#*with the resources / sources at her disposal

[fideidefenswhore]

thoughts on william latimer on a source on anne boleyn?

oooo, thanks <3

i think maria dowling has argued pretty convincingly that to dismiss his work as panegyric is fairly specious?

latimer did, for one, actually know anne pretty well (he was her chaplain), his sources are people that actually knew anne pretty well, too (one of them, mary fitzroy, likely her favorite lady-in-waiting).

now, does this preclude that it's a biased source, that latimer is probably putting the best spin on things his retelling, of course not, but none of the anecdotes he provides have been unequivocally disproved, if that makes sense? and many of them even have corroboration.

an excerpt/example from dowling:

Anne Boleyn's fondness for scripture was paralleled by her interest in scholarship. William Latimer states that she asked the King to excuse the universities from the payments of tenths and subsidies; that she gave substantial sums of money to Oxford and Cambridge for the maitenanceof poor scholars: and that she granted a student named Beckynsall [funds] for a year to study abroad

The first claim is confirmed by a letter of thanks to her from Cambridge university, and the second is supported by William Barker. In the dedication of his Nobility of Women to Elizabeth I in 1559, the latter recalled the Anne had 'employed her bountiful benevolence upon sundry students that were placed at Cambridge, among the which it please Her Highness to appoint me." Further, when Barker was forced to beg for Elizabeth's mercy in 1571 for his involvement in the Ridolfi plot, he again harked back to Anne's generosity, and asked that 'as by Her Majesty's noble mother I first began at Cambridge tasting of her munificence, so by Her Majesty's clemency I may end the rest of my sorrowful days there."

[thegreatwicked]

This obviously needed its own post and here it is, a collection of blog posts and resources I have found and used for my own writing, I hope they help you too! Go forth and write that spice!

The Smut Writers Dictionary By @maybeeatspaghetti Seriously, how many different way are there to write cock? Does anyone else wonder if they've used the word 'lips' too many times? Well, this is a good place to start!

The Ultimate Guide to Writing Smut This is the first one I found and I go back to it frequently! There's also some great information about specific areas of sex that may not be common knowledge for first time writers!

How to Write Smut By @urfriendlywriter Another great source of information from different verbiage to use and a few tips to hel you along (giggity)

Smut Thesaurus By @prurientpuddlejumper just what it sounds like and you can never have too many words at your disposal.

6 Steps to Writing Better Sex By @chaoschaoswriting If you're at a loss or just want some more help this is antoher fantastic blog!

Writing Prompts NSFW By @seidenbros Need some dialogue? Or a story idea? Have a look!

#100 NSFW/Smut Dialogue Prompts By @a-cure-for-writers-block More? More. This is also a fantastic writing blog with lots to offer!

Intimate + Sexual Headcannon Questions By @petalsprompts Good questions to ask your characters to get to know them better and make more well rounded characters!

Smut & Mature (18+) Master List By @pendarling A great list dialogue prompts, scenarios, and helpful bits!

Poly NSFW Alphabet By @smaoineamhsalach Another great way to get to know your characters and maybe a handful of ideas for story ideas.

Kink Prompts Another from the previous blogger above and I didn't know what half of these are! I'll work on a kink dictionary next!

Writing Smut 101: Overcoming Smut Shame @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 There's a lot to be said for this particular subject! It's hard to write stuff like this, so how do you get over it? Start here!

How to Write a Kiss Scene By @youneedsomeprompts Yes!!! I still struggle with this one! There's a thousand ways to kiss, find your favorite!

Smut Oneliners By @deity-prompts you can never have enough one-liners!!

How to Write a (Great) Sex Scene Another great article for new smut writers

9 Tips for Writing Steamy Scenes More tips to help you wirte good steamy stuff!

How to Write Erotica and a Damn Fine Sex Scene A WEALTH if information on writing, structuring, and helpful tips!

@saradikahas a fantatic blog with graphics for you to use to add some fun to your posts. Things like MDNI Banners, 18+ Content Warnings, Support Your Favorite Writers and Reblog banners! They are free to use but she does ask that you reblog her stuff if you do! She's also a very talented writer and she writes some AMAZING Din Djarin stories!

Gay Sex Positions Guide This is a WONDERFUL adition and thank you so much @b7bubby for bringing this to my attention, I didn't have any resources for writing M/M fairings but this is a much needed addition to the spicy community! i've never written an M/M pairing and I feel like such an idiot for overlooking the need for a resource like this!

Writing the Perfect Kiss Scene provided by @writers-potiona fantastic little guide to writing better kisses!

If you find any other great smut writing resources feel free to tag me so I can add them to this list! Good luck with your writing! Now go write that story and LET THE SPICE FLOW!!!!

[dandelionsresilience]

Good News - June 8-14

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $Kaybarr1735! And if you tip me and give me a way to contact you, at the end of the month I'll send you a link to all of the articles I found but didn't use each week!

1. Rare foal born on estate for first time in 100 years

“The Food Museum at Abbot's Hall in Stowmarket, Suffolk, is home to a small number of Suffolk Punch horses - a breed considered critically endangered by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. A female foal was born on Saturday and has been named Abbots Juno to honour the last horse born at the museum in 1924. [...] Juno is just one of 12 fillies born so far this year in the country and she could potentially help produce more of the breed in the future.”

2. The cement that could turn your house into a giant battery

“[Scientists] at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found a way of creating an energy storage device known as a supercapacitor from three basic, cheap materials – water, cement and a soot-like substance called carbon black. [... Supercapacitators] can charge much more quickly than a lithium ion battery and don't suffer from the same levels of degradation in performance. [... Future applications of this concrete might include] roads that store solar energy and then release it to recharge electric cars wirelessly as they drive along a road [... and] energy-storing foundations of houses.”

3. New road lights, fewer dead insects—insect-friendly lighting successfully tested

“Tailored and shielded road lights make the light source almost invisible outside the illuminated area and significantly reduces the lethal attraction for flying insects in different environments. [...] The new LED luminaires deliver more focused light, reduce spill light, and are shielded above and to the side to minimize light pollution. [... In contrast,] dimming the conventional lights by a factor of 5 had no significant effect on insect attraction.”

4. When LGBTQ health is at stake, patient navigators are ready to help

“[S]ome health care systems have begun to offer guides, or navigators, to get people the help they need. [... W]hether they're just looking for a new doctor or taking the first step toward getting gender-affirming care, "a lot of our patients really benefit from having someone like me who is there to make sure that they are getting connected with a person who is immediately going to provide a safe environment for them." [... A navigator] also connects people with LGBTQ community organizations, social groups and peer support groups.”

5. Tech company to help tackle invasive plant species

“Himalayan balsam has very sugary nectar which tempts bees and other pollinators away from native plants, thereby preventing them from producing seed. It outcompetes native plant species for resources such as sunlight, space and nutrients. [...] The volunteer scheme is open to all GWT WilderGlos users who have a smartphone and can download the Crowdorsa app, where they can then earn up to 25p per square meter of Balsam removed.”

6. [Fish & Wildlife] Service Provides Over $14 Million to Benefit Local Communities, Clean Waterways and Recreational Boaters

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is distributing more than $14 million in Clean Vessel Act grants to improve water quality and increase opportunities for fishing, shellfish harvests and safe swimming in the nation’s waterways. By helping recreational boaters properly dispose of sewage, this year’s grants will improve conditions for local communities, wildlife and recreational boaters in 18 states and Guam.”

7. Bornean clouded leopard family filmed in wild for first time ever

“Camera traps in Tanjung Puting National Park in Indonesian Borneo have captured a Bornean clouded leopard mother and her two cubs wandering through a forest. It's the first time a family of these endangered leopards has been caught on camera in the wild, according [to] staff from the Orangutan Foundation who placed camera traps throughout the forest to learn more about the elusive species.”

8. Toy library helps parents save money 'and the planet'

“Started in 2015 by Annie Berry, South Bristol's toy library aims to reduce waste and allow more children access to more - and sometimes expensive - toys. [...] Ms Berry partnered with the St Philips recycling centre on a pilot project to rescue items back from landfill, bringing more toys into the library. [...] [P]eople use it to support the environment, take out toys that they might not have the space for at home or be able to afford, and allow children to pick non-gender specific toys.”

9. Chicago Receives $3M Grant to Inventory Its Trees and Create Plan to Manage City’s Urban Forest

“The Chicago Park District received a $1.48 million grant [“made available through the federal Inflation Reduction Act”] to complete a 100% inventory of its estimated 250,000 trees, develop an urban forestry management plan and plant 200 trees in disadvantaged areas with the highest need. As with the city, development of the management plan is expected to involve significant community input.”

10. Strong Public Support for Indigenous Co-Stewardship Plan for Bears Ears National Monument

“[The NFW has a] plan to collaboratively steward Bears Ears National Monument to safeguard wildlife, protect cultural resources, and better manage outdoor recreation. The plan was the result of a two-year collaboration among the five Tribes of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and upholds Tribal sovereignty, incorporates Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and responsibly manages the monument for hunting, fishing, and other outdoor recreation while ensuring the continued health of the ecosystem.”

June 1-7 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[cinnabunwanda]

We shouldn't be doing this ･ ｡ﾟNatasha Ramnoff

content warning — Smut, Shower Sex, Degration Kink, Mommy Kink, Angst

pairing — Fem Reader X Natasha Romanoff

summary — Steve, an avenger, faces tension with his girlfriend Natasha at a shindig. Wanda suggests they make a great couple, but the protagonist refuses. Natasha admires their friendship, asks to fuck him, and makes him feel vulnerable.

word count — 6.0k

Life as an avenger was a constant rollercoaster of danger and responsibility. One day, we could be on the hunt for an Alien threatening to destroy the world, and the next we could be in a high-level meeting discussing how to utilize our powers and resources for the good of humanity.

But even superheroes needed a break, and when we did get some time off, the team liked to spend it together. Tonight was one of those rare occasions.

"What's on the agenda tonight?" I asked Tony, always the mastermind behind our group outings.

"Well, my dear comrades, I have decided to throw a little shindig for us. Drinks, dancing, games...the whole nine yards," he grinned mischievously at all of us.

"The crew? Are you twelve years old?" Bucky teased him.

"Hey now, don't be boosting his ego too much. He's ancient," Sam chimed in with a sly smile.

"Says the man born in the 20s," Tony retorted playfully.

"Well, if Nat's going then count me in," I declared, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge.

"Actually, Nat won't be joining us tonight. We have a date," Steve announced proudly, looking at his girlfriend with adoration in his eyes.

Natasha looked back at him with confusion written all over her face. Clearly, she had no idea about this so-called date Steve had planned.

Tony shot me a look that said "uh-oh, trouble." I couldn't help but stifle a laugh at his expression, but when everyone turned to look at me, I quickly diverted my attention to my water bottle.

"Nat is a grown woman capable of making her own decisions," I spoke up honestly after disposing of my empty bottle.

I was sick and tired of Steve treating Natasha like he owned her. She was my best friend and under no one's spell. I couldn't understand what she saw in him, especially since they were always bickering, but I admired her for standing up to him. His mind was still stuck in the 20s.

"Stay out of my relationship," Steve snapped at me, his tone harsh and accusatory.

"Don't talk to her like that!" Natasha slammed her hands on the table, her voice filled with frustration.

"What did you just say?" Steve's anger was evident in his eyes.

"You heard me. Don't. Talk. To. Her. Like. That," Natasha spat back at him.

And so it began, another argument between the two of them. Tony, Bucky, and Sam quickly made their escape, and I attempted to do the same, but Natasha called out my name, causing me to pause and turn back towards them.

"Why do you always drag her into our problems? Leave her out of this," Steve shouted at Natasha.

"I'll involve whoever I want to. You don't own me, Steve. I'm sick of this bullshit," Natasha shot back fiercely.

I wanted nothing more than to leave and take a nice hot shower to escape the tension in the room. I speed-walked down the hallway but bumped into Wanda along the way. She smiled sympathetically at me before glancing down the hallway where we could still hear Nat and Steve going at it.

"They're fighting again? What happened now?" Wanda asked in disbelief.

"I know, can you believe it's already the fourth time today? Tony was planning a team get-together and Nat said she would go, but then Steve said she couldn't, and well...you can hear how that turned out," I explained, nodding my head towards the source of the commotion down the hall.

Wanda sighed and shook her head in exasperation before turning back to face me.

"You and Nat would make a great couple, you know," she shrugged nonchalantly.

"Excuse me? Me and Nat? No way. She's Nat, and besides, she's my best friend," I laughed off the suggestion.

"Y/n, your thoughts are too loud to hide from me. Just something to think about," Wanda said with a knowing smile before walking away.

As I continued on my way to the shower, I couldn't help but wonder if Wanda was right. Maybe there was more to my feelings for Natasha than just friendship. But for now, all I wanted was a peaceful evening without any drama or arguments.

As I walked away from her, a thin smile graced my lips in response to her comment about my secrets. With each step, the sound of my feet hitting the ground echoed through the hallway. Suddenly, I heard her voice ring out behind me.

"I KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERYONE, DON'T WORRY!" she shouted after me.

Ignoring her, I sent her a defiant middle finger and continued on my way to my room. Once inside, I quickly gathered all of my shower essentials and headed into the bathroom. Stripping off my clothes and tossing them carelessly into a corner, I was interrupted by the sudden intrusion of someone barging into my room.

"Ugh, this better be important. I'm about to take a shower," I called out irritably.

To my surprise, it was Natasha standing in front of me with a weight seemingly lifted off her shoulders. Concerned, I wrapped a towel around my body and stepped out into my room to face her.

"Hey, are you okay?" I asked gently.

Without hesitation, she scanned me up and down with clear admiration in her eyes. Our friendship had always been like this - playful flirtation and pretending to be each other's girlfriends to ward off unwanted advances from guys.

"Eyes up here, Romanoff," I warned as her gaze lingered on my chest.

"Kiss me," she stated bluntly.

I hesitated for a moment, knowing that she had a boyfriend and not wanting to complicate things between us.

"Nat...as much as I would love for you to...you know...fuck me...you have a boyfriend and I don't want to-"

"Y/n, listen. Steve and I aren't together anymore. So please just let me fuck you until you can't walk," she said earnestly, looking directly into my eyes.

