and thinking outside the box (canon)

But something interesting happened in 2020 with the pandemic, people who weren't apart of fandom spaces started joining cause what else were you going to do? but there started the divide. These people wouldn't have joined fandoms originally because they didn't have that sort of creativity. Which isn't a bad or negative thing, everyone is different and that what makes the world go around, but these people were not used to fandom spaces and that divergency. To them, things have to be how it was written and non-canon things, ships or au's that can't hurt you or become canon, were blasphemous. Because why change the foundation if you liked the original media? this also ties into the "why do you read or interact with this media?" questions when people engage with media in their own way even if they dislike the majority of it. which is valid to do, I do it personally with acotar. I dislike the majority of acotar from the way it's written to lots of the characters, but I interact with a certain subset of the fandom that shares a love for the same characters as I.

But these people, these mostly neurotypical, TikTok people, intrude into these safe creative spaces and cause a ruckus over non-canon Aus and ships. for no reason! Ships like Rhysta are harmless, of course people who make and consume this media don't think it's going to be real, and that's the misconception! Making and consuming non-canon media doesn't mean you think it's going to happen or want it to happen, it's just existing. existing for the sake of existing and stretching creative muscles. You can't grow as an artist if you do not break from the mold, from the restraints of canon.

What you are doing by constantly harassing and posting shit about non-canon media is showing you lack a fundamental understanding of Fandom. Policing what people do is a fruitless endeavor. of course, calling out actually problematic creators is okay, when what they're doing is actually harmful and not them being creative or God forbid, a little weird.

There has been and still needs to be respect in the places. Filtering tags for things that upset you and blocking creators you disagree with is key to being someone people will actually listen to and respect. If you refuse to do that, no one you harass, or attack will take you seriously. and maybe that's not your objective but that means you're going to be blocked on main and made fun of. And this segment is somewhat targeted at someone who has been consistently harassing my mutuals, but I've seen so many people like this and it's a real issue. And its such an issue in Booktok popular books and shows, and media that becomes popular with the masses.

Fandom spaces aren't meant to follow canon to a T. People will have non-canon ships, opinions on how they think the series should have gone, opinions on characters, etc. Constantly harassing and targeting creators won't change that.

I know this won't stop this behavior, it will continue to happen but it's been bothering me and maybe this will change some people's minds on how they interact with the media they like, and they hate.

I love rhysta, I think that the dynamic is very interesting and that people are free to explore that and say whatever they want about how it could have gone in canon. None of that means i think its going to happen or that it should. Lord, people are just having fun. Like they should in fandom places.

[angelsdean]

ruthlessly deleting old 2021/2022 posts (not by me) from my dean studies tag like *click* un-incorporating that from my beliefs system! also the way SO many posts have me like ok uh-huh good aaand then say one completely wrong thing that loses me. it's so many posts.

[basket-of-radiants]

Ok hi!!!! I love all your takes on the characters and it's rlly interesting! I also think moash is a very nuanced and fascinating character. I'm kinda mad at him after he tried to convince Kal to k!ll himself but I think he's a great charcter with lots of depth and your pinned post was so interesting because it said so much about moash! Anyway sorry bye!!!

Hello!!! Thank you!! I apologize for inflicting that post on you, but I'm glad you read/enjoyed it! ty for letting me know <3<3<3

[liquidstar]

a friend who'd wait :)