I couldn't help but feel conflicted as she leaned in and pressed her lips against mine. They were just as soft and inviting as I remembered, and I couldn't resist kissing her back. Lost in the moment, we stumbled towards the bathroom, our hands desperately tugging at each other's clothes.

Once inside, Natasha pulled away from me with a mischievous smirk on her face.

"Let's get rid of these," she said playfully, gesturing to my towel.

"I like them where they are," I teased back, unable to take my eyes off of her.

"Baby, I thought you wanted me to fuck you," she pouted, running her fingers along my jawline.

"I do," I whined, feeling more turned on by the second.

"Well then, let's remove this obstacle," she whispered seductively before nibbling on my ear as she tugged on my towel.

"Mmmh, I think you're right, Natty," I replied breathlessly.

In one swift motion, she pulled down my towel so that I was standing fully naked in front of her. Her eyes roamed over my body with hunger and desire, making me feel small and vulnerable under her intense gaze.

"You are going to be so much fun," she murmured, tracing her finger lightly over my chest before pushing me into the shower.

As the warm water cascaded over my body, I couldn't help but let out a slight moan. Natasha stepped in behind me and pressed her body against mine, her lips crashing onto mine once again. As our tongues tangled and hands roamed freely over each other's bodies, I couldn't believe what was happening. And as she pinned me against the wall of the shower and continued to ravish me with kisses and touches, I knew that this would be a night to remember.

The hot steamy shower added so much passion into our little hookup. It made everything way more hotter than normal. The way Natasha's red hair looked as the water trickled down her body was a sight I will never forget.

She placed her hands on my thighs and tapped on them. She picked me up and I wrapped myself around her waist. I began to try and grind myself to try get some sort of friction which worked for a minute as I grinded myself on her abs but when she realised what I was doing she stopped me

"Such a desperate little whore aren't you? Look at you so pathetic trying to get yourself off by using my abs" she degraded me

I could feel myself get wet at her choice of words. I was dumbfounded and my moth couldn't even form words.

"You like that? You like it when I call you a whore baby?" She smiled evilly at me

There definitely was a pool between my legs at this point. She kept staring into my eyes when she spoke to me which made it harder to keep eye contact when she was saying these hypnotising things

"Answer me slut" she snarled

"Ye-yes mommy I do" I replied with a smirk once I pulled myself together

She wore her famous smirk on her face as she stared into my eyes. "Mommy? God I love that" she smirked

She began to attack my body with kisses. Sucking,biting and leaving marks all along my neck,chest shoulders you name it she marked it. She slammed us against the wall and I slowly got off her waist moaning quietly at her marking my body

She placed her knee between my thighs so my pussy was resting on her knee. She pushed it up hard causing me to moan loudly and my moan echoed around the room I quickly covered my mouth but Nat grabbed my wrist and removed my hand from my mouth

"I want to hear those pretty moans, go on scream shout let everyone know that Starks golden child is being fucked by the black widow" she said with lust in her eyes and voice

She gripped both of her hands on my waist and began to harshly push my hips into her knee. The pleasure shot through my body sending shivers down my spine.

"GOD NAT" I moaned loudly

She smirked wildly at me and began to slow down. Which was horrible I needed a release the knot that once was in my stomach had disappeared. My head was resting on Natasha's shoulder.

"Ple-please Nat I NEED you" i panted

"What, you have me what more could you want" she slowed down even more

"Mommy please your killing me" I breathed out

"Such a little slut aren't we? Be a good girl and beg for it" she instructed me

"Please please mommy let me finish all over your knee, I will be a good girl-please mommy" I begged

"Go on get yourself off I want to watch you" she smirked at me

She let go of my hips and I began to grind myself down onto her knee. It felt so good, moans began to fall out of my mouth. I picked up the paste and I could feel my tits bouncing as I moved up and down on her. I had my eyes shut and I threw my head back in pleasure when she flexed her leg.

I opened my eyes and seen Natasha was fingering herself. God it was hot. I shoved 3 of my fingers in her and she moaned

"YES Y/N RIGHT THERE" I picked up the pace

I could feel the knot in my stomach again. I was so close. I could tell Natasha was too by the way she was pulsing on my fingers.

"I'm so close mommy" I moaned

Natasha's moans echoed through the bathroom as I thrust a fourth finger inside of her without warning. Her legs flexed and she threw her head back, lost in pleasure. I quickened my pace, my body on the verge of climaxing.

"PLEASE NAT, I CAN'T HOLD IT!" I cried out, overcome with desire. "Cum on me," she moaned in response.

The sound of our passionate encounter filled the small bathroom, but in that moment, we didn't care who could hear us. My fingers continued to move inside of Natasha as she reached her peak, her release coating my hand.

We collapsed against each other, panting and exhausted. I rested my head against her neck and she nestled hers into mine, peppering light kisses along my skin.

"Holy- fuck," she panted between breaths. "That was...the best shower of my life."

I breathed out a laugh and nodded in agreement. But just as we were starting to relax and catch our breath, Natasha reminded me that we had plans for the evening.

"We should get ready for tonight. That is, if you're still going..." I told her hesitantly.

"Y/n, if you're going, I am going," she said with a smile.

I bit my lip nervously and flashed a shy smile in return. We exited the shower and wrapped towels around our bodies before parting ways to get dressed. As I put on my favorite red dress, revealing just enough cleavage to make it daring yet elegant, Wanda burst into my room with excitement.

"Oh my God!" she squealed. "Natasha and Steve broke up!"

My acting skills came into play as I pretended to be shocked and happy by this news. Wanda bought it completely.

"No way! Really? You're not joking with me?" I exclaimed.

"I wouldn't do that to you!" She laughed. "How did you find out?"

"I overheard Steve telling Bucky," she informed me.

"I thought Natasha and I were the spies here, not you witchy," I teased her.

"That's not the only thing you and Natasha are," she smirked.

"What are we, Wanda?" I turned to face her.

"Each other's future wives," she smirked again.

I rolled my eyes playfully while trying to hide my blush. But Wanda was right, there was definitely something special between Natasha and me.

"You look beautiful, by the way. Is that for Vision?" I joked with a wink.

"Shut up, I can dress up for myself, you know!" Wanda shook her head in mock annoyance.

"Mmhm, yeah, but that dress is new and I know you wouldn't wear it unless you were planning to impress him," I teased as we linked arms and made our way down the hallway.

"Well, I could say the same. We both know a certain spy's favorite color is red," Wanda joked back as we walked.

"But how do you know I'm not trying to impress you? Your favorite color is red too," I responded with a sly smile.

"Well, if that's the case..." she smiled mischievously and we both burst out laughing.

As we entered the main room, still giggling about our love lives, we noticed that it was practically empty except for Tony, Maria, Steve, Vision, and Natasha.

"Well, isn't this quite the party," Wanda quipped at Tony as we approached the small group.

My laughter echoed through the spacious room as I stood with Wanda, trying to decide who to talk to first. There were so many people to choose from in this tower, and we were all gathered here for some unknown reason. "You two give it up," Tony commented, rolling his eyes. "People are coming, unlike you two. Some of us have lives outside of this tower." Maria smirked at me, her gaze lingering on my face. "Well, Y/n certainly does," she said suggestively. "What are you on about, Ms. Hill?" Vision asked curiously. "From the looks of it, Y/n has had some fun recently," Maria grinned, gesturing towards my neck.

Suddenly, everyone's attention turned to me. What was Maria talking about? Wanda slapped my arm playfully. "Miss Y/L/N! What is that on your neck?" she gasped. "It appears to be a hickey, I believe," Vision stated loudly. "WHO HAS A HICKEY?!" Sam's voice boomed as he and the rest of the group descended down the stairs. "Y/N!" Maria exclaimed, causing everyone to focus their attention on me.

I blushed furiously as they began to bombard me with questions. "When did this happen?" Bucky smirked mischievously. "Doesn't matter, it's none of anyone's business," I replied coolly as I sat down on the couch and grabbed a beer from the cooler.

"Okay, so it had to be recently, like in the last 2-3 days," Carol calculated, her eyes scanning my appearance. Tony looked disgusted while Bruce seemed uncomfortable and kept shifting in his seat.

"But Y/n doesn't leave the compound," Wanda announced defensively. "I do too!" I defended myself, feeling slightly hurt by their disbelief.

"I mean, she clearly does," Rhodes pointed at my neck accusingly. "Can we stop talking about this?" I asked, feeling embarrassed and uncomfortable.

"Yeah, please, can we?" Tony pleaded, looking like he was about to have a heart attack. "But-" Vision started to say.

"Yes, Vis?" Wanda interrupted him. "If Y/n went out and had intercourse with another person...well, that's impossible," Vision stated matter-of-factly.

"How is it impossible?" I asked, confused by his statement. "You haven't left the compound in 4 days apart from that mission, and unless you slept with someone from Hydra 4 days ago, plus the fact that those hickeys look somewhat fresh...it's impossible that you had intercourse elsewhere...plus-" Vision was suddenly cut off by a loud outburst from Tony.

"STOP! STOP! THAT'S ENOUGH!" Tony yelled, causing everyone to turn their attention towards him. I could see the shock on Rhodey's face as he exclaimed, "Stark, seriously?! She's half your age!"

My eyes went wide as I realized what they were all hinting at. "Ewww, no! No, we didn't," Tony defended himself quickly.

"Stop it now, please," I begged as I placed my hands over my face in embarrassment.

Tony stood up abruptly and walked over to the bar, while Natasha sat smirking and sipping her beer. Bruce also seemed preoccupied with Nat, which wasn't unusual since they were close friends. "Wait, so Y/n brought someone to her room and slept with them?" Carol looked around at the group.

"It isn't anyone here," I said quickly, trying to deflect the attention away from myself.

"I'm going to join Tony at the bar," Bruce announced suddenly, trying to make a quick escape. But Carol and Maria stopped him. "You know something, Brucey. What is it?" Maria interrogated him.

"Leave the poor guy alone," Nat defended him, giving Bruce a reassuring glance.

"Come on, aren't you dying to find out who she slept with?" Carol asked Nat eagerly.

"Of course I am, but we all know Mr. Anger over here gets uncomfortable easily," Nat teased back, causing Maria and Wanda to laugh.

"Oh, Witchy Witchy," Maria smirked at Wanda, who responded with an equally mischievous grin as she slowly walked over to Bruce.

I could see the worry in Bruce's eyes as he sent a quick glance my way. Fuck, he must have overheard something. I gave him a questioning look, hoping he knew something that could explain this situation. He looked away, his expression filled with concern. Damn, he definitely heard something.

With a sudden burst of energy, Sam practically leapt 6 feet in the air, exclaiming, "HE KNOWS WHO IT IS!"

"NO- GUYS I DONT," he quickly defended himself as everyone turned to look at him.

"DO IT NOW WANDA," Bucky smirked at her, urging her to reveal the identity.

I glanced at Nat and Bucky, who were sitting closely beside each other. Dread filled me as I realized that soon everyone would know.

"Guys, who actually cares who she slept with?" Steve groaned, clearly annoyed by the situation.

"Everyone apparently," Nat shot back, glaring at him. "Well Tony doesn't, nor do I," he began to walk away.

"Well you would care," Bruce murmured quietly under his breath.

"What was that Brucey?" Wanda smirked playfully. "Hmmmmm?" He acted dumb, but we all knew what he had said.

"Let him go guys please, this is embarrassing for me. It's my life, not yours," I pleaded with them, trying to diffuse the tension.

But my efforts were in vain as Wanda's smirk grew wider and red wisps of energy emanated from her hands. She was reading Bruce's mind. Suddenly, she gasped and Bruce quickly ran to Tony, apologizing frantically.

"I'M SO SORRY Y/N!" he shouted over his shoulder as he rushed away.

"OH MY GOD," Wanda smirked at me, her eyes glinting mischievously. "WHO IS IT?"

"WITCHY TELL US!" Maria exclaimed, unable to contain her excitement.

Wanda paused for a moment before announcing with a sly smile, "It's someone in this room."

The group erupted into a frenzy of questions, desperate to uncover the truth. Maria gasped in shock while Carol couldn't hide her curiosity.

"Okay, who was getting it on with Y/n?" Sam's wide smirk displayed his eagerness to know.

"It could be a girl," Natasha pretended it wasn't her and shrugged nonchalantly.

"That's funny," Steve commented, clearly uncomfortable with the topic.

"So what if it is a girl, Steve? It's my body, not yours," I deflected his judgmental comment.

"Well, it's wrong," he argued back, causing me to roll my eyes in frustration.

"Wanda..." Maria turned to her, hoping she would reveal more information.

I gave Wanda a pleading look, but she shook her head at me. Little witch.

"I'll give you all a hint: their favorite color is red," Wanda began, enjoying the power she held over everyone's thoughts.

"Okay, so that rules out Sam and Nat. Plus, we already established that it isn't Tony or Natasha," Maria listed off potential suspects in the room.

Vision looked relieved at being cleared as a suspect, and I couldn't help but find it cute in that moment. But then reality hit once again.

"Okay, to cut ties. Sam had no clue, so that's him out," Clint suggested logically. "And let's be real, we all know he wouldn't be able to pull Y/n anyway."

Sam was highly offended by this insinuation and tried to argue his case, but I quickly shut him down. Natasha smirked at me for turning him down while the rest of the group joined in on teasing him.

"Well then that leaves two possibilities: Bucky's exes Nat and Steve," Bucky stated matter-of-factly. My heart sank at the thought of either of them being involved.

Steve was busy chatting with Tony and Bruce at the bar, completely unaware of the conversation happening right next to them.

"Well, it has to be one of them. Maybe they used Y/n as a rebound since they just broke up," Carol suggested, causing me to feel even more upset.

"I'm not some lousy one night stand," I interjected, feeling hurt by the words being thrown around.

"Are we correct that it is one of them, Wanda?" Vision asked politely, trying to move the conversation along.

"Yes, you are," she confirmed with a mischievous smirk.

"Well, I could be right then," Carol shrugged her shoulders confidently.

"You really think that?" I asked sadly.

"Well, I mean, it is strange that they broke up and whoever it is ran to you. Maybe they did it as a way to get back at Steve for something," Carol said without thinking.

I sat there in shock as Maria slapped her on the arm for her insensitivity.

"My money is on Steve. He's always had a thing against Y/n and it would make sense if it was an enemies-to-lovers situation," Sam boomed confidently.

"Nah, I think it has to be Nat. If we're going off of what Carol said, she would want to get under Steve's skin by sleeping with his best friend who he dislikes," Thor chimed in with his own theory.

Everyone began agreeing with Thor and even I couldn't help but consider their theories. After all, Nat and Steve were always on-again-off-again. But the thought of either one of them using me as a pawn in their love triangle made my stomach churn.

As I looked at her, my heart ached and tears began to fill my eyes. She was about to say something before she was stopped by Tony's outburst.

"STOP IT! Can't you all see what this is doing to her? Look at her, she is on the verge of tears. You are all making her feel like a piece of shit, like some cheap hooker," Tony defended me passionately.

I looked up and saw Bruce standing next to him, offering his support. Tony protectively placed his hands on my shoulders while Bruce sat beside me, gently placing his hand on my knee in an attempt to comfort me.

"You should all be ashamed of yourselves. We have all gone to Y/n with our secrets at one point or another, and she has never said a word. Is this how you want to repay her? By speaking about her personal life with such lack of empathy?" Bruce's tone was harsh as he scolded the group.

A tear streamed down my face, which I quickly wiped away as everyone's eyes turned to me. I could feel their gaze, but some were shamefully looking at the ground. Without warning, I felt someone wrap their arms around me from behind - it was Natasha.

"Well, I'm telling you now it wasn't me," Wanda spoke up with a smile.

I wrapped my arms around her, taking in her comforting scent. She truly gave the best hugs. As I cried softly into her shoulder, all the hurtful thoughts and accusations that had been swirling in my mind disappeared.

"It's okay, you're okay," she whispered softly to me.

But suddenly, everything came flooding back as I remembered what they had done. "No, please get off of me," I pushed Wanda away and stood up.

Feeling disgusted and betrayed, I walked away from the group. Carol was right; Natasha had used me to get under Steve's skin, and he watched me leave with a smug grin on his face - I could see it from a mile away.

From Natasha's point of view, Y/n had just stormed out of the main hall. As she looked at the rest of the group, they all wore expressions of guilt. Anger rose up in Natasha like never before.

"Baby, did you do this to make me jealous?" Steve approached her.

"Don't fucking call me that," Natasha snapped at him.

"In fact, I don't want any of you to even call me your friend anymore. None of you are my friends after what you did tonight. The only people who I consider friends are Tony and Bruce. The rest of you are just horrible colleagues that I have to put up with," she yelled at them.

"Nat, we're sorry. We didn't think she would..." Wanda started to apologize, but Natasha cut her off.

"Out of all the people, you were the last person I expected to do this to her - to us," Natasha said, disappointment evident in her voice.

"Actually, no, scratch that. I didn't think any of you would be so cruel. But here we are. So since you all are dying to know - YES, I slept with Y/n. And NO, Carol, it wasn't to get back at Steve. It was because I genuinely love her with every piece of my body, and I would die for her. It was the best experience I've ever had because I was with someone who truly cares not only for me but for everyone around her. Y/n would go to hell and back for any one of you. So fuck you all," Natasha stormed out.

She went to her room and slammed the door shut behind her. Frantically changing into her comfortable pajamas, she grabbed Y/n's favorite hoodie which always goes missing when she's away on missions. Determined to fight for her and prove her love, Natasha left her room and went down to find Y/n's room. She had to show her girl that she was willing to go to great lengths for their love.

Your POV

The weight of disappointment and hurt settled heavily on my chest. With a heavy heart, I trudged to my room, eager to shed the facade of happiness that I had worn all day. Taking comfort in soft, loose clothes, I wiped away the thick layer of makeup and let myself succumb to tears.

As I lay in bed, memories of Natasha and the events of the day flooded my mind. How could I have been so naive? Of course she slept with me as a way to get back at Steve. The realization stung like a fresh wound.

But amidst the pain and betrayal, one moment stood out - our encounter in the shower. For a brief moment, she had smiled at me with genuine affection before kissing me again. Was it all just a ploy to manipulate me?

My thoughts spiraled into self-doubt and anger towards my friends, especially Wanda for exposing my vulnerability and feelings for Natasha.

"Why did I trust her?" I cried to myself.

A knock on my door interrupted my thoughts, but I ignored it. Using my powers to lock the door, I refused to let anyone in unless it was Bruce or Tony. But they persisted and eventually picked the lock.

Ready to defend myself with my magic, I sat up on the bed as they entered. To my surprise, it was Natasha who walked in with a gentle expression on her face.

"Did you not hear me? Last time I checked, you're not Tony or Bruce," I sniffled, trying to regain composure.

"I may not have a clean record like them, but I promise you, I'm not here to hurt you," she spoke softly as she approached me.

"Nat, please just go away," I pleaded.

"You'll have to make me if you want that to happen," she challenged with determination in her eyes.

I braced myself, ready to use my powers against her despite my reluctance to do so. But her words and gaze softened me, and I slowly dissipated the energy ball in my hands.

"That's it, Natasha. It's just me," she whispered, sitting at the end of my bed with a familiar hoodie in her hand - my favorite one.

But even the comfort of my cherished item couldn't ease the disgust I felt towards myself. "Giving me this hoodie won't change how I feel about what happened," I told her bitterly.

Her face fell at my harsh words, and for a moment, I regretted lashing out. But I pushed away any guilt and continued, "Why wouldn't I be disgusted? You slept with me to spite Steve, and now everyone sees me as a cheap whore you use when you need a boost."

Tears welled up in her eyes as she asked softly, "Is that how little you think of me?"

I paused, realizing I had let my hurt and anger cloud my judgment. "You're not denying it, so yes, I did think that lowly of you – no, wait, that's not true." My voice cracked with emotion. "I don't want to believe that about you."

"Y/n, listen to me. I didn't sleep with you to get back at Steve. I don't care about his opinion. But I care about yours," she pleaded with sincerity etched on her features.

She gazed into my eyes, her expression filled with sincerity and love. "You're not some cheap hooker or a whore, Y/n. I slept with you because I have real feelings for you. I couldn't resist acting on them the first chance I got," she confessed to me.

I felt a lump form in my throat as her words touched my heart. I was about to respond when she silenced me with a gentle kiss. My body responded instantly, melting into her touch. She pulled away after a few seconds, leaving tears in my eyes.

"Why the tears?" she asked, cupping my face in her hands.

"I'm sorry for what I said earlier, Nat. It wasn't fair of me to judge you like that," I apologized, my voice trembling with emotion.

"Don't worry about that. I'm okay. Let's talk about it and I'll help you through it, if you want me to," she reassured me, rubbing my cheek tenderly.

I couldn't shake off the looks of judgement from everyone at the party. They made me feel dirty and ashamed. I know some of it may have been in my head, but Carol's words really got to me and made sense. I had been suppressing my feelings for Nat for so long, thinking they were wrong and that no one would accept us. But then we shared that moment in the shower and it felt right, until Carol's words brought all my doubts rushing back.

"Fuck it. I'm so in love with you," I blurted out, tears streaming down my face now.

Nat looked at me with so much love in her eyes that it made my heart swell with emotion. I wrapped my arms around her tightly and buried my head in her shoulder while she drew soothing patterns on my back.

"Thank you for listening to me," I mumbled against her.

"Hey, it's what I'm here for," she replied sweetly.

We pulled away and I took the jumper from her lap and put it on. She chuckled at me and I pulled her into my bed, pulling the covers over us. We both decided to keep our relationship private, but not a secret.

"You looked breathtaking tonight," Nat complimented me, her eyes filled with admiration.

"Thank you. The dress was for you," I blushed, feeling suddenly self-conscious.

"But I have to say, you are effortlessly gorgeous," she said with a smile.

"That's not true," I shook my head.

"Yes, it is. Even right now, lying here next to me. You are perfect in every way," I whispered softly.

"I'm not perfect, Y/n. Trust me," she said honestly.

"ты всегда будешь идеальной в моих глазах Наталья Романова," I whispered against her lips, reminding her of how perfect she will always be in my eyes.

She smiled into the kiss and lightly held onto my waist as I gently ran my fingers through her red hair.

"Не важно что," I mumbled against her lips, reaffirming that nothing else mattered to me.

"When did you learn Russian?" she asked with a curious smile.

"I learned it for you a while ago. I'm now fluent," I bragged a little, feeling proud of myself.

"How come you never spoke it before?" she questioned playfully.

"I was learning it to ask you out, but then you started dating Steve and all I knew how to say at the time was 'Natasha Romanoff, will you go out with me?' and 'I love you'," I laughed a little at the memory.

"Stop, please tell me you're lying," she groaned, burying her head into my chest in embarrassment.

"Unfortunately, no. But I continued to learn it so I could say things to you without the team knowing," I smiled softly at her.

Nat's eyes sparkled with love and adoration as she leaned in for another kiss, grateful for our secret language that only we shared.

My heart skipped a beat as her beautiful smile lit up her face. "Wait, you learned how to say 'I love you'?" she asked, looking up at me with shining eyes. "Yeah, it was one of the first things my teacher taught me," I replied, a fond smile tugging at my lips.

"Say it in Russian for me," she requested, her smile growing wider.

"But you already know how to say it in Russian," I said, confused by her request.

"Amuse me," she replied with a playful glint in her eyes.

My heart swelled with adoration as I spoke the words in Russian: "Я люблю вас."

Her smile softened and she echoed the words back to me: "я тоже тебя люблю, Y/N." It felt like an exchange of promises, a declaration of our feelings for each other.

She leaned in and kissed me, and I eagerly returned the gesture. In that moment, as we stood there with our arms wrapped around each other, I knew that I never wanted to be anywhere without her. She had tricked me into saying those three little words, but they were more than just words. They were a reflection of what we both felt deep in our hearts - love.

©Elena do not copy, edit, or translate my works.

[parabiota]

Kaijuno has possibly been lying about being an astrophysicist for 8 years: a compilation

Abstract: Kaijuno made her initial claim to Tumblr fame in 2016 with the release of a few popular posts. In the 8 years which followed, she has been wearing the title of astrophysicist with pride. I call this title into question on behalf of all Tumblr users. All evidence has been gathered with legal and publicly available information. Posts will be screenshotted, as well as embedded with a link to prove I have sourced them publicly. While I cannot prove anything beyond a doubt, I hope this raises suspicion of her past, current, and future actions. I do not wish any harm on her. I just wish to inform people of her alleged lies since she has been taking emergency donations on her Tumblr blog for years.

1. Introduction Jessica Peck -- whose name is public and has been sourced through Paypal, Cashapp, and Venmo accounts linked to her Tumblr -- of Flint, Michigan (also publicly sourced via posts she made) has been running the blog Kaijuno since August 2014. She has been claiming to be an astrophysicist since at least August 2016, and continues to as of today (7.13.24). It is my firm belief that she is not an astrophysicist, but rather had dropped out of an undergraduate physics program during or after 2017. Additionally, I believe the art she has been posting since 2023 to have been made with AI. While I have not looked into her financial situation, I believe that if she is truly lying about her career and art, it is entirely plausible for her to lie about her finances as well.

2. Methods

2.1 Outside Research With a publicly sourced name and location, I was able to use a variety of public resources at my disposal to track any published papers or accounts on other websites. A quick search through Google Scholar yields no results of anybody named Jessica Peck publishing a paper on astrophysics. I have not searched through other databases -- I don't find it necessary but I do implore others to search if they wish.

The next place to check was Linkedin. A similar search yielded a public Linkedin page attributed to someone of the same name and state:

This page has seemingly not been updated since 2017, during her undergrad. An important thing to note about Linkedin is that does say she graduated in 2020. However, when you link your university to Linkedin it lists your expected graduation year regardless of whether you've graduated or not. This does not prove graduation, but that she has gone for an undergraduate degree in physics at one point with an estimated graduation year of 2020.

Everything else comes directly from her Tumblr blog. I'm embedding all screenshots with links, however I anticipate most of them being deleted.

2.2 Direct Quotes Jessica has claimed to have a graduate degree, specifically a Ph.D, on numerous occasions. These have generally been played off as jokes, though I do believe the intention of posting them has been to persuade people that she does have a degree.

Here she claims shes going back to college (10.30.23):

But here she claims she has '2 PhDs'(10.30.23). The following two screenshots single-handedly contain the bulk of my evidence.

NOTE: The usernames and icons have been blocked out, as those people are not involved with this post.

The 'free college because I'm 26' appears to be from Michigan Reconnect, a scholarship program which pays for community college for students over the age of 25 who do not have a college degree. The only way Jessica would be benefiting from this program would be if she never completed her undergraduate degree in 2020. This appears to be the only way you can get free or discounted college tuition exclusively based on age in the state of Michigan. While she could get her tuition paid for her by FAFSA, that is income-based, NOT age-based.

If she is currently attending college and benefiting from this age-based aid program, she cannot possess the multitude of prior degrees she has otherwise attested to. This means that, effectively by her own admission/contradiction, she does not have any sort of degree in astrophysics, but rather used to be a physics student that never completed her degree.

This is all of the information I have collected on her academics. Again, every single part of this has been publicly sourced, and any person would have been able to find all of this information the same exact way that I have.

3. Results // AI Art and General Bitchery This is a collection of art she claims to be her own, and how I visually identified it as AI:

(This is just Heroforge. Maybe with a filter over it. Anyone familiar with Heroforge knows this.)

I present one final screenshot:

This doesn't prove anything about her academic, art, or financial state. I am simply including this to show people how she truly feels about those who have given her donations over the past several years.

4. Conclusion I'd like to close this out by saying: no, none of this is definitive proof. I have no desire to dig any deeper than the resources that are publicly available. If you've noticed, I have not stated anything about her financial situation. This is because I haven't seen anything she posted which contradicts her financial state, other than the fact that she has been lying about her other personal details for years. It is my opinion that she did not graduate college, but she does appear to be unemployed at the very least. I'd appreciate it if people formed their own beliefs based upon this post rather than taking my word as complete fact, and do their own research as well.

With that being said -- if you disagree with anything I have posted, by all means let me know. And feel free to add if there is something else I missed. I only ask that you take this post into consideration before you donate her money, as the person you're sending it to might not be who she advertises herself as.

[crguang]

how would kafka deal with an s/o who's very easily scared? like if they see a spider, they are gonna scream bloody murder. i can only see kafka falling in love with people who are bold and confident so it'd be interesting to see her having an s/o that easilg feels fear when kafka herself can't.

this is such an interesting thought, i saw it this morning and have been thinking about it since. i also think boldness attracts kafka for sure and anyone that stands out in some way could definitely catch her eye. i’m not sure because in my opinion kafka understands fear on a cognitive level but she obviously can’t feel it, so she would be less empathetic in this context; if you’re about to cry cause you saw a spider, unless it’s a phobia she’d just be like “bruh” 😭 laughs at you probably. she does dispose of it and everything but trust she’ll make a joke first. this is something that pisses me off in others but she might have the habit to downplay your fear just because she thinks that it’s not that serious. if your life isn’t in danger and you’re screaming bloody murder cause a rat just ran past you (me i hate them i hate them) she’d tell you to relax and wouldn’t take you seriously. she might come off as condescending sometimes. on the other hand though, she’d enjoy being needed so if your reflex is to clutch her shirt or grab her hand tightly, that’s a win for her. what’s more interesting to me is the irony of her not being able to feel fear and being really good at instilling fear in others versus being someone’s first source of comfort, i think it would take her some time to get used to it. kafka’s strong, resourceful, confident and intelligent, and her lack of fear + nonchalance makes her very comforting in stressful situations. a bit of a knight in shining armor, she easily takes care of whatever scares you even if she doesn’t get it fully because she gets attention and kisses afterwards so. she’d feel bad if you do end up crying out of fear and her way to deal with that situation would be to remove your stressor and just be there i guess. she says something like “with me around? nothing to worry about.” and lets you cling to her all you like while she pats your head

[iced-coffee-jesus]

Fuck it, I added this to someone else's post but it deserves it's own.

I'm 30 minutes from Asheville, we didn't have power or water for over 11 days, we only just got it back tonight at 8:55 P.M; from the early morning of September 27th to the late evening of October 8th we were without electric, water, and means to use a bathroom.

All our freezer and refrigerated food is spoiled and stinking up the house while we try to find a way to dispose of it. Landfills are overrun and garbage trucks can't access a lot of area's. We won't be able to re-stock any amount of cold food for at least another week, and barely are able to get enough fresh food to eat day by day. Radio was the only way to hear any news and have hopes of hearing where to get supplies, because cell service was non-existent for 8 days straight.

Asheville's water system was destroyed. There is no access to water in the city, and may not be for months. 25 feet of ground was washed away, and the back-up system we put in about two years ago failed. 1,800 thousand miles of pipe needs to be re-layed. They're hopefully thinking early December, last I heard. This happened September 27th. Let that timeline sink in.

The death toll sits somewhere at 115 in Western North Carolina. They are no longer providing meaningful updates on the radio of the missing and dead, so most of us are unclear where we stand. Most widely talked about is a woman that I only know through other friends; she climbed the roof of her house with her seven year-old son and her elderly parents to escape the flood waters. The roof collapsed under them, trapping her and drowning her son and parents. After that horrifying tragedy, she waited another three hours trapped on the roof waiting to be rescued.

We're a mountain community. There was no real warning, and no one here knows how to properly prepare for a hurricane because we don't fucking get them here. My mom survived Hurricane Andrew, and as a Floridian is always 'over prepared'; if a neighbor didn't bring us water, we would have been screwed 7 days in. Even as generally prepared people, we didn't have enough resources.

We are doing our best. First responders, radio hosts, good Samaritans, Walmart employees, they are working around the clock and we know that. But the devastation is unfathomable and unprecedented. The flooding and landslides destroyed towns, homes, and lives. Some people have fled and will never return, the damage is too great.

In some area's, the electric companies are openly admitting they won't be putting up new poles because there are no homes left to give electricity to. It's simply gone.

Here's a really great local news source if you want to hear more. I'm begging everyone to be kind to everyone suffering such huge losses right now.

[queer-ragnelle]

So, regarding your novels, what made you write backwards? I'm so curious about it.

TL;DR I started writing in Mordred and Galahad perspective. I then became possessed by the "older" characters and went "back" in the timeline to write their origins (starting with parentified Agravaine). I did this several times until I ended up with Ragnelle/Gawain as book 1, "the beginning," of what turned into an Epic many books long.

Let me give you a timeline...

1900s: I am born and develop Arthurian brain worms.

21st century: The worms declare Ragnelle/Gawain are my favorites and I write their Wedding multiple times for fun based off what can be gleaned from Wikipedia and retellings as I have no medieval resources at my disposal.

February 2020: I think Mordred and Galahad would make neat narrative foils and write a short story about them playing chess.

March 2020: The plague. I'm furloughed from my job. Writing becomes my full-time focus. I write 60,000 words in Mordred and Galahad perspective, plotting their story to be a trilogy.

June 2020: I'm back to work but I'm still writing. With money and curiosity at my disposal, I begin hoarding Arthurian books. Local quirky secondhand bookstore owner had an Arthurian fixation in his youth—I clear his shelves. He asks if I'm a medievalist major and I have to break it to him I'm just a High School drop out at the mercy of the Tell-Tale knights chattering in my head. I learn more lore. I splurge to buy the Vulgate cycle. I'm forever changed.

Late 2020: Reading medlit and retellings and watching all the movies super charged the brain worms. The Vulgate especially. I develop an obsession with circumventing the Orkneys/Welshmen blood feud with the power of gay sex. (Joan Wolf did it first in her 1988 book The Road to Avalon with Agravaine/Lamorak.)

January 2021: Historical research shows that Islam didn't exist yet during the 5th/6th century I'd been writing in. I order Zoroastrianism by Mary Boyce to make sure I'm depicting Ragnelle and Gromer's religion properly. But it's nbd their page time is minimal as background characters right? ....right?

2021 continued: The Agravaine/Lamorak brain worms take on a life of their own as I'm hospitalized and bedridden. Chronic pain and isolation become my themes. I write endlessly on my phone from bed. 2/3 novels are completed and readable straight through with a third book in pieces. These are currently at a combined total of nearly 140,000 words. (Plus the notes file with scenes I haven't moved yet...whoa.)

Late 2021: I rediscover old Ragnelle/Gawain stuff and decide to write about their wedding. Again. But this time with legit sources. Except Ragnelle isn't some ambiguous character of color, she's now very specifically Persian [Iranian] Zoroastrian. So the whole thing takes place in Persia and research goes crazy. Someone gives me their college log in so I can download and hoard essays and textbook PDFs. I do beta-read trades with people in facebook groups (bad bad idea) and yet...

End of 2021: I get sample edits from various editors including one guy who insulted my "lack of education" and said emulating J. R. R. Tolkien's old style didn't work anymore and I should take inspiration from The Hunger Games....for my queer romance in Persia. Right. Anyway I pay the $100 for the pages edited so he'll go away and continue searching for my unicorn editor....

2022: Ultimately facebook group scouting finally yields results as I stumble upon a fellow Ragnelle/Gawain enthusiast who would become my editor!! Editor says I have to cut the giant book into thirds, so what is now book 1 ends up chopped.

2023: I'm still revising book 1, now titled The Moonlit Knight, with my editor. All the while I'm drafting book 2, sporadically cheating to write in other books including an Elaine and Perceval book that appeared out of no where, and scouting out beta readers. One beta reader came via a tumblr mutual who connected me through instagram. A second beta reader discovered in a discord server. Another beta reader from a different discord server. So on and so forth.

Early 2024: Beta reading continues, until I have readers for every angle I require; queer people of all flavors, Zoroastrians, Arthurian enthusiasts, Jewish readers, people with DID knowledge etc! Slowly but surely I work through revising the book with all these wonderful people to a final 95,000 words!

Mid 2024: But now...it needed a cover. I commission a tumblr mutual and work for weeks with them on that, still editing/revising and having betas read book 2, Sunshine's Lady, which is currently almost 132,000 words long and half edited/beta read.

September 2024: I still haven't published. lol. But the process takes a long time and has a lot of moving parts!

So why do I actually recommend this method? Well, this has been hugely helpful to write foreshadowing. Forgetting for a second the blueprint drawn from Arthurian Legend itself, I know how my story with my version of the characters is going to go, so I can set all of that up way in advance. It's all well and good to know (spoiler) Arthur dies at the end, but it's never been about the conclusion so much as the journey there and the unique perspective of whichever character the author has chosen to focus on. I mean, Godfrey Turton's The Emperor Arthur is Pelleas point of view. He's instrumental at the battle of Camlann. It's the same with Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles and our one-handed friend Derfel, the reasoning for which isn't revealed until book 3. The world is your oyster! Fixate on your special character and set that shit up and pay it off!!!

Knowing what you're writing toward is extremely helpful during the drafting process. Even if it's only vaguely shaped it'll develop detail as you revise. Other than Derfel's missing hand, the best example of this I can think of is in Realm of the Elderlings series by Robin Hobb. It has a huge fanbase on tumblr for a reason, it's just an insane amount of set up you're not even aware of until the impact slams into you many books later and you're left going, "Whoa.....it was there the whole time." Mind blowing. I want have half as much narrative resonance as that.

Another thing that came of this is, since I wrote Agravaine/Lamorak first, and I'm obscenely Ragnelle obsessed, she pops up in their pov as a hag, only for them to not realize she's one and the same as Gawain's bombshell wife they "meet" later. I wrote this as the lads first, but it's extra funny now that, actually, the reader will experience Ragnelle's perspective first. Hottie uncursed Ragnelle does know she met them before, but feigns otherwise. So it's very fun to see the same encounters happen a second time a few books later. Agravaine is like, "Okay granny whatever. Bye... :^/" and Lamorak is like, "That granny was weird but I like her! :^)" meanwhile the reader is like, "AHHHHH! I KNOW HER!!! YOU FOOLS DON'T KNOW HOW IMPORTANT SHE'LL BE AHHH!!!" At least, that has been the beta reader reaction, which is gratifying. Even better, the books can be read out of order, so actually if you read Agravaine/Lamorak before Ragnelle/Gawain, it works in reverse, too. So if the reader knows who Agravaine is from reading his perspective, when Ragnelle or Gawain runs into him, the reader will realize who he is before it clicks for the point of view character. I had a lot of fun developing all of this across the series for multiple characters, it certainly happens more than once.

Wow that was long but I hope it makes sense and gives you an idea how it all went down. Thanks for taking an interest and I hope you enjoy my books when they're out. Take care! :^)

[fictionadventurer]

Would you be able to tell me more about how pro-life positions are beneficial to women?

I have been becoming more pro-life over the past year because I see edges of this argument online, but I don't know enough to try to clearly explain it to myself, much less to other people. One point someone brought up that helped me see this differently was that abortions are a band-aid solution to sexual abuse and help make it easier to hide sexual violence. And I have also seen the point people make that companies would rather provide abortion care than maternity leave because it keeps people working.

I'm curious if you have other thoughts that can help me affirm this point both to myself and to others? I think there's a lot of vitriol around how people speak about women in abortion discussions, and it can make it hard for people who are on the fence to engage. And having more examples of how pro-life advocates care for women would make it easier to enter into the conversation, especially with people who take a feminist approach to the topic.

(I also want to affirm that I'm asking this in good faith, as someone who wants to learn sincerely, and I hope you might respond sincerely too. I'm taking it for granted that a fetus is also a human, so I'm more interested in how to bring up this other part of the discussion with people. If this is a topic you know less about, that's all right too.)

I tend to approach abortion debates by keeping a laser-focus on the fact that the fetus is a human and a person, because we need to remind people that no problem that the mother faces justifies killing an innocent human being. That said, the pro-life position is infinitely better for women in a bunch of different ways. I'm not going to provide sources, because there are lots of better blogs devoted to that kind of thing (@prolifeproliberty is one that's coming to mind), but I can provide a few talking points.

The biggest benefit a pro-life position provides to a woman is that she doesn't have to live with the fact that she killed her own child. People understand on an instinctive level that a woman is pregnant with a baby; they can try to gloss over it with rhetoric, but the truth remains that the woman pregnant with a human being with its own separate life to live, and abortion violently ends that life. Abortion regret is a very real thing; there's a vast increase in depression and suicide in post-abortive women, and these women often can't get help for such regret, because people deny that it exists, or because "it was her choice".

A pro-life position is also infinitely more empowering to women. Abortion supporters look at a pregnant woman and tell her, "You can't do this. You can't raise a child. You can't have a career. You can't get out of poverty. This will destroy your life." The pro-life position tells a woman that she can do this. She's strong enough. She's smart enough. Both she and her child can have fulfilling lives, because we can help her. The pro-life community provides tons of resources to help women get the supplies and medical care and support that they need to either raise the child or to find adoptive parents to help raise it. Abortion only gets rid of the child--it doesn't solve any of the other problems that made it so difficult for the woman to have a child.

Abortion is also the single greatest tool to allow men to sexually abuse women. The pro-abortion idea that men are against abortion because they want to oppress women is laughable. Men get no benefit from a pro-life position. Abortion allows men to sleep around as much as they like, and if they get a woman pregnant, they don't have to pay child support--they just pay for her abortion and go on their merry way. No concern for her mental or physical or emotional health--just convenience for him. Abortion turns both woman and child into objects for a man's pleasure, to be disposed of when they're not fun anymore.

I could go on for ages, but to keep this simple, I'll just list a few other points:

Abortion greatly increases a woman's risk of breast cancer, and can cause fertility problems later in life.

The abortion pill is extremely dangerous, especially used unsupervised, because it can cause extreme bleeding and other complications.

Abortion allows sexual abusers to hide the evidence of their sexual abuse and keep women trapped longer. This includes human-trafficking and prostitution situations.

Women are often pressured into abortion because of lack of support from their family or community. People might be willing to help her pay for the abortion, but if the woman chooses to have the child, people are unwilling to provide long-term support--it was "her choice", so she has to bear all the responsibility. A decision for abortion made under that kind of pressure isn't really concerned about "a woman's choice."

As you said, employers are far more willing to pay for abortion than they are to provide much more expensive maternity leave, health insurance, etc. It can serve as another tool for employers to oppress workers.

Abortion supporters are often so focused on increasing access to abortion that they put women at risk. They have shot down and repealed bills that require abortion clinics to be licensed and inspected and to meet certain minimum medical standards. They've allowed teenagers to get abortions without parental notification, even though they're legally not competent to make other medical decisions, and the abortion procedure could put the teen's health at risk (plus this can cause teens to be trapped even longer in trafficking situations). They shoot down measures that would require women to be given more information about the abortion procedure and other options--even though informed consent is a cornerstone of medical ethics. If abortion supporters were truly concerned about women, they would be willing to put some of these common-sense protective measures in place.

[lookismfanfics]

Jay x Daniel Older sister (they are about 10 mins apart)

So when Daniel and the reader transfer to the school, Jay takes notice to both of them. Jay and Daniel become best friends and he slowly sees himself falling in love with his best friends sister. Daniel is slightly overprotective of the reader since he had such a deep relationship with her but realizes Jay is genuinely nice and allows him to date his sister.

Can you please write so people with colored-skin can apply to it as well? So just mainly no blushing? Thank you! Love your writing by the way ❤️

𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐏𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞...?

𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: 𝐅𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐟𝐥𝐮𝐟𝐟

Warnings: Jealousy, mentions of bullying, sibling-ness. Also… the POV switches from 3rd to 2nd POV.

Jay Hong x Fem!Reader (who is also Daniel Park’s twin~)

𝟑𝐫𝐝 𝐩𝐨𝐯 ❦ It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Daniel Park was different.

❦ Good-looking, charming… even a little secretive.

❦ From the moment we walked into the room all eyes were on him… ranging from the cautious, steely eyes of the jocks; to the love-stuck, infatuated gazes of the girls.

❦ Jay was one of the people to notice Daniel. He couldn’t keep his eyes off of him.

❦ Daniel was handsome. He seemed like to guy to have resources at his disposal, like Jay. And yet he was kind to everyone… protective of girls and outcasts… a very confusing person.

❦ And maybe Jay had noticed his clothes were a little rough… but when it was really pointed out and suddenly Daniel’s dignity was on the line, Jay affirmed he would do something about it.

❦ Of course he was interested in this new transfer student.

❦ …Of course he was fascinated by his selflessness and seemingly endless kindness.

❦ So that day when Jay decided he would make a move— show Daniel that he wanted to be friends, he was surprised.

❦ The street glowed orange and yellow, the sun’s rays gently warming Jay’s numb hands that clasped around the duffel bag.

❦ He sees Daniel walking down the pavement, his impressive form highlighted by the sunset’s colors. Even if he hardly knows him, Jay wants Daniel to have a decent birthday. He’s not certain why… but he needs this to work out.

❦ And Daniel perks up, eyes widening with recognition. He smiles, and calls out in a voice that Jay senses will become a source of comfort:

(aYo why is this turning into Daniel x Jay…?)

❦ “Oh… Jay! You live around here too…?”

❦ Jay doesn’t say anything, just tosses the bag on the ground and smiles.

❦ And there’s the real birthday surprise…

❦ “Daniel?”

❦ A girl’s voice.

❦ “Who’s this?”

❦ Daniel is crouched on the ground, rummaging through the bag and exclaiming surprised comments. And as much as Jay wants reply to him- he’s all of a sudden distracted.

❦ “O-Oh… (Y/N)! This is Jay, from my class.”

❦ Jay feels his stomach drop. Who’s (Y/N)?

❦ She stands behind Daniel, glancing down dubiously at the duffel bag before glancing up at Jay. She’s pretty.

❦ “What’s this for…?” She asks quietly, staring at the back of Daniel’s head.

❦ “Jay, you knew it was our birthday…?”

❦ “…”

❦ Jay is panicking-

❦ 🚨 🚨 🚨

❦ “Our” birthday? What does he mean…? Jay can feel his lips parting, his mouth intaking the warm air as he tries to steady his breathing.

❦ “…” “Huh? Oh! You didn’t know I had a sister? Ah- she’s in a different class… beauty department.”

❦ Beauty department… it suits her.

❦ “Oh, you think so?” Daniel laughs. Beside him, still eyeing Jay with suspicion, is (Y/N).

❦ “I’m a little hurt you didn’t mention me… but anyway. I’m sorry Jay, but we really can’t accept this…”

❦ Jay nods his head rapidly.

❦ Her previous look of confusion is slowly molded into one of tentative understanding. Glossy lips tilting upwards into a soft smile.

❦ “You were throwing them out…?”

❦ Daniel starts translating then… all to which Jay nods.

❦ And as much as he wishes he could say something else… or watch him try on the clothes… or genuinely ask if they could be friends…

❦ Jay can’t stay. Suddenly he feels a drop of guilt in his stomach.

❦ No birthday gift for (Y/N)…

❦ No birthday gift for Daniel’s twin…

𝟐𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐨𝐯

❦ After that… Jay caught himself staring during lunch breaks.

❦ He was getting close with Daniel… really close actually. There was a warm weight in his chest knowing that he had a friend.

❦ And although Daniel was great, he couldn’t help but feel disappointed in himself for not knowing about you.

❦ I mean… really? How was he supposed to know?

❦ He hadn’t noticed that you two walked together after school, or exchanged hushed whispers in the hall. Why would he…?

❦ But now that he was aware, Jay couldn’t make eye contact. Honestly— he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not even when you called him out on it.

❦ You found Jay endearing… he was a nice boy. Now you didn’t see any harm in him being Danny’s friend.

❦ He started hanging around more often… tagging along on your walk homewards. Studying with your idiot of a brother, who blatantly refused your help. (You’re still siblings after all.)

❦ Jay found himself in the middle of several sibling banters. You would most commonly get on him for sleeping in class… telling him how irresponsible and unfair it was. Whatever that meant.

❦ Even if he never said anything, you found Jay’s company to be very enjoyable. By the day you were beginning to understand what he was trying to say more and more.

❦ Deciphering his mannerisms and translating them into words hadn’t come to you as easily as it had to Danny.

❦ But you and your brother were used to exchanging silent words.

❦ You had done it before… back home with Eomma. Whenever your brother wanted to hide something… or didn’t want your mother to worry.

❦ Silent words were exchanged, looks that said “are you sure?” and “please don’t tell.”

❦ You had told Daniel how guilty you were for not doing anything… and for not standing up for him. But Daniel, as imperfect as he was, never wanted to drag you into his messes.

❦ He never, ever, wanted you to get hurt.

❦ Maybe it was a twin thing… “telepathy” or whatever. You could understand Danny’s silent sentences, and he could understand yours.

❦ So it was natural that you began to pick up onto Jay’s own wordless language.

❦ As previously stated… Daniel doesn’t want his sister to get hurt.

❦ He was the man of the house (sort of) and he should be the one to take the bullets for her.

❦ Especially now that he had two bodies, and his twin was the only person he could confide in.

❦ You disagree… “Danny, I’m older. I can handle myself.”

❦ You smirk to yourself, shouldering your backpack and walking forward with more confidence.

❦ Daniel watches as your curls bounce in rhythm with your step. He tries to control his smile by forming it into a frown.

❦ “That’s not a fair excuse. And I’m serious… I don’t want you walking home by yourself.”

❦ Your pace slows and matches up with your little hyeongje.

❦ “Fine…” some silence lapses between the two of you. “Are you and Jay still hanging out?”

❦ It feels weird for you to look up at your brother… seeing as he’s now a six-foot monster. To be fair, you know he’s still growing in his alter ego, but it feels odd nonetheless.

❦ Daniel casts you a weird side-eye, feeling a drop to his stomach. “Yeah, we are. Why wouldn’t we be?”

❦ You shrug your shoulders and keep waking forward, “You just never invite him over. It’s weird… aren’t pretty-boys supposed to hang out at the mall or each others houses?”

❦ Danny shrugs his shoulders, staring down at the pavement.

❦ “I wouldn’t know…” he trails off as you walk ahead into the house. And then as he’s kicking off his shoes, it dawns on him.

❦ Did… his sister… just call Jay… his new best friend… a pretty boy…?

❦ 👺👺

❦ “Hey (Y/N)—” “Shut it imposter-boy.”

❦ You shake his original body’s shoulders, paying little attention to his new body that slumps sleepily to the floor.

❦ Little Danny blinks up at you, and you hand him his glasses, “There’s my little brother.”

❦ Daniel cares about you too much to let you go without a fight. After all, it’s his twin sister. The only person he can be open with. One of the only people he feels obligated to protect.

❦ Jay also cares too much about you to let you get hurt. After all, you are his best friend’s twin sister. One of the only people who understands him. One of the only people he wants to let in to his secrets.

❦ He can’t pin the moment when he began viewing you differently. At first you were just Daniel’s sister. And then you were his friend, too.

❦ After a while, he caught himself thinking of you. You specifically.

❦ Shyness accompanied these random daydreams of hanging out with you. And the slowly shyness dissolved into realization that he just really cared for you.

❦ Caring turned into attraction; Jay was attracted to you. How…? When…? Why…? He wasn’t sure.

❦ He caught himself falling deep slowly, surely; almost subconsciously…

❦ “Hey Jay!” Daniel greets, sliding into his seat beside him in the cafeteria.

❦ The afternoon sun and luminescent lights still manage to hone in on Daniels “natural” beauty. He still receives stares from other classes… much to Jay’s distaste.

❦ He doesn’t say anything, just smiling in slight embarrassment and turning back to his already-empty food tray.

❦ “…?”

❦ “Where’s (Y/N)?” Jay watches as Daniel’s eyes scan over the cafeteria, flickering between the different girls at the beauty table.

❦ “Ah~ I’m not sure. She must be in the bathrooms or something.”

❦ Daniel turns back to his food, but his apparent unconcern only spurs on the faux-blonde’s worries.

❦ Daniel picks up on Jay’s hyperactive urges to make sure you’re in eyesight. Of course he’s aware that Jay is protective of him… but it’s different when he’s looking around the room frantically for you.

❦ Daniel feels a warmth in his chest- a slight pain in his forehead like his eyebrows are subtly being forced together.

❦ He almost feels annoyed, although he’s never caught himself feeling irritated with Jay. You’re probably the only person who could provoke him at random.

❦ It’s different than just plain annoyance or anger. He almost feels jealous of Jay for being so worried about you. Especially when you walk in, completely unharmed, just like Daniel knew you’d be. Daniel feels hot in his face and body when he catches Jay releasing a tiny sigh, lips curving upwards into a smile.

❦ Daniel asks for time to sort out his new-found overprotectiveness. And you give him time.

❦ To be honest… you need time to sort out your own feelings.

❦ You weren’t always on-board with your brothers new friend.

❦ Why would you be?

❦ You had both transferred from your old school for the sake of protecting Daniel. You had taken on the task of monitoring your twin for the sake of your Eomma.

❦ There was no way you were letting anyone bully your brother. Not even in his new body. (Of course you knew he felt the same way about you.)

❦ So you were a bit skeptical of the apparently mute, rich, and secretive boy who extended his friendship towards your Danny.

❦ A dark undercut bleached blonde, aristocratic features and perfectly molded pink-lips; expensive brands and a flawless grade sheet. Jay Hong had it all. What could he possibly want from your brother?

❦ You searched for an alternative motive…

❦ Regarding Jay with upmost suspicion during your encounters… calculating what he could gain from his every action.

❦ Your searches came up empty… you couldn’t find anything “dirty” about Jay.

❦ The only thing you gained from watching his every move and translating his silent words… was admiration.

❦ You admired Jay’s selflessness that mirrored your brothers. Kindness that mimicked your Eomma. Protectiveness… that probably reflected someone you knew (yourself and your twin).

❦ He was charming. He was thoughtful. Sweet. Endearing.

❦ Jay’s hand brushes against yours, and a booming swarm of butterflies erupt in your stomach. Happiness chokes in your throat; you’re forced to bashfully avoid eye-contact and pull your hand away from his.

❦ Jay smiles at you from across the hall, and suddenly you’re fighting back a grin. You conform that grin you want to let out into a tiny smile and an acknowledging nod, even though your head feels light your stomach feels empty.

❦ You come to realize what these feelings are… the fatigue you feel after encountering that boy; the way your heart lurches towards him whenever he’s in the room.

❦ It stopped being plain hormones a long time ago. It’s developing into more than a crush…

❦ You’d do anything to keep Danny safe. And now… you feel your protective circle broadening to let Jay in.

❦ Meanwhile Daniel’s protective grip on you seemed to be tightening.

❦ He was starting to regard the potential of you having a partner with hostility.

❦ He wouldn’t let you get hurt. He wouldn’t let himself be the one to introduce you to that sort of pain.

❦ If Jay was a really… really… really good guy… then maybe…

❦ As for Jay; he felt himself growing warm at the thought of you. That damn smile of yours.

❦ He smiles pleasurably as he relaxes into his bed, running his hand down his face.

❦ His guilt of not getting you a birthday gift is soon to be repelled. He glances over at the bag that rests on his desk.

❦ A hue of red taints his cheeks.

❦ Jay has done his own personal-sorting.

❦ After he watched Daniel; chiseled physique, radiating personality, magnetic charisma, reserved introversion; he decided he wanted to get to know him. And then he wanted to be friends.

❦ Then he met Daniel’s twin. His sister. He was enchanted by your aloof disregard for him, a facade of rudeness that soon gave way to your warm interior. He wanted to be greeted by your smile the way you beamed at your brother. He wanted to feel the touch the way you clasped your hands with Daniels. Hell… he wouldn’t mind if you dragged him by the collar the way you did with your twin.

❦ Jay felt his face heating up even more as he thought over his new revelation.

❦ He wanted to be more than just friends with (Y/N) Park.

❦ His gaze on the gift bag only intensified.

❦ “Will she like it…? I hope so. (Y/N) isn’t the type of girl to be picky about these sorts of things anyway… right?”

❦ “Will she want to stay friends? Probably. I mean- she’s nice to everybody. Me and her are nothing special…”

❦ Jay’s smile faded into a frown. Even if she did reject him, he always had to fall back onto his personal resolve. He was going to do this.

❦ A flustered mess. Jay Hong was a flustered mess.

❦ (Jay: 😰😰😰)

❦ “…!”

❦ “Like it? Of course I’ll like it Jay, you don’t need to be so nervous about it…”

❦ Daniel walks in to this rom-com of a scene.

❦ You sit there, smiling warmly at the boy in front of you. Jay slouches in front of you as though he’s trying to make himself smaller, pursing his lips tightly, his cheeks flushing a peachy pink.

❦ Daniel just stands there, staring into the empty classroom, save for his best friend and his twin sister, watching wordlessly as your hands pull out the tissue paper stuffed in the gift bag.

❦ You pull out an article of clothing… a jacket. Daniel can tell by the looks of it that it’s expensive. How much money was Jay willing to spend on you?

❦ “I love it Jay…” you smile, “but you already know I can’t accept this.”

❦ Jay frowns, nervousness still radiating from his demeanor. “…”

(So you don’t like it?)

❦ Daniel picks up on what it means, but he watches as his sister’s face morphs into understanding.

❦ “No I do— but it’s too much Jay. Huh…? If I’m happy with it then I can keep— no Jay that’s not how it works, I’m serious.”

❦ Daniel can see something. A warm spark that kindles as you hold each other’s gaze. You smile, even as Jay’s lips mold into a pout. Your eyes gloss in reflection with the sunlight; your gaze looks softer than Danny has ever seen it.

❦ He feels the heated pit in his chest extinguishing… his own gaze softening.

❦ Jay just wanted you to be happy…?

❦ “…”

❦ “Okay I’ll try it on… but only for size. I’m telling you I’m not accepting this gift— because friends don’t give each other expensive gifts like this! And you can’t tell me these are old clothes… because there is no way your sister would ever let you.”

❦ Jay is smiling broadly, helping you into the jacket (even though you can clearly manage on your own).

❦ Daniel coughs, walking through the doorway. “(Y/N) we better get home… or other Daniel will start to worry.”

❦ You conclude: you like Jay. He concludes: He likes you.

❦ Daniel concludes: Jay is a nice guy. He won’t hurt his beloved twin sister.

❦ Later on… Daniel sits beside Jay outside of the school building. He rubs the back of his neck nervously, releasing a shaky sigh.

❦ “Ah… Jay? Can I ask you a serious question?”

❦ Jay nods rapidly, an easygoing smile adorning his features.

❦ “Do you like my sister?”

❦ “…”

❦ This time Jay nods with less eagerness, like he’s guiltily admitting defeat. Daniel huffs turning away from Jay with a conflicted expression.

❦ “Well… if you want to I guess… you could ask her out. I mean- I’m not against it…”

❦ Jay: 😳

❦ “….”

❦ Translation: Thanks.

❦ A week later. You and Jay are going on your first date.

Fluff 😩 ❤️

I hope this was good :)

It for sure was the longest thing I’ve published on this blog. Requests are open! So keep giving me ideas! <3

[rontra]

I have a question about CTDE zatanna's backstory. How do you interpret the medulla jewel? I mean both the impact it has on her story and powers. Also does the hidden city play a big role or not really?

zatanna nation alive and well in my inbox today... welcome... and you're activating my CTDE Ramble Mode 😭 here we go again (puts in a readmore) but thank you for asking!

god the fucking medulla jewel. i mean the thing is.

i MEAN. the THING is.

even DC didn't really seem to know how to interpret that thing. it's shown up like twice or whatever Back In The Day and it was all quite vague and then they stopped talking about it forever. so it never really crossed my mind as something i should factor in to be honest 😭 but now that it's been brought up i'm considering if it might be useful in some way...

well, CTDE Zee's power level has always been primarily a result of her immense experience (never ask a magician her age), which is plenty sufficient for my general purposes. her long training, lived experience, and intricate know-how are the main vehicle, wrapped around an engine of her raw magical power. taking the medulla jewel as a type of magical power source (as presented), it might serve as a means to support the immense pool of resources at her disposal...

primarily i would hate for it to be the Sole Culprit behind her strength since there are Other Reasons she's like this (lol) but i think it could definitely be a Factor (and help explain the truly Zany stunts Arc 3 demands of her, which are so immense they almost kill her lmao)

...i suppose there's a few ways to conceptualize it for my purposes without sundering the 'verse like for example

the jewel is an "innate source of magic" that actively supplies her with a constant flow of power

the jewel is a "battery" that passively stores excess power to be used whenever needed

the jewel is a "philosopher's stone" that transmutes base magic into effective spells directly, circumventing traditional casting methods/costs (essentially, casting for free)

the jewel is a "lens" that focuses magic and gives spells a buff to concentrated power, like a magnifying glass under the sun

something else or a combination

for my purposes and the role she plays in the AU, a combination of #2 and #3 feels more compelling to me than something like #1. Since the CTDE is running "magic always has a cost" rules, a big thing about zee's bad vibe is her non-committal relationship with actually paying—if the medulla jewel provides an innate "bank" of some magical resource, which she can choose to "trade" with the universe in order to immediately cast For Free, that suits her type just fine. her coin on a string for the vending machine of magic, if you will

but it should have a theoretical limit, so making it a "battery pool" that runs low Eventually and needs to recharge (by skimming magic off the world around her) is OK. how to manage her bank of resources—whether to do regular safe invocation or cosmic trickery or just cast from her cheater freebie pool—should be (at least in theory) a choice she makes when bending the universe around her

(her level is so immense that in like 99% of cases she could just freecast without thinking about it) (but the 1% of spells that she needs to Actually Think About is what we're concerned with preserving, so that's still okay)

if she has that funny thing built-in, she probably spent a lot of her training time refining and practicing how to use it and how magic interacts with it. which means she would probably have to Know About All Of That beforehand. which brings us back to the Hidden City Sindella Lore huh.

well when it comes to her parents and stuff, CTDE Zee does play the same general tune--so it's possible some variation of Sindella's Fun Battery Pack plot did happen. this part of the CTDE backstory i havent really delved into bc it hasn't been relevant/important to the main plot of the AU but honestly.... maybe it would be fun to tinker with those components and assemble something

if a variant version of that did happen and sindella was being used to power the hidden city's hidden city-ing, zee would know enough to refine her own Working Relationship with the Magic Brainstone. but also i did Simply Assume and mark sindella as "dead" in my chart earlier, so it probably didn't end much better for herBHJDJMKS

ahhh... we hardly knew ye...

if a version of that stuff happened its probably backstory/not SUPER foreground to her present-time CTDE storyline . since she has some other major shit going on nowadays . but it mightve still been a pretty important part of the backstory...hmm....

it might even prove useful for me down the road, in plotting some of the foggy areas, maybe? i could probably use a hidden city or two, they're convenient to have aroundHDHJBFD

(imagining fondly) the peak Evil Motherhood Theme moment of the CTDE will be when zee takes everyone back to the hidden city and is like Yeah so they sucked my mom DRY here and NOT in a good way. she Died! & theyre all like "ohhh. this is why youre like this"

haha no idk..hm... it's compelling. i'll have to think of a way to use it. if nothing else youve given me something to think about.... in my zee cave...

[pinkberrypocky]

pmmm rewatch live notes: ep 9

wough. ep 9. wough. the design of sayaka's labyrinth. the way kyoko chooses to die with sayaka. screaming crying throwing up.

THE WAY SAYAKA’S LABYRINTH IS MUSICAL

Earlier when she was in despair but not a witch she was floating in symbolic waves of sadness that looked kinda like music waves

In sayaka’s labyrinth the sword as the conductor wand is SO CRAZY

Bc the conductor is the one who decides how everything goes and what the rules are and sayaka was determining the rules for the world as a warrior of justice but she was wrong

The bugs around the lamps when madoka is on the way to find sayaka !!!

madoka is walking on a railroad track when she comes across homura and kyoko carrying sayaka

There is a railroad motif in her labyrinth

The silence of the train and then the sudden sound of the train as madoka comes to the realization of what happened to sayaka

“From now on for every person she has saved she will curse another” really ties back into the idea that hope and despair cancel out to zero

Homura isn’t able to comfort madoka bc she has been through what madoka is going though countless times and knows crying is pointless

Homura saying that she doesn’t consider herself human and kyoko shouldn't either is so AAAA

Madoka small on her bed with her knees to her chest and kyubey’s giant shadow on the curtain as he looms over her

Why are there so many empty chairs in madoka’s room?

For the past versions of her?

For everyone she will save?

Madoka asks kyubey if the magical girls are just disposable energy sources

Which is exactly what it is

They are a natural resource for the incubators to manipulate, reshape, and commodify with no regard for their humanity

Kyubey moves to sit on a chair… What does this/the chairs represent?

I don’t think madoka truly saw kyubey as an enemy until this episode when he says he doesn’t understand why they are upset about a few people dying

Before that she tried so hard to understand him bc she wants to see the best in everyone and find a path forward together but this is a fundamental difference they can’t meet on

Kyoko is seen eating a shit ton of food right after the whole sayaka thing

Reminding herself that she’s not back in the situation she was with her dad

She’s not poor she is safe and can eat when she is hungry

False sense of security in food

The reason she is always snacking is bc it brings her comfort

Kyoko tells madoka that until they knows for sure that sayaka can’t be saved she wants to try

She isn’t trying to put up the facade that she doesn’t care about others anymore

She is doing something selfless blatantly and doesn’t seem upset about it either

Kyoko says that it was sayaka who reminded her why she became a magical girl in the first place (to save others)

So its so narratively tasty that she dies to “save” sayaka in the only remaining way she can

Kyoko tried to teach sayaka the truth about the horrors life but in turn she was reminded of the good parts by sayaka

In the building kyoko and madoka break into to get to sayaka’s labyrinth is lit in yellow

So interesting how mami dies first but her color shows up the most in setting/objects

Her influence living on and continuing to have an impact on the actions of all of them

Kyoko does what mami tried to do in terms of educating about the magical girl reality 

She tells madoka to wait to make a wish until she has no choice

She is always talking about how tough it is and doesn’t sugar coat anything 

She is seen as an opposite to mami but in reality they are so similar

They are also the only two who have experienced economic hardship

Sayaka’s witch form wears a suit of armor like a knight (like she wished to be)

All the people playing the violin in time perfectly no matter what is happening around them bc sayaka’s whole thing is making sure things play on (and literally that kyosuke can play violin)

The red and blue sayaka and kyoko in kyoko’s internal monologue of talking to/with sayaka is SO AAAAAAA

The only time in this fight that kyoko gets mad is when sayaka attacks madoka 

Bc that shows that sayaka is truly gone bc protecting (esp her loved ones) is everything to her

Kyoko tells homura to focus on the one thing that matters to her most to the end

Homura looks at her with madoka in her arms

Kyoko takes down her hair and kisses her soul gem before breaking it to die w sayaka

In context w the quote from above she is apologizing to herself, what mattered most to her, bc she has found something else that she isn’t willing to give up on, even if it means giving up on herself 

The first time we see homura’s nameplate for her house when she talks w kyoko its red bc they aren’t a team yet then the next time it's lit in yellow bc they are a team now but then when kyoko dies it is just gray

[contrasting-realities]

Lore for a Sims 4 Shadows House Game

I have a save file on the sims 4 where I recreated the shadows house. It is a challenge where the goal is to take over the entire map with the shadows house but that's not what I'm going to share today.

Nope. I wrote lore for this iteration of the shadows house and it is quite different from the source material.

To start off, this shadows house is an offshoot of the original, created by four shadows (and one living doll) who managed to escape. They are this house's "3rd floor".

Gabriel: A shadow with the same soot power as Great Grandfather, but who lacks a face. He was a big deal for the OG shadows house due to him being a second source of soot coffee but his doll died before his invitation from a deadly infection. This led the children's wing manager to lock him away in the punishment room to hide the incident, where he met the living doll of the group (who will be discussed later).

Monica & Margette: Two members of Gabriel's debut class, both were invited and passed unification. They wondered why Gabriel hadn't been invited with them considering that the Children's wing manager had such expectations for him. Monica is weird but mostly harmless and Margette is a blunt and impulsive woman who notably is uncomfortable around those younger than her. Monica's soot power is growth/aging acceleration or stalling while Margette can project events occurring in one location somewhere else

Pierre: A second floor shadow who felt like he wasn't being recognized by his superiors, so he hatched a plan to leave and use Gabriel to create a new shadows house. He is the mastermind behind this whole thing, a calm and collected sociopath. His soot power is the ability to control any corpse.

Rohan: The living doll I mentioned earlier. He was locked away in the punishment room because his shadow had died due to the CW Manager's incompetence. As a doll he was called "Roy" but his real name is Rohan, a long time ago he was a juvenile delinquent but the death of his shadow and the time he spent with the others after escaping gave him a paralyzing fear of death (since adult shadows don't age and Gabriel doesn't since his doll is dead). This caused him to allow Pierre to experiment on him, as Pierre is a mad scientist, for potential immortality, because he is immune to soot of certain textures (read: allergic) which Monica happens to fall under.

The new shadows house sits upon crappy land in the middle of a backwater area that has frequently been a battleground in several wars. The locals hated their previous lords and therefore the shadows took advantage of that to overthrow them and take over.

People also tend to go missing in this town, for reasons that aren't widely known but it seems to have stopped since the shadows family took over. The actual reason is that there is an eldritch horror asleep beneath the town who not only eats people from time to time but also makes the place a practical swamp infested with pests, the shadows house only stopped it since the creature assumes that disposed of pairs are sacrifices for it.

Now for the shadows house itself, it's functionally the same as the original with one major difference: no lying. they didn't have the resources to set up the same masquerade that the original had, so they instead offered the villagers the luxuries of soot coal and protection from the constant wars.

The children's wing was only created after a major war was declared by a different country, as this town is part of a region that is constantly changing hands violently, everyone reacted as you'd expect. Pierre took advantage of this to bolster the number of adult shadows to not only complete his final steps of his plan, but to defend themselves against any invaders who might come by (as adult shadows are superior to any humans).

The villagers know what the shadows family are, but worship them regardless because of what they've done to help. Living dolls are selected based on who's willing to sacrifice themselves, as unification is a well known fact in this place. It is considered a honorable thing to serve as a shadows face and even though there is memory alteration, it is mostly done to prevent outside families from trying to use their children to gain status/power (there was one incident of a child having a ribbon sewed into her face as a 'gift' for the noblemen, they banned any form of body modification soon after) and living dolls still know that they are humans, shadows also know about unification and that they are originally morphs.

Most living dolls are physically around 15 or 16 when they go to serve the shadows house and have a good idea of what they're getting into. I say physically because due to their small population, Monica uses her soot power to accelerate the growth of any children in the area by a long shot, the population is growing but fairly slowly.

Eventually, portals to different worlds were discovered. One leads to a 1950s type world while the other leads to a town infested with magic, both are alternate versions of this town and the new shadows house has branches in each, to help create more adults of course.

there are also 3 different timelines with different quirks depending on who became head of the first children's wing. Margette's is the standard timeline, Pierre's had him discover magic earlier due to one of the dolls being a bastard child between a human and a witch, and Monica's has her keeping 20 pairs at once out of fear that the recent war will be much deadlier than predicted.

(Also, this is all canon to one of my fanfics, but I'm not telling you guys which yet. You're welcome to guess though.)

[ashadowofburnedoutstardust]

So I'm going to take a moment to explain myself....

I caught wind of your little plan to use screenshots of fan posts for 🐟 to make a sympathy play with the public along with that random article about needing security

I'm guessing it's the reason why she started unblocking people on her IG account at the same time hoping for more of the trolling comments on her posts like the ones she left up WAY BACK in her comments section attacking Chris etc and why some Tumblr blogs decided to remove some of their posts so they couldn't be used against them,

Since I've gotten blamed for a lot of things I figured I might be a target

So instead of backing down to the intimidation tactics I decided to make use of their own plan and create an exposé using the like video

I'm sure it's sucked for all of them to not get to dance to the tune of their own fiddle

I have warned you before I'd love the extra attention

It's that "Leo" ego and Scorpio Mars

I thought to myself if 🐟 wants the attention well then let's let her have it 😀 I'd be happy for the viewing boost along with it

So I went wide on Twitter/IG/Tumblr/Tiktok/Reddit with a mix of the Mama Lisa like video and mixed in my own watermarked content so if people went looking for the account source due to a clickbait article quote to go troll or harass me they'd find a bunch more revealing info on both the accounts and the hashtags

Not to mention the Kyle Marisa content aligning with the sentiments from the selfie and the like video, and the fact she shared my Tiktok to her IG story was genuinely pure luck and timing, so big shout out to her

Kismet *chefs kiss*

If they decided to buy clicks due to the chatter they were creating to get her trending exposure then the content would trend along with it giving the boost meaning they'd be helping to pay for distribution of the disabling content themselves

I honestly still think this entire situation is horseshit with his friends dropping content the way they are, it still doesn't track as legitimate to me, I meant what I said when I specified my opinion on this situation previously, but because I can't be certain that it's not real the potential to go down together is there if they wanted to fund it

Ultimately rich white boy can afford to pay others to defend him, some of us still have to go into bat for ourselves given our limited resources but that doesn't mean we don't have useful tools at our disposal, we are a fandom with extensive social media training and Photoshop skills after all

So go ahead, try to blame the fans if you want but the info is out there ready and waiting to be discovered

So in the weirdest way if it is legitimately PR then I doubt Chris would want to help fund his own downfall by buying clicks and whoever's backing her can't do so without disadvantaging both of them, I doubt they'd want to do that to the bigger star given they're still not getting the returns they had in mind, and she now can't take advantage of the link without screwing herself over

And if it's real they both lose out, oops

It's always been said it will end how it began except at this end it's not us getting trolled into a reaction, it's them getting starved for the attention they so desperately crave

The Tower card flipped

How do you like them apples?

🪽✨

[thecreaturecodex]

Debbie Twice-Born

“Enraged” © deviantArt user TheBoyofCheese

[This character was an NPC from my Age of Worms game, one of Filge’s undead minions after @canwefixitnoitsfucked​ took Filge from NPC to PC. Debbie’s name and personality were references to “Manos” the Hands of Fate; in that movie, Debbie is the poorly-dubbed little girl who gets turned into one of the undead. Debbie was much more of a joke character than a useful one, although Filge did keep her in a papoose to use her pale aura until she got too fragile to survive the kinds of AoEs they were dealing with. And since I brought Filge back as a weird mutant, I figured Debbie should get the same treatment.

The music box I refer to in the gear is new, but I think it fits well with the character. I assembled a whole huge soundtrack for Age of Worms, and both Filge and reality warping stuff were associated with Philip Glass music. Specifically, Filge’s themes were all taken from the Dracula score. So Debbie’s music box plays the theme from Candyman. ]

Debbie Twice-Born CR 16 CE Undead This young woman has a slight build with powerful and lean muscles, shorter than average but no less strong for it. Her hair is tousled and blonde, and her eyes are black pits looking over a mouth full of sharp, crooked teeth. She carries a bloodstained axe with practiced ease.

Debbie Twice-Born is Filge’s “daughter”. She is a slaymate, created from the daughter of a woman who Filge loved. The woman scorned Filge for his cruelty, and she and her daughter both died from a plague that Filge could easily have saved them from. Through Filge’s adventures, Debbie was quiet and distracted, complaining about the cold of death, and frequently looking for a lost puppy that may or may not have ever existed. When Filge was fragged by his own party, Debbie escaped, and wandered around Alhaster during the short lived Age of Worms on Oerth. When Kyuss died, the waves of powerful negative energy that suffused the region caused her to “grow up”, as it were, and advance from a child of about eight years old to a young woman of eighteen or so. Of course, she was still dead, and still crazy. But now much more dangerous.

Debbie Twice-Born spent a few months as a recreational serial killer before entering the Wormwarrens and finding her equally transformed “father” there. Filge now uses Debbie as his primary agent in the wider world, committing assassinations for him, gathering useful supplies and spying on his former allies. As her powers have grown, Filge has given her a longer leash, and she has made multiple excursions to alternate realities through the depths of the Shadow Plane.

Debbie’s latest excursions have brought her to Castle Xyntillian, where she is a guest of honor and mutually exploited. Debbie has considered merely butchering Aristide Malevol and stealing his role as head of the family, but knows that without finding and destroying his phylactery, that that would be a fool’s errand. Likewise, Aristide is happy to have a powerful pet assassin on hand who is ultimately disposable to him, but also wants to pick her brain about Filge’s exploits, powers and resources. Debbie is somewhat scatterbrained and never paid much attention to the technical details of necromancy, leaving such conversations a source of frustration for the Patriarch Lich. As far as actual friends within the family, Debbie Twice-Born gets along well with Hubert Malevol the Hunter, whose enormous kennels of mundane, monstrous and undead hounds give her plenty of doggies to play with.

Debbie Twice-Born       CR 16 XP 76,800 Female variant giant slaymate slayer 10 (stygian slayer), shadowdancer 1 Init +4; Senses darkvision 60 ft., Perception +13 Aura pale (10 ft.) Defense AC 25, touch 17, flat-footed 20 (+4 Dex, +1 dodge, +3 natural, +5 armor, +2 deflection) hp 221 (8d8+10d10+126) Fort +13, Ref +13, Will +8; +2 vs. mind reading effects Immune undead traits Defensive Abilities half damage from falling, trap sense +3 Offense Speed 30 ft. Melee lifedrinker +22/+17/+12 (1d12+10/19-20x3 plus 2 negative levels), bite +16 (1d6+3 plus disease) or bite +21 (1d6+6 plus disease) Ranged dagger +19 (1d4+6/19-20) Special Attacks bolstering touch, sneak attack +4d6, studied target (+3, 3 targets, move or swift action) Spell-like Abilities CL 10th, concentration +17 2/day—invisibility 10 minutes/day—shadowy mist form Statistics Str 22, Dex 18, Con -, Int 13, Wis 10, Cha 24 Base Atk +15; CMB +21; CMD 38 Feats Blind Fight, Canny Tumble, Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Extra Slayer Talent, Improved Critical (greataxe), Mobility, Nimble Moves, Power Attack Skills Acrobatics +22, Bluff +16, Climb +11, Craft (traps) +11, Disable Device +26, Disguise +16, Escape Artist +17, Fly +11, Intimidate +14, Knowledge (arcana, religion) +6, Knowledge (planes) +3, Perception +13 (+18 finding traps), Perform (dance) +12, Sense Motive +13, Spellcraft +6, Stealth +22, Survival +13 (+18 following tracks), Swim +11, Use Magic Device +17 SQ exceptional resources (15th level PC, +4 Cha), grown up, hide in plain sight, slayer talents (bleeding attack +4, fast stealth, foil scrutiny, spell use, surprise attack, trapfinding) Gear lifedrinker, +3 catskin leather, belt of physical might +2 (Str, Dex), headband of charisma +2, winged boots, bloodstained gloves, ring of maniacal devices, ring of protection +2, false face, dust of appearance, assassin’s dust, scroll of shadow walk, scroll of greater invisibility, scroll of dimension door, scroll of enervation, scroll of inflict critical wounds (x2), scroll of displacement (x3), scroll of mirror image (x3), 10 daggers, masterwork thieves tools, copper and bone music box worth 125 gp, 12 pp Special Abilities Bolstering Touch (Su) Three times a day, a slaymate can touch an undead creature to grant it a +1 profane bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls and +2 channel resistance for 1 minute. Disease (Su) Pale wasting—injury; save Fort DC 20; onset 1 day; damage 1d4 Str and 1d4 Con; cure 2 saves. The save DC is Charisma based. Exceptional Resources (Ex) Debbie has the treasure of a 15th level PC, and has used some of that money to obtain and use a tome of influence +4. These advantages give her a +1 increase to her CR. Grown Up (Ex) As an undead child magically matured to adulthood, Debbie has a slightly different set of abilities than normal for the giant simple template. Instead of gaining a +4 bonus to Constitution, she gains a +4 bonus to Charisma, and a +10 foot increase to her land speed. Pale Aura (Su) A slaymate exudes an aura that empowers necromantic magic. Any necromancy spell cast within a slaymate’s pale aura gains a +1 bonus to the DC (if any) and is cast at +1 caster level. A spellcaster within the slaymate’s aura can choose to use any metamagic feat he knows on a necromancy spell he casts without increasing the casting time or spell level. Doing so, however, deals damage to both the slaymate and the caster equal to 5 x the level the spell would ordinarily be adjusted to. There is no saving throw to resist this damage. Shadowy Mist Form (Sp): At 10th level, a stygian slayer can transform into an inky black cloud of mist. This functions as gaseous form, except it also obscures vision as fog cloud. The slayer can use this ability for a number of minutes per day equal to his level. These minutes need not be consecutive, but must be used in 1-minute increments. This ability replaces the advanced slayer talent gained at 10th level. Spell Use (Ex) At 7th level, a stygian slayer is able to use spell completion and spell trigger items as if they were an arcane caster with these spells on his spell list: darkness, forced quietUM, modify memory, nondetection, obscuring mist, phantom steed, shadow walk , and wizard spells of the illusion school of spell level 0 through 4th. The slayer’s uses their class level as their caster level for this ability. This ability replaces stalker.

[yr-obedt-cicero]

A recording of Hamilton's days following the duel

July 8th, 1804

Sunday morning, Hamilton walked with Eliza “over all the pleasant scenes” of the Grange estate, and returned home at noon. He read the morning service of the Episcopal church. The hours until evening were spent “in kind companionship” with his family. And at the end of the day, Hamilton gathered his children around him under a near tree, he laid with them upon the grass until it turned dark. [x] According to Alexander Hamilton Jr. in an interview; “Col. Smith, son in-law of John Adams, had dined with us, and the result of a conversation on the subject was a tacit agreement on my father's part not to fight.” [x]

July 9th, 1804

Monday morning, Hamilton left Eliza at the Grange and rode down to lower Manhattan, to his town house at 54 Cedar Street with his four eldest sons. After taking care of his urgent clients and affairs, he drafted his will.

Source — Library of Congress, Digital Collections. Alexander Hamilton Papers: Miscellany, 1711-1820; Hamilton, Alexander; Last will and testament

In the Name of God Amen! I Alexander Hamilton of the City of New York Counsellor at Law do make this my last Will and Testament as follows. First I appoint John B Church Nicholas Fish and Nathaniel Pendleton of the City aforesaid Esquires to be Executors and Trustees of this my Will and I devise to them their heirs and Assigns, as joint Tenants and not as Tenants in common, All my Estate real and personal whatsoever and wheresoever upon Trust at their discretion to sell and dispose of the same, at such time and times in such manner and upon such terms as they the Survivors and Survivor shall think fit and out of the proceeds to pay all the Debts which I shall owe at the time of my decease, in whole, if the fund shall be sufficient, proportionally, if it shall be insufficient, and the residue, if any there shall be to pay and deliver to my excellent and dear Wife Elizabeth Hamilton.

Though if it shall please God to spare my life I may look for a considerable surplus out of my present property—Yet if he should speedily call me to the eternal wor[l]d, a forced sale as is usual may possibly render it insufficient to satisfy my Debts. I pray God that something may remain for the maintenance and education of my dear Wife and Children. But should it on the contrary happen that there is not enough for the payment of my Debts, I entreat my Dear Children, if they or any of them shall ever be able, to make up the Deficiency. I without hesitation commit to their delicacy a wish which is dictated by my own. Though conscious that I have too far sacrificed the interests of my family to public avocations & on this account have the less claim to burthen my Children, yet I trust in their magnanimity to appreciate as they ought this my request. In so unfavourable an event of things, the support of their dear Mother with the most respectful and tender attention is a duty all the sacredness of which they will feel. Probably her own patrimonial resources will preserve her from Indigence. But in all situations they are charged to bear in mind that she has been to them the most devoted and best of mothers. In Testimony whereof I have hereunto subscribed my hand the Ninth day of July in the year of our lord One thousand Eight hundred & four.

Alexander Hamilton

Signed sealed published & declared as and for his last Will and Testament in our presence who have subscribed the same in his presence.

The words John B Church being above interlined.

Dominick T Blake

Graham Newell

Theo B Valleau

Source — Last Will and Testament of Alexander Hamilton, [9 July 1804]

According to John C. Hamilton, while he was executing it, a friend came in and related to him his fear of an intended fraud. Hamilton took him by the arm and said, “Let us walk past the counting-room of these people. Perhaps, on seeing us together, they may think it expedient to do you justice.” The expedient succeeded. [x]

In the afternoon, the regulations of the duel were finalized by Van Nass and Pendleton. [x] Hamilton wrote that Assignment of Debts and Grant of Power of Attorney would be placed on John B. Church. This was included in a list of seven items given to Nathaniel Pendleton. [x]

Know all Men by these Presents, That I Alexander Hamilton of the City of New York Counsellor at law, in consideration of one Dollar to me in hand paid by John B Church Esquire, (the receipt whereof is hereby acknowleged) have bargained sold assigned and conveyed and hereby do bargain sell assign & convey to the said John B Church all and singular the debts due owing and payable to me: which are specified in the schedule hereunto annexed to be by him collected and the proceeds applied first towards the payment of all and every the debt and debts which I owe to my household and other servants and labourers, and to the Woman who washes for Mrs. Hamilton—and secondly towards the satisfaction and discharge of certain accommodation notes made by me and indorsed by him and which have been or shall be discounted in and by the Manhattan Bank and the Office of Discount & Deposit of the Bank of the United States in the City of New York. And for this purpose I do hereby constitute and appoint him my Attorney to ask demand sue for recover and receive the said Debts and every of them and upon receipt thereof or any part thereof to make and give acquittances. In Witness whereof I have hereunto subscribed & set my hand and seal the Ninth day of July in the year of our lord One thousand Eight hundred & four.

A. Ham⟨ilton⟩

Source — Assignment of Debts and Grant of Power of Attorney to John B. Church, [9 July 1804]

The last remaining hours of the day were spent with his old Treasury protégé, Oliver Wolcott Jr., who later wrote; “Hamilton spent the afternoon & evening of Monday with our friends at my House in Company with Mr. Hopkinson of Phil’. He was uncommonly cheerful and gay The duel had been determined on for ten days.” [x]

July 10th, 1804

The following document is undated, but is theorized to have been composed or finished on Hamilton's last work day, Tuesday. Hamilton wrote a list of reasonings as to why he accepted the challenge;

Source — New York Historical Society. Alexander Hamilton statement on impending duel with Aaron Burr, undated, [July 10, 1804(?)]

On my expected interview with Col Burr, I think it proper to make some remarks explanatory of my conduct, motives and views.

I am certainly desirous of avoiding this interview, for the most cogent reasons.

1 My religious and moral principles are strongly opposed to the practice of Duelling, and it would even give me pain to be obliged to shed the blood of a fellow creature in a private combat forbidden by the laws.

2 My wife and Children are extremely dear to me, and my life is of the utmost importance to them, in various views.

3 I feel a sense of obligation towards my creditors; who in case of accident to me, by the forced sale of my property, may be in some degree sufferers. I did not think my self at liberty, as a man of probity, lightly to expose them to this hazard.

4 I am conscious of no ill-will to Col Burr, distinct from political opposition, which, as I trust, has proceeded from pure and upright motives.

Lastly, I shall hazard much, and can possibly gain nothing by the issue of the interview.

But it was, as I conceive, impossible for me to avoid it. There were intrinsick difficulties in the thing, and artificial embarrassments, from the manner of proceeding on the part of Col Burr.

Intrinsick—because it is not to be denied, that my animadversions on the political principles character and views of Col Burr have been extremely severe, and on different occasions, I, in common with many others, have made very unfavourable criticisms on particular instances of the private conduct of this Gentleman.

In proportion as these impressions were entertained with sincerity and uttered with motives and for purposes, which might appear to me commendable, would be the difficulty (until they could be removed by evidence of their being erroneous), of explanation or apology. The disavowal required of me by Col Burr, in a general and indefinite form, was out of my power, if it had really been proper for me to submit to be so questionned; but I was sincerely of opinion, that this could not be, and in this opinion, I was confirmed by that of a very moderate and judicious friend whom I consulted. Besides that Col Burr appeared to me to assume, in the first instance, a tone unnecessarily peremptory and menacing, and in the second, positively offensive. Yet I wished, as far as might be practicable, to leave a door open to accommodation. This, I think, will be inferred from the written communications made by me and by my direction, and would be confirmed by the conversations between Mr van Ness and myself, which arose out of the subject.

I am not sure, whether under all the circumstances I did not go further in the attempt to accommodate, than a pun[c]tilious delicacy will justify. If so, I hope the motives I have stated will excuse me.

It is not my design, by what I have said to affix any odium on the conduct of Col Burr, in this case. He doubtless has heared of animadversions of mine which bore very hard upon him; and it is probable that as usual they were accompanied with some falshoods. He may have supposed himself under a necessity of acting as he has done. I hope the grounds of his proceeding have been such as ought to satisfy his own conscience.

I trust, at the same time, that the world will do me the Justice to believe, that I have not censured him on light grounds, or from unworthy inducements. I certainly have had strong reasons for what I may have said, though it is possible that in some particulars, I may have been influenced by misconstruction or misinformation. It is also my ardent wish that I may have been more mistaken than I think I have been, and that he by his future conduct may shew himself worthy of all confidence and esteem, and prove an ornament and blessing to his Country.

As well because it is possible that I may have injured Col Burr, however convinced myself that my opinions and declarations have been well founded, as from my general principles and temper in relation to similar affairs—I have resolved, if our interview is conducted in the usual manner, and it pleases God to give me the opportunity, to reserve and throw away my first fire, and I have thoughts even of reserving my second fire—and thus giving a double opportunity to Col Burr to pause and to reflect.

It is not however my intention to enter into any explanations on the ground. Apology, from principle I hope, rather than Pride, is out of the question.

To those, who with me abhorring the practice of Duelling may think that I ought on no account to have added to the number of bad examples—I answer that my relative situation, as well in public as private aspects, enforcing all the considerations which constitute what men of the world denominate honor, impressed on me (as I thought) a peculiar necessity not to decline the call. The ability to be in future useful, whether in resisting mischief or effecting good, in those crises of our public affairs, which seem likely to happen, would probably be inseparable from a conformity with public prejudice in this particular.

Source — Statement on Impending Duel with Aaron Burr, [28 June–10 July 1804]

Hamilton ran into a family friend and client on Broadway, Dirck Ten Broeck, who reminded him that he had forgotten to deliver a promised legal opinion. Afterward, Broeck reflected with astonishment on Hamilton's reaction; “He was really ashamed of his neglect, but [said] that I must call on him the next day, Wednesday—(the awful fatal day)—at 10 o'clock, when he would sit down with me, lock the door, and then we would finish the business.” [x]

Hamilton wrote to Theodore Sedgwick, his friend of many years, who had been the channel of his most useful communications on the policy of the country; thus showing that, to the latest moment, his thoughts were upon that which had formed the leading topic of the Federalist—“the utility of the Union to the political prosperity of the whole American people.” [x] Since one purpose of the duel was to prepare to head off a secessionist threat, he warned Sedgwick against any such movement among New England Federalists.

Source — Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. Letter from Alexander Hamilton to Theodore Sedgwick, 10 July 1804.

New York July 10. 1804

My Dear Sir

I have received two letters from you since we last saw each other—that of the latest date being the 24 of May. I have had in hand for some time a long letter to you, explaining my view of the course and tendency of our Politics, and my intentions as to my own future conduct. But my plan embraced so large a range that owing to much avocation, some indifferent health, and a growing distaste for Politics, the letter is still considerably short of being finished. I write this now to satisfy you, that want of regard for you has not been the cause of my silence.

I will here express but one sentiment, which is, that Dismembrement of our Empire will be a clear sacrifice of great positive advantages, without any counterballancing good; administering no relief to our real Disease; which is Democracy, the poison of which by a subdivision will only be the more concentered in each part, and consequently the more virulent.

King is on his way for Boston where you may chance to see him, and hear from himself his sentiments.

God bless you

A H

Source — Alexander Hamilton to Theodore Sedgwick, [July 10, 1804]

Hamilton then saw Judah Hammond, who was a clerk in AH's law office, where he drafted an elaborate opinion in a legal matter. Hammond later recalled that; “The last time General Hamilton was in the office was in the early part of July 1804, in the afternoon. I was the only person remaining in the office with him. The last thing he did there, in his professional business he did at my desk and by my side. Even the place seems sacred to my memory. The office was at Number twelve in Garden Street, opposite the Church Grounds. The building has been since removed. It was near sunset, the evening bright and serene. The setting sun approached the margin of the horizon, shedding his last rays on the beautiful objects illustrated by his departing splendours. At this closing of the day, when we love to linger in its pleasures, General Hamilton came to my desk, in the tranquil manner usual with him, and gave me a business paper with his instructions, concerning it. I saw no change in his appearance. These were his last moments in his place of business” [x]

According to John C. Hamilton; “—after waiting upon his faithful friend, Oliver Wolcott, at the close of an entertainment given by him, [...] made his last visit. It was to Colonel [Robert] Troup, the companion of his early years.” [x] For weeks, Troup had lain bedridden with a grave illness that Hamilton feared might prove mortal. When he dropped by to visit Troup, Hamilton did not mention the duel and overflowed Troup with medical suggestions;

“The General's visit lasted more than half an hour; and after making particular inquiries respecting the state of my complaint, he favored me with his advice as to the course which he thought would best conduce to the reestablishment of my health. But the whole tenor of the General's deportment during the visit manifested such composure and cheerfulness of mind as to leave me without any suspicion of the rencontre that was depending.”

Source — William and Mary Quarterly, Journal

Afterwards, Hamilton returned to his townhouse. Pendleton found him there and attempted to discuss with him and make a final attempt to dissuade Hamilton from his decision to delope during the duel. Nevertheless, Hamilton insisted he would fire in the air. When Pendleton protested, Hamilton indicated that his mind was made up; “My friend,” he told Pendleton, “it is the effect of a religious scruple and does not admit of reasoning. It is useless to say more on the subject as my purpose is definitely fixed.” [x]

At 10 p.m, Hamilton - even after already writing Eliza a farewell letter dated on the fourth - sat down in his study upstairs and took his quill once more to pen another letter but in favor of Anne Mitchell, Hamilton's cousin, and his largest supporter in his boyhood.

Source — A letter from Alexander Hamilton to Elizabeth Hamilton, dated July 4, 1804. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Manuscripts Division.

My beloved Eliza

Mrs. Mitchel is the person in the world to whom as a friend I am under the greatest Obligations. I have ⟨not⟩ hitherto done my ⟨duty⟩ to her. But ⟨resolved⟩ to repair my omission as much as ⟨possible,⟩ I have encouraged her to come to ⟨this Country⟩ and intend, if it shall be ⟨in my po⟩wer to render the Evening of her days ⟨c⟩omfortable. But if it shall please God to put this out of my power and to inable you hereafter to be of ⟨s⟩ervice to her, I entreat you to d⟨o⟩ it and to treat ⟨h⟩er with the tenderness of a Sister.

This is my second letter.

The Scrup⟨les of a Christian have deter⟩mined me to expose my own li⟨fe to any⟩ extent rather than subject my s⟨elf to the⟩ guilt of taking the life of ⟨another.⟩ This must increase my hazards & redoubles my pangs for you. But you had rather I should die inno⟨c⟩ent than live guilty. Heaven can pre⟨se⟩rve me ⟨and I humbly⟩ hope will ⟨b⟩ut in the contrary ⟨e⟩vent, I charge you to remember that you are a Christian. God’s Will be done. The will of a merciful God must be good.

Once more Adieu My Darling darling Wife

A H

Tuesday Evening 10 oCl⟨ock⟩

⟨Mrs Ha⟩milton

Source — Alexander Hamilton to Elizabeth Hamilton, [10 July 1804]

Hamilton descended from his study, and entered the parlor downstairs, there he found his son reading a book. Hamilton watched him pensively for a few moments, before he leaned over his book and smiled as he asked him if he would sleep with him. [x] The son in this story is Hamilton's fifth child, John Church Hamilton, who later recalled the same incident in an interview;

I recall a single incident about it with full clearness. [...] The day before the duel I was sitting in a room, when, at a slight noise, I turned around and saw my father in the doorway, standing silently there and looking at me with a most sweet and beautiful expression of countenance. It was full of tenderness, and without any of the business pre-occupation he sometimes had. “John,” he said, when I had discovered him, “won't you come and sleep with me to-night?” His voice was frank as if he had been my brother instead of my father. That night I went to his bed, and in the morning very early he awakened me, and taking my hands in his palms, all four hands extended, he said and told me to repeat the Lord's Prayer. Seventy-five years have since passed over my head, and I have forgotten many things, but not that tender expression when he stood looking at me in the door nor the prayer we made together the morning before the duel. I do not so well recollect seeing him lie upon his deathbed, though I was there.

Source — Interview with John Church Hamilton, reminiscences about his father.

July 11th, 1804

After Hamilton retired to bed with John uncommonly early, he awoke quietly at three o'clock the next morning. Hamilton reportedly had; “some imperfect sleep; but the succeeding morning his symptoms were aggravated, attended however with a diminution of pain. His mind retained all its usual strength and composure. The great source of his anxiety seemed to be in his sympathy with his half distracted wife and children.” [x] He soon awoke John and took his hands in his palms, “all four hands extended”, he spoke the Lord's Prayer, as John repeated after him. Afterwards he asked his son to light a candle, John asked him what was the matter and Hamilton had lied to him claiming that his little sister, Eliza Hamilton Holly, was ill and had been taken out of town. And that his mother had sent for him and that he was going out with Doctor Hosack. After the candle was lit he sat down and wrote a hymn which he had but just finished when Pendleton and Hosack called for him. The hymn was put in his will where it was found by his wife later on. [x]

Main sources:

Life of Alexander Hamilton, by John Church Hamilton.

The intimate life of Alexander Hamilton, by Allan McLane Hamilton.

Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow.

A Collection of the Facts and Documents, Relative to the Death of Major-General Alexander Hamilton, by William Coleman.

Four letters on the death of Alexander Hamilton 1804, David B. Ogden